#idk but it's certainly up there

[greatwesternrailway]

I made Eras Tour bracelets of all the times Taylor Swift references trains in her songs. The colours are inspired by different trains and railway liveries. Excessive details under the cut:

"You know that my train could take you home" from Willow. Inspired by Great Western Railway's Intercity Express Trains. It's the train I catch most often, it's my train!

"I knew you, stepping on the last train" from Cardigan. Inspired by the subway cars in New York City, which I think of as having blue seats but it seems yellow/orange is just as (or more?) common. Idk I've never been to New York, my whole knowledge of the subway comes from Broad City and pictures of dogs in Ikea bags.

"I jump from the train, I ride off alone" from The Archer. Inspired by ye olde American locomotives like the Union Pacific No. 119. This lyric evokes Wild West imagery for me and this type of engine is what my British brain thinks of as a "cowboy train".

"Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train" from The Last Great American Dynasty. Inspired by the steam locomotives used in the 1940s by the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, which is what Rebekah Harkness would have rode up on. Sadly I couldn't find a good colour image of one, so I leaned into it and chose a greyscale colour palette. As it happens the engines were almost certainly black anyway so it's fine.

"Silence, the train runs off its tracks" from Sad Beautiful Tragic. Inspired by my boy Thomas the Tank Engine. There are a lot of derailments on the Island of Sodor, the Fat Controller should probably have been sacked.

"Northbound I got carried away, as you boarded your train south" from I Look in People's Windows. Inspired by the London Underground map. I didn't have any brown beads so the Bakerloo line has been reassigned orange.

"We wait for trains that just aren't coming" from New Romantics. Inspired by the British Rail Class 195 trains created for Arriva Rail North, the network so incompetent that even the Tories had to re-nationalise it. Those trains just weren't coming.

"You took the night train for a reason" from Champagne Problems. Inspired by the British Rail Mark 5 coaches used on the Caledonian Sleeper Service.

"Some trains you can't catch again, you've gotta leave it as it was" from Tim McGraw - Acoustic Demo. This is a deep cut that I expect even a lot of Swifties wouldn't necessarily know, but I've always loved this lyric. It totally recontextualises the song and ironically is a much more adult sentiment than the lyrics of the final recording. Inspired by the livery of Anglia Railways, which are the trains of my childhood. Anglia Railways has been sold and rebranded several times since then, so they are quite literally the trains I can't catch again.

I imagine that Taylor Swift has not been on a train in many years, for obvious reasons. However I appreciate her continued use of train imagery in her songs and I hope she never ever stops :)

[mitathemita]

please take a gander at my best boy

[forgetme-eternally-blissfully]

Cale isnt a cuddler.

He never had toys to fall asleep with, he couldn’t snuggle up to his parents after the accident and he certainly couldn’t with his uncle, and he was, most often, barely comfortable when he slept anyway.

So when the apocalypse arrived, he was the perfect person when it came to sleeping.

He didn’t move around, he didn’t snore, and he had already gotten used to falling asleep on shitty surfaces!

Jung Soo described it as eery, with the way that Rok Soo would get into a position to fall asleep and then he would stay that way for the rest of the night. His chest barely rose and fell, and on more than one occasion Soo Hyuk had woken him up because they were afraid he wasn’t breathing. Thankfully he has always been a light sleeper, so just moving around nearby would be enough to startle him awake.

They tried having a buddy system where they would sleep next to Rok Soo, “for his safety” but he would refuse and find some private place to cram himself into to sleep, scaring them even more. They tried to trick him multiple times, but Rok Soo never fell for it.

He allowed it one time.

It was a cold night, and Jung Soo was too tired from fighting monsters that they couldn’t get back to their company before nightfall.

Jung Soo had been barely coherent, grasping onto Rok Soo as he had been temporarily blinded by a poison grade 2 monster.

He refused to let go of Rok Soo, and so he gave in. He laid on the ground, curled up to Jung Soo, and pretended to be asleep.

He used his record ability intermittently throughout the entire night. It got cold enough to snow, and so Rok Soo had to be the fire for the time.

He never told Jung Soo he stayed up to keep him warm.

But that doesn’t matter.

Because now he’s Cale Henituse. He’s trash. He can sleep anywhere and at any time, but he demands a bed because he can. He demands comfort and warmth and safety. He always wants to fall asleep with a full stomach.

The others know this.

Except he can fall asleep easily when he hasn’t eaten. He can barely be counted as safe, ever, because of the White Star. He complains about the cold but they know he sometimes forgets to ask for a jacket.

The strangest story, however.

The oddest story?

Cale sleep walked.

Once.

Raon watched him get out of bed, and followed him to a nondescript corner of their newest house, where he laid down and stopped moving.

Raon woke him up immediately, and Cale was very disoriented and confused, but Raon didn’t care about the sleep walking. He cared about the stillness. Cale had looked as if he was hiding from a monster and could barely lift his chest to breathe softly.

Raon demanded to sleep next to Cale from then on, because he was worried Cale would get himself hurt.

Cale reluctantly gave in. He thinks about Soo Hyuk and Jung Soo, and thinks they’d be proud of him for opening up.

He casts that thought away.

(December 30, 2022)

[wispurring-moss]

brain said this one had to be written in hieroglyphs so idk if the jokes are even gonna land— 😆😂

but don't worry, Angel; when there's only so many braincells to go around then it's inevitable that you'll have some absolute smoothbrain moments like this one, it's okay, we all have them— x'3c

[phoenixcatch7]

I get that calling white lotus lbh a sticky little 'sheep' is a canon translation and stuck in the fandom now anyway, but I do feel the intended spirit of the original word wasn't the sheeple/dumb herd animal that's more common in the western world, but instead something actually conveying sweetness, innocence, purity and youth - lamb.

Famous for being utterly adorable and following around their mothers, gambolling in sunny meadows, curly white wool shining.

And NOW we can talk about black sheep/wolf in sheep's clothing metaphors.

[rystiel]

well that’s one way to come out i guess

[warning-heckboop]

Was going to write a little ficlet to go with this, but. Vaccine tiredness is killer.

A little bit of art for the FOP Nature au by @bunnieswithknives. I cannot recommend checking it out enough.

[kickedin17]

Regional at Best is so special because it feels so exactly like what it is, which is an album made by a young person, younger than I am now, who'd given up everything else to make this dream work and probably had no idea what the hell he was going to do if it didn't. Keep working a normal job? Go back to college? What do you do if the dream doesn't work, when you're an early-20-something who (like all early-20-somethings) has precisely nothing else figured out? What do you do if everyone's right and the art isn't worth it?

Then your bandmates leave. But actually, it turns out perfect anyway, because you end up with this other guy who also has precisely nothing else figured out and no plan B except to be in this very band with you. How rare and precious of a thing that is, to meet someone who believes in your art just as much as you do. At least if you fail you fail together, right?

I think RAB feels like the end of summer and growing pains because it exists in that same itchy, anxious space as your last summer before you graduate high school/college, when it begins hitting you that there will never be a summer like this again because next year you're supposed to be grown up. But the truth is you never figured out how to grow up and you never figured out how to stop dreaming. So many people have to learn that lesson for various reasons, but Tyler and Josh never did because they believed in it so much that I think it truly never could've failed. Even if they never got as big as they did w/ Blurryface, I think they never could've failed because they are for the dreamers.

Self-titled is complicated and beautiful and core to everything else they would do after, but RAB is the beating heart of what tøp was always meant to be imo. It's embracing the fear of getting older because you have no other choice, while acknowledging you're still a little afraid of the dark. It's a night light for the grown-ups who are still scared of long dark hallways they can't see the end of (and work email chains). You turn 23 and discover you probably don't actually want to die as much as you used to, and also that you still think pokémon cards are fucking rad, and both of those things are okay. And maybe you'll never get out of this goddamn town but it never hurts to dream

[tea-cat-arts]

I simply think this fandom doesn't give Wei Wuxian enough credit for the various ways in which he saved Lan Wangji

[sixoclocker]

hi (makes starlo a red giant star early)

hey lol (steals all of his hydrogen EARLY so he’s FUCKED UP and RED instead of a MAIN SEQUENCE STAR and he can’t NUCLEAR FISSION!!!!)

here’s an extra doodle

he can talk in full sentences but a lot of the time it’s just too taxing along with everything else he has to worry about

[jadecantcreate]

in the whitchlite carinval. straight up “caking it.” and by “it”, haha, well. lets justr say. My chad

(some gideon exploration & little doodles)

[mercymaker]

Let's try to keep that lovely neck of yours in one piece, hmm?

[pkmoth]

ohhh my GOD this took so much time but WOOOO BATTLE SPRITES!!!!!!!!!!! HELL YES!!!!!!!!!!! i was Also able to mod them actually In Game which is SO exciting i feel so proud of myself

ANYWAYS UM!!!! heres king lucas hes fine and sane and normal i promise <33333 will yap more about him in the eventual au masterpost once i get this aus loop design drawn :]

party menu | in love and time au tag

[candycryptids]

How can you not love their cute wittle cuddly faces ;-; anyways, for maps last Friday night, to match my outfit (as a delivery moogle! Kupo!) I took the plunge and made this- very cute, very silly !

Carboogles. Or Mogbuncles? TLDR they have wings and a mogpom. Works with texture and vfx edits! Replaces the Carbuncle models. Have fun! Download available here -> [XMA]

[gay-jesus-probably]

Seeing as the Gerudo turned on Ganon, he might not have been that much better of a ruler.

First of all, we literally have no idea, because the only ancient Gerudo that we actually get to interact with is Ganondorf himself, and he has nothing to say about his own people. The ancient Gerudo sage doesn't count btw, she doesn't have a name, we never even see her face, and she has literally nothing to say except repeating the exact same dialogue as the sages for the other races. The narrative does not treat the ancient sages as people; they are four completely interchangable weapons that are owned by the royal family.

And secondly, I don't care how Ganon ruled them; the Gerudo only get one man every century, if their king sucks, they've obviously got their own system of government to fall back on. I have no idea what kind of authority the sages had among their own people, but honestly I'd say if the four of them were in charge of their respective people, then they were just puppet rulers appointed by Rauru, given that all four of them happily agreed that to sell their entire race into servitude the second Zelda asked them. Say what you will about Ganondorf, but I fucking know that if he was told the Gerudo people existed for the sole purpose of serving the glory of Hyrule, he'd drop kick Zelda into the fucking sun.

And don't get me started on the implications of the cultural differences we see between the independent Gerudo and the annexed Gerudo. The background Gerudo characters all have their own models, and we can clearly see that the ones siding with Ganon have their own unique looks - for example, the amazing lady with the mohawk that summons the molduga swarm in that one flashback. And men are never mentioned in these flashbacks at all, which implies that the Gerudo genuinely didn't care about settling down. Ganon even speaks derisively about marriage, implying that it's very rare for Gerudo women to make serious romantic commitments with men. It implies that their culture is more along the same line as their portrayal in OOT - they are a closed culture. Men trying to force their way into their areas are arrested, and mocked for being entitled dumbasses. Outsiders are only welcome if they can prove that they respect the Gerudo as people, and aren't just there to try and pick up chicks. It's never outright said, but OOT also makes it pretty clear that the Gerudo women just aren't interested in marrying outsiders - close relationships occur with other Gerudo, Hylian men are only considered useful for making babies.

Meanwhile the Gerudo we see serving Hyrule are all trying to measure up to Hylian beauty standards, and appeal to their men. Their one goal in life is to meet a man and get married. Men are welcome in their lands, and only kept out of the town itself... and even then, there's a small army of guys trying to force their way into the town anyways, which is brushed off as just haha, boys will be boys. No men allowed isn't even about independence, it's just a silly romantic tradition.

Of course this is just a fictional culture in a game world, but it's still really fucking uncomfortable that the 'evil' Gerudo are the ones that have independence, both politically and socially, and display a unique culture that refuses to tolerate disrespect from outsiders. Meanwhile the 'good' Gerudo are the ones that canonically exist to serve a kingdom where 95% of the population is light skinned (even setting aside the unfortunate implications, just saying one race exists to serve a different one is super fucked up), they have classes on how to be more appealing to Hylian's, and their entire social structure is built around finding a Hylian man to marry, making them all inherently dependent on the goodwill of outsiders. Even their biggest value of 'women only' is treated as a joke; men trying to trespass in BOTW are just shoved back out the door, letting them keep trying all day if they want. The crowds of men plotting to force their way in are laughed off as a joke. Nobody cares that there's a guy running laps around their city walls and trying to trick women into being alone with him. I mean for fucks sake, in TOTK we find that the creepy guy trying to lure women away has taken advantage of a massive disaster to get into the town, and he's still there once things return to normal. You can't kick him out, or alert anyone to his presence. And the Gerudo just tolerate Hylians blatantly ignoring their boundaries. For fucks sake, TOTK even reveals that the seven legendary heroines they've been revering the whole time were actually completely useless and unable to achieve anything... because they needed the eighth hero, a Hylian man to teach them basic tactics and do all the heavy lifting.

TOTK does not respect the Gerudo people in the slightest. It doesn't respect anyone who isn't Hylian or Zonai.

...This got a little off track, but the point I'm trying to make is, no, I don't consider the Gerudo turning on Ganon to mean anything. The entire game does not feel like the real story of what happened, it feels like the propaganda version of history meant to make Hyrule look as good as possible. I genuinely cannot believe that we're being told the real story about the Imprisoning War, because none of it feels real, and we don't get to know any details that might have made Hyrule look even slightly imperfect. We're told that Ganondorf is evil because he hates Hyrule, and he hates Hyrule because he's evil. The Gerudo people followed Ganondorf and saw him as a hero of their people, then suddenly he was their worst enemy. Hyrule is a perfect kingdom that has strong, equal alliances with the other races, but also all of the non-Hylian races exist for the sole purpose of serving Hyrule, and their leaders are expected to swear eternal loyalty and submission to the Hylian royal family. King Rauru and Queen Sonia united all of the races in peace and equality, which is why they're sitting on the world's supply of magical nuclear missiles, and every member of the Hylian royal family is allowed to walk around wearing them as cute accessories, but everyone else only gets them at the last second, and they all need to outright swear to only use that power to benefit Rauru and his descendants.

There's just so many fucked up contradictions, and so many hints of something more nuanced going on... but the story refuses to acknowledge any of it, and just keeps aggressively pushing the narrative that Hyrule is the ultimate good and couldn't possibly do anything wrong. I don't even believe that Ganon was a bad king honestly; we never hear why his people stopped following him. We also never even see if the Gerudo people turned on him at all; all we know is the ancient Gerudo sage wanted him dead, and given that she also happily sold her people into slavery, she's not exactly the most trustworthy source of information. All we know is that Ganondorf was a hero to his people, only one of his citizens is ever shown having an issue with him (and her motives are never explained), and then he lost the war and was sealed away, leaving his people open to be conquered by Zelda and annexed into Hyrule. By the time we see any Gerudo actually opposing Ganon (apart from the ancient sage), it's been ten thousand years since the war, and all anyone knows is the Hylian version of the story.

[qiu-yan]

jiang cheng at the club

i answered kind of speedily but hm blorbo should not be at the club

teenage era? the most debatable era tbh. on one hand - for one, if jiang cheng goes, he's going because he thinks that's what the cool kids his age should be doing, rather than because it's what he actually wants to do. for two, if he goes he's certainly going with wei wuxian. there's a good chance he'll have a good time with wei wuxian, but there's also a good chance that he'll spend the entire experience way too high-strung about wei wuxian doing something stupid (guaranteed) that will make both him and yunmeng jiang look stupid (not guaranteed but still likely) and/or put wei wuxian in danger (also very likely). there's also an even higher chance that wei wuxian will end up fucking off to chat/flirt/etc with other people (eg. lan wangji who wei wuxian also managed to drag to the club, who then gets drunk and thus wei wuxian now has to babysit), thereby leaving jiang cheng all by his lonesome. jiang cheng can probably talk to strangers, but he came here to have fun with wei wuxian and now wei wuxian has ding dong ditched. bonus points if wei wuxian promised to be designated driver and now jiang cheng has to uber home.

on the other hand - teenage wei wuxian and jiang cheng are definitely making the club more fun. mostly wei wuxian. and, despite all of the above, jiang cheng is probably having a good time...most of the time...too.

adult era: nah. jiang cheng is busy. it would be nice if he could let loose and forget about everything for a few hours, but he would not do that. realistically he'd just spend the entire time stressing about his growing to-do list, and the music would give him a headache.

also, everything at the club would remind him of wei wuxian. wei wuxian, certified party animal, was almost certainly the one dragging jiang cheng to the club in their youth; jiang cheng probably does in fact have some happy memories of clubbing with wei wuxian. but those happy memories are gonna curdle into depressing ones the moment he steps through the doors and is reminded of wei wuxian again. the photos of wei wuxian doing a keg stand behind the bar are making him miserable, and he in turn is going to make it everyone else's problem.

postcanon era: also nah. mostly because he'd almost certainly run into jin ling et al. sneaking into the club with fake IDs, and now everyone's yelling.

on the other hand....maybe he and wei wuxian can eventually reconcile over a night of partying they're both frankly way too old for. or maybe when they wake up the next day in the same ditch with matching hangovers.