#baffling actually fucking baffling

[teddybeartoji]

i hate whining on here abt my fear of being annoying sm bc it feels like i'm dismissing all of you hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i really really promise that i am not and godddd i'm so fucking happy to have you all here with me but sometimes just sometimes the feeling just creeps up on me and i hate it so fucking bad

[sp0o0kylights]

Grass is green, water is wet, and Jonathan Byers does not like Steve Harrington.

These are known facts in the universe.

Computers were going to take over the world, a “mobile” phone was being invented, and Steve Harrington had lost most of his hearing.

These were unknown facts--rumors even, if you will. Eddie had never seen even a grain of truth to support any of them. 

(Well, maybe the computer thing, but only because Grant and Dustin both had made a couple of convincing arguments.) 

So he doesn’t think about it, when his freshman gang up on him. 

Doesn’t even factor the “can’t hear well” thing in, when he was tasked (demanded, whined, bitched and moaned at) with helping them explain to Steve why going to the release party of the new D&D box set, located at a hobby store only a mere 2 hour drive away, was important.

Eddie’s not even sure how the little shits got him to agree to do it until he’s standing in the parking lot in front of the former King himself. 

“The store’s leading up to the release with a handful of one-shots.” He’s explaining, unsure whether to pull out the bored act or play up his court jester persona, and thus mixing and matching on the fly. 

He does not care if Harrington doesn’t know what a one-shot is. 

“They’re releasing the set at midnight. You have to be there to get it though, you can’t have someone else pick it up for you because they only got a certain amount in.” 

Harrington’s frowning (no surprise) but it’s not until Eddie is well into his spiel about how his van is already full with the elder members of Hellfire, and thus has no room for the freshmen, that he realizes Steve isn’t quite looking at him. 

Is in fact, looking over his shoulder.

Eddie stops. Follows Harrington’s gaze.

Parked across from Steve’s Beemer, is Jonathan Byer’s barely working clunker car. 

A handful of steps in front of it, and thus nearly right behind Eddie, is the man himself.

His hands are still moving, mouth shaping words silent as he goes, his gaze locked not on Eddie or the kids--but on Steve. 

Who turns back around as Harrington’s eyes slide right back to him. 

“And this is taking place next Friday?” He says, in that sort of annoyed but resigned way parents aim at their children. “After school?” 

“I’d like to go during  school, but the freshmen insist you wouldn’t let them ditch out.” Eddie tells him. “They had two separate arguments about it.” 

Loud ones, that had interrupted the game and given Eddie a migraine. 

Once again Steve’s eyes slide away from him, to Jonathan. 

“They’re not skipping school.” He says suddenly, a glare forming and Jonathan makes an annoyed noise. 

“They argued about skipping, they’re not going to.” He says aloud, and finally steps up so that he’s next to Eddie instead of behind him. 

“Munson slow down, I can’t sign as fast as you’re talking.” He adds, in the hang-dog grumble he’s notorious for. 

Eddie stares at him. 

“Can he seriously not hear me?” 

“No.” Steve and Jonathan answer together. 

“I can kind of still hear,” Steve adds, gaze returning to Eddie’s face. “But its more loud music or noises. I can lip read, but you’re also talking too fast for that.” 

Without pausing, he turns back to Jonathan and says; “Why can’t you take them?”

“It’s Friday.” Byers deadpans. 

Eddie’s not an expert on sign language, but his hands somehow looked deadpan too. 

He’s not sure how Jonathan did that. 

“So?” Steve snarks back. 

What follows is an argument that Eddie is not, at all involved in, mostly because he’s too busy handling the fact that Jonathan Byers has learned sign language, for Steve Harrington, apparently, and given the tone the argument is taking they still don’t even like each other.  

Eventually the argument ends, Steve throwing his hands in the air and demanding that Jonathan owes him. 

(Eventually Eddie will corner the ever so quiet Will Byers and ask why the hell his brother learned sign language for someone he clearly fucking hates.

“Oh they don’t hate each other.” Baby Byers would say, in that shy, quiet way of his. “I think they’re actually friends now?” 

“You think?”

“Well--you’ve seen them.” Will shrugs. “I think being mean to each other is kinda their thing.” 

‘What the hell.’ Eddie would think, right up until he stumbled across one of the kids sign language books. 

Byers the Elder, he decides, isn’t the only person who should learn sign language to chew out Harrington properly.

The pay off is immediate. 

Or at least, the pay off of watching Steve’s shocked face the first time Eddie signs something vulgar at him is, anyway.)

[fonthoura]

Hc where Garak knows Julian is a liar, but he can't, for the life of him, know what he's lying about.

Like, he has this feeling, given to him by years of training and an observant eyes, that Julian is very purposefully unauthentic, and it seems that no one else notices.

He sees how Julian talks a lot and overshares, but never really says anything, to the point where his friends would have a hard time answering any question about him, like, for fucks sake, it took reading his file to get to know his date of birth because no one knew.

Jadzia thinks he has a brother, Miles is convinced he has a sister, and Garak is fairly sure he is an only child, the problem is, Julian doesn't talk about it. He talks too much and hardly says anything.

Garak also notices how he is always tense, as if holding back, like when he lets himself be punched when he clearly sees it coming, when he let's things break even though Garak is sure he could've caught them mid air, how he seems to calculate the perfect amount of clumsy in a day (once he even bumped into Garak and pretended to be distracted) and no one notices.

But Garak does, Garak knows he is lying about something, he feels it, specially when he looses on games and arguments, like he could not think of something else but Garak sees it in his eyes that he is hiding something.

And Garak constantly gets worried, despite his best knowledge, about him.

He knows how lonely it is, to keep yourself hidden from the world, to not let anyone know you, to hold the weight of a thousand secrets on his body, and constantly he sees this weight taking it's toll on the doctor.

Julian keeps people at arms length, he gets close on condition, he larps with Miles, discuss literature with Garak and converses with Jadzia, but keeps them all compartmentalized, always distant, even his crush on Jadzia being shallow, no real depth to it.

Julian seems skin deep and Garak knows how it feels and aches for him.

So he constantly tries to scratch the surface, aways tries to get Julian out of his lie made shell like Julian does to him, and he doesn't succeed, but he keeps trying.

Specially after he finds out that Julian had been gone for a month and not even him noticed it, he knows it's because no one would, because Julian keeps so much of himself hidden that you can't distinguish him from a fake.

And then, doctor Zimmermann shows up...

[otome-dissection]

compilation of Hey What The Fuck Did They Mean By This

[fuchsea]

hello kids i haven't done a controversial post in a while but i am filled with rage so here goes. louis' coming to india next week and i have already seen way too many pointed comments towards that and let me say this plain and straight: you're fucking racist. this is the first time ever in 15 years that we are getting a 1d member to come to india and yes we're enthusiastic about it and we're going to be loud and going to bring out our desiness to show louis how much we love him and to give him a glimpse of our culture. if any non-asian people can't understand that vigour then you can fuck off because it's not your country nor your culture. we love loudly and we want him to see that just as much as we've waited for him, it was definitely worth a visit for him as well. i know there's main non-asian people coming to the show, which honestly is a whole other rant, but hey if you have money and wanna spend it who am i to say anything. all i'm saying is come here as a guest and leave as one. do not for one fucking second compare or comment about how us desis are different from you whites because of course we are. different cultures, remember? also to those people who have made comments like "i hate that louis might debut a new song at a show that's not mine and is in fucking india" suck my fucking dick. why can't you just accept that we deserve it too? why can't you let go of your superiority and accept that not everything needs to happen in a first world country? that is plain racist and i hope you get your privilege under check before tuning into the instagram live of louis' set next sunday.

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

I love Fiona the Hippo, so I really liked your post highlighting her, but now I'm sad that Moo Deng is having a bad time. I did think it was funny she tried to bite that one handler's crotch, and I was worried that she's going to grow up to be an aggressive hippo that might hurt someone because they're just kinda . . . letting her bite people and how that'll end very badly for her, but it hadn't occurred to me that she was being mistreated. :(

It’s hard to say whether she’s being “mistreated” necessarily. I don’t like to throw around words like abuse when it comes to animal welfare because people use it way too lightly.

But there’s definitely a degree of stress she’s experiencing due to that handling. It’s so easy to find cute animal videos endearing and amusing when we don’t know what to look for.

I tend to try to assess things over multiple contexts and videos and form an opinion from there. The blatant smacking, grabbing, picking up and chasing were probably the best examples- but I only found most of those because TikTok kept shoving guest videos from the zoo onto my fyp.

The biting was another flag. Yes, hippos use their mouths to interact with their world but regardless of context it’s just a huge no no when it comes to handling any animal - especially a large herbivore that grows up with a bite force of approx 1800lbs!

Also I was looking for more videos of their adult Pygmy hippos and came across a video of one of the keepers using a water gun on one of them

Dude really? You’re going to post that on your official zoo TikTok and not have a think about the optics for your conservation message?

Yikes.

Also the adult Pygmy hippo very much avoids the keeper and either tolerates it or runs away from the water.

Interesting to see the open mouth while being followed/chased with the water gun while he tries to avoid it. A redirected threat display? A stress yawn? He just looks very much like he’s tolerating it.

It does make me wonder if this is another hippo raised with the same rough handling as Moo Deng and they’ve just learned nothing they do matters and to tolerate whatever comes their way. It’s pretty much learned helplessness and I don’t like that at all.

Compare this with Fritz the common hippo (Fiona’s brother) interacting with the hose - it stays in one place for him to interact with, is offered and then moved away so he can continue to seek it out if he wants more. He actively seeks the hose and can move himself around to where it feels best.

This is how you offer consent and autonomy to your zoo animals. Not chase them around their enclosure with a water gun jfc

[itstimetodrew]

Ohio republicans trying to hold an election they hoped would go unnoticed in order to deny Ohioans simple majority rule (changing it from 50% to 60% majority), only for it to be one of the highest voter turnouts for an August election ever in the state AND the votes against them being 60%+ anyway? Lol. Lmao even.

[vaguely-concerned]

powerful mental image of lucanis expounding passionately about any given one of his limited but extremely deep areas of interest (the wyvern/knives/coffee/cooking/murder continuum of lucanis dellamorte special interests if you will) while rye lounges around and Beholds him with palpable twink boutta pounce energy

[loveridden1999]

not to be mean but i cannot wrap my head around how women, majorly white, on tiktok fall for the same patriarchal infantalization & misogynistic propaganda over & over & over again. how are we still at a point that we have to teach basic feminism to you guys? how are you 20 something adult who cannot differentiate between repackaged regressive retellings and actual fun little memes? how can you confidently say reading is apolitical how how

[missjamiekaye]

I tried to figure out how James Marsden's face works and NGL it was more of a challenge than I expected lol

In conclusion:

[anotherpapercut]

the democrats long term plan cannot just be "win every election for the next several decades" without doing literally anything at all to secure votes and protect voting rights. it is shocking to me how many of y'all just play along with this and blame VOTERS instead of the people who have power and refuse to even pretend to use it

[psalmsofpsychosis]

Me: yeah no i can cook gutwrenching Batman headcanons

Gotham TV: baby Bruce curls besides Alfred's hospital bed after Alfred gets stabbed in the heart, never leaves his side for one moment to the point that Gordon has to bring him food, he's red faced and hicking up all the time, whispers to Gordon "i can't lose him; he's all i have," and after Alfred comes back to life he brings books from Wayne Manor and softly reads horror bedtime stories to Alfred during the day until Alfred eases down and falls asleep

Me: god nevermind

[xxplastic-cubexx]

it doesnt need to be said but its genuinely so funny how at-the-hip charles and erik are in krakoa like they really had the green light- the OBLIGATION- to be as obnoxiously close to each other as possible and abused that right to the fullest extent

[logansgaar]

nothing could ever convince me Peter Parker and Bucky Barnes wouldn't be friends in the mcu

I don't know how anyone could watch any of the marvel movies/shows they're in and not think "yeah, these two have compatible as hell ideologies and attitudes"

how anyone could watch nwh and ever think Peter wouldn't defend Bucky to the fucking death

as for why Bucky would find Peter delightful, well *gestures vaguely at this insanely resilient and strong willed, sweet but angry little guy vigilante who talks back, hates bullies, jumped in front of a bomb, and won't back down from a fight...who also is a tech genius and what is one thing we've known since catfa that Bucky likes?*

even in cacw, Bucky's mostly just baffled by the spider concept and is on the evasive after the first swing

[riddlemearose]

Okay ngl Muse standing there watching Matt absolutely book it to come beat his ass is going to continue to make me laugh

[otome-dissection]

he did Not just fucking say all that