#it even had the asterisk

[84reedsy]

HAPPYYY BIRTHDAYYY!! 🥳🥳

I hope you had a great day! I didn't realise it was yesterday 😅 I hope you also have great year ahead 🎉🎉💐🩵

TBH I celebrate for the entire month of August so you're right on time!!!

Thank you so much 💚💚💚💚

[crptdkssr]

insane about erickson saying s1 was about childhood and s2 adolescence when all through the first half of episode 4 i was like good for them they’re teenagers!! they’re literally young teens now!! like, mark and helly* snickering in the face of their teacher-boss’ morality story. milchick responding like an offended parent who ‘thought they knew’ their children as good and obedient. mark blindly infatuated to the point of ignoring everything else around him (i’m so mad for irv). mark finally getting to do helly’s rebellious kid routine in ep 1, demanding a degree of personhood. irv throwing curse words left right and centre (good for him).

like, there’s still that naivety and uncertainty and submission to authority but now it’s much more—dare i say—tempered

[wrathion]

forever and always bitter about how anduin got magically cured from his arthasfication in shadowlands ... i mean yeah the mental issues & trauma are there (somehow...shoutout to tww) but i mean physically!!

what if he lost his heartbeat and it didn't come back after his boss fight. no matter what he does his pulse isn't there, he doesn't know how he's standing and that's scary. what is he now? is he alive? is he dead? will he age? or will he rot on his own two feet like a forsaken? if that's the case, how much time does he have left? is he a ticking time bomb or will he be here long after his other shorter-life-span friends & adopted family die (assuming he even manages to make it that far)

granted, his mawsworn design in shadowlands was more a visual shorthand to the players that he was Evil Now than anything, he was just as alive as before, just possessed. he could seemingly be swapped between his original looking self and mawsworn self in the kyrestria cutscene? but i digress, the pale skin & hair? the blank eyes? Surely something had to have gone wrong with the amount of time he was stuck like that

[cluescorner]

Tim Drake has a weird fucking function

The thing about Tim that I find unique is that his life became SO MUCH WORSE after joining the heroing thing. Everybody else had a mid-to-shit life before becoming a hero/living with Bruce and mostly everybody (except Jason who LITERALLY DIED) had their life improved by being a hero/being Bruce's kid (or at least it is typically portrayed as such.

Tim had the exact opposite trajectory. His life wasn't perfect before he became Robin, but like...multi-millionaire/billionaire (canon is unclear, but he's within Gotham's upper-strata) kid with both natural intelligence + charisma and a bright future ahead of him and parents who were emotionally neglectful but nothing really beyond that (which is also a form of trauma, but all of the info we have indicates that the Drakes were no Arthur Brown or David Cain) and he still had other people he could rely on outside of them. He went to boarding school, which could be something horrible OR something amazing depending on your own thoughts/experiences. I grew up having a commute where we'd drive past a really pretty and rich af boarding school that literally everybody in our area DREAMED of going to, so to me the idea of going to boarding school sounds incredible but mileage may vary. Tim seems like the type of kid who would thrive in that though. Based on what we know in canon atm, his pre-robin life was fucking amazing.

And then he starts being the sidekick and working towards becoming Robin. His parents immediately get kidnapped and poison themselves through drinking tainted water; his mom dies and his dad is in a coma. This is not the fault of Robin, but Tim himself muses about the idea that Robin and dead parents are linked: to become Robin completely, you must lose your parents. And with how fate/destiny/canon events can operate in comics universes, maybe he isn't that far off. Once his dad wakes up, their relationship becomes strained as the man grieves the loss of his wife and realizes that his son has been doing vigilantism as a hobby. It is unclear exactly how good of a parent Jack was before the incident, but the results of Tim's involvement with the Robin mantle has definitely made things worse between father and son. Jack will also die within quick succession of 2 of Tim's best friends, his girlfriend, and his other father. He will also effectively lose like 1/2 his loved ones in the fallout of all of that mess including: his older brother, his other friends (both civilian and superhero), and the stepmother with whom he shared what I would argue is his best parent-child relationship (Dana also may have died, but it's left unclear). He has stopped pursuing higher education (the moment he even applied for college he 'died', and it seems he hasn't made another attempt since) and if he wasn’t a major focus of the media before he sure is now. He tries to quit briefly (in fact he initially was planning on quitting once someone more suited came along) and cannot bring himself to do so. Even when he does manage to get away for a while, his superhero life impacts the pre-robin life he is trying to go back to. Leaving is an impossibility, this is all there is for him now. He also isn’t allowed to make mistakes anymore, not when lives hang in the balance. The one who enforces that impossible standard the most (besides Bruce depending on who's writing) is himself. He’s got TRAUMA now and people want to hurt him constantly. He is constantly questioning his own sanity and morality and place in the world. He almost dies like every month. Tim grows colder and less grounded, he is becoming both a better and a worse version of himself at the same time. He’s saving lives in the same few issues as he’s setting up a Saw movie plot for the man who killed his father. He is haunted by the ghosts of his past and the looming figure of his future. His life becomes SO MUCH FUCKING WORSE after he becomes Robin. Some of it is the fault of others, some is the fault of circumstance, and some of it is due to his own actions. But basically all of Tim's worst traumas and life-changing moments are either tied to or caused by Robin. Dick's parents would still be dead, Jason would still be living on the streets, Stephanie would still have Arthur Brown for a father and a lot of other things that deserve their own posts/IDK if they've been retconned, and Damian would still have been raised in the eco-cult where death is a constant. Those are life circumstances that occur without the involvement of Robin, the only one who even needs Bruce involved at all in their series of events is Damian. But Tim? All of what is considered his 'worst' moments occur after he assumes the role.

This idea is what I find the coolest and most fascinating about Tim as a character. Being a hero is usually portrayed as either an outright awesome thing or a righteous duty that one must fulfill or (maybe in a grimmer and/or more grounded story) a sacrifice to your interpersonal relationships/mental health that is made for the greater good. For Tim, being a superhero actively ruined his life (both because of the general circumstances surrounding being a kid vigilante and the choices he made as part of that role). It's never portrayed that way in canon because we need to come out of issues going 'wow being a superhero is so cool! I'm gonna buy the next issue!', but when you just look at Tim's life literally everything really bad that we know of occurred after he became Robin.

[trainingdummyrabbit]

yapping about my bugs; cocoaduology edition. yip o7

so like. the thing is that like. its. wrt to cocoa and holly, theyre very much... i speak of them separately very frequently, and on some level they are very much kind of. occupying different spaces. but at the same time, they are functionally two parts of the same whole. ive yet to really dig into exactly what this Entails in the way that i want to, especially because of how cocoa functions with matters regarding herself post... isolation, i guess we can call it.

she doesnt like being pushed into or expected to give space for it, but its also something she turns to when she feels like she doesnt have anything else. and those times are often when she wouldnt get an answer.

they Do care about each other. its hard-wired into them, given how it is they came to be, yknow? cocoa is like... an exaggerated defense mechanism given their own space due to holly's refusal to engage any further with the world around her. cocoa is Going to care about holly. holly is Going to care about cocoa. but the amount that theyd ever be able to actually interact with each other is practically 0. when theyre under stress, cocoa is more likely to push and lash out, while holly makes herself small and nonthreatening. but ultimately, they both respond to it by complete shutdown. neither of them really know how to hold it, how to handle it.

which brings me to the Actual Thing I Was Going To Talk About-- its that, regardless of which scenario, which setting, which situation; whichever of the two is "active," theyre incredibly difficult to work with because. well. i dont know what they can do.

specifically, the happenstance of what they are is so messy that they tend to clash with each other. but more importantly, the way that they function wrt their tether to the world at large is incredibly fragile. a Lot of what they do is the result of several layers of coping mechanism that, admittedly, is very very much not sustainable in the long-term. i dont know what they can Do.

the intent with cocoa's character is that they have to essentially build themselves up as a person nearly completely from scratch-- something they Thankfully dont have to do Completely on their own, but its still something so incredibly slow and tenuous that like. well. The Difficulties. i think they Can do it-- or at least theyre capable of making progress on-- but again, its all very vested in the presence of an Other. they do kind of have to be dragged into it, a Lot.

and then, speaking entirely from those 'what-if' scenarios, holly is. well. she. She Is Less Equipped Than That, to put it extraordinarily lightly. she is also Highly Dependent but in an entirely different way. shes had more time to consciously Be, but a lot of that has been completely dropped in favor of adapting to what she needs to be. she entirely redefines herself, in such a way where its hard to tell what, if anything, was there before. so frankly, she only Seems more defined because shes gotten really good at acting the part.

which is to say, i guess, i dont really know what theyre doing. i just set them down and watch em run around, and hope they come back holding a stick or flower or pebble they really like. go have fun girlies, if you figure it out, let me know.

[moeblob]

I unfortunately picked up Bravely Default 2 again (I bought it back when it released) and then started over since I last played it in June 2021. And. You know what. I like these silly beans. And then I saw concept art for Dag's expressions and I am not the same. Why did they decide to give him huge fangs in it.

(also I'm trying so hard to avoid spoilers less for plot but more for characters so if you know anything that happens to characters shhhhh. also the expression concept is below the read more so you can see what I mean.)

[hephaestuscrew]

Favourite Fleet & Clara quotes from High Vaultage 

(Page numbers from my Goldsboro special edition, I'm not sure how they line up with page numbers in other versions. Spoilers for all of High Vaultage.)

p27: Clara had met Fleet only weeks before. She had just arrived in London and started work as a crime reporter, and pursued a murder case alongside Fleet despite his repeated objections, until he eventually conceded - as Clara had known he would - that they were making a good team, and furthermore proposed - as she hadn't a clue he would - that they go into business together.

p51: "There you are, Fleet. Where have you been?" / Fleet paused, made some confused looks between Clara and the room he had just left, and finally pointed at the door. "Isn't this the waiting room for detectives whose partners have run off? They were quite a few of us in there. Quite a lot in common." / Clara suppressed a grin into something more disapproving. "You're not as funny as you think you are, Inspector." (More below the cut.)

p70: [After Clara successfully sneaks into the Iron Bridge Club] [Fleet] should have known Clara would make it in. Her tenacity had been clear to him since she had first left the police roping at a crime scene of his. It was one of the things he admired about her, even if she didn't always check whether there was somewhere to land.

p76: [After Clara's business card strategies work on Cosgrove] Fleet glanced at Clara. She grinned back, eyes wild with pride, before tapping her bag and mouthing the word 'Posner'.

p116: [After Professor McCabe says “Top marks, Miss Entwhistle”] Clara beamed, and flashed her eyebrows at Fleet while elbowing him in the ribs.

p132: "Don't think you can shake me off, Inspector. I'll come with you." / " I'm not trying to shake you off. It's just late, Clara.” / "You're always trying to shake me off. Ever since we met. Despite my constant usefulness." / "I'd say occasional usefulness," replied Fleet, maintaining a straight face. / Clara, with some effort, twisted her grin into something approximating outrage. "Frequent usefulness, surely!" / "No, but I'll agree to "regular usefulness"." / "Deal.” / “And I asked you to join me in business, Clara. If I'd wanted to shake you off, that's a poor way to go about it."

p154: [From Fleet's POV] Clara really was the sort of person - indeed the only person he knew - who could find genuine joy and wonder in a building site.

p172: [When Clara fears for her life at the display of the Lanterns] She thought of her brother, her sister, her parents... Her ridiculous detective.

p176-178: Clara without her usual pep was almost unrecognisable. [...] Normally that sort of reply would at least elicit some playful scolding. Fleet grew concerned. [...] "Do you want to talk about it?" [...] " What do you want to talk about?" [...] He tried to think of more options. Not talking about things was Fleet's speciality, but for Clara this signalled a worrying malaise. Things were dire. He was going to have to resort to small talk. "Would you like to hear about my day?" A brief pause. "Yes," she replied, with a note of hope [...] Fleet remembered the mess he was in before he switched to the task of cheering up Clara.

p184: When he saw her, she noticed his eyes were shining with a rare zeal, and he appeared bursting to explain whatever he was thinking.

p187: Fleet had, after all, taken her under his wing, even if she did have to thrust herself there initially. She thought about the door plaque he’d had engraved with both their names on it as his way of inviting her to be his business partner – typical Fleet, refusing to tell her so much as his favourite breakfast food and then to go and do something like that. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her.

p201: [After Fleet sees a magpie get electrocuted] Fleet looked at Clara, who thankfully had been facing the other way.

p214: [After Fleet falls into the frozen river] Clara, removing her cape and placing it over Fleet's shoulders 

p225: [Clara] had read several books on the subject - Surreptitious Sleuthing, Introduction to Ingression, Undetectable Detection, to name a few - but she always seemed to pick up more from her partner, whose years in the police had left him full of [useful tricks].

p235: [While navigating the Brunellian tunnels for the first time] "I still think my way is more fun." / "Escape, Clara. Escape and then fun." / "That's a promise, Fleet. You've promised it now.”

p259: “That's too much topiary,” said Fleet [...] Clara's eyes lit up at this rare revelation of a personal opinion from her colleague. “I didn't know you had such strong views on topiary, Fleet.”

p293: [When Crowe increases how much he'd be willing to pay them to investigate on his behalf] Fleet knew his answer, but felt he had to see whether Clara was still in agreement. He looked to her, only to be met with an expression of astonishment that he had taken even this long to respond.

p337: [After their falling out] Where do you even begin, she thought, let alone end, with someone you've worked with so closely?

p338: [After they squash the scone Fleet brought Clara as part of his apology] "You want me to eat an exploded scone!" cried Clara, stifling laughter.”/ “I think it says a lot if you refuse.” / “Fine,” she said, grabbing the bag, pulling out the crushed scone and taking an enormous bite. / The corners of Fleet's mouth twitched. Clara was sure he almost laughed.

p341: [Before they go into the Church of the Mechanical Man to look for Helena Evans] Clara smiled, and punched him in the shoulder. / "Ow! What was that for?" / Clara realised that in her excitement at Fleet's plan she had landed her friendly thump with rather more power than intended, so she clarified: "You're a good one, Fleet.”

p371: [After Fleet gets shot in the shoulder] Fleet thought he heard Clara scream his name, but he couldn't be sure. Suddenly she was next to him, checking his shoulder.

p371-372: Clara turned to Fleet. “Now I have an idea.” / “What kind of idea?” / “A terrible idea. Just the worst idea I've ever had.” / Fleet looked towards the distant exit, which could barely be seen beyond the fire, and then back to Clara. “I like it.”

p373: [As they anticipate an oncoming wave of molten metal] Fleet felt a sensation he did not recognise. Something like calm. Then Clara took his hand and turned him towards her. For some insufferable reason she was smiling again. He couldn't help but return it. [...] Fleet realised Clara still had his hand firmly in hers, and she seemed to be saying something at him that he couldn't hear. He tried to listen, but she stopped speaking, shook her head, threw her arms around him and hauled him down onto the ground.

p375: [When Clara won't tell Fleet whether she knew they were going to be saved by Helena Evans] “And you don't think this might affect how likely I am to trust your plans in the future?” / “Does it?” asked Clara. [...] “No,” said Fleet. “It doesn't.”

p381: Clara stiffened her posture, as though she might salute. "Archibald Fleet, I challenge you to a battle of business." / "We're partners, Clara. We're on the same side." / "A point for whoever solves a case first! More for trickier ones!" / "But we work together..." / "Let battle commence!" she cried.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[hum--hallelujah]

built this life and now it's mine - Fab Four fluff + jetpoison* (platonic or romantic, up to interpretation) (for @caffeineecold)

-

Kobra got the jukebox in the corner working two days ago and Jet's just returned from a run that nearly killed him but also scored them a crate of real booze — not the shitty moonshine brewed in the Zones that everyone pretends they like even though it tastes like the inside of the boot that gave bootlegging its name, real stuff.

Party's already sloppy drunk, sitting at the counter, and Jet doesn't usually let himself get this tipsy. Kobra and Ghoul sit in the corner next to the jukebox, picking out tunes and passing back and forth a bottle of champagne, of all things. For being a sandpup, Ghoul has expensive tastes.

Something bass-heavy is playing when Party slips from the stool and nearly topples over. Jet's reflexes are sluggish, but he manages to slide from his own seat and catch Poison. Party's pissed at him for nearly dying, again, and Jet expects a shove and dark look, but that's not what he gets. Instead, Poison leans into him, fitting them so naturally together that it's almost frightening.

"Y'okay?" Jet asks quietly into Party's hair.

"Dance with me, Star?"

Jet blinks, shocked. This is the last thing he expected. But he's just drunk enough, inhibitions just low enough, and he always crumbles when Pois calls him Star. Nobody else really ever does. "Sure," he finds himself saying, and Pois curls even more against him, their hands finding their places without even looking. It's too easy to sway back and forth together, in some facsimile of dance that's really just more an excuse for the comfort of touch that they both need, to the lilting gravelly guitars playing through the jukebox speakers.

The track skips and Kobra thumps the side of the box to get it playing again, a rising guitar interlude without words. Poison's head is nested against Jet's jaw, red hair filling his entire field of vision. On an impulse he doesn't resist for once, probably due to how tipsy he is, he presses his lips to Poison's temple.

"I'm sorry, sunshine," he whispers. "Fuck, Poison, I love you. Not the way... you want me to, probably, but I do. I love you so much." His eye is wide and staring, a little bit desperate. There's no other way he can say it.

"Don't leave me," mumbles Poison softly into the skin of his neck. The song is different now, something softer. "My Star..."

Jet closes his eye. "I'm not trying to," he says.

Poison sniffs, still swaying to the new tempo of this song. "Try harder."

Pois probably won't remember this in the morning. Kobra and Ghoul will give them weird looks, like they've completely lost it, and Jet will know why. Heck, they're giving them weird looks now, over the top of a champagne bottle and between smirking giggling asides to each otherm But Party is too drunk to retain much. They won't ever talk about it, except maybe when it comes up in an argument they force everyone to hear. You said you wouldn't leave me, you said you love me. I don't care how it is I just want you to love me whatever way you can.

The future is unfolding in front of them in so many ways. But right now it's just two friends, irresponsibly drunk and folded into each other.

[bastard-of-a-bog-being]

Hey guys I saw a leaked script for frozen 3 and hands makes a return !!

Hans: literally just breathes Elsa: smirks and Murders him to death with ice powers, struts away sassily because she’s Idina Menzel Hands: will return in Frozen 4 and every short thereafter for this same joke

[abductedlawnchair]

By the way, while I'm on my MoviestarPlanet ramblings here on my page...

If your name is Kayla Mae and had the username "imsowwy" and had a very involved romantic relationship with a guy having the username of "XxKawaiiPandaBoixX" in 2016 who admitted he wasn't actually a guy and disappeared due to his religious upbringing not allowing him to date a girl if he was a girl....

You are entitled to some form of compensation. Idk how much financial compensation I could do, but you are entitled to some kind compensation nonetheless.

[vraska-theunseen]

guys will be battling demons and the demons will be that ****** ****** ******* *** ******* ******* ***** *** ** ***

[saltineofswing]

I’ll also say — as a Californian who is, maybe not aghast or surprised but definitely angry and disappointed about how sideways the voting went in California re: progressive outcomes on the propositions at play this cycle — a big problem with this specific instance is that there is a massive propaganda effort in this state, specifically, to trick people into thinking one way or another about progressive causes. I feel that in my experience, the ‘powers that be’ know that if the language used to describe an issue is too empathetic (or, honestly, just straightforward), a measure will quickly get a lot of support. So, advertising for propositions is severely curtailed in spaces where they know younger and more motivated demographics will be watching, and counter-ads often use extremely oblique and sometimes outright misleading language to make the progressive goal of the proposition sound like a Bad Thing, Actually.

This is the Associated Press’s google tooltip that I got from googling California Prop 6:

I’ll get back to this in a second. For now, here is a link to the full text on Prop 6. It’s kind of a fucking slam dunk in my opinion! The section at the end is particularly interesting to me.

Nobody even bothered to submit an argument against. Why? Because nobody reads this stuff, and the people who didn’t want Prop 6 to pass knew that. I bet if you look into No On 6 campaigns, the rhetoric is probably highly divorced from the reality of what the proposition actually does, and is designed to trick people into thinking that it’s something completely different.

(It’s also very closely connected to the ‘return to tough-on-crime policy’ Prop 36, and they work nicely together to subjugate petty criminals.)

But I think that it’s important to remember that a lot of people just. Didn’t vote. California has something like 38 million citizens, and even if you take the above numbers as 55% of counted ballots — as per the implication in the screenshot of the AP’s tallies — that still accounts for less than half of CA’s population having voted in the first place. So, realistically… like, a quarter of the population voted No on this. Yes, that’s one in four people being OK with treating criminals however the fuck they want… but it’s a dramatic minority of the overall population.

All that said: I agree with OP, that most people don’t think twice about it and allow themselves to be carried by the cultural current. Before I really dug into it with my dad, he expressed the basic sentiment of ‘Well yeah indentured servitude is bad, but they did something wrong, so I don’t know that I mind’; but it took extremely minimal effort to point out how fucked up the situation really is (which is partially because my dad is a reasonable man, but I don’t think that most people would be that much harder to convince.) I think that cultivated apathy is easily cut through, as long as the individual in question already has a decent ethical base.

And I do believe that when it comes California’s denizens, at large, apathy really is their biggest problem. It sucks so, so bad that so few people bothered to vote down-ballot, if they voted at all, but I would rather work with the apathetic than with the outright malicious.

i've been seeing a lot of californians aghast at the proposition to abolish prisoners being used as slave labour getting voted down and i have no idea how to fix this on a societal scale but after having enough conversations with people you really do start to realise that a massive percentage of the population sees prisoners as subhuman and therefore believes that once someone is in prison for any reason then everything bad that's done to them is simply their just desserts

[arolesbianism]

Richard vc damn I'm doing such a good job at committing to this bit rn I'm so good at acting scared (<- is scared (<- doesn't realize that she feels emotions))

[the-weeping-dawn]

I can't make a single argument for her to fully side with Minthara, slaughtering the grove and siding with goblins is in fact doing the opposite of what she's trying, I can see her consider it, and intentionally knock out Minthara, and want to come back for her.....

[rose-chateau]

One unspoken but VERY obvious facet of the whole... w//tcher situation, I guess you could call it. Is that a lot of un/sloved fans are phannies.

Like, hear me out: when dan howell went on his 5-7 year long haitus, Ry*n and Sh*ne became kind of the substitute teachers of the dan and phil phandom. A lot of people making/commenting on b*zzfeed un/solved compilations have phan related stuff in their usernames and icons. A LOT of the fanart/fanfiction/general shitposts has a distinct "these two guys are soulmates" vibe to them ala phan conspiracy shit. And I know that wasn't UNIQUE to phan (far from it). But dan and phil were a unique case even before they came out because they moved in together, they did everything together, they talked about being each other's only friend, and gave fans a LOT of mundane crumbs about their personal lives very often. It was a close-feeling situation even if you didn't ship them. Personal vlogger channels are just inherently more personal than Content made by a Corporation, (the corporation in question being b*zzfeed as R and S's origin.)

I think phans carried over that dynamic to the ry*n and sh*ne fandom, and I think they were mostly getting away with it until the streaming service debacle kinda shattered the illusion. In reality, ry*n and sh*ne lack SO MUCH of what made dan and phil redeemable as rich content creators. Ry*n and Sh*ne weren't domestically vivisected before their audience on a weekly basis, what they put out has always been within the confines of their work. Ry*n and Sh*ne were barely even FRIENDS outside of work before un/solved. And it's not like they did anything WRONG by being that way. It's just an aspect of the situation that HEAVILY affects the nature of their parasocial relationship with their fans. Phan trends on tumblr every time one of them sneezes, but w*tcher fans don't exactly have a wealth of domestic gay husbands fanfic fodder to wade through on a regular basis. But it was definitely the "business decision" of charging 5 dollars a month for four fucking youtube videos that really hauled the fostered phandom out of the rose colored projecting mindset.

It turns out that when contrasted against dan and phil, ry*n and sh*ne just aren't that interesting 🤷‍♀️