#basic fucking stuff

[bixels]

Learning that fans hated Applejack and called her "boring" is crazyyy to me because I genuinely, unironically believe AJ's the most complex character in the main six.

Backstory-wise, she was born into a family of famers/blue collar workers who helped found the town she lives in. She grew up a habitual liar until she had the bad habit traumatized outta her. She lost both her parents and was orphaned at a young age, having to step up as her baby sister's mother figure. She's the only person in the main gang who's experienced this level of loss and grief (A Royal Problem reveals that AJ dreams about memories of being held by her parents as a baby). She moved to Manhattan to live with her wealthy family members, only to realize she'll never fit in or be accepted, even amongst her own family. The earlier seasons imply she and her family had money problems too (In The Ticket Master, AJ wants to go to the gala to earn money to buy new farm equipment and afford hip surgery for her grandma).

Personality-wise, she's a total people-pleaser/steamroller (with an occasional savior complex) who places her self worth on her independence and usefulness for other people, causing her to become a complete workaholic. In Applebuck Season, AJ stops taking care of herself because of her obsessive responsibilities for others and becomes completely dysfunctional. In Apple Family Reunion, AJ has a tearful breakdown because in she thinks she dishonored her family and tarnished her reputation as a potential leader –– an expectation and anxiety that's directly tied to her deceased parents, as shown in the episode's ending scene. In The Last Roundup, AJ abandons her family and friends out of shame because believes she failed them by not earning 1st place in a rodeo competition. She completely spirals emotionally when she isn't able to fulfill her duties toward others. Her need to be the best manifests in intense pride and competitiveness when others challenge her. And when her pride's broken, she cowers and physically hides herself.

Moreover, it's strongly implied that AJ has a deep-seated anger. The comics explore her ranting outbursts more. EQG also obviously has AJ yelling at and insulting Rarity in a jealous fit just to hurt her feelings (with a line that I could write a whole dissection on). And I'm certain I read in a post somewhere that in a Gameloft event, AJ's negative traits are listed as anger.

Subtextually, a lot of these flaws and anxieties can be (retroactively) linked to her parents' death, forcing her to grow up too quickly to become the adult/caregiver of the family (especially after her big brother becomes semiverbal). Notice how throughout the series, she's constantly acting as the "mom friend" of the group (despite everything, she manages to be the most emotionally mature of the bunch). Notice how AJ'll switch to a quieter, calmer tone when her friends are panicking and use soothing prompts and questions to talk them through their emotions/problems; something she'd definitely pick up while raising a child. Same with her stoicism and reluctance at crying or releasing emotions (something Pinkie explicitly points out). She also had a childhood relationship with Rara (which, if you were to give a queer reading, could easy be interpreted as her first 'aha' crush), who eventually left her life. (Interestingly enough, AJ also has an angry outburst with Rara for the same exact reasons as with EQG Rarity; jealous, upset that someone else is using and changing her). It's not hard to imagine an AJ with separation anxiety stemming from her mother and childhood friend/crush leaving. I'm also not above reading into AJ's relationship with her little sister (Y'all ever think about how AB never got to know her parents, even though she shares her father's colors and her mother's curly hair?).

AJ's stubbornness is a symptom of growing up too quickly as well. Who else to play with your baby sister when your brother goes nonverbal (not to discount Big Mac's role in raising AB)? Who else to wake up in the middle of the night to care for your crying baby sister when your grandma needs her rest? When you need to be 100% all the time for your family, you tend to become hard-stuck with a sense of moral superiority. You know what's best because you have to be your best because if you're aren't your best, then everything'll inevitably fall apart and it'll be your fault. And if you don't know what's best –– if you've been wrong the whole time –– that means you haven't been your best, which means you've failed the people who rely on you, which means you can't fulfill your role in the family/society, which makes you worthless . We've seen time and time again how this compulsive need to be right for the sake of others becomes self-destructive (Apple Family Reunion, Sound of Silence, all competitions against RD). We've seen in The Last Roundup how, when no longer at her best, AJ would rather remove herself from her community than confront them because she no longer feels of use to them.

But I guess it is kinda weird that AJ has "masculine" traits and isn't interested in men at all. It's totally justified that an aggressively straight, misogynistic male fandom would characterize her as a "boring background character." /s

At the time of writing this, it's 4:46AM.

[butchlifeguard]

we need to destroy the idea that girls should wear makeup. normalize bare faces on prom queens and flower girls and cheerleaders. no products at all instead of '7 product simple makeup routine.' no more 10 step skincare and regular facials and dermablading and gua sha just to be comfortable with yr natural face. i want to see eye bags on the funny librarian and acne on the swim coach and wrinkles on all our adult role models. i want to see a 16 year old girl that has never tried putting on eyeshadow. i want to see a 7 year old girl who doesn't have to go out and buy powder for her dance recital. i want to see trans women and girls everywhere to never have to wear makeup, regardless of how well they 'pass.' no more 'contouring to look masc' either. a post-beauty industry world is possible

reblogs are on but if you bring up the stage makeup point that i have addressed three times yr blocked on sight ☹️

[bedforddanes75]

im not american but some of you guys are just fucking stupid ong what do you MEAN youre not gna vote because you disagree with like one part of what youre voting for. like okay me when im fucking thick

[excali8ur]

So there's this AU,

[jazzyjesse]

working at a grocery store has only made me even angrier about inflation and how food, water, and shelter isnt free

like just looking at groceries (not water or shelter) i see just a few bags (maybe around 5 or so) of food costing over $125 USD regularly. I've seen orders upwards of $600. and sure those have been bigger orders but no food should cost that much.

my coworkers and i shouldn't be complaining about the price of food when we get employee discounts.

a single bag of food for myself (usually containing some small pizzas, crackers, milk, and cereal) regularly costs between $50-60. minimum wage in my state is 15/HR. thats about four hours of work for one bag of food

a coworker who works on the front end of our store prides herself on being able to catch theives. everyone says how good she is at it. and sometimes it makes sense, sometimes people are just stealing to steal. but how do you ever know?

when the card reader we take outside is broken we are supposed to have the customers come inside to pay for their groceries if they're paying with EBT. there's a woman who's a regular who has a few small children and when she comes to pick up groceries they're usually asleep in the car.

am i supposed to make her choose between leaving her children alone in the car or waking them up and taking them inside?

four hours of work for one bag of groceries. is this not also theft?

four hours of work. let that sink in. four hours for one small bag of groceries.

we aren't supposed to accept tips but if we don't accept tips then how else are we supposed to afford our groceries?

i haven't seen a single person stealing food. you cannot steal whats already stolen.

although im no longer a christian, the teachings of my childhood have stuck with me, and in the bible it says "When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you."

society has reaped right up the the very edge and beyond of its fields, so it's up to us to reap what we can

four hours of work for one bag of food

[lefthandarm-man]

Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanoff The Avengers (2012)

matching each others freak

[little-pondhead]

Your Ancient History, Written In Wax

-

Danny knew he should have put better security around the Sarcophagus of Eternal Sleep. It wasn’t even Vlad who opened it this time! The fruitloop was too busy doing his actual mayor duties because for some godforsaken reason, the man got re-elected.

No, it wasn’t Vlad. And it wasn’t Fright Knight, either. Nor the Observants. Who opened the Sarcophagus, then? Danny didn’t have time to find out as Pariah Dark promptly tore open a hole in reality and started hunting Danny down.

The battle was longer this time. He didn’t have the Ecto-Skeleton, as that was the first thing Pariah had destroyed. The halfa had grown a lot over the past few years, and learned some new tricks, but apparently sleeping in a magic ghost box meant that Pariah had absorbed a lot of power. The bigger ghost acted like a one-man army!

Amity Park was caught in the middle of the battle, but the residents made sure it went no further than that. Vlad and the Fentons made a barrier around the town to keep the destruction from leaking. Sam, Tucker, and Dani did crowd control while Danny faced the king head-on.

Their battle shook the Zone and pulled them wildly between the mortal plane and the afterlife. Sometimes, residents noticed a blow from Pariah transported them to the age of the dinosaurs, and Phantom’s Wail brought them to an unknown future. Then they were in a desert. Then a blazing forest. Then underwater. It went on like that, but no one dared step foot outside of Amity. They couldn’t risk being left behind.

It took ages to beat him, but eventually, Danny stood above the old ghost king, encasing his symbols of power in ice so they couldn’t be used again. He refused to claim the title for himself. Tired as he was, Danny handed the objects off to Clockwork for safe keeping and started repairing the damage Pariah had done to the town. The tear he’d made was too big to fix, for now, so no one bothered. They just welcomed their new ghostly neighbors with open arms and worked together to restore Amity Park.

Finally, the day came to bring down the barrier. People were gathered around the giant device the Fentons had built to sustain it. Danny had brought Clockwork to Amity, to double check that they had returned to the right time and dimension.

Clockwork assured everyone that they were in the right spot, and only a small amount of time had passed, so the Fentons gave the signal to drop the shield.

Very quickly did they discover that something was wrong. The air smelled different. The noise of the nearby city, Elmerton, was louder and more chaotic. Something was there that wasn’t before, and it put everyone on edge.

Clockwork smiled, made a remark about the town fitting in better than before, and disappearing before Danny could catch him.

Frantic, Danny had a few of his ghost buds stay behind to protect the town while he investigated.

He flew far and wide, steadily growing horrified at the changes the world had undergone. Heroes, villains, rampant crime and alien invasions. The Earth was unrecognizable. There were people moving around the stars like it was second nature and others raising dead gods like the apocalypse was coming. Magic and ectoplasm was everywhere, rather than following the ley lines like they were supposed to.

Danny returned to Amity.

The fight with Pariah had taken them through space and time. Somewhere along the way, they had changed the course of history so badly that this now felt like an alien world.

How was he supposed to fix this?

-

In the Watchtower, The Flash was wrapping up monitor duty while Impulse buzzed around him, a little more jittery than usual. The boy was talking a mile a minute, when alarms started blaring an alarming green. Flash had never seen this alarm before, and its crackling whine was grating on his ears.

Flash returned to the monitor, frantically clicking around to find the issue, but nothing was popping up. No major disasters, no invasions, no declarations of war. Nothing! What was causing the alarm?

Impulse swore and zipped to a window, pressing his face against it and staring down at Earth. “Fuck! It’s today isn’t it? I forgot!”

“What’s today?” Flash asked. He shot off a text to Batman, asking if it was an error. The big Bat said it wasn’t, and that he would be there soon.

“The arrival of Amity Park. I learned about this in school; the alarm always gives me headaches.”

Flash turned to his grandson, getting his attention. “Bart,” he stressed. “What are you talking about?”

Impulse barely glanced over his shoulder. Now that Flash was facing him, he could see a strong glow coming from Earth. “The first villain, first anti-villain, and the first hero,” he said anxiously. “They all protect the town of the original metas. They’re all here.”

“Here? Now??”

“Yeah? They weren’t before, but they are now. The first hero said there was time stuff involved, which was what inspired me to start practicing time travel in the first place.”

“I’m not following.”

“It’s okay. We should probably go welcome them before they tear apart Illinois, though. The history I remember says that some of them freaked and destroyed a chunk of the Midwest during a fight with each other.”

“WHAT?”

[no1deahow]

The Sabo part came out of nowhere

[sunlit-mess]

silly

[cable-salamdr]

Did you know Cole asking “are you departed?” to Wu’s spirit thing and Wu not answering was actually my roman empire of s2p2 (or at least one of the many)

[snoozerin]

thinking abt canpru dumbshit again

[ants-personal]

charles is gonna have his oh moment and its gonna be something so mundane its honestly a little embarrassing for him

Like them taking a break from a case so everyone decides not to waste the snowday and its going fine everyones have a great time charles is hitting snowballs the girls throw for him edwin hiding behind him when they threaten to hit him if he doesnt stop commenting on their throwing forms

Eventually splitting off a bit with edwin going with niko making tiny snowmen niko explaining they are totally cute and better than a normal snowman look you can hold them in your hands and

charles and crystal coming back with coffee and hot chocolate even if the boys cant drink it its nice to still have it for the holidays

walking up charles is gonna see edwin smiling bright and sparkling just like the snow on the ground he stands amongst the snowy field raditing a warm light hes softer activitly having fun his posture more lax its gonna cause charles to drop their drinks as niko runs up to grabs her from crystal and show off the snowman she made while edwins looks at him quizzically

charles apologizing saying he must of slip laughing it off edwin opens his mouth like hes about to say something but secodes againat it crystal squints at charles but doesnt push it cause they can all hear the night nurse pratically screaming across the city for them to finish their work

[calamarispiderart]

you really are pathetic.

[manga-and-stuff]

Source: Fullmetal Alchemist Hagane no Renkinjutsushi 鋼の錬金術師

by Hiromu Arakawa

[travellingtribble]

I'm in my feels thinking about how fucked up the TOS crew ended like

Kirk got stuck in the nexus from ~2293 to 2371 only to die again, for good, as soon as he got out? Come on. come on man.

Bones got old. like really old. and didn't get to see Kirk again??? It's been a while since I watched the TNG episode with McCoy, I don't remember what he says, but he was like 150 years old. Did he ever even see Kirk before he got stuck in the Nexus. Did he ever see Spock? (I'd hope so, Spock disappears years later, in Picard if I'm correct?)

Spock was... around doing Spock stuff. And then Kirk died and did Spock even know? did someone tell Spock that his literal soulmate died. twice. and then Spock got stuck in another universe, a reality slightly different from his own, where everyone is younger than him and Jim is not really Jim and he has his own Spock anyway and his planet is gone and he lived the rest of his days in the Kelvin timeline, alone.

And Scotty got stuck in a transporter buffer for 75 years. That's so long. They had to tell him Kirk was gone? (although, they were together when that happened, weren't they? they were on the Enterprise-B, technically Scotty knew that Kirk was "dead" didn't he? I guess spending 75 years stuck in a buffer mode will screw up your memory though.) Did he see Spock again? Did he see Bones again before either of them died?

Basically the only ones we didn't see explicitly (or implicitly) die or disappear of the OG crew are Uhura, Chekov and Sulu. Where were they? what were they doing? did they know about Kirk? about Scotty? about Spock?

Sorry but like. that is so fucked up. why does nobody talk about this!!!

[bigskydreaming]

Imagine looking at a character whose entire premise is that in every stage of his life, he's made every version of himself into someone that inspires people to such a degree that EVERY SINGLE VERSION OF HIM has people wanting to literally follow in his footsteps in some way or another.....

And coming to the conclusion that like.....the most important things about him are the sum of all his trappings. His entirely homemade developed from scratch could not exist if not for what he already was and brought with him BEFORE crafting this newest version of himself trappings, with his greatest trait throughout all of it being his adaptability; his ability and willingness to roll with the punches and not try to simply weather any opposition or changes to his life but instead reshape himself as needed to better fit INTO whatever new shape his life and the world around him takes. All while managing to carry the most innate, fundamental and necessary aspects of himself from one version to the next. Thus every single version of himself is different but simultaneously every single version of himself is also undeniably the same person.

The strength of this character, to me, will always be that he can be so many versions of himself, he can become so many things, all without ever actually losing or discarding any of the aspects of himself he considers most essential, the things he's not willing to lose or give up just to keep going. Finding that road not taken by most, usually because most never even think to look for it as an option. But one that he's always able to find because the one trick he's mastered in his tumultuous life is threading that needle of not just digging in his heels in an unproductive way but rather being selective about when and where he makes a stand and decides "this is not a thing I'm willing to compromise about" but here are places and ways I can and will change and evolve and adapt in order to make it possible for me to hold onto these parts and keep them as they are.

And that's why its always so mind-boggling to me that so many writers can't seem to think of anything else to do with Dick Grayson other than invent some new reason for him to just....not be that person, or to like just take the character whose most basic fundamental trait he's NOT about to compromise on is willingly giving up his spot in the driver's seat of his own life.....and make him just a passenger in his own life and stories.

Dick Grayson at age nine....at age nineteen...at age twenty nine....the one core thread running through all versions of him is the only way he's standing back and letting you call the shots for him or putting him on the sidelines in some way is over his dead body.

HOW he goes about that, what that looks like, who he becomes and what aspects of himself he plays up at some times and what traits he lets fall by the wayside at other times when they offer less in service to his primary goal here....that changes constantly. He changes constantly.

But those changes are almost always (or at least they used to be/should be IN MY OPINION) made with the intention of keeping certain things about him or his life as consistent as possible.

That's the duality of Dick Grayson that I'm here for. The inherent contradiction of him that COULD allow for endless conflict and breaking new narrative ground in all sorts of ways if mined properly:

His eternal willingness to compromise....but only ever in pursuit of doubling down on the ways he's not willing to compromise.

Forever walking that tightrope in ways that only a kid born and raised in a circus could ever hope to.