#always tell the truth

[theficpusher]

Finger My Mouth by LouisThiccSexyGlitteryAss | E | 1515 Louis' dentist (and childhood crush) rides him on the orthodontic chair.

A+ Patient by YesIsAWorld | G | 1882 Harry hated everything about the dentist—the antiseptic smell and the bright light in his face and the disappointment in himself and the suction thingy that kept his mouth too dry. But the thing he hated the most was how in love with his dentist he was.

Working With Mouths. by kotabear24 | M | 2075 But, basically, Louis goes to a new dentist...who is Harry Styles.

The gas had a delayed effect(it's just the dentist's office) by AxWorldxAway | nr | 3832 "Got a bit of a laugh, eavesdropping in on my very personal conversation with myself, eh?" Louis pulled the straightest face he could, acting as stern as he could, and he almost pulled it off. That is, until he saw the way the boy paled dramatically and his eyes widened comically. He burst out laughing a second after the boy began rushing out a hasty apology. He couldn't stop laughing, doubling over from his place perched in the chair. The other boy began chuckling slightly along with him. Louis knew it wasn't that funny, but he had to keep his spirits high somehow; he was sitting in a dentist office after all. (Louis cracks his tooth and is forced to take a trip to the dentist. Harry just happens to be the attractive dental assistant to Louis' eccentric dentist.)

Brace Yourself by Kaname | nr | 4056 "Standing in the doorway, wearing the most garish pair of banana scrubs that Louis had ever had the misfortune of seeing, was the most bloody gorgeous man he'd ever laid his eyes on. His hair was twisted into a messy bun of shiny, perfect curls; his thick lips curled up into a playful smile while a set of sparkling green eyes read through his folder. 'Hope you’ve not had trouble "filling" the time before the appointment, then,” the hygienist mused, smirking down at the file in his hands. His muscular forearms were blissfully exposed, a white undershirt rolled up to the elbows while a set of long, elegant fingers flipped leisurely through Louis’ x-rays. “Not that I mean to "drill" you about what you do with your free time, but it would be awfully "root" not to ask.'" (Louis is a whiny arsehat who hates the dentist, and Harry is a hygientist with a pocket full of dental puns and a thing for petite men in poof-hats.)

always tell the truth by anditsonlyforthebrave | nr | 5027 Harry is Louis' dentist and getting a wisdom tooth removed shouldn't be the end of the world.

Tantrums and Toothaches by sagegreenharry | nr | 5159 Louis and Harry's daughters always loved their dentist appointments with Louis. While Harry was off to the side doing his deep breathing, the girls would be laughing in the chair with Louis as he cleaned their teeth. So, this time when Harry gets the text from Louis to bring himself and the girls to his office, and Eva turns pale as a ghost, Harry knows something must be up.

Beautiful smile by HESLWTLJPNJHZJM | G | 5297 Louis takes Doris to her dentist appointment where Harry just so happens to be the dentist. Shocker, I know.

You smile all the time ('cause how can you not show it?) by thebreadvan | E | 9500 Harry’s eyes unwillingly slip up to the doctor, scanning his features and the focused crinkle between his brows. His jaw looks sharp, especially when he clenches it, pearly teeth biting into his bottom lip. Harry admires the stubble growing on his cheeks, and the impressive cut of his cheekbones, and – the blush blooming from his cheeks down to his neck. Harry blinks away, hoping he hasn’t been caught staring or made the man uncomfortable, but Dr. Tomlinson clears his throat and his leg starts bouncing beside Harry’s chair. Harry looks up again, and finds his face twisted into an undecipherable grimace. “Uhm,” Dr. Tomlinson stammers, “Could you hold your tongue still for me?” Harry stops breathing when he realises. He is licking Dr. Tomlinson’s fingers. <<>><<>><<>> Or, Harry never liked dentists, until now.

[manny-jacinto]

a message from Rahul Kohli 

[justaz]

post magic reveal merlin who is so used to working in the shadows and continuing on as if he wasn’t dying the night before disappearing for a day and showing up like nothing happened until someone points out blood seeping through his clothes and merlin going “oh! whoops! lol” and arthur has a heart attack

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Laios's three Boy Best Friends. And yes, they hate him.

[mobius-m-mobius]

What were you calling me? Mobius. It’s a pretty cool name.

Loki 1x02 // 2x05

[oceanwithouthermoon]

saiteru is so misunderstood and its so sad because its genuinely one of the best implied ships ive ever seen

girl who thinks she can only be loved for her appearance and when she sacrifices her own happiness and privacy for the sake of others............ guy who doesnt care about her appearance and grows to care about her despite knowing all her secrets, and insists that she doesnt need to sacrifice anything but still admires her for it......... u guys only hate them cuz u hate to see a girlboss winning

[anathemafiction]

If the Ros had to tell the mc a lie In order for the mc to stay with them or tell the truth and have the mc leave them. Which would they do?

Oooh, this is juicy!

Lie and take the secret to their grave: Alain, Rafael, and Vallen.

The truth, always: Hadrian, Neia, and Lance.

Lie at first, as a knee-jerk reaction out of dread of losing you, but eventually, confess the truth: Alessa, Ysabella, and the Pirate King.

[bi-dykes]

I just think that best friends to lovers

[churchwizard]

Canary in the coalmine

[itsyaraz]

I make art sometimes ...That art is almost always stormlight related.

Anyway, here's a Renarin for the soul.

[northlight14]

Speaking as someone who was constantly late to school, I think punishing kids/teens for being late to school is stupid. Like, I get it. When they’re older, they can’t be late to work and stuff and they need to understand that. But majority of kids/teens are getting to school via their parents or someone else driving them or hell the school bus which is also driven by an adult. So when a kid arrives late and gets punished for it, all that’s happening is a child getting punished because the adult responsible for getting them there on time wasn’t successful. That’s not teaching the kid anything, that’s just annoying. Especially when, as a kid I was always ready on time and it was my parents I was waiting on and then in detention I’d be expected to write down a “what will I do better” that didn’t apply to me because I didn’t do anything wrong

I get that sometimes it will be the kids fault but I feel like those cases are few and far between and punishing a kid for the adults in their life is just counterproductive

[probablybadrpgideas]

A Riddle

You are trapped on one side of a river. You have a boat, and can use it cross the river. However, you need to get three wolves, three goats and three bags of grain across. If there are ever more wolves then goats on one side of the river, they'll eat the goats, and likewise for goats and grain. You can take up to two things per journey, not including yourself.

Who the fuck let this happen?

[hecksupremechips]

Akihiko becoming a cop is something that simply doesn’t happen in the coma route cuz Shinji would see that shit and be like Aki what the actual hell is wrong with you

[bitchthefuck1]

Tom's line about Shiv being selfish and "find[ing] it very hard to think about me" is actually so telling because while it's absolutely true that she rarely takes his position into consideration, Tom never once thinks about what he can do to help Shiv unless it also benefits him.

Every single time he makes a move or sacrifice that might help her, it's always something that he thinks will give him a leg up. He volunteers to take the fall for cruises, not for Shiv, who is in no way implicated, or even for Waystar, but because he thinks it'll ingratiate him to Logan, and the second it seems like he might have to actually follow through on that, he immediately tries to get out of it and even throws Shiv under the bus. Meanwhile, for all that Shiv disregards his interests, there are a number of things she does that only help him, and she's the one who actually sacrifices something and undermines her position with Logan to beg him not to let Tom go to jail.

It just makes it so clear that no matter how much he might love her (and I think he does, in his own compromised way), for him their relationship was always built on the underlying assumption that it's her job to prop him up, but it's not his job to help her.

[emblazons]

It’s “realizing that Will’s struggle in S2 with being infected with a virus that spreads and will kill him quickly (but doctors don’t care) is a metaphor for how gay men were treated during the aids crisis” hours

—right alongside Mike (who comes from a family with a Reagan sign in their front yard + a mom who outwardly supported Margret Thatcher), who sat at his now confirmed gay best friend’s side the entire time he was sick and watched as people were willing to let him die because he was viewed as expendable……and now has an ongoing storyline where

1) his relationship with his girlfriend is falling apart because he doesn’t love her romantically

2) he’s staring longingly and pushing toward the freedom his gay best friend embodies for him, and

3) he cannot bring himself to tell anyone around him something because “what if they don’t like it” + dehumanize him for telling the secret truth he cannot bring himself to externalize, despite now knowing something that scares him about about himself:

(Bonus points for the fact that the first time we see Mike push Will and himself toward a girl is after he watches how people were willing to let his gay best friend (and him, by extension) die should they not confirm to expectations)

[heycarrots]

There’s been a lot of discourse about the nature of James and Miranda’s relationship. There’s even been a lot of discussion on my podcast about it. One thing I want to make clear is that my podcast is a platform for discussion on all points of view. I’m not going to agree, 100%, with everything that’s said, but it makes the views of my guests no less valid. There’s no right or wrong, here, because this is art and therefore, it is subject to interpretation.

My intent, however, is to attempt to get as close to the original intent of the actors as possible because we look at a show or a film or a play as going through several layers of distillation. Each level purifies the intended narrative leaving its truest essence.

When we make a reduction sauce using an alcohol of some kind, let’s say a red wine, the heat applied to it burns off things we don’t need for flavor. You’re never going to get drunk off of red wine reduction because there’s almost no alcohol left in it. That all gets burned off, leaving only the flavor components, which is what we wanted all along, anyway. We want that extra element that enriches the flavor of the steak, by adding nuance.

So let’s take apart that meal.

We start with the birth of the idea. The story kicks around in an author’s head, trying to get out, growing bigger and more persistent until it outgrows the confines of the mental box inspiration is stored in and has to be let out. That idea, that’s the cow.

The author raises that idea, feeds it, watches it grow, and then, ultimately slaughters it. That sounds awful, but once you have that idea pulsing, growing, evolving and then finally commit the final draft on paper, it is a kind of death. The life of the story comes to an end and it becomes memorialized in a mausoleum. Readers will come to visit, spend time with it, lay down flowers, cherish it, and mourn its passing.

The next level is adaptation. That’s the steak. There are many ways you can slice the story, large roasts encompassing the whole story or a smaller, hyper-focused character study fillet mignon.

A writers room gets hold of the cow and carves it up. They choose what gets cooked and what gets tossed. A GREAT group of writers saves the bones. They take in the entire supporting structure of the piece and while the whole story may not make it onto the screen, they will have slow roasted the bones for a stock. When you watch a show like Black Sails, where themes are introduced that won’t fully be explained or explored until several seasons later, that’s what that is. It is the stock being used to flavor the whole dish. You’ve distilled the entire cow to its purest essence and so every scene, every line of dialogue, every acting choice, encompasses the entirety of the story. A line from episode one is defined by knowledge of the finale and in regard to dialogue, defined by an actors’ knowledge of a character’s backstory. There are many writers rooms who are creating the bones of the story as they go, which means they aren’t starting with a rich stock. You can’t trace back character motivations or choices to begin with because those motivations changed throughout production.

Black Sails, again, isn’t one of those shows. Steinberg and Levine came into the writers room with their stock pot full and sloshing, spilling story everywhere. The richness of the details they were laying can make season one a bit hard to consume unless you are ready for a story on that level. Viewers need to come to the table with some bread to sop up all those character details because we WILL need them later.

Over the course of finalizing scripts and blocking out episodes, the steak is cooked. Like any great steak, this story is medium rare. More juice comes out with every bite. It’s what makes the show infinitely rewatchable. It continues to cook on the plate, but because it wasn’t overdone, it never dries out.

When the actors get ahold of it, that’s the reduction sauce we were talking about. That sauce provides nuance and flavor. That’s the emotion. A line of dialogue on a page is just ink. It’s nothing until it’s spoken aloud. And like any bit of language in this world, it’s subject to interpretation. In this case, it’s the actor who does the interpreting.

I spoke on the podcast about the art of subtext and how huge a role it plays in Black Sails. One example we used is Jane Eyre. It’s one of the most frequently adapted novels in the English language and with each adaptation, we get a new version of our characters. The most volatile and subject to change is Rochester. There are MANY versions of Rochester that I find appalling (including the original beast in the book), but each actor has formed him into something else, based on their performance. Toby Stephens takes Rochester and turns him into a silly tragic romantic, broken many times over by a society he never really fits into, despite the status of his birth. He connects with Ruth Wilson’s Jane because she fully and happily inhabits that space on the fringes that Rochester thinks he needs to climb out of. Jane takes his hand on the outside of the wall, turns him away from the guarded palace and shows him the wild world that was at his back this whole time.

This is what Toby Stephens, Luke Arnold, Louise Barnes, Zethu Dlomo, and really all the actors for whom their subtextual choices make them reflect like prisms, have done with their performances.

In the final distillation, character motivations and emotions are finalized by the actor. Writers can pontificate, the source material lies dead in its lovely tomb, but stories live and breathe by their storytellers.

What we’re left with is Toby’s face telling the world how deeply Flint loves Silver. Every single choice tells this story.

We’re left with Luke showing us how much Silver is repressing in his feelings for Flint. Luke’s face shows us an incredible depth of feeling and a door slamming shut.

We’re left with the incredible intimacy between James and Miranda, which speaks of a decade of shared physical intimacy. There’s an openness, a freeness to it until the moment in episode 3 when Miranda learns that James has found the Urca and is leaving soon to pursue it. She gives some of it away when she says “I thought I’d have you all to myself”. She is mourning the loss of intimacy that she only gets in short windows of time. They aren’t strained because James isn’t attracted to her, but because he’s rarely there. She has him for a few days at a time before he’s off on another hunt. The coldness starts from the moment he tells her he’s leaving in a few days because I believe she thinks he won’t be coming back, that this is the hunt he won’t survive and she’ll finally have lost both James and Thomas. From the moment Richard Guthrie darkens her door, she’s looking for a way to weaponize him and get them out. For her, it’s a race against the clock and she’s willing to sacrifice a bit of her relationship with James in the present to secure happiness for them in the future.

This is also why James still has sex with her before leaving, even though he’s furious for her reading Meditations to Richard. This is how they connect. They connected through physical intimacy in the flashbacks, as well. Him stroking her thumb in the carriage before the kiss. Tactile contact to seal their understanding of each other. Miranda bracing her hands on his chest during important moments in the Hamilton’s home, something she also does to Thomas, to show physical connection, physical intimacy. Miranda thrives on physical touch.

To think that, for 10 years, James is lying there like an object for Miranda to use, is, to me, short sighted. To think that James doesn’t love Miranda outside of a group, is also ignoring the fact that, 10 years on, James will not leave on a hunt (angry as they both are) without physically connecting with her, trying so hard to reach beyond his anger and the wound freshly opened from sight of that book he’s chosen not to look at for probably the better part of those 10 years. The way his hands hover over her back after she comes and he desperately wants to be with her in that moment, like the best of their moments, but he just can’t, speaks to the depth of his love for her.

So many fans of the show point to this sad sex scene as one of the most important character moments for James and Miranda, but I consistently come to the opposite conclusions about WHY it’s important and what we learn from it, because I’m taking my cues from the actor’s choices, not the director or the writers. On the page, in plain ink, he hates having sex with her. Toby and Louise show us, however, that they are trying to recapture a thing that is fleeting, reaching out to each other to patch up an old wound from which the scab has been picked off, leaving it seeping and raw.

From Toby’s performance, regardless of the words he uses years later to describe it, we see not a character who “loves men” or a character who “loves women”, but a character who LOVES. I don’t see Flint defining that love in terms of boxes and parameters. He’s a character who must be coaxed out, but then loves without reason, without a safety net, as he proves with his love of Silver. As was also referenced by a guest on the podcast, he places a sword in Silver’s hand and says “do it”.

Anyway, this post got away from me and took several turns, but the love between James and Miranda being dismissed by so many in the fandom has been bugging me for a while and I just needed to emotionally vomit on tumblr.