#except in Ted 2

[rainofthetwilight]

2023

I've drawn jenna 36 times in 2023 (actually 39 times since there were three other drawings that couldn't fit in here), and I've drawn ethan 18 times in 2023, whoo what a year! I can't believe how much both my art and my designs for them changed 😭

looking forward to see even more drawings this year! happy new year everyone <33

(edit: switched some drawings in ethan's pics! also just found another jenna drawing so the count is actually 39 lmao)

[gelarshiesprofruitboarder]

you know youre fucked when your biggest source of gender envy is a marshmallow made of jello

[sage-nebula]

I've decided to make my own post because I am not an idiot, but full disclosure that this post is 50% based on thoughts I was having while I was driving home from the auto repair shop yesterday and 50% a response to a post I saw just now that conflated "redemption arcs" (things fictional characters go through in fictional stories) with "community support" (things real life people offer to other real life people in real life) and how this relates to "fixing people" (making someone who mistreats or abuses themself or others not mistreat or abuse themself or others anymore).

Read my words very carefully.

In fiction, it is more than okay to like whatever type of toxic or fantastical relationship you want. If you like to read stories about toxic, codependent people who are absolutely horrible to one another and will never, ever change, you read those stories. If you like to read stories about a tortured man who just needs The Right Person to teach him to be better, and then he is, sometimes exclusively only to them though, then you read those stories. Sometimes you want to read stories where the main character says "I can fix him" and fails spectacularly, and sometimes you want to read stories where the main character says "I can fix him" and succeeds spectacularly, and either way, you read whatever stories you want, whatever makes you happy, I'm sure it's somewhere in this vast Archive that we call Our Own.

However, in real life?

First of all, "arcs" aren't things real life people have. An arc is something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Real life people don't have those, because our stories don't end until we die. Unlike a character, whose life presumably continues even after their story ends (except in circumstances where they die at the end but you know what I mean), we have to keep living day by day, with all the rises and falls that come with it. Now, this does not mean that a person cannot change, or that a person can't get better and learn from their mistakes; but it DOES mean that we can't have a "redemption arc" where we complete a checklist of story beats and then suddenly we're a better person who has experienced the necessary growth to be forgiven. First off, no amount of growth or change ever requires any victims to forgive. And second, that's just not how life works. That's not how change works. Change and growth are baby steps taken each day, and sometimes you go backwards, and you get angry with yourself, but then you pick yourself up and you try again the next day, and the next, and the next. It's an ongoing journey that does not end until you die. That's life.

But second and more importantly, the real idea that I think the original post was trying to get at, but missing the mark on was . . . okay.

So, the original OP of the post (and the person who replied to OP) got angry at the idea that the strawman they had invented (the person who had theoretically said "you can't fix him!") would deny support to someone who needs that help to grow and change as a person. The person who had replied in support of OP added that the strawman clearly believed in punitive justice over rehabilitative justice as well. On the surface, I can see where they are coming from. After all, on the whole humans are a social species and do need support networks in order to not only thrive, but survive. People such as drug addicts need support and assistance in order to get into better places in their lives, and the prison system has been proven to be far less effective at preventing repeated offenses than rehabilitative programs. This is all true.

However.

The reason why "you can't fix them" is still true, and needs to be said and understood particularly by those who are susceptible to falling into abusive relationships (e.g. people who have been abused before, particularly in childhood or adolescence) is because of free will. Specifically, the free will that each of us has, but specifically the other person. Person A can want so, so, so badly to "fix" Person B so that they stop being an abusive alcoholic 75% of the time. But if Person B doesn't actually want to stop being an abusive alcoholic (even if they say they do during the 25% of the time they aren't smacking Person A around), and refuses to put in the work that it takes to become sober and be a better person, then guess what? Nothing Person A does will ever make them be a sober, non-abusive partner. They will be unable to fix Person B. It doesn't matter how much time, energy, money, or commitment they pour into that person. It doesn't matter how much they genuinely, honestly, earnestly love them. Because unless Person B wants to change, and will put the work into doing so, then they will not change, and Person A, for their own health, safety, and sanity, needs to exit that relationship.

Now, does that mean that if, ten years down the line, Person B decides they are ready to put in the work to get their alcoholism under control, no one should help them? Of course not! They should absolutely be put in touch with sober counselors, support groups, medical professionals, friends and family who can help them. Person A could potentially forgive them, if Person A chooses. But that willingness to change and put in the work has to come from within Person B first.

I've been in the position where I've seen people in awful situations just tanking their lives, people I loved and cared about, people I begged to just listen to me and get help, only for them to not . . . and ultimately I had to accept that I couldn't fix them. I could be there to offer support when they were ready to fix themselves, but the core work that needed to be done had to come from within themselves. I couldn't provide that. Not because I was inadequate, not because I didn't love them, but because I couldn't force them to do anything they didn't want, or weren't ready, to do.

So at the end of the day, "you can't fix them" isn't about not giving support. It's about recognizing your limitations as a human being. It's about knowing that:

You cannot force someone to do something they do not want to do.

You cannot force someone to do something they are not ready to do.

Not being able to help or save someone is not a moral failing of yours.

Not being able to help or save someone does not mean you do not love or care about them.

Providing support should never come at risk of your own health and safety, physical or otherwise.

When you love someone, it can be really hard to accept this. You think, "I know I can make them want to try. I know I can inspire them to want to change. I know they love me, so if I just love them a little harder, they will want to change." Nine times out of ten, though, that is just not true. And if someone is abusing you, it is not worth the literal risk to your life to keep trying. You are worth more than that. You are more than just someone else's band-aid.

Keep yourselves safe in 2024.

[callixton]

i do actually think it’s Fucking Crazy that i would consider that boy one of my closest friends rn

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

i've historically been a "no one can see or hear about it until it's done" type of writer, but i'm procrastinating on my MA thesis so if anyone wants to send me questions/comments about my fic The Hedgehog's Dilemma as I work on chapter 3, feel free to do that

Summary for those of you who are curious:

After Jamie is benched partway through the match against Watford, he receives a call from his father, asking for a favour back in Manchester. It goes predictably poorly.

Or: in which Roy is reluctantly worried about Richmond's wayward striker, James Tartt Sr. continues to be the worst, and Jamie finally learns to stop battling the people who are just trying to help him.

[revolutionsoftheheart]

celestial games, a Ted Lasso fic;

Ted Lasso x Rebecca Welton A retelling of the events of Ted Lasso season 1, where the future of humanity is at stake and some characters are angels or demons; or the Angels vs Demons / Good Omens AU no one asked for.

It was a nice day.

In London, England, the sun was shining. While a crisp wind blew through the city, the weather was comfortable enough for one to wear only a light jacket. It was Spring. Flowers were blooming all over town, their scent floating in the air as though you were stepping through a garden. It was the kind of day that motivated you to leave your house. A day to cherish, for it felt like nothing bad could happen.

In Hell, the fires burned so hot the demons were sweating their eternity away. Chaos reigned in all its horrifying glory for a thwarted end of the world meant a reshuffling of the hierarchy. Battles of all kinds would be waged for the foreseeable future. Deals would be made, too—and broken. The most mischievous would emerge victorious. It was the perfect day to stab someone in the back, figuratively and literally.

In Heaven, everything was orderly and silent. The soft glow of righteousness permeated the place and everyone returned to their ordained conduct. While the day did not go as planned, Hell didn’t win and all were content with that conclusion.

(That Heaven didn’t win either is a technicality they didn’t care to expound.)

In the office of a football club owner, an angel and a demon toasted to life on Earth.

Before we understand what happened here, at the end of the world—or what should have been the end of the world if everything had gone according to the Great Plan—we must go back to what happened five months ago.

Read 'celestial games' on AO3

[little-eldritch-gremlin]

okay so I got spoiled on what the ending was for HN 2 (and normally I don’t care about getting spoiled) and it made me so confused so I went to see if it was true… and after being disappointed I made a thing to help me cope

[cpressmn]

one thing about me i will either be super fucking hyperfixated on something or i will bounce from one interest to the other in rapid succession i just go where the serotonin leads

[aesrot]

mixed feelings abt how my dreams work. it always has at least one pov switch, either starts from my own pov doing whatever, until I find a certain person and then bam, pov switches to them, and the whole dream shifts to tell a story about them. like in my dreams im some sort of storyteller who's looking for different stories to tell, but without interfering or getting involved in anyway.

which is cool except I never get a finished story. i either wake up and forget most of it or the pov switches before I get to see the end or their stories. most times it ends way before the apex of what's happening is reached. also very rarely I have what I assume it'd be a lucid dream, in which I realise I'm inside a dream, but before I can even do anything I wake up. it's probably bc I get so excited abt it that I wake myself up, but its cool to think that i shouldn't interfere in whatever story I'm witnessing, and if I'm aware of what's going on I'm gonna make my own decisions and actions, and change the course of whoever's story I'm watching, even when it's my own.

[cornfieldsrambles]

YOU HAVE PERMISSION TO INFODUMP PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT WIGGLY'S SIBLINGS???? THAT HE APPARENTLY HAS????

omg ok SO

Meet the Lords in Black. Charming, aren't they?

Yes, Wiggly does indeed have four brothers who all do different things, so I'll cover them one by one, in order of introduction (since we've already met each of them in Nightmare Time at least once). BTW Nightmare Time has a fuckton of lore in it that I won't go into here, so even though I am about to spoil significant parts of it for you, I do recommend watching it, it's really good and if there's enough interest they might make a third one!

(Also you might notice they're all in doll form in this picture. This is how we knew them up until NPMD introduced us to what I call their Tumblr sexyman forms. Which are rad as hell by the way.)

So you already know Wiggly. That little green fucker, Wiggog Y'Wrath, the Capitalist Cthulu who does uwu-speak and starts a cult by invading people's minds. This will become a bit of a reoccurring theme with these guys. He's also the only one to successfully start an apocalypse, and the only one to have attempted to birth himself into our reality. (Or is he? We'll get to that...) He does seem to have some kind of dominion over the other LiB, as whenever all five of them show up there's always emphasis placed on him, like in NPMD where he does most of the talking while his siblings occasionally butt in.

Now for Bliklotep. Blinky seems to have slightly lower-scale ambitions than Wiggly, but don't let that fool you. Eyeball Boi is still incredibly dangerous. He runs an amusement park, WatcherWorld, deep within the Hatchetfield Witchwood. But it's not for the amusement of the patrons. Oh no. It's for Blinky's own amusement. Once you step inside, every insecurity, every shred of potential conflict will be ripped to the forefront, turning people against each other to the point of trying to kill each other until he's fully infected their minds. It's implied that, if not all, but a significant chunk of the workers at WatcherWorld were once patrons before having their minds taken over by Blinky. He's also implied to be the thing in Trail To Oregon that Jack Bauer sees during his venom-induced hallucination, as Blinky is referred to as "The Watcher With 1,000 Eyes", which is exactly what JB says he sees? Making Blinky the only LiB to induce a Starkid crossover. My headcanon is that the Dikrats founded Hatchetfield. But regardless.

Next up on the roster is Tinky. T'noy Karaxis, the Time Bastard. You may be wondering about that one line in NPMD where he recognised Pete as a Spankoffski, and said he "could have the whole set in his toybox". Has Tinky gone after Pete's relatives?

Well. Um. You know Ted, right? Yeah, his name is Spankoffski. He's Pete's big brother. We actually got the surname reveal before the brother reveal, lol. And that's not the only reveal we got about Ted. Our boy Teddy Bear has this whole entire tragic backstory and it turns out he gets fucked over in literally every timeline! Isn't that fun?

So, to summarise an entire episode: Tinky makes travel fuckery happen, Ted wants to go back in time to fix his life, accidentally goes back to before the time machine was created and gets stuck in the past, literally. Tinky is watching and laughing at the whole thing, then shows up to blow Ted's brain to smithereens with his weird little magic box, the Bastard's Box, where he stores all the people he toys with. Anyway Ted eventually catches up with the present by aging, except now no one knows who he is, he's... actually I won't spoil that. But once he dies he ends up eternally trapped and tortured in the Bastard's Box. Yaaay.

Fast forward to Nightmare Time 2 and we get introduced to Nibbly, in possibly the most unexpected way imaginable. He's revealed to have been behind a whole episode literally right at the end of said episode, and even though it was kind of foreshadowed, it hits you like a freight train in the best way. Remember when I said Wiggly was the only one who tried to birth himself into reality? That was kind of a lie. Nibblenephim can sort of do that anyway. Every year, he can possess a bunch of carcasses and create a living form to walk the earth for one night. He also has a cult of followers who provide him with the carcasses, as well as a sacrifice to feed on. There's a little more to it, specifically with how the sacrifice is chosen, but again, I'm trying to spoil as little as possible. Go watch Nightmare Time. Nibbly also seems to have a "pig" motif, and his theme song, The Nibbly Ditty, is a banger, easily my favourite of the three LiB theme songs we've heard so far.

And finally, we are introduced to Pokotho, in the very last episode of NMT2.

Except no. We were formally introduced to Pokey there, yes, but we've seen his apocalypse already. Long before NPMD, before Nightmare Time, even before Black Friday.

Yeah, remember me saying that Wiggly was the only one to successfully start an apocalypse? That was also a lie! Pokey already did that, and he did it without ever showing his masked face. Remember The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals? The blue spores that came down in a meteor and turned everyone into singing zombies? That was Pokey's doing! That's his blue spores! That's his apocalypse!

This also provides an explanation for why blowing up the meteor didn't work. Emma and Hidgens were right about the hivemind thing, but wrong about the location of the central brain. It wasn't the meteor - the meteor was just the vessel which carried the spores to Earth. The central brain was sitting safely up in the Black and White, laughing as Paul blew himself to smithereens. The central brain was Pokey, the Singular Voice, the most uncompromising of his brothers. The one who hates every voice that is not his own, hence the hivemind and making all of his zombies speak in HIS voice.

Anyway in NMT2 he's happily collecting musical zombies by taking on a human form and infiltrating a fighting ring of superpowered children until he has enough to kickstart another apocalypse. (Don't question it, we're almost done). He also calls himself Otho, not Pokey, making him the only LiB to have two different abbreviations of his name. Hannah is also there (remember her? Lex's little sister?) and she is like incredibly important to this whole thing, she has a super powerful mind, but that's a whole other thing.

But I did mention Hannah for a reason. Because you said "Wiggly's SIBLINGS". And while the Lords in Black are always referred to as brothers, they do have one more sibling. A sister. A Queen in White. And her name is Webby.

Yep, Hannah's imaginary friend isn't imaginary, who could have guessed? She's benevolent, always trying her best to combat her brothers' antics, but given that there's one of her and five of them, this is a bit of an uphill battle. Webby doesn't have a full name that we know of, nor does she have a doll. We don't know much about her. And she may not be all-powerful - but then again, neither are her brothers.

Infodump concluded. Hope this helps, it was very fun to write.

[starlit-mansion]

maybe someday when i have money again (just bought plane tickets... oof), i will get a mettaton icon and just switch back and forth between deep-voiced pink robots depending on which fandom has a stronger grip on me

[a-nybodys]

why did everyone say that white lotus is a good show lmfao

every single gay character is predatory and they all die (minus the sad lonely lesbian who uses her position of power to try and get her younger subordinate to daye her)

[not-the-cheese]

one sentence summaries of every TMA episode

(1-60 i'll add more soon)

part 2 up!

world's most effective anti-smoking PSA

man DOES NOT open coffin. everyone claps.

woman is judgemental towards neighbor even though she has hobbies that are just as weird.

book makes multiple people fall off chair.

man finds bag of teeth and decides he absolutely needs to fuck around and find out.

worm sti.

there was a SCARY MAN in the WAR.

fuck this tree

well at least ted bundy was a great father :)

i'm like 55% sure vampires are real and i'm willing to take those odds

bitches be dying. you're next.

we kill this man because he made the soda too warm.

sorry ur husband's dead. maybe get some help.

Unbox with me ! (GONE WRONG)

hah i'm safe from this one because i have decided to Never Go Into a Cave Ever.

man is so annoying about this spider that even his cat can't be bothered

man's bully finds a book about a Bone Turner and subsequently begins turning people's bones.

this guy sucks at DIY home improvement

aw maybe this priest didn't do anything THAT bad!

oh fuck nevermind

THE SKY ATE MY SON.

the worms stole my identity. i haven't left the house in days.

man beats german children at game of bravery and wins a coin (he later loses this coin)

my ex boyfriend gets casted in the muppets and dies

sorry mom, i've abandoned jesus for a new religion : jesus in the dark.

tall squiggly and HANDsome

old man arm wrestles demon through door knob

the buzzfeed unsolved guys finally catch a ghost but it's their sound tech

immortality but at what cost

working at the big meat factory was so traumatizing it made me vegetarian

i go to america and get almost killed by a furry

well if you love that wasp nest so much why don't you MARRY it (and then she did)

antisocial boat crew bands together to exclude one guy from a midnight party. he dies from the rejection.

bone apple teeth

remember when that norwegian guy threw a tantrum about us not digging a hole? turns out we were right to not dig that hole.

babe come over my parents have taken ill and passed away

man fucks around and it costs him everything

HOMOPHOBIC CHINESE VASE

oh god oh fuck the worms are here

thank you for participating in worms! please rate your wormsperience from 1 to 10.

the wormsperience has left me deeply scarred. i'm going to get lost in a tunnel about it.

🎸music makes me loose control🎸

spooky stories to tell at the next police slumber party

child threatens to run away and join the circus one too many times, and now the circus has come to cash in.

these mosquitoes are mad sus

man frequents local barnes and noble and then dies(?) after liking a book too much.

realtor gets eaten by the backrooms twice. it's a terrible shame.

both me and this weird goth dude have an unsatisfying italy vacation

guy who turns people's bones gets a new job where he continues to turn people's bones.

man who should never be allowed to build prisons builds a prison.

Something Big Is In The Water.

what if u heard me about 15 feet behind you fumbling around and calling out ur name 😳 (and we were both prison guards)

i'm going to be honest i didn't retain anything from this episode except that this guy has the silliest old man voice ever

everybody hates the tax man, including these creepy taxidermy animals

hmmgh. ant house.

so turns out being only 55% sure that vampires are real in my career as a vampire hunter has had some consequences.

the only thing keeping you company in space is your abandonment issues

🎶 the snack that smiles back 🎶 (my husband!)

maybe the real treasure was the house siblings we encased in spider web along the way.

your dead brother wrote books about ancient myths and WHAT

Part 2

[cianfries-stuff]

Welcome, everyone, to my TED Talk. Today, we're diving into my humble top 3 most striking declarations of love from Dean to Sam so far.

3. Croatoan. Dean wanted Sam to infect him with the Croatoan virus so they could die together. I bet that if the doctor hadn’t come back two seconds later to free them, Dean would’ve cut himself on purpose and infected himself so that Sam wouldn’t have to do it once he lost control. At that point, all that was missing was George Michael’s Careless Whisper in the background, and they might as well have ended the series right there.

2. The siren. In the show, the siren transforms into the person you desire most in the world. For Dean, that person isn’t a lover, a girlfriend, or a wife—it’s a version of Sam who loves him more than he believes the real Sam does, and who’s as devoted to him as he is to Sam. In fact, what Dean wants the most is to be loved by his baby brother. I can't believe this is actually a canon event.

1. Dean’s heaven. When he gets to heaven in season 5, he relives the memory of when he and Sam shot off fireworks for the 4th of July. This moment gives us a glimpse into his deepest feelings:

Dean has always felt this way about Sam.

His affection hasn’t changed over the years—from the time that memory took place to his arrival in heaven, despite all they’ve been through: demon blood, fights, trying to kill and save each other repeatedly. What he felt back then as a kid is exactly what he feels now as an adult, except now it comes with the bittersweet nostalgia of knowing it’ll never come back.

Dean’s idea of heaven doesn’t center on his own happiness—it’s about Sam’s. And it’s even better if he is the reason Sam is happy.

And if that’s not enough, Dean openly admits how painful it is to realize that he doesn’t even appear in Sam’s heaven. I think we can safely call this moment a not-as-subtle-as-dean-thinks declaration of love and devotion. Interestingly, in that episode, we see a string of Sam’s memories but only one of Dean’s—and Sam doesn’t even witness it. It really makes you wonder what other memories might make up Dean’s heaven…

One more thing: that scene reminds me of the one in Edward Scissorhands where Winona Ryder’s character dances in the snow. It’s fascinating to compare the two, because one scene should depict brotherly love while the other shows romantic love, yet to me, they seem almost identical. And honestly, I think Dean and Edward have a lot in common—but that’s a topic for another TED Talk.

So, to wrap things up: Dean is madly in love with his little brother. Thank you all for listening.

I'm only up to season 5, so this is a partial ranking. Stay tuned for more rants!

[singaroundelay]

I will never write a better line than “show the class what the rest says”.

And BELLY.

Trent's sitting at their kitchen table, flicking through emails and notifications while his cup of tea grows colder by the minute. It's late and he should be getting ready for bed but damnit, he needs to finish a few more things for the day before he can curl up with Ted—

"I can't believe she went through with it."

He picks his head up — *fuck*. He's seen Ted in just about every state of undress over these past few months. Why does *this* have his mouth going dry? Those faded blue KC Royals sweatpants slung low on his hips — arms crossed in front of his chest, hiding *something* (AKA, whatever is on the bottom half of the shirt).

Trent's unabashedly staring while he waits for his brain to reboot. Anyone who thinks rockhard abs are the peak of masculine form have never laid their head on Ted's belly and fallen asleep.

"Who went through with what?" Trent's asking, trying to make out the rest of the words behind Ted's forearms.

"Keeley. Though I think this might've come from Roy — hard to tell these days. They're a bad influence on each other."

Trent motions a finger at Ted. "Share with the class what the rest says."

Ted drops his arms.

A slow smile spreads across Trent's face. "Prove it."

- ficlet by my beloved Moe @singaroundelay

Live Trent reaction below the cut

[sarkos]

Student debt also largely didn’t exist in America before the Reagan Revolution. It was created by Republicans here in the 1980s — intentionally — and if we can overcome Republican opposition, we can intentionally end it here and join the rest of the world in once again benefiting from an educated populace. Forty years on from the Reagan Revolution, student debt has crippled three generations of young Americans: over 44 million people carry the burden, totaling a $2+ trillion drag on our economy that benefits nobody except the banks earning interest on the debt and the politicians they pay off. But that doesn’t begin to describe the damage student debt has done to America since Reagan, in his first year as governor of California, ended free tuition at the University of California and cut state aid to that college system by 20 percent across-the-board. After having destroyed low income Californians’ ability to get a college education in the 1970s, Reagan then took his anti-education program national as president in 1981. When asked why he’d taken a meat-axe to higher education and was pricing college out of the reach of most Americans, he said, much like Ted Cruz might today, that college students were “too liberal” and America “should not subsidize intellectual curiosity.” It was the 1980s version of today’s “war on woke”: Reagan hated college students. On May 1, 1970, Governor Reagan announced that students protesting the Vietnam war across America were “brats,” “freaks” and “cowardly fascists,” adding, as The New York Times noted at the time: “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement!” Four days later four were dead at Kent State, having been murdered by National Guard riflemen using live ammunition against anti-war protesters. Before Reagan became president, states paid 65 percent of the costs of colleges, and federal aid covered another 15 or so percent, leaving students to cover the remaining 20 percent with their tuition payments. It’s why when I attended college in the late 1960s — before Reagan — I could pay my tuition working a weekend job as a DJ at a local radio station and washing dishes at Bob’s Big Boy restaurant on Trowbridge Road in East Lansing.

The real reason Republicans oppose efforts to cancel student debt - Raw Story