#just a thing

[owchie-wowchie]

If you think about it, Lauren Lopez, Jon Matteson, and Joey Richter play trios in all 3 hatchetfield musicals. TGWDLM had Emma, Paul, and Ted. Black Friday had Linda, Wiggly, and Wilbur. NPMD had Ruth, Richie, and Pete.

[koroa]

I found lines for this in my old files, felt like doing something with them.

He’s still one of my favorite characters in almost all continuities but the IDW one is my real fav, I guess I have a thing for revolutionists and idealists and my cat is named after him…

[warmblanketwhump]

please consider a whumpee who can never get dry

maybe they work on a ship or in a job related to the water, or maybe they just live in a climate that’s always wet and rainy. whatever the case, make sure that it’s impossible for them to ever get fully dry, or warm, or comfortable. Make sure the damp chill clings to their bones, and no amount of blankets or time in bed can chase away the deep cold in their core.

oh, and if you’re feeling especially cruel, add a stiff breeze that blows straight through them.

[humanityinahandbag]

took an edible, got high (still high), and decided to try and find roller coaster tycoon on steam and ended up in the reviews section and yippee ki-gay i hit the fucking jackpot

Like this very honest (and earnestly sweet at first) self critique:

Or what about this wonderful pro/con list of more expensive game options:

This person right here is a master of sound and acoustics, an appreciator of auditory Borgia.

There were some reviews from tech people as well who gave super helpful advice. I just thought that this dude had the best description I've ever heard for annoying little bugs on the computer. I want this person to write newspaper headlines.

And this one?

Shakespeare.

And here's even more brutal honesty from people who understand just how feral we were as kids and probably continue to be as adults. Every one of us was apparently living childhood with the gumption and drive of a pack of raccoons stuck in a dumpster. Our only goals were anarchy and OSHA violations.

And when they quote the game, it reads like an ominous short sci-fi apocalyptic horror story.

But my favorite probably would be this incredible set of reviews that Steam dropped right beside one another that absolutely describe the game in what I can only describe as a visual masterpiece.

10/10 ⭐️ Guest 203 Has Drowned :D

want to blaze this post because you get it

[kittylittersmoothie]

💜🩷💚 ドニーさんです 💜🩷💚

このすっぽんが大好きです <3

[hookliner]

love it when a smart boy admits he's stupid for me

[just-horrible-things]

Blue

Have you ever been on a plane bound west, and flown out from the night-shadow of the Earth back into the daylight, even though your body still believes it to be the dead of night? The effect is magical and somewhat eerie – sunrise at midnight, an impossibility made possible by the wonders of modern transportation.

Aeroplanes have always been a little magical to me. I love the moment of take-off, when the wheels come off the tarmac and you feel the lift – the implausible transition from the familiar rumble of a road vehicle – albeit a very very large and very very fast one – to flight, true flight.

Landing brings – in balance – a certain disappointment. Although I am usually as eager as the next person to get off the plane and onward to my next destination, there is still a kind of a pang at touchdown. We leave the domain of the skies and gravity reasserts itself, rendering us earthbound once more.

The plane in question departed at 23:47 local time – only ten minutes after its scheduled departure, so not bad going. Being early spring it was by then quite dark outside, and we took off with cabin lights dimmed and the false promise of sleep in the air.

Bearing almost directly westward, it wasn’t long before the sky outside began to lighten again – someone’s evening becoming our dawn as the clocks turned back. Being a peculiar sort of romantic, I watched the sky avidly as we pursued the recently-set Sun over the horizon, hoping to see it rise again ahead of us.

As I was seated in the middle of my row, this involved a certain amount of craning my head to see past the woman in the window seat. And while people on planes are usually quite understanding of the desire to see out of the window, there is still a certain degree of awkwardness. We laughed about it as one does to clear embarrassment from the air, and from there we were sort of obliged to speak to one another.

She told me that she would swap with me if it weren’t for her air-sickness, and I told her that it was no problem. She mentioned that her family tease her for taking long haul flights anyway, and told me that she was visiting her parents. I spoke briefly about the convention I was attending, we diverted into a brief tangent on anime due to a misunderstanding, introductions were made – her name was Aisyah, which took me a couple of attempts to pronounce correctly – and then we got to talking about my career.

(In the end we didn’t get to see the sun rise in the west, as the nose of the plane thoroughly obstructed our view. Alas.)

I normally try to avoid talking much about my writing, as it seems a little conceited and I’m very conscious of the temptation to ramble well beyond the point of anyone else’s interest in the details of a fictional economy or public transport network. But Aisyah was exceedingly curious about the genre and I must admit I allowed myself to be drawn into a rather self-aggrandising discussion of my works and process.

It was in the middle of this discussion that the bell preceding an announcement chimed, and the senior flight attendant’s voice came over the speakers asking if there were any meteorologists aboard.

As someone who understands what a meteorologist studies, this was somewhat concerning to me. 

Aisyah and I shared a look, and then I instinctively looked to the window. By this point Aisyah had somewhat rotated in her seat to make conversation more comfortable, and all I could see over her shoulder was a slice of clear blue sky.

I joked, uncomfortably, about expecting turbulence, and then we returned to our conversation – which at the time I think was about the sliding scale between hard and soft sci fi.

Shortly thereafter, a second announcement was made, this time asking for any scientists aboard – particularly if working in the physical sciences – to please made themselves known to the cabin crew.

This, I think not unreasonably, was rather unsettling to me.

“Why would they need a scientist?” Aisyah asked. “Don’t they usually ask for a doctor?” “In movies, sure,” I responded, “I don’t know if they do that in real life.” But I had no answer to her first, more important question.

We looked around the cabin. A number of other passengers seemed similarly concerned and perplexed, but most were still absorbed in whatever distraction they had brought aboard – screens and books and magazines. A few were successfully sleeping, despite the daylight.

When the announcement was repeated, Aisyah reached up and pushed the call button above our heads.

“You didn’t tell me you worked in science. What do you study?” She laughed – in retrospect somewhat uncomfortably – made a non-committal sound, and wondered aloud, “What do you think they want?”

It did not take long for a flight attendant to appear. Her customer service smile was absent, replaced by grim gravity. I looked to Aisyah expectantly, already pressing myself back against my seat to make room for her to get up. But she pointed at me.

“Me? Oh, no, I’m sorry, there’s been a misunderstanding,” I said. “I mean, I have an undergrad degree in physics but that was a decade ago – I’m an author. I write fiction.” “He’s very knowledgeable,” Aisyah argued. “He writes science fiction, and he reads research papers for all of the science. He’s very nearly a scientist.”

The flight attendant’s lips pressed together in an – understandably! – unimpressed line. She looked up and down the cabin. I looked up and down the cabin. There was a distinct absence of lit call signals, or other attendants speaking to specific passengers as if they had been called. 

I could only see one guy at the front speaking to a rather agitated-looking passenger. He met his colleague’s eyes and did a little grimace and a tiny headshake that I took to mean that his passenger wasn’t a good candidate either.

“Are you?” the attendant said to me, “Very nearly a scientist?” “I mean, I guess I’m well read, I’d consider my grasp of the fundamentals pretty solid…” “And you studied physics?” “Yeah…” “I suppose you’ll do.”

So I followed her up the plane, through the tiny crew area, to the rather solid security doors that separate the pilots from the passengers. 

We were joined as we passed them by the agitated maybe-scientist found by the other flight attendant. He looked about fourteen – though I don’t think he was fourteen, he just had one of those faces that are cursed – or blessed – with looking like teenagers right up until their hair starts to grey. His sense of style reinforced the impression of youth. He had pierced ears and an undercut, and his faded t-shirt bore what I could only assume was the logo of some band I don’t know.

The pilot and co-pilot glanced round as we were ushered into the cockpit. I was surprised by how much space there was, honestly. It was pretty cramped, but there was more space behind the pilots’ seats than I expected. Enough for us two passengers and the one flight attendant to awkwardly squeeze in together. 

I guess the pilots have to be able to get up and stretch their legs every so often.

The captain’s expression was as grim as the attendant’s. There was a slightly wild, haunted cast to her eyes, which did nothing to calm my building unease. She gestured, sharply but expansively, at the windshield – is it called a windshield on an aeroplane? I’m not sure.

Mr. Undercut saw it first. His shocked little “oh” cued me in to the scale of what I was looking for. 

When I saw it, I couldn’t imagine how I didn’t see it instantly. It became searingly obvious, like an optical illusion suddenly snapping into focus, except accompanied by the unpleasant lurching feeling of missing a step on the stairs.

“Where’s the ground?” Mr. Undercut asked. “You’ve identified the crux of the problem,” said the pilot.

As far as the eye could see, there was just open blue sky – a little paler above us, a shade deeper below.

I leant closer to the glass as far as I could, as if imagining that the horizon was merely fractionally out of view beneath the body of the plane. “Are we over the ocean?” I asked, dumbly. I knew we weren’t over the ocean. We weren’t supposed to be over the ocean, at any rate. “No.” 

“Okay,” I said. “Nobody panic.” “Nobody is panicking,” the co-pilot retorted sharply.

“It could be some kind of – attack,” said Undercut. “Someone on the ground aiming something at us that – causes some kind of illusion?” “It seems more likely that it’s some kind of atmospheric effect,” I argued. “What, exactly, are your qualifications?” the co-pilot demanded.

Undercut ran a hand awkwardly through his hair. “I’m doing a PhD in Physical Chemistry,” he admitted. “I have no qualifications,” I said, in a hurry to get that fact out there as soon as possible. “I mean, I have an undergrad degree but – I think we’re the best they could find. I’m widely read. Sorry.” The pilot cast the flight attendant a look of disbelief. “Two hundred passengers,” the co-pilot bemoaned, “and not a single doctorate?” “Sorry,” I repeated.

We stared at the wide open blue in shared discomfort.

“It’s probably some kind of reflection or refraction,” I theorised nervously. “Like a mirage, a temperature differential in the air. Sometimes people on the ground see images floating in the sky of cities or mountains that are hundreds of miles over the horizon –” “Fata Morgana,” the pilot interjected. “Right. Because it refracts – and if the boundary between layers was sharp enough it could even reflect. We’re seeing the sky above us, reflected off a boundary below us. Maybe?” “We thought that,” said the pilot. “What do the instruments say?”

There was a drawn out silence that made me sure before they said anything that what the instruments said was nothing good.

“That’s the other half of the problem,” the pilot ventured grudgingly. “We’ve got no radio, no connection to anyone at all.” “Well.” I swallowed. I was very glad I’m not a nervous flyer. “It could be the same effect, right? The radio waves are bouncing off the same boundary, they can’t reach us.” “We should have a satellite connection,” the co-pilot put in.

I looked up. I’m not sure why a plane needs such a good view of the sky above, but we could certainly see a lot further up than down.

Somewhere up there, the plane should have been able to see the satellites above us. I was struck by the unsettling idea that if it weren’t daylight, there’d be no stars up there either, just unbroken black.

“Hold on,” I said, as I felt that stomach-dropping-out lurching sensation again. “Where’s the sun?”

It should have been directly ahead of us, with the glare in all of our eyes. Instead the light was directionless, like an overcast day but brighter, seeming to come from the whole sky at once and no place in particular.

“Yeah,” said the pilot.

Another silence. I could hear voices from the cabin behind us, the murmur of a lot of people talking at once. 

“Have we… got turned around somehow? Could it be behind us?” “Can’t rule it out. No compass.” “No compass?” That couldn’t be a mirage effect. “No compass.” “It’s not behind us,” the pilot said. “You’d see it on the wings.” “We’ve checked,” the flight attendant added.

She ducked out, then. We heard the raised voices more clearly for a second, with the door open. People had noticed that they couldn't see the ground.

“Some kind of lenticular effect,” Undercut said. He had his phone out and was tapping furiously into what looked at a glance like some kind of notes app. “Yeah,” I agreed. “We’re in a kind of bubble, light and other EM waves are refracting around us. We can’t see the sun or the ground because neither of them are at the right angle.” “Have you heard of anything like that?” asked the pilot. “Anything remotely like that?” “Other than the floating city mirages… no.” “Sun dogs,” Undercut suggested. “It must be a very rare phenomenon. But rare phenomena happen. Someone’s got to be the first to document these things. If we lose altitude we ought to pass below the edge of the effect…”

The hubbub behind us was growing louder. I could hear one man in particular growing louder and more hysterical minute by minute.

The captain flicked a switch, and held up a hand to the rest of us to be quiet.

“This is your captain speaking. As you can see from your windows, we are currently passing through a rare atmospheric phenomenon causing the ground not to be visible from our current position. Please remain calm.

“I have lit the Fasten Seatbelts sign. There is a possibility of sudden turbulence, so please remain in your seats with your seatbelts fastened, and enjoy the unusual view from the windows. Or, if you are finding it unsettling, simply close your window shutters and wait for it to pass.

“We are about to start descending in order to reach a more favourable layer of air. We are not intending to land, this is likely to be a short descent. We are still three and a half hours from our destination. Once again, please return to your seats and remain calm.”

She exhaled, long and slow, after finishing the announcement. We all listened. The hubbub was no quieter – perhaps even a little louder – but perhaps less agitated and upset. The yelling man had quieted down.

Undercut was still tapping away on his phone.

“I don’t think you can get the refractive index of air high enough,” he said, “to explain this.” “What about reflection?” I asked. “You’d see through it if it was reflection. Like looking at the surface of water.” “Not if it was strong enough.” “I’m not done with the numbers,” he acknowledged. “But I don’t think it’s possible.” “What about contaminants?” I said. “Some… industrial gas in the air, messing with the optical properties…” “Doubtful,” he said. “Diffusion would spread it out pretty fast…” “Diffusion’s weird sometimes. Think haloclines.” “Mh,” he agreed, still tapping. “Can’t rule it out. Yet.”

I felt the subtle shift that told us we’d started our descent. Downward acceleration countering gravity by the tiniest amount. More subtle than the descent of a lift going down, but definitely noticeable.

“You’ll get one hell of a PhD out of this,” I joked. “Whatever the cause.” “In physical chemistry? I don’t think so.” “You’ll have to change to physics.” “Oh hell no.”

“What’s our altitude?” I asked. “Altimeters are out,” the pilot said. “Or at least… the needles aren’t moving.” “Tell me that’s an electronic system,” Undercut said. “Something that can have just, an error…” “The backup is just a barometer. Physical. Detects atmospheric pressure.” “Okay,” I said. “Okay. Well… what do they say our altitude is?” “Ten point two kilometers. Same as before… this.” “And they agree with each other, the different instruments?” “Yes.”

Descent continued. It didn’t feel like much, but I’m no expert and I had no idea how to assess how fast we were descending. Whatever the pilots felt appropriate, I supposed. The conversation had died. Undercut was still buried in his calculations, trying to find a set of conditions that could explain what we were seeing. The rest of us stared, unsettled, into the unbroken blue.

There weren’t even clouds, not even a wisp or a pale haze. Just blue.

[iusedtohavesixtoes]

Someone covered him up.

[paper-cuts-galore]

My favourite part about this whole thing was when Wednesday was leaning more to Enid’s side of the room :’)

[themosthatedbeingg]

🎉

[lustandrot]

OOC NOTE; He's being gross and weird, sorry. ^^ Also, FYI, this is 1000% musical-based.

'The Court of Miracles' was his at last and quite frankly, it wasn't even that impressive of a discovery, considering just how long he had been in search of such a place to begin with. Either way, those pathetic gypsy dogs finally had nowhere left to scatter - nowhere left to hide - and it was all thanks to Quasimodo for being such an excellent problem-solver. Knowing the boy would eventually be of some kind of use to him, he had to give the hunchback at least some kind of credit by now, did he not? Perhaps once and for all, he would finally be able to extinguish the last of the gypsies, or at least enough of them so that they'd finally just die out and could no longer be of a threat to the souls of the citizens of Paris. In his educated opinion, they didn't even deserve the right to copulate or reproduce.

With the lot of them now having been captured and carried off to various prison cells until it was time for their sentencing, the Archdeacon was already completely head-first in planning the bon fire that would be taking place in the square at dawn, which in turn, had only been a few short hours away. Most of the city had grown restless and the people were angry, not to mention there wasn't a single street in sight that didn't have at least one or two entire buildings completely engulfed in flames - smoke still very much pouring and billowing out while it continued to choke and suffocate the innocent who ended up facing its wrath.

Somewhere, in the midst of the chaos that was looming, there was a part of him that couldn't even find it within himself to be worried for Quasimodo. Not with all of the fire or the smoke. Frollo of course had been swift in making sure that the boy had been properly restrained prior to the events that were doomed to unfold in just a few hours.

Though the entire city of Paris was still very much continuing to burn, the Archdeacon didn't have his mind on anything else besides her. This had all been for her. Because of her. Now he was looking at a city that was about to be nothing but a pile of ash and charred remains …. and she had been the one to force his hand. The hand that could have been so kind to her…. had she only let it.

How many times had he selflessly offered to save her? How many times had he practically begged for her to accept his help? Each and every time, she denied him -- and often times -- mocked him for it. Now, she sat alone in a cell … waiting to meet her pyre - the very pyre she'd die on. She'd die knowing that her precious ex-captain of the guard would no longer know happiness or love - for he too was scheduled and ordered to be executed directly after the witch, Esmeralda. She could have just ….said yes. She could have just … loved him the way that he felt like he loved her. Had the love in question only ever been real…

With the silken red scarf that had once belonged to the gypsy girl now draped neatly across his lap, he grabbed it with his free hand before crumpling it up within his fist and lifting it slowly to his face. Shoving his entire nose into the crimson material that he had carried around with him for so long that he had nearly lost track of when it had become an actual habit, he inhaled the scent that had been trapped within its threads and fibers. Her scent. It was a scent he knew all too well because he had made it so. Drawing in another deep inhale, his hand finally dropped as he hastily shoved the material deep into one of the pockets of his robe - the place it usually stayed hidden.

He was sick and tired of being in agony. He wasn't going to be able to survive just by simply inhaling a scarf every single day - only desperately craving for it to be her.

Regardless of the gypsy finally meeting her death, none of it filled the Archdeacon with happiness. He would have much rather seen her saved. He would much rather have her alive. It didn't matter. She had made her choice a long time ago and as much as it brought him true pain, she had left him no other choice. He could have saved her … and now, he was going to be her un-doing. Standing up now, he decided to quickly exit his chambers, feeling like dawn was only going to come faster if he didn't go see her one last time.

[humanityinahandbag]

Something a ton of fanfic authors don't realize, especially the new ones, is that timing is EVERYTHING. Getting a story out one month after a show or movie releases very nearly guarantees more attention for that writer, sometimes in the long term for their stories within the fandom.

This isn't me saying you should be writing faster or that you're doomed for low readership. Not at all.

What I am saying is that judging a story by its hits is sometimes not the way to go.

And I'm not going to call out any titles or names because I'm not that type of person, but I will say is that I just read two stories within the Stranger Things fandom.

The first had something like 3k notes in total for about 11 chapters. It was stunning. Gorgeous. Written with so much care and consideration. The plot was well thought out and the ending had me in tears. It was published on the cusp of the New Year.

And then I went and looked at a story on the opposite end of that spectrum, written just about one month after the finale of the season. This one has about 17k notes for a one shot, adding up to roughly 1.5k hits per thousand words. The plot was fine. Nothing too insane or wild. It was fairly safe as far as stories go. But my God. This story was absolutely riddled in grammar mistakes, poor characterization, and spelling errors. And yet, were you to look up stories by hits, this one would be shown as the more popular one.

And that's the thing.

Popular doesn't mean better.

Do some stories get popular and have amazing characterization and plot? Absolutely! I've got a few that I reread, and I'm not so humble that I can't say I haven't written something I've absolutely adored and was honored to see it go to go up in notes. But if something I write doesn't skyrocket with hits, it's also not the worst thing ever.

Does it suck to go unnoticed? Totally. Is it nice to get attention for your art? That's a trick question. Of course it fucking is. It's the pinnacle of all things good.

But don't stake your talent on how popular your story becomes. Learn. Grow. Continue to hone your craft. And just remember-

Popular does not equal good.

[bannedaid]

thinking about my gw2 fellas because i can’t play right now. thinking about all of them and shaking them around in my head and thinking about how i havent rped them in months and they’re starving and wasting away. sorry varus eros sobb agar keer plato and the sylvari i impulsively made one day. scratches head. kind of want to yap here but also in tags because i think tumblr works that way. people yap in the tags right

[rotting-green-apple]

Grace saying “I’m the girl you thought you knew” in Dirty Dudes must Die has the same vibes as Paul’s “I’m still the man your trust” in Inevitable

[owocontroversy]

god i wanna be in love so bad