#at this point it seems a requirement

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

considering the doctors sort of cargo cult approach to tardis piloting if river and clara ever ran into yaz the first thing they'd say is like sorry babe but youve got some bad habits to unlearn

and clara is like dont worry he did that to me too. he just really doesnt know what hes doing actually

and yaz is like she. and river and clara look at each other like she

[sevenines]

i saw this tweet and found it interesting for two reasons. one is that some people base how good cartoon network would be to toh by how it treated su, and despite the fact that su’s treatment by the network was considered poor at the time, now its thought to be exceptionally good in comparison to modern shows.

two is how exactly su got impacted by a limited budget. a common criticism is how characters like connie, peridot, and lapis are left out of missions. but balancing a lot of characters is not only hard but also costly (extra animation, extra voices—it’s been revealed that the show is limited to a set number of characters per episode otherwise they’re over budget). animation mistakes are not uncommon since retakes cost extra. the entire reason the original show got cut short was due to loss of funding!

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Story Ideas I'm Never Going to Write #1: The Midnight Door

A mashup retelling of "Cinderella" and "The Twelve Dancing Princesses"

Main character is a young woman who is heiress to an estate and fortune that can pass down along the female line. Her father has remarried a woman with two sons of her own. Stepmother resents that Cinderella is going to get everything while she has two sons who get nothing.

Cinderella is in love with a seventh son who's also a soldier. An upcoming ball is going to be Cinderella's last chance to see him before he goes off to war.

Cinderella's father disapproves of this relationship, believing the soldier to be a fortune hunter. To keep Cinderella away from him, he forbids her from going to the ball and the family leaves her behind.

As Cinderella is mourning this, she is visited by a fairy who offers to help, giving her a ballgown and transportation to the ball (as well as magically ensuring that her family doesn't recognize her) so long as she returns by midnight.

Cinderella has a wonderful evening, bids her beloved a fond farewell after promises of everlasting devotion, and returns at the stroke of twelve. She thanks the fairy profusely, wondering how she can ever repay her.

The fairy says she'll think of something.

The next night, at the stroke of midnight, a door appears in Cinderella's room. When Cinderella walks through, she finds herself in a magical garden. The fairy states that the door will appear in Cinderella's room each night, which will allow her to come to the fairy's home and complete a few small tasks to show her gratitude for the help she received in getting to the ball. If Cinderella refuses, this will be proof that she is a wicked, ungrateful child deserving of magical punishment.

Cinderella has no choice but to agree. The door appears each night, and Cinderella spends each night completing tasks for the fairy--sometimes ordinary cleaning or gardening tasks that she doesn't want to waste magic on, sometimes on quests into the magical wilds to find items that are best retrieved by a pure-hearted human. Sometimes, the fairy offers magical help with these tasks, which only gives Cinderella more debt to work off.

This leaves Cinderella exhausted during the daytime, and eventually, her family notices. The stepmother thinks that this is proof that Cinderella is living a pampered, worthless lifestyle, and she convinces her husband that Cinderella needs to take up more responsibilities if she wants to live up to her role as heiress to the estate.

Cinderella tries not going through the door a few times, but time always stays frozen at the stroke of midnight until she goes through the door.

Cinderella's father figures out that she's going somewhere at night, but since the magic keeps everyone in the house asleep while she's gone, and keeps her from telling anyone the truth, he's unable to figure it out.

He recruits the help of some eligible young men in the area (hoping that this will also help her forget about the soldier and agree to marry a suitable man). Since the bonds of marriage are stronger than the bonds of gratitude that bind Cinderella to the fairy's service, the fairy gets worried that she might lose the best servant she's ever had, so she takes the precaution of stealing away the young men who try to solve the mystery, turning them to stone, and leaving them as statues in her garden.

The fairy has a brother who eventually comes by and learns about the situation. The brother doesn't approve of his sister's cruelty in general (which is why he interacts with her as little as possible), and he has a sympathy for humans after spending a portion of his young life as a changeling. He learns that his sister has no intention of ever allowing Cinderella to work off the debt, and he tries to force her to set Cinderella (and the stone suitors) free.

The sister is enraged, and with her stronger magic, she casts her brother out into the human world, leaving him weak and nearly powerless .

He's in this weakened state when a soldier comes by and offers help. Taking food from a human will leave the fairy in a debt to him similar to the one that binds Cinderella to his sister's service, but he's too weak to care much.

A conversation with the soldier reveals that he's actually Cinderella's sweetheart, newly returned from the war. The fairy is unable to directly tell him what's happening to Cinderella, but since he's now bound to the soldier's service, it is totally legal for him to set up a situation where the soldier can figure out what's going on for himself.

The fairy gives the soldier an invisibility cloak, and advises him to go to Cinderella's father and offer to solve the mystery. The father figures that this is a win-win situation--either the soldier solves the mystery and they resolve the situation that's harming Cinderella and stealing away these young men, or the soldier will get stolen away and her father won't have to worry about this unsuitable suitor chasing after her.

The cloak and the fairy bound to his service protect the soldier from any detection by the sister's magic, and he follows Cinderella and figures out what's going on. They could break Cinderella's bond of service by getting married, but Cinderella refuses to free herself until she can free all the innocent men who've been caught up in this.

The three of them figure out a way to save the suitors and defeat the evil fairy, Cinderella's father learns the truth and agrees to let Cinderella marry her true love, and everyone lives happily ever after.

[nagashima-shou-fanclub]

Yashiki: Maybe the real payment for this case was the spirits and people we helped along the way. :)

Mashita: No the hell it was not.

Yashiki: But-

Mashita: Some of us actually need to earn money you rich fuck.

[thedreadvampy]

sometimes I forget that my experience has been. um. not 'your experiences are not universal' vibes but more like 'your experiences are EXTREMELY atypical'

[sforzesco]

what ARE the circumstances that made decimation work for Crassus, if you don’t mind me asking?

it was a slave rebellion, and the third servile war would be the last major slave rebellion during the republic.

it's important to remember: roman attitudes towards slaves, and that when the roman army cracks, it shatters.

Decimatio: Myth, Discipline, and Death in the Roman Republic, Michael J. Taylor

here, the decimation cauterized the hemorrhaging morale because the army felt reassured that their commander was more terrifying than spartacus (appian civ. 1.118). even if this is generous take on the situation, either way: the army under crassus' command came together to accomplish the task the senate set for them.

we will not see this specific set of circumstances again, and other commanders will not be jumping at the chance to try their hand at it since it was excessively brutal in practice.

this is probably the only moment where it would be met with any kind of positive reaction by the army. on account of the slaves. I cannot emphasize enough how humiliating it was for the roman identity that they were brought to a standstill by a slave rebellion. which is also why crassus executed six thousand surviving slaves by crucifixion (a death that was humiliating, painful, and most horrifying of all: slow)

tldr; rome is a horrible torment nexus filled with violence from the top down

[rose-n-gunses]

Hellcheer au where they're in the same college class and keep responding to each other's discussion boards because they're both convinced the other person is a genius because they just. have the most beautiful insightful things to say and they're infatuated with the thoughts they have and connections they make in their discussion posts

They've never met in person and only know each other by name and their tiny canvas profile picture or whatever until they do meet somehow, maybe in a different class or through mutual friends OR maybe one of them works somewhere on/near campus and the other shows their student ID to get the discount and the one working like. quotes one of their discussion posts at them or something idk

[sickgraymeat]

I think she’s a romantic. I know this scene seems like a huge counterpoint to that lolll but really! I think she’s a romantic who’s also very pragmatic and private about her feelings and personal life, and who’s not very good at romance lmao. She loves ceremony. Like 75% of her career is essentially “making the toys kiss” in both a metaphorical and an almost-literal sense. Getting Hambo back was a grand romantic gesture!! She’s always embarrassed by it / shy about it when it’s personal but who isn’t lol

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

You ever wonder if each nation has variations of common phrases? Like fontaine would have "plenty of fish in the sea" but liyue would have "plenty of ore in the mine" or sumeru would have "plenty of leaves on the tree".

genuinely good question that i have no answer to. that sort of implies the regions all developed their phrases on their own, simultaneously, and that there was no cultural mixing at any point. like i could see there having been regional variants, but i do think it's likely the 'fish' variant spread wider by virtue of getting everywhere by boat.

but idk, i'm not knowledgable enough in how that stuff works irl to tell you if it would work like that in genshin

it does sound like a pretty funny idea though

[pebblezone]

She is soooo Living Dead Girl core

[fvckw4d]

The concept of queerbaiting annoys me. I was told that it refers to a work of fiction pretending to cater to a queer audience but then pulling back from it to avoid alienating homophobes, which is an incredibly specific thing. But a lot of people seem to think that it instead means "any time there's any gay subtex, metaphor, or ambiguity" or "whenever something from 1995-2012 was being a normal amount of homophobic for the era."

[sysig]

What if baby VUX (Patreon)

[claudiaeparvier]

really do not agree with some of these takes from the vc fandom concerning the show only fanbase

[inniave]

how are y'all affording film

[coriander-candlesticks]

I'm sick so I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense, but I've been thinking about the nature of myths recently as I've been exploring hellenic polytheism.

For context: I'm ex-Mormon. I was raised in the church and, because of that, was taught biblical literalism but in, like, a more subtle way than most? I was raised believing that Adam & Eve and Noah's Ark, etc., were literally true, but that the story of Job specifically was not; I also always knew evolution and the Big Bang to be correct, despite there being a verse in the Doctrine & Covenants (a Mormon-specific religious book) where God apparently told Joseph Smith that the world is 6,000 years old- a passage I didn't know existed until my senior year of high school. I didn't realize I had believed in biblical literalism until I'd left the church, actually.

Now that I'm aware of it, it's a mindset I'm actively trying to combat while I explore Hellenic polytheism. It's definitely been a task to separate the nature of the Gods from their myths, as brutal as they often are. And it's something I've noticed within the community, too, which I think is interesting. It makes sense: Christianity, at least, has had a chokehold on much of the world for a long time, and so many of us have experienced literalism as our first interaction with any sort of holy text (though, of course, Greek myths as a whole aren't that) alongside our first experience with divinity as a wrathful God whose flaws are waved away, or ignored, or twisted into positive attributes. This also means that I'm trying to re-approach several deities with an open mind (Zeus, Hera, and Ares in particular, but many of them to some extent) while also trying to un-condition myself. I was already in the process of doing this, of course, but trying to figure out how to interact with a completely different pantheon has made that especially clear.

It extends to things like prayer and offerings, too. Prayers were very formulaic growing up, even though most of the time there wasn't a strict script to follow. There was always something you ask as part of the prayer, even if it's just 'please help me do better tomorrow' (alongside giving thanks, of course), so trying to craft a prayer without adding *everything* I'm used to including in makes it feel incomplete and, therefore, disrespectful. And daily prayer is something I'm resistant to because of prior experiences with it. I don't want to offend any of the gods by asking for something or asking for too much, especially so early on, and there's always a promised offering the few times I *have* asked. Add worries about exact obedience on top of that and it's proving to be a difficult thing to untangle. And I know that the gods are difficult to offend, figuring out how to do this takes trial & error and that's okay, it'll get better the more I do it, etc., etc.; this is more an issue with my own overthinking than anything else (hooray for ✨ mental health issues ✨). I'm not really asking for advice here, necessarily, just thinking out loud because I'm not comfortable talking to people in meat space about it yet.

[gerryrigged]

👀 please tell me about the dicktim time travel

Gladly! :D

Okay so I forgot - this file actually has two separate ideas because I was trying to decide which one to actually develop.

Idea 1

A happy, healthy 25-yo Tim is dropped back in Gotham a couple of weeks after Red Robin first left the city.

He's a huge shock to a 24-yo Dick struggling with, among other things, the weight of the Bat mantle, grief over Bruce, frustration with Damian, and worry and guilt over his pissed-off, grief-stricken, unstable younger brother who hasn't answered any of his calls since Dick let him ride off to god knows where, to do god knows what.

This older Tim is so…warm. Calm. Steady. (Gorgeous.) He jokes and smiles at Dick without any shadows (the way Tim used to smile at him), and hugs him without hesitation, ignoring the way Dick stiffens up like a board before slowly, slowly melting into him. (Clutching at him.)

He brushes off Damian! Doesn't take his shit, but mostly seems amused by him. Wow. Dick can't even manage that most of the time, not yet.

He drives Dick crazy by refusing to tell him any spoilers about (a) what his 17-year-old self is up to, or (b) what any of their lives are like in the future. He won't even tell Dick his new vigilante name, even though Dick knows he has to have one!

He also shuts down Dick's halting apology for his own screw-ups with swift, excruciating kindness.

"Sorry, Dick, but no," the older Tim says, eyes soft but voice firm. "Tell this to him. The next time you see him."

Idea 2

Sort of an inverse of the above, actually. Red Robin!Tim has just passed out in the desert after being run through by the Widower. He wakes up in a comfortable bed (?), unharmed (???), being spooned by Dick (???????).

Needless to say, he thinks it's a dying hallucination - or maybe he's already dead? (Is this heaven? he thinks, tracing a finger down the muscles of Dick's forearm, wrapped firmly around his stomach.)

He's torn between his still simmering anger and resentment for Dick, and a sort of manic recklessness. This is obviously not real, so why shouldn't he turn around when this dream!Dick kisses his shoulder - why shouldn't he grab Dick and kiss him back - kiss him so hard he makes a delicious little 'mmph!' noise as he's pressed down into the mattress?

Why shouldn't he grip Dick's wrists too tight, bite the stupid tempting curve of his lower lip too aggressively - because Tim just died in the fucking desert. Right after finding proof that Bruce was alive.

He failed to save Bruce. Failed to keep his shit together, just like Dick transparently knew he would. Failed to come back to Dick, to prove him wrong for not believing Tim, for choosing someone else.

(If he kisses Dick hard enough, he can keep himself from breaking apart. Right? ...Right?)

Dick figures out immediately that something is Very Fucking Wrong with his husband :/