#in which Alex does things

[pinyatapix]

how i imagine Minecraft Alex's personality to be like vs how i imagine Minecraft Steve's personality. duality of minecraft

[kayvalencourt]

Snippets from a phosphorous/gi doodle page

Do they have a ship name yet? I haven't seen much

[realbeefman]

you ever think about young nigel getting dragged along to a hunting trip with his dad and at first they’re genuinely getting along for once because nigel almost instinctively picks up on how to spot game trails, creep through the underbrush without making a sound, until his dad shoots the first buck and the shot sends birds fluttering in his stomach and he puts down the binoculars, turns to see that same manic gleam in his dad’s eyes as when he comes home looking for a fight, and his dad clasps him on the shoulder, oblivious and pleased, and he can feel his heart thudding out of his chest as they approach the body, the vacant eyes, the red pooling beneath it, the twitching muscles that don’t yet know they’re dead, and when his dad asks him later if he wants to try aiming the gun himself he takes it into his hands and stumbles a little at the unexpected weight, but finds the trigger is still warm to the touch

[mousemannation]

this article is about oscar but LOOK!!!!!! MOUSE MAN 🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀🐀

[aeolianblues]

was kinda thinking about this when I saw Renee Rapp live recently-- I didn't know her visual vibe, I'd heard a few songs here and there but I hadn't really *seen* her, and her attire at Osheaga was really casual, a jersey (baseball/basketball?) and slacks. And that was so amazing! I couldn't help thinking, the work Billie Eilish has done for how women in pop music are allowed to dress is incredible. Seeing her up there all comfortable you just know that Billie walked in her oversized tops so that Renee in her slacks could run; Billie walked through all the critcisms about how she dressed slobbily and having to assert that she didn't owe anyone a display of skin, so that Renee could be comfortable and unquestioned running up and down the catwalk in front of 10,000 people. How iconic.

And I don't think we even realised at the time how much something as simple as letting Billie dress the way she as a (then-) 17-year-old teenager dressed, could end up meaning for a future generation of women in music.

Obviously there is still way to go, there were weirdos complaining about how 'plain' Dua Lipa's Glastonbury outfit was this year (in 2024!!), l have to ask, are you at Paris Fashion Week?? She is the musical HEADLINER of an entire day of music at one of the biggest music festivals in the world, and you can't grant her the space to exist as an artist, you have to moan about her dress not being excitingly revealing enough. There's work to do, it's still dismal out there. But the space Billie Eilish has created for a most ordinarily-dressed woman popstar is still heartening.

[ohblimeygeorge]

Comfy cosy Alex n his cute caption🥰

Then Daniel’s comment lmaoooo

[eshithepetty]

Not a girlboss, not a girlfailure, but a secret third thing (put into an impossible situation and doing her best despite all the shit the world throws at her)

[eternallyfatedjadedspaded]

me trying to find this one part of The Brothers Karamazov that inspired a LOT of my ILY fic like... DAMN, forgot how much this book stabs in the same vein of TSH.

“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. it sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked up on a word and made a mountain out of a pea--he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility...”

“In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.”

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

“Forgive me... for my love - for ruining you with my love.”

(note to readers of ILY: much pain and confliction to come as the five above especially inspired a lot of this brand of hc i have for Henry, as well as some the rest really lol. my hc was inspired a lot by Ivan Karamazov in particular, his convos with Alyosha go so hard. i swear it's also gonna make a lot more sense of his total assholeness, so sorry for the longest wait ever (long enough for you to read the entire TBK book and i probs still won't be done). the character development doesn't write itself tho, nor do my class assignments so... low key might even use some of these in the notes section. heads up, same kinda vibes and inspiration of grappling with everything in life and man in the crossover too so...)

General TSH vibe quotes from TBK

“They were like two enemies in love with one another.”

“But to be in love is not the same as loving. One can fall in love and still hate.”

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”

“If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's human, he'll murder; if he's faithful, he'll deceive.”

“Love is such a priceless treasure that you can buy the whole world with it, and redeem not only your own but other people's sins. Go, and do not be afraid.”

“...I believe that you are sincere and good at heart. If you do not attain happiness, always remember that you are on the right road, and try not to leave it. Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself. What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself. Avoid fear, too, though fear is only the consequence of every sort of falsehood. Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love.”

“The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”

“I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”

“The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”

“And what's strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man.”

“You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.”

“I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, 'I exist.' In thousands of agonies -- I exist. I'm tormented on the rack -- but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar -- I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.”

“Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of anyone. For no one can judge a criminal until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime. When he understands that, he will be able to be a judge. Though that sounds absurd, it is true. If I had been righteous myself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before me. If you can take upon yourself the crime of the criminal your heart is judging, take it at once, suffer for him yourself, and let him go without reproach. And even if the law itself makes you his judge, act in the same spirit so far as possible, for he will go away and condemn himself more bitterly than you have done. If, after your kiss, he goes away untouched, mocking at you, do not let that be a stumbling-block to you. It shows his time has not yet come, but it will come in due course. And if it come not, no matter; if not he, then another in his place will understand and suffer, and judge and condemn himself, and the truth will be fulfilled. Believe that, believe it without doubt; for in that lies all the hope and faith of the saints.”

(this one DEF ILY energy. might have to listen to the book again to get inspired even more as i work in my free time. this book really did inspire tf out of me.)

here's some more so i don't look as i already do with this fixation. i reckon Donna def drew upon him for writing both TSH and TGF.

if this aint them:

“Do you know I've been sitting here thinking to myself: that if I didn't believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced in fact that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man's disillusionment -- still I should want to live. Having once tasted of the cup, I would not turn away from it till I had drained it! At thirty though, I shall be sure to leave the cup even if I've not emptied it, and turn away -- where I don't know. But till I am thirty I know that my youth will triumph over everything -- every disillusionment, every disgust with life. I've asked myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that could overcome this frantic thirst for life. And I've come to the conclusion that there isn't, that is until I am thirty.”

And this is Richard (but like shhh about the lord stuff):

"I'm a Karamazov… when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in such a humiliating position, and for me, I find it beautiful. And so in that very shame, I suddenly begin a hymn. Let me be cursed, let me be base and vile, but let me also kiss the hem of that garment in which my God is clothed; let me be following the devil at the same time, but still I am also your son, Lord, and I love you, and I feel a joy without which the world cannot stand and be."

[legendary-defender-of-fandoms]

Is Adam Ugly?

I’ve seen some folks saying that there’s a subset of the Hazbin Hotel fanbase that is fairly vocal about how they don’t like what Adam looks like under his helmet. As an idiot who didn’t know THIS:

Wasn’t his real face, I think this is a repeat of the Adam situation in Beauty & the Beast 1991.

It’s not that Adam’s real face is ugly (the design is fine - I still don’t see much of Alex Brightman in him, but he looks good considering he’s throwing a temper tantrum & just got his ass kicked by Lucifer) - we spent 8 episodes getting attached to Exorcist Adam, not Human Adam. They could’ve put ANY face under that mask, and the reaction would probably be the same.

For what it’s worth, Adam looks good with or without the mask, and I love how he’s still got exaggerated expressions no matter which side of him we see.

[sovamurka]

Team behind "Ma Meilleure Ennemie": How long this song can be?

Arcane team: Ahhhh... 2:30 max??? No, wait, 2:28!

Team behind "Ma Meilleure Ennemie": ...hmmm, quite short. Okay :)

Arcane team: Okay?

Team behind "Ma Meilleure Ennemie": Hehe :D *creates THE BEST FUCKING 2:28 song EVER*

[bloodbathfortwo]

I need everyone, in the Like Minds fandom, to critic my phone (Wallpaper and Lockscreen).

[honestlyvan]

(Crossposted to DW)

The thing is I have sooooo many things to say about Dark Place Casey but I find myself tripping on step one -- which is that trenchcoat Casey, the Casey from the Echoes, the Casey of Yötön Yö -- that's not actually Casey, our Casey, that's just Alan again. It's Alan, filtered through the lens of Casey, filtered through the lens of Alan.

Because everything that makes Casey recognisably himself is just... good character writing. The affect, the character voice, the opinions, the way he reasons through circumstances, all of those are the result of Alan's familiarity with the version of Casey he thinks is his. We're already seeing one layer down because of the way Echoes work, but even that top layer, Casey in the text, is Alan's creation.

Which makes it fucking fascinating that Casey is in the text identified in a role that is removed from the roles hierarchy of the horror story. He is "the detective". And if you've read enough detective fiction, you know that the detective rarely is the hero of the story. They're not someone who has skin in the game. They're rarely personally involved, their character arc rarely tied to the mystery itself. The detective may be the protagonist, but most of the time their role is to be a witness -- an observer, a collaborator, the window into a broader, impersonal perspective and, when necessary, the hand of the author acting on the plot.

An outsider to Alan's mental landscape with the face and the voice of a stranger.

[ceramicbeetle]

Desperately trying to make sense of Alex's motivations in Season Two and you know, I do eventually have to wonder if maybe Alex wasn't actually lying in the majority of those tapes.

Like, we tend to assume that Alex's motivations have been a consistent throughline since the college years, but do we actually know that that's the case? Do we know for sure that Alex was acting in deliberate, calculated ways in 2006; or could it be that he's telling the Truth on those olds tapes when he says he's blacking out and can't remember what's happening to anyone? After all, if we're assuming that Season 2 Alex's motivations are the exact same as his motives in Season 3, then it doesn't make any sense at all that he spend months working with Jay to try to find Amy; Season 3 Alex would have attempted to kill Jay like, on sight just to get things over with as quickly as possible and contain the spread of contamination as best as he could.

But, maybe, if Alex really had been separated from Amy after the events of the 04-04-10 tape, and if he really doesn't know where she is, then maybe that could make things start to make more sense. Maybe he really had been watching Jay's channel, and seeing Jay start going through the same things he went through in college without things devolving into violence and disappearances, and wondered if things maybe could play out differently this time. Maybe he really did send that tape to Jay to ask him for help, maybe he really was just trying to find Amy.

But then, instead of actually being helpful, Jay makes it extremely clear that he's a lot more interested in stalking Alex than he is in finding Amy. Alex asked for help, and instead there's a bunch of masked dudes on Jay's heels that keep attacking him, Jay is breaking into his house, stealing his things, leading the Operator right to him all over again, keeps trying to get other people (namely: Jessica -- if Alex is being honest when he says that his call reassuring her that Amy had been found was an effort to make Sure she stayed away from everything that was happening) involved; and instead of anything getting better, instead of anyone finding Amy, things are just getting worse all over again.

It's not until after the incident at the tunnel that things seem to start rapidly devolving. Rather than a calculated attempt to finally follow through with his need to curb the spread of contamination, this is very clearly an outburst of rage and terror. Alex's "I told you not to follow me" line in conjunction with Jay speculating that Alex didn't know who that guy was, to me, pretty firmly seems to speak to Alex having mistaken that stranger for Jay. From his point of view, Alex knows that Jay and totheark know where he live, have broken in before, he suspects that Jay stole a key to make it easier to get into his house, and he's been followed on the daily for months -- Alex is sitting at the tunnel because he doesn't know where else he can go without being constantly surveilled, hunted, and assaulted. And instead of getting a moment by himself to breathe, Jay followed him out there all over again (it feels like Alex looks directly at the camera in Jay's footage of him from this day; he knew for a fact that Jay was there), and then to make matters worse now 'Jay' won't even keep his distance anymore.

So Alex lashes out. And it's not until afterwards that he looks down and finally recognizes that this wasn't Jay -- it was someone completely innocent. Things have finally reached the low point he was at in college all over again; maybe even worse this time. If Alex doesn't remember attacking anyone in college, but he was at least partially conscious of it this time, then things have reached an entirely new rock bottom, they've reached an absolute point of no return.

He has no idea what happened to Amy, and he's spent months trying to find her with no hint of where she could be; he doesn't know where Jay actually is or what additional trouble he could be causing at this point; he does know that now innocent people are getting caught in the crossfire (in regards to the stranger in the tunnel, and also Jessica now that Jay has her phone number, and the untold number of people Jay got involved when he started posting videos to the Marble Hornets channel); things are spiraling out of control and there's no one left to ask for help. The situation isn't getting better, it's getting worse; things aren't getting easier to handle, they're just getting more out of hand; the negative impact is spreading and who knows how much further it can still go?

So, Alex decides to go scorched earth. He disfigures the body with the rock either to hide evidence or to make sure the guy would actually stay dead and not just get back up to start his own cycle of contamination in a few years. He tries to give Jay one last chance to back off, and Jay instead admits he's been talking to Jessica, acts obstinate and lies about not having Alex's spare key, and then breaks into Alex's house a second time (minimum). If Alex doesn't stop him now, who will? Alex met with Jay planning to kill the others, and then himself, so he could put a stop to this once and for all and keep things from getting any worse than they already were.

Maybe it makes a lot more sense if, rather than being a strangely incomprehensible detour on what should have been a straight path, the events of Season Two were the breaking point that put Alex on that path to begin with.

[legolasghosty]

🐑 Alternate Universe- Magic, Mutual Pining, Demonic possession, Furbies

Oh dear...

Alex is attending one of the most prestigious magic academies in the country, on the orders of his parents of course. Even though Laiz Fier Academy reviles even the name of the only type of magic he's ever been good at. His parents swore he'd find another specialty here, and he'd let himself believe them, like the idiot he is. He's scraping by in classes. Barely. At least he's managed to make a couple of friends and figure out how to sneak into the library stacks to find books that will actually help him hone his skills.

However, Alex realizes now there's a reason why it's not recommended to do your first summoning alone. Because, while he does manage to summon a demon, it doesn't exactly end up in the silvery urn he'd laid in the center of the pentagram.

So now he has a talking, demonic Furby to hide. One that, despite its too-wide eyes and disconcertingly smooth voice, Alex thinks he might be developing feelings for.

(Fake fic ask game!)

[until-the-brahmin-come-home]

actually wait nonsensical personal worldbuilding ahoy but it'd be interesting/funny/depressing if there were two versions of my vault dweller Alex running around after he dies - the version spoken of and semi-worshipped by wastelanders, and the one revered by Arroyo. Actually there could be three cuz his ghost is also hanging around. Actually there could be four on account of the Cafe of Broken Dreams. Actually - *is forcibly dragged offstage*

[vraska-theunseen]

google how to not be sosososo anxious all the time. its not even like stress that motivates me to get things done it's just like. i make a mistake and misunderstood instructions in class and my teacher is like "you were supposed to figure out precisely where 180 was before taping the draft and punching your marks" when i like an idiot guesstimated it and after a moment of me going "oh..." bc its something i can't fix bc i've already punched in all the holes on the part he's like "i think you'll be okay" and goes back to what he's doing and then for three hours im like he's so annoyed with me i bring things to him too much and ask him too many questions and make the stupidest mistakes every day he hates me. i ask a friend something and they don't respond because they're busy or forget about it or don't see it or any number of other reasons and then a couple weeks later i send them something else and they don't respond for a few hours and its enough time for me to convince myself i said something a while ago that they took offense to without realizing and they're ignoring me and i send another message saying "are you mad at me did i do something can you tell me what i did so we can work it out" and he's like "what?". a friend posts about people treating them badly in a way that's clear they're talking about a specific phenomenon or person and im always like omg are they talking about me did i do something bad and not realize it... and its someone i talk to so infrequently and casually it obviously would not be a concern or someone i've known for so many years that they would obviously come to me if there was any conflict that arose. help