#because 'its obvious isnt it?'

[96percentdone]

I do honestly believe that all communication ever would be vastly improved if everyone on earth internalized and understood that the the whole thing is a series of back and forth interpretation of words with a collectively understood haze of potential meanings wildly dependent on context, speaker, and audience, even for even the most basic of sentences.

Like I can say "I like cats" but the degree of intensity to which i like them is just something you're inferring based on prior context (also interpreted) and how my tone is read. I could be sincere, or totally sarcastic, or maybe cat is slang for something else—miscommunication happens because everything is up for grabs, and communication is not an objective science.

It's a fast-paced guessing game played by all.

[verflares]

(click for higher quality!) draconified link concept ive been chipping away at this past week ..... here's my funny little compendium concept for him:

"A heroic spirit has taken the form of this bestial dragon. Unlike it's kin, this creature exhibits an extremely aggressive disposition. It appears highly territorial, and will relentlessly chase down those who disturb its skywide patrols - of which it seems to be endlessly searching for either a long-time vassal or foe. Unfortunately, it seems the spirit within has long since forgotten exactly who it was looking for…"

[thewhizzyhead]

WAIT I WANNA BRING UP ANOTHER THING ABOUT HOW BULLYING IS ADDRESSED IN NERDY PRUDES MUST DIE. one thing I really liked about how Max is shown as a bully is his talk with Pete at the Pasqualli's parking lot. When Pete tries to stand up to Max, Max pushes him down and emphasizes that Pete isn't a loser because of his own qualities - rather, Pete is a loser because Max simply said so.

Of course we can attribute this to Max's god complex but I think that this point in particular is less than often really brought up in teen-centered media featuring bullying: that bullying exists not because of nerdy behavior or whatever the fuck, but because bullies will it into being. And to have a BULLY of all people say that out loud - to have the main villain point out the root of their behavior without showing any kind of shame whatsoever - showcases just how much of a menace Max is.

[dreadfuldevotee]

Too much hate for Armand's Paris hairstyle. Not enough talk about how that is seriously meticulous look that requires skill, and nightly styling to maintain. Like, let us all think about the fact that Armand goes to coffin looking like this

[bylerist]

saw someone claim that mike "ignored will all last season" which… wow. that is certainly a sentence. 

so i decided to put all of their scenes together and speed them up -  just to show how much time they actually spend together. and while doing that i noticed this.

when you speed up mike’s monologue, it becomes even more clear just how un-romantic it is. the sound is so eerie… and by the end, it literally sounds like an alarm. like the scene is screaming something is very wrong here. something’s not right. 

edit: more sped up byler here :)

[spacedlexi]

"sounds nice... having a partner"

[cent-scratchnsniff]

the only thing about me that resembles her

[sieglinde-freud]

let it be known that i love prince inigo with my whole soul. however sometimes it is SO much fun to think about owain and his two most loyal-est knights you ever seen: worst guy in the world #1 and worst guy in the world #2. i love retainer inigo and severa so much. retainers who bully you and make fun of you and trash on you but they’d leave behind everyone and everything they ever knew to follow you and protect you in a whole new universe. they love you so much that they’d swear allegiance to total strangers but that loyalty pales in comparison to what they’d do for you. and they were all lovers!!!!!!!

[pinkd3mon]

I just wanted an excuse to draw my Galacta with a cape propaganda

[kawareo]

The bg3 community has a big problem with not thinking the characters are pansexual, when they clearly are, here's all the bad takes i've heard (this from queer people) on tiktok/twitter/etc "Minthara is a lesbian and HATES men" "Gale only like women, and only feminine ones" "Wyll is a gentleman, he would only date women" "Karlach clearly only has dialogue talking about men because of her heteronormative upbringing" These people are insane

Where is that post about how bitchy or mean women in media are always headcanoned as lesbians

Minthara hating men is funny to me though because ingame she openly admires and respects both Ketheric and Gortash for their leadership and/or war mindset

Gale 'i quite enjoy your musk' Dekarios suuure likes only femenine women

I'm standoffish around Wyll so I might be reaching here, but to me it sounds like calling him a Gentleman is just a nicer way of calling him boring. (Also, why couldn't a gentleman date a man??) But also Wyll openly fawns over how pretty Astarion is and about Halsin, more than once, and that's just from the top of my head

Oh wow, a big muscular lady is a lesbian? Call the news, we have something groundbreaking. (I'm still playing a Wylach romance so I do have a bias but cmon) Idk what heteronormative upbringing they're talking about though. Having a mom and a dad? In a world where homophobia doesn't exist and never has? It's so stupid, especially with Karlach whos whole thing is being open and honest about her feelings; but sure, make up straws to reach for that explain away her straight up stating that she wants to fuck a specific man

Headcanons are one thing (like personally, i see Minthara as being slightly more into women than she is into men, and opposite with Karlach) but ffs I don't get it why people need to argue about canon so much when it's literally spelled out for them

Tbh I didn't know this was such a big problem, but i guess it just means I'm happy here in my oblivious corner where people make sense

[merry-fagoland]

traveler as a "Witness"

[buwheal]

out of context lyric discussion doodles solely because you guys like this... thing.... or.... whatever he is........

[quietwingsinthesky]

like it feels obvious on doctor who. the show who’s main gimmick is that the guy running around goes only by a title they gave themself and whose identity revolves around a dialogue with that title, constructing it, interrogating it, redefining it, endlessly as a part of their journey. it feels obvious to say that you absolutely cannot on this show give something an incredibly symbolic name and then Not say anything about that.

so why does kerblam spend the latter half of its runtime emphasizing The Foundation, right. the foundation is where power gets stored when it goes out everywhere else. the foundation is where workers are being killed and melted down into goop. the foundation is so old that the original plans of the building on paper are needed to understand it. The System is in The Foundation before it is anywhere else.

and then that. doesn’t matter. we aren’t going to use this to say anything. in fact, we’re going to assert that the system is so Fine, Actually that filling the foundational level of it with ten million bombs doesn’t even do any lasting damage to it. and hey, hey. remember when the system decided that the Correct option was to kill an innocent person uninvolved in all of this because she happened to be someone that charlie liked. remember when it lured her down into the foundational level to fucking murder her. yeah, that was justified of it actually, the blood on its hands is worth the point it was making.

how do you build the perfect set-up for the most obvious critique: Space Amazon Is Built On Bad Foundations That Lead It To Hurting The Workers And Customers In The Long Run. and then stumble ass backwards into uhhhhhh no actually it was this one guy. with bombs. and also his bombs are so ineffective and meaningless that blowing them up in the center of the facility did Nothing. he is both an unimaginable threat and also powerless. please take our doctor who episode about how good space amazon is very seriously.

[snobgoblin]

i really wanna play as the Stove Salamander in Heart Hunter,,,

[lucabyte]

Where are people getting 8-12 for Siffrin from????? Like even without the timing of the Island, SASAP Siffrin canonically drinks wine and I’m pretty sure there’s a bathroom convo that implies he’s gone out drinking with the party before, like that rouge is a Grown Adult 100% (and also if Siffrin Was somehow 8-12 I don’t think they would’ve written their interactions with Isabeau like that since he’s also written to be at least mid 20s or so and has a job)

8-12 as in 8-12 when they left the island, not during game events. You misread the tags on this one.

(said tags were based on seeing poll results where the overwhelming, while not Majority, mode/most frequent answer was 8-12, with a not insubstantial number of people answering 5-9??)

(ive repeated my own thoughts on this matter a number of times, but mostly it comes down to disagreeing with 'refusing to eat vegetables is a childish reason to run away' since it's stated in text that they were Joking at the time (reads to me like a teenage 'ohh my god stop telling me what to doooo', which is also supported by adrienne's own word of god that they were a teen/that its based on their own teenage anecdote), and the logic that an unnacompanied child is likely to be taken in and taken care of, where a mid-teen or older is more likely to be assumed to be okay when Wandering Around On Their Own, Homeless. Which to me lines up far more with Siffrin's in-game behaviour of latching onto small kindnesses, etc. I know a lost child is a sad concept but extend that kind of empathy to teens too?? A lost teen ends up in such a tragic place of 'too old to be seen as needing protection' and 'still too young to be alone like that'. you dont need to make them younger to make it more tragic! if anything losing MORE of their adolesence is scarier... So I'm on team 15-18 myself. Because uh. Numbers. 30/25 minus 10/15 is still more likely to be on the higher side. And thats assuming that people would say 'about a decade' when referring to a variance as high as 5 extra years. (remember too that nille has to be able to be old enough to remember the island's disappearence and she's mira's age of early 20s. Mathsssss))

(although i have seen some WILD poll results with at least a few people pegging sif's in-game age as low as 19-23 which still boggles the mind given how frequently they're reiterated to be the second oldest in the party next to odile and the. literal wiki page that states their age to be mid-to-late 20s. I have No idea where people are getting that outside of 1. not paying attention 2. infantilisation 3. being on the younger end themselves and not really being able to visualise an older person (than them. 30 isnt old) having the kinds of mental struggles that siffrin has, and due to relating to them pulling the presumed age closer to their own)

[flow2024]

I wish you would write a fic about irreconcilable artistic differences on a movie set between Joe and Nicky.

not really irreconciliable as in not solvable at all but you know i had fun with this

Joe squeezes his eyes shut, covering his face with both hands, and leans forward. His shoulders tremble uncontrollably. He takes a short, sharp breath, and another, and another, but he can’t quite seem to get enough into his lungs. There’s a lump in his throat and a weight in his stomach. He leans forward with a low, wounded sound and–

“Cut,” Nicky says softly. Then, because it takes Joe a second to hear him: “Joe, stop.”

Slowly, Joe raises his head. Wipes at his eyes and takes a few deep breaths to steady himself. Nicky’s already up, frowning ever so slightly as he looks at the camera. 

“What is it this time?” Joe manages. His voice is hoarse; he has to clear his throat once or twice. Nicky doesn’t look up. The clock on the nightstand reads 01.34, but Nicky’s changed it a few times over the course of the shoot. He has no clue what time it really is, only that it’s dark outside.

It’s just the two of them in the room. Nicky had wanted to keep this one small, just him and Joe and the camera. The apartment they’re in is nice, if a little empty, though Joe supposes that’s the point. They’re in the bedroom, Joe sitting cross-legged on the bed, shirtless, sheets bunched up over his lap, a phone lying on the nightstand behind him. One entire wall of the room is taken up by a floor-to-ceiling window which lets the moonlight in, though there’s a few low lights set up behind Nicky to send bars of silver light across the bed, because the natural light hadn’t quite been strong enough for the effect Nicky wanted. It’s otherworldly; it’s beautiful. 

Nicky still isn’t looking at him, so Joe says again, “What?” It comes out a little harsher than he means it to, but it gets Nicky’s attention.

Nicky runs one hand through his hair. Joe can’t see him well, not with the light behind him and the shadows in the room. “I don’t know,” Nicky says. “It’s missing something.”

Joe has worked with Nicky enough times before. It’s not that he doesn’t like working with him - they’re friends - but he can’t fucking read him, and so after the sixth take of the same scene he can’t help but take it a little personally. 

Joe reaches for the bottle of water hidden just under the bed and takes a long drink, mostly to keep himself from snapping. What time is it? “I can try again, but I can’t do this indefinitely, Nicky.”

“I know, I know,” Nicky says, fidgeting again with the camera, “it’s not you, it’s just–” 

“What else could it be?” Joe interrupts. He’s not stupid. This scene doesn’t work if he can’t get it right, which means the entire film doesn’t work if he can’t get it right. More than anything else, this one depends on him. No music, no camera movement, no dialogue, nothing but him and the camera. And he wants to do it right, he loves this project almost as much as Nicky does, but there’s a hollow feeling in his chest and he’s spent the last however-many-hours having a near-complete breakdown over and over again and it’s still not right. And Joe doesn’t know what it is he’s doing wrong.

“I don’t know,” Nicky says quietly. Now he is looking at Joe, and Joe can’t tell if he’s disappointed, or angry, or – or what. He’s perfectly expressionless, as always. 

Joe loves this job. And he wants to get this right. But it doesn’t mean it’s not one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do, and he’s tired.

“I don’t have much more left in me, Nicky,” he says, and this time he does snap. He wipes at his eyes again, can’t look at Nicky. He’s supposed to be making himself vulnerable, above all in this scene, but suddenly he can’t stand the way Nicky’s looking at him. “Pass me my hoodie.”

“Joe–”

“I can’t. I can’t keep doing this.” He kicks the sheets off and gets tangled trying to do it, grabs his hoodie when Nicky offers it, pulls it over his head in one fluid motion and gets out of there as soon as he can. Thankfully, there’s only Andy and Nile in the other room, Andy lying back on the couch with her feet up and Nile perched on the arm of it. They both look up at Joe as he enters, both look like they’re about to ask, and Joe can’t stand it, can’t be in here a second longer, can’t–

“We are done for the day, I think,” Nicky says behind him, startling Joe. He hadn’t realised Nicky was there.

Andy raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t argue. It’s already the second day of trying to shoot this scene: they’re running the risk of falling behind schedule. 

“We’ll find something else to do tomorrow,” Nicky says. “I’ll look over everything tonight. We will try this again on Monday.”

Andy and Nile look at each other. Nile shrugs. 

“Get some rest, Joe,” Nicky says. 

Joe shoves his hands in his pockets and doesn’t say a word.

–--------------------------------

He doesn’t get called in the next day at all, and he doesn’t interrogate it too closely. Takes the day off, pretty much, because they’ve only really got one scene left to film, and there’s not much more he can do for that. Nicky had wanted to leave it to the last, and Joe had agreed, at the time.

At about nine pm, someone knocks on his hotel room door, which is unusual on a day where they don’t have a night shoot to do. When he opens it, Nicky is on the other side. Joe lets him in without a word. 

“I wanted to apologise,” Nicky says, standing in the middle of the room and looking as uncomfortable as Joe’s ever seen him. “For last night. I was pushing you too hard, and I should not have done.”

Joe closes the door behind him. Nicky fidgets with the sleeve of his hoodie. 

“Sit down,” Joe says. 

Nicky does, settling himself on the edge of Joe’s bed, not quite looking him in the eye. Joe joins him, after a moment. 

“At the risk of sounding cliche,” Nicky says, “it’s not you, it’s me.”

Joe laughs, mostly because the phrase sounds so strange coming from Nicky and also because out of everything he’d thought Nicky might say, he hadn’t expected that. 

Nicky smiles slightly, too. Then he gets up and heads for the minibar. “Mind if I have a drink?”

Joe shakes his head. Nicky gets out a little bottle of wine, glances at the label, and takes a swig straight from the bottle without bothering to get a glass. 

“I can’t seem to get it right,” Nicky says. “You know I wrote almost fifteen different versions of that scene?”

The scene in the script itself is barely a page long. “No,” Joe says. 

Nicky nods. Rubs a hand over his face. “I wanted it to feel real. I thought if I could get it right, it would… help, somehow. I don’t know.”

It’s the exact same reason Joe said yes before he even read the script, when the whole thing was just an idea in Nicky’s head, when they were talking about it over drinks at Andy’s and Joe was in love with the idea almost immediately. He knew exactly why Nicky was writing it; he knows, now, exactly why it needs to be right. But at the same time – “I don’t know if that’s possible, Nicky.”

Nicky sighs. “I know.” He crosses back over to sit beside Joe again, takes another drink from the bottle. “But there is something missing, and I cannot seem to find it. And so it does not feel real. And I know this is not easy for you.”

“It’s not,” Joe says plainly. 

“But you know,” Nicky continues, “I could not have trusted anyone with this but you. If you had not said yes, I would not have done this.”

That, Joe didn’t know: he knows he’d been Nicky’s first choice, but he’d assumed that’s because they know each other well enough already. But it makes sense: the reason Nicky wrote the script is the same thing they’d bonded over. 

Even still, it’s a lot. “I don’t know if I can do it the way you want,” Joe says. 

Nicky looks up at him from where he’s been running his fingers over the label on the bottle absentmindedly. “If you want to stop, I can–”

“No,” Joe says quickly. “But I don’t think it’s ever going to be exactly the way you felt.”

Nicky looks away. “It is a lot to ask,” he says. “I know this.”

Joe doesn’t think; just reaches over and takes Nicky’s hand. “I know,” he says. “Trust me.”

Nicky takes a deep breath. Then he nods. "Okay."