#andrew be normal challenge it is NOT this deep this anime came out over a decade ago gay people arent real pre 2013 idk man im just insane

[olvitier]

Sorry its so late buf i am in an Edling mood tonight and I will never stop thinking about the idea of how theyre the epitome of right person wrong time.

(obviously in a context of like fandom shenannigans where canon events arent 100% set in stone like edling arent canon but also idc !! they are to me! im ignoring it let me be insane) ANYWAY

Even if they wanted to be together post promised day Ling has all the responsibilities of Xing and his clan and Edward would never hold him back from that for a second. Im of the opinion that brotherhood Edward feels a lot of guilt for wanting love from the people around him particularly those he sees as good (winry, alphonse, etc) especially if hes done things hes perceived as hurting them (maes’ death, the transmutation, etc etc). Which is why I think Edward connects with Ling so well cayse he doesnt carry the weight of a lot if his past mistakes, and then when the stone happens its like goddamn it i roped this guy into my shit again. Like i dont know Edward doesnt really dedicate himself so fully to people outside of winry and ed a lot so its interesting like!!

He cares about a lot of people like the majority of the allied cast and we see him be openly affectionate towards Nina and Hughes pre their deaths but I think Ling is the only person hes ever decided to stick with WITHOUT alphonse? I may be wrong but the whole sure Ill stay with you and trust my brother and Winry to stay safe and follow you around the outskirts of the east for a week till the promised day to protect my new friend is so??? what?? huh???

But anyone my point is post promised day Edward cant really ever see a future with Ling because of all the responsibility Ling holds outside of him and its veyr tragic imo like especially because in a different scenario if Ling didnt have those responsibilities and Edward wasn’t so dedicated to the people around him to a fault of never thinking about his own desires I think they could have the possibility of a future.

Like I have read a lot of fanfiction abiut Ed traveling to Xing and living with him there but?? I realistically cant see him ever doing that just solely because Edward is not the type of person to settle down! like its my one and only criticism of the fma manga is that I cannot see Edward ever being satisfied with a simple life? Like even in Fma 03 which is my favourite interpretation of Edwards character once he gets stranded in our world he learns?? Rocket Science?? For the chance to get back to Amestris but he doesnt really seem to take that goal all that seriously especially considered Alfons ends up getting involved in a lot more aircraft projects than Edward like Edwsrd genuinely enjoys learning!!

Im pretty sure he was the one who dragged Alphonse into Hoenhiems office when they were kids after he left, probably to Al’s reluctance of if they were allowed in there, and started ripping through all of his old books just to learn. Edward never stops and it gets so bad that he never stops to even consider himself constantly worrying about getting his brother back or improving the states of others lives especially when! ya know! the whole country is at stake!!

So in a circumstance post promised day where Ed decides what he wants to do (my personal favourite interpretation is either an alchemical researcher outside of directly performing alchemy, ie revolutionizing the circle matrixes and discovering nee combinations or becoming a professor of some kind) I dont think he would give that up to settle again. And obviously Ling cant exactly up and leave being Emperor unless he decides he doesnt want to, im not the most knowledgable on Lings characterization so I wont speak there but!

They have so much fun together and compliment each other and genuinely care about each other so much but their happiness and fulfillment as people to themselves and others make it so its nearly impossible they would ever realistically end up together and its really doomed and tragic!! idk i think about it a lot.

[oddsnendsfanfics]

Rum and Ginger

Genre: Fan Fiction (Animal Kingdom) Pairing: N/A Warnings: N/A Rating: G Length: Drabble Disclaimer: a strict work of fiction, I own nothing except the original characters and the plot line. In no way am I affiliated to any of it.  

A/N: FINALLY! I was able to throw together my entry for the Winter Wonderland Writing Challenge that @pixiedustandfairywings and I held. -- Prompt was #31 Ugly Christmas sweaters and too much rum and eggnog

Pope Cody had never enjoyed Christmas, even as a child Christmas came and went, no enjoyment from Pope. Each year he would sit back and watch his brothers tear through their gifts, never appreciating or caring for what they received.

This year was no different.

Craig would fuck off to do who knows what.

Deran would be working at the bar.

Baz was...well, his Christmas celebrations were long over.

And his nephew J would be hanging around the house, lurking like a thief in the night.

Or so Pope had thought.

The day began like any other Christmas Eve in the Cody house. Smurf woke up to make Pope and J breakfast, Craig stumbled in about an hour later - still stoned, and Deran was...wherever Deran went these days.

Nobody mentioned Christmas. Pope was content to carry on with his day, treating it as any other Monday. Any other Monday it was, until the phone rang around noon.

"Baby, I need you to get a tree and make sure you have presents under it by dinner." Smurf informed her eldest son.

"No." Pope growled his eyes lifeless and cold.

"Maybe you didn't hear me, Andrew?" Smurf sneered. "That was Lena's foster family, they're granting you a courtesy and allowing her to come over for dinner. I want a tree, I want presents, and I want my boys to be here and be merry."

Fucking Smurf. Pope had his doubts about this. He'd taken Lena back, with the intentions that his niece would be better off without her family in the mix. Still, he would do everything he could to giver her a good Christmas.

By 5:30 the house looked as though Santa himself had shit Christmas all over. The outside was brightly decorated, out of place snowmen characters on the green lawn, lights all over the house, and a plastic Santa next to the garage.

Inside was just as colourful and festive. A tree in the living room, the biggest tree that Pope had ever seen. J had brought it back, from where, nobody asked. Lights, wreathes, and even mistletoe were strung around the house.

No Christmas was complete without the food and family togetherness, of course. Food the Cody's could do, the issue was being a normal functioning family for a few hours. Somewhere in the express planning  matching ugly sweaters had shown up. The real joy was how hot and itchy the fucking things were.

"This was a stupid fucking idea." Deran grumbled pouring the dark rum into the glass, swiping the egg nog from the counter top.

"You're the one who bought the fucking things." Craig complained, pulling at the neck of the red and white sweater.

"I was told to make a good impression and be festive, or some shit." Deran defended chugging the egg nog mixture.

"This was the best you could do?" Pope glanced down at the dancing gingerbread men on his matching sweater.

"I'm not the one who asked about the kid coming over." Deran shrugged.

"Nobody asked. Okay." Pope rolled his eyes. "But she's here now, let's at least act like we care."

"I don't think they're all that bad." J shrugged, admiring the battery operated lights that donned the front of the sweaters. "Besides, we only have to wear them while Lena is here."

"Not that bad? How drunk are you?" Craig laughed at J's amusement.

Picking at the little lights placed among the dancing gingerbread, J's focus was lost.

"Hey Craig, what did you put in those cookies?" Deran raised his brow.

"I didn't make those. Smurf did."

"Hey man, you okay?" Craig watched J admire the shiny shit on his sweater. "You have something that you'd like to pass around?"

"You want to know my secret?" J mused.

"I asked, didn't I?" Craig urged.

Leaning in closer to his uncles, J took a deep breath, waiting until the moment was right. "You can never have too much rum and eggnog at Christmas." J declared taking another glass and waltzing to the living room, calling out for Lena to come open presents.

@ivarlothbroks,  @noobchic,  @sparklemichele, @klinger-verseau  , @hows-my-hair  , @grungyblonde , @thoughtsmeander2tumblingblindly, @carbonated-beverage , @supernaturalvikingwhore 

[yasbxxgie]

"I still don't know if I am truly creative," writes Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson in the introduction to Creative Quest, his new book exploring what it means to be a creator. "At times I feel like I'm a way better student than I am teacher or maker." Despite winning three Grammys with the Roots and counting author, DJ, designer, producer and culinary businessman among his varied pursuits, music's most affable multihyphenate writes with a deep humility and constant curiosity toward the mindsets of those he admires.

Backstage after a Tonight Show taping, Thompson explains why he wanted to write a book blending his own history of artist collaborations with advice on how to generate ideas, how to deal with failure and how technology has affected the creative process. "I'm asked all the time, 'What advice would you give?' And I hate doing that whole, 'Just stick to your dreams, da-da-da-da-da,'" he tells Rolling Stone, sounding more animated than annoyed. "It's a self-help book for music and art heads."

Part manual, part manifesto, part music-nerd history, part textbook – "I would like this to be a gift that parents give their college students," he says – the book is an indispensable resource for anyone looking to understand the impulse, psychology and spark behind creative ideas.

Who are your heroes? My dad [doo-wop singer Lee Andrews] taught me everything I know about the music business. But if you're talking about who I look to and worship in my daily life, the Father is Don Cornelius, the Son is Prince and the Holy Ghost is Michael Jackson. The first thing I do every morning is watch an episode of Soul Train. Why? I don't know. Because I can. There's always some Prince surprise around the corner. And the last three interviews on my podcast are heavily Jackson-related.

What's the best advice you've ever received? [Drummer] Bernard Purdie was doing a session for my father in 1975. Dad said, "Bernard, tell my son how you keep food on the table," and he says, "The two and the four." I didn't understand the jargon then, but I know it now. Which is why whenever parents make me meet their four-year-old and the [kid's] looking at me like, "Who the hell are you?" I just say, "You're not going to get this now, but trust me, you'll understand this 20 years from now."

My dad was always a rigorous, bandleading disciplinarian when it came to keeping it in the pocket. That stuck with me. In some ways I've become my dad, especially with the Roots. All of our arguments have to do with numbers. Also, my dad always said, "Son, remember: They can't get you if they can't put anything in you." That's probably the reason I don't drink. I think he had these fears of me partying at a bar and picking up a random person.

What advice would you give to a teenage Questlove? If the Questlove Jacob Marley figure could go back in time and tell 19-year-old me that you were about to face the hardest 25-year fight of your life, would he still stay in the race? It's like, "I got good news and I got weird news. The good news is you guys are going to be in the industry. You're going to make it. The weird news is that you'll probably be closer to 50 before you get the moment where you can just be like [exhales]."

[Over the years] I had panic attacks over [other people getting] undeserved Rolling Stone covers. I remember, "How the fuck they get five mics [in the Source]?" I threw tantrums; I threw glasses. Many times, I quit. But there was always the hope that one day you were going to make it. I jumped in the river and there's piranhas and sharks, but as far as I'm concerned, I have a 500-foot lead on them.

Was there a career moment, though, when you thought you "made it"? I knew when I had a DJ gig for the Super Bowl in 2010. I asked my DJ manager, "Wait, how much are they going to pay me for this?" and my manager joked, "Hey, we should make this your new price." I was like, "No!" My thing was always, "Go super under because all I want to do is have something to do after a show." I never wanted to be the guy that just slams on the table like, "Give me six figures," to a club that I knew can't afford that. My manager's like, "Dude, doing these $5 DJ gigs for nine hours is not going to further you along. Trust me on this one."

What first drove you to play hours-long DJ sets? There's a lot of boredom on the road once you get off the stage at midnight and there's girls and there's Patron there. So I made sure that I was accounted for between the hours of 12:30 and four in the morning. I don't want to start a cocaine habit. DJ'ing was my cocaine.

Why did you want to include a chapter in your book about how to deal with failure? There have been a lot of pie-in-the-face moments. "Oh, you're Questlove and you're an icon and everyone loves you." But I cry over record reviews and have done horrible projects. It's important to let people know.

I was a little dismayed once Will Smith joined Instagram [laughs]. I have this failure thing on lockdown [claps]. I'm going to be the first person to be like, "Yes, you must fail!" And then Will Smith came with, "Failure is great," and I was like, "Ah, fuck!"

Do you ever get impostor syndrome? Every day of my life. I was trying to explain to my girlfriend recently: "Look. You know how you look at me as this dweeby nerd that gets on your nerves? You do acknowledge that there are some people on this Earth that hold me in a higher superman regard, but you're stuck with Clark Kent." A lot of us are afraid that we'll get found out as normal. The reason why bodyguards and velvet ropes really exist is mainly because a lot of celebrities don't want you to know how normal and regular they are.

After Things Fall Apart came out and this whole new world opened, there were still questions to answer, like, "Ahmir, why are you still driving that Scion?" I was on a date last year and the girl looked at me like I disrespected her. She's like, "You're driving a Kia Soul? Why?" I was like, "Well, it's boxy, but it's also Afro-friendly and my hair won't be flat when I get out the car. You do know about me, right? You know I do regular guy shit like shopping at Ralph's at three in the morning."

When I interviewed the Revolution, to hear that Prince was doing his laundry and making sandwiches while making "When You Were Mine" in his house. ... He's literally recording a life-changing record and running upstairs [to finish laundry]. I would rather kill all expectations and let you know from the get that I'm a super-dweeb.

What are the most important rules to live by? Get out of your own head. When I write about that, I'm trying to explain being in the alpha state where you do things so naturally that you don't overthink it. Some people over-prepare stuff and overthink things; some people don't do their homework and just wing it and are under-prepared. But there's that middle place where it's so natural to you that you just don't think about it.

I know I'm coming off like that weird guy that I used to always roll my eyes at whenever I saw people talking about metaphysics and now I've become that person. But my peers overthink shit and call me at four in the morning, like, "I can't!" Panic is just people's default. They don't trust the Force. I'm dismayed that U2's "Get Out of Your Own Way" didn't hit bigger.

You write that your response to seeing someone else's creative innovation is to be "overcome by a kind of paralysis." What was the last thing that made you freeze? [Dave] Chappelle did a four-hour private show at the Comedy Store at NBA All-Star Weekend. Chappelle is in his mid-1960s free-jazz Coltrane phase. Especially now, when people are finding some of his work problematic. Just to see him have so much confidence ...  He spent 30 minutes talking about pumpkin juice. Thirty minutes! I am thoroughly amazed at anyone who is so confident in the science of their work.

He knows that he is Mel Blanc plus Richard Pryor. He has his whole science thing down from the [impersonates Chappelle] intonation of his voice that reminds you of Mel Blanc and Bugs Bunny. He always does this thing where he'll take a cigarette and not light it and put it to his mouth. He's hypnotizing. He analyzes the science [of comedy] and he'll go out and test it. It's so fearless to me. The best part was, the last three hours? All misses. [Chris] Rock was rolling his eyes like, "Alright, man. Tell Dave, let's go to the restaurant" and I was like "No, man! That's the best part!"

Hypothetically, the creators of Black Mirror ask you to create an episode. What's it about? I'm obsessed with time travel so it's a time travel episode with an African American, but I need them to have two options: They can either travel to an alternate universe in which there's no civil unrest or civil injustice. So if I go back to the 1600s, slavery doesn't exist. However, you're not allowed to take the knowledge that you have with you in present day, so I can't invent the basketball or [know to] make friends with four guys from Liverpool, England, and be their manager. But, if you choose that option, you only get 80 years on Earth and you will have Benjamin Button syndrome and can't get old.

Or, you can take the 10-year test and go back to whatever time period and have to deal with the social consequences, but there's going to be a price to pay. If you can manage to survive those 10 years, you can convince the Beatles that you can be their manager [laughs]. It's the challenge of staying alive.

How far do you think the Roots would've gone if you'd stayed with your original name, Black to the Future? [Laughs] One and done. One album and that's it. Those [kind of] group names never ...  yeah. But [some crate-digger] would've paid $500 for that one record.

What's the best and worst thing about success? The best thing about success is I don't know if I have it yet. The worst thing about success is I'm still grasping to get some [laughs].