#i also live in a very hot place

[eybefioro]

For 50 Questions Just Because: 47

47: Do you like to go on walks?

Eh. It depends. Sometimes it's good for my mind, I tend to just stay at home when I have time.

[al-luviec]

id like to thank ninjago episode snake jaguar for everything but nothing all at the same time

[moonkhao]

hi.

[lord-squiggletits]

On the MegOP fandom trend of saying "Optimus should apologize to Megatron"

(Speaking specifically for IDW1, though it applies to a lot of MegOP especially ones that do continuity soup with heavy reference to IDW1)

I was talking to a friend in DMs and they mentioned a common headcanon/fanfic trope that I also concurred with, and both of us said it's something that bothers us: a common take in the MegOP fandom goes basically along the lines of "If Optimus had just apologized to Megatron, the war would've ended" (or other variants including "if he'd tried harder to understand Megatron/work in collaboration with him").

And firstly, this is incorrect for a number of reasons:

There were attempts at peace negotiations during the war, but they fell through. So Optimus WAS trying to work with Megatron to the point of participating in formal diplomatic meetings.

Optimus tried multiple times on page to convince Megatron to just stop fighting and work with him for peace (Autocracy, Chaos Theory) that Megatron rejected. Given that these on-page examples take place at the start of the war and at the end of the war respectively, it makes sense that Optimus asking Megatron for collaboration is something he was trying/willing to do the entire time. So again, Optimus was always willing AND ATTEMPTING to work with Megatron and find a joint solution

Even before the war when Optimus was still Orion, he was very explicitly inspired by Megatron's writing and names Megatron as one of the people who "opened his eyes" to the wrongs of Cybertronian society. So how is it that people claim "the war went on for too long because Optimus never tried to understand Megatron" when OP literally named Megatron as one of his biggest idols, thus implying that OP does understand Megatron's ideals

But the primary purpose of this post wasn't to defend Optimus, actually. Even though I personally think Optimus did plenty (dare I say, everything) to try to end the war, there are some who may still think otherwise, so instead of arguing about whether Optimus did "enough", or who should apologize to whom, or who "deserves the blame" for starting/continuing the war, I'd actually rather talk about this:

No matter who is most "to blame" for the war, it's my firm belief that neither Megatron nor Optimus would even expect/demand the other to apologize to them at all.

On Megatron's side, he would never seek to judge Optimus negatively for the decisions to the point of saying "you wronged me, apologize." Whether it's evil Megatron who doesn't care about atrocities and revels in an opportunity to expose Optimus as a hypocrite, or post-war/Autobot Megatron who knows that his own evil actions are irredeemable, the idea of Megatron judging Optimus and demanding an apology for the war specifically strikes me as out-of-character. Why would Megatron demand or even want an apology from Optimus when Megatron knows fully well that he has his own sins to bear, he prolonged the war for his own selfish/material gain, and that he is responsible for an untold amount of suffering? Demanding an apology would imply that Megatron sees himself as the wronged party and Optimus as the wrongdoer, but by the end of the war, Megatron is too aware of his own part in the war to ever demand such a thing of Optimus. Even if he DID think that Optimus was "equally to blame" for the war (which he doesn't/wouldn't, btw), Megatron's own feelings of guilt would prevent him from trying to seek the petty satisfaction of the moral high ground or making Optimus beg for his forgiveness.

Additionally, Megatron knows Optimus very well as a person: he knows that the position of leadership is full of "loneliness [and] agonizing self-doubt" for Optimus (Chaos Theory) and that "when Optimus hurts others, he hurts himself" (MTMTE). Another reason that Megatron wouldn't demand nor want an apology from Optimus is because Megatron knows Optimus so well that he already knows that being a war leader fills Optimus with immense guilt and suffering. Given that Megatron knows about Optimus' self-doubt and guilt, why would he even need an apology when he already knows how much Optimus regrets the war and desperately wishes/wished for it to end?

Then, as established in the previous paragraphs, Optimus is too full of guilt for his part in the war (both before it started and in being unable to stop it sooner) to demand an apology from Megatron. Again, demanding an apology would put Optimus in an implied position of moral superiority and/or victimhood, but Optimus doesn't see himself as morally superior or as a victim (or rather, he sees himself as being responsible for these bad things happening and internalizes this as a duty to do better/fix wrongdoings). In other words, Megatron and Optimus both share this view of themselves and each other: Their hands are so dirty, and they both feel such guilt over this, and they know each other well enough to know that the other feels this way as well. Because both of them feel blame for the war and are acutely aware of their own flaws/part in suffering, both of them feel far too responsible for the war happening for them to ever blame their archnemesis for "not trying harder" or "being responsible for the war."

Hell, if you even look at the socio-political climate of Cybertron before the war started, neither Megatron nor Optimus were the ones who put this conflict into motion. The corrupt legacy of the Primes, Functionism, class issues-- all of these things existed before Megatron and Optimus did. Even once they started doing things like writing about social issues (M) or fighting against the Senate (OP), both of them were "underlings" in sense that they weren't leaders:

Megatron's writings may have inspired the Decepticon movement, but that movement existed as an independent entity with its own leaders and speakers long before Megatron became the "official" ruler of the Decepticons. He wasn't even the leader of the 'Cons until he took control of the gladiator arena and the nonviolent sections of the Decepticons were (presumably) subsumed into the underground, exploitative battle culture that Megatron created.

Optimus-as-Orion was a police officer to start, but even once he started going against the Senate, he mainly worked in collaboration with others like Senator Shockwave and Zeta (later Zeta Prime), who he either saw as his idols or who were literally superior to him in rank due to government/military structures.

So with this in mind, even from a social level, while Megatron and Optimus may have been "catalysts" of a sort that caused the war to escalate to an outright planetary/galactic level, the scenario is too complex to solely lay the blame for the war at either of their feet. I'm not confident in saying that Megatron/Optimus would explicitly think of this when talking to each other, but what I'm trying to say is that M/OP were just catalysts in a long chain of brewing tension that exploded into a war. Even if one could claim that one of them "started" or "escalated" the war, the social issues that caused the war and the positions of power that allowed them to become leaders in the first place were falling into place before either of them actually BECAME leaders.

In other words, this shared fate of being the final reaction that exploded a societal conflict into outright war... Megatron and Optimus both have that in common. And because of this, I really don't think either of them would even think to ask the other to apologize because they're both in such similar positions, with such similar feelings of guilt and responsibility, that they understand each other's feelings without words. To demand an apology would be akin to taking that shared vulnerability/guilt and stepping on it, attempting to claim that one is right/superior and the other is wrong/inferior, and that the inferior one needs to grovel and take responsibility for the bad things that happened.

[sometimeswritingsometimesdying]

i've had a vision of aiden and black magic by little mix and now i'm knee deep in a modern magic au where aiden sells cheesy love potions by being hot (it's a scam)

[lwcina]

the fact that the us government can continue funding and arming a genocide despite massive public opposition really highlights how inherently non-democratic the united states is

[thefootnotes]

maybe it's time for me to move on.............

[ladyluscinia]

I really cannot make it clear enough that the only people who think Izzy Hands has a massively outsized following in the OFMD fandom are people who aren't paying attention and probably get annoyed by every positive mention of Izzy Hands.

Those of us who do post about him / read fics about him / enthusiastically ship him / whatever are far more likely to quip about how there are whole dozens of us in our corner because that's a hell of lot closer to the reality. But if plain statistics on fics or repeatedly pointing out that tumblr notes are the same people hitting that same reasonable average of double digit reblogs... Idk. Maybe a more descriptive exercise would make this clear?

I'm sorting AO3 by most kudos, looking at OFMD fics with Izzy's character tag (aka the one place he really outstrips the other side characters in numbers). A few observations:

Izzy's name appears in a fic summary for the first time on Fic 6, with "...and Izzy getting disrespected several times." Not much of a mention.

First Izzy/OC ship is Fic 7 (Hell or High Water - a title I recognize but have never read)

First Izzy/Other Character is Fic 17, with Izzy/Lucius, which also appears to be the first Izzy focused fic

Fic 22 is the first appearance of BlackHands as part of a SteddyHands fic

46 Fics in we get the first one Not Technically Ship Tagged with BlackBonnet (a Lucius/Izzy with a "background blackbonnet" tag), and at Fic 63 we get the first Actually Not Ship Tagged with BlackBonnet (a Stizzy fic about bonding over hating Calico Jack).

I think Fic 215 is the first mention of Sam Bellamy? I'm trying to find something specific and it's taking a while...

Oh wait there it is! 216 Fics by Kudos into the "Israel Hands" character tag (out of 7785 total) we have the first BlackHands fic that doesn't have Stede involved. Prior to this there were a lot of BlackBonnet fics, and notable numbers of SteddyHands and Izzy/Lucius. Hell we even hit Izzy/Frenchie and Izzy/Captain Flint before getting to this point.

I'm just really trying to illustrate here that for all the snide accusations and defensive worrying I see about all the sinister Izzy fans trying to make the whole show and fandom about him, "Izzy" content (which this ought to demonstrate is hardly all about Izzy) is just not that overwhelming. Izzy content that excludes or ignores the Revenge crew even less so. Like, run this exercise with any side character and you'll get pretty similar results - seeing as the dominance of BlackBonnet above all else is still ridiculous by fandom standards - but that's kinda the point.

Izzy is a popular side character, which is a thing that tends to happen when side characters get speaking time, characterization, camera focus, exploration of their current and potential relationships (conflict counts), etc. You know, things that Izzy gets a bunch of as an antagonist? Izzy having more content than Oluwande is not really more weird than Oluwande having more content than Buttons or Wee John? I'm not going to pretend that fandom spaces don't drop the ball on content for characters of color pretty often, but the tagged content breakdown in this fandom is not far off from what you would expect by character descriptions alone.

Like the list goes Cool Protagonist / Love Interest -> POV Protagonist -> Live-In Primary Antagonist -> Side Fun Guy with a Death Cliffhanger / Fanfic Gap Ending -> Side Pirate Assassin with a Subplot -> Assassin's Side Love Interest... I mean, maybe Lucius is a bit higher than Jim even for what "Lucius in the walls" fics can account for, or Lucius / Izzy have a bit bigger of a lead than they would without white identifying bias, but that's like? Unprovable speculation at best???

Not remotely comparable to, like, "Star Wars Sequel Trilogy" where Kylo Ren is 46.3% of fics while the two non-white protagonists are only in 35.7% (Poe) or 29% (Finn). Like Poe is technically behind Hux's 35.9%, which is absurd for a secondary antagonist no matter how fun I found his blatant evil. It's like if Chauncey Badminton was neck and neck with Jim or even Edward. That is a content percentage you should question, and the numbers might be worse in "Star Wars - All Media Types" (though Kylo does at least lose to Obi Wan).

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

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[herawell]

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[aria0fgold]

My cold got worse... I can't breathe much again orz... We stay losing I guess... I blame all of this on that blinding rat.

[hiddenworldofmary]

giant fucking moth left something on my window net how do i safely burn down my entire apartment

[krystaldeath]

Thinking about my mom’s high school friend who was gothic and STILL is apparently (have seen hs pics of her, not of her currently, though I SO want to)

[lesbianlenas]

was playing ds3 today and ok. i pledged to a covenant bc the lady who u talk to to join the covenant was really hot (pictured below) and i got summoned to another player’s game to help them fight someone or smth idk i was just vibing. anyway point is i hope they could see my character name which is cweampuff bc it would be very funny to me if they did. sadly they could not see her beautiful face bc it was covered by a helmet (also pictured below)

Figure 1A. Yorshka from Dark Souls 3 as she appears in the game.

Figure 1B. Official character art of Yorska where you can see she has a tail. I was not aware of the tail when I pledged, but I feel it is worth mentioning.

Figure 2A. My Dark Souls 3 character, cweampuff, of whom i spent an hour beautifully crafting to create the perfect face.

Figure 2B. A candid picture of my Dark Souls 3 character, cweampuff. Shared because I love her.

[team-frightfur]

(Theyre also blushing but i cant figure out why). Both Kenzan and Johan are more focused on Judai tho, which could either be bc theyre both gay for him or cause this takes place post s4 (so theyre happy to see Jou enjoying life again after his depression). Then you have Fubuki and Asuka in the corner. Fubuki is doing his standout uncoordinated cloudcuckoolander bit by not wearing blue/black/white/yellow like everyone else (get with the program, man!) Instead he's going for that... christmas ensemble? With the rare red....tho now I see it, there's also judais pants and the coke bottles and the red cups and oh my god it was a red/blue/green/yellow colour scheme all along. ANYWAY, while Asuka is more serious with her modest clothing and walking boots, she has this small smile. Like, clearly she's not super duper ecstatic over his dumbass ukelele serenades, but she'll humour him today of all days, not just because it's a special day but because she looooves having her brother back.

Final verdict: this pic honestly just gets better the more you look at it. It makes me wish i had synesthesia just so I could taste the cozy hot chocolate vibes. Like its truly utterly immaculate. Kudos to you for all time!!!

[this-doesnt-endd]

Theres one local theatre in my town thats at the end of the line of the bus route and theyll do throwback movies and a lot of the times its 80s movies and with the new 4k version of risky business on the horizion i desperatly need them to show it