#i'm so sorry for being cringe on main whenever i post oh boy

[miralyk]

the conflict of wanting to draw and talk more but also. the fears

[killian-whump]

I'm not the troll anon, but I REALLY want to see your bulleted list of why you hate babies on tv shows... To see how many points we might have in common.

WELCOME TO MY TED TALK!!!!

Sorry, I’m a little excited, Nonny. I’ve been waiting all day to tell everybody why I friggin’ hate fictional babies so I’m just, wow, I’m just really happy you’re here and asking me why I hate those little fuckers.

Alright now, before we get into the bulleted list and everything, lemme first say that there are simply too many babies in the world. They’re everywhere. On TV. In the real world. In @gusenitsaa‘s tummy. In the next room. Wait a fucking minute - WHO THE FUCK LEFT A BABY IN MY GODDAMN HOUSE?!

Okay, really, I just wanted to post that GIF, because I love it, but it really is true. There are way too many babies in the world, and on TV - and especially in Once Upon a Time. I mean, ONE baby is bad enough, but OUAT threw, like, 15 babies at us and none of them ever fucking grew up.

And babies make absolutely TERRIBLE characters. Look out, my friend, because here comes the bulleted list of why they’re fucking awful:

They have no character traits. Hey, tiny human, what’re you about? What do you like? What do you hate? What are your motivations in this scene? Oh, that’s right. You have literally none of these things, because you don’t have a personality that can be defined for an audience yet.

They all look the same. At least toddlers (like Ashley’s kid in 6x03) can wear cute outfits and, you know, have identifying characteristics to differentiate one of them from the next. Babies don’t. They’re either a lump in a pink blanket or a lump in a blue blanket, because babies fucking suck.

They can’t do anything. They are literally a lump, as mentioned above. How do you know who’s the baby in a scene? THEY’RE THE ONE NOT CARRYING THEIR OWN WEIGHT. Literally. They have to be carried everywhere, like a fucking handbag that wails periodically. You can’t give them any lines, and unlike Colin, they can’t close out a scene with a meaningful look.

No one ever uses them properly. If I had a nickel for every time there was a scene where a baby could’ve been used as a projectile weapon and wasn’t... I’d be fucking rich. I mean, that monster chasing you will AT LEAST pause for a hot minute if you throw a fucking baby in his ugly ass face. I promise.

They limit the plotlines for the ‘parents’. Once a couple has a baby, they suddenly can’t go anywhere or do anything on the show without either lugging the baby along or making a throwaway line somewhere about a babysitter. If the ‘parents’ spend too much time off adventuring sans baby, the audience feels like they’re not bothering to raise their kid. If the kid comes along on too many adventures, the audience is left wondering why they brought their 6-month-old adventuring in hell.

They’re used as a shortcut. Wanna show a couple is “true love”? Give ‘em a baby. Wanna show their “happily ever after”? Give ‘em a baby. Wanna create unnecessary drama for no goddamn reason? Give ‘em a baby. Considering how useless these babies are in every possible way (see this entire list), there’s literally no GOOD reason to throw a baby in the mix, other than as a shortcut to drama or emotion that the writers are too damn lazy to actually write.

They’re useless in fandom. Fanfics now have the same issue the show has - what do you do with the damn baby now? Fanartists have less of a problem, since they capture moments instead of plots, but if you’re an artist and you’re not into drawing babies, I hope you’re ready to field a bunch of requests and accusations that you “hate” the bastards. And shipping? No way! Babies aren’t welcome on ANY Bang Trains - unless they happen to be Gideon Gold, who was literally bangable before he was even born. That one’s complicated.

Babies sometimes smell bad. I know, I know. We don’t have smell-o-vision, so I can’t really complain about this, but whenever I see a real baby in a scene, I’m always thinking “please don’t shit right now, please don’t shit right now” because let me tell you, a diaper is nowhere near a solid enough barrier to ever have between yourself and the kind of volcano-like eruptions that can come out of a baby’s bottom. “Do you wanna hold the baby?” No, I don’t wanna fucking play Russian Roulette with that tiny human’s unpredictable anus.

They’re teeny tiny con-artists. That baby ain’t that woman’s baby. Hell, that baby ain’t even that baby! The Olsen twins pretended to be a single baby named Michelle for, like, 50 years or something. Boys pretend they’re girls. 10-month-olds pretend they’re newborns. There’s no one regulating this shit. These fuckers just get away with claiming to be whoever or whatever they want. And let me tell you the worst part...

They’re not even fucking alive. More often than not, they’re fucking dolls. And before you think, “But dolls are cute!” let me tell you, dolls are not always cute. Steve Pearlman posted a picture from the set of Baby Neal in his crib and it was awful. I can’t find it right now, because Satan obviously came and took it back to whatever hell it came from, but I assure you it was the worst thing ever.

And this brings me to my final point: They’re embarrassing. Actors do a lot of silly things, like riding on giant green pickles and biting enormous green donuts... but holding dolls and looking at them adoringly will always be one of THE stupidest things actors get tasked with doing. Like, I can’t see an actor or actress holding (what is more often than not) an obvious doll and take them seriously. I mean, when the fact it’s a doll is hidden well, it can create a touching image... but when it’s obvious? Oh, shit. Second hand cringe. I can’t enjoy it. I feel bad for the actors, honestly, especially when the doll looks like a $5 Walgreens special instead of, like, an ultra-realistic ReBorn doll. Now, I love Colin like it’s my sole purpose in life, but this is some bad fake baby shit here:

But don’t get me wrong. Not ALL babies are bad. Just, you know, almost all of them. Flashback babies can be okay. They’re like, “Hello, I’m here and- Oh, nevermind, I’m now all grown and you never even had time to think about me pooping.” And they’re great for touching family moments, as long as the cast/crew bother to hide the fakeness long enough for a nice screencap. As I’ve said before, I DO love the closing shot of CS and Baby Hope:

And I loved the scene of Hook singing to Baby Alice:

And yeah, I admit that Colin’s presence is the main reason I like both of those moments. Being Hook’s baby makes one of these tiny human creatures somewhat interesting in my opinion... but only somewhat. It’s still a baby, and that still makes it absolutely dreadful in a general sense ;)

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk!!!

[vodka-aunt-coran]

archaeology au???? i'm currently writing a shallura fantasy au in which shiro meets allura because he's an arch nerd so I'm listening

oh boy oh boy oK LISTEN

(ok sorry i’m adding a readmore. this got long. beware y’all this is ENTIRELY self-indulgent, like, 100%, and i don’t expect anyone else to enjoy it.)

this begins in college but it’ll extend to post-graduation

i’ll start with shiro, a poor, tired grad student who took a few years after his masters to split his time between CRM and projects whenever he got the chance, but now he’s back to fight for a PhD

his focus is on…hmmm…for now i’m going to go with historical archaeology, mainly focusing on the cultural interactions between china and japan?

shiro is also a TA! and each semester, whatever class he’s teaching, he like. straight-up adopts the undergrads in his section. there are four undergrads in particular who keep popping up. they are his children now.

matt is also a PhD student! he got 2 majors and 2 minors in undergrad, completed his masters really quickly, and then tried to go for a PhD immediately but burned out :x he’s back now! just under heavy supervision from shiro.

matt specializes in reconstructing paleoenvironment. this is done through paleoethnobotany (looking at old seeds n shit), sometimes geoarchaeology (looking at dirt n shit), AND getting climate information………………from ice cores.

(and lake cores but i know what the people really want to hear)

allura is like…everyone’s goals. she took her time getting her degrees (coughcoughmatt) and had a 4.0 probably, she’s worked on a frankly astounding number of projects, and people can hardly believe she doesn’t have a PhD yet.

i’m not 100% sure what allura’s specializing in. i feel like she wouldn’t either? like, she’s worked on such a variety of projects that she took a while to figure out what she really wanted to stick with. my guess is that, like matt, she decides to focus on technical rather than area so she gets to work all over the place. i’ll go with…osteoarchaeology. aka. bones n shit.

that’s right allura’s the badass who gets to work with burials and is probably cursed 93% of the time

her dream job is working on the domuztepe death pit

(don’t look up the death pit if you’re squeamish and also bc the information won’t be as good as if you dm me for the deets update: i made a post concerning The Deets, but proceed with caution, because it is about horrific deaths)

allura and matt are TAs too but matt is not super helpful if it’s not about his own field? and allura is rly intimidating. so people generally just go to shiro for help.

The Children are just undergrads BUT what they end up specializing in:

keith: warfare lmao boy loves his weapon artifacts. he’s like. A1 at identifying them too, show him an old sword and he’ll be like “oh yeah that looks like a viking design from the early 8th century”

lance: he rly…rly likes working on sites near water…like every time he gets to work on a shipwreck or anything underwater his soul grows brighter. that being said, i wanna say his specialty is in preservation and possibly curation? so during important digs he’s on site and nagging everyone to be as careful as possible

hunk: does a lot of lab work! he’s like. the king of the lab. need that sample carbon dated? hunk’s got you. need to know the composition of that ceramic? hunk’s your guy. need lipid analysis? bring it to hunk. he can even get the ancient XRD machine to work, even though no one else can figure it out. he’s a legend.

pidge: …i want to make a her a paleoethnobotanist so bad. but like. i know she wouldn’t simply bc matt’s already doing that and the independent will of second children is strong.fcuk it, she’s a paleoethnobotanist. she’s ridiculously good at identifying samples, and usually ends up helping matt with it. she’s also really into reconstructing diets and stuff and gets excited when she gets to work with stable isotope data.

bonus! shay is a geoarchaeologist who asks for hunk’s help mayyybe more often than is strictly necessary. then again, hunk will sometimes ask her opinion on samples when she’s pretty sure he’s already interpreted it perfectly. a modern romance

ok some more nonsense about them follows in no particular order

all of them are rly passionate about combating looting, collecting, and other destruction of sites. keith almost dropped a collector at a convention once. shiro held him back, but they still got kicked out bc while his back was turned allura and lance were cursing out a rly skeezy (but rich) curator.

shiro: hunk, why didn’t you stop them?hunk: [writing a paper about the museum’s poorly provenienced polynesian artifacts] what?

shiro is more careful about who he brings along to his academic conventions.

i mean. obv he also wrecks these garbage people. but with heavily researched papers n shit.

[while in undergrad]professor holt: ok class today we’re going to watch a documentary on the excavation of this famous site in the 60s!whole class: [cringing at the poor methodology]professor holt: i know, i know, we’ll roast our predecessors after the video is over

keith and pidge are huge conspiracy theorists right. like. aliens are real and out there, you know? so you’d think they’re all about those aliens built the pyramids stuff

some loser: hey you know how the aliens built the pyramids right?keith: ok listen math and astronomy existed before greece there is so much evidence showing that the egyptians themselves built their pyramids and there’s a clear progression from stepped pyramids to perfect ones and the fact that stepped pyramids appear around the world doesn’t mean anything more than making it obvious what the easiest way to build a large structure is and while we’re at it let’s talk about the nasca lines–

basically they call out Certain Theories for what they are bc…like…bro didn’t u notice that u only claim aliens abt incredible achievements when the people aren’t white

shiro: so, wait. if you don’t believe that aliens interacted with prehistoric peoples, why do you believe in them at all?pidge: because they infiltrated european politics beginning with ancient rome and have currently shifted their focus towards controlling american governmentkeith: [pulling out a Conspiracy Board] do you want to see our research, we think it could be our thesis project

like how pidge and keith are into aliens, lance deeply believes in ghosts. he’s convinced that allura has a million curses on her and the fact that she’s still perfect is evidence that she is A Goddess.

allura: lance, there’s no such thing as ghosts. you won’t be haunted or cursed if you help me handle this burial.lance: …alright, fine. only for you.[three days later]allura: [picks up phone] hello lance. how are you?lance: A TREE FELL ON MY CAR YOU LIAR

[at a historical site w shiro]lance: so uh. how many ghosts do you think are in here.shiro: oh my god, you’re just as bad as the other two.pidge: don’t group me in with that! i know ghosts aren’t real.keith: eh, they might belance: you work with violent deaths, how could you sleep at night believing in ghosts?keith: i’m not a coward like some peoplelance: !! i am not a coward!![door slams down the hall]lance and keith: [sprinting back outside]

lance gets on everybody’s case abt what they should and shouldn’t touch, and how to bag things, etc

when anyone wants a lipid or dna sample run, hunk makes sure that lance is there to make sure they properly handle the artifact sharon if you don’t wear gloves and the facemask all your research won’t count for shit

keith is The Worst at bagging and labelling his shit like. lance sometimes just makes a point of coming to his digs for the express purpose of labelling all the stuff for him.

lance: keith are you really going to make me waste shelf space on all these soil sampleskeith: [softly] lance i don’t know why the fuck we even take soil samples this isn’t my job

lance made the mistake of going to pick up boxes of artifacts from the holts on april fools day. when matt ‘tripped’ and dropped the box, it didn’t matter that it was really empty, because lance was already in tears. shiro had A Word with them. pidge and matt had to be a lot nicer to lance after that.

allura and keith work together pretty often bc. y’know. war stuff and remains tend to overlap. they’re besties with a sense of morbid humor to rival shiro’s.

allura: keith you’ll never guess what happened to this femur!keith: it looks…bad?allura: yes. the individual was killed by a boiling tar poured over the nearby wall!keith: i guess he didn’t get a heads up?allura: haha!! exactly!! or else he would’ve suffocated horribly!!both: [laughing]shiro: [hunched over faded old documents] god i wish that were me

pidge: hey lance, i was sieving through dirt from the hearth area for seeds, but i think i just found a tooth?lance: oh god ok put that back i’ll call allurapidge: dude it’s just a tooth, it might not even be human. i think we can handle it.lance: what if it is!! where do you think teeth come from pidge!!pidge: look, someone just happened to drop a tooth in the fireplace!!keith: hey guys i think i just found a skull in the hearthpidge: DAMN ITlance: AHA!!keith: not the reactions i was expecting but,

hunk: keith, i need to break off a piece of it if you want composition. you know how this works.keith: [cradling knife to his chest] but i love her

(update: here are a few bonus additions to this, since this is more or less the main post and this is main stuff)