#it's absolutely wild how that works because we do this with a bunch of stuff where we can mention the incident very vaguely

[maxdibert]

The double standards of HP fandom is the highlight of my day. I love the hypocrisy of “the marauders have matured” as they say and make up horrible things about Sev. It's always “they were teenagers, all teenagers do shit”, but they also ignore that Severus was a teenager when he called Lily a Mudblood, he was also a teenager when he believed that the bad side was a lifeline in his existence. But they always throw him under the bus, shouting like idiots about how Severus is “racist”, “fascist” and “nazi”. Boys will always be boys, until the boy is Severus and they will act as if an outcast child is the root of the entire world's evil and that their favorites are peacekeepers just because they are on the “good” side of the coin, ignoring that his “punishers” are part of the reason Sev is who he has become.

I couldn’t agree more with this. The double standards are wild, and the mental gymnastics people do to justify their favorites while trashing Severus is honestly fascinating in the worst way. Like, “the Marauders have matured”? Please. Sirius is 30+ years old in Order of the Phoenix and still acting like he’s in high school, picking fights with Snape just because he can. That’s maturity? Meanwhile, Severus is held accountable forever for stuff he did as a literal teenager, in the middle of being bullied and isolated, and on top of that, having no real support system.

The “he was a Nazi” argument drives me insane. Severus grew up in a broken home, surrounded by poverty, abuse, and probably a ton of internalized self-loathing. He latched onto the Death Eaters as a desperate, misguided attempt to gain power and control in a world where he had none. Does that make his choices right? No, but it makes them understandable. But no, let’s keep pretending he was just an evil mastermind from birth while completely ignoring that James and Sirius literally assaulted him for fun. I guess we’re cool with bullies as long as they’re charming and good-looking?

And don’t even get me started on Dumbledore. Everyone acts like Dumbledore is some saint, but the man literally used Severus as a pawn for years, keeping him trapped in this cycle of guilt and redemption while letting everyone else treat him like garbage. But oh no, Snape said a slur when he was 15, so let’s act like he’s beyond redemption. Meanwhile, the Marauders and their crew, who are canonically responsible for attempted murder (hello, werewolf prank??), get a free pass because they’re “fun.”

It’s the hypocrisy for me. Severus has to be perfect, repentant, and saintly just to be considered “okay,” while others get to coast on their charm and charisma despite being cruel, reckless, or outright abusive. If you’re going to judge characters for their actions, at least hold them all to the same standard, or just admit you’re biased and move on. P.S. Unpopular opinion, but honestly, Severus calling Lily a “Mudblood” feels almost laughable compared to everything he was going through at the time. Maybe it’s because my friends and I (we’ve literally known each other since nursery school) are a codependent bunch with dynamics straight out of a dysfunctional family, but we’ve had fights, arguments, screamed at each other, thrown the nastiest things in each other’s faces, stopped talking for a while, and yet we always managed to work things out. I get that Lily had her reasons for cutting ties—it’s absolutely valid, and no one has the right to tell you when or how to set boundaries with someone you feel isn’t good for you anymore. But the fandom in general blows this way out of proportion. I mean, I personally find an attempted murder, like the one Sirius orchestrated, a lot worse, and yet people don’t give that even half the weight they give to this incident.

[thethingything]

I just noticed what feels like a small cavity forming in another one of our teeth and god I hope that's not actually what's going on here because I cannot fucking handle that on top of the one we've already got. like if it is a cavity then I have no idea what to do about it

[thatringboy]

A Body Built for an Undeserving Soul, A Boothill Theory

My definitely sober thoughts while grinding for the eventual Ruan Mei rerun and writing some robinhill have led me to a startling train of thought. I’ll do my best to sound sane as I say this, but the 18 minute discord voice memo I originally made is definitely anything but. Spoilers for Boothill’s backstory, character stories, and other lore, and no I’m not really gonna be citing things because it’s 3 in the morning and I’m high. If at any point I say something that isn’t really supported by canon, please be nice i’m a little silly boy

Anyways

I don’t think Boothill is a Pathstrider.

Let me cook, please. Here’s my reasons why:

The way he talks about Aeons and Paths

The way his body is designed

And 3.

Enjoy the madness below the cut

So, there’s not really a proper way to word any of this without it being an ADHD word vomit. Bear with me. Please.

Penacony has been a fantastic update for those of us waiting for worldbuilding. We’ve learned a LOT about the many factions in the cosmos, the true nature of the IPC, the powers of the Aeons, and that the Paths are tangible things in the universe. The Luofu arc opened up a bit about this, but since it was so focused on The Hunt and The Abundance and The Permanence, we sort of fell back into the same story beats as the Herta Station arc. Either way, Penacony has been amazing for little lore bugs like me.

So what does this have to do with the wild claim that Boothill somehow isn’t a Pathstrider?

Let’s touch some grass for a minute and consider our places in the irl universe. Hi, I’m Perseus, a young transmasculine white adult guy from South Texas who grew up reading too many Rick Riordan books and now has a complicated relationship with both the christian god and the greek gods. It’s an autism special interest of mine to learn about the greek pantheon and while I don’t know everything about it, I’m a silly little guy and can recite fun facts about dozens of gods. I can also recite fun facts about the christian bible and christian mythology because I was forced to study christianity when I was younger. Nice to meet y’all. Now, when I, Perseus, talk to people about the various religions I know a thing or two about, I infodump. A lot. I think I once ranted about Dionysus for 20 minutes before my sister told me to shut up. It happens.

Now focus back in on the important topic: the fictional cyborg with jiggle physics. I’m working purely on memory, but I’m pretty sure when he first meets Dan Heng and Pom-Pom, he does go on a spiel about the Aeons and Paths as he tries to prove his identity as a Galaxy Ranger and Acheron’s identity as Not a Galaxy Ranger. The way he describes The Hunt, The Nihility, Emanators, and Paths, it all just sounded… i don’t know, canned? It came across as very emotionally disconnected, even as he talked about The Hunt, but he was saying all the right words. Like someone who studied a religion but isn’t actually a part of the religion. 

On its own, this means absolutely nothing besides just reminding us of his home planet’s hostile takeover by Qlipoth-worshiping IPC workers. If you haven’t seen the post yet, I really recommend reading the So, Honkai: Star Rail made a cyborg cowboy... an INDIGENOUS cyborg cowboy. post by @ahworm I’ll link it here, please check it out because it recontextualized a lot of how I viewed Boothill’s actions and mannerisms

So the way Boothill talks about the Path he should be a Pathstrider of sounds more like an encyclopedia than a follower. Now, maybe this can be explained by the fact that Galaxy Rangers aren’t the most zealous bunch, especially when standing next to the Xianzhou Alliance who worship Lan as a deity more than The Hunt itself. The Galaxy rangers are the opposite, they are hunters first and last regardless of what Lan in THEIR “greatness” does.

But if Boothill is just a normal Galaxy ranger (whatever that means), then how does he recognize the Jade Abacus of Allying Oath instantaneously? Dan Heng’s barely put the damn thing on the table and Boothill’s already jaw on the floor amazed. One could make the argument that, well, Boothill’s a well-traveled guy, of course he’d know the most valuable artifact to his Path. To that, I say: there’s more to it.

Boothill’s main accusation against Acheron in the beginning is, what? “An Emanator that shouldn’t exist.” He talks about The Nihility and Device IX the same way he talks about The Hunt; learned and detached in an agnostic way. He’s aware these are real concepts and beings, he’s crossed paths with an Emanator of Elation before so he can’t deny the existence of literal gods in the universe

We also know that it’s canon in the star rail universe that there are planets who haven’t heard of the Aeons before, like Sigonia - Aventurine’s planet. Instead of Aeons, we know the Avgins worshiped the goddess Giathra Triclops. I’ve seen the argument that Giathra is just another name for Xipe since THEY have three faces, but Aventurine’s flashbacks are very clear in showing that the worship of Giathra was very different from the worship of Aeons. We don’t know much about Aeragan-Epharshel, but from how the IPC described the indigenous people as needing civilization and other disgusting things (not to mention how they forced a synesthesia beacon into boothill when he was maybe like a teenager? And then his brain nearly broke from the influx of information?), I think it’s safe to say that the tribes of Aeragan-Epharshel also didn’t follow any specific Aeon.

But Aventurine is now a Pathstrider of Preservation, so why can’t Boothill be a Hunter Pathstrider too? Well, dear reader, allow me to bash my head against the wall trying to form words. Aventurine doesn’t believe anything about the sovereignty of The Preservation, just like the rest of the Stonehearts. He has his agenda, and if he has to play Preservation to do so, then he will. I think Boothill is the same, which is also why I can’t wait to see what happens in the upcoming quests with the two of them in the same room. That being said, Aventurine’s Preservation powers only come from his Cornerstone, crafted by an Emanator of Preservation. It’s how he and Topaz and Jade can all be such different people but all be classified as Pathstriders of Preservation, the sheer proximity to an Emanator’s powers canonically give them powers equivalent to actual Pathstriders.

So… what about Boothil? This leads me into my next point: Boothill’s cyborg body. By looking at his Character Story Part 3, we learn that Boothill VOLUNTARILY became a cyborg to become stronger. He literally shed the skin and name from an ancient, dead tongue to become a real loaded gun. His voice lines in combat talk about death a lot, his name literally is in reference to a graveyard - this man cannot wait to finally die in some sort of blaze of glory and vengeance. I say that with a little bit of sarcasm, but Boothill designed his body to be a weapon. 

In a lot of parts of the USA, it’s illegal to even insinuate that you have a firearm as that constitutes as the crime of  “armed robbery”, even if you don’t even have a gun. The threat alone is enough to warrant a higher penalty. But Boothill is already a great shot with a gun, why does he also need augmented teeth and crosshair eyes and hips that can fold his body into any sinful shape he needs? Because the threat alone is enough to give him power over his prey. Almost as if he’s compensating for a lack of magic godly powers. He needs to be able to keep up with even the strongest IPC goons, to pierce their Preservation shields with his bullets so that he can get closer and closer to Oswaldo Schneider.

But how can I prove that Boothill doesn’t have any Path magic? Well, let’s take a spin around his character model. What’s that thing sitting snugly against his exposed asscheek? His pistol? But that’s not weird, Perseus, most cowboys hold their guns there!

But what other playable character has their weapon on their actual model like him?

There are so many in-game cutscenes showing that, canonically, the Pathstriders summon their weapon from some sort of unseen storage or hammerspace. I like the term hammerspace, let’s use that. The playable Pathstriders all use hammerspace to easily summon their weapons. None of them actually carry their weapons on their model. Even Welt Yang has scenes of him summoning his herrscher cane (I’ve never played hi3 please forgive me for using incorrect terms) from his hammerspace. But not Boothill. He has his arm gun and he has his trusty 9 millimeter pistol on his little slutty hip. His idle animations involve reloading his weapons and putting them back on his person. No particle effects, no vanishing tricks, just a man sticking his tongue out to catch a bullet for a snack.

So what have we learned?

Boothill doesn’t have an emotional connection to his Path, it most likely is just the Path he figured met his needs and decided the philosophy was good enough

Boothill’s body is designed to perform specifically to kill Pathstriders, especially sturdier Pathstriders of The Preservation

Boothill either can’t or won’t use the same hammerspace the other canonical Pathstriders use

Each point by themself means nothing, or can be chalked up to unique character designs. But together? My intoxicated mind theorizes that Boothill is not a Pathstrider, merely a broken man trying to play the game according to the rules of the oppressors that colonized his planet and bombed his tribe into reservations and the dirt. Thank you for your time.

[groenendaelfic]

Hey,

haven't seen you around a lot lately. Just writing to check in. how is it going? Wish you a nice evening

it is going, thank you for asking!

Life has been very busy these past few months but is moving in a hopefully good and definitely exciting direction.

In this particular order (if memory serves correctly) I've:

decided to move halfway across the continent

marked the one year anniversary of the worst time of my life

had other people mark the one year anniversary of the worst time of my life with all that entails

quit my job (I'd been planning that for a while)

had my boss and hr offer to let me go instead and half my notice period to two months (aka 'give' me more money and facilitate my move, yay pity)

started looking for a place to live and organizing my move

found a new job in a slightly different corner of halfway across the continent (I start July 1st)

got my request for citizenship approved (epic timing guys)

found a place to live in an awesome area (I will be able to do all my errands on foot and my new job is only a short bike ride away)

told everyone I was leaving for sure

signed the paperwork to have my uncle in law take over the place here

had my cousin offer to move my stuff with his remodeled fire engine in exchange for gas and (bridge) tolls

did all the paperwork in the universe ever

started saying my goodbyes for now (I still have lots of family and friends etc here so I'll be back a lot)

had my cousin tell me he'd make a bro trip out of the move because his friends really wanted to see a basic bridge, and room and board plus no girls was all the compensation they needed for getting to carry my boxes

said thanks but no thanks to citizenship (sorry Wille, you'll always be my King)

was asked if I minded the move taking a bit longer because the guys wanted to stop for totally unplanned soccer (a not insignificant part of their motivation if not a deciding factor I dare say)

did more move and job leaving planning and paperwork

welcomed, fed and watered a bunch of guys really into soccer bridges and very disappointed I didn't have more boxes they could compete carrying

prepared a big lunch basket and said goodbye to said guys and my boxes

sat down to write this list wondering where I should celebrate midsummer (aka do I want to travel back and forth to get everything ready or stay until it's time to hand in my work laptop etc)

Phew, yes. Also a million other things which won't come to mind right now. Thank you to everyone who left me such kind messages btw. I appreciate them so much but am still learning to respond to kindness and compliments without awkwardness. They nevertheless give me life.

In more interesting news to everyone here I've also done a lot of writing.

Mostly on One Wild Summer, which has already grown into a monster, but I've been writing the exciting parts later on and still guesstimate a 15k or so stretch which needs bridging to get to all the fun stuff I've already written.

but also on The Prince and the Barista and As Long as We Have Each Other. I only need to make it coherent and once again fill the gap to where I stopped posting.

plus *cue exasperated sighs* I'm also 9k+ into a new fic! The (once more) absolutely most self-indulgent thing I've ever written in this fandom and something I swore I never would turn into a proper fic. Expect the prologue for that (which was meant to be 500 words and not 5k) soonish.

Everything else including regular updates not before mid to late July though I think. Because moving and starting a new job and life means busy times and while I can write scribble down connected sentences with half a mind, I can't beta read and edit with half a mind.

tl;dr: I am still writing yr fic and haven't abandoned my fics, but am also busy moving. goodbye cloudberries and lingonberries, hello wineberries vineyards and appleberries apple orchards.

[hp-hcs]

Your fics are incredible! My friend wanted to know if you wrote for Pansy? If you do, a Pansy x gn reader would be amazing :D

absolutely i will write for my slytherin queen 😩🤌 and thank you so much!!

requests? 🥺🤲

paralyzer — pansy parkinson x gn! hufflepuff! reader

oh my godddd 😩🤌👑

underage alcohol consumption warning

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

‘I hold on so nervously to me and my drink/ I wish it was coolin' me/ But so far has not been good/ It's been shitty, and I feel awkward as I should/ This club has got to be the most pretentious thing/ Since I thought you and me’

“Heyyyy, Y/N! How’zit goin’?!”

“Wonderful,” you drawl. “Now go drink some water before you die of alcohol poisoning.”

Cedric clapped you on the shoulder, giggling, before wandering off after a pretty Ravenclaw.

You sigh, downing the last of your drink and pushing yourself off of the wall you’d been leaning against for the last half hour, fully intending to make your escape to your dorm.

You weave your way through the throng of people, almost taking an elbow to the face when you pass by a particularly rowdy bunch. Scowling at the group, you aren’t even paying attention when you run smack into someone.

“Hey! Watch where you’re going!” An angry voice snaps. You turn to apologize and are met with the most gorgeous girl you’ve ever seen.

She rolls her eyes, her hands on her hips, and her pretty lips pursed in annoyance. “Of course it’d be a Puff. Pick your jaw up off the floor, sweetheart.”

She gives you a condescending pat on the shoulder and waltzes off, taking your entire heart with her.

‘Well, I am imagining a dark lit place/ Or your place or my place’

“Subtle, Panz,” Draco rolls his eyes.

“Oh Merlin, oh fucking Merlin, I fucked that up, didn’t I?”

Mattheo takes a puff from his cigarette, swinging his legs from where he sits on the edge of the bathroom sink. He watches Pansy pace anxiously around the empty second floor girl’s bathroom. “Yep, pretty much.”

“‘Pick your jaw up off the floor’? What was I thinking?!”

“You weren’t,” Draco supplies helpfully, leaning against the wall. “I mean, at least you called ‘em sweetheart. That’s gotta do something.”

Pansy groans and face palms. “Thanks a lot. Now how do I fix this?”

“Why are you asking us? This is your Puff-Stuff, not ours,” Mattheo says flippantly, tapping the ash off the end of his cigarette.

“They don’t even know I exist!” Pansy whines.

“Well, they do now, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Oi. You better shut the fuck up.”

‘Well, I'm not paralyzed, but I seem to be struck by you/ I wanna make you move because you're standin' still/ If your body matches what your eyes can do/ You'll probably move right through me on my way to you’

“Hey, Puff!”

You look up from your assignment, seeing, of all people, Pansy Parkinson leaning towards you from her desk. She smiles anxiously at you.

“Uh, hi…?” You ask slowly, quietly.

“I- uh- d-do you have a quill I could borrow?”

You hum, nodding. “Yeah, here.”

She grins widely. “Thanks.”

She takes the quill you hold out to her with utter reverence—much more respect than you would expect her to give to a five-sickle quill from a discount shop.

You nod, a bit baffled, and turn back to your work.

She waits, like she expects you to say something further. When you remain silent, she sighs, seemingly disappointed, and moves on to her assignment.

‘I hold out for one more drink, before I think/ I'm lookin' too desperately/ But so far has not been fun, I should just stay home/ If one thing really means one/ This club will hopefully be closed in three weeks/ That would be cool with me’

“I can’t believe it! I just sat there, like an utter dumbass-”

Cedric raises an eyebrow. “Here’s a wild thought: maybe she’s into you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ced,” you scoff. “She doesn’t even know I exist.”

‘Well, I'm still imagining a dark lit place/ Or your place or my place’

“We are not friends,” Draco warns. “This is just an alliance.”

“Just so they stop acting so lovesick over each other,” Cedric agreed.

‘Well, I'm not paralyzed, but I seem to be struck by you/ I wanna make you move because you're standin' still/ If your body matches what your eyes can do/ You'll probably move right through me on my way to you’

“Hey, Panz,” Draco starts, interrupting his friend mid-tirade about they’re just so cute, and they loaned me a quill today in History when I couldn’t find mine. “Why don’t you just ask ‘em out?”

She stops her rant, speechless. “Are you insane?”

Draco shrugs. “Just like, send them a note, or whatever. What’s the worst that could happen? You said it yourself; they barely know you exist.”

‘Well, I'm not paralyzed, but I seem to be struck by you/ I wanna make you move because you're standin' still/ If your body matches what your eyes can do/ You'll probably move right through me on my way to you’

Your eyes widen in surprise when one of the Owl Post owls drops an envelope onto the table in front of you. Plucking it up, you turn it around, finding no return address or name of any kind. Cedric leans over.

“Who’s it from?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“Well, open it!” Your friend, Hannah, exclaims. “You never get mail.”

You open the unmarked envelope, pulling out a piece of folded parchment. Scrawled on it, in Slytherin green ink, is a short poem.

I’m not paralyzed, but I seem to be struck by you. I wanna make you move, because you're standing still. If your body matches what your eyes can do, You'll probably move right through me on my way to you. - P. P.

Your eyes widen as you look at the initials, knowing immediately who it was. You look up, easily finding Pansy’s eyes from across the room. She looks startled, like she hadn’t been expecting to make such sudden eye contact.

You both blush and look away, smiling to yourselves.

‘You'll probably move right through me on my way to you’

“I’ll admit, I didn’t expect that to actually work,” Cedric murmurs under his breath to Draco.

The pair watch as you and Pansy, paired together for a Potions assignment, laugh and mess around with each other on the other side of the room.

“Yeah. How long d’you think before Y/N realizes that Pansy only writes in black ink?” Draco muses with his infamous smirk, twirling his quill around and nearly knocking over his jar of Slytherin green ink.

‘You'll probably move right through me on my way to you’

[antianakin]

You know what's something I wished fanon/fanfic/etc explored? The idea of clones, basically traveling the galaxy because of the war not only having their own traditions, but also picking up stuff and being taught things by various people they encounter. Not even necessarily like a culture/tradition. A planet's local militia taught a trooper how to weave grass during a long night waiting for orders.

Of course he brought this to his friends and now the whole battalion makes things from grass or leaves or thread. It's calming, it's fun, they experiment with materials.

The clones who've developed their own culture (not Mandalorian) but also enjoying learning and participating. Let them be happy and want to explore things beyond their DNA donors world. (I also enjoy the idea of them getting to relax and join in on fun, normal activities).

And the idea of different units having different traditions while also sharing them when they're deployed together is fun.

The idea of mindfulness being picked up from Jedi general's and everyone having a unique spin, either copying meditation or meditating while cleaning equipment.

Also I want people to appreciate the clones as their own people.

Yeah, I hardly EVER see the clones depicted as this really interesting mish mash of cultures due to potentially picking up a bunch of shit from civilian populations they meet and then just passing it around their own battalion which could then make it out to the GAR as a whole.

Weaving baskets is a cute one, it could also be something as simple as picking up new spices every time they land somewhere and so their food is this wild fusion cuisine of spices and maybe fruits/dried meats/nuts from all over the galaxy because they just pick up stuff that goes to the kitchens and the clones doing the cooking in the kitchens use whatever they've got available to try to make new dishes. And they end up perhaps getting really good at figuring out how to combine these different ingredients that, on paper, seem like they absolutely should NOT go well together and yet somehow they make it work. And so clone cuisine becomes its own completely unique thing. You could even compare it to Jedi cuisine where they probably end up combining things a lot themselves, but the Jedi would theoretically often have had more access to resources and time to learn whole dishes than the clones do so it's more that the Jedi prepare different specific dishes from a lot of cultures as opposed to the more fusion-style cuisine the clones have come up with.

Or games, it'd be so cute to have the clones picking up all these different sort-of idle games from different civilian children they meet, like gffa versions of hopscotch or hackey sack, maybe card games that aren't sabacc or board games that aren't dejarik but are more specific to this one planet or culture. Maybe the clones start coming up with their OWN card games as they go because they start getting bored of the few that they know and start getting creative from there.

And of course things like different styles of visual art like painting and tattooing and hair styles that they might pick up on and incorporate into their own style that either becomes very popular among the clones on its own or ends up sort-of hybridized and become its own unique clone specific spin on the artform rather than a direct imitation. Writing would be really cool, too, that they pick up things like novels or journals from different cultures and some of the clones start writing creatively and become really prolific among the GAR (and maybe the Jedi too) for their stories. Similar to before, they might start off sort-of imitating styles they see from other cultures, specific kinds of poetry or tropes, but then branch out and put their own spin on it or start combining different things they've learned from various cultures.

Some clones might end up sticking closer to one specific culture they've connected or that just matches their personal taste really well, while others embrace the fusion more, and everything in-between.

And of course we can bring the Jedi into it more, too, and have the Jedi constantly working to introduce the clones to more things, maybe things THEY know and love from various cultures that they think the clones would find fun or interesting. And not just that person's "birth culture" like Ahsoka teaching people about Togruta culture, but things from OTHER CULTURES that they themselves have experimented with and liked. Maybe Ahsoka has a Mon Cal skincare routine she fucking swears by, or a Zabrak meat dish that's her absolute favorite hands down because of how tender they cook it, or her favorite book is actually Rodian because she particularly loves Rodian romance novels. And she introduces the clones to THESE things as well because why wouldn't she? The Jedi have a smorgasbord of options available to them and their culture encourages learning and connecting as much as possible, something I imagine they'd do their best to pass on to the clones in any way available to them.

And of course the Jedi, as some of the only people really out there with the clones and interacting with them regularly, get to be the first to BENEFIT from the hybridization that the clones utilize and get to see more about how these different cultures they've learned and appreciated for so long can be combined in such new and different ways to create something entirely unique and beautiful, so they get to enjoy these things all over again and it's AWESOME! New favorite noodle dish that combined fish from Glee Anselm and spices from Pantora and noodles from Chandrila, new favorite poem that has elements of Naboo and Ryloth in it, new knitted scarf that combined a knitting style from Lothal and a pattern from Shili.

And I've been going more for physical material things so far like food and stuff, but you can include things like slang they pick up from other cultures or maybe rituals of some kind they saw someone do that they asked about and got permission to participate in that they continue to practice afterwards because it's nice and calming.

The interesting part about the clones is that they don't have a "birth" culture to go back to. They were raised in a very sterile environment where everything they were exposed to was something very specific and aimed towards a certain goal. So they might have a favorite fighting move from the ones they were taught on Kamino or a favorite ship to fly of the ones they were taught to use for war, but it would be SO incredibly limited to what the Kaminoans wanted them to learn and not intended to become something the clones really connected to culturally. The Kaminoans themselves clearly HAVE a culture of sorts, they seem to share a style of fashion at least and probably an architectural style, but this isn't something that was passed on to the clones or that they would've been allowed to ever really participate in (beyond maintenance to the buildings, but they wouldn't have gotten a say in things like paint colors or additions to the building for cosmetic reasons, etc). And of course I don't think canon supports the idea that the clones really had a lot of connection to Mando culture and certainly nothing that supports the concept that they would consider it their "birth" culture. Jango barely seems to have passed any sort of Mando heritage on to BOBA, so it seems INCREDIBLY unlikely he'd have passed anything significant on to the clones he DIDN'T consider his son. And the Mando trainers are a legends thing these days, and were never canon anyway, so their exposure to Mando culture would be even more limited than their exposure to Kaminoan culture quite honestly.

All of which means the clones don't really have a firm basis of a birth culture from which to start on and then sort-of experiment out from. They're almost entirely open to whatever they discover or are introduced to in terms of culture. They're not Mando, they're not Kaminoan, they're their OWN THING and they can literally incorporate just about anything and everything into the culture they choose to build and that's SUCH a cool thing to look at and to explore and I don't know if I've really seen that much of it in fics. Especially via the Jedi who are their own massively multi-cultural society and can take the opportunity to really widen the clones' horizons in so many ways.

[twwings]

Big Festivids Recs Post!

Last weekend was the big Festivids GoLive, which meant the release into the wild of 160 brand new small fandom vids (aka fanvids, edits, etc.) Right now the collection's anonymous, but tomorrow is vidder reveals, so I wanted to write up a recs post for some of my absolute favourites from this year's collection. If you know Yuletide, well, Festivids is like Yuletide, celebrating small/weird/underappreciated fandoms! It's an exchange fest, so people ask for the small fandom vids of their heart and, then, receive one.

Honestly the collection this year is SO high quality, you should really go and browse the works yourself in their entirety; there are so many vids that I absolutely loved that I didn't put on this recs list, because I was trying not to get carried away (and also trying to get it done). But just to get you started, here are a smattering of my favourites. I tried to represent a bunch of vid genres and source types here, but ultimately it's just my taste.

RECS RECS RECS!

Andor: Level Up

AHHHH this is a vid about Andor and fascism and collective action and One Way Out and it's so gorgeously done. Perfect song choice, perfect vid, makes me cry and I will rewatch it many times.

Andor: be ready and be brave

Focusing on Ferrix, its history, its people, and its revolution. Absolute chills. Also I'm SO happy whenever I get to watch a vid to a Mountain Goats song.

Mosquita y Mari: como siempre soñé

Such a sweet, soft, slow romance vid. I ACHED for these two. Like reading a 300k slowburn but in three and a half minutes.

Dropout TV: Nothing in my Head

The Dropout TV vid of my DREAAAAAMS! (largely Game Changer but with lots of stuff in there!)

Taskmaster UK: Blood in the Cut

UHHHH. IT'S AMAZING??? It's hot and raw and kinky and hardcore. the vidder has the delicate, precise touch of a bloody scalpel. Yes, this is a vid for Taskmaster, the UK show where comedians do silly tasks. Because yeah, it's that show, but it's also this show.

Slash/Back: Uja

This vidder KNOWS how to vid horror. The way this vid cuts the most terrible images to make them barely-there, more horrifying for being rough slaps against my consciousness . . . yikes. Amazing vidding, super cool and scary, while also maintaining the uplifting, kickass, hopeful tone you want from a collective-action horror movie.

Janelle Monae: I Like That

Glorious, joyful, sexy celebration of being a free-ass motherfucker.

Star Trek: Lower Decks: Hard Times

Boimler vid about how he's essentially a redshirt who is just slightly too sweet to actually die. Absolutely adorable and hilarious.

Woman King: Upside Down

Absolute BANGER of a vid, great cuts, great movement, great character arc and great Dahomey women being amazing.

Romeo + Juliet: Magnetic

We all agree Harold Perrineau is the best Mercutio, SO, with that in mind, here is a flawless celebration of the best Mercutio.

Knives Out/Glass Onion: 'Til You Hit a Nerve

Brilliant comparison vid putting Marta from the first film together with Helen and Andi from the second one, drawing out the similarities and dissimilarities in a visual feast and with a badass powerwalk. Nothing not to love!

David Cronenberg's Films: body

This one is phenomenal. It takes David Cronenberg's entire filmography and condenses it into a vid about all the sexualized body horror. It is deeply horny and deeply disturbing and deeply fascinated by every single finger going into a hole in a body that shouldn't be there. It's soft and tentative and it's very graphic and violent, all at once.

The Wheel of Time: Velodrome

Tower politics and circularity and being bound to one another in every good way and every bad way; what a beautiful vid. I love how this is about a place, and about how that place draws these people together over and over in their shared experience and love and trauma.

The Midnight Sky: The Laughing Heart

Absolutely gorgeous vid of the film to a spoken word + music rendition of Charles Bukowski's "The Laughing Heart" (there is a light somewhere). I have not seen this film but I found this vid deeply moving.

Moby Dick: Queequeg and I

There are four (FOUR!!!) Moby Dick vids at Festivids this year, and they are all amazing combinations of a huge smorgasboard of sources, I heartily recommend them all, but I'll specifically rec two. This one is Queequeg and Ishmael to "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and it is the sweetest queerest thing ever. Queequeg and Ishmael get a happy ending shhhhh they do shhhhh yes this is how it happened they came out of the water they're fine

Moby Dick: a vulture feeds upon the heart forever

This vid is a fucking masterpiece. It is a huge archival multisource Moby Dick vid that weaves all these incredibly different visual together to make a coherent, tragic narrative. And like. The BOOK is not a coherent narrative! This is such gorgeous and amazing fanwork. Don't miss out on it.

Women's 100m Sprinting: Didn't Come to Play

This is GORGEOUS, I don't know anything about sprinting but I know I love these beautiful joyful powerful women running really fast and hugging each other and being amazing. The editing on this is so tight; the vid never stops for a second. Like a sprint?!?!?!

The Golem and the Jinni: סיפור הגולם

This is another book vid, but since this book doesn't have any adaptations, it's using entirely archival source and probably some documentaries and films to construct the story - or, really, construct the vibe of the book, construct the metaphors of the book, and the result is beautiful and powerful and meditative. It's about survival, and making life.

Jesus Christ Superstar: Hope on Fire

This is another umbrella vid, where the vidder is taking a bunch of different productions of the play and mashing them together. This vid focuses on Judas and Jesus/Judas, and it all feels so inevitable and tragic and real and cruel. I really loved it.

Jordan Peele's Films: Goodbye, Honey, You Call That Gone

This is such a wonderful mashup of Jordan Peele's three films, exploring all the parallels and differences and just the rich tapestry of his imagery.

猎罪图鉴 | Under the Skin: Put It On Me

I don't know this source but this was just so gorgeously put together; there's a focus on art and art objects, on hands moving and creating, that's just mesmerizing.

[melbatron5000]

The Clues of Good Omens are trolling us

I didn't reblog this post I saw a few days ago, and now I'm regretting it. Not like, I'll be on my death bed full of thoughts of this post, but like, it made a solid point and I think it's worth repeating.

I had already been thinking about some of the stuff various Ineffable Mystery Game Players are noting, and wondering how important some of this stuff is. There are some wild little details that people are chasing down.

I think that's fascinating. I also think it's not the slightest bit important to figuring out the hidden story; and if it leads to anything, it's going to circle back to things that can be found in other, easier-to-spot Clues. That's NOT to say I don't think people should be doing it. I am; at least somewhat. It's FUN.

I DO think a lot of layers of detail and intricacies have been added to the show to trip up people looking for what's going on. Much like digging for dinosaur bones, there's nothing to be found in the top layer, interesting stuff that's probably not dinosaurs under that, and real dinosaurs under that. Look too deep, though, and you bypass the dinosaurs entirely and start finding more interesting stuff that's also not dinosaurs. If you're just digging for joy, great. Have at it. There's a ton there. If you're looking for dinos, though, you need to know how far to dig and where to stop.

The post I mentioned said, paraphrasing: "It's a TV show. Whatever's going on has to be quickly explainable to the casual viewer. Most of the TV audience isn't digging this deep or going to be able to follow some of these really crackpot theories."

This is true. This is absolutely true.

So far, all my own theories do fit inside an easy-to-explain-in-a-few-seconds model. And I intend to work to keep them that way. Are some of my Clues a little off-the-wall? Sure, but wherever I found them, they're still dinosaurs. Several of them have easier Clues than what I dug up, but they all lead back to the same place: a story that will make sense when explained quickly.

Two Crowleys? Just have to have the second one walk on screen. Secret twins have been done before on many shows. Done.

Gabriel stole records from Heaven that Aziraphale will use to take them down? A quick flashback will show us that -- we might not even need that much. "The records Gabriel stole when he left," Aziraphale says, and a bunch of the picture snaps into place for the casual viewer. Maybe not the entire thing, but enough that they can follow.

Saraqael has been working with Crowley and Aziraphale? Show the three of them talking not in code about literally anything, it becomes clear they're cooperating.

Missing scenes? Again, a short sequence showing us that something got jumped over -- and how it got jumped over -- will put that to rest. We don't have to necessarily know what got jumped over, just that something did.

Nina is Jesus 2.0? Listen to what I just said -- how quick was that? How difficult to understand?

The whole entire picture doesn't have to be drawn out in intricate detail for the casual audience to follow the gist. I think plenty of Ineffable Mystery will be left intact for us to keep mining for years and years. But the main points, the important plot points, will be quickly summed up.

I'm going to keep digging willy-nilly, because it's fun. There's a lot to find. But I'm also going to try to keep my thoughts based in the story as it would be told to someone interested in sci-fi/fantasy TV. Viewers like that tend to be brighter than the average bear, but not all of us are mystery sleuths. I'm not looking for Atlantis, I'm looking for dinosaurs. If I find Atlantis while I'm down there, cool. But I'm not going to hang that from a wire and put it on display at the Smithsonian in the paleontology wing.

Nobody would get it.

[vespers-pkmn-rescue]

Hello hello!

My name is Vesper, and I’m a former Pokémon Ranger, but more importantly, I’m the founder of the Unova Pokémon Rescue! My pronouns are She/They, and I’m originally from Orre, though I’ve also lived in Almia (where I was a Ranger) and Unova, and I spend plenty of time traveling to other regions! 

I’m currently in the process of creating an online guide to Pokémon care, and I’ve raised and cared for tons of Pokémon over the years. If you have any questions about Pokémon care, feel free to ask!

What’s the Unova Pokémon Rescue?

It’s an organization I founded years back. After a pretty nasty injury during my Ranger days, I retired from my job as a Ranger and founded the Pokémon Rescue shortly after moving to Unova! I came across a Deino that had been neglected and abandoned, who I helped raise into a happy and healthy Hydreigon. Inspired by that little guy, I opened the rescue to help rehabilitate abandoned, abused, or neglected Pokémon in need of help. I work with tons of organizations across the globe, and we help Pokémon either recover enough to return to the wild, or, for Pokémon unfit for the wild, help them find loving Trainers! 

Vesper's Online Guide to Pokemon Care - Where I post about different Pokémon and how to properly care for their biological needs!

My Team:

Nibbles: Hydreigon, male. The little guy that started it all, this is the Deino I rescued who inspired me to open the Rescue! Destroyer of many a chew toy, but an absolute sweetheart. Still bites me (affectionately). Second biggest troublemaker of my Pokémon, mainly because he’s spoiled rotten.

Dust Devil (Dusty): Garchomp, male. My first Pokémon, I’ve had this guy since he was a Gible! He was my partner Pokémon during my Ranger days, and now that I’ve retired, he’s my partner around the rescue! He has a nasty scar on his leg from the same incident that made me have to retire, but is still as lively as ever. He’s very protective. 

Zipzap (Zippy): Galvantula, male. Formerly a Pokémon I was looking after as a foster when we rescued him. We found him as a Joltik in the Driftveil Cold Storage, with no clue how he ended up there. Deemed unfit to survive in the wild due to poor immune system and frequent illness, so I ended up keeping him! Climbs on everything in my apartment. Biggest troublemaker of the bunch.

Duchess Wisteria Stringbean (Duchess/Stringbean): Serperior, female. Rescued from an illegal breeding operation in Sinnoh. Sassy, stubborn, and full of herself– but a genuine sweetie if you give her attention. Very helpful with the younger Pokémon at the rescue.

Marshmallow: Tyranitar, female. Does lots of the heavy lifting around the rescue. I rescued her after she was abandoned by a Trainer who very clearly wasn’t prepared for how difficult Tyranitars are to care for once they evolve. Likes to act tough but is actually a big softie. 

Lysander (Sometimes called “Beeps”): Decidueye, male. A rescue Pokémon that we took in from a sister organization in Alola. Was horribly mistreated by his previous Trainer, and as such is rather jumpy and wary of strangers. Also easily startled by basically any loud noises. Likes to stare at me from across the Rescue and watch me work. Makes “beep” noises sometimes to get my attention.

Also be sure to check out one of our volunteers: @dustytodusty-pkmn !

OOC//

Hi! I’m Ceja, aka @visceralVoid, and this is a little pokemon irl side blog of mine! Vesper’s guide to Pokémon care is planned to be a small YouTube series one day, but until then, I’ve decided to just do a tumblr blog for now! Info stuff:

Based on the game canon, little to no regard for the anime.

Predominantly an askblog.

Expect occasional headcanon!

Sapient Pokémon and other similar stuff aren’t really a thing in Vesper’s world, but I’m generally willing to interact with that stuff for the most part. There may be times where I disregard it if it clashes too much with Vesper's canon.

Pelipper mail is ON but will be accepted at my discretion. No Musharna mail, though.

I’m an adult, and so is Vesper. Keep that in mind. There won’t be any NSFW here, though.

[eerna]

the thematic shift from botw to totk is so weird when u rly think about it bc in botw its all about a failed prophecy; zelda couldnt awaken her powers and the champions couldnt defeat ganon as it was foretold. it was about breaking free from tradition and convention and trying to find other means of defeating this evil (zeldas fascination with sheikah tech for example). i think this theme also aligns with the entirety of the loz franchise as a whole, given how botw did a complete 180° on the zelda formula theyve always had. everything just worked!!!

and then in totk its just like ... we go back in time and use the powers of old to defeat ganon ... ? not to mention that every researcher in the game is fascinated by these ancient texts and architecture. rather than innovators they become historians. youre expected to look for answers in the past rather than learn from naively following prophecies and suffering its consequences.

however i do think totk had a rly interesting premise when they decided to implement time travel. like i absolutely LOVEE everything about the light dragon etc etc but the story in general just did not hit as hard :( i adore this game its so fun and its so beautiful but there is so much room for criticism as well

also sorry for this long ass ask omfg .. but ur post earlier got me going !!

It's ok, I fully support long elaborations based on whatever I went off about! :D

Oh, that's an interesting view of it! I personally didn't think BotW was about forgetting tradition at all? The Sheikah tech is still history, it's still following in the footsteps of those who came before - the prophecy itself is was what led to its discovery in the first place. I interpreted BotW as a story about what happens when people try to imitate the past, I agree, but in the end the point was that they shouldn't let it weight them down, but should still pay respects to it. Hyrule forgot all about its history - who knows what might have happened if that ancient king never got spooked by the Sheikah tech and buried it! If it didn't stay exactly the same as it was 10000 years ago, Ganon might have never influenced it so strongly, and the Calamity might have never have happened! Zelda couldn't escape her history, all the progressive tech in the world couldn't imitate her role, but the only way she was able to realize her destiny was through her own means, on her own time. It wasn't about her rejecting convention, it was about her finding her own spin on it. She was being held back by the shadow of her mother and the expectations of the monarchy, and found a way to channel her inheritance through the wild, and through Link. And that was the theme of the game! Looking back at decades' worth of games, then picking and choosing what to keep and what to give up on! It is so cool!

I think TotK did great to continue this line of thought regarding Zelda's character - she is not a princess-princess she was forced to be 100 years ago, she is a teacher/researcher/engineer-princess, and everyone loves her and looks up to her. She is still a sort-of leader, but she is doing it in her own way, without castles or thrones or holy powers and almost entirely hands-off, letting the people guide her. In my opinion, it treats the researchers the same way it did in BotW, except yes, a new faction has been introduced to the plot that is dedicated to historical research. I don't doubt that the decade leading up to the Calamity also had a bunch of historians running around deciphering old texts and figuring out how stuff worked, we just didn't get to see it and got the finished results instead. Also, it's pretty clear that Zonai tech requires a Zonai to work it (Link can do it because of his right arm), so it's not as widely malleable as Sheikah tech which was able to be used by all inhabitants of Hyrule. And the finale of the game FULLY goes against history even harder than BotW did - yes, Ganondorf CAN be defeated, even if Rauru failed. Yes, Zelda CAN be returned to her original form, even if the transformation is supposed to be permanent according to Zonai history. In fact, the Zelda thing annoys me (no matter how much I love it) because it wasn't set up in a way that carried over any sort of a message or a theme. Impa said she would find a way to turn her back, I was expecting a quest dedicated to it, be it finding ancient texts or a new loophole, and then whoosh she's back through a Sonia-and-Rauru-ex-machina. I would say that TotK can't decide if it wants to break away from its history (by making half the game a completely new, blank slate) or go along with it (by making the other half of the game clearly love what happened before, all the way back to a divine Hyrulean monarchy) which is why it's so jumbled up at times.

Like you said, I love the game, I cry whenever I remember that beautiful finale, but it really dropped the ball when it came to BotW's comprehensiveness. Why did Link fail to catch Zelda in the beginning, but managed in the end? What changed? What is its significance? It's a beautiful scene and makes me so emo, but it rings hollow if I try to find a deeper meaning, and that's basically the game in a nutshell.

[eternalera]

one thing that I think doesn't get enough attention in reguards to hunters trauma with belos is that belos wasn't always shit with him like yes

he always planned to kill him

he hated him

abused him

and yes he was shit with him but he wasnt like that all the time the thing that doesnt get enough attention in relationships like this which toh did well (in that one line which basically said it all) is that they still make you feel like theyre on your side and that no matter what that they do care for you

thats what belos was doing when he said that their family was killed by wild magic and that he didnt want to lose hunter too which we all know was bs since he gave hunter a FUCKING SIGIL

yet there had to be moments when he wasnt completely shit with him and we do see that when he says 'omg i didnt mean to hurt you i just lost my temper since my curse and all haha' (i wanna punt him so bad and not in a haha funny way) and we know that this is fake but hunter doesnt think it is

so there had to be a point in hunters life (most likely when he was younger) that belos acted like he cared about him and didnt abuse tf out of him or smth. bc hunter isnt an idiot like lets be honest he reads a bunch and even if he isnt the best in terms of relationships it seems like he knows when smths up (when he realized willow wasnt acting like willow in labyrinth runners or whatever).

and yes he doesnt know how a proper relationship is supposed to work but he most likely knows when hes getting treated like absolute shit. not to mention he wants to help belos. you wouldnt want to help someone even if theyre your family who treats you like shit

he feels obligated to help belos. he feels like he has to and most likely not just because of brute force because lets be honest he couldve just ran tf away in eclipse lake, would belos have found him? probably but he also runs away in hollow mind so if he really was terrified of belos and thought that he would kill him (he just says replaced which could pertain to killed or just and this probably isnt right, replaced).

but he would most likely still go back because he cares for belos, he even offers to help his curse and he starts mentioning stuff like wild magic in order to help him (this was before eclipse lake but whatever)

point being he was willing to go back because he thought belos most likely cared for him to some extent only in hollow mind to be shown that that isnt true

[lily-alphonse]

hi! for your rarepair suggestion thing, i would love to see Leah x Alex, idk i just think they’d be fun together

I’m really loving your rarepairs so far, i think the Shane and Sandy one is my favorite so far! Can’t wait to see more!!

Ottterpops I love you. I see you in my notifications all the time and this is the sweetest little ask I love knowing these things like which are people's favorites and stuff wow wow wow 10/10 ♥️♥️ reach out more often my dear I love you

BUT THIS IS INSANE

Damn. Leah and ALEX? Ughghapeuwefn 😩 What the hell would they be doing together?

Ok. Ok. Asshole Alex? Asshole Alex. Misogynist Alex. Strong and independent Leah. I'm cooking, let's go.

ITS ENEMIES TO LOVERS TIME BABYYYY 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 The crowd goes wild, they're going feral, we love to see it

They're butting heads right off the BAT. Because see, Alex is just coming back after flunking out of university. And Leah just moved to Pelican Town like a year ago. So she's had time to get settled into town, maybe even helps out Granny Evelyn sometimes since Alex was gone.

Actually, she's heard a lot of great things about Alex from his grandmother. She was looking forward to meeting him. The first time she sees him, she thinks he’s super hot. How couldn't she? He's got muscles on muscles and a little dimple in his chin to boot. 

But Alex comes home, feeling like absolute trash after his dreams have come crashing down, and there is a stranger in his house acting like she knows his family better than him. So that goes over GREAT (/s) as you can imagine.

He immediately has an attitude with her, to Evelyn's horror. She apologizes for him while he walks away and slams his door like a moody teenager. (Oh god this would be so fun to do a back and forth with them both being justified in their hatred of each other I'm salivating.)

Alex has also been raised that women should present themselves a certain way, and act a certain way, and Leah is none of that. She wears chunky hiking sandals and no makeup and has arms covered in scars from her work. She does intense manual labor and lives on her own in the woods. She even helped clean the gutters while he was gone, which is another thing on the long list of insults to Alex's manhood that he takes personally. Cleaning the gutters was HIS job.

They have a bunch of tense run-ins from there as he tries to re-establish himself. He sends her away when she comes by to check in on his grandparents. She holds her tongue then out of respect for his grandmother, but she isn’t so quiet on their next run-in. 

He comes across her in the forest on his morning jog and she’s CHOPPING WOOD of all things. Alex hasn't held an axe in years. It pisses him off. He asks her what she’s doing (with an attitude, of course) and she is all too happy to put him in his place with her axe in-hand. She shouts at him and calls him a jughead, among other names.

Alex is silent throughout. Normally he hates being yelled at, it's triggering. By coaches, by his grandpa (reminds him of his dad). But it's different coming from a girl. She’s sweating, muscled arms out, and wielding her axe. It’s… almost kind of hot? He tries to not think about it too much and stay mad, but later realizes he might actually like a girl with fire in her blood. 

He starts actually kind of looking forward to crossing paths with her, to have her attention on him no matter how negative. Throughout this time he’s also working through the grief of his failure, and figuring out a new future now that his gridball scholarship is gone. Evelyn continues to give him grief about how he treats her, and he starts to feel bad about how he came between them. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have her start coming around again, if anything just to annoy the hell out of her.

She's cold to him when he visits, which was to be expected. She looks him up and down, eyes narrowed and scrutinizing. She has some paint on her arms and fingers. It seems like she wants to yell at him but she's holding it in. 

"Granny okay?" she asks.

He nods, and can barely start saying "Yes" before she is shutting the door. "Wait!"

She opens the door and crosses her arms, taking a deep breath and unleashing her anger on him. She's defending her right to stay here, telling him he's not going to run her out, that she is stronger than he thinks and has dealt with worse than the likes of him. He is once again silent, and a little turned on, until she stops to breathe and he can get a word in.

"I came to apologize."

She deflates. "You... what?"

He shifts uncomfortably, runs a hand through his hair. "I was an ass, when you got here. I was... I was just going through shit and I think you should go back to coming over, if you want.”

She takes a deep breath to recalibrate, and takes a moment to think. She's always wanted things to be okay with Alex. It was incredibly stressful to be at odds with him, and lose the precarious belonging she had found in her new town. 

"Noted," is her eventual response.

"Noted?"

"Yes. I don't forgive you, yet."

He nods sheepishly. "Understandable, I guess."

She has him wait there in the doorway and comes back with her phone. She holds it up as if filming him.

"Alright, Jughead. Say 'I'm a dumbass and I'm sorry.'"

He sucks his teeth and shifts uncomfortably. "You're not gonna post this somewhere are you?"

"No. Promise. I won't promise I won't show anyone else though." She smiles for the first time at him, and he has to relent at that.

"I'm a dumbass and I'm sorry," he says, looking at her instead of her phone.

She laughs, and even though its at his expense it makes him smile. She has a good laugh. "And 'Leah is better at cleaning the gutters than I am'," she adds.

He gapes at her. "That is NOT true."

She shrugs and stops the video. "Remains to be seen."

"Am I forgiven now?"

"Oh, this is only the beginning," Leah grins impishly.

And thus begins their romance arc. The teasing is more playful than mean. Sometimes they end up working on something together, and it's not so bad. They help clear the driveway of snow together and end up tossing snowballs at each other. It gets dangerously cute.

Leah sees more of how Alex actually is. He's a good man who has just been through a lot. She could see herself with a man like him. But surely not him, she still has to hold her grudge after all. She's happy things are mostly back to normal though, she doesn't have to consider moving again.

Then Evelyn has a fall or something and they both rush to the hospital together. She can tell Alex is bottling everything, trying to stay strong in the hospital room. Leah takes his hand and squeezes and he doesn't shove her off. Afterwards when they get home she follows him into his room.

"Alex."

"Hm." He's avoiding looking at her and keeps swallowing. He looks to be dissociating.

She takes another chance and hugs him hard. He puts an arm around her weakly.

"Come on squeeze me like you mean it!" she scolds, muffled in his chest.

He makes a sound half chuckle, half sigh, and squeezes her back.

"Harder, I'm not made of glass," she whacks him on the head for good measure this time.

It works, because he chuckles and squeezes so hard she can't breathe. She squeezes him back as hard as she can, and they just hold each other for a moment, partially comforting and partially a contest of strength.

When he pulls back both their eyes are misty and she brings her hand to his cheek. They both kind of want to kiss and are both terrified of upsetting the other person. But as soon as Leah feels Alex leaning in even slightly, she takes full advantage and pulls him down the rest of the way to kiss.

I TOOK THIS ONE SO SERIOUSLY I SPENT SO MUCH TIME ON IT LOLLL I actually ended up rewriting it because I didn't like the first one

Send me any Stardew Valley rarepair and I will tell you how I would make them work! (Even non-marriage npcs) If youre lucky you may get a mini fic out of it. Check the list below to see if Ive already answered yours

Rarepair Masterlist

[moxpunk]

So, I mentioned I'd write up a trip-report/retrospective of my experience of getting absolutely buried under pies on Saturday, so here it is! Be warned, it's fucking long.

To start off, my friend Dee was very professional about the whole matter: reassured me that I'd be taken care of, helped lighten the mood a bit, and didn't have any massive expectations for someone they just met for the first time in-person who's never done something like this at such a scale. Our styles and how we carried ourselves couldn't be different though, which was extremely funny to me. Them in this very stylish coat and scarf number, while I'm bumming around in my ripped-up Fender shirt and fishnet-tights - extremely visual-metaphor, I know.

Snagging the supplies was a wild experience. I'm just sorta following along while Dee had a total game-plan in their head, bee-lining it towards the baking section and immediately shoving about 12 boxes of cake batter into the cart. I was surprised to see how little frosting they snagged, but that'll be something for next time. The other supply that dominated our cart was store-brand whipped topping for the pies. I figure we had like about a dozen tubs of that as well by the end. During the grocery-run, I told Dee that whenever someone would make a comment when I'd buy stuff for solo-experiences, I just tell them that I'm running a bake-sale or something. People will take it at face-value, and I don't have to explain that "Yes, I'm buying so much dessert-product because it's a kink of mine". But Dee, this asshole (affectionate), gets asked the question while we're checking out and puts on this bright face saying they're "Moxie's happy helper, she's got so much work to be done on her head" and I'm trying not to corpse right then and there while I'm bagging our supplies. I think my face was crimson when we bounced back to my place.

Speaking of my place, I do not live in a large apartment and my bathroom is even smaller with my shower being a one-person standing-job. Thankfully, this also means that laying down tarp to catch the massive amount of spillage was super easy, and Dee had tons of tarp and tape ready to go. Looked like that one scene in American Psycho with a singular chair in the middle surrounded by clear tarp to catch the mess. Absolutely unhinged shit if you saw it out of context.

Then came making everything! Dee had brought a bunch of pudding-cups as filling for the pies as well as some xanthan gum to thicken things. That xanthan gum stuff is wild, they mixed it with water at first, and it had the texture of drool. Great if you're into that stuff and want a body-safe way to get drenched in it! I had baked half of the crusts earlier when we got back, but I totally spaced on poking holes in the crusts so they ended up kinda jank. Thankfully, the pies were just going to be thrown at me instead of eaten. Ha! This is when my back started getting angry at me, standing a whole bunch and moving around the kitchen. Had to take a number of breaks during this, but Dee told me they have infinite energy for this sort of thing and was fine that the fat girl needed a few breaks. Took maybe an hour in total to go from nothing to a dozen pies and three 3-gallon buckets of cake batter, which was wild. I put some makeup on, Dee got the camera and tripod set up, and it was time for us to start!

The anticipation I felt when I was sitting in that chair was wild. Like, I've absolutely pied myself before and even last year I got pied by another person for the first time from my ex. So, I sorta knew what to expect. But, these pies had that gum mixed in to hold their shape better, so I wasn't entirely certain how it was going to go. Dee told me to get ready and…

SPLAT! The first pie nearly knocked the fucking air out of my lungs. It was fucking cold thanks to the topping been in the fridge-section of the grocery store about only an hour ago! It covered my whole face and stuck to my hair that I had pushed to run down the side of my head, and I nearly called for a yellow light to slow down. For a little there, I felt like I couldn't catch my breath properly before two more pies got sandwiched over my head. Dee, for their part, did the expert thing of smearing and twisting the desserts over my head to just turn it into a mask of goop. This is absolutely the point where I could feel all the weight concentrate in my hair and start to weight my whole damn head down. Looking back at the video for reference, my hair is just this curtain of white goop and pie crust.

A few pies in for good measure, and Dee finally grabbed one of the buckets of batter. The dye we snagged wasn't all that potent, sadly. We wanted a bright pink sludge that mimicked the ancient-ass game-show What Would You Do's "Crowning Glory", but we know next time not to get the gel-dye (and also to buy a hand-mixer!). Because it's part of The Kink, of course I looked directly up into the bucket above just before it cascaded over me. In stark contrast to the other pies being cold as hell, Dee used warm water to mix with the batter, so it was heavenly to have that thick warmth poured over my body. It made all the future pies a lot easier to handle, honestly, by having that mucky barrier of off-pink coating me.

Around this time is when I realized "Oh, right, I have a bunch of hair soaking in all this stuff, might as well work it in!" because I'm a dork for my hair getting the slop-salon treatment. Another few pies splatted over my face while I worked my hair like I was in a shampoo commercial, Dee grabs my arm and smears a big blob of marshmallow fluff up my armpit because the bastard knows I'm a pit-fiend. So, you folks out there that enjoy the idea of lapping dessert out of my pit, please hold onto that mental image nice and tight. The banter between me and Dee started flowing at about this point. They were asking me questions while smearing the batter over my body, and ended up zeroing in on my nipple. I'm a sensitive lady, so when I'm trying to give an answer, it came out as "Oh yeah~!" like I'm some actress in a shitty porn because I was goddamn moaning through it. They didn't let me forget that, repeating it back to me whenever I would say "Yeah" to anything. Asshole (affectionate).

Syrup came next, just some cheap-ass brand and not actual maple syrup, and I smelled like breakfast. I smelled like breakfast for like two days afterwards, even through a thorough shower. I am not complaining at all, this is a benefit to this fetish. Honestly, the syrup was the one thing that I was not expecting to enjoy as much as I did. In my head, it's watery and just kinda boring? But, it being emptied out over mess-coated me and a pie that was stuffed into my face, I'm absolutely adding it to the roster of Quick and Easy Shit to Buy When I'm Horny.

Then came The Barrage. So, in this little obsession Dee and I share, the pie-barrage is usually seen as one of the climaxes of a scene. It's taking what, up to this point, is usually singular pies being added to someone in a sensual way that builds up the mess slowly piece-by-piece. A barrage of pies is the person throwing them going absolutely feral and just wanting to see the target inundated with layer upon layer of pie. That's exactly what happened to me! The first pie hit, totally blinding me, and before I had time to react properly, a second and then a third pie was added to the vaguely human-shaped blob of pie and moaning trans woman. Even managed to muffle anything I was trying to say, which was incredible to someone like me that types out muffled syllables in text roleplay. Honestly, Dee got the best photos of me immediately after the barrage, you… can hardly see who I am, let alone what I am. Absolute peak!

When your head is absolutely coated in thick pie-slop, the world fades away in a real way. You can't see past the layers of dessert, it settles over your head so you can't hear anything but your own breathing, and taste and smell have been absolutely tossed out the window to be replaced by sugarsmell. It's like sensory deprivation, because even your sense of touch fades out since you're rocking at least a layer or two of full-body coverage. It's an incredible experience! It's also only halfway through my session!

To speed things up a bit, more pies and more batter-slime was added to the mess. Since this kink began with Nickelodeon shows for the vast majority of the Millennials that have it, it's a bit of a "tradition" when green slime is involved (in our case, green batter because I'm a Dessert Bitch) to say "I don't know" like in You Can't Do That On Television. Say the trigger-phrase, get a bucket of green dumped over you. Dee even tried to put the bucket over my head, but the three-gallon ones are just a bit too small for that. It's a shame, because if we had the five-gallon buckets, I would have absolutely done a bit of head-dunking where I get on my hands and knees before plunging my whole head into that warm goop. Dee even had some chocolate cake batter as well, which reminded me that Valentine's was only a few days previous. Chocolate-covered goblin, anyone? The irony of my most-recent art piece mirroring what was going to happen to me is absolutely not lost on me.

Eventually, we had run out of supplies, and I got to sit there in the chair just enjoying the mess I was in. My hair was so heavy at that point, and the slop had just sorta congealed into a single texture. It made it incredibly easy to just work and play with, with Dee finally realizing that the reason I keep my hair so goddamn long is for moments like this where I get to wear what felt like ten pounds of sludge from the neck up. As is tradition in these shoots, just because we ran out of supplies doesn't mean the Moxie Messing was over, because Dee had put a bucket between my legs to catch as much excess slop as possible before dumping it all over my head in this thick mashed-up mixed-up wave.

After I had run out of steam having fun with myself, it was time to wrap and get me cleaned off. Wringing out my hair was an experience for the both of us. Neither of us had really realized just how much mass my hair could hold. When I went to pull the mess from my hair, it… just kept going. I filled a damned three-gallon bucket with just the stuff in my hair alone, and even then there was more. I soaked myself in the shower for the better part of a half-hour afterwards, to which my back got very upset at me for standing so long on a slippery surface. When I came out of the shower, Dee had completely cleaned the place. Wrapped up the pool of slop in the tarps and slammed it into a contractor bag for dumping. In my past experiences of being really bad at planning, it was never that easy, so I was thoroughly impressed at the foresight. I helped Dee toss it all into the dumpster near my place, and they bounced on off home in their car soon after!

So, to summarize… Holy shit, I wrote a lot, didn't I? Ha! But, yeah, this was an incredible experience and hands-down the best and most-encompassing slop-session I've ever had to this point. Dee said they absolutely want to do another session before they move again, so I'm excited to have more experiences like this! Hopefully this whole thing helps show people that have no idea why the hell I'm so obsessed with being hit by pies why I enjoy it, and shows people that do understand how incredible it was for me to have this. 2023 was a rough year for me, so kicking off 2024 with a session like this is hopefully the start to a far better year. With that, let's call it a wrap!

Love you all, stay messy. 💖

[anogete]

Oh my goodness

Hello to anyone who remembers me. Real life and mental health both sank their claws into me. I've been avoiding social media because... well, many reasons but most because I feel like I'm a big ol' disappointment.

But today, I've come here like the humble whore I am to ask for a beta. Before you get excited, I have to warn you that it's not for Marvel, which (if you remember me) is what you likely know me for writing. Read on for an explanation about where the fuck I've been and what fandom I've spiraled down into lately.

In 2019-2020, I had a lot of grieving to do for some close loved ones who passed on. This led to a really shitty space for my mental health where I went into a functioning depression. I was doing things, but only the bare minimum required to exist without people catching on that I was in a bad mental space. I can't say I've completely kicked that, but I'm trying to do better. At the same time, I had a bunch of stuff going on a work. Specifically, I work for a team of advisors who provide financial planning services to individuals/families. I was promoted to an associate in 2020 and then we went through a merger with a larger firm in 2022. So, work has been crazy with me taking on additional responsibilities and working to build new processes after the merger. In addition, I managed to finish my bachelor's (20 years after I dropped out of college!) and take classes toward getting a CFP designation over the past 2 years. I'm scheduled to take the CFP exam in November. It's a 6-hour bear of a test covering pretty much all aspects of personal financial planning. And then next year I'll be continuing with my team as an advisor myself. Do I have anxiety? Fuck, yes. But I'm trying to stop cockblocking myself on the career front.

ANYWAY, enough with the boring stuff. I've been drowning in material for classes and studies with so little fun in my life. Somehow I got on CODTok (Call of Duty) and my little imagination ran wild as I watched these absolutely filthy edits of those boys. And for the first time in a long time, I felt that itch to write. I really should be focusing on studying for this exam, but all work and no play isn't fun. It's taken me 3 years to learn that lesson, but it has managed to finally sink into my thick skull.

My problem is that I know virtually nothing about Call of Duty because I don't like video games. As for the characters--I only know minimal info (mostly from YouTube videos and a COD wiki). It would be nice to have someone more knowledgeable than me to look over what I've written. And if not that, then it would be nice to have anyone other than me give it a beta read to point out my stupid mistakes or plot holes. I have about 16 pages of a Ghost/OFC written. It's my usual--heavy on the dialogue and sexual tension with a side of plot/action. I don't know how fast I'll be at writing this. Work is kicking my ass and I still need to dedicate my weekends to studying for this test. But if you're willing to take a little ride with me, I'd love some input. Send me a message or email me at anogete527@yahoo.com if you're interested. I miss and love ya'll.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Chortle headlines.

Some of these are interesting. I don't know if it bodes well if Paddy Young is the absolute best rookie comedians in all of Britain, but he definitely had a good show last year (that got streamed on NextUp from Edinburgh). I have trouble believing anyone wrote a show that's better than both Paul Foot's Dissolve and Ahir Shah's Ends, but to be fair, I haven't seen John Kearns' show and he is very fucking good at these things, makes me hope even more that he'll be doing something in Edinburgh while I'm there. Alex Horne got an award for Taskmaster being an outstanding achievement, not quite sure what that means but I think it's accurate. I think if you look up the definition of "breakthrough act" you'll just find a note that says "see Sam Campbell's career throughout 2023", so that couldn't really have gone any other way. I've heard Kiri Pritchard-McLean compere a bunch on NextUp things, she is in fact very good at clubs. I haven't seen any of the other nominees but I'm still sure that James Acaster deserved to win that best tour one. I couldn't stomach the amount of Celebrity Glamour in Joe Lycett's new show but he is a great comedian and he is definitely made to be a TV comedian, which in some ways could be an insult but I really mean it as a compliment, he's great at that, good for him. Munya Chawawa posts highly amusing song parodies on YouTube. Fern Brady's is one of the best comedian books I've read. Three Bean Salad I was unable to get into, but maybe I'll give it another shot sometimes, after I finish with the winners of that radio award, John and Elis - well done to them for getting over ten years and not completely falling apart. I usually find it hard to get into sketch comedy (or anything that isn't straight stand-up) but Lorna Rose Treen made me laugh with character things last summer, so she probably deserves that one.

Those are my unsolicited opinions on that. The existence of Taskmaster is definitely an outstanding achievement for all involved.

This a special feature that happens every once in a while, called "Chortle publishes the contents of Daniel Kitson's mailing list". I find it gets funnier the less it sounds like Steve Bennett knows about the news items beyond the contents of the mailing list email, and in this case, that is clearly fuck all. But anyway, it's a great show and exciting announcement, anyone who has the opportunity should go see this tour. He said in the email that he might try to get something going in NYC later this year, which would be incredibly logistically difficult for me to get to (8.5-hour drive each way if I can borrow a car from someone, which would be tough, 14 hours on the bus otherwise, I've been told I can't take any more vacation days in 2024 because I used them on the London/Edinburgh trip), but still, I have found myself wondering how I might be able to make that work if he actually announces it.

Fucking hell. I can't believe this. My local comedian Facebook group is going pretty wild in response to this news. That's fucking huge, a massive amount of stuff is centred around this. To be honest I'm still not clear on the scope of this news so I won't go into it too much, I'll just say, fucking hell. Truly shocking. That's like a sport just canceling its national championships halfway through the season.

Excellent. Everyone should read this. His 2023 show (which I think he's still touring) is one of my favourite comedy shows ever. And the one before that, which inspired this book, is also very fucking funny, though not as good as his latest one.

Also, I am up for a trend of one comedian per year writing a book about their relatively recent autism diagnosis. Who do we think it'll be in 2025? I have approximately four to five suggestions.

[rpedia]

Hello, I have a question about combat roleplaying. Is there anyway to counter someone trying to wipe your character from existence? I have a character whos high 1-A, just wondering.

I cannot tell you how wild of an ask this is because of how much of it must be entirely contextual to your current situation. A-1 means nothing to me, this isn't a universal term in RP, but after some looking around it seems to be a categorization used in the vsBattle fandom to allow people to rank character power stats against each other like classes of heavyweight versus lightweight. And it seems to have been very thought out by a bunch of people who are very very serious about it, so it's a well-thought out thing. So, I'm assuming if this is the right power ranking to go off, your character is an "High Outerverse level" character similar to God/Death in some series.

Whew, back in my day we just had Marvel Mutants being Omega class, or Naruto Ninjas being S-Rank... Looks like you're in somewhere with a lot more math and intensity than I'm used to considering I just had to read "structures with a number of dimensions equal to the cardinal aleph-2" with my own two delicate innocent baby boy eyes. This means whatever advice I am about to give you is unlikely to be useful, but fuck it, I'm game.

So, you're getting wiped out of existence...

Your character is, as far as I can tell, able to manipulate all of existence, including every multiverse, hyperverse, and whatever-the-fuck-have-you because they can fuck with but infinity times infinity, except they're a step below the ultimate Boundless, and one step above the guy who can mess with infinity times three. Really getting back to the playground "infinity plus one" argument. You must be going up against someone who is going a little faster than you or doing better than you to have them cockblock your entire existence. I think I have the scenario broken down for more feeble minds like me can figure out what the hell this means.

Logically, the answer is you can't do shit. Guy is faster/better/more tactically sound, so he wins. He's managed to outdo you on every level, and made your existence just stop, you can no longer be who you are, you're a never-was similar to Cul from the Thor comics. Absolutely buckshit wild stuff here. This suggests to survive, someone has to remember you, which may be a way through if there's space where you still exist while you don't exist. How does time work in your universe? What's the standards here for how to change existence? Is there a ripple effect, or is it impossible to change the timeline? Are you forced into an alternate universe where you DID exist, and how is the other guy handling the obvious issue that if you never existed, he would never have gone back to erase you, and shit— we've got either a figure eight loop forcing us to repeat these two states of 0 and 1 endlessly, or a paradox.

So go for the throat, make them explain the paradox. Make them fix the paradox, which can paradoxically never be fixed because that's what them boyes do. You might have to live one step ahead of them in only alternating universes for the rest of existence and be satisfied with that. Or, I suppose, find someone bigger and stronger than old Jokey-poo here who is putting you in the un-birth grave, and have them de-powered or something to end the rigamarole. Maybe you have a good trap for them set-up where the state of your birth is a fixed point, and them entering it makes time stop entirely so they can never reach the point at which they actually delete you.

But this is all just Watsonian fuckery, stuff from within the perspective of the story. If you go Doyalist, we can ask the question "What kills a vampire?" and come up with the answer "Whatever satisfies the narrative." because those blood thirsty bitches be fictional. This is all fictional. You are imagining a story. The only truth of a story is the satisfaction of those who write/read it.

Therefore, if you are happy with the end of your character, and you feel like it's been given weight and meaning, and you like the outcome. You win, you finished the story, they are gone.

If you are unhappy, you can make up whatever bullshit you want because it's all in your head anyways, and suddenly your character survived going over the falls due to some vague handwaved plot point far in the misty difference that is really an in-universe cover to 'they made me write Sherlock after the Reichenbach Falls was supposed to be the end of the damn serial'. It all comes down to what you're happy with as a player and a writer.

You think any Shonen writer had the good sense to end their series after the bad guy seemed all-powerful? Absolutely not, these other guys had trickery and even more power beyond the power that is infinite power to call on, and they sure did win because they said so. Same thing here. As long as no one is upset, you can do whatever you want. "Blue fairy said I could come back." "Some Boundless Character found me beyond the universes and pulled me back into this world." Seriously, make shit up, it's all you've been doing anyways.

I recognize at this point it's more of a thought experiment, kind of a highbrow push against the mundane realities of our existence. It's where philosophy meets story. Making something that really sticks to the bones of your story, and gives you something to work off can be a huge ask when it gets to these extremes. You're working with a framework outside our actual existence, a thing we can comprehend only because we've pushed so hard against the limitations of this world we've given concepts like infinity not only a limit, but a word for when that limit is breached and repeated.

Being able to truly understand what you're asking, and whether there's any rules to it is more than a simple roleplay help blog can give you. You're bending rules that aren't even confirmed to exist, that have been developed to create a framework by which people can enjoy fighting tiers to simplify things that are wildly imaginative and unusual. Certainly you are at the moment asking me if I can conceive of a situation in which literally Death themself, if they were a character, could be erased from existence by something just as powerful or even more powerful than themselves, and then get around that somehow. It's mythical. It's entirely a toy that you, yourself, are defining the rules for play with. I can simply say "this Roleplaying Blog is actually a Boundless level character and has rebuffed that attack" and it would be equally true because the canon of this blog now says so.

So you can do whatever works for you.

Just make sure it's satisfying, so you can do it again next week and relish it all over. The point of RP is to be fun. Keep having fun. You do you, in whatever style makes you happy. Even if it's a lot of math and now I know there's a term for approaching the infinity after Real numbers run out of integers because someone made their character so powerful they ran out of numbers for them and somehow this is the same power level as Those Who Sit Above In Shadow, which means Loki's punked their ass plenty of times in-comics by saying he's the Storyteller who tells them into existence anyways. God damn Beyonder ass...

But you're the Storyteller now, so write something true to your heart, and see how far you can take it. See if your character can manage to break reality one more time, and level up to becoming Boundless themselves. You have the power, because that power is imagination. The true Boundless power.