#black hole productions

[ashtxeman]

I love to imagine an AU where Wiggly's summoning in Black Friday was successful and he just started the Hatchetfield version of Weirdmaggedon.

[reine-du-sourire]

Amaranthine

Cheslock's in the library when Edward finds him, standing on tiptoes to reach a gilt-edged blue tome with golden letters dancing along its spine. With a soft grunt, Cheslock manages to tip it down and turns, triumphant, tucking the book under his arm. "Hiya, Ed." "Hello, Cheslock." Edward can't help a smile. "Are you busy?" Cheslock looks curiously at the elegant rectangular parcel that Edward is holding. "I can spare a minute. What have ya got there?"

Edward opens the box. "Some new inks. I only ordered black, but I received this set as well- it might have been an accident, or maybe they're just complimentary samples. I thought you might like to have them. I don't use colored inks."

"So send 'em back," Cheslock shrugs. His eyes scan the row of little jars nestled in black velvet lining, and he selects a bottle of deep reddish-violet ink, turning it over in his fingers. "It's nice stuff. Or save 'em."

"Or I could give them to you. It's hardly worth the bother to return them."

"Why would ya give 'em to me?"

"I thought you'd like them."

Cheslock picks up a midnight blue ink and rolls it back and forth between his hands, allowing it to clink gently against the purple-red one. "Where'd ya say you got 'em from?"

"Antoine & Fils," Edward replies. "My father's favorite manufacturer."

"Oh. Pricey." Cheslock passes the ink back. "Nah."

"As a gift, Cheslock! You don't have to pay me for them!"

"Not into gifts."

"As a favor to me, then? So I don't have to return them?"

"Not into favors either. I don't like owing people."

"It's not owing-! And- and it's not like you don't do favors, you've done favors for me, you gave me a massage last week-"

"That's 'cause ya squeak like a sick mouse, and it's funny."

Edward flushes. "I do not!"

"Yeah, ya do," Cheslock says lazily. He picks up the purple-red ink again. "Think the teachers'll have a fit if I hand in essays in this?"

"Cheslock, you shouldn't do that." Edward shakes his head. "You can use it to write your music. Or your letters home."

"Or I can make tattoos."

"You definitely shouldn't do that."

"You're the one who wanted me to take 'em."

"Yes, but not for tattoos!"

With a grin, Cheslock replaces the ink and takes the box from Edward, tucking it under his arm with the book and leaning forward to whisper directly into Edward's ear. "Maybe I'll give you a tattoo."

"Cheslock!"

"There's that sick mouse again. Is that why ya bought me fancy inks, 'cause I gave ya a massage? See? You can't stand owing anyone either, I bet."

"I said it's not owing! And I didn't buy them, they were complimentary!"

"You're such a gentleman, Midford." Cheslock's hand comes up to tug gently at Edward's earlobe. "Your ears go all pink when ya lie."

The rest of Edward's face goes vibrantly red as well. "Cheslock!"

"Thanks for the inks, Eddie. I've gotta go now. See ya 'round, okay?"

"Of course," Edward mumbles, and wonders whether his munificence will be the death of him.

The spring in Cheslock's step as he leaves the library suggests that it might not be, though, and Edward smiles.

Link to AO3

[dreamlogic]

musing in the tags about the view two years out from my hysterectomy and the shifting nature of neuropathy. i asked my PT for recommendations/resources pertaining to pain science and that's been a very helpful lenses to have. i'm still not back to normal, will never be unmarked by this experience or return to my pre-op self, but my baseline has been gradually increasing over the last few months, and it feels good to look back on the last two years and say "i have no idea how i managed to function while living with that, but i did!"

[klysanderelias]

So apparently there IS a throwaway line in the antilles episode about how fulcrum is a codename they give to EVERY secret informant. I think I have to walk back some of my previous statements - I think I'm right, still, but I'll admit that like, the reveal isn't 'kallus was fulcrum ALL ALONG' but instead 'kallus is A fulcrum agent' and that's less offensive, but it still smacks of poor planning when they completely drop the idea for a full season AND in all of star wars (that I know of, I'm trying not to dig too deeply to avoid spoilers) there are only 3 fulcrum agents (kallus ahsoka and andor) that we see. Getting to see more use of fulcrum as a network would have made it less irritating, and of course the way Ahsoka worked in the first season-

Hey wait a second! She wasn't a fucking informant at all! She was literally giving orders to rebel cells! Ahsoka as fulcrum was literally calling shots for the ghost crew. You could argue she was GIVING them information, but as a handler, not as a secret spy!

And it's stupid to argue, because it doesn't matter (and because the sample size is so small) but at the core of it is that the kallus shit feels so forced. I'm not like 'oh wow that's cool', I literally immediately went back and brought up old episodes because I was like 'that's fucking wrong'. I literally stopped watching the show so I could argue the point. Regardless of whether I'm right, my reaction was to stop everything to check because I couldn't believe it.

And at the end of the day I don't feel like the difference between 'kallus was fulcrum ALL ALONG' and 'kallus is A fulcrum agent' changes anything about my core criticisms - that it's completely rewriting a villain to make them more palatable and set up an undeserved redemption arc OFFSCREEN. If you're going to redeem the genocidal white guy (WHICH YOU SHOULDN'T) at LEAST do it onscreen! At least SHOW ME him putting in the goddamn effort to be a better person instead of going 'oh he did it you just weren't looking in the right direction, now stop asking about it because it makes him feel bad'

[daydreamingtomatos]

sticks my finger in my ear like a nonchalant anime boy. listen i know we're all worried about chat gpt or whatever and im not wild about the idea of my surgeon using it to skate through uni without actually learning anything, but you do know there were already surgeons skating through uni without actually learning anything right. before chat gpt people would just Buy their essays. students were already doing and have always done that. swaths of ghostwritten unresearched health advice books already crammed amazon's shelves. youre telling me that some lazy dumbfuck fiction writer is using inauthentic methods to push out as many books as possible with no integrity and the goal of profit over everything else? shit let me pull out my copy of Judge And Jury by James Patterson

[mccoyquialisms]

coming into week 4 on wellbutrin and my god I can't believe all I needed was a bit of dopamine this whole time

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

The Zero Theorem (2013, Terry Gilliam)

05/05/2024

[bookishjules]

this morning i was like okay brain here's what we're not gonna do: think about rwby. bc thinking about rwby made it impossible for us to write yesterday. so you are not allowed to think about rwby.

but then my brain, that cheeky bastard, said okay fine--i'll chuck myself into the ever-present black hole of sizzy feels instead.

like my guy!! that was not the solution!!

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[whateverthewiz]

[tenth-sentence]

The Large Hadron Collider might turn out to be a factory for producing microscopic black holes!

"The Fabric of the Cosmos" - Brian Greene

[foldingfittedsheets]

When I was working at the sex shop I was pulling poverty wages. I loved my job but I was on food stamps and still barely getting by. When they hired the stores first male employee and he started at my pay rate after I’d been there for three years I quit.

I was initially really nervous when I saw the post for the mattress job. It listed a pay scale that I couldn’t even conceptualize and I appeared qualified. When I got an interview I was over the moon but also petrified. Reactions to my line of work often varied but most people were very embarrassed or skeptical. I worried about how I’d address it in the actual interview.

I lived far to the north of their headquarters and drove almost two hours to get there. When I finally arrived it was in the nicest thrift store clothes I could find, but I shrank inside to see a room full of older white men in nice suits waiting to be interviewed for the same job.

Why did I bother? I was decades younger than anyone else in the room, shabbily dressed, and I suspected I was the only afab person in the entire building. I stewed in my insecurities until I was called in.

The second I met my interviewer I was instantly put at ease. The man had the energy of a therapy dog, he was abound with positive, good natured energy. He was also incredibly beautiful. I grinned back at his welcoming smile as we said our pleasantries. But still. This very beautiful polished man seemed very innocent. How would the sex shop question go?

“I see here you worked at STORE?”

“Yes,” I said hesitantly.

“And that was sales? Or you just rang people up.”

“No, it was sales. I’d help people find products, we were encouraged to upsell, there was sales spiffs, and most importantly we educated customers on products to help them find what they liked best.”

He grinned approvingly and asked, “Can you give me an example of a time you successfully upsold a customer?”

I paused, wringing my hands before I asked, “How vague would you like me to be…?”

“Not at all!” He assured me. “Go for it!”

“Well. A man came in looking for something to make his fingers vibrate so when he was touching his wife it would enhance that sensation. We had cheap $10 cockrings that I showed him first. But we had a rechargeable waterproof one made of nicer material, and after I showed him a demo he bought that one.”

“How much was that one?”

“$110”

“Wow! You had an upsell of 100% from what he came in looking for! That’s incredible!”

He was so truly genuinely stoked and not at all embarrassed that for the first time I saw a tiny glimmer of a future where I didn’t have ramen and peanut butter tiding me over between paychecks.

He asked me to wait then came back to tell me he liked me so much that he wanted to send me right into another interview, if that was okay. He didn’t want me to have to drive back later, it was terribly considerate and exciting. I beamed and told him it would be lovely.

I then had the second worst interview I’ve ever had. The worst goes to the time I applied to be a store manager for a pet food place years later. The district and store manager interviewing me passed notes and texted while I was speaking. When the district manager called to inform me I didn’t get the job I told him I’d never have accepted anyway because I’d never had such a disrespectful interview.

The new man sitting behind the desk radiated an aura of a brick wall. As someone with anxiety I’m highly keyed into the emotional states of people I’m talking to. To receive no feedback at all was my personal hell. After a perfunctory greeting he asked me with no inflection to sell him a pen.

I gathered the shreds of my courage and attempted the Herculean task he’d set me. Through my whole improvised spiel he resisted all attempts at engaging him, regarding me with a cold apathy as I touted the benefits of my fictitious pen.

Halfway through I broke into a cold sweat. My smile didn’t waver but it grew strained as I projected friendliness and warmth into the black hole of his heart. My thoughts scattered and my sales pitch grew redundant in the face of his nothingness. I finally concluded with a hard close and he simply nodded.

He glanced at my resume and commented, “You didn’t ask me to touch or hold it. Though I suppose I can understand from your previous line of work why you wouldn’t.” I shriveled and died inside knowing that I encouraged people to touch dildos all day long and had been too frazzled to offer him the pen.

He bid me a cool farewell. I made it to my car before I started sobbing. I had never been so rattled. I couldn’t understand what I’d done to make him so unfriendly or if my threadbare clothes were what had made him treat me like dirt. I drove an hour and a half to get home, weeping intermittently.

I was therefore taken by complete surprise to receive a call the next day inviting me on board for their five week training program. The first man who’d interviewed me gushed on the phone about how the second guy had loved me and that I was going to be fantastic.

I was in shock. When I showed up to training the second interviewer was charming my new classmates, beaming and laughing. He was an utterly different person. To my dismay I learned he was the trainer for my district and would be my point of contact if I made it through training.

He joked with me later that his interview facade was just a tactic to see how people held up under pressure and I filed him into a category of my deepest enmity. I never forgave him for how small he made me feel that day, but I never showed him the depths of my fury.

I aced every test and went on to be valedictorian of the eight people who had survived the rigorous training process to earn a sales position. When I got my first paycheck I bought myself new clothes, the first non-thrifted things I’d owned in years.

[scalematey]

i think. next year i might try to write a short story a month. and then by the end of the year i'll have 12 short stories and that's basically a manuscript right. how hard can it be

[billlaotian]

[unpredictablestuff]

From the day I entered kindergarten until I graduated from high school Disney released 50 movies (animated OR live action)

How many have you heard of?

Robin Hood Superdad Herbie Rides Again The Bears and I The Castaway Cowboy The Island at the Top of the World The Strongest Man in the World Escape to Witch Mountain The Apple Dumpling Gang One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing The Best of Walt Disney's True-Life Adventures Ride a Wild Pony No Deposit, No Return Treasure of Matecumbe Gus The Shaggy D.A. Freaky Friday The Littlest Horse Thieves The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh The Rescuers Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo Pete's Dragon Candleshoe Return from Witch Mountain The Cat from Outer Space Hot Lead and Cold Feet The North Avenue Irregulars The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again Unidentified Flying Oddball The Black Hole Midnight Madness The Watcher in the Woods Herbie Goes Bananas The Last Flight of Noah's Ark Popeye The Devil and Max Devlin Amy Dragonslayer The Fox and the Hound Condorman Night Crossing Tron Tex Trenchcoat Something Wicked This Way Comes Never Cry Wolf Return to Oz The Black Cauldron The Journey of Natty Gann One Magic Christmas

[moodycarcass]

My YouTube recommendations are still fucked and getting exposed to the cat thing from poppy play time makes me wanna rip my head off about current horror design tropes