#if im being totally honest

[transsexualbloodlust]

idk i’m not french

sorry for crushing up your boyfriend mixing him with tobacco and rolling him into a little cigarette as if it’s my fault i’m french :/

[astralzeraphias]

“he was mentally ill. this monster was a- was a sick fantasy. a product of his dementia.”

“…i saw it too. does that make me disturbed? demented? does… that make me sick too?”

[torantuga]

i was unmotivated to draw this week so i forced myself to draw in diff styles - and i chose to redesign emmk cus i love them both sm (even tho i dont even enjoy td anymore)

buut then i got the idea of maybeeee i could make a what-if scenario where julia-mk-emma alliance could be made

so here they are!

EXPLANATION BELOW!!! (warning, maybe ooc but it's a rewrite + redesign)

sooo what im bringing to the table is a rewrite of their characters - esp s1

JULIA

for julia, i wanted to make the twist villain thing for s2, which might sound weird... but i can explain

she mantains the happy-go-hippie personality as a facade during the time she stays in the island, whilst in the background she's actively sabotaging other contestants with the help of mk. she only shows her true colors after mk betrays her (which i kept the same, probably after the merge tho) and she gets kicked out. (iii feel like mk would stay longer BUT not be a finalist, mainly cus in this redesign she plans things through very VERY carefully)

she would be used as the main villain for s2, and she would be like julia in mid s1 probably - petty, strategic and, most importantly, deadly. she replaces her tropical, pinkish clothing with blueish popular outfits and she becomes mean as she can be. hostile, she becomes someone to fear as she turns her gentle face into one full of disgust for those around her.

MK

So. you guys know i love MK - shes the whole reason i still havent let go of td - so im giving her the best character ever!

calculative, observative, and sneaky, shes the definition of a stellar strategist. she makes herself look average just to pass by smoothly, and she sabotages everyone she cans to assure she stays that way until the very end.

though she's snarky, she understands that overdoing it might get her on a radar. she observes everyone she can to understand them on face value in order to know how to approach them.

she's naturally drawn to julia, as she notices things in her behavior that differentiate her from genuinely nice people like priya or emma. her smile twitches when no one looks, her eyes do not smile along with her mouth... she's as fake as she can be.

so she observes her during the first episodes, trying to make a conclusion and find a way to get her on her good side.

so she confronts julia alone, which makes julia drop the act and threaten her. mk assures julia that shes in no way trying to threaten her, and that she wants to form an alliance, which julia then accepts after some convincing that they were probably the best duo in the game so far.

she's still got a lot of character outside julia though, and she shows it through her snarky attitude when it comes to everything, and her master thief tactics that she uses to hack and learn what challenge is going to happen and how she's going to eliminate certain people that oppose a threat to her.

However, a duo like them always needs a backup to throw under the bus at any circumstance of danger, so they decide to pick a gullible, insecure person....

EMMA

A nice, silly girl that has some bottled up anger from years and years of frustration she was told to keep in because of her internet persona.

after a messy break up and a fine that cost her almost thousands of dollars, she's pretty sure the bottled up anger is now cracking. she's no longer a youtube star, as her ex's channel was the only thing keeping her trendy, so she no longer needed to spread herself thin to please an audience - to please him.

so! chase is here! hm! how the FUCK is she supposed to continue the game knowing that her stupid ex is in the same tv show as her?!

he's dumb, lazy, and apathetic. he shouldn't be there to begin with!

...so she tries to ignore him as much as she can, though he sometimes makes her want to scream.

either way, her ex aside, she tries to be kind to everyone she meets, but everyone sees her as gullible and naïve cus of it. shes letting everyone see her insecurities by simply existing, and though she's friends with bowie, everyone guesses she won't make it far. she's fun, silly, but also weird in her own way.

mk observes emma and concludes that she's the perfect pawn for their game, and so she finds her alone to play mindgames on her, knowing that her biggest insecurity is not being a good people-pleaser.

mk manages to convince emma that she should join the alliance, and so she accepts. emma's not happy about it though, but she understands mk wouldn't let her join if she didn't saw potential.

THE ALLIANCE

mk, julia and emma are underestimated due to their actions, so it's not hard to cheat in challenges that way. emma finds this a bit uncomfortable, but she helps them with social intel. she's the least suspicious of the bunch, so she can eavesdrop with ease since she's not seen as a threat.

they manage to kick out chase and ripper with ease, and they go unpunished through the series.

well. until mk betrays julia, that is.

mk knows that her days are counted if she keeps julia around for too long, so she frames her as soon as she feels things going against her. it is not pretty, and julia swears on her life she'll take her down.

but she didn't betray emma.

mk never mentioned emma being in the alliance, causing her to get the boot as soon as possible, which is 2 episodes after julia.

emma stays to be in the final five, but she doesn't end up winning.

mk swears it's so that they can team up next season, but it's something more.

HOW EMMK CAN STILL WIN

mk originally was going to betray both of them, but she couldn't. not emma.

emma was a genuinely nice person to be around, and though she was useless when it came to actual scheming, she was funny and understanding.

mk had a big crush, long story short, and couldn't bring herself to see emma get hurt like that. if she had had a crush on julia, which she thought she had, she would've still betrayed her. it was strategy, and there were no hard feelings.

but emma? mk believes seeing her sad face would probably ruin her. she's a truthful person, and mk admires that.

so she and emma stay friends, and continue being alliance members in s2, which escalates into something more.

S2

i believe s2 wld be julia vs mk in terms of main villains, and emmk wld be the main focus when it comes to mk and emma screentime.

julia tries her hardest to sabotage, and mk counterattacks in default, leaving them to battle for dominance all the way til the merge, when mk gets eliminated instead of julia. emma is heartbroken due to her ...friend.. getting kicked out, and she follows the next elimination.

idk for s3 but maybe mk wld be a finalist or win cus my girl needs a win under her belt!!!

[widebruh]

[tytoalbatross]

god damn i do not post often but can i talk about intentionality for a second?? one second please

i'm gonna be talking about bg3 but this really applies to any fandom space. people will, surface-level, agree that a Black character is not getting enough content compared to their white counterparts because it's. obvious . take wyll, who is several hours behind on voiced lines compared to other origins despite being one of the original five (before they added karlach and whiteified her too but that's another post). it's hard to deny cold hard facts

but then instead of engaging in content that uplifts Black characters and creators, they'll go right back to pumping out more and more content of just their white faves. on its own, it's not actively harmful, but here's what the implication is, whether they acknowledge it or not: yes wyll has less in-game content, yes his writing didn't get the attention it deserved, therefore i don't like him as much. it only perpetuates wyll's lack of content by contributing to his sidelining in fandom spaces

what i would love for fans who claim to be allies to do is to step out of the comfort zone of their initial favorites (which can, in fact, be biased!) and start pursuing content centering Black characters with intentionality. like all things, anti-racism (actively pushing back against racism rather than simply "Not Being Racist") takes practice and effort. you can't really agree with us that wyll needs more content, then in the same breath say that it's because of that that he's not interesting to you . the point was right in front of you doing a jig and you still missed it

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[uglyf4wn]

realizing that communication actually doesnt matter as much as ppl say it does, bc most ppl glorify it and see it as a magical solution when in fact communicating your feelings/wants/needs only work if other ppl are receptible to it. which... most ppl arent, both bc many dont want to bc it requires too much effort of them and it's easier to shift blame on others not "communicating", but also bc many many ppl just have brains that arent wired to understand others, or other viewpoints and perspectives. thus, no level of communication will make someone who isnt capable of receiving it hear you. most efforts to "communicate" are completely wasted. and it's frustrating, but what can u do?

[edwinisms]

see I need ghost clothes to have properties more or less like regular clothes because wearing someone else’s jacket or shirt is one of the most important expressions of affection in existence and yes basically what I’m saying is i wanna see charles give edwin his jacket for one reason or another and see edwin get all flustered and giddy about it

[sukugo]

everytime sukugo gets called a crack ship i suffer +10 damage

[supakixbabe]

My main problem with WWE is that instead of showcasing their current roster and elevating it, they decided to go get Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, pay him a shit ton of money to be a cheap nostalgia act.

There’s literally nothing “original” about that man, and I wouldn’t be so upset if they weren’t taking opportunities from other non-part-time wrestlers on their roster.

Like I regret saying this, but they have Logan Paul, practically new (a disrespectful asshole, but good in the ring). LA Knight. Grayson Waller. Austin Theory. Charlie Dempsey. Fucking Dom Mysterio. Like, you could literally have anyone on the WrestleMania card, yet you chose The Rock??

That was certainly a choice.

I’m all about when companies elevate and showcase their roster. And how people can actually be mad at certain wrestlers for jumping-ship is actually fucking insane. Wouldn’t you want them used to their potential instead of being fucking wasted?

WWE clearly isn’t doing it, so let companies like TNA, MLW, AEW, GCW, the fucking indy’s, etc do it.

And I’m not at all saying other companies are beyond perfect, but they’re doing better than the “E.” The company itself is the worst, but I will always stand by the wrestlers who choose to elevate themselves and others to be the best they can be.

[lesbianralzarek]

while we're on the topic, why in the hell does gofundme expect tips in the form of percentages? theyre not waitstaff or uber drivers or anything that implies a relationship between bill price pre-tip and actual labor performed. its as easy for them to process a $5 donation as a $500 donation. theyre already taking 2.9% as hosting and processing fees and have the audacity to suggest tipping another 17%. im not doing that. no one is doing that.

[jesterjaxx]

If fresh tv made merchandise of any Total Drama characters

Who are the ones you will like to have a marketable plushie of?

Duncan and DJ. In a heart beat.

Id put DJ up on my bookshelf with a little teddy bear and rabbit plushie to keep him comfortable and I'd toss Duncan somewhere on the floor so i can easily pick him up and chuck him at the wall whenever i need to.

[vaguehotels]

SICK. "right person, wrong time."

[catboyidia]

Heya! I have midterms this week (wish me luck), can I ask for some floof head canons to give me energy?

I'm okay if you want to keep it in the omegaverse au or not, also good with ags and bc (and anything you'd like to add)

Thank youuu, hope you're doing good

omg i wish you best of luck anon! i really hope all goes well! :)

heres a few of the softest/most domestic headcanons that come to mind:

(mostly asg but there is one zc too)

- genesis has a secret stash of stuffed animals, including his favorite thats a little grey cat he's had for a long time that he calls "sephy", and he refuses to let sephiroth find out about it. only angeal knows about it, and he teases genesis about "sephy" whenever he sees it but he has also promised to keep genesis' secret, partially because they have a deal that if angeal keeps "sephy" a secret, genesis won't tell zack about the time angeal absolutely gushed, and even got emotional about how proud he was of zack when zack got promoted to first (it was angeal's proudest "fatherly" mentor moment)

- the first time cloud brought zack home to meet his mom, he was incredibly nervous about how it would go, and even zack was a little nervous about making a good impression, but as soon as claudia saw them together and saw how zack treated cloud, she instantly loved zack and welcomed zack as a part of the family, treating him like a son and even giving zack her blessing to marry cloud in the future. not to mention that claudia also felt it necessary to start telling zack every single embarrassing moment in cloud's childhood, which zack found absolutely adorable, but poor cloud could only sit there in horror

- before asg went public with their relationship, the three of them, mainly genesis though, would always find ways to sneak small kisses and whisper soft "i love you"s to each other in the minuscule timeframes between their public appearances, which nearly led to them being caught numerous times. and whenever they had public appearances as a group, like interviews and whatnot, they would always do things like link their pinkies together under a table or just out of view of the cameras, or they would "accidentally" brush the back of their hands together, just doing anything they could to be as close as possible in public without being caught

- sometimes angeal will get cold since he's the only one who doesn't have a coat as part of his uniform, so genesis will lend angeal his coat, but not without teasingly "scolding" angeal the way he knows angeal would scold him or sephiroth if they were in the same position, almost as payback for all the times angeal has scolded them over small things

- on rare occasions, sephiroth will be in a very specific clingy mood where he wants nothing more than to just cuddle or be cuddled by genesis and angeal, but he never voices his desires, not really knowing how to. although despite sephiroth never saying anything, genesis and angeal are somehow always able to tell what sephiroth wants, always being able to notice the tiniest of subtle hints and differences in sephiroth's behavior, and they always find it to be the cutest thing ever, and never hesitate to give sephiroth what he wants

[ask-whitepearl-and-steven]

As a non-binary person, are you out at work? If so, how did you come out? What would you suggest to someone else coming out as non-binary?

I'll be completely honest - 'being out at work' is a spaghetti of a situation when 1/2 your co-workers

don't speak English and therefore are not aware of any pronouns

live in a country where the LGBTQ culture is VASTLY different from the western one and the word 'nonbinary' is not at all known

are old and under the impression that 'gay people are a thing that the west invented, but we don't have that here'

So you gotta understand that although your question SOUNDS simple, what you're actually asking me is a Rubiks Cube puzzle where all the stickers have been peeled off and replaced with arbitrary bedazzle designs of new colors.

My answers are as follows:

not really

kind of?

the coworkers that speak English natively know my pronouns, yes

they don't know about my specific gender identity because like why would they need to? I am their manager not a friend

idk man I'm a private person I don't really care about coming out

the coworkers that don't speak English - most of them don't even know what nonbinary means

they don't use pronouns for me because we don't speak english

Japanese pronouns work differently, it's not--it's a whole--I DON'T WANT TO TURN THIS INTO A TED-TALK I'M RESISTING

I don't really even care

The kids still ask me after 8 years if I'm a boy or a girl and at this point I deflect by asking them if they did their homework

no I'm not really out at work I think

I kind of am? it's complicated

It's not clear cut like in the movies

What I would suggest to someone coming out as non-binary: I don't know. I personally dislike big announcements. I personally have been in the closet about my sexuality and my gender identity for like decades. I put (they/them) in my bio in the group chat and point to it occasionally. To me, that's enough.

If it's not enough for you, I'm afraid I don't know how else to do it, so I'm really the worst person to ask about this.

[lilybug-02]

I like how the Mad King is basically the exact opposite of Chara. I hope they both appear in one of your comics or something, because they would HATE each other. (He also gives me Emperor Belos vibes)

I do love them both, but they are never meeting in the comic. I made the Mad King months after I had solidified the plot, so :P