#i don't make up the rules

[in-tero]

fu xuan: becomes the general of the luofu

yuan and bailu in a 0,001 sec:

yuan: what time is it now?

bailu: time to get out of xianzhou 😎

[thyme-in-a-bubble]

sometimes a day just has to be spent in procreate and canva.

[egophiliac]

still ruminating over Lost In the Book With Spooky Skeletons Part 1, so here's a selection of some of my favorite little bits! (...some more loosely paraphrased than others) (I just feel like Idia has no room to criticize in general, okay)

anyway, I'm sure we're just going to have a fun time celebrating Halloween and nothing bad is going to happen whatsoever! :)

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

finally at that age where i'm thinking i should get a tattoo. not bc i feel strongly about it, just seems like a waste not to. i've got so much skin i'm not using

[hinamie]

siren!megumi concept sheet i whipped up in a single-minded fever state fr @uriekukistan

[tfp-is-my-lifeblood-lol]

I saw a Youtube comment talking about how, in the episode "Crosscross," Silas was able to track Jack's location and personal info via social media, so why didn't the Decepticons just do THAT all this time, so they could track the humans/Autobot base?

Then all the commenters agreed that it's because the CAPTCHA "I am not a robot" thing actually works on Decepticons, because they are, in fact robots.

I love this and it shall now be my crack headcanon.

(In all seriousness, I actually don't think it's a plot hole. I think it's a great example of the Decepticons' characterization.

The real reason Decepticons never tried social media tracking is because they're too proud to use human technology. To them, it's considered "inferior."

I'm fascinated by the idea that, if they hadn't underestimated human technology, they could have found all these Autobot secrets, like the location of their base and humans, EASILY. But they never bothered, because "oh, that's worthless human tech."

Keep in mind, in one episode, Starscream actually did explore the human internet, and almost located Bumblebee that way, but the others made fun of him for it (the tap-dancing monkey incident) so we can see they don't respect it enough to give it their time.

It also kinda shows how MECH, to some extent, has an advantage against the Autobots because they're all humans, and are therefore better aquatinted with Earth. Even Airachnid didn't realize social media would be a useful weapon until Silas explained it to her. The Decepticons are obviously more powerful since they're giant aliens, but MECH uses their humanity and Earth knowledge as their greatest strength. It's kinda neat.

[zephyrchama]

Fun fact I just invented: the Royal Academy of Diavolo gave its uniforms little half capes so that shy human exchange students can hide under them. Just walk right up to someone at school and stick your head under their cape. That's what they're there for.

[karuinekom]

when everyone thought frenchie would secretly bring lucius food as he hid in the walls, but then we got frenchie sneaking izzy medicines, and something in the universe suddenly shifted.

[athanmis]

welly belly🤭

[betweenlands]

i need you all to listen to me. you know how youtube will sometimes randomly recommend videos with like, 58 views? sometimes the stars align and the fucked up algorithm does something right.

go out there and watch a smaller mcyter. sub-100k at the bare minimum, but ideally under 10k and even more ideally under 1000 subs. bonus points if they have in the low 100s to under 100 subscribers. watch whatever video you got recommended. watch another of theirs if you vibe with it. pick a specific series of theirs that you really like. subscribe to them.

now. this is really important. leave comments on the video or series you like. do a running gag if it helps remind you to comment. and more important than that: pick a story they're telling and engage with it. draw silly fanart even if you don't have any place to share it with them. write a tiny little story and keep it all to yourself. hype them up to your friends. get excited about this person's videos. if they do have a discord or whatever, send fanart, get involved in their community, et cetera, just --

i cannot stress enough how good it feels to have at least one tiny niche thing that's your special thing. it rules. the more you can get the better, in all honesty it doesn't even have to be an mcyter it could be an itch.io visual novel or something, just pick something obscure you stumble onto and hold it close and let it tell its story.

there will always be something there.

[stealingpotatoes]

hands you all this cal to announce i’ve FINALLY finished fallen order (by which i mean i finally picked it up again after those couple hours i played a few months ago and then finished the whole game in 2 days lol)

[eemryss]

YES THEY DO!! ༼;´༎ຶ ۝ ༎ຶ༽

[indigovigilance]

The Final Fifteen is about Terry Pratchett's Death

read on Ao3

The final fifteen is obviously a major plot point, and serves a role in a story that was written long before Terry Pratchett was ever diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. But the scene itself wasn’t written until just a few years ago, during the writing of Season 2. In fact, the scene came about during a park bench conversation between Neil Gaiman and John Finnemore.

Others have noted that the non-romantic kiss that signals the story moving into the third act is a Neil Gaiman staple. The function of such a kiss, from Gaiman’s perspective, is to communicate.

In 2023 we are seeing a lot of stories written by men, for men, about men who are best friends and discover that their friendship can go deeper than the norms of society would usually allow; that platonic and romantic love are not so far apart, and perhaps the better word for a relationship that can be described this way is intimacy.

Neil Gaiman has made it clear in interviews that his friendship with Terry Pratchett was deeply intimate. They began collaborating on what would become Good Omens in the 1980’s, endured a tumultuous experience together through the first publication, wherein Neil offered to martyr himself on behalf of Terry if the book failed, and then spent the better part of two decades touring the world, meeting the people who loved their work. Neil would even off-handedly remark that Terry’s fans were so cheerful, and Neil’s seemed like they were ready to kill themselves; wouldn’t it be nice if they got married? From the outside, it looks very much as if Terry was Aziraphale-coded, and Neil was Crowley-coded, working together in an unexpected partnership to make the world a little bit more tolerable for the humans inhabiting it. I am not conjecturing that Neil and Terry had romantic inclinations the way their fictional characters do, but I think it is fair to say that their opposites-attract intimacy became an important part of who each of them were.

In 2007 Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer’s. As the disease progressed, he began to lose himself, and knew that the person he used to be was slipping away. He wanted to end his life on his own terms, and die as himself, but England did not and still does not allow for voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide. He advocated for the right to die but never achieved it, and ultimately succumbed to the disease in 2015. Neil Gaiman has spoken a lot on the topic of death, and one answer of his that resonated with me reads:

Mostly it feels terrible. It even feels terrible when it’s someone who has been in a lot of pain for a long time or has not really been there for a long time and you know that Death has in some ways been a blessing: suddenly you are mourning the whole person. 

It doesn’t get easier as you age. It gets stranger. The point where you realise how many people you used to know and like who aren’t there any longer, and you cannot talk to them or see them or laugh with them is painful in a way that I had never expected. The first time that someone you had a romantic relationship with dies and you realise that there had been moments both of you shared and now you are the sole custodian of those moments and one day you will be gone and they will be lost forever is peculiarly strange and hard. 

~~~

The entire show is seeded with references to Terry Pratchett, but the most important one is the one that’s missing. Neil Gaiman cameoed as a sleeping moviegoer in S1E4, but a long time ago, he and Terry had discussed cameoing as sushi restaurant-goers, because sushi was weirdly prominent in the book. That cameo would have been in S1E1. But when it came time to do it, Neil couldn’t. Not without Terry. 

Neil: I was gonna say our location is a Chinese restaurant we’d had turned into a sushi restaurant. So Terry and I, Terry Pratchett and I, had a standing… not even a standing joke, just a standing plan, that we were going to have sushi - there was going to be a scene in Good Omens where sushi was eaten and we were gonna be extras, we were gonna sit in the background, eating sushi while it was done. And I was so looking forward to this and, so I wrote this scene with it being sushi, even though Terry was gone, with that in mind and I thought: Oh, I’ll sit and I’ll eat lots of sushi as an extra, this will be my scene as an extra, I’ll just be in the background. And then, on the day, or a couple of days before, I realized that I couldn’t do it.

Douglas: You never told me this before either. I might have pushed you into doing it, had I known. I think you were right not to tell me.

Neil: I was keeping it to me self ‘cause I was always like: Oh, maybe I’ll be… this will be my cameo. And then I couldn’t. I was just so sad, ‘cause Terry wasn’t there. And it was probably the day that I missed Terry the most of all of the filming - it was just this one scene ‘cause it was written for Terry and all of the sushi meals we’d ever had and all of the strange way that sushi ran through Good Omens.

~~~

In the Final Fifteen, it is clear that Crowley and Aziraphale want to stay together. They love each other. They each know that the other loves them. There’s nothing that needs to be said, no convincing that their bond is true and real and precious.

But Aziraphale has to go to Heaven, and Crowley cannot follow him there.

I cannot speculate what it must have been like for Neil to endure losing a friend who, though I’m sure he desperately wanted to still be in his life, he also knew that life had become a burden to him, and grieved that Terry was not able to choose the time and manner of his departure from this Earth. This sort of complex grief, we fan-ficcers know, is the kind that is often best processed through story-telling. 

I think that what we see Crowley going through in the Final Fifteen, alongside its importance to the story arc of Good Omens overall, is Neil processing his grief at losing his friend Terry Pratchett, and even the kiss, that violent, terrible, awful kiss, was the symbolic representation of Neil saying goodbye.

[sassypantsjaxon]

Listen. I know most of the earlier one piece movies aren't really canon, but I am obsessed with the implications of Saga in the Cursed Holy Sword, because he really adds a layer to Zoro's relationships with his rivals.

Okay. First, there's Kuina. His first rival. The one he can never beat. The promise to become the greatest. Untouchable, indestructible, until she isn't. Wado Ichimonji.

Then there's Saga. His next rival. They're more equally balanced. They're both orphans. There's an understanding there. A more even footing that he didn't have with Kuina. A gifted short sword instead of an inherited katana.

And Sanji. The proof of Zoro's rule of three. Twice over, in fact, third rival, third son. Never gives Zoro an inch in a fight, but doesn't hesitate to give him food afterwards. He doesn't fight with a sword, so there's no blade shared between them. Instead there's a much heavier promise.

Kuina dies. Saga dies. Both so close to Zoro, and he couldn't even do anything. Of course Zoro's worried when Sanji boards the sea train by himself. Of course he pushes Sanji out of the way at Thriller Bark. Of course he's angry with Sanji when he runs off to Whole Cake.

Zoro's already mourned his first two best friends rivals. Does he really have to go through that again?

Maybe Kuina wouldn't have fallen if Zoro had never asked her to fight him. Maybe if Zoro had been a little better he could have saved Saga. Maybe Zoro will have to kill Sanji himself.

[shiningbean]

Hello M*rvel are you going to give me the full photo of Agatha in Edwardian fashion or do I have to do everything around here myself?

The ref of course:

[sillyfudgemonkeys]