#i-bless-your-heart

[definitely-wikipedia]

Guess what?

What?

[the-real-google]

Wait crap I actually have to go to my wedding? Dang it

[aq2003]

imagine you need to get away from the house and your responsibilities for a hot second and there's this bus driver/tour guide you meet and he invites you on a one-time big sightseeing trip (what the bus driver is telling himself. don't worry about that). and at first you think it's like a date and he's into you but this dries up maybe half a day in when the sightseeing goes wrong and he starts angsting about his dead girlfriend. anyway the trip gets extended and he's still the worst most disappointing tour guide in the world so you do the emotional equivalent of poking at him with a stick and asking what the hell is wrong with him. bus driver relents and reveals that his whole family is dead and he's been trying to avoid thinking about it by being a bus driver. you listen to him as he talks about how nice his town was before it exploded and you suddenly realize that the bus driver is furiously grieving/homesick/depressed and you're like the only thing stopping him from driving off a cliff and into the sea. especially bc the next day you run into the mafia and the bus driver starts screaming at them to kill him. then he hugs an electric fence. and then he tells you to take the bus keys and leave him and screams at the mafia to kill him again. and like this is so obviously horrific but what can you do besides stay with him on more sightseeing trips and hope you're doing enough to keep him alive. bc one of the responsibilities you ducked from was your job of saving people and this stupid fucking bus driver is a person in need of saving so bad. even if he starts shutting down when he manages to catch that you're directly onto how unstable he is. anyway, on an unrelated note, ten and martha from hit tv show doctor who,

[bklily]

Do you guys ever think, VERY VERY early on, right after baby Adrien was born and Emilie started going down the long painful journey of "deathly motherhood disease". Do you guys think that. That Natalie like. Hated baby Adrien. Like. For a split second. She looked at the sparkling white crib hosting the most tiny golden perfect angel baby, who looked so much like Emelie, who was faded to slowly but surely syphon away her life, and for the tiniest of moments she glared at him. Because who else was she meant to resent? Emilie? Gabriel? The baby? ... probably Gabriel would be the safest bet actually. And then baby Adrien just smiled at her and held her finger and his eyes shone so much like Emilies and she knew she was doomed forever.

Do you guys ever think

[mawapeach]

I FINALLY COMPLETED THIS PIECE

Almost a year since I first started this Johnny Cage fighter au or movie crap Cage Match stuff- and couldn’t even commit!! It was haunting me so I definitely had to push through.

“Mawa all these months for this??�� First of all, I’m going to eat you. SECOND of all, I didn’t have enough body anatomy experience and references. AND LAST OF ALL, I have commitment issues 😙

ANYWAY here you go! My early gift to myself to you guys

[starcurtain]

A Closer Look at the Phaidei Memory

I've seen so many people talking about this scene with Phainon and Mydei and making fun of how blatantly obvious Phainon is about his... respect for Mydei's... conspicuous body, but one thing I feel like a lot of people missed (or at least I haven't seen anyone discussing) is that this memory seems to come from very early on in their acquaintance.

Looking at it closely, it's clear that the two aren't particularly familiar with each other yet in this memory sequence. For one, Phainon questions things that he should easily know if he was well-acquainted with Mydei already.

First, very comically: "Do you even bathe, bro?"

And second, Phainon questions why Mydei isn't immune to the black tide:

This suggests that, up to the point of this memory, Phainon had not been in enough battles with Mydei (or at least close enough to Mydei) to see him be affected by the black tide. Apparently, this memory-Phainon-and-Mydei don't have years of rushing into battle side-by-side to defend Okhema yet.

It's also hilariously clear that the Phainon in this memory has absolutely no idea how to talk to Mydei.

Breaking this scene down, it's literally Phainon just trying really hard to strike up conversation, doing his best to try to crack the tough exterior and get Mydei to actually interact with him. He jumps around through topics rapidly--the baths, the black tide, their personal sparring--looking for anything that will catch Mydei's attention.

Meanwhile, we can tell that Mydei is not particularly familiar or comfortable with Phainon yet because his dialogue is so different from any of his other scenes in the game. Although Mydei is obviously not the game's biggest yapper, he does always have full sentences to contribute to other conversations and banters readily with Phainon whenever he's baited into it.

In this memory, he instead starts off polite but also completely aloof:

This is the exact sort of response you'd have to a vague acquaintance coming up and trying to talk to you like you're best friends. Phainon skipped at least four steps of familiarity here, and Mydei is obviously at a loss for why the conversation is even happening.

He responds by blatantly stonewalling, answering Phainon's (slightly pathetic) attempts to start an actual conversation in nothing but single word answers:

You can even see Phainon recognize how bad he's failing half way through the conversation, which prompts him to vocally declare that he's going to make a complete topic switch:

And this time, it works!

When Phainon brings up their personal duel or spar, whichever it was, finally, finally Mydei caves and engages in the conversation with him:

Which prompts Phainon to laugh (in relief? lol) and flat out crow about how he's finally cracked the code and figured out how to get Mydei to notice him:

Poor Mydei, however, did not seem to realize his slight display of interest was going to lead him into a full conversation, and he responds to Phainon's blatant invitation to keep talking with a confused:

Witness Mydei accidentally turning down Phainon's request for a date in real time.

The only thing that complicates the situation is what Phainon says late in the memory: that they've battled "all this time." However, looking at his earlier comments, this last statement may just be in a general sense, as in "two Chrysos Heirs who have been fighting the titans for years," especially as the rest of the line "How do you train? Would you consider teaching me?" once again indicates a lack of close familiarity.

(It's also possible this line is just poorly translated in English, and was actually meant to refer to their legendary ten-day-long duel: "We battled all that time, yet I never saw you fatigued." Given the rest of the lines in the memory, I think "dodgy translation" honestly makes the most sense here, and would also just have really funny implications: Phainon and Mydei didn't fall in love at first sight; they fell in comically-long-duel at first sight. Okay, maybe for Phainon it was both.)

Phainon's earlier statements in the memory make it clear that he isn't very experienced with fighting Mydei specifically, with the overall implication of the dialogue being that they've just had their first duel against each other recently:

So anyway, where I am going with all this?

I know a lot of people got distracted by Phainon's (accidental?) pass at Mydei in the first line, but I think taking a step back and looking at the scene as a whole, in context, makes it even more hilarious and off-the-cuff:

Phainon and Mydei aren't well-acquainted in this scene.

Phainon literally walked up on a guy he barely knows and the first words that fell out of his mouth were "Dan Nicky your bobbies." "I would know that body anywhere."

Even Mydei was weirded out at first!

Like, Phainon has absolute foot-in-mouth syndrome around his new "friend." He spends the whole conversation narrating his own attempts to communicate ("Ah, I see I am unwanted. Instead of leaving, I shall try another tactic. Is it working yet?" and "Yes, yes, yes, it worked!") like this is a remotely normal thing to do around a person you're not even close with yet.

You can see his puppy tail wagging. He wants to be friends with Mydei so bad.

He is actively making up excuses to try to get Mydei to spend time with him here--first the comment about "Yay, you're here!" at the baths like he expects them to bathe together, then the whole "Why don't we go somewhere and have a long conversation about the insights we gained from rolling around in the dirt together?" to finally just flat out asking Mydei to train with him.

It's so charmingly earnest, straightforward, and even a bit awkward that I think this scene is really under-rated by the fans. It's not just another example of Phainon commenting on Mydei's muscles--it's a glimpse into what they were like before they were close and just how much Phainon wanted to connect to Mydei, how willing he was to explore to discover exactly what Mydei would be interested in so that he could seize that common ground between them.

Really a masterclass in showing us fans characterization right on the cusp of changing, and for showcasing both Phainon's charming audacity and Mydei's surprisingly-reserved-around-strangers behavior.

And, since we know the future that memory-Phainon-and-Mydei are headed toward... we also know it worked! Mydei is smiling by the end of the conversation! He and Phainon are going to become vitriolic best buds--er, rivals--and Phainon is going to get all the spars he wants.

Persistence pays off!

[pain-is-too-tired]

Lester: What's this? Looks like a metal jelly bean?

Will: ....

Will: Dad, that's a bullet.

[janearts]

“What came out was not what went in.” A rasping laugh as the Carver laid the shard of bone on the ground beside him. “How lovely she is—new as a fawn and yet ancient as the sea. How she calls to you. A queen, as my sister once was. Terrible and proud; beautiful as a winter sunrise.” ♛

[hualianschild]

absolutely love it when they put details like this

[turtleblogatlast]

Every day I’m haunted by the fact the boys happily swim in sewer water

Even if it’s filtered somehow there’s no way it’s not still nasty 😭 Bet they can defeat any of their villains just by accidentally giving them diseases I swear

[fluffielox]

„bless your heart ❤️“

[benevolenterrancy]

Hi I have caught up to you on having feelings about Zhuzhi-Lang. He's a good boy! 🥺 Good snake boy! 🥺 I had the thought, after Zhuzhi let SQQ leave after SQQ yelled at him... what if they Stole Him. What if.

(Also have you read/been recommended anything by corduroyserpent yet? Big writer of Zhuzhi-Lang fics, including a very cute de-aged Zhuzhi-Lang and some zhushen)

Justifications of bride-stealing!

(AND HE'S THE BEST BOY 😭 I LOVE HIM SO MUCH, SO MUCH!! have some further au thoughts because this has contaminated my brain...)

What I think would actually happen if they stole SQQ? Absolutely nothing good for anyone, LBH would Lose His Fucking Mind xD as a more interesting answer though, I like the idea that Shen "Pedantic Nitpicky Asshole" Qingqiu's primary point of argument is that he is not a bride so he cannot be "bridenapped" regardless of demonic tradition or intention!

This eventually leads to them all completely avoiding the Maigu Ridge incident because TLJ realizes that, somehow, SQQ doesn't realize the depths of his son's feelings for him and decides to put all his efforts into being a wingman for his nephew instead because he finds the entire thing absolutely hilarious and rather satisfying after his own sad romance. Obviously someone like SQQ would do much better with his good, loyal nephew than the disappointing offspring of that disastrous relationship!

As for ZZL he just has to assume that LBH must not be treating SQQ anywhere near the way he should be (and like... he isn't wrong at this point, there is a non-zero amount of torture and terror going on here) if SQQ doesn't see himself as being tied to LBH in any way. And if he's not attached to LBH then there's absolutely no reason he shouldn't make his own efforts to seduce SQQ! After all, if LBH isn't valuing SQQ properly then obviously ZZL has to step up because someone as kind as SQQ deserves the best!!!

[mamawasatesttube]

frankly no one leans into bart being from alabama enough. do you even know how devastating it could be for impulse to look at you just sitting there minding your own business and go "aw man, bless your heart </3"

[moonstarphoenix]

I really need the official accounts to release all the Tulsa footage, like now. On YouTube.

Enjoy our gang in Tulsa!

[ynbabe]

I need lance and Logan to form an ‘they hate me for no reason’ alliance asap actually

[scarefox]

We are in such a good QL drama timeline