#just so fun and excellent

[gentenn]

Just hit episode 64 on Welcome to Nightvale! I only listened to the first 30 or so eps in 2013-2014, and just picked it up after the iconic Tumblr sexyman poll, so it’s been a fun experience.

Favorite episodes so far:

1. 45 - A Story About Them—LOVE the writing, love the story, love the gimmick. I think my favorite overall episode so far

2. 53 - The September Monologues—very fun to get a glimpse of the inner worlds of different characters, just an overall banger

3. Is it cheating to say the whole season 1 finale? The live episodes were so hype, I was losing my mind getting voices for all these recurring characters.

4. 60 - Water Failure—almost entirely because this episode’s weather segment was set-up as in-universe hold music, which is such a clever idea it took me out

I hope we get a voice for Pamela Winchell in a future episode. I was a little sad she didn’t appear in the live S1 finale (and while we’re at it, voices for old woman Josie as well as John Peters, y’know, the farmer)

[keymintt]

a comic/zine about coyotes

[eyrri]

little Kitten Burst doodles because i love it and think about it a lot

pspspspspspspsps play kitten burst

[happi-dreams]

the sillies the goofers the 💥💥

this is offically a hyperfixation now thank you funny bird for your essay

[sforzesco]

DO NOT BE AFRAID

this is combining Ovid's Heroides and the Excidium Troie because I can't stop thinking of Hermes telling him not to be afraid. what the fuck!! Ares is wearing the crown that Paris gave him.

I have. thoughts. about Paris. he's almost got this Troilos parallel in my mind, that the event that defines him in detail exists in a lost narrative that we don't have (the Cypria), but everyone else knew. the event that defines Troilos is his death (murdered, butchered by Achilles, the violence of which haunts everything after. Achilles, child killer, you can't escape that!), and the event that defines Paris is the Judgement. what's a lost text but a kind of grave!!

idk I don't think that Paris before the Judgement would recognize himself after bc when you become god touched, it rearranges your guts. you become transformed in the worst way possible! how could you recognize yourself! but I also think that all the Parises after the Judgement would recognize each other because that event is so locked into the trauma of war and the scar it leaves on the land, it's like a scar on the narrative too. it exists like this forever, over and over again, so you exist like that forever too. Troy collects grief and despairs.

Troy as trauma: Reflections on intergenerational transmission and the locus of trauma, Andromache Karanika

and Paris is like. a miserable little god/corpse-puppet or something, like a match for the gods to throw onto gasoline.

The Excidium Troie + Ovid's Heroides:

Excidium Troie, trans. Muhammad Syarif Fadhlurrahman

Ovid, Heroides 16 (trans. Harold Isbell)

a collection of things regarding Paris that made me go 😬 but under a cut bc this is getting. very long.

The Divine Twins in Early Greek Poetry, Corolla Torontonensis

Iliad 24 and the Judgement of Paris, C.J. Mackie

Elegy and Epic and the Recognition of Paris: Ovid "Heroides" 16, Elizabeth Forbis Mazurek

Ennian Influence in "Heroides" 16 and 17, Howard Jacobson

Paris/Alexandros in the "Iliad", I. J. F. de Jong

[eerna]

me explaining why Will/Elizabeth/Jack love triangle was a perfect little one-movie arc that wasn't present in the final movie because it was never about choosing and instead just about dynamics and character development so they all outgrew it by then

[bacchuschucklefuck]

okay unironically I love so much that porter is like this world SUCKS its BAD here and it HURTS you why do you care abt it!!! and literally every single bad kid is like ngl we just hate ur ass it does not matter what ur philosophy is

[iraprince]

if u like listening to music while u work but find urself getting distracted fiddling with queueing stuff/finding The Perfect Playlist/etc my recent hack has been just throwing on youtube videos of dj sets

book club radio is a good channel to start w bc they usually have the overall Vibe of the set in the title (i.e. "dreamy pop mix", "energetic techno mix" etc) so u can pick the general tempo or w/e u want but then it just kind of blends into the bg and u can set it + forget it

any time i put my own playlists on i'm just too familiar w what could be coming up and i end up wasting so much time skipping/scrolling 2 look for specific songs and stuff. dj sets are like putting a post-op doggy cone on me. it;'s out of my hands

[lurking-loaf]

Have you ever drawn and hidden little doodles of the DCA while at work?

Just scribbled one or two during a moment of free time and tucked them someplace?

There are now 19 of these silly things scattered around a 136 sq. ft (41.45 sq. m) space.

The thing I'm unsure about is whether I gather them up or leave them for future employees to find when the time comes for me to move on from this job.

[egophiliac]

I have a question about the jp server pickups, since I really want knight Sebek, but I’m trying to save gems for bloom malleus + the 3rd tsum event that’s gonna show up sooner or later. Iirc, after knight Sebek, the next story update’s pickup had all of the previous story cards (ie cerberus Ortho, general Lilia, and knight Sebek). Is this true, and if it is, did it include a token system like the dorm pickups where you can just do 100 pulls and then buy the specific card you want directly? Because if that is how it works, then I can wait until then and be sure I won’t have to go to 200 for him.

we did indeed get a second chance at those three when 7-7 came out! I'm pretty sure there was not a token system -- though admittedly I don't 100% remember, sorry! ��� I took a quick search through some past posts/videos from people who tend to include the gacha and news stuff, but I didn't see any mention of it, so I'm inclined to think there really wasn't one. :( they were all separate pickups with their own pull counts rather than a combined one, if that info helps at all.

speaking as a strict f2p who hoards keys/gems like the lovechild of a dragon and a magpie, given the choice between saving for a story card and a birthday card, I'd go for story -- it does require a lot of patience, but there are way more opportunities to get past birthday cards, both from the anniversary events and the rerun pickups! tsums is a bit harder to say anything on because Eng doesn't follow the same event schedule, but it's a longish event and those pickups let you have a free 10-roll, so I think they're also a bit easier to save up for.

(ALSO speaking of free rolls, starting with the fifth round of birthdays -- the kutsurogi my room ones -- the birthday boy/union jacket/bloom cards have had a separate pickup that you can get two free 10-pulls at by doing missions! I got a bloom Jade from it a couple weeks ago. :D meanwhile general Lilia is the only story card I've ever managed to pull, so...I'm probably kinda biased. whoops.)

[scificrows]

Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.

Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):

In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.

It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]

The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]

Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]

In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]

In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]

Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.

[vaguely-concerned]

lucanis truly has a near terminal case of burned out golden child syndrome. caterina fucked both of these kids over so incredibly bad with the dynamic she enforced there, with illario being labled the perpetual fuckup kid where lucanis 'could do no (would never be allowed to do) wrong'. the way he admits in the first coffee date scene that the only thing that happened when he showed he could carry the weight of expectation was that more weight was added makes me so sad. you can hear it in caterina's voice in his intro mission that she's incredibly proud of him, but this is clearly a leandra and hawke situation where that pride never translates into relief or resolution or unconditional warmth or understanding or anything that really helps.

[butchcarmy]

Building on your arguing and making up blurb… he comes home from a super tough day/week. He’s just been off and a bunch of stupid little shit happened and he REALLY doesn’t want to talk about it. All he wants is to come home to his person and have them wrap their arms around him, maybe play with his hair, rub his back while the both of them cuddle each other. He can’t stop thinking about it and he’s so ashamed to ask ‘cause he’s still working on being vulnerable, but he’s so tired and he just NEEDS it so as soon as he showers he crawls into bed and it all just tumbles out in a mess of words “look, I-I know you said I don’t have to talk, a-and now is one of those times, I mean I’m talking, but I don’t want to talk about *it* a-and I just.. i need..” and he takes a deep breath because his partner is watching and being patient like they promised, waiting to go off his cues… “fuck” he mutters and then it comes out in a jumbled mess “ijustreallywantyoutohdmerightnow” and his chest is heaving with nerves and his partner just wraps him up and he melts into their touch.

(in reference to this post)

Oh… this is wonderful…you understand everything…don’t mind me as I just bounce off this! I really enjoyed this idea

word count: ~400

Carmy doesn’t understand how it starts, only that he’s riding the spiral from the moment he wakes up until he gets home.

His head’s on fire and sweat coats his skin and his stomach’s fucked and god, he’s exhausted. He says hi to you, already tucked into bed onto your phone, and mumbles something about taking a quick shower. The warmth eases the ache, the pervasive exhaustion that lives in all his muscles, but he still feels like everything’s on fire.

As he towels his hair and body, dissociation pulls him in and out, his consciousness drifting away and returning like waves. Today was just awful, not even because work was particularly that bad. He can’t find the words for it. All he knows is that it hurts. It fucking hurts.

He doesn’t even say anything when he reenters the bedroom and falls onto the bed. He tucks himself immediately into your side, arms wrapping around your waist, and you instantly curl back around him.

“Hey,” you whisper, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Welcome home.”

“Hey,” he whispers back. He cranes his head towards you, leaning for a kiss, and you meet him halfway.

“How was today?”

“God.” The loaded question. The more he lingers on it, the more anxiety floods his system. He just needs to get the words out. “It was��it was bad. Just a bunch of mental stuff. And I—“ He makes a frustrated noise, inhales sharply. Why is speaking so hard? “I, I know you said it’s okay if I don’t wanna talk. So I guess this is me saying that, uh, that’s how I’m feeling right now. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you—I mean, I guess I did say that, but it’s not—I just, I wanna stop thinking about today for just one fucking second, I want, I want…”

“Yeah?” One of your hands is at his hairline, gently pressing back damp curly hairs with your thumb. The soft touch brings him back in. “Take a breath, baby.”

He doesn’t realize how quickly he was talking until you mention it. At your words, he stops and breathes.

“I…just…” He feels anxiety prickling up his back, but he looks at your soft, patient expression and pulls through. “I just really want you to hold me. Is that okay?”

“That’s more than okay. C’mere, big guy.” He chuckles as he snuggles further into your arms, burying his head into your chest. Tension dissolves in his body like spun sugar in water. It just melts away.

You kiss the top of his head and keep him held close for the rest of the night, exchanging quiet words and affections until he falls asleep in your arms.

[vagueconfusion]

source

[pokimoko]

Hello!! I came across a couple of your animals with pride flags series (idk what you're actually calling it lol) and I wanted to request an intersex blue-ringed octopus (I'm not intersex myself tho lol, just thought it might look neat)

Oooh, this was a fun one! Thank you for the request! 🐙

[gelarshiesprofruitboarder]

ok these r all in one video cuz tumblrs video limit is stupid and they might also be shit quality cuz tumblr likes to do that sometimes but. heres some clips from. auditions i think. that i like idk

source 1 - source 2