#Maybe that's why my random number generator is obsessed with it?

[piperamitt]

Did you guys know Poof has a Crash Nebula lunch box? If not...

Now you do.

[biolumien]

Hi Hi! first time requesting like this and I just recently finished watching the latest episode of Kaiju number 8. I was wondering if your could write something for Vice Captain Hoshina.

I was thinking something along the lines of a reincarnation storyline? Maybe Reader is a renowned painter or something. And one day they come across a dream of Hoshina in their past life and they paint his face. And Hoshina is suddenly bombarded by a few officers/cadets a few days later about a sudden article blowing up online with a painting that had extremely similar structure to his face. And maybe they'd end up meeting because of it?

I love your writing. Particularly the one with the glasses reader that I read a few days back. You're free to change things as you see fit. And I'm sure whatever you come up with will be very nice. Sorry if my words are confusing. I don't speak english language that well. 😊👌 Thank you if you decide to write for this ask.

notes: ok the way i am. actually obsessed with this i hope you enjoy!!

every 'one line' drawn.

soshiro hoshina x gn!reader no warnings, i think wc: 1768

in your dreams, you always see the same face. red eyes watching your face, purple hair framed over his face and the feeling of a callused hand on your hand, on your cheek. and every time he leans into kiss you, you find yourself pressing your face closer to his, as if desperate, and then you wake up. 

and when you wake up, you always feel the telltale trickle of a tear down your face, the feeling of salt on your tongue. 

there’s no time to wonder what the dreams ever mean, what with your job as a painter. you lived commission to commission—and while your customers were always high brow and paid generously, still meant that you couldn’t be lost in daydreams forever. 

and in your studio, with the pungent smell of turpentine and linseed oil, with your hands inevitably smeared with oil paints, it was easy to forget the stranger whose hands felt rough and weary, and yet held your face with measured gentleness. it was easy to forget him—up until you went back to bed, and you’d always be back in the same dream. 

“i keep seeing you,” you murmur in your dream. “who are you?” 

the man laughs. 

he seems sad, for a second. 

“a dear friend,” he responds. you see it on his face, the way his lips twist at his words, that it’s not quite true. and he leans in again, watching your face. “it’s okay if you don’t remember me.” 

“but i do,” you say in protest. you think you remember this face. “i want to.” 

you must remember this face, surely—this face that, upon your words, looks sadder. and then you wonder if he’s even real—or if this is simply your subconscious, saddened that you can’t remember. saddened that your mind replays this moment, again and again, a repeated brushstroke pulling open the blank canvas underneath. 

“we all want things we can’t have, sometimes,” the man says. 

he leans into kiss you, 

and you jolt up out of bed, awakening to a phone call from your manager. 

“hello…?” you mumble into your phone, pressing it against your cheek as you rub the sleep out of your eyes. “it’s rare you call me randomly like this…” 

“tis no random call,” your manager responds. “you’ve received a request to exhibit some of your works from a museum. will you do it? i hear the pay’s pretty good.”

“mmm… any specific theme?” you ask. 

“not really. they said to let your imagination go wild.” 

“hm.” 

you touch your lips, and when you close your eyes, you see a hint of those crimson eyes again. 

“alright. i think i’ve got a pretty good muse this time,” you say. 

[…]

hoshina wasn’t exactly someone who was very in the know about art. his job, for one, meant that it’s not like he would exactly be interested in art in general, and it’s not like he was even spending his days off on art museum trips or admiring the local art scene. 

so why was it that everyone seemed all abuzz about art today?

and why did it seem like there were more eyes on him than before? not that he particularly abhorred attention or anything, but the eyes seemed to be looking at his face specifically. 

his eyes flit to some of the new officer recruits—iharu, reno, kafka… fuck, even haruichi and aoi? what the hell was going on—huddled around a laptop. haruichi’s brow furrows as he stares at the illuminated screen, and then flits up to look at hoshina. when hoshina stares back, harder, haruichi’s gaze immediately ducks back to the laptop.  

okay. 

well, something was definitely up. 

hoshina strolls over to the recruits, who immediately seem to start panicking—the panic is written across kafka’s face more obviously than the others, and reno elbows kafka in the side. 

“what’s all this about? if you’ve got time to huddle you’ve got time to run laps—” hoshina starts, leaning over at the screen before—

“about that, vice captain,” iharu says. 

hoshina’s in stunned silence staring at the screen, because… isn’t that—

“holy shit,” hoshina says. 

“holy shit indeed,” haruichi says grimly. 

on haruichi’s laptop screen is a painting of— him. hoshina’s damned face, brows gentle and a softened smile on his face. it was a beautiful painting, and yet—there was something sad about the smile, the brows belying deep sorrow. 

“this painter’s pretty well-known, too, aren’t they?” kafka asks. “for like… the psychedelic stuff.” 

“no,” reno says. “they’re like our modern-day monet or something. impressionist paintings.” 

“impressi-what? how do you know this much about art, reno?” iharu asks, wrapping his arm around reno’s neck in a headlock. reno coughs, slapping iharu’s arm. 

“shut up,” reno chokes out, but even as the bickering picks up, hoshina’s gaze is still transfixed on the painting. 

it’s him. no doubt about it. 

“i’ve never talked to them before,” hoshina says after a moment. at once the arguments rattle to a halt, but in the empty relief of silence is the carved truth—that the painting is definitely of him, and its painter was a person who he’d never talked to before in his life. 

“the artist is going to be doing a panel about their exhibition soon,” haruichi says, glancing up at hoshina. “i think they can get me a ticket if i ask.” 

“… just don’t expect me to lighten your laps around the training course,” hoshina says with a chuckle. 

[…]

you hated speaking in front of an audience. cliche, of course, the introverted artist that squirrels away in in their studio—but that was often your reality. you liked to say you wanted your work to ‘speak for itself’, as it were, so you didn’t often make public appearances. 

but your most recent exhibition, featuring the painting of your mysterious dream visitor, created far more buzz than you could have asked for. suddenly everyone and anyone wanted an answer as for who your muse was, why he had a very striking resemblance to soshiro hoshina of the japan anti-kaiju defense force’s third division, and had you gotten permission from hoshina to do it? did you have a specific message surrounding your work?

“just stick to the script,” your manager says to you. “i talked it through with some of the reporters and i wrote some answers for you if you’re scared.” he hands you a slip of paper, and your eyes scan the page, and you swallow the lump in forming in your throat. 

“i shouldn’t have done the painting after all,” you say.

it was strange. in the days and weeks you’d worked on the painting, you hadn’t seen your muse in your dreams at all. you’d been forced to rely on only the memory of the dream–which only seemed to get fuzzier and fuzzier until it became barely a wisp. and now, in those ensuing weeks that the painting has been on exhibition, you almost felt embarrassed of the painting–its vague subject matter might have been charming and a little kitsch, but charming and a little kitsch wasn’t supposed to garner this much attention.

“nonsense,” your manager says. “it’s a wonderful painting.” he pushes you by the back, gently urging you forward. “they’re ready for you.”

you push past the door separating you from the reporters–and then are immediately flashbanged with cameras and lights, and jumbling, layered voices creating a discordant symphony that made you wince.

“um. thank you… for…” you wince as your grip fumbles on your microphone, nearly dropping it, the feedback screeching across speakers. “um. sorry. i’m not exactly the best public speaker–my repertoire of events… like this, isn’t many. but thank you for attending this panel… surrounding my exhibition of my latest work. i’ll answer… a few questions.”

the reporters looked like a jumbled blob for the most part–a thrumming organism of similar faces that melted together into one homogenous mess, a splotch of badly-mixed paint on the palette that you’d scrape away with a knife and discard. 

reciting your manager’s written responses wasn’t the hard part. as you continued to banter, your eyes swept across the crowd.

what were you even doing here?

you wanted to crawl back to your studio, already, and go back to painting. at least then the idea that you’d dreamed up some man who bore a striking resemblance to someone who already existed would fade away with time. and then your eyes found that telltale shade of crimson and purple–for just a moment. and you think his eyes meet yours, too–crimson eyes the exact shade as the one in your dreams. 

his eyes widen. 

“... as you were saying?” a reporter’s words float back to your ears, ephemeral, and you pause.

“can we… no more questions.” you shake your head, finding your vision swimming, blurring, and you raise a hand wiping tears from your face. “sorry. something just… came up–”

and you push into the crowd, trying to find the face from your dreams.

that had to be him, right? his face? it was like as soon as you saw him, the underpainting of your memories flowed back to you–a heartaching loss pounding in your chest. something was wrong. something was missing, because you’d forgotten–and now that you’d remembered it, it hurt. 

“i’m sorry,” you say. 

“you’ve nothing to be sorry for,” the man says to you, and leans in to kiss you. “i’ll find you again in the next life.”

“i’ll remember you,” you say. 

the man watches you, a somewhat sad look on his face.

you press your thumb to the corner of his lip.

“and when i do, i’ll do something big. to capture your attention. and then your eyes will be on me forever.”

you finally manage to catch the man in the crowd, and you realize you’ve seen him before. only once or twice, though–on a small poster or on television. soshiro hoshina, of the third division. you did know this man–but just barely.

he lets out a surprised noise as soon as you collide with him, and you gasp breathlessly. 

“i’m sorry,” you say, looking up at hoshina. “i just… have we…”

“met?” hoshina answers your question, cocking his head, blinking down at you.

“yes,” you say. “i think… i think so. maybe. we… you look familiar.”

hoshina blinks, and then smiles.

it’s so different than the way he smiled at you in your dream. the corners of his lips quirk up, his eyebrows relax almost as he watches you. 

“i thought so too,” hoshina says, and you hear relief in his voice. “so… um. hi.”

“hi,” you respond, and he laughs.

[sharklovingaquarist]

I've been struggling with physical health lately, and I HATE the medical field

I feel like womens health is such a big trigger to me. I see something about "if your childhood looks like this, then time to schedule a pap smear," trying to be all quirky... like it all feels wrong. Im recently having issues with menstruation, and I just learned that my grandmother had endometriosis. Im worried that, if it gets worse, I'll have to go through all the bullshit other women talk about. Someone else said it perfectly, its baby machine maintenance. The medical system screams and pisses over the possibility that a woman loses her sex appeal (breasts) and cervix/uterus (reproduction). But why is it that they deny the possibility of ovarian cysts or cancer? They are so desperate to shove a speculum in your vagina but are so reluctant to do an ultrasound. My theory is that if you have cervical cancer, you could lose your ability to gestate. If you have ovarian, you can get an egg donor. Idk, maybe I'm wrong, because without ovaries, you would lose hormone synthesis (however you would probably take supplements), but it's something to think about. They're obsessed with inserting random tools made by men into your vagina as soon as you hit puberty, but not for your sake. Also, the number of stories I've heard of women who had many mammograms but it was only caught at a late stage years later??? Men aren't pressued nearly as much nor at as early of an age, yet it seems women suffer more from cancer (I would have to view statistics. That's just observation). Again, I'm not a medical professional, but it's definitely an area that concerns me. The insistence on getting checked seems more like breeding stock monitoring than comfort and health of female patients, the vibe around it in general screams this with how forceful they are on this subject yet how little they care.

Excuse any improper grammar or messy writing it's just getting on my nerves.

[ay-miphae]

More Pointless Ayreon Statistics.txt

chat i don't know how to preface this one. i'm just obsessed with Ayreon and with pointless data collection

instead of alt text because that would be very verbose i have decided why not link the same spreadsheet but on Google Sheets, this time with a bit more conditional formatting. everybody enjoy (none of the formulas transferred over though)

Basically I went through the entirety of the Source with the object of thinking "huh I wonder how long each character appears for and if it bears any significance" so the part of the table highlighted in green is the length of each character's appearance (in seconds) per song.

At the bottom of the green section is the total number of seconds each character appears, the total number of songs they appear on, average time per song (the green and yellow row), and then overall percentage.

To the right I wanted to see how many characters appeared on each song, and it's not an exact measure but the percentage of the song that is and isn't vocals (% instrumental is the yellow and green column)

Also the pie chart just graphs the length of each character's appearance.

Random observations here:

Dream Dissolves is the most instrumental by far (makes sense) followed by the most vocal (Deathcry). Tbf Deathcry has a lot of shared choruses and I forgot to account for that (like when multiple characters are singing at the same time). also might be worth redoing this data now that I'm much more familiar with when and for how long each character appears. (this consisted of me sitting in front of Excel with a stopwatch for multiple hours yes)

TH-1 only appears on 7 songs (average is close to 9, like pretty consistently) but when he does he sings a lot. Particularly his binary string and Everybody Dies and March of the Machines.

The ones who appear on more than 9 songs are Captain, Biologist, and Diplomat, so do with that what you will

Why does Astro get far less time per song than everybody else please do my boy some justice

Prophet is halfway done with his vocals by the end of Sea of Machines it's like he just dips for the last three chronicles lmao

Surprisingly the character who shows up the most is Diplomat! I wonder why that is, maybe he's just the closest to an everyman on the album so it makes sense that we're seeing a lot of events from his perspective?

Then Captain and TH-1. It tracks tbh

Chemist in the top 4 is a surprise, then again a lot of his vocals are like slow melodic segments. OL and Bio next don't surprise me either

Preacher at the bottom but we knew that, feeling ripped off that Astro has a whole minute less than Prophet

I keep trying to edit in the detail that "Hansi sings more on Wheel of Time than on this entire album and I thought y'all should know that" but it keeps getting deleted randomly. Tumblr does not want y'all to know that ??

Ok ignore the red tags on these and the name I gave the graph, I was just writing notes to myself to remind myself of who was singing what. 01 has significantly more characters who aren't part of the core council of Forever

I don't have a lot to say on this one, same format and everything. Comatose, Waking Dreams, and River of Time are the most instrumental, Connect the Dots is the most vocal.

Same thing as before, I didn't factor in shared vocals and such except for Sixth Extinction because otherwise it would have been at like 108% vocal I don't think that's possible

PX is just barely on this album lmao. In terms of Forevers, this album is generally a LOT more even with the exception of 𓅛 taking over the whole album (he does... seem like the most central Forever) and ☾ who only appears on two songs (I included Sixth Extinction though) </3 Considering that the Forevers are a hivemind and there's much less character distinctions. A bit surprised that ☯ and R are close to the bottom but the difference isn't that huge...

[avpdvoidspace]

Since you've mentioned a couple of times having comorbid OCPD, would you mind explaining more about the effect that disorder has on you? Out of every PD, it's the one I never find people talking about. Due to that, and the diagnostic criteria itself being (as ever) exasperatingly superficial and vague, It's hard to know where to even look for information about it..!

Sure. I agree that it's very difficult to find information about ocpd online. I guess I could categorize my experience with ocpd into three categories: things that are absolutely recognized symptoms of ocpd, things that overlap with other obsessive compulsive spectrum disorders (like things more traditionally thought of as OCD symptoms), and things that I have to assume come from ocpd because they seem to but I don't know if they're universal because I don't see other people talking about having ocpd. So in terms of things that are definitely ocpd experiences: I really don't feel safe or comfortable in situations I don't have at least some control over. I need to control my space, my food, who is around me, etc to feel safe. This also applies to my time and schedule. I get very agitated when it's interrupted, even if I don't show it. I tend to plan my day's activities pretty rigidly and it stresses me out when I'm not able to follow through. I also have very rigid ways I like to do things, and it stresses me out if I have to do something with someone else's method or if someone in my apartment does something differently to how I would do it, especially things like eating without washing hands first, not taking shoes off before coming in, etc. I try to keep this kind of thing in check because I don't want to be controlling or obnoxious, but it causes me a lot of stress internally. This has been very difficult when I've had a job and I'm being told to do things a particular way but it's not MY way. It's also difficult when I'm intentionally trying to push myself to try a different method for, say, drawing something. Even though I'm making the choice, I'm breaking my method and it feels extremely Wrong. The next category is overlap with other obsessive compulsive spectrum disorders. I definitely get intrusive thoughts and the anxiety inducing spiral of 'something bad will happen if I don't have the tv volume set to an odd number' and 'I feel compelled to make sure my foot touches to the floor in a very certain way right now for Reasons'. I also have health anxiety that gets worse if I try to engage in reassurance seeking behavior (but this only started after I got diagnosed with a chronic illness, so it could be a combination of ocpd and trauma). But you can apply the mechanics of health anxiety to other things that pop into my head to frighten me with no basis in reality that start the reassurance seeking/me becoming more convinced the terrible thing is true cycle. Then the third category, which is random things I think are ocpd but who knows because there aren't a lot of other people out there talking about their personal experiences with it: I like recording things. Every day, I write the weather conditions down in a notebook. I also have very rigid records of my drawing time and draw with a stopwatch going to make sure I'm keeping track and write everything in a notepad++ file like so

I get extremely stressed out if anything gets in the way of this process! You could say my life kind of revolves around this actually. I've actually drawn at least an hour a day for about a decade (knock on wood...), and I track it every day. In general, I have a lot of fun creating methods and systems to follow rigidly. It's like a game even. Maybe why I like playing games with a lot of organization/time management... Love giving myself a list of tasks and completing them. Speaking of games, I love Pokemon Legends Arceus because it is essentially a checklist simulator. Also, I experience something similar to special interests but maybe not exactly the same. I wouldn't say hyperfixations either because they're not fleeting. They're very enduring. I wish I could explain more about how they're unique from either special interests (in the autistic meaning of the phrase) and hyperfixations (like with ADHD), but it's kind of hard to explain without feeling like I'm explaining it poorly. And last, something that could go in either this category or the second because it's something I've heard people diagnosed with OCD talk about experiencing is I have a weird thing with my memory where my visual/auditory memory are weirdly strongly connected. So if I'm listening to something while drawing, if I listen to it again, I can 'see' what I was drawing at the time. If I look at the drawing, I'll remember the part of the audiobook or whatever I was listening to. It's to the point that if I was listening to an audiobook while playing a certain video game, hearing the audiobook again will make me crave playing the video game really intensely! It's like I can see exactly where I was in the game as if I was playing it right now. Anyway, I hope that was helpful. I tried to include everything I could think of. My life is very rigid, but I guess if there's one more thing I could say about that, it's that the rigidity excites me and feels like it lights up my brain with feel-good chemicals. I think having ocpd is like a combination of extreme anxiety and the ability to create fun engaging activities all by myself and with very few resources.

[accio-victuuri]

I usually see posts on weibo including Yibo, a comparison with people his age or like the 95+ group in terms of fan engagement and likes on certain posts. Why WYB seem to not be the leading in numbers on that area. The easy ( and somewhat harsh maybe ) explanation would be — all these people have are likes and online engagement but no actual talent or award nominations/wins to be called an actor. being a celebrity is what they are. a celebrity actor if you will. an idol actor. there is nothing wrong with that. a lot of c-ent personalities go this route, even wyb started as an “idol actor” but the difference is, he is not contented in staying that way.

I also read a post that went like this:

It would be strange if fans don’t leave. He is famously not fond of business, and his account number is equal to that of an advertising blogger. There is almost no fan interaction, he only has fans who love him for years and this is not enough to last forever. Now that he is filming a movie, he will disappear easily. He used to send WB frequently. In a few selfies, his face was even covered up.

Then it goes on to say how this is basically not sustainable and fans will want something in return to stay.

Right from the get go, the person who posted this already answered their own “question”: He is famously not fond of business. Meaning, WYB is already known to keep a clear line between him and fans. He appreciates his fans and those who support his work ( clear example is his interactions during movie roadshows ) but most of those going into the fandom already know that about him. A lot of us are even attracted to him because of it.

Not to mention he has challenges with security, even if he always has 1 or 2 bodyguards always with him. He still gets trackers placed in his car, stalker harassing him on the plane, people touching him etc and you all wonder why he isn’t enthusiastic about sharing personal things 👁️👄👁️

This obsession of wanting to know everything about someone and needing celebrities to share their life like some influencer is gonna get old real soon. It’s actually what’s not sustainable — especially if you want to be a serious actor loved by the general public. You can’t share too much. You have to keep a certain mystery. What people should focus on is the movie and your acting, and not your personal life. Yibo understands that. The shift is so obvious and I get it if some fans don’t agree, but I love it. I have always been vocal with my support in Yibo’s acting career track. I miss random douyin posts and other things but I understand that keeping that limited is better for him. If that’s what gives him some sense of peace and privacy, then I’m okay with that. Plus there is a thing called over exposure — so yeah. Being on hot search daily isn’t a good thing like people make it out to be. If being on HS @ weibo is all a fandom and a celebrity aims for, then go ahead. Yibo is not the same. I’m not even gonna talk about how many of those fan engagement are real and not a water army.

Anyway, he really has to do things differently if he wants better results ( be nominated and win legitimate acting awards, not hand outs ) in his career. If he just goes with the blueprint, then he will end up in the same way as other c-ent celebrities. Bloggers who post stuff like what I shared don’t get it. Yibo is an anomaly in the industry. People fear and reject things they don’t understand. They can’t figure him out, he keeps on going against the trend. As a fan, that’s what is exciting. Yibo is making a path of his own and i’m here for it. ✌🏼

[bnnuy-wabbit]

Cunospig -> bnnuywabbit

Name's Lago. I'm 22.

My art tag is #feral art tag

My asks and messages are disabled due to spam. If you want to contact me you can send me asks in any of my other blogs (Like @marmenlade, that's my OC/aes blog), send a submission and pretend it's an ask, tag me anywhere and/or comment on any of my posts INCLUDING THIS ONE, call my actual real phone number in real life, scream my name really loud or even reach to me through the ether. Seriously. Feel free to talk to me if you so happen inhabit a human shaped shell at this moment in time.

I'm prone to note spamming mutuals btw! I personally love being note spammed. It's a love language. To me.

If you happened to stumble upon this blog, you Must Know that I'm obsessed with many things like Sandman as of writing this post!

I'm Brazilian. As in from Brazil. As in Born There and Living There till my eventual demise, possibly. If you also happen to be one of those or adjacent, feel free to hit me up. É nois 🤙

I treat my blog as an open diary. There'll be cool things about my life and things in excited abou t and things that make me upset and general life shit. I also talk a lot about my little brothers endeavors because i love him and he's my little creature. If any of this or the stuff i blog about bothers you, i recommend not following. Also this blog contains adult stuff because im an adult, so follow at your own risk and/or pleasure! I think you should be in control of what you use your eyes to look at. I ain't a cop.

More info under readmore!! But only if you feel like it.

Other than the aforementioned, i have Many other interests that Can and WILL show up here, like:

My OCs and worldbuilding

Portal

Half life and hlvrai

Disco Elysium

Stranger Things

Homestuck

Whump stuff

FNAF

Literally whatever show and game im currently watching or playing.

SO, so many bands

I'm VERY into music. My favorite genres are 00s pop, industrial, heavy metal when it's a joke, classic rock, synthpop and mpb. I love learning more about music and getting to know new music genres. Autism list moments. Feel free to throw some at me!

Random info: I use emojis and smileys unironically. I just love to pepper my texts with some emotion here and there. I promise there's no sarcasm associated to my emojis and smileys. If i send i smiling smiley i Mean It. I also add !!!! To them if I'm particularly excited. Tone tags are confusing to me, I don't use them.

Regarding The Me: I'm queer and weird about it! My gender is completely none of my business. Also I'm an Artist and creator at heart, so i draw a lot, i like sculpting things with clay and foam, i love doing collages, i like playing my guitar and sometimes i write fucked up things for fun because it's Fun, tho i wouldn't call myself a writer. I'm diagnosed audhd. I'm weird and not in a cutesy way sometimes, but at least I'm funny about it i think!

I'm uhhhh a med student with a background in AG/rural sciences (vetmed + fishing) which ig is kinda funny. The funniest thing about me is I'm an honest to god fishing technician. I have a fucking diploma in fishing. I have no idea how or why, it still baffles me to this day that i made it through fishing school!! I have plenty thoughts on the ag/fishing field as a whole and a bit of experience with Some Things. I've worked in a few labs and written and published a few papers and I've wanted to be a Real Scientist when i grew up since i was a kid :) I don't know what I want to be when I grow up now. Maybe work in emergency services or something. Or maybe. Perhaps do something research related. I am Nosey.

I'm surprisingly a bit shy, even though nobody believes me when i say it! I'm getting over it, though. Please feel free to send an message somewhere asking for my discord if you'd like to chat. My messages are off for nonmutuals because I'm tired of getting spambots and my asks also. But i post a lot. Seriously just respond and go like 'oh hey can i DM you' and I will DM YOU. One thing i MUST state upfront if you'd like to talk to me and be friends: I'm trying to get better at talking to people. I'm soooo not very good at it. Don't blame yourself if our conversations fall flat. Talking and initiating conversations with people is Hard, but I'm alright at keeping conversations going if you tell me about your likes and dislikes or if you wanna do small talk! My cheat sheet is: Talk to me about your favorite weather, your timezone, what you like learning more about, about your country and culture or your favorite types of music and your favorite bands! Tell me about yourself, please!!! ALSO. Talk to me about fandom. Feel free to complain about petty things, I do enjoy a good complaint. And passionate rants. I'm told i can be cool to talk to if we get to know each other, I'm told I'm a very trusting, agreeable and judgementless individual. I like to believe that is true. To be fair, I'm eager to make new friends and learn more about people and we'll surely bond over something, I'm absolutely sure 🥰.

I have a lot of blogs. Like a LOT. I'm not going to link them all here, but they ARE linked to my main somewhere. Probably. Have fun collecting them all or something. It's wayyyyyy too many.

Here's my favorite one: @marmenlade

I think that's about it.

Updated: 7.jan.25

[cinturon-cadena]

DP x DC Smallville

Okay, I've been forming this theory for a while now, but this scene just cemented it:

The bottom of her boots? Fenton F??? There is no way you can't tell me those aren't Fenton-grade boots!

Hear me out. I have other evidence.

The principal in season 1 is a man of Asian decent named Kwan. Who else do we know named Kwan?

And to top it off, Smallville's Kwan has a son named Danny. Now obviously, his son isn't Fenton/Phantom, BUT assuming at least the class and maybe the entire town of Amity Park learns Danny's secret, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary that some of his classmates grow up and name a child after their town hero. Even if they never learn Danny's secret, Danny Fenton himself did lead the entire class against Ember and Youngblood, as well as exhibited other noble qualities, so it's not out of the question that at least one of his classmates had a child whom they named 'Danny'.

2. As discussed in this post, the whole 'Kryptonite-is-crystalized-Ectoplasm' theory. Now some of the more meticulous (me) might be wondering, 'if this theory holds up and Kryptonite-Ectoplasm is giving random people in Smallville super/ghost powers, then why didn't Amity Park have the same activity?' Why thank you, Skeptical Voice In My Head! I'll tell you why. First of all, Smallville has had 12 years-worth of exposure to the Kryptonite-Ectoplasm, that's why! During the course of Danny Phantom's runtime we only get to see ~1 year pass. 2 if we're being generous. In addition, despite having a literal portal to Hell the Infinite Realms open basically 24/7 in the town, along with near-daily/hourly ghost attacks, the citizens of Amity Park themselves do not seem to regularly come into contact with any form of Ectoplasm. Unlike in Smallville, where people are handling the stuff almost daily - hell, dozens of people just casually wear it as jewelry, and I guarantee more than 1 person has at least a meteorite rock or 2 in their home, as a keepsake. There is also a potential argument to be made about crystalized Ectoplasm-Kryptonite being more potent than the ambient radiation/gas/liquid stuff we see in Amity Park.

3. There is literally a canonical town near Smallville called Amityville. Enough said.

4. Which brings us to number 4. The Boots.

I propose that it is highly likely that Danny's class grew up through the events of Danny Phantom (sin Phantom Planet), and that Smallville takes place somewhere around ~25 years after the Portal opens. Kwan grew up to be a teacher, then principal, and named his son after Danny (whether he knew Danny's secret or not). Fenton Works continued on in some capacity, whether it's still the Dr's Fenton going at it or if Danny/Jazz inherited the family business, and at some point made a line of Fenton-grade combat boots. Heck, maybe Sam had a say in their design (it is the kind of thing she'd wear).

In addition, if this is ~25 years later, then Amity Park would be full of Liminals right now - probably keeping their nature on the down-low so the rest of the world doesn't know, or being held under a Team Phantom (Foley/Fenton/Technus) or GIW-mandated blackout. Either way, the general world knows Amity ParkVille exists, but not that Liminals live there (unlive?).

And because their exposure to Ectoplasm was much more gradual and they would have had enough cultural exposure to ghosts, they would adapt to their newfound Liminality powers much more effectively than the poor flash-exposured citizens of Smallville who end up insane because they can't handle the sudden influx of power they're granted. The citizens of Amity Park have the tech and know-how to deal with weird ectoplasm-induced ghost powers. They've seen and interacted with enough ghosts that the idea of Obsessions/Purposes/insert-headcanon-here isn't far-fetched and they'd know how to deal with it in a slightly more constructive way (or at least, be able to handle the ghostly aggression that Liminals seem to have, if Smallville is any indication).

SO, In Conclusion, Danny Phantom's Amity Park and Smallville are in the same universe, albeit DP is ~25 years ahead of Smallville's setting.

Just Saying.

[spandexinspace]

It is done. Overall I'd say the game is a 6-7/10 something. It's fun, but it lacks substance at times and nuance all the time. Thoughts and stuff and probably spoilers under the cut.

I still think the lack of carry over from previous games not called Trespasser was a mistake. There are things in the game that should have been affected by what happened in the others and the game dances around them with absolutely no elegance. And they choices you do make aren't all that important in my opinion.

Another change that didn't really work for me was the reduced party size. It didn't break the entire experience, but I could have handled three of them and it would have spiced up interactions.

I ended up like the combat once I got used to it. It's quite easy to cheese once you get some ways into it though. I'll reply it at some point in the future to see if I think it works as a mage too, since that feels like the class that should be the most affected by the reduced number of abilities/spells.

Other pros include the soundtrack, soundscape and visuals. I like the art style and the environments are very impressive and may have burnt a hole through my GPU. The general plot worked well, especially the endgame, but I thought it got a little fractured towards the middle and wasn't a fan of all the companion quests. I like how they tied in to the plot, but some of them just weren't good.

I'm having a hard time really pinpointing what the issue with the companions is. They're not particularly flawed, which I think is part of it, but other than that there's just something missing. They're funny and sometimes emotionally interesting in other ways, but they're not the DAO or DA2 crew. Davrin and Emmrich are the standouts of the cast, Neve is fun, Harding and Bellara are fine and Taash and Lucanis are not.

I'm still absolutely obsessed with Evka and Antoine though. NPCs and couple of the year. I really hope we get to see what the Grey Wardens look like under their less strict and traditional leadership. And maybe now we'll actually see an end to the calling now?

Neve and Lucanis was also a pretty fun ship, despite my not really enjoyment of him. People should be normal about it.

I absolutely loathed how much this game pulls the "Rook you have to pick" choices. The previous games would at least occasionally have a "do whatever the fuck you want" option that seemed slightly connected to your companions' development. There should have been more of that because why am I making life-altering decisions for all these people.

But the elephant in the room throughout the entire game is its treatment of previous lore and nuance. There are so many exclusions and retcons that don't make any sense and/or seem to exist only to simplify the narrative or make it more appealing to a general audience. In some ways it reminds me of how DC currently treats its lore, which isn't a good sign when you're a game series of four games and a pile of mildly canon extra material, and not a comic book company with several dozen monthly books.

It's weird that the oppression of elves is suddenly not an issue anymore. That no one isn't even casually bigoted towards them now. People are claiming that it's because we're not in the south anymore, but everything we saw before this game seemed to indicate that at least parts of the north were even worse than the south. Slavery has at most been illegal for 8 years, it shouldn't be like it never even existed.

I'm disappointed by how the Crows were handled too. Even if what Zevran said wasn't true for everyone there ought to still have been at least some kind of reference to how people like him were treated. Lucanis mentions hardships, but nothing close to the 11% survival rate and random mental abuse. I still think a plot line that explored the difference between Lucanis' more privileged position and that of less fortunate Crows could have been interesting. But really, anything that doesn't just portray them as goody two-shoes local heroes would have been nice.

But overall the game just seems to suffer from a lack of nuance. Things are bad or good and shades of grey need not apply.

Another weird thing is how much and quickly Bellara blames herself (and sometime tries to blame Davrin and elf Rook too) for the things the ancient elves did. It also felt like the game didn't really allow you to push back against that idea too much. I'm not sure if it's intentional commentary, but if it is it's poorly done. Especially if it relies on elves suddenly not being oppressed.

The endgame was really good and tight. Solas' plot was well-done, more so than any other subplot in the game, and sometimes quite emotional.

The future teaser was... interesting. Magisters? Those from beyond the sea? Did it show up if you didn't collect those circles?

I'm not sure if the game will even get a sequel, but I hope it does and that it's a bit more nuanced than this. I expect a more major time and/or space jump for that one though, so how closely married to the lore it'll even have to be remains to be seen.

Also Zevran, Fenris and Josephine were still ROBBED.

[wirewitchviolet]

To everyone who keeps writing these posts about weird marginalized infighting crap and especially to the people who keep reblogging them onto my feed: Please quit falling for the number one play in the nazi handbook.

So this is my experience with Tumblr, I don't know if it's true for everyone else. I sit down, I load up my feed, I see a couple weird/cute nerdy things maybe, and then within the first 3 or 4 posts, there's something that reads like this:

"So check this out, I look in my inbox today and there's this anonymous post from a three-headed five-legged slumf who is just randomly laying into me about how their life is made of pain and suffering thanks to all the special privileges they for some baffling reason believe I have as a two-headed nine-legged slumf. It's so weird and creepy and wrong! Obviously all slumfs are seriously oppressed, I don't get why I keep seeing so many three-headed five-legged ones coming after us two-headed nine-legged ones. It's some real serious 2-9-slumf-phobia within the community though and we need to address it."

It would really mean a lot to me if you would all just stop posting and sharing those sort of things, if you'd be so kind, and ideally pass this post along to others. The reason for this should be obvious if you look at the title I slapped on this, but you know me, I'm going to keep rambling below the fold.

As documented in articles like this one, and this one, hardcore bigots have been completely obsessed with "false flag" operations for... at LEAST the past 20 years or so. The way they do it is pretty simple. Pick two broad groups you hate and want dead. Make some social media accounts (or better, re-do the profiles for the one you used the last time you did this, older ones look more legit) where you pretend you're a member of the one group, and speaking broadly on their behalf, and just vomit a ton of hate at the other group with that disguise. For best results, use some other accounts to pretend to be the second group and vomit hate at the first.

Aside from the immediate satisfaction of hurling hate at the target, there's this general hope that it will cause real strife between the target and the group being impersonated. And there's even some benefit in just getting people venting about it so people who aren't affected see commentary on this crap and just come off thinking "damn, look at all those crazy slumfs and their weird factionalizing and infighting. I don't want anything to do with that."

Now maybe you're thinking, "OK, but I'm pretty sure this creep harassing me really was a three-headed five-legged slumf, and even if this one wasn't, I've definitely encountered such in real life." We could go back and forth on this all day about whether people are who they say they are and how being a gross bigot and being a target of gross bigotry aren't mutually exclusive at all, but at the end of the day, I don't care in the slightest if someone spreading this kind of crap is just stirring crap or legitimately personally what they claim and bent out of shape. Getting real people on board is explicitly part of the goal. If it's working that doesn't make things better. The point is you are sharing something which doesn't really serve any purpose beyond encouraging animosity between two groups (or hell, two individuals even) that bigots are out to get, and people's exposure to it are going to be advancing those bigots' goals.

You could also argue, hey, no, it's important to share this stuff to educate people. Educate them about what, though? That random creeps give marginalized people are hard time? That's pretty common knowledge. Some members of marginalized groups are huge bigoted creeps? Also goes without saying, there's bigoted creeps all over.

Or maybe we're just sharing this yarn because dealing with creeps sucks and it helps to vent about it. That's totally valid, we all need to vent about stuff that sucks. I'm doing it right now! But like... you can talk about how lame stuff is personally affecting you without vaguely insinuating whole groups suck by association. Just tell me you've been dealing with BS from some bigoted creep, I'll sympathize. You don't need to quote all the awful gibberish and personal identification. Consider something more like this:

So hey. I'm a trans woman, and I had this total creep start messaging me out of the blue one day, blaming me for all the problems in the world from like famous bigots existing to having abusive parents, being part of some huge conspiracy with a bunch of other people apparently selected at random, something about sexual favors with a long time stalker of mine, and a bunch of other random crap, and then proceeded on this weird crusade to get my patreon shut down and failing that harass anyone supporting me there until they stopped.

I'm not bringing up any of the axes of marginalization this weird creep may have been on and giving anyone any ammo that way, just pointing out the sort of weird freaking crap people like me have to deal with regularly. Also hey fun fact, the above example is a real thing that happened to me, it really did have a serious impact on my income from which I've never recovered, and once my landlord cashes this month's check it's gonna leave me with something like $39. So uh... have a link to said patreon? Point is, like... try and focus your highlighting of the plight of the marginalized on actionable stuff and important information to be shared, not pointing at other people who are/claim to be marginalized who are being complete creeps.

[where-dreamers-go]

Reading and rambling: The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm

(Tales from Alagaësia VOLUME 1: ERAGON)

~~~

PART ONE: THE FORK

I. Mount Arngor

~~~

Ahem.

*looks at tiny, cute, little, colored map of the EASTERN REACHES*

That looks like it would have taken me the days to color. *imagining the ache of non-stop coloring the same spot over and over and over)

Anyway, what's with the random mountain? They don't get earthquakes do they?

*flipping pages*

Angela! Angela!

... Hmm 2018 copyright. Took me long enough.

*sees drawing of a fork*

Oh! The Little Mermaid! Cool.

What's with the hanging ornament with the page numbers? Should I know these symbols??

The day had not gone well.

I'm sorry. .. Blackberry mead... Like wine or expensive juice?

...picking berries in Palancar Valley.

Awh. Farm boy.

A pang of homesickness struck him.

Now?

...the Academy...

Academy? Oh okay. Not sure I even thought of him giving it a name. Then again he gives names to a number of things. Right?

He sighed, finding the sight depressing.

Do you need help? I can do that. Is it a lot for you? Or a lot in general? Are you exaggerating "mounds"?

It stood alone in the green expanse...

Oh, gosh of I were a place to have dragons... Where would I be? Hmmm. Maybe the big random mountain. A good stronghold though.

Two weeks of sailing to get there??? No. A close environment with the elves and Eragon? No. Can't do it.

How many names can this mountain have? Au least the dwarves know their history. Also, what the crap, elves? You know the mountain's name, but not where or why it has the name??? What? Like that's all you remember from class or something? Not important enough as your obsession with dragons and controlling nature that you claim to respect?

Dealing with them had proven far more frustrating than Eragon anticipated...

FINALLY! Eragon is with all the races in one place. Not just one. At least the dwarves gave him access to history and a MAP back in the day. But now... Oh oooooh. Do you know how happy I am, years later after reflection, that he's able to compare and contrast people? Also in a completely different situation.

Okay, so Eragon is eating. But it's never enough with all the energy he's using to help build??!?!!

I need to introduce him to carbs and stuff. Something.

Good, good. He doesn't want to experience anything like what happened fighting the Empire. Yeah, exciting, Eragon, but... Maybe you need a small hobby to entertain you.

"Barzûl," Eragon muttered.

Oh! That's a curse word. I know that. Right? Wait... Ha! Yeah.

A quill. Good to know.

Awwwwhhh he sleeps under one of Saphira's wings. Where else would he sleep? A rock?

Oh my goodness. Eragon and Saphira, let me do the paperwork. Just pay me in telling me what words you use to get the hair off your face.

A dragon destroyed his homework. That's messed up. I'd be upset about just that. Why don't you just burn it? Huh?

I wanna help decorate the halls!!! The echoes must be creepy in a place that large.

...and then the elves had refined the details.

Dude! The dwarves know very well how to build! When was the last time elves build anything out of stone? You didn't like Eragon's plan enough?? Just want the last say?

Darn, Eragon, get an assistant. Please.

I'll do it, but I require indoor plumbing and a cool cloak.

Oh. Eragon wants to problem solve. He wants to feel productive. Same.

Okay. I need to look up what an 'eyrie' is exactly.

Yeah, those Eldunarí need years of therapy. Poor things.

They can feel the light on their facets? For real or...?

Oh, the elves did windows. Cool. Cool.

*reads about Eragon talking with dragons*

See? I was right. Eragon needs something to do to distract himself.

Wow. That's a lot of information. I'm glad to see Eragon in a different setting, not war. But it's very new for him having so much pressure for the present to make sure the future is safer.

He's working smarter, but also a lot harder.

Woo!

[ourlonelymoon]

I just want you to know that I think this is the nicest offer! Obviously, you don’t need to give us anything beyond what you have already written. However, I will say I absolutely adore that you do analysis of your own writing in the end notes! It makes me super happy to see why you do stuff and I get giggly when I notice things that you did on purpose and I’m like, “I SAW THAT!”

If you want to talk about your fic as a way of engaging with us, maybe you could answer one or more of these random questions? Literally no pressure, I’m just trying to make sure you know I’m obsessed with your story.

1. Do you have a favorite line or section so far? Why?

2. Do you have a section you wish more people commented on? If so, maybe we just missed it. What makes it something you want to discuss?

3. Do you have any questions for us, as readers?

4. If you (as yourself, just like a part of the adventure family) were on the skiff with all our faves, what would you be up to? What would you think about what’s going on with Kit?

5. Why do you write (or read) whump? (Seriously, can you break down why this stuff makes me feral. I love whump but I don’t understand it psychologically. Is it the catharsis?)

6. What do you think Kenneth thinks about all of Kits screaming? Does he care, or is he just a good boy?

Bonus Question: Can you tell I typed this without my glasses because they fell under my bed and I can’t find my glasses without my glasses? I have literally no idea if there are a million typos because I can’t edit my writing without glasses because everything is tripled and fading in and out of my left eye’s one focus spot.

I’m glad you enjoy the analysis of each chapter - I keep a list of things I want to say as I write so it’s nice to know you appreciate it! Also thank you for the questions, I’m going to answer them all while I’m bored in the car.

1. I really enjoyed the hallucination chapter from a creative perspective because there was literally no limits. It was so fun to write anything and everything that came to mind and find ways to weave reality with Kit’s experience. My favourite scenes are yet to come, both involving Kit. One is with Jade in the next chapter and the other is with another character in the penultimate chapter - I’m not going to tell you who! The fake escape attempt right at the beginning is also a favourite!

2. People have been so nice with comments and generally pick up on the main points of each chapter. Usually I’d say if something goes under the radar it’s because there’s a bigger plot point happening so I don’t mind if it doesn’t get picked up on.

3. This is a really interesting question. I guess it would be interesting to know if you have any theories on where the story is going? Or if you think that there was a smaller plot point that could have been expanded on?

4. I think I’d be pretty useless here I’ll be honest. I’m a chronic worrier, very clumsy and have not exercised properly in ages so I think I’d probably be the weak link. I reckon I could read a map? Is that helpful?

5. I think the appeal of whump for me is the comfort aspect of it, especially as a reader. Maybe that’s surprising given how many chapters I spent beating the shit out of Kit. In terms of writing it, I’ve always found it somewhat easier to write very angsty things. This fic was born because I wanted to read a Kit torture fic and there wasn’t any out there when I started it.

6. I think Kenneth remains unbothered. He’s lived with Zeb, who has been tortured by the Crone for an unspecified number of years, so I reckon he’s used to the dramatics. Besides, water is pretty good at blocking out noise.

[the-rewatch-rewind]

New episode!

Script below the break

Hello and welcome back to the Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies in a 20-year period. Today I will be discussing number 22 on my list: RKO’s 1938 screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby, directed by Howard Hawks, written by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde, based on a story by Hagar Wilde, and starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

Paleontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant) has a lot going on. He’s about to marry Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker). The final bone to complete the brontosaurus skeleton he’s been assembling for four years has just been found. And the wealthy Mrs. Carlton Random (May Robson) is considering a million-dollar donation to his museum. But while David is golfing with Mrs. Random’s lawyer, Alexander Peabody (George Irving), his ball gets mixed up with that of zany, scatterbrained Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn), who leads him on a series of misadventures involving wardrobe malfunctions, a thieving dog, trouble with the law, and two leopards.

When my mom was starting to introduce me to Old Hollywood, she got Bringing Up Baby from the library and said something along the lines of, “I don’t particularly like this one, but you probably will.” And, um…that was an understatement. I was obsessed with this movie in my early teens. Like, to an embarrassing degree. I quoted it constantly. For example, whenever there was a curb or other uneven surface, I had to walk along it with one leg higher than the other in reference to the part when Susan loses the heel of one of her shoes and says, “I was born on the side of a hill.” I’m pretty sure I had watched it a few times in 2002 before I started keeping track; then I saw it five times in 2003, twice in 2004, and three times in 2005. And then as I got older, I started to cringe about my initial enthusiasm, and to listen to people I knew who didn’t like it. I watched it once in 2008, once in 2013, once in 2014, once in 2016, and then I decided I liked it again, so I saw it twice in 2018, twice in 2021, and once in 2022.

This movie flopped in its initial release, but its reputation has grown over the years, and it’s now generally considered to be the definitive screwball comedy, one of the greatest comedic films ever made, and according to some, one of the greatest films of all time of any genre. And yet, many of the people I know in real life who have seen it don’t like it – apart from my brother; I could always count on him to watch it with me. I think a lot of people find it too unhinged and chaotic and frustrating – and, to be fair, they are correct in that assessment. But it happens to be unhinged and chaotic and frustrating in all the right ways for me. I totally get that it’s not for everyone, and I think it does tend to be over-praised now, perhaps to overcompensate for the lukewarm response it generated in 1938. Back then, Howard Hawks attributed the box office failure to the fact that there were no normal characters in the film, so there was nobody for the audience to identify with. And maybe that is the problem. Perhaps the people who don’t like this movie are too normal for it, and the reason I enjoy it is because I have never been normal.

I think especially when I was young, I saw a lot of myself in both David Huxley and Susan Vance, even though they are pretty much opposites. David is mild-mannered and socially awkward, which is how I tend to be around people I don’t know very well. He also has a fairly passive role in the story; lots of things happen to him, while he’s unwillingly along for the ride, and that was definitely how I perceived my life at the time when I was most into this movie. Susan, on the other hand, is outgoing and self-assured when she shouldn’t be, and she frequently prattles on to the point of obnoxiousness, which is how I tend to be around people I’m comfortable with – again, even more so when I was younger. The fact that I’m basically a combination of the two leading characters is not something I consciously noticed until recently, but I think it explains a lot. Like why I find this movie comforting when it seems like I should find it irritating. I truly cannot overemphasize how ridiculous this movie is. Nothing about it makes any sense, which normally would bother me, but the thing is, it’s clearly not supposed to make sense. David refers to his skeleton as a brontosaurus, when at the time most paleontologists considered them the same as an apatosaurus (although recently that’s been called into question again). The final bone he’s waiting for is the “intercostal clavicle” which would be a shoulder bone in between the ribs, which…is not a thing in any animal that I know of. And the main leopard, Baby, is introduced to the story because Susan’s brother sent him to her from Brazil, which means either the brother or the leopard was very lost, since leopards are native to Africa and Asia. These factual errors introduced early in the story help set the tone for the nonsense that’s about to ensue, and oh boy is there a lot of nonsense. I mean, not that there isn’t a story at all; there definitely is, and the plot is relatively easy to follow. It’s just absolutely bonkers. Nobody would wind up in jail for trying to get a leopard off a roof, after mistaking it for a different leopard. But it’s very funny to see what would happen if they did. Ultimately, this movie is just trying to be a comedy, and it very much succeeds at that. Most of the movie is witty dialogue between wacky characters in ridiculous situations – basically my favorite brand of humor. There is also excellent physical comedy, including lots of falling down, which normally I’m not a huge fan of, but for some reason this movie’s brand of falling humor works for me. It’s a fun silly movie that is clearly not meant to be taken seriously. And I would argue that its central romance isn’t meant to be taken seriously either.

Because this movie has a male and a female lead, predictably they end up together. But the thing is, I don’t believe that David and Susan truly have romantic feelings for each other. After they have run into each other a few times, Susan asks a psychiatrist she’s stumbled upon what he would say about a man who follows a woman around, and when she talks to him, he fights with her. Now, this is an extremely inaccurate representation of what has been happening – first she took over his golf ball, then she stole his car, then she dropped an olive causing him to slip and fall on his hat. He’s not just randomly picking fights with her; he has reasons to be upset with her. But based on what she said, the psychiatrist tells her, “The love impulse in men frequently reveals itself in terms of conflict.” That leads Susan to conclude that David must be in love with her, and she then decides that she is also in love with him. Which very much sounds like the behavior of someone who does not understand romantic attraction. Throughout the rest of the movie, Susan keeps coming up with ways to prevent David from leaving, which she thinks is because she’s in love with him, but comes across to me as a lonely person desperate for a friend. David spends most of the movie trying to get away from Susan. He does help her resolve some of the situations that she gets herself into, but mostly because she’s either tricked or trapped him. At one point, he tells her, “In moments of quiet, I’m strangely drawn toward you, but there haven’t been any quiet moments,” implying that he is not, in fact, drawn toward her at all. He does care about her wellbeing in spite of himself, but that doesn’t automatically imply romantic feelings. At the climax, when David is trying to fight off the wild leopard that has been mistaken for the tame Baby, he urges Susan to run, and she says, “No, I won’t leave you, I love you!” and he just responds with an unpleasantly shocked, “WHAT?!” Granted, at the end, David confesses to Susan that in hindsight, the time he spent with her was the most fun he’s had in his whole life, to which she replies, “That means you must like me a little bit,” and he says, “It’s more than that! I love you, I think!” But then she accidentally breaks the dinosaur skeleton that he’s spent four years working on, and before he recovers his power of speech, she says, “Oh, David can you ever forgive me? You do? And you still love me!” and she embraces him, and he just goes, “Oh dear,” and hugs her back, and then the movie ends without even remotely convincing me that they’re really in love. I think the psychiatrist’s suggestion combined with amatonormativity has convinced them that they were thrown together by fate and destined to fall in love, so they decided that that was what had happened without really feeling it. The characters strike me as being better suited for friendship than romance, and I hope they discover that after the events of the film. I can see them meeting up every once in a while for more absurd adventures, but I feel like they would destroy each other if they tried to live together.

Now, could this all be me projecting my aromanticism onto these characters so I could relate to them even more? Absolutely. But there’s something indisputably queer about this movie that is definitely not all in my head. These characters are just so fascinatingly quirky that they can’t possibly all be straight allos. Apparently the script had scenes of David and Susan declaring love for each other in the middle that Howard Hawks cut during production, which implies that the director agreed with me that the leads weren’t intended to be too into each other that way. And of course, there’s That One Line. If you’re at all familiar with this movie, you probably know the one I mean, but for those who don’t: after they take Baby the leopard to Susan’s aunt’s country house in Connecticut, Susan convinces David that he needs to take a shower before he can go back to New York to marry his fiancée, and while he’s bathing she takes his clothes and sends them into town to be cleaned, so David won’t be able to leave. When he gets out of the shower, he has nothing to put on but a frilly woman’s bathrobe. Then Susan’s aunt (who also happens to be Mrs. Carlton Random, but he doesn’t know that yet) enters the house and asks who he is, to which he replies, “I don’t know, I’m not quite myself today.” And then when she demands to know why he’s wearing the feminine robe, he can’t come up with a good explanation, so he bursts out, “Because I just went GAY, all of a sudden!” This was an ad-lib by Cary Grant that somehow made it into the film and is now probably its most famous line. At the time, the word “gay” was being used by the homosexual community to refer to themselves, but that use had not entered mainstream consciousness yet, obviously, or the censors wouldn’t have allowed it in the movie. Most uses of “gay” in old films were clearly meant in the “lighthearted, carefree” sense, or were at least ambiguous enough that they could mean that, but in this context, that definition doesn’t really make sense. I don’t like forcing labels onto real people, but it does seem like Cary Grant was probably bisexual, and therefore it’s reasonable to assume that he would have been familiar with the less common definition. Of course, David is saying this sarcastically; he’s wearing the feminine robe because that was the only thing available to wear when he got out of the shower – it has nothing to do with his sexuality or gender presentation. But the idea that the character would be familiar with that use of the word “gay” raises some interesting questions.

In addition to Cary Grant, it’s also been widely speculated that Katharine Hepburn was not straight. She certainly was at least somewhat gender-nonconforming, frequently wearing pants at a time when that wasn’t socially acceptable for women. Susan Vance is one of her more feminine-dressing characters, and she doesn’t say anything about being gay, but right after that scene, when she hears that David is looking for clothes in her brother’s old room, she cries, “If he gets some clothes, he’ll go away, and he’s the only man I’ve ever loved!” I’m told that making it to 30 without having loved someone of the opposite sex is not a typical straight, alloromantic experience. So even if my initial theory is wrong and David and Susan are attracted to each other romantically, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that they’re some form of queer. And as for David’s fiancée, Alice, she’s not in much of the movie, but she makes it clear that her marriage to David is going to be more of a business arrangement than a romance. She has no interest in a honeymoon or children, insisting that the dinosaur skeleton will be their child, and like, I know she was probably meant to be a stereotypically frigid geeky girl with glasses, and it’s harmful to imply that women can either have brains or heart, but at the same time “why would we need to have sex when we have a dinosaur skeleton” is such an iconic ace attitude that I can’t help but admire her. Anyway, she breaks up with David after Mrs. Carlton Random finds out who he is and decides not to donate her million dollars to a museum that employs someone as unhinged as him, but I hope Alice finds happiness, preferably with another asexual dinosaur enthusiast. Most of the other characters also seem at least somewhat queer – Constable Slocum and his assistant Elmer kind of seem like they’re in a relationship with each other, for instance, and Major Applegate doesn’t seem very straight either. All of this might have been completely unintentional, but what the heck, in honor of Pride month, I’m declaring that every character in this movie is somewhere under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella. This is my podcast and I make the rules.

Bringing Up Baby was reportedly very difficult to make. Production ended up taking 40 days longer than scheduled and costing $330,000 over budget. Part of that was because Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn kept cracking each other up and ruining takes, and because Howard Hawks had a fairly leisurely attitude on set, sometimes cancelling shooting early to take the cast to the races. They also had to deal with animals, which is always tricky. In modern films there are usually multiple animals playing the same character, but in this movie they only had one Leopard, named Nissa, who played both Baby and the vicious circus leopard. Katharine Hepburn seemed to enjoy working with the leopard, and she wasn’t afraid of it even though it did almost attack her at one point. But Cary Grant was terrified of Nissa, so most of his scenes with a leopard were either filmed with his stand-in, or his part and the leopard’s part were filmed separately. The visual effects were fairly advanced for 1938, and even though you can sometimes tell that the actors and the leopard weren’t actually together, it works well enough that you won’t really notice unless you’re watching for it. There’s also a dog named George who steals and buries the intercostal clavicle, and that dog was played by the famous Skippy, who had also played Asta in the first few Thin Man movies and appeared in a different Cary Grant movie called The Awful Truth. I haven’t heard any stories about how Skippy behaved on the Bringing Up Baby set, but I assume he was very professional.

Although the film’s box office failure did nothing to help Katharine Hepburn’s floundering film career in the late 1930s, I personally feel like it represents a significant turning point in her acting abilities. There’s a staggering difference between her pre-Bringing Up Baby performances and her post-Bringing Up Baby performances. Early in her career she was extremely overly dramatic, and while some of those films were still fairly good, many are painfully unwatchable. The story goes that initially, she wasn’t very good as Susan Vance either. She kept trying too hard to be funny, which ruined the comedy. Unable to get through to her himself, Howard Hawks asked Vaudeville veteran Walter Catlett to show her what she was doing wrong, and Hepburn found him so helpful that she asked Hawks to cast him in the movie so he’d be around to give her more pointers. So Walter Catlett played Constable Slocum, and Katharine Hepburn learned how to do comedy. Her character is relentlessly annoying and over-the-top ridiculous, but Hepburn commits. The knowledge that she needed help to get there in no way detracts from the brilliance of her performance. She plays everything Susan does as if it’s the most logical, natural thing in the world, and that’s what makes the movie work. If Susan was aware of how silly she was, the whole thing would have fallen apart. We all know that I love Cary Grant, and I do greatly enjoy his performance here, too, and I think they play off each other very well, but I feel like it’s mainly Hepburn’s performance that has compelled me to keep revisiting this film. As a young person, I related to certain things about Susan and wished I could be as carefree and self-assured as she was, although maybe a little less obnoxious. Now I relate to her less – I wish I had half her energy – but I still find her antics amusing. And it’s also fun to see how much better her acting got after this movie. Clearly she took Catlett’s lessons to heart, and combined them with her natural talent and determination and hard-working spirit to fully become the force to be reckoned with that she’s remembered as.

There is so much more I could say about Bringing Up Baby, like how much I love the scene when Susan pretends to be a gangster to get out of jail, but I’m worried I would just end up quoting the whole movie if I kept going, so I think I’ll wrap it up here. Thank you so much for listening, whether you love this movie, hate this movie, don’t have a strong opinion about this movie, or have never seen this movie. I appreciate you all so much! This will be my last solo episode for a while, as I have guests lined up for the next three episodes, so stay tuned for some fun conversations. Next up is the fifth and final film I watched 19 times while keeping track. As always I will leave you with a quote from that next movie: “A date! What’s a date?”

[adriennefrombrooklyn]

Hello, this is your Secret Santa!

Could you maybe expand on your favorite McLennon moments? Like why they stand out to you, etc?

Any preference/kink beyond bottom Paul for the smut?

Anything you don't want in a fic?

And in the case you get fanart, what would you like to see?

I already have a few ideas and outlines but I'd like to make sure it's correctly tailored to you!

(and this is late but I swear you'll get your present on time!!)

Hi lovely Secret Santa <33333

Thank you so much for the ask!

I'm trying to remember specifically what I put down for my fav moments lol. Off the top of my head I love the years '63-'65 just because of how mutually delighted/obsessed they were with each other. And what with them touring all the time they had plenty of opportunity to hook up with no stress or extra effort. I love the kind of heady, no complications, just music and fucking, vibes of those years.

And '67 will always be important to me because of how deeply domestic, clothes-sharing, doing everything together, living at Cavendish and shagging all the time the whole year was.

And I love early Liverpool for mutual pining, Romeo and Juliet-type "my dad won't let us be together" ridiculousness. I especially love a pining Paul perspective with Jim being an asshole (bc he was and I love angst)

On the subject of angst I LOVE it but only if it doesn't end with any breakup or unrequited heartbreak. I'm all for fic where some external angst makes things terrible for them, or one of them is being a dick because of some dumb insecurity, but I need it to end in real reconciliation and a way forward. I really love me some dark heavy angst (Manila, the cherry bomb, Paul getting arrested in Japan) that is outside of their own drama and could mean some really A+ hurt/comfort.

In terms of kink, I love me any good bottom!Paul, sub!Paul, just Paul getting railed, by John but honestly by anyone. J/P is my number one but I do love some good Paul/Robert smut, or even Paul and some random dude/dudes.

As far as things I don't love in fic, I tend not to go for anything that is built on the idea that they never fucked until the 70s or later (altho I have read some AMAZING fic based on that premise) but generally its not my thing because 1. I don't find it particularly believable and 2. it just kinda depresses me to think about all that wasted time. So it's generally not my thing. And as I said earlier, any angst that's mostly them fighting or breaking up with no reconciliation is a nope for me.

As far as fanart, I love NSFW if it's something you would be comfortable with, J/P, bottom!Paul, I'm not that picky on the other details lol. But if you'd rather do something more general, anything of them kissing. I need more otp kissing art, always.

I am honestly so excited for whatever you're planning, I'm sure I'll love it. I hope this info helps, ilysm!! <33333

[everydaymusingsofj]

Why social media and scrolling is a silent killer in today's generation ! -Part 1

I've been working in corporate for about 10 years now and I have sure seen the evolution of social media and scrolling creep up into our everyday lives without you realizing and one day it dawns on you, over time that is, you really want to slow down in life. Here are some of the thoughts that helped me realize I need a break from all the scrolling and social media in general and live life as is in the moment. 1) Some days you wake up and when you first look at Instagram or you tube or Pinterest and get lost in the never ending reels or videos or insane amount of news about random celebrities or fitness gurus or nutritionists and you wonder what's the point of all this .By then my day's first half hour ( or even one) is gone in completely useless content that is now in my mind for no reason .Instead what if I woke up got a few deep breaths, soaked in the sun outside my balcony for a good few minutes, prayed for a couple of minutes ,talked to my mom or my cat and decided about my day .Damn ! That' would make a whole lot of difference to my day .Trust me!

2) Consuming mindless content may seem entertaining ,yes I love sending and receiving memes from my friends and it does make me laugh during the day .Or the thought that someone sent it to me thinking Id like it, is definitely a good gesture ,but too much of anything is not good especially social media. I've never felt happier coz I was scrolling for hours or watching memes all day or just listening to the 100000th advice from certified experts. And it robs you of so much time of your day and by the time you realize it ,your day is over. That's how the algorithms keep our interests hooked, We sure must try not to fall for it before its too late.

3) I used to take the metro sometimes and today if I were to count the number of people who are not glued to their phones throughout the train journey .Maybe 5 or even less sometimes. Social media definitely has reduced our attention span .How long can we talk to someone ( even those whom we love) without glancing our phones now and then or forgetting that it exists for a while ? Is it even possible today ? I hope we could go back to the days when we chose how to consume phones rather than the phones consuming us .

4) Now I'm not all against social media, yes I've learnt so much information on anything I'd want to .Its become that easy especially with GPT and the boom of AI .But now there is just too much information/content that its become so damn confusing .What to do ?what to eat ,what not to eat ? Where to invest ? What must I actually do to protect my mental health from this information flooding ? Detoxify my social media presence .For starters ,YES! And it makes so much of a difference to my mind .It makes me calmer makes me live in the moment. And not get caught in this chaotic virtual world where the obsession is insane.

5) Is it robbing our precious time with our loved ones ? YES ! Sometimes its so annoying when someone keeps scrolling while speaking to you ,or you don't have their undivided attention .Have humans started prioritizing devices over human connections ? I fear the answer. Has it created more social awkwardness for introverts? Has it created more anxiety and fear for youngsters? Has it rapidly reduced our attention span to a few seconds?Will we never be able to enjoy slow movies because we are so used to the reel culture?These are some of the questions that we need to think about Lets not let social media take control over us. Lets take the control back and live a much more meaningful and fulfilling life.

[notanodinarygirl]

This is really cool!! Here's me answering your questions @vintagetee13 !!

1st what is something very random and little you are obsessed with? (could be idk a song lyric, a specific colour, a number, literally brushing your teeth idk lol)

Star Wars. Genuinely, it is my go to mood changer.

2nd what is something you'd like to be talented at but aren't really?

Playing a guitar and piano!! I know how to play a guitar but I want to be better at it and I want to learn how to play a piano. I would reallyyyyyyyy like to be talented in this.

3rd gold or silver (jewelery)?

Gold with diamond jewelery for fancy and special occasions and sliver for everyday use.

4th how tall are you?

Honestly I don't know. The last time I checked my height was about 4-5 years ago in my school for a checkup. I would check it now but I have no measures to check my height right now😅.

5th if you had to pick up a new sport what would it be?

Ooooooo hmm badminton and maybe ice hockey.

6th what is the first thing in your photo gallery you're okay with describing or sharing?

It's a picture of my bday cake from last week!

7th what's your favourite number?

Probably by birthday date. And in general, i don't know why but I like all even numbers less than 10.

8th at what time do you usually go to sleep?

Ooo um I have a really bad sleep schedule. By 12 AM on school nights and somewhere between 1 AM to 2AM on holiday nights.

9th at what age did you get your first phone?

I got my personal phone when I turned 15th!

10th what is a random app you have that more people should know cause it's really cool?

Tumblr. Duh.

Here are my questions ⬇️

1. What is your go to party song?

2. Describe your current lock screen (if you are comfortable to share with)?

3. If you were to make a song, which genre would it be of?

4. If you could go inside a book and live as a character in that book for 1 month, which book would it be?

5. Favorite youtuber/youtubers (if any)?

6. Which mythical creature would you like as a pet?

7. Two magic powers you would love to have?

8. Favorite nail paint colour/colours?

9. You spend most of your time on which app?

10. What are your hobbies?

Thankyou for the taggg bestie @vintagetee13. You can go ahead and answer my questions again if you want!

Taglist: @kanerallels @ana-cantskywalker @kazoosandfannypacks @seleneisrising @bluewhiteseagull @vintagetee13

Ten questions to ask a mutual

Instructions: prev asks ten questions and you answer them, then ask ten new ones and tag ten people to keep the chain going! I’ll go first

What is the weirdest thing you’ve eaten? (For me it’s the time I accidentally drank ants)

do you like purple or green more? (For me it’s a 50/50 I love them both)

what is your favorite two color color combo? (For me it’s purple and gold)

are you a cat or dog person? (Dogs 100%)

what is your favorite painting (Miranda by John William Waterhouse)

Mountains or beaches? (Mountains)

what’s your favorite dessert? (Lemon bars)

are you right or left handed? (Right but I used to be left handed)

salty or sweet? (Sweet)

summer or winter? (Winter)

I’m tagging 11 people but it’s whatever

@wra1th-k1ng

@bladevoyager

@tragedyanddust

@kindred-spirit-93

@urfavgreekmythnerd

@sickneurotic

@ry-diggity

@we-are-but-dead-stars

@thestarryfalls

@tamaruaart

@hermesmoly