#This is probably more context than you really needed for a really stupid joke but you can have it anyway

[herbertwest]

What is the name of Rumpelstiltskin's mom?

Mumpelstiltskin.

[puddinqinq]

Could I maybe request a nsfw alphabet for Naruto and Sasuke. <33

Nsfw alphabet ft. Naruto & Sasuke!

A/n: thanks for being my first ask! ♡ sorry if it's a bit short, this is my first time with nsfw 😭🩷

Naruto Uzumaki -

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex): He tries his best! He's super full of energy, and sometimes forget you're tired after sex. Let him know what you need and he's got it for you! His favorite part of aftercare is probably holding you and talking.

B = Body part (Their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s): His favorite part of himself is probably his hands! Whether in a sexual context or not, he loves touching you. His favorite part of you is your face, he loves looking at the expressions you make!

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person): He loves finishing on your face, or in your mouth!

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs): He REALLY wants to fuck you with his shadow clones.

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?): Moderately? He's had a couple partners since becoming more popular in the village. He has to be told what you like!

F = Favorite Position (This goes without saying.): He's often all over you at random times, he likes going at it against the wall.

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc): He's very silly, it's in his nature!

H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.): Naruto doesn't shave. He's not a fan. His hair is just a bit darker than the ones on his head!

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…): Naruto can be intimate, but oftentimes can't be serious. That doesn't mean he doesn't find it romantic, he just likes cracking jokes and giggling throughout sex!

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon): He masturbates a lot, even with a partner. Very very easily worked up.

K = Kink (one of their kinks): Praise 100%, he lives for your affection and compliments.

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do): On the wall or over a counter... Often too impatient to make it to bed.

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going): Praising him about nearly anything! He's immediately all over you.

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs): Naruto refuses to degrade, he'd feel too guilty afterwards.

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc): Prefers to receive, but is never opposed to giving!

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.): Fast! He's naturally very hyper, and sometimes will need to be told to slow down.

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.): Loves them! He gets to set a fast pace and get things done before having to head out on a mission, go out, etc.!

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.): He'll experiment if you want to! He's plenty happy with his sex life as it is, but would try most things at least once if asked.

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…): Lots of stamina! He lasts pretty long and can go for multiple rounds without needing a break (please...tell him if you need a second).

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?): Not really, he doesn't see a need for them. He doesn't mind you having any, but won't go out of his way to use them.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease): Huge tease! Even if it's stupid icha icha paradise quotes it's his mission to fluster you. Once he discovers edging it's definitely his favorite thing.

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make): Surprisingly I don't think he'd be very loud, talkative sure. But he's more likely to groan and grunt quietly.

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice): He goes way, way rougher on you if he feels shown up my Sasuke.

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words): about 5.5 inches, but pretty thick. Veiny.

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?): Incredibly high, he's almost always down for anything.

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards): Doesn't fall asleep for a while, but tries to once you're asleep.

-

Sasuke Uchiha -

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex): So attentive! Constantly asking if you're alright and if he can get anything for you. Has water and a cloth on standby for you!

B = Body part (Their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s): He likes his eyes most. Not only as a pride thing but because whenever you compliment them it fills him with so much joy. He says he loves every part of you equally, but I think he's an ass guy in (not so) secret.

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person): He's absolutely without question into breeding. Restoring the clan and all of that.. If you ask him not to of course he'll comply but other wise he'll ask to finish inside.

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs): He may or may not steal some of your clothes to bring with him on travels, and jerk off while smelling them.

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?): I'd say he's pretty experienced, many women find him wildly attractive.

F = Favorite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual): Missionary, he loves looking into your eyes!

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc): He's very serious. Naruto's exact opposite, he sometimes makes a sarcastic remark but otherwise he's not one for jokes.

H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.): He trims and sometimes shaves, both hair colors are the same!

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…): Very very romantic! He wants to make it special for you most of the time, even if you've been together long.

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon): Not too often actually. Only if he really really misses you! Otherwise, it's incredibly rare.

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks): Breeding, obviously. He loses his control at the thought of you having his children.

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do): 100% the bed, he's normally going out of his way to take things to the bedroom if you both aren't there already.

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going): Talks about wanting kids, and smelling you. If you have a perfume you often wear or shampoo you use he's buying you more the moment you run out.

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs): He hates the idea of causing you any pain, even light slaps make him feel awful.

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc): He prefers to give! He's okay dying if it's between your thighs. Sometimes you'd have to pry him off of you after he starts, Sasuke is a determined man.

P = Pace (Are they fats and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.): Sasuke is slow and sensual, he may speed up towards the end but is more into the intimate aspect of sex.

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.): Absolutely not a fan. Maybe if he's in a rush and especially worked up, but even then he wouldn't feel as satisfied.

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.): He's okay trying what you want! He doesn't have many specific things he'd like to try. Maybe temperature play. Not risky at all.

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…): Pretty high stamina, a lot like Naruto! Lasts pretty long and for a good amount of rounds.

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?): Is out too much to use toys, really. He likes using vibrators on you when he's home, though!

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease): He's wrapped around your finger, if you want something he won't deny you.

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make): He's a lot more vocal when he's close, otherwise it's an occasional grunt (sometimes you wonder if he's even enjoying it... He is.)

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice): I think he's blunt about what he wants. He's likely to straight up tell you, "I want to have sex". Pretty honest guy!

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words): About 7 inches, not very thick. Upward curve.

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?): I don't actually think it's very high! He likes it, yeah, but his libido is a bit below average. He doesn't mind whenever you want, though. You often may have to take initiative.

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards): Not very quickly. He holds you until you're asleep but stays up thinking or looking at you before he finally closes his eyes.

[gomtotemeal]

They built the world’s largest salad. The whole thing was set up in a park about an hour away from our home so my wife Diane convinced me that it might be fun to go see it.

“Deb and Gary are going this afternoon and so I thought we’d ride over there with them.”

“Will there be any left?”

“Oh, it’s not to eat,” said Diane. “It’s like an art piece. The Guinness World Records people will be there.”

On the way over, I started to talk about a Cobb salad I had at this place near my office that was pretty big.

“I usually eat only about half of it.”

“Well, I’m sure this one is much bigger than that,” said Gary.

“Jesus Christ, Gary. I wasn’t implying that I thought the Cobb salad I had was bigger than this salad. It’s just that all of this giant salad business has me thinking about large salads I’ve had before. God!”

“It was a joke,” said Gary. “Calm down.”

But I could tell from the muscles in his face that Gary was lying. Deb quickly chimed in with a request to hear about more of the big salads I’d had, but I was over it. The mood had been ruined.

“Forget it,” I said. “Let’s just get this thing over with.”

The salad was huge. According to a series of laminated signs, we learned that all of the produce had come by way of donations from local farmers and then a college in New York had commissioned a handful of artists to construct a gigantic ceramic bowl to put everything in.

We took pictures and afterwards I bought a t-shirt at the gift shop. It was powder blue with a graphic of the gigantic salad pasted right on the front. On the back was the date and city.

In the car, Gary said that the salad on my t-shirt just looked like a regular-sized salad.

“Bullshit,” I said. “It’s huge.”

“Well maybe it’s huge because you know that it’s huge,” said Diane. “But to someone who doesn’t know what it is, I can see how it looks like a regular salad.”

I looked at it again and realized that they were right. How could I have allowed myself to be seduced by the context of such a limited reality? The only place a gigantic salad can truly exist is sitting there right in front of you! Even photos were a stretch. I stifled my anger and humiliation with short breaths and concentrated on the scenery so as not to rip the t-shirt in half in a blind rage.

Gary had made me look like a fool twice in a span of mere hours and I desperately needed to restore balance. That night, I sat in my study and replayed the day’s events in my mind. Surely, Gary had to have slipped up somewhere and said or done something dumb.

“Diane,” I said. “Wake up.”

“God, what time is it?”

“Remember when we first saw the salad? Remember what Gary said?”

“I don’t know.”

“He said that the salad was so big that he’d need a pitchfork to eat it! Remember?”

She thought about it. “I guess. I really don’t remember.”

“He did say it! Ha! What an idiot!”

I clapped my hands together.

“Because, Diane. The ingredients were standard-sized ingredients. It was only the salad itself that was huge.”

“So.”

“So why the pitchfork?! Does Gary suddenly have a gigantic head with such a gigantic mouth that a regular fork won’t do? God, he’s so stupid! Isn’t he stupid, Diane?”

“I don’t know what your problem is with Gary.”

“I don’t have a problem with Gary! I just have a problem with an idiot who thinks that large portions automatically correlate with large utensils. I mean, Christ Diane! What an idiot!”

I could see that my wife wanted me to leave, but I wasn’t done yet.

“Why, that would be like thinking that…” I paused, a grin plastered to my face, and tried to think of a similar example containing both a large food item and another large utensil. But it wouldn’t come to me.

“It would be like what?” asked Diane.

“Nothing! I’ll think of it later.”

In the early hours of the morning, Gary was awakened by an anonymous phone call from the payphone outside of a nearby liquor store.

“Hello?”

“If someone gave you a gigantic sundae, you’d probably try to eat it with a snow shovel!”

 Click.

[alicesmindpalace]

I've decided that I'm gonna take the excuse of Anthony's birthday 🎂 as a chance to make a quick post to explain why I love and respect this guy so much.

For context, I have been a Smosh fan since 2013 and as you can imagine, it's been a real rollercoaster 😆, but I am glad I stuck around because in the end it was really worth it.

I think the main reason why I am still around and I'm still here in my late 20's (yeah, I'm old lol) is that Ian and Anthony as people more than as creators, always kinda hit a little different for me.

Ian and Anthony are so precious to me, and I will never shut up about how Anthony deserve a lot more praise and understanding.

Because sure, being good looking in our society is a big advantage but being known as "the hot one" in a comedy duo isn't that easy. Anthony's contributions get overlooked often because of this dumb old mindset and I think it's really unfair tbh.

Anthony has a great sense of humor, even if he doesn't make jokes 24/7 he can immediately recognize what makes something funny, hone in on it and use it to make the situation funnier. He built a media empire doing that if you really think about it! He really found a golden goose and immediately knew what to make of it. Anthony and Ian BOTH (that's right both) have a great sense of humor and it's very compatible, which is why Smosh became a thing imo.

Of course, the best part of this is that you can't have a sense of humor and be stupid, it's impossible, you can be funny and be an idiot yeah, but having a sense of humor needs quick thinking, an ability to recognize subtle patterns, the contradictions, making unexpected connections all of that good stuff, which means that these two guys are also really intelligent.

Which makes sense because Anthony was already building websites when most of the people his age were clicking around on Newgrounds. He created two successful buissness form scratch, the boy is smart! 🙌

He came from nothing and got to where is now which is very impressive.

That's also why another thing that I respect about him, is that he almost never mentions how hard it's been for him during his childhood or uses it to gain sympathy even though it would be really easy to do it. He only mentioned the difficult situation at home and his mother's problems a few times in all these years on camera. He still is mentally struggling these days because he didn’t have an easy life but he doesn't use it to get pity or attention, like a lot of people on the internet do.

He really is one of the only remaining unproblematic internet creators that there are left and he managed to be one of them for decades.

There is no dirt on him. He is a nice person and that's probably the most important thing for me tbh and the reason why I could never just forget of Ian and Anthony or get over them or just swap them for some else. Finding Smosh to me felt as mind blowing as finding two four leaves clovers right next to each other.

Even when things went south and they separated, they were never spiteful or malicious, like (a lot of) other people are in these situations, and both handled it with so much respect. They could have made up stuff and thrown shade or dirt to make themselves appear in the right but they didn't. We maybe not know all the details but even just the way they still love and think of each other now after the worst went down tells you who they really were and are behind close doors.

I have so much more to say but it would get too long, so, yeah, this is (part lol) of the reason I love and respect Anthony Padilla so much.

These are only my thoughts of course, I'm talking for me, but I hope you enjoyed (will probably do one for Ian's birthday as well and talk about more of the reason Ianthony are my all time favorites 🤞).

[raedshadowlegends]

Why Lore Olympus and Miraculous Ladybug are the Same Thing but in Different Fonts

Good evening, good day, hello and howdy. I am INCREDIBLY bored and I'm here to go on a nonsensical tangent about two pieces of media that I hate and have dedicated a vast amount of my free time to. This is all in good fun and all of my rudeness is intended to be satirical and/or comical unless indicated otherwise.

Now just to preface, if you know me then you know how much I dislike Miraculous Ladybug. Folks in my circle got to watch as I descended into madness writing a 64k word review on season 5. So I've spent an uncomfortable amount of time dissecting this show.

I have also spent an uncomfortable amount of time engaging with the shitshow that is Lore Olympus. And now my ass is gonna try and compare the two because there's a lot of shit going on here.

None of this is going to matter and it's all in good fun. Like I said, I am bored. And sometimes it's fun to compare stuff you hate.

Now let the insanity ensue. FP spoilers and MLB s5 spoilers below the cut btw.

To get a major difference out of the way, Miraculous Ladybug is a tv show. Lore Olympus is a webcomic.

But mediums aside, these two things still have a lot in common. So for the first comparison, I'd like to talk about the insecurity in both properties.

Insecurity

What I define as insecurity in this context is a piece of media that is too afraid to commit or adhere to a certain tone, story, style, etc. In short-- they don't know what they want to be.

Insecurity in Lore Olympus is a bit more obvious than with Miraculous so I'm gonna rant about that first.

Lore Olympus just straight up does not have a story to tell.

There are too many random ass plots being added and discarded on a whim for it to be a coherent story. A good way to explain it is kinda like this-- In this episode of LO, something cool new and interesting is set up and you have to keep reading to see what happens! And then nothing ever happens. Or it happens because the audience won't let the author forget so there's a half-assed attempt to wrap up that plot point.

LO is so insecure about what it is, it feels the need to add more and more to make it actually something. But what it is is a hollow story that lacks substance. So all of these new random plot points are kinda like bandaid solutions if that makes sense.

There are so many unfinished/under-utilized plot points that if you were to count out each and every one, you'd probably keel over dead before you finished. There's that many.

It's too insecure to commit to any one of them in the grand scheme of things.

I don't know how coherent all of that was so here's a shitty tl;dr

LO doesn't know what it wants to say anymore so it's just adding more shit to keep the reader "invested."

Yeah ok I think that makes more sense. As for Miraculous...

God. I fucking hate Miraculous.

It's insecure as hell and you can smell that shit from ten miles away. It's insecure with it's premise, I think.

If it just kept to the simple "monster-of-the-week" formula, I do not think I would have written so many words on it's fifth season.

Miraculous (apparently) had a grander story to tell beyond the "monster-of-the-week revert back to the status quo each episode."

But we don't see any of that in full swing till season 3, really. Which is a long ass time to get the ball rolling imo.

It's a little jarring to see the show go from the stupid kid status quo adventures to a heavy and emotional story??? And I say heavy and emotional with the most sarcastic tone possible because the only emotion I feel watching this shit is rage.

Despite wanting to make that shift to a serialized type of show, Miraculous was too scared to stray from the successful status quo format.

To explain a bit more I wanna talk about my review of the season.

While it is mostly filled with rude jokes and incomprehensible jargon, I bring up a lot of points in it regarding the state of things.

One of those things being the show's hesitancy to move the story along.

The fifth season was supposed to be a grand final battle and a conclusion to this story arc. But it was too scared to commit to that so there's way more episodes that are nothing but shipping fodder.

There are many episodes that season that just... feel the same. Just with different coats of paint. "Marinette is trying to date Adrien but she's awkward and clumsy and oh no! shenanigans ensue!" We've been doing this for 8 years.

If they want to tell a serialized story then they need to grow some balls and cut the shit we've seen a million times before.

Their insistence to stick to the status quo makes the writing exceptionally weak downright painful to sift through. It was too scared, too insecure, to stray from its formula.

That's a part of the reason why I think the season is paced so bad. There's so little time spent on the interesting parts of the story because they had to cram in as much shipping shit as possible. So by proxy, there was less time to tell a good story.

Both of these stupid ass properties don't know what they want to be. There are too many things being added and not enough balls to commit to any of them.

Now with both LO and MLB, we can all agree that the writing is pretty shit. Nothing new there. But shitty writing often bleeds into the characters and making them shitty by exposure. Almost like a spill of toxic waste, infecting anything near it and turning into a rotten pile of sludge and chemicals.

So yeah, the characters are ass as well. But I only wanna complain about the female leads for both of these things.

But just to mention Adrien and Hades, they are pretty similar. I won't go into detail but the short of it is, "Character with deep seated issues that could have been interesting, has a lot of potential, but is just kinda garbage in the end."

At least Adrien Agreste isn't monetizing death and has a bunch of shades in his basement doing his work.

Persephone and Marinette

So I always say that I don't like using the term 'Mary Sue' to describe a character. But as it turns out, I use that term a lot. So I'm not gonna lie about that anymore.

These two characters are Mary Sues.

Persephone first

Oh my god I hate Persephone a lot. She just ticks every box on my list of 'THINGS I HATE IN A CHARACTER.'

Which is funny because her character had a lot of promise and heart in the beginning.

I related to her a LOT when I picked up this comic before my frontal cortex developed. I related with her character and her struggles. Especially after the Apollo incident. That really stuck out to me. It was so powerful.

But all of those tiny things I liked about her character were stripped away. Her ambition to study in school? Poof, gone. Her charm? Not charming anymore. That kindness everyone in the story gushes about? I don't even think it was there in the first place.

Truth be told, I do need to reread this comic because the beginning is fuzzy as fuck in my walnut-sized brain. But I can tell you for certain that the way she was in the beginning is not who she is now.

And this isn't the case of a character going through an arc and developing and changing. She's just getting worse and the narrative treats it as a GOOD THING.

"Oh yeah, Persephone trashed Leuce's apartment instead of talking to her husband like an adult. She threatened to kill this nymph but you're supposed to find that endearing." Like, what??? I will not have a story try and get me to believe this is a good thing.

If this were a good story, Persephone's actions in that episode WOULDN'T BE REWARDED. But she's rewarded with sex for being a fucking psychopath towards a random nymph. Wow.

And that leads into my next point-- she can never be in the wrong ever.

AOW? Retconned, not her fault. It wasn't her fault she killed all those people. It's actually Eris' fault because she gave her wrath.

Trashing Leuce's apartment? She was in the right for that, apparently.

Killing people in a famine during the 10 year banishment? That's never explored, we just know she killed people, burned a library or something, and probably shot the president too. But it's fine, she's the good guy.

And most recently (and potentially the most frustrating);

Persephone causes winter.

Not her mother, Demeter, no fuck the myths. Persephone is the one who caused winter actually. AND SHE DID IT ON ACCIDENT SO TECHNICALLY IT IS NOT HER FAULT CAUSE SHE DIDNT MEAN TOOOO UWU She also probably killed a million flower nymphs in that snap freeze but its ok it doesn't matter.

WHAT?

WHAT THE FUCK? CMON NOW.

She's not going to receive any consequences for anything because she is just too perfect.

She's smarter than Athena, prettier than Aphrodite, better than her mother in every way, all the boys want her, she has a perfect body, she's pink, her eyes go red when she's angy, she has the most power of everyone in the world, she's a super rare fertility goddess, she has all the gifts, all the blessings, and none of the development.

It almost feels like a wattpad fanfic.

"My mom doesn't like me so she sold me to one direction and then I became queen of the underworld."

Yeah, I don't like her.

And the same can be applied to Marinette!

A character who is so blatantly perfect, the narrative fucking BENDS TO HER WILL.

She's a creepy ass stalker and has done some weird ass things to get close to this random famous white boy and it's all excused.

It's literally excused.

There is a rule about character backstories. They are supposed to provide an explanation for a character's behavior, not an excuse for it.

In season 5, episode 14 - Derision, we see a bit of Marinette backstory. Some stupid bullshit happens and Marinette essentially says she isn't going to say 'I love you' to anyone unless she knows literally everything about them.

She says a lot in that stupid ass scene but it's basically just saying that all of her stalking and creepy behavior is justified. Which it is not.

Marinette can do no wrong. The narrative won't allow it.

She's perfect in every way. And even when SHE is in the wrong, characters somehow find a way to apologize to her. Either that or she turns a situation about someone else into one about her self.

She's just the perfect character who ends up saving the world.

Fuck having Chat Noir face against his dad in the finale, Marinette has to girlboss all over the place and save the day but then actually lose because the "plot" demands it.

Oh yeah and she's probably never going to tell Adrien that his abusive dad was the villain they had been fighting for months. Do you think that's a good choice? I'll give you a hint; it is not.

It makes Marinette look like a HORRIBLE character but it's painted in a way that makes the viewer believe this is the right decision.

I don't think I need to get into specifics as to why that is wrong and disgusting.

If I had to make a prediction for this show going forward, she isn't going to tell him. It's going to be forgotten and she's going to be painted as the hero.

No flaws, no accountability, nothing.

Garbage character. Fucking hate it.

Both of these characters will never see consequences for their actions. Their bad actions are either excused or retconned out of existence. And that's not how you write a character btw. If you want them to be real, give them consequences. The world should not revolve around them. They should have flaws and issues that should be explored. But apparently that's too much work.

It's funny how both of these properties claim to be about feminism and somehow completely miss what feminism is

Miraculous thinks that feminism means "Girl power! Girls are better than guys in every way!" And Lore Olympus makes no attempt to be feminist at all. Women hate other women, and they don't get a lot of opportunities to explore and express themselves.

I could get into the whole purity culture shtick but that's a shitty rant for another day.

I've been ranting about this for a while and I got the big ones out of the way, methinks. I do want to get into the creators of both of these things but that is also a rant for another day.

Cause if I got into that now, we'd be here a while.

So let me just make a final comparison and wrap things up here. I don't think any of this makes a lot of sense but I hate both things and I'm passionate about it so I'm gonna keep rambling.

Miraculous Ladybug and Lore Olympus never attempt to grow as stories. They are both scared to try new things and to stick with it. Most of the time this results in rushed writing and horribly done characters.

It's so clear that both of these things are desperate to be something great but they just can't put in the work to get there.

Honestly, they both feel like the product of a team of yes-men. Bad decisions and errors slip by WAY too often and it's kind of embarrassing.

These are popular pieces of media and they have the resources to be great but they just aren't.

They're both too insecure to make something of themselves.

It's honestly really sad and I don't want this for either of these things. I want LO to be stunning and retell the myth of Persephone with the respect it deserves. I want MLB to be a serialized show with focus on the lore. Sure it can start as episodic but it can ease us into a deeper story and intrigue the viewer. But I want it to flesh out the world and be an entertaining experience.

It's sad but it's the way it is.

Who knows, maybe MLB season 6 will be good. And maybe LO will have a 4th season and it'll fix all the problems it has.

I dunno.

Thanks for reading this incoherent nonsense.

[thirty-two-or-fewer-characters]

How to make Aiura and Saiki not soulmates.

I like both Saiteru and Saiura a lot as ships, but Saiki x Teruhashi is definitely pushed by the series a lot more towards the end. Despite this, if someone wants to make a fic/doujin where Saiki and Teruhashi get together, there's the obvious problem of what to do with Aiura: not only is she a romantic rival throughout the series, but she's introduced as being soulmates with Saiki, and her predictions are never* wrong. If you want to stay canon-compliant, you need to come up with an explanation for why them being soulmates isn't getting in the way of Saiki and Teruhashi being together.

Here are some options I've seen and have thought of:

Ignore it. Don't consider Aiura and Saiki being soulmates an aspect of their relationship that needs to be brought up. Maybe don't have Aiura show up at all! This also allows the reader to headcanon any of the below as what happened, although that's a bit stupid.

They're platonic soulmates! Soulmates have only been mentioned in a romantic context throughout the series, but maybe it's really that they're super close friends or whatever!! This can be cute, but it also comes with the expectation that they're going to be shown off doing platonic soulmatey stuff (like ever interacting), and a lot of fics don't really... do that.......

They're still romantic soulmates, but you can be with someone who isn't your soulmate. You can play it as a nice thing, about how you don't necessarily need to force yourself to conform to the whims of fate and can find your own happiness, or as a sad thing, where Saiki, Aiura, and Teruhashi aren't with their true loves. The latter works a bit less well if you want to portray Saiki and Teruhashi positively, but you can also have it be angst purely for Aiura.

Soulmates aren't a permanent thing. You can be soulmates with someone at one point in your life and then lose that connection later on, somehow. This goes against the cultural zeitgeist's perception of "soulmate" but (iirc) isn't explicitly not canon, although it does retroactively make Aiura seem... kind of reckless and weird? But she's already a bit reckless and weird, and she probably isn't a focus of characterization in a Saiki and Teruhashi story.

Aiura was wrong. Sure, her predictions are never* wrong, but maybe she just... was, somehow? This can be played for angst but also as a quick joke that leaves Saiki and Teruhashi room to be soulmates, and is also a way to get Aiura out of the narrative quickly if you don't want her there much but still want to have her show up.

*Aiura can be wrong under specific circumstances. I say she's never wrong, but her predictions of disaster can be mitigated if one takes action to prevent them, implying that her predictions can be made wrong if someone has the knowledge of them beforehand. This opens the door to a really interesting possibility: Aiura and Saiki would have been soulmates, but the fact that she tracked down Saiki specifically because of this caused them to meet much earlier than they should have, and butterfly effected them out of being soulmates. This is super cool to me, but it does force a specific interpretation of Aiura's prediction that they're soulmates (that it's a vision of the future and not an inherent property the people hold), and also requires a lot of explanation about Aiura's powers, which might not be what an author wants for a Saiki x Teruhashi story. But I'd love to see it explored more in something focused on Aiura!

Aiura was completely right, and the common interpretation of soulmates is completely right as well, and Saiki and Teruhashi are gonna break up. If you're the kind of person who's okay with relationships ending at some point in the future and still cares about the present, this can be a cute/melancholic view, where Saiki and Teruhashi are in a relationship doomed to end (and Saiki might even know about it), but they don't care and just want to enjoy it. If you're not that kind of person, this is really easy angst potential. You can also make Aiura believe that this is the case, that they'll break up soon, and have that be a sad part of her character for most of the above options.

I can't believe I forgot this. Polyamory. Easy.

Cheating?? idfk

[strawberryraviegutz]

I really REALLY hate those kinds of stupid “hot take” posts. I think they’re just garbage to purposely farm more discourse to cause infighting, but I’ve been holding this in for so long and I need to get it out of my system so here it goes.

Alastor fans are allowed to dislike Valentino. Valentino was made to be a dislikable Villain while Alastor BY VIV’S OWN WORDS is a chaotic neutral antihero based off of Dexter with a moral code. Of course people are gonna like Alastor more than Valentino. The antihero/vigilante is a very popular beloved trope. I mean just look at Magneto and Venom.

You guys claim to want more nuanced characters but when we try and tell you that Alastor is more nuanced BASED OFF OF EVIDENCE FROM THE CREATOR and little possible context clues in the show we get accused of “babying/woobifying him”(as if Val fans haven’t done that to Val). This isn’t a hit piece against all Val fans/simps btw. I may hate that moth, but you guys should be allowed like him without receiving hate and or death threats.

It’s not “hypocrisy” to dislike Valentino or the Vees and like Alastor for the reasons I said above and the four of them aren’t comparable. Yeah they share some traits but overall the only thing Alastor and the Vees have in common are the mistreatment of the souls they own. Like I said, Val fans shouldn’t be attacked for liking him but the thing is…if you’re gonna preach those words then do the same for Alastor fans/simps because we get attacked too.

(Again it’s not all Val stans but it sure it a lot of them. I’ve all so seen Val haters do it too.) Yall claim not to harass people over fictional characters yet will go under Alastor posts and or discussion threads and be like “Uhm actually him and Valentino are the same🤓☝️”.

“He’s worse than Val” “Why can’t we just have a good villain” “Just accept that Alastor is a villain stop babying him” when we’re just minding our own business. Not to mention people going under fanart of Angel! Alastor and being like “erm actually he’d never go to heaven🤪”.

Along with yall bullying the hell out of Alastor selfshippers/simps and using tumblr sexyman as an insult(which reaks of internalized misogyny btw because majority of Alastor simps are women + women are always the first to be made fun of when it comes to characters that Classify as tumblr sexymen being found attractive by them or any character you personally wouldn’t find attractive.)

And yall going around and keep calling Alastor ugly under posts about people gushing about him and i don’t mean lighthearted jokes either because i make fun of the back of his head sometimes too. And full blown harassment. When an Alastor fan provided evidence of Alastor being a more nuanced character which were clips from Viv’s streams, people in the comments and qrts were being extremely rude and dismissive. It got so bad that op deleted the og tweet.

Don’t go around and claim to be against cringe culture but then make fun of people for finding Alastor attractive. And for goodness sake STOP FUCKING CALLING HIM A SLAVE OWNER. And yes he owns souls but that doesn’t matter.

Alastor is canonically half black and its overall disgusting to slap the label “slave owner” onto him knowing damn well that he grew up in the Jim Crow era of America in the Deep South of Louisiana. His existence as a mixed black person back then was basically considered an abomination. With how terrible it was for black people back then, Alastor probably bore witness to a lot of messed up shit growing up and if that’s the case then it’s no wonder he’s so messed up in the head.

This type of behavior has been going on since the days where we only had the pilot and it’s only gotten worse since the show came out. As soon as I saw that scene with husk and Alastor in hell’s greatest dad I automatically knew what was coming. I’m not saying that Alastor Is a good person nor am I saying that what he did to husk was ok. But to go after/make fun of Alastor fans,purposely denying evidence of his character while in the same breath preach against bullying people over liking certain characters makes YOU the hypocrites. So much for anti-harassment. I’m tired. Bye.

[cakesandfail]

Do you have any headcanons about how Vetinari ended up taking power?

Actually yes I do!

I wrote a fic about his first day in power that vaguely referenced this and while I don't have like, a fully fleshed out story, there are a few bits and pieces that I sort of bodged together from things in the books and what I personally find entertaining about him as a character:

There's a bit in Soul Music which says that there was a rat plague in Ankh-Morpork shortly before Vetinari came to power, and that his solution was "tax the rat farms". It's unclear in context whether this means he suggested it at the end of Snapcase's time in power or if it was one of the first things he did after he became Patrician. I've just gone ahead and assumed that the rat plague was the last straw for Snapcase and that actually having a good suggestion was one of the reasons Vetinari was in people's minds as a replacement

That then leads us to ask, well, what on earth was he doing there? He's been in power a fair while even by Guards Guards but chronologically must still only be in his early 40s by then, to have been in his late teens in the 30-years-ago bits of Night Watch (and he can't be older than that, because it's made fairly clear that he's in the Guild equivalent of secondary school at that time, and Vimes knows that the two of them are approximately the same age). Given his canonically hilariously long list of postgrad qualifications, he probably went straight from Assassins Guild grad school to the Oblong Office, more or less. Conclusion: he was the fucking INTERN. (or possibly working as a clerk, but calling him the intern is at least 500% funnier)

Given the running joke about him being this weird posh dude who doesn't seem like a threat until you remember where he was educated, I would imagine that his whole "ah capital jolly good here I go getting slang wrong again" bullshit started here. We know that among the Ankh-Morpork elite, pretending to be stupider than you really are is something that can both keep you safe and help you get away with a lot, because we see Vetinari and Vimes and Sybil do it. So this is where he got his practice. Bertie Wooster the FUCK out of your working day, quietly get on with the things that need to be done while nobody's looking, and nobody will realise because they just think you're Madam's weird nephew with the shit beard and the puppy

So, bearing all that in mind, picture this:

Snapcase is dead. The important people (at least, the people who think themselves important) converge on the palace. In a small room off the Oblong Office is a young man steadily working through a large pile of paperwork. Oh, yes, that's Madam's nephew, you know... Havelock, isn't it? They ask if he knows what's happened, and he says no, he has no idea, he's just been working his way through all these regulations, and gosh, they really are very dull. And... well... nobody else is here. And nobody else seems to understand the filing system, or the rest of the staff, or anything really. But he does.

This guy's had a few good ideas when he's been doing the minutes at various meetings, that makes him a plausible candidate surely? And he's so young, so he's going to need a lot of guidance from helpful, experienced folks, right? How useful. He's just smart enough not to be an obvious puppet. Very handy indeed.

And the cream of Ankh-Morpork society being what they are (truly the cream- rich and thick) they don't realise until it's far too late that this lanky goth weirdo they'd thought would do their bidding knows everything about everyone and he's been quietly furious about the result of the Glorious 25th for over a decade. And, whoops, they'd somehow forgotten that he didn't spend all of that time on Guild postgraduate courses doing resits. Oh dear. And now he's their boss.

[empty-movement]

sorry but please... post your akio plastic covered couch tweet here... the world needs to know...

Warning: pics of gross shit happening on the couches

I'll do you one better and include the STORY! So, I, Vanna (note: Yasha mostly does the Tumblr and I mostly do the Twitter,) was smoking enough weed to knock out a large horse or put a very tiny dent in my constant back and shoulder pain, as one does when when they're a middle-aged Registered Nurse in the year 2023. (I'm 39 but it's an old 39, lmao.)

Scrolling through Twitter, I stumble on a fanart of Suletta from Witch of Mercury sitting goofily on a white couch. Now I haven't seen this show yet, but the white couch....looked familiar, and I know the show is very much a descendent of Utena in terms of creative teams. For those that don't know, the series is written by Ichirō Ōkouchi, who also wrote the two Revolutionary Girl Utena novelizations...which if you didn't know about before, you know about now, and can read translated on our site here! (Warning: Touga and Miki uh, in the novels...)

Anyways, so I hop onto my own website and start downloading the images that will constitute receipts, before realizing 1. these images are all on multiple computers feet away from me, 2. the couch isn't an identical match, 3. that'd have been weird anyway, and most importantly, 4:

AKIO'S COUCHES DON'T LOOK RIGHT. OBSERVE:

The edges of the armrests have sloppier upholstery than the blanket I have covering my computer desk. I took the time to tuck seams at least. What is this??

Now it could absolutely be leather, I thought. It would absolutely track. But leather upholstery doesn't look like this. It doesn't wrinkle quite this way. It would have cleaner seams.

No. No that's too shiny for leather. So here I am, presented with this strangeness I'd never really considered in how Akio's couch is drawn, and having spent the last few months learning about my Italian-American family history, my chemically altered ass came to the only reasonable conclusion:

Akio Ohtori has plastic coverings on his white couches, like he's a depression era American in poverty.

Fuck yeah, I though, A HIT TWEET, there, at the end of all Tweeting things. (Yeah I'm working on that, stay tuned, lmao. I of all people know when to bail on stupid men with stupid power.) Because I am me, I framed it as semi serious by pulling a context to explain it out of my ass:

I was joking.

But the replies? They were not. And then I thought about it some more. And I've kept thinking about it. Do I seriously think Ikuhara and Co literally are intentionally drawing a plastic covered couch? Doesn't that feel, Vanna, like a bit of a stretch, even for Utena meta?

Listen to that CRONCH when Akio sits down in episode 31, before Anthy is seen by Nanami. Look, the buttons on the back rest don't quite fit, but the rest? Yeah it kinda does. I was high, but not wrong!?

Akio *does* surround himself with a bizarre hodgepodge of Americana as an aesthetic. The arm garters. The piping and cut of his cowboy-ass shirt. His American car. His mullet. His miniature fucking golf. Why not the plastic covered couch? It's a trope of American poverty that would absolutely have fallen neatly into the diet of American pop culture that influenced Ikuhara. (He makes references to E.T. and The Godfather and Suspiria and all kinds of things in his other work, Utena itself is a little less obvious with individual references but inherits HUGE amounts of vibes from the same content--Ikuhara and Co watched Lost Highway in theaters during the production of the Akio Arc and I will not be convinced otherwise.)

So yeah. That's the story, and that's the theory. Do I seriously believe it was deliberate? Maybe. Probably. Possibly. But it fits so well it's headcanon for me, and in the Utena fandom, pretty much all canon is kind of headcanon so enjoy this one.

What an asshole.

[numberonetacostan]

hi its your honorary microphone fictionkin coming in to talk about insane AU's I have so last night while I was completely unable to sleep, I was thinking a lot about my qsmp x inanimate insanity AU. Qsmp stands for quackity smp and for context its about these people trapped in an island called 'quesadilla' run by this pseudo-goverment called 'the federation'. So like the good taco and pickle interacting truther or whatever, I decided that it would be pretty funny if the fed just snatched them and put them on this island, and they just wake up not only to see each other but to see their surroundings and realize that they are in a place unknown to them. I think pickle would be so fucking uncomfortable, but I feel both of them set their issues aside from a moment to try and get out of here whatever this place is. And they get a video from the federation! its the introductory video and then they realize they are practically confined by walls, the video tells them to not press this oddly placed red button on the wall but since they are desperate to escape they do so anyways and its the moment of realization that you cannot escape this island. You are trapped in this island now, maybe you should start getting used to it. And I think this realization just kinda hits them a little too hard, they are both dazed, looking at the destroyed wall knowing that there might just not be a way to go back home and they dread. I was planning for them to fight or something but I think they are so in shock they cannot really pay attention to everything going on between them, they are trapped in an island. And they cannot escape, I think they freak out. I think they both ally to try and find some kind of way out because despite everything they are smart. They know that fighting wont bring a solution so they do this small 'truce' of sorts. This is also the time they meet 'cucurucho' cucurucho is the census beareu (whatever its spelled as) of the island. Her is a white bear with a creepy smile and talks in text-to-speech voice:

but then, a week has passed. And no progress aside as a possible way to contact the other contestants has presented itself. I think after a bit this is the moment they fight, I think the heavy reality of their situation hits them and I think they are so stressed out taco would probably completely snaps when pickle tells her off just like when he did on episode 16 and they start arguing, contents of this arguing should be obvious by now. But almost as some bad joke from life, the federation calls. They have a surprise for them: in the original smp, after the first week the players were given an egg to take care of in pairs. Since in this AU pickle and taco are the only ones in the island. The federation gives them one of these eggs called ''bobby'' by jaiden and roier in the original

taco and pickle, understandably so- when the confussion wears off are very fucking upset. They were stranded in this island with no way out, forced to be with each other on top of all of that despite their story together and these people whoever they were thought it was a GOOD idea to take care of a baby dragon egg until it hatches and its mother comes back. Just how much more worse it can get? I think more than angry at each other they are angry at the federation, but in the end after this anger and hurt and fights I think they just come to the agreement that despite everything this thing is practically a child. And it need their help to survive. So begrudgingly so they would start another truce only for this kid who has no idea what the fuck is going on or why these people that are meant to take care of him are yelling and so pickle grabs the certificate the federation handed them and calls him 'bobby'. I want you to know taco completely stops to look at him in the face because she finds the name just so stupid. ''Bobby?'' ''Bobby.'' ''BOBBY?! OUT OF ANY FUCKING NAME YOU COULD HAVE CHOSEN YOU CHOOSE BOBBY.'' and welp bobby is with them now. I don't have a lot to say more than as the days, weeks, months pass they become attached to this weird creature, it was meant to only be temporal something until it hatches but is it normal for eggs to not hatch after so long? but hey, what do they know about 'dragon eggs' or whatever shitty (possibly made up) story the federation told them. And so I think they still fight, I think they are uncomfortable with each other for a while, but before they know this creature makes them laugh and makes them perhaps joke with one another and try their best to take care of this things unknowinglly ends up bonding them somehow. And before they knew it they are in some weird situation where they aren't really friends? but they still joke with the other and make silly comments about the egg they are taking care of and know that despite everything they can trust the other to take care of this child that is by all means like theirs now. They get attached because bobby is amazing and bobby is silly and bobby just brings out the best of the other. Its the first time they can actually look at each other and smile for a new day and play...maybe goof around for a little bit. Grabbing crops and materials enough to surviva in this strange island they are stranded in. So its more like this unspoken solidarity they have and the trust they have on the other to take care of this egg. Pickle seeing taco's more maternal side with bobby just like she did with luz in my AU. Taco is protective of those she cares about and its especially true with bobby, she cares about this little guy so much. And just know bobby ADORES HER, like shown with jaiden he is honorary mama's voice he would be more silly and perhaps a little bratty with pickle like he was with roier but seems like a pretty little angel with taco around. With pickle he lets on more his chaotic side and you know this guy also loves him to death, they joke and go exploring and go to dungeons and bobby is fearless always facing danger head on and pickle despite this eggie being younger than he is can't help but smile and pat its head and wish for this sparkle and mischief he has to never go away when he turns into a dragon. They both know that there is probably going to be a point where they have to say goodbye, where they have to let the egg to hatch and fly away from the nest but they would be dammed if they didn't got attached to this thing. And they do. They do.

WHICH BRINGS ME BACK TO MY FAVORITE PART OF THE AU AND IS THAT WHEN THE S1 AND S2 CONTESTANTS ARRIVE INTO THE ISLAND THANKS TO THE FEDERATION AND THEY FIND TACO, PICKLE AND THIS WEIRD EGG THEY ARE TAKING CARE OF???? wait what do you mean this is your child. Why are you and taco so familiar with each other now. WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIS GOVERMENT JUST HANDED YOU AN EGG TO TAKE CARE OF AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF SCHOOL PROJECT.

so its been months by this point. Saying that everyone was fucking worried over pickle suddenly disappearing its an understatement. But I love to think of the shock they have when they see a taco awkwardly beside him, I think maybe just maybe pickle brought up mic to taco. Because she may have told him what went on and he saw the way taco tenses when he did, he saw the pain he had and when talking about it he saw the lovestruck adoration that exist within her for this woman that he never saw in her. And so I think he understands the way her face changes to reflect pain when she looks at microphone, the way she tries to make herself look smaller- invisible. And so he does her a favor, he tells her to go take care of bobby since he probably just woke up because he understands taco needs some time to prepare herself before talking to mic, taco does. And faintly pickle is able to hear a small ''thank you...'' escaping her lips. I think he does kinda explain the entire mess that went on and everyone is confuse but like they get to the house they built and they get to meet the legend himself. Bobby. And listen I think a lot of them would be so fucking confused but I know mic would fucking love him the moment she sees him ,is adoration at first sight she is sobbing and crying as she holds him and poor little egg is confused but I think bobby to an extend knows this woman is important to his mom. So he chooses to welcome her with open arms and play around her a little and they end up bonding while pickle and taco are awkwardly still explaining the story to them. there is more to it but I want to know your thought over the entire thing cuz its an AU I had a lot of fun thinking about :D see you soon!

Hi Kiara!!!!^^ Welcome back, and thank you for your submission!! :)

I'll start by letting you know in advance that I don't know a single thing about Minecraft smps!!! I mainly watched Minecraft youtube around a decade ago now (jeez) in the days of DanTDM, Stampy, PopularMMOs, and such, yeah? So I'm going to focus more on Pickle and Taco and how they interact rather than the quackity smp's plot, if that's alright!! Regardless, it was a neat read, and I appreciate the effort you must have put into typing that all out!!!^^ I'd know how long that sort of thing can take ;).

Pickle and Taco lost and forcibly separated from everyone else has a lot of plot potential, depending on when this takes place!! Pre-season 2? Mid season 2? Post-canon? Their dynamic would change quite a bit depending on when it takes place, yeah?

So Pickle is uncomfortable being alone with her, which is fair, and I imagine here she's rather quiet and sheepish since I'm assuming you're placing this post-canon. I can definitely see them not believing it at first, not wanting to believe they're trapped in another game(?) after just having found out that they were unknowingly trapped in one for over a decade. They would come to a silent mutual agreement to not argue or bring any of their issues up for the sake of getting themselves out of there. I can see Taco coming up with dozens of different ideas and schemes to try and get them out, none of them working would be quite discouraging to her, as well as a bit agitating to Pickle. He does not trust Taco, which is also fair, and if she could con her way through an entire season why can't she con her way out of this? He would definitely be having doubts about whether or not she was really trying to help, or if she was involved in her being stuck there in the first place.

I can definitely see both of them snapping after a failed attempt. Pickle is distrusting, which is fair, Taco is discouraged, they're both exhausted, they get into a pretty nasty fight.

That egg thing disturbs me. I will certainly be seeing it in my visions of the apocalypse. Regardless, uh. Yeah Taco would find naming it Bobby pretty dumb. They all call each other by their object names anyways, why Pickle would not just call it "egg", she does not understand. I can see Pickle and Taco falling into more of a rhythm over time, though, yeah. They're the only two people there, like it or not, they depend on each other not only for survival tasks but for social interaction. I am unsure of how alive the egg is, but for my sake I hope it is minimal. I do not know why it crashes so hard into uncanny valley for me, however it does, and I am Afraid. Anyways, yeah, I can see Taco and Pickle bonding in an odd way as they're forced to survive together. Pickle wouldn't trust her, persay, but he would trust her with his life.

It would be interesting for the other contestants to find them though!! They'd certainly be surprised to see Pickle and Taco talking so casually, but mostly happy to see them!! Well. Some people wouldn't be that happy to see Taco but my point still stands. Tacomic reunion hooray!!!! :3

[but-a-humble-goon]

for, https://www.tumblr.com/but-a-humble-goon/754670294342500352/name-a-character-from-one-of-my-fandoms-and-ill?source=share

Cassandra Cain, naturally.

If you already got Cassandra then I'll take a wild swing and go for Emerald Sustrai.

I ain't got Cassandra yet funnily enough. Cassandra Cain Three personal headcanon facts about them -Even after she learns to talk she's still trying to figure out what's going on via inference in 90% of social situations. Words are challenging and not the kind of challenging she likes. -Cass hates stakeouts more than anything in the world. She is a creature of pure motion, she must be free. It takes all of her considerable will and discipline to sit still for longer than an hour or so and it feels like actual torture. -She gets sincerely very emotional listening to Evanescence. She's got no idea about their pop culture context, she just feels very seen by their music. Like she senses a spiritual kinship. A reason they suck Basically everything about how she treated Stephanie in Batgirl 2000. Didn't trust her, didn't respect her, tried very hard to drive her away, completely took their friendship for granted, was generally insufferable and mean to her constantly, took Bruce's side against her and pushed her into getting herself killed. A reason they are great Cassandra Cain is genuinely the kindest soul in the entire DC universe. She is the very essence of empathy and compassion. She would take on the entire world to fight for the life of even the worst person who ever lived. I've said it before but no matter how much the universe tries to hammer the message into her that you can't save them all her response will always be "watch me." A reason I relate to them She's terrible with her emotions and even worse at social interaction and everybody around her misconstrues this as her being emotionless or just projects their own biases onto her. People talk about her like she isn't even there and even though she acts like it doesn't sting, it does. She feels like everybody around her got given a manual on how to be human properly except her. Top tier OTP I don't really ship Cass with anyone. If she's gonna end up with someone at this point it should definitely be Stephanie to give the middle finger to all of the queerbait between the two over the years. Five things that never happened to the character that I believe should have happened. -We should have actually gotten to see her seeing Steph alive again for the first time after War Games and gotten all the devastating emotional fallout of that. -they really should have done a Cass vs Jason storyline at this point, it's kinda ridiculous that they haven't. -Batgirl 2000 should have had a real ending and not just sort of fizzled out the way it did. -Bruce really does need to sort his fucking life out and admit he's basically been feeding her self-abuse, ruining her life and failing her as a father and mentor. -SHE NEEDS A GODDAMN SOLO BOOK AGAIN Five people that the character never fell in love with and why -Conner Kent, much as I think there's probably still some not entirely platonic feelings between them, I don't think anything could ever really come of it, that's why I like where they left off. -Tai'Darshan, because that whole plotline was stupid. -Rose Wilson. If you were to ask Cass she'd tell you it's because Rose is a punk ass bitch. -Zatanna. I know it's like the joke that every bat is at least a little bit in love with Z but Cass could never be with somebody cooler than she is. -Any of her brothers, no matter what people seem to think, because that's disgusting.

[rlyehtaxidermist]

so I’ve seen some posting about oil fire going around and as one of the people sitting in the eye of that particular hurricane i have a couple thoughts. keep in mind that I obviously can’t speak for every single Poster etc etc, obviously this is just my view on things. in particular don’t quote Twitter at me because the only time I was ever active on there was back when “have a visible professional social media account” was considered important for the job hunt. I know nothing of Touhou Twitter or Touhou Reddit and I am content in my ignorance

Anyway there’s three major points of criticism I’ve seen, and one of them as basically “it’s just a nothingburger that came out of nowhere” and even ignoring the history of that in Touhou in general, I’m going to set it aside because I don’t think it needs a more specific rebuttal than the length of this post. so on to the two more substantial complaints I’ve seen:

“it’s just a sex ship”: look, I won’t deny that there’s been a lot of sexposting. i’ve probably posted more about cock in the last 48 hours than in the last five years combined. almost certainly more than i will in the next five too. but there’s a subtext to it that often gets missed (not just by critics but also by a lot of sexposters).

these are two characters who have had... a bit of a history with being sexualised by the fandom. i shouldn’t need to recite all the “slut sanae” memes, those who know know and honestly they were never funny, but they existed. tsukasa meanwhile was stuck with “sex fox” pretty much from the beginning due to some kuda-gitsune legends specifically involving their rapid reproduction.

obviously this is going to go more into the personal view and i reiterate that i’m not speaking for Everyone’s posts, but I’m asexual. the whole emphasis people put on sex as a cultural thing, not just in terms of Posting about it but also in terms of Not Posting about it is funny to me. people dance around it like they’re waltzing with the demon core but also are baffled when i say i’m just not into it.

the oil fire sexposting isn’t about “lol they’re fucking”. there was already plenty of that. the joke is that it’s not a big deal that they’re fucking - it’s not dramatic or cathartic or even erotic. they’re bad at it, they get distracted, they’re not really thinking things through; fail sex with her cringe wife. it’s sexual in the way that a Tom and Jerry sketch is violent - stepping back from the artifice around it to say “you know, whatever else this is, it’s pretty goofy”. to me at least, that’s more of a repudiation of horny character exaggeration than simply ignoring it is.

(there’s also a false equivalence to me in the general notion of “it’s just hornyposting”, between hornyposting by straight men and that of queer women and/or the gender blender, when the characters involved are both women - especially in light of the reasonably consistent depiction of one or both as transgender in oil fire posting. there’s better people than me and my none gender with leftist beef to effortpost on that side of things.)

“tsukasa is manipulating sanae” I’d add a single phrase here - she’s trying to. The big thing with a lot of how I look at Sanae and this is no exception is that while she can be naive, she’s not stupid. There’s a difference between being trusting and being easily deceived. She’s not a master manipulator, but she lives with Kanako, she knows a bit of how the game is played.

I think this kind of echoes the last bit of the last segment, in that how the characters are portrayed in the context matters a lot. Oil Fire Sanae is, at least within the spheres I see here, heavily coded as if not explicitly autistic. A lot of the content is being written by autistic people, myself included.

Autistic adults are, in my anecdotal experience, pretty conscious of being manipulative or manipulated, because we have to learn deliberately where that line is drawn and how to act around it.

To get into explicitly personal experiences, I often think of myself as being “manipulative” because I have to deliberately strategise a lot of social cues and how I present myself and information I know, and still haven’t really shook that perspective internally despite the intellectual knowledge of several therapists and psychiatrists that no, that’s just an autism thing, most people do all that stuff without thinking about it.

Now obviously simply Being Autistic is not an unassailable fortress against manipulation, nor does it prevent you from being actually manipulative in your own right, but it does tilt the pinball table a bit, again especially in terms of awareness. And that awareness helps control a response - again, even if you’re not always quite sure how to respond.

Sanae’s way of cutting that Gordian knot is what a friend of mine calls the Bishop Myriel Method: how can someone steal what is freely given? She has her lines, but the stuff Tsukasa is leaning on her to get - protection, shelter, and an in-group - are all things Sanae doesn’t see an issue with giving to her. Tsukasa for her part doesn’t really understand this, being more used to dealing with power-broker types where everything has a quid-pro-quo, and from a position of pretty notable inferiority (just look at how any of the stronger youkai talk to her in UDoALG) at that - so she looks at all the leverage that Sanae now has over her (leverage which Sanae doesn’t really understand she has), and doubles down on trying to be manipulative because she doesn’t understand that she doesn’t have to.

in conclusion obviously I’m not thinking about all this wall of text every time I post something, for the same reason that I’m not thinking about how my house’s foundations are designed every time I go up or down the stairs - the general idea is there in the background and actually needing to go check it out usually means that I won’t be doing whatever I was going up the stairs for in the first place. but these are The Thoughts, upon which the lower effort thoughts stand as they heckle each other. there are many like them but these are mine

[pynkhues]

Ok i have embarassingly stupid question so i'm sorry but. English is not my first language and i've been wondering what does the phrase "considerable considerables" exactly mean? I've assumed that in the context of the scene, considerables meant sexual advances that Louis was rebuffing? However, it seems like most of the fandom think Lestat meant... his genitals? But how could genitals be squandered? (unless literally which ouch) I feel like i'm missing the obvious joke here? Google says that considerables are just "things to be considered", which is no help! So I'm assuming that it's either some obscure 18th century word like bookbinder's wife or just a metaphor that lestat invented?

Hey! It's not an embarrassingly stupid question at all, anon! It's an innuendo, so ultimately it's up to the viewer to decide what he means, but given the context of the scene, I think you and others in the fandom are both right:

Considerable can mean something big, but also just something that should be thought about, and he's using it as a plural which means he's referencing more than one thing. As a result, I tend to not think it's just him saying he's got a big dick, but Lestat objectifying himself generally, and referring to both his, ahem, appendage, and virility / skills in bed.

Given it follows on from the conversation about Claudia, I take it to mean that he's reminding his gay husband that he's a man who wants him, not a little girl (their daughter!) who doesn't. It kind of goes back to the conversation from yesterday about Lestat needing his looks / sexuality validated, but I also think it's important to remember how far into their depression era this is. The earlier scene shows Lestat's been really in the thick of it with him ("You draw me into your gloom") and he even tries to get them both to go out to a Louis Armstrong concert together, which results in the fight where Lestat effectively calls Louis an arrogant snob, and Louis effectively calls Lestat shallow and stupid, so it hasn't just been about sex for Lestat in the way I think sometimes people can emphasise. I think his body/sexuality is probably the last thing Lestat feels he has to offer Louis anymore, and when Louis rejects that too, Lestat starts to live a bit of a separate life from him again (although still doesn't actually leave).

It's an interesting beat!

[allykatsart]

pls i’m so feral about your deer boi oc tell me more i wanna know how the whole everyone notices he’s terrified of alastor thing goes

Who is Peccantum?

HO BOY YOU ASKED FOR IT-

Husk, of course, is the first to notice.

He's a gambler, bartender, and is far more attentive than other sinners give him credit for. Of course he notices Peccantum is treading on eggshells everywhere, and not just for comedic effect. The young buck is genuinely terrified of Alastor.

However, Husk isn't one to act on that information. Not only is it none of his business, Husk is also kind of in the same boat as Peccantum. Honestly, the bartender thinks Peccantum's fear is warranted. He does soften over time, but what can he do, really?

Angel Dust is the first to help.

It would be post episode 4, when Angel really starts to connect with others at the hotel. Angel just kinda always assumed Peccantum was a panicky, on edge weirdo. As they get to know each other a little more, Angel realizes that's not actually the case. Peccantum is usually a sarcastic, passionate, clever guy! So the way the bellhop acts around Alastor... It reminds Angel a touch too much of his situation with Val

(Not in romance or assault, but in the 'Im going to fuck with you for my own amusement' way)

So, Angel starts doing little things. He doesn't want to piss off the strawberry pimp, so no direct confrontation, but he can still help Peccantum not get jump scared. Angel greets Alastor out loud when Alastor enters a room quietly. He lingers in rooms where Peccantum would be alone otherwise. Small things that prepare Peccantum beforehand.

In return, Peccantum makes Angel warm drinks when Angel comes back from a long day. He learns recipes that Angel likes and cooks dinner. He gives Angel a book called "A hundred and one dirty jokes for the wickedly perverted." Small things.

They don't talk about it, and it's not a foolproof strategy, but it helps.

Sir Pentious, the best friend, takes it very seriously.

Sir Pentious doesn't pick up on it like Husk and Angel do, so it takes an actual conversation with Peccantum about it for him to realize it's serious. Pentious and Peccantum are Science Buddies™️ so it doesn't take long before Pentious starts coming up with inventions that might help! Magic seeking goggles, ocular augmentations, even a scanner to help identify Alastor before he appears! They have a little fun with it.

In the end, though, Pentious keeps it simple. He and Peccantum develop a secret hand signal for if Peccantum needs someone to distract Alastor. That way Peccantum can slip away and calm himself down if he's spiraling!

They also develop a secret handshake but that's beside the point.

Charlie....

Despite what everyone thinks, Charlie isn't stupid. She's observant and empathetic, and quickly picks up that Peccantum is nervous around Alastor. She can understand that, Hell, sometimes the Radio Demon makes her nervous! She's also a fixer, so would try to resolve the issue with diplomacy and setting boundaries. Sure, Alastor probably doesn't care about Peccantum, but Alastor does listen to her!

But she doesn't have the context.

I don't think Peccantum would tell her anything, and may actively try to keep his thoughts about Alastor private from her. I also think Alastor has made it clear that if Peccantum tries to hide behind Charlie, he's in for a lot worse than just some scares. Alastor defers to Charlie out of obligation and opportunity, but he refuses to have others use her to manipulate himself. Especially not a soul he owns.

Peccantum, of course, complies. He has to convincingly lie to Charlie, which makes his stomach squirm with guilt, but it's fine. He's overreacting anyways. It's fine. It's the price he chose to pay for power.

As long as he has magic, he shouldn't care what Alastor decides to do with him.

It's fine.

(No, it's not)

[canarydarity]

hello,, remember that Jimmy centric harbinger of death au I mentioned months back? Have a snippet of a scene from the first chapter :) (which will be posted in full soon!)

“Jimmy, look out!” 

From over his shoulder, he hears it—the spark and a slight buzz, like static; for a weird second, he thinks of the radio and the crackling, the sand in the desert. But he knows better, he knows that hiss, a sound that haunts him both awake and asleep. It doesn’t matter that he was just facing that direction and had seen no sign of any creepers—there was a conditioned response to what he just heard, everyone has one; Jimmy’s is to drop, ducking to the ground hands up and over his head—not that they would’ve done anything to protect him had the threat been real. 

And while nothing happened—no crater dug itself into the ground, no hole ripped itself through his barely-armored body, no gasp as he woke up back in that desert—the panic was most definitely real. Seasoned target of one too many jokes, following the usual progression Jimmy knows the anger comes next; the panic would fade upon the realization that the threat wasn’t real and the annoyance at whatever joke was played would take its place, no less insistent and intense as the feeling before it. But as Jimmy cowers on the ground, catching his breath, his hands frantically cataloging limbs and appendages and understanding he was fine, he doesn’t find that his fear gives way to anger—his fear wasn’t giving away at all. 

His ears are ringing, which is weird because there had been no actual explosion. The noise came from somewhere—probably a disc if he had to guess—but it was pre-recorded, only a playback of some other detonation, it shouldn’t have nearly been enough to do any real damage. And it didn’t seem to for anyone else either, if the laughter he vaguely hears behind him is any sort of indication. The perpetrators are fine, but even so, Jimmy’s head rocks like there had been a blast, like he needs time to recover. 

No matter how many times he repeats to himself that nothing had happened, that it was just a stupid prank, he can’t seem to calm down. 

A hand touches his arm and he flinches hard, blinking up to find Scott just trying to help him to his feet. “Easy, Jimmy, easy.” Jimmy lets Scott pull him until he’s standing, brushing him off. 

Martyn is still laughing at his own prank, wiping a tear from below his eye, practically wheezing; it’s unclear how much of it is real and how much is for show. “I have gotten a one hundred percent success rate with that,” he brags with a happy sigh, hands out to his sides, inviting them to join in on his praise. “I gotta say, I’m pleased.”  

“What was that noise?” Jimmy asks, but his question goes unanswered. 

“He got me as well,” Scott says, but then he turns to look at Jimmy with a smirk. “But not nearly as aggressively as he got you, Jimmy.” 

Jimmy wants to join them in their amusement, he really does, but his heart rate hasn’t quite recovered yet. He’s embarrassed, almost, to still be feeling it. He blinks a few times hoping to clear something in his brain, begging himself to calm down, to chill out before someone notices. 

But of course, the next thing Martyn says is “Just a music disc Tim, jeez, you alright there?” Not sounding at all actually concerned about Jimmy’s state of being; his deceptively kind words more an excuse to poke at Jimmy’s weak spots than actually inquire about his feelings.

He wants to play it cool, to take the joke as easily as he’s sure the others have, but instead on instinct his shock makes him shove his arm in Martyn’s face, crowing “I’ve got goosebumps, Martyn, look!” 

Martyn draws back in his distaste, his own hand coming up to push Jimmy’s arm back down and away. “Yep, I see that alright, thank you.”

Scott pats Jimmy twice on the shoulder, something he’s quickly getting sick of happening in this sort of context.

“I’ve got a few more people to get with it, though, so—” Martyn says, clearly trying to take his leave now that he did what he came here to. “Actually,” he interrupts himself, “have you seen Grian anywhere?”

Scott shakes his head, “No, I—”

And—maybe just a moment behind—Jimmy understands he means to repeat the prank again, and speaks without really thinking about it or meaning to for the second time today. 

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, actually.” 

Martyn’s eyes dart away from him and then back again like he's giving some sort of aside to an audience, acknowledging the weirdness of Jimmy’s comment with a 3rd party who’s in on the bit. “Um, what?”

Jimmy ignores the feeling that he’s walking himself into a joke, calling on Martyn to pick him apart like usual—because the feeling of wrong wrong wrong wrong is so much stronger. His ears are still ringing from the explosion that didn’t happen, and he rubs a hand over one of them trying to make it go away before he answers, but for some reason, that only makes it louder. 

He winces, both from the pain and the knowledge that he knows exactly how this conversation is going to go over before he even starts it. 

“I said you oughta stop that.” He tries to be firm, but from the smirk on Martyn’s face, he’s not going to succeed. It makes Jimmy double down, rush the rest of the sentence out of his mouth as quickly as possible, trying to avoid the possibility of being dismissed. “Someone could get seriously hurt!”

“It’s not a real creeper though, is it Timmy?” 

Jimmy feels the helpless frown settle on his face, and the frustration that comes with knowing he's going to lose but not wanting to give up; he acts and speaks with the same level of intensity as he does with everything else, but there's an underlying urgency here that he does not doubt even though he doesn’t quite understand its cause. He doesn’t bother answering Martyn’s question, knowing at least enough to understand that he isn’t meant to. 

“I still don’t think you should be doin’ that though!” He argues, and the worst possible turn the conversation could take begins from there; dismissal of the point that the prank is potentially dangerous for the more amusing idea that Jimmy is a sore participant. 

Martyn rolls his eyes and crosses his arms. “Oh come on,” he drawls. “Take a joke, take a joke…” 

Jimmy groans, “But Martyn, I think th—”

Martyn groans back, “But Timmy!” 

Scott laughs and Jimmy turns to glare at him, giving up on his sentence halfway through. 

Martyn takes the distraction as his leave, already having jogged halfway across the tiny valley by the time Jimmy looks back in his direction. 

“You’re gonna kill someone with that!” Jimmy yells after him, but Martyn is ignoring him and making really exaggerated gestures of goodbye, like he's just given a performance and the crowd is shouting for an encore. He brings both hands to his mouth and blows a kiss to his imaginary admirers, then clasps his hands together giving a large bow; waving, smiling, mouthing thank you. 

Jimmy calls again “I’m serious Martyn!” But his friend fakes a laugh and says “oh, you’re all too kind!” Before disappearing over the crest of the mountain across them.

[destinygoldenstar]

Send this to anyone who has never seen TADC (Out of Context Lines)

"They'll get totally spoiled!"

"Why are you like this?"

"Any torment I inflict is one hundred percent accidental! Like any good war criminal!"

"Does this count as a bus?"

"Wow, that's just about as dumb as my name."

"We have a suggestion box?" "Basically no."

"What happened?!" "I just remembered a really funny joke!" "Why did you scream then?" "Maybe it wasn't actually that funny..." "Oh my god..."

"Come on ladies, let's go harass the clown."

"Everyone alright?" "Can you repeat the question? I couldn't hear you over the knives."

"Well I don't know what's normal to you people!"

"Oh god, that just sounds like murder." "Is it really murder if it's delicious?"

"Now what the heck happened around here? Oh yeah, my doing!"

"My mind is a beeswax polished coconut!"

"Oh no! It looks like I've taken Ragatha, and dropped her in the deep frier!"

"Oh look! Now she's turning blue!" "She was already blue."

"This is dumb and weird."

"I'm not a child, you don't have to hype me up."

"It's called a manic episode, and you're getting three more seasons! Hahahahaha-anyway-"

"Alright Pomni, just stay like that and I'll cross over you."

"What are ya thinking?" "I don't care-"

"Please don't come alive..." "Okay I won't."

"Excuse me? Yeah, little jester? I'd like to order the stupid burger!"

"I feel like that violates some kind of convention."

"Wow, this is some rather inconvenient lore placement."

"Do it, or I'll tell Ragatha about the figuring thing."

"You guys have a second truck that flies?" "Yeah! Oh wait, no, no we don't, not at all."

"Drown yourself in the digital lake!"

"I forgot to ask for a kids meal toy!" "But you're not a kid." "Oh yeah! An adult toy then." "I don't know about that one mate."

"You're probably not even listening." "Zooble, look at this cool bee I drew!"

"You're all good!" "...huh?"

"Why are we here again? What are we doing?"

"I wish someone would flirt with me..."

"Boss! Where've you been? We got fudged!"

"If anyone needs me, than f%#k off."

"What do you think of XDDCC?" "I don't-" "You're right, terrible, let's try that again!"

"Did someone say something about an insect collection?"

"And Zooble turns straight." "My limbs straighten up-f#%k off."

"And it's cool to have dreams! But you also need to remember that they're completely unrealistic, and you need to stop trying!"

"Sounds *CENSORED*." "Bubble you can't say that..."

"What time period is this supposed to be again?"

"Oh look there's Zooble! Hi Zooble!" "Help me you idiots!"

"You now, I'm starting to think."

"Are you smiling?" "Uh, no?" "Why not?"

"Welp, I'm gonna go drink water! It's been awhile since I've done that!"

"This is the void!"

"Hundreds of all seeing eyes on you!"

"Oh no, they killed Zooble. Anyway, you guys wanna get something to eat?"

"Not even I know what's out there."

"Made with all the love I'm legally allowed to carry."

"There's a fly in here!" "Don't you think that's making a lot of-oh god there is a fly."

"That was more info on Gloink reproduction than I ever needed to know..."

"You didn't experience a game show in there, did you?" "What are you talking about?"

"I can't hold it any longer."

"It's probably just magnets. Or a boat." "A boat?" "Whatever the case."

"I'm surprised you remember that." "Remember what?"

"Huffing paint? And not waiting till a designated break?"

"You! Do you like adventure? Activity? Wonder? Danger? Horror? Pain? Suffering? Death? Disease? Death? Angel food cake?"

"Ooh, violence!"

"Aren't you supposed to be submissive and agreeable? Move it!"

"No thanks, I'm trying to quit."

"Get out of here before the moon gets frisky!"

"Oh Bubble, you always know how to make me say this exact sentence."

"We're one tanker away from being Augustus Glooped!"

"Oh wait, you mean me grabbing you right now? Yeah, that was me."

"Hurt nothing! I'm hurt enough! Packages landing on my head, tea parties, dancing lessons..."

"It appears you seem to have cut your own shift short, went a little kooky, and ran out into upcoming traffic."

"What did any of that mean?"