#jesus doesn't mind

[effinbirds]

It's that time of year again: I've updated my glorious holiday playlist with 50 new, terrible Christmas songs. Put it on, start a timer, and see how long until someone complains.

Plus, I have ugly Christmas sweaters and holiday cards for you at that same website, because that's how this shit works.

(I am incredibly proud of the URL shitm.as, by the way)

[lordandladywhistledown]

People wanting Pen and Colin’s story to drag out like they've only just met in ep 1... HELLO???

They've known each other since they were kids, why are you expecting them to have "let's get to know each other" conversations like Pen and Debling had? Polin are so far away from acquaintances that it's diminishing their story and their essence as a couple by adding superficial dialogue. They are each other's best friends (sorry Eloise) and know each other better than anyone (ex. Penelope seeing through Colin’s mask immediately after he came back) and that's why they don't need 7 episodes to fall in love - they're in love even before ep1 of s3!!! (Yes, Colin as well).

You can't expect a slow burn because the slow burn has already happened, specifically in the seasons before this one.

Not all love stories need to have an interesting beginning and build up, some are a bit more tame but much more exciting after they get together (aka the LW drama that's about to ensue) and similarly not all love stories end right after they wed.

People compare the last two seasons to this one and expect the same things, and that's virtually impossible considering we've known Colin and Penelope now longer than we did Anthony and Kate or Daphne and Simon. Plus, the tropes are also completely different so people who expect Kanthony 2.0 this season with Polin are absolutely fucking insane.

We know Penelope loves Colin, we know Colin doesn't think of Penelope as someone he might marry, we know Penelope wrote about Colin and Marina and we absolutely know that they still care deeply for one another. So therefore there's no need to add all of that if it's already astablished but rather to continue and develop their story into a new depth and a new story, with them already being in love from the beginning.

Also,

HALF OF THE FUCKING STORY IS STILL MISSING!?!?!?!

Yes Jennifer, of course the story feels unfinished and rushed by the end of ep4 because IT IS STILL FUCKING UNFINISHED

...

[ai-the-broccoli]

enemies to lovers / but you'll never own my heart

@luzon-dove happy birthday, Quinn!! As a present, I decided to draw a piece fanart of your "blood in the walls of the yagami house" AU fic series, since I found it very well-written and full of super interesting ideas and concepts. I hope you like it!

[skrunksthatwunk]

this show is melting my fucking organs

[hedonists]

how do you feel about a "gang boss snatches good boy jesus lover from his church prison tower to turn him into his trophy wife" au or is that crossing too many lines

[crumpet-doodles]

[best-enemies]

I've reached season 5 on my CSI rewatch and I'm a few episodes past "Swap Meet", where a woman is murdered after attending a swing party with other couples from the neighbourhood. Near the end of the episode there's a moment that made me jump from my seat:

(Grissom walks up to Sara and takes the seat next to her. He's holding two cups. He hands her a cup of tea.)

[INT. POLICE DEPARTMENT - BRASS' OFFICE]

Erin Brady: Everybody fantasizes about other people. (She glances at Grissom.)

Even you, Mr. Grissom. A neighbor, a friend ... girl at the office.

[INT. POLICE DEPARTMENT - HALLWAY]

(The door opens. Paul Brady walks out of the hallway. Erin Brady walks out into the hallway. Sara is sitting in the hallway chair watching them. She watches as they meet and kiss.)

(Grissom walks up to Sara and takes the seat next to her. He's holding two culps. He hands her a cup of tea.)

LIKE!!!!!!!

Right after Erin ends her sentence with 'girl at the office', the first time Sara and Grissom meet again, he brings her tea. This might be an innocent interaction but to me it seemed like a nod to this relationship they have where both are into each other, know about the other's feelings, but can't/won't do anything about it (although Sara has kind of given Grissom an ultimatum). I don't know if it was intentional - I'm guessing it is, because I picked it up immediately. I might or might not have squealed in delight.

[fiona-fififi]

The way people sometimes refuse to acknowledge that writing choices that clearly go against established canon should mean something is endlessly frustrating to me. We don't have to agree on the interpretation, but these writing choices SHOULD mean something.

Otherwise, it's shitty writing.

[ghost-proofbaby]

OH god, sooo many kellin fics. Most were on wattpad honestly.

A lot of them all blur together (also a few kellic fics yikes), but I specifically remember one with an OC? Like kellin cheated on his wife with her and she nearly died or something? Classic wattpad and shitty summary but IT WAS SO GOOD. I think the girl's name was Brooke or Brooklyn. (also keep in mind this was 2012? 2013? wattpad. so... maybe not good by our current day standards but back then it was AMAZING). I can't remember the name but if you want it I would be willing to go on the deep dive for you 👀

SAY FUCKING SIKE RIGHT NOW.

you don't need to deep dive for the fic. her name was brooklyn mackenzie or some stupid shit, the fic's name is 'The Secret Affair', and it's going to haunt me until the day i die because i wrote it at 13 years old.

congratulations, nonnie. you can officially say you are one of the og readers of my fics. i certainly hope my writing has improved this last decade.

(unless there was another popular kellin fic with the exact same plot as mine. in that case, this is embarrassing).

[papirouge]

"The sell your cloak and buy a sword" has to be one of the most misquoted Bible verse EVER

It's now become a pet peeve of mine Witnessing all these idiots with surface level theology take this passage at face value and mUh tHe BibLe wAnTs yOu tO bUy gUnS!! and seemingly don't have enough braincells left to rub to realize that the Sword is a metaphor for the Word/Christ crossing several books in the Bible AND that Jesus rebuked Peter for using the very same weapon he was allegedly okay with him using, and went as far as to heal the very man he harmed doing so, but hey I guess expecting those Christians to have a crumb of critical thinking skills might be a little bit too much to ask

[navree]

in terms of how pervasive the fanon perception of tim drake as this neglected/borderline abused child of the horrific drake parents who are the worst human beings to ever live, i think it largely comes from the fact that i would bet money that 90% of the people perpetuating it just didn't have two parents who both worked.

[iridescentoracle]

Hello! I am here to ask about your Dior headcanons re: the political cohesion of Doriath. 👀

Oh man, I didn't expect anyone to actually take me up on that!

(Okay so I got partway into writing this and then realized I should probably note up front that I tend to stick to the Silm (& LOTR/the Hobbit where applicable, but they... aren't, here) as the most authoritative version of canon, and I can get into why and where the nuances/exceptions are there (I do say tend to stick, it's not hard and fast!), but that's mostly a side note here: the point is simply that I don't really factor other drafts or the poetic Leithian into my take on Doriath, Thingol, Dior, etc, just what we're told in the actual Silm. I also read the Silm as an in-universe history text compiled by in-universe scholars, who, being people, are going to have their own biases and blind spots, even when they're doing their best to be accurate!)

So, this is a two-part thing: #1, there's the political cohesion of Doriath before & at the time of Thingol's death, which i talked about in the tags of the post that prompted this ask but is kind of necessary as context for the Dior part to make sense, and #2, there's the actual Dior headcanons. Both of these parts are very long because I've never really seen anyone else suggest any of this stuff and I want to explain where I'm coming from thoroughly enough that it actually makes sense to people who aren't me, but the TL;DRs:

TL;DR 1: I think Doriath was probably a hot mess politically after Thingol died, with tensions between various groups of Sindar and Laiquendi in the leadup to Thingol's death & Melian's departure, and more political tensions afterwards between those who wanted Beren & Lúthien to come be the new rulers, and those who thought they should stay gone, with someone still in Doriath taking over.

TL;DR 2: I think Dior became Eluchil, potentially at the request of some portion of the Iathrim, hoping to help prevent Doriath from devolving into civil war, and saw dealing with the Silmaril-Fëanorioni situation as a lower priority than stabilizing Doriath's internal political situation until it was too late.

1. The political cohesion (or rather, lack thereof) in Doriath prior to Thingol's death

So, okay, the thing about Doriath is that we don't actually have any real idea of like... how much the Iathrim liked being the Iathrim? We're never told about any intra-Iathrim conflict, but a) the Silm was probably compiled mostly by surviving Gondolindrim or their descendants, so they wouldn't know about anything liike that unless surviving Iathrim told them, and after the Second Kinslaying I don't imagine many Iathrim would've been eager to talk about how things had actually been tense/messy/etc when they could remember everything as having been perfect until it was ruined by the Fëanorionrim, and doubly so after the Third Kinslaying, so why would anything like that make it into the Silm?

and b) what we do know about Doriath is that it wasn't really Doriath as we know it until Morgoth came back to Middle-earth, and everything went to hell.

At the start of the first age, you suddenly get Doriath (the fenced land!) being the one protected area of a continent that used to be totally free and open. How many Sindar actually didn't particularly care for Thingol's style of leadership, or simply preferred to live nomadic lives, going basically wherever they pleased, until suddenly that wasn't safe anymore, and you were only guaranteed survival if you were close enough to Menegroth to be within the Girdle when it went up? ditto how many Laiquendi had no interest in swearing loyalty to Thingol right after their own king had just been killed, but again, made it to safety and stayed there over taking their chances on their own in the outside world? (None of this is meant as any insult to Thingol himself, by the way; he can have been a good king who did his best for his people and still rubbed some of his new subjects-by-necessity the wrong way, through no fault of his own or theirs.)

I think it's entirely possible that there were always potential political tensions under the surface in Doriath that just... never got written about, because they never boiled over into actual political conflict, and so it was never the sort of tension that had any bearing on the historical record.

Except then Beren & Lúthien happen to the world, and a few years later the Narn, and in the blink of an eye suddenly the only king Doriath has ever had is dead, and the only queen Doriath has ever had is gone and the Girdle with her—and more than that, the only rulers the Sindar had ever had for three thousand years before Doriath existed.

And where a few years earlier I think the Iathrim would probably have turned pretty universally to Lúthien, now she's abandoned them for her human husband—and while she's my favorite character in the entire legendarium hands-down and I don't blame her, I think that's another place there might have actually been some very mixed feelings among the Iathrim that nobody wanted to admit to later because how could anyone have been upset with Lúthien—and on top of her abandoning them for him, I think it's extremely probable most of Doriath did not actually get over their xenophobia about humans in general or Beren in specific when Thingol did (we know for sure at least some of Doriath didn't, cf. Saeros insulting Túrin's mother & sister to his face), but again, who's going to admit to having had a grudge against the holy couple of Middle-earth after the fact, you know?

Conversely, there could've been a sizeable faction of Sindar who had been totally loyal to Thingol until everything happened with Beren & Lúthien, but who found his actions towards them and/or Finrod to be where they drew the line, and while (unlike B&L themselves) that faction stayed in Doriath, there could've been a new, additional tension on that front.

Finally, for all we know there were multiple factions within the Laiquendi of Doriath, with political tensions stretching back to before their king died, rooted in who-even-knows!

2. Dior

All of that, of course, sets up a very, very messy political situation for Dior to walk into.

The Doriath stuff is arguably more speculation than actual headcanon, but here's where the unambiguous headcanons come in: I don't think "Dior Eluchil set himself to raise anew the glory of the kingdom of Doriath." Obviously that's how it got written down, but bluntly, I can't see Beren and Lúthien having a kid that stupid or, like, power-hungry and arrogant?

What I can see is a situation where the messenger that brought word of Thingol's death and Melian's departure asked Beren & Lúthien to come take over as the new king and queen, we promise we're not mad about you leaving and we won't be xenophobic to your husband anymore we swear it's fine now pretty please, Beren & Lúthien said no, and the messenger either asked Dior as a second choice, or said "okay fine none of that was actually true but Doriath is falling apart and we need a leader ASAP and there's about eight different contenders* (mostly kinsmen of Thingol or Laiquendi) being backed by various factions and it's going to devolve into civil war any minute so if you care at all—" and Dior said "would I do?"

(* Ask me about my Galadriel headcanon)

I don't think Dior necessarily wanted to be king of Doriath, and I don't think he saw the throne as his birthright or anything like that; I don't think anyone involved, from Thingol to Lúthien to Dior himself, ever considered the possibility of Thingol dying and needing an heir! I think it's possible he was asked, or at most that he offered, and either way, I think he saw becoming king as taking on a responsibility for the sake of others.

(Which, like, "well here's a potentially impossible task that I'm going to take up even though probably no one thinks I'm actually capable of it, but it's my duty to help others as best I can" sure does sound to me like an attitude one might develop when raised by Lúthien "I kicked Sauron's ass cast a sleep spell on Morgoth and persuaded the Valar to find a loophole in the fabric of reality" Tinuviel and Beren "I stayed by my father's side as an outlaw to give my mother time to lead the rest of our people away hopefully to safety knowing I would never see her or any of them again (and then spent several years being a giant thorn in Morgoth's side for good measure)" Barahirion, where "apparently my grandpa I may or may not have ever met died, guess that makes me the king of a place i may or may not have ever been" does... not.)

I also think he either took on the epithet Eluchil, or was given it by whichever factions of the Iathrim accepted him as king, when he actually became king. Obviously he's going to be referred to as Dior Eluchil even before that in retrospect because that's how he's thought of later, but that doesn't mean it was actually a name he always had, you know?

The final thing is, I think if Dior essentially walked into a political situation five seconds from devolving into civil war, it makes his inaction regarding the Silmaril prior to the Second Kinslaying make more sense: the Fëanorioni have been sitting around doing nothing about the Silmaril in Doriath / with Beren & Lúthien this whole time, the letter saying "hey that's our Silmaril give it back now" is probably just a formality, and Dior's only been ruling for a couple years, there's still plenty of people dubious about whether he should be king at all, he might well be subject to at least some of whatever xenophobia remains about humans in Doriath, and in general all the work he's done on stabilizing the kingdom will absolutely come undone again if he screws up; he's trying to keep a kingdom from falling apart, the Silmaril thing can wait.

Of course, it wasn't a formality, and it couldn't wait, but why would Dior have known that?

[enchaentingly]

✨

send an emoji for... , accepting!  ˎˊ˗

✨ - One assumption my character has about your character.

ever since she's met her, she's always had the assumption that anika's affectionately dubbed "grumpiness" has come from a tragedy or trauma of some kind. "hurt people, hurt people" allie doesn't have a backbone to begin with, but this assumption kills her defenses even more, and gives anika extra bandwidth to lash out, or hurt her, because allie knows she's hurting. naturally, as allie gets to know her, this assumption only grows. anika will say things and allie will try to find the inner softness in them, anika will know things that allie will feel so sorry that she had to know. especially after the basement, where allie has real, solid evidence that something has happened to break anika for quite a long time. this is why the truth is that anika could do anything, or say anything to her and allie would always come back after being pushed away, in hopes of helping her. she knows she could never "save" or "fix" anika, and she doesn't want to or change her in any way. she wants to help heal and mend, and while she also knows she could never truly protect anika, she wants to be someone anika doesn't have to protect herself from.

in the most platonic way possible, allie thinks about anika a lot.

[multishipper-baby]

The funny thing about my Eakowededdy OT4 is that I actually headcanon three fourths of the ship to be pretty jealous lol.

Freddy's comes mostly from anxiety and feeling like he's not good enough- that if his partner likes someone else, then it's probably because he's a bad boyfriend that can't make them happy on his own and they're planning on leaving him.

Fred's comes from isolation: a lifetime of living in hiding, with only two people who knew of his existence, makes it really hard for him not to get very attached to the few people who do acknowledge him- and thus, he doesn't take well to the idea that they might not love him as much in return.

And Owynn... I mean, look at him. It's pretty self explanatory.

[hauntingblue]

Can you believe Otto Hightower got kidnapped and ended up in the venomverse having a road trip with his second family???

[brittlebonesstanley]

in conclusion: i think we should kill him

[exotrauma talk in the tags]