#i suppose i could just. sleep

[mageofcolors]

i was like "i dont have to go to sleep at 8:30 today! yahoo!!" but now it's 8:30 and im sleepy

[madbard]

Thinking about how the Stan twins were both taught from a young age that life is a matter of transactions. How they were valued only for the money they could bring their family, and how this shaped their lives in such different ways.

Ford was the intelligent one, and this made him valuable. He knew what he had to offer. He knew he was important. (He had to be. Experience had shown him that love was conditional. He had to earn it. He had to be enough.) When Bill Cipher approached him, he confirmed everything Ford wanted so desperately to believe about himself. Imagine that sense of excitement, of accomplishment, of pride and power and relief. Imagine having that final, unshakeable source of external validation - that this being that knew everything and could have chosen anyone, chose you. Imagine knowing exactly what you could do to please this being and, with the understanding that love is conditional, knowing that you could fulfill the requirements for that love. Imagine knowing exactly how to ensure you would be loved, not just by that being but by the family you uplifted and the future you created. All you had to do was satisfy your own curiosity… all you had to do was build a portal. Is it any wonder that Ford fell for Bill’s tricks?

Then we have Stan, the failure. If love was transactional, he could never pay the fee. He knew people only helped you if you had something to offer. And he had nothing to offer, so why would anyone ever help him? Why would anyone care? Of course he didn’t fall for Bill. He couldn’t. When Bill promised gifts and power and happiness, how could Stan believe a word he said? In a world without altruism, such promises could never be trusted. There was always a price to be paid - and Stan had never been able to pay it.

And so the end of the world was triggered and then averted, all because one brother thought he could earn the world’s love, while the other knew he would never earn anything good.

A+ parenting, Filbrick. Truly.

[ysabellious]

thought about the frog show again at 4am

[vaggieslefteye]

CHARLIE MAGNE from HAZBIN HOTEL (2019): Pilot - "That's Entertainment" ↳ "So, I've been thinking: Isn't there a more humane way to hinder overpopulation here in Hell? Perhaps we can create an alternative way to change souls through... redemption?"

[mabaris]

“men are always willing to believe two things about a woman: one, that she is weak, and two, that she finds him attractive.”

truly insane to have a character say this and then make them actually attracted to men in any capacity. btw.

[buwheal]

I wanna give him a blanket. Can it maybe just materialize outta nowhere?

(I know fabric wrinkles suck to draw. You don't gotta 😵)

[moongothic]

WAIT WAIT WAIT HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE

So normally we only get fullblown, extended and dedicated flashbacks for heroic characters in One Piece, the characters who we're meant to root for. The literal only TRUE exception we've had to this rule was Big Mom's flashback. Even fucking Doflamingo's flashback was tied to Law and Rosinante's

So the fact that we haven't gotten a single fucking GLIMPSE at Crocodile's backstory is?!?

Like sure, we haven't gotten like a Moria flashback, but you know, he literally told us all we needed to know himself, AND we got to see glimpses of him in the Wano flashbacks. Arlong didn't get a flashback of his own, but he did get to cameo in Fisher Tiger's flashback. And Rob Fucking Lucci got a flashback that was 6 whooping panels long

BUT CROCODILE?? Not only do we know almost Fuck All about his story, but also have never gotten as much as a glimpse at it? But his backstory has been HINTED and TEASED at multiple times??

GUYS. FELLAS

Like. I am SURE the "Full Backstories for Heroes Only" rule is going to get broken again, but with Imu and Blackbeard already there just BEGGING to have their beans spilled, can we even be sure Sir Fucking Crocodile is somehow going to become A Villain So Dangerous To The Narrative that he ALSO should also recieve a Full Fucking Backstory?? For his Nefarious Schemes?? AT THIS POINT??

Y'all

I think it's more likely Oda's been saving up Croc's backstory because it might just completely recontextualize his entire character

[nymphilily]

"The Knight Of Dawn being a near exact copy of Silver is lazy!" You absolutely think the curtains are just blue, don't you?

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

I am exhausted, good heavens.

[kutiekirby]

Js had a cute(??) idea to help cope with ii17

What if this was all just young Mephone playing pretend with his dad (who loves him) and Mephone made the contestants as little figurines and “hired” cobs to play the big bad guy and all the “dramatic” scenes are just silly as hell and it was all just them two sitting on the floor on Mephone 4s room playing with action figures

Like for example. The scene where cobs tells life and suitcase they aren’t real is just cobs acting and looking down at Mephone 4 holding two figurines in his little hands. And all the Meeple stuff is just things cobs made. The AirTags are regular size, he made a smaller model of the Mephone X for the sake of playing along. Mephone 4 and cobs sing along to The Future Is So Yesterday. What if inanimate insanity was just a father and his beloved, creative, maybe autistic son playing pretend.

[moominpopzz]

how long do y’all think Ashe had to sleep in Mark’s bed with him after what happened to her mom. How often do you think Mark would try to put Ashe to bed and she’d run to him minutes after he leaves her room and begged him not to leave her. How often do you think Mark would hold her while she slept, staying awake for nights on end so that when she woke up screaming and sobbing from nightmares he could be awake to comfort her.

Do you think she moved back to her own room on her own or that she got to an age where Mark slowly started making her go back to her room instead. Do you think he’d sit in there and wait until she fell asleep or with his work one day he just stopped letting her crawl into bed with him. Do you think there were nights where when she could only fall asleep in his bed he’d carry her back to her room and she’d wake up, alone, in the room that damn book was in, do you think she’d just scream until Mark ran in to check on her?

[sysig]

Delusions (Patreon)

"Could I have your hand, sir?" Max didn't move, which Dexter was, sadly, getting used to.

"Sir?" Max jerked, then turned and stared at him, lost and blank. "Your hand, please."

Max's hand lifted shakily, and he laid it gently in Dexter's upturned palm. Dexter gave a quick and quiet "thank you," then turned it over in his own hand, observing him closely.

Too closely - his knuckles were rough and his fingernails were dull and cracked in places. His once-soft, not-a-day-in-his-life-subjected-to-hard-labour hands were now, already, toughened and split and scarred in places, especially the heel of his palm. He turned it over again, this time to stop looking so intensely. He had only wanted to give it a cursory glance to begin with.

"Do you know what I see, sir?" he asked as conversationally as he could manage, running his fingers along Max's abused flesh. He seemed to be at least half paying attention, his eye gazing down between them, and he'd occasionally twitch, encouragingly Dexter thought. He seemed to want to curl around him, then stopped and shook, his hand squeezing into a fist. Dexter coaxed him back out, encouraged him to hold himself lightly.

"What do you see?" He was almost startled by Max actually continuing their conversation, that happened so rarely now, shaking and quiet as it was. He took a deep breath, was he really going to do this?

"I see a hand, with five fingers." Max remained quiet, though his brow curled, and a guarded look came into his eye, though he still wasn't looking at Dexter. He felt a pang of guilt, but he had to try. "What do you see?"

Max's eye unfocused and began to water. He looked up, but not enough to reach Dexter's gaze in return, instead staring through his chest, and he felt just as hollow and empty as he must look to him.

"Do you take me for a fool, DAX?" Quiet and as close to angry as he'd heard since they'd been here.

No, not angry.

Betrayed.

He swallowed down the stinging lump at the back of his throat. He had to put on a brave face, had to keep his composure if he wanted Max to get better. That was the only thing he wanted, more than anything.

"Of course not, sir. Genuinely, what do you see?"

Max pulled his hand away and turned his body, his bandaged side facing Dexter. Shutting him out, pointedly. Dexter's empty hand curled into a fist, he was no better.

"Please, don't..." Max took a shallow, shuddering breath, and several beats before he spoke again, even quieter. "Don't ridicule me." Dexter could hear his breath catch, and he wanted nothing more than for this all to just stop.

"Sir, I didn't-"

"I've had enough of that." He shook his head stiffly, the action strange and wrong, like he had forgotten how. He stilled, his head turned even further away. "More than enough."

[icewindandboringhorror]

Some (late) holiday photos of the boye~!

[thegreatyin]

to put a long story short: at the end of ffxiv's base game, literally Directly before the beginning of its first expansion (heavensward), there is a series of quests and story arcs that eventually snowball into an hour-long cutscene in which the entire thing comes to a head in the literal worst way possible. like, "the hero's plans all go horribly wrong and several major characters die onscreen, with others going missing (presumed dead), eventually culminating in the player character being framed for the murder of the leader of a nation-state and being Literally Forced To Flee The Country" wrong.

heavensward leads directly on from this plotline. you arrive at the major location of the expansion in the midst of seeking asylum whilst being a wanted criminal everywhere else in the world right now. it's like. A Whole Thing. the game makes such a big deal out of it all. the fandom does as well. and for good reason!! it's a really good moment!!!!!!

and then roughly 1/3rds of the way into heavensward you find out that literally none of it mattered. nobody important actually died, no changes were actually made to the status quo, and nothing comes of being literally kicked out of the country for (what is implied to be) several in-universe weeks, if not months. None Of It Mattered. None.

TLDR; the bloody banquet is a major, exciting, and very infamous twist that seems like it's going to segway into a MAJOR upheaval of the status quo and some really intriguing ramifications for the story as a whole... and then heavensward does away with literally all of that and practically writes the entire thing off as a waste of time.

you may be able to see why i'm so salty about it.

[princescar]

Enomatsumiki ot3 charts bc them and Chappell Roan is the only thing that has been keeping me stable

[coquelicoq]

at this point the most strategic thing for xue fangfei and xiao heng to do would be to get married as soon as possible. as long as they're single, they're each a liability to the grand scheme, because other people can keep trying to get engaged to them for their own purposes. they're loose ends. if they were married, especially xue fangfei since in this society a woman can only have one husband, it would take away that potential leverage that other people are trying to get over them. but they haven't gotten married, and i want to find a way for it to be for a satisfying character reason, but it's obviously just because the plot needs them to not be married so they can continue to have this exact problem of other people trying to marry them. the closest i can get to a good reason is that xue fangfei isn't ready to get married and xiao heng is respecting that, but i don't really believe that anymore. we cut away from them kissing at the end of episode 34. what happens after that? did they sleep together? i could maybe believe that xue fangfei slept with him, even given her trauma around being accused of adultery, because she trusts him, and she knows he will marry her as soon as she says the word. but if that's the case...why would she not just marry him at this point? yes i'm willing to trust him and make myself (my reputation) vulnerable to him but i'm not willing to do the other thing that would make all of this way less risky for me? it doesn't make any sense. so ultimately i haven't found a way to make this not annoying.