#anyone could have done that

[pratchettquotes]

"But, but--you said we had to use magic--" Amanita began.

"No, I didn't," said Granny.

"But anyone could have done that," said Magenta.

"Yes, but that's not the point," said Granny. "The point is that you didn't."

Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

[xxplastic-cubexx]

obligatory beach divorce doodling

bonus rough cover redraw of x-men #41 (1995) But Beach Divorce below cut

[morganmnemonic]

I can't stop thinking about the relationship between Jon and Helen as perhaps one of the most important ones in the entire show. They are narrative parallels for each other, and they both know it. They've both known it from the very start!

Helen walks into the Archives, paranoid, unsure of who to trust, and Jon sees himself in her. And he thinks "If i can help her, maybe there's hope for me too." Then he can't save her. The next time they meet, she's a monster. They're both monsters. There was never any other way their stories could have gone, their fates entwined from the very start.

And Helen answers his original thought with one of her own: "Maybe if we can help each other, there's hope for us both." But Jon looks at her and sees everything that he fears becoming, and so he turns her away, and refuses to accept that their stories are still one and the same.

Helen went to the last person who was ever kind to her, the only person who both knew her as a human and had the context to understand what she'd become, and he hated her. He hated her because he liked Helen, and told her that she couldn't be Helen.

So she stopped trying to be Helen, and embraced being a monster. Reveled in it even. Then Jon wakes up from a six month coma, more monster than person, and tries so hard to cling to the things that mattered to him when he was human. Even with no support, even with the entire archives staff against him, he chooses humanity and compassion over and over again.

And this is a direct threat to Helen's world view. Their stories are entwined. If Jon can continue to be a person even after everything he's been through, then she could have clung to her humanity too, if only she'd tried a little harder. And that terrifies her! She wants to conceptualize herself as someone who was completely overwhelmed by forces beyond her control, who never had a choice but to become a monster. She want's to be an innocent victim. But Jon argues with his actions that they'd both had choices.

And, Jon, in turn, holds out hope that she might make better choices until the very end.

This is the conflict between them for all of season 4 and 5. Jon wants to prove that they can both be decent people, and Helen wants to prove that they were never going to be anything but monsters. This is why she's so devoted to trying to goad Jon into enjoying his newfound godhood. She knows that they are the same, and wants that to mean that he has a spark of evil inside of him, and not that she was always capable of doing good.

When Jon kills her, she loses her life, but wins the argument. Helen is nothing but a dangerous monster who needs to be killed for the good of everyone, and in the moment he decides that, Jon dooms himself to the same fate. Their stories are one and the same. "If i can help her, maybe there's hope for me too." he thought. But he couldn't help her, refused to, even, in the one moment when it actually mattered. And thus, there was never hope for him.

[hey-howsitgoin]

So I've had this joke in my head for a couple months (at least), but hadn't found the right spot to make it. Today it is complete.

A hole in my jeans?

Hmm? What's this?

A Patchypus?

REPAIRRY THE PATCHYPUS!!!?!!!

[chronalshifts]

i think a lot of people are calling viktor’s reaction to waking up changed and then almost immediately leaving for zaun unrealistic and like… yes it would be. for someone whose mind has not been affected by the hexcore. he speaks differently, he hears sky’s voice through its influence, he can no longer feel the cold, or the warmth of jayce’s hug. he walks away from jayce because he can no longer feel the affection that kept them together, and he sees no logical point in remaining when they have no common ground anymore. he might not be a machine externally, exactly, but his mind certainly isn’t human anymore.

[choccy-milky]

ty to @icedmatchawoatmilk13 for sending this to me! i may have gone a bit overboard but this was so much fun to fill out/think about BAHAHA💖 ill still never get over how perfect the song sarah smiles is for them...the lyrics AND the fact that its an alliteration...im gonna do an animatic about seb and clora to that song one day i swear 😩 ((blank template by oakwolves!))

[utilitycaster]

I think the two most obvious foils for Ludinus Da'leth across all of Critical Role are Essek and Keyleth, which is both fascinating given how different those two characters are from each other (Essek being a foil in terms of isolation, single-mindedness, harm in the name of ambition, knowledge, and other such wizard themes; Keyleth being a foil in terms of people who have lost something at a young age to the gods and bear resentment for it, political leadership, belief that the world belongs to mortalkind, and longevity) but also it's extremely funny that they both are the partners of Liam's character.

[feedmesunlightt]

on c!clingyduo and being alive and staying together, or something adjacent

x. logging on to the dsmp for the last time || matched, allie condie || x. @spoopdeedoop || john steinbeck, journal of a novel: the east of eden letters || the raven cycle, maggie stiefvater || minecraft end poem, julian gough || the snow queen, hans christian andersen || x. @bongwalter10

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

jin guangshan and lan qiren yaoi perhaps? since their shapes create a perfect balance?

Two old men perform worlds first successful 96.

[luuxxart]

i’m not saying there’s pepsi in miyu’s eggnog recipe. but like. i’m not not saying it

[aeb-art]

i'm giving loop another thing to unpack

[phoenixyfriend]

something something one of those those "Jango falls for Courtesan/Stripper/NightclubSinger/TrophyWife!Obi-Wan" AUs...

But instead Obi-Wan actually being a sex worker, he's undercover and still a Jedi, and either:

They split ways and run into each other a few months later with Obi-Wan in full Prude Beige Knight mode OR

The situation goes pear-shaped while they're still flirting and Obi-Wan has to break cover to grab a senator and jump out a window and suddenly this half-dressed glittery Person is batting away shots with a lightsaber and there's a bratty twelve-year-old who ALSO has a lightsaber threatening people with I Will Eat Your Liver if they keep staring at his dad's ass just because the sequined sheathe dress tore in a sexy place

[materassassino]

The Old Guard casting for Nicky: Ok so we'll get an actual Italian because that's important, he isn't strictly Genoese, but he has played a Genoese man before so that's fine.

The Old Guard casting for Booker: He's from Marseille? Uhhhhh idk this fucking Belgian man will do.

[potions-of-dark-devotion]

Ok but what’s funny to me is Snaters relentlessly arguing that Severus Snape is a bad person when in fact the entire fate of the Wizarding World hangs on the string of his integrity and goodness. He could have burned the world to the ground if he wanted; but he values human life, even the lives of those he detests personally. Literally the entire Harry Potter series hangs on the balance of Severus’s goodness. Without his relentless goodness even in the face of hatred; Voldemort would have rolled over them like ants under a boulder. You can’t deny it. He is canonically a good person with more integrity and responsibility and patience than I could ever hope to have.

[glassedplanets]

a few months ago giffy was like "haha hear me out, what if tattoo au" and then we blacked out and talked about nothing else for like three weeks

[gorgynei]

cant get over the fungi on ruidus sorry. i have more to say

its implied that the reilorans are able to survive and farm the fungus, theres at least 347 different species of fungus native (?) to ruidus, and theres also slime molds*. evolutionarily (assuming the life evolved independently on ruidus which is a very bold assumption) this would imply that theres also prokaryotic life (bacteria, basically) and likely advanced eukaryotic organisms in the form of animal life, which we do see! its very possible that the reason theres so little plant life on ruidus is because something about the makeup of the planet is aggressively harmful to plants, if i had to guess its the lack of easily available sunlight due to the constant dust storms and the soil is probably unfavorable for growing. this probably means that fungus makes up the majority of the biomass for animals to consume or animals are much more adapted for absorbing nutrients from the soil/other sources.

i do think its interesting that fungus seem to survive and thrive SO well in the deep caverns because most fungus (on earth, and exandria. probably) are decomposers and need organic material to survive off of. they could be decomposing the crystal corpse of predathos though, which is the coolest idea in the world to me, or they could just do so well that they've created an independent ecosystem underground complete with its own n- and c-cycles.

the fungus on ruidus seem to take more after kingdom animalia in general, since theyre motile (for those unawares, fungus are actually MUCH much much more related to animals than they are to plants, so this isnt that out there) which is super cool. the myceits are somehow related to the fungi's sexual reproduction because we see the sterile mycelium on it's own and it doesn't seem to be producing any spores, where the myceits do have spore producing structures (specifically they have hymenophores, since they are most similiar to hymenomycete mushrooms). so i think its likely the myceits are just advanced forms of spore dispersal and will run around till they find somewhere favourable to drop spores (or passively will drop them as they move) and probably they have very short life spans </3 sorry myceits

also myceit = mycete = fungi kingdom. proof of earth-equivalent taxonomy existing in exandria? possibly why the ruidians call them myceits is because theyve seen botanists dream about mushrooms and refer to them as "mycetes" !

*gaz, the source for the # of fungus, seems to consider slime molds a kind of fungus, so its unclear whether all the species are actually true fungi, but i digress because slime molds are closely related to fungus anyway. also 347 is a really low number of species for an entire planet, but whatever.