#just. it's got everything man

[screwpinecaprice]

He communicated through mental text.

[egophiliac]

I have SO many thoughts about everything and they are in no kind of order yet, so here's just some quick little bits in the meantime!

I am not normal about any of these characters!

[inkskinned]

there's a video on instagram of a man kicking his partner's door in. the top comment is (with over 4 thousand likes): "how about you tell us what you did to make him that angry?"

barring emergency, nobody should be kicking anybody's door in. many of us lived in houses where it was always, somehow, an emergency. there is a strange, almost hysterical calm that comes over you in that moment - everything feels muted, and you almost feel, however incongruently, like you should be laughing. you are living inside of "the emergency." oh my god, you think. i am now a fucking statistic.

there is another comment with 2.8 thousand likes: "if this was a woman doing it to a man, nobody would give a shit."

do people give a shit now, though?

barring emergency, the door should remain standing. the emergency should be panicked, desperate - "i'm coming in there to protect you." many of us know what it feels like when the emergency is instead "i'm coming in there to get you."

1.5k likes: "and yet you post this for notes. glad to see being the victim has become your whole personality."

hysteria is a word connected to womb, from greek. what you're experiencing is so senseless and inhumane that you (a rational creature) try to find any ground within what is irrational and cannot be explained. one of the most frustrating things about staying in bad situations is that we also lie to ourselves. we also ask ourselves - wow. what did i do?

women can be, and often are, also abusers. abuse is not gendered. abuse is not just a "straight person" problem. abuse does not have a face or figure or sexuality. you cannot pick an abuser out of a crowd. an abuser could be actually anybody.

and then so many people rally behind the man kicking the door in. here is something nobody should be doing, right? you want to ask every person that liked that first comment: do you ask this because you side with him? do you ask this because it helps you feel safe from this ever happening?

in some ways, you're weirdly sympathetic to the top comment, because it is the same logic you see frequently. the idea is that the average, normal, sane person doesn't just break down a door. doesn't just shoot up a school. doesn't stalk and kill women. doesn't threaten sexual assault. doesn't run over protesters. doesn't shoot an unarmed black person. doesn't scream at underpaid walmart employees. doesn't just "lose it". something had to have happened, right? because the default (white. straight. cis.) - that is someone who is always, you know. "sane."

(right?)

on a podcast, you hear a sane, normal, rational person. "if you piss me off, i'm going to need to hit something. sorry but i'm not apologizing. that's just who i am that's how it is." his voice almost sounds like he's laughing.

you think of the door, and how you were almost laughing behind it, too. ironically, every real emergency in your life has almost felt peaceful in comparison. fire, car accident, flash flooding - these felt quiet, covenant to you. you'd stood in all of them, feeling them pass over and up to your chin, never actually overwhelming.

but when the door was coming down, you had felt - is there a word for that? there has to be, a word, right.

surely one of us has figured out the word for that, i mean. it's such a large fucking statistic.

[gomzdrawfr]

Getting creative with recognition

uh not so cute/funny random drabble of the AU:

warning: not proofread and just me rambling, bad writing LMAO

[nerdy-hyperfixations]

My mom (and my sister) said that both baby Stan and Ford are adorable but Ford is cuter and she likes him better and I think my heart is shattered.

This post is dedicated to my favorite kid Stanley panels:

My mom didn’t even like him when I showed the one where he murders those two kids 😭😭😭 that’s the best part!!!

[blorbologist]

Y'know, I think I figured out why the Hells still feel like a new low-level party to me, even though they're level 13 and almost 100 episodes in.

I don't quite think it's the lack of conversations, or the fact half the party's plot hooks are big ties to past campaigns - though that definitely plays a part.

... Bell's Hells still primarily rely on quest givers.

Most of their goals are given to them and do not feel organic to the party, and constantly remind us that the Hells are pretty much never the most powerful people in the room. Which is usually something you see with a low-level party.

NPCs offering jobs is not a bad thing; it's a very common plot hook. Matt has been extremely skilled with using NPC quest givers in those two campaigns. Not only do they provide an obvious plot thread, but they can put the party in the path of others (say, the Nein running into the Iron Shepherds while doing a job for the Gentleman and everything that came of that). And the Hells had a solid start with it too - Eshteross was an excellent quest giver!

The problem is that Bell's Hells have never really not had a quest giver.

Maybe it's a byproduct of the more plot-heavy structure of this campaign? But while prior parties have felt like they decided on their course of action and what they prioritized, Bell's Hells feels less like level 13 (13! Level 13!) experienced adventurers and more like an MMO group clicking on the exclamation point over an NPC's head. Where does the plot demand we go next? Who do we report back to?

They're level 13.

At level 13, Vox Machina had just defeated a necromantic city-state to clear their name and Percy's conscience. And, you know, the Conclave just destroyed Emon. No one was explicitly telling the group to gather Vestiges and save the world (though Matt guided them there), and they were usually among the most powerful people in the room. They chose which Vestiges to prioritize, which dragons to tackle when, even if the over-all plot was pretty clear.

At level 13, the Mighty Nein were celebrating Traveler Con (another PC goal, I'll note) after brokering peace between two nations, accidentally becoming pirates and heroes of the Dynasty. The Nein regularly chose what to do based on personal goals, not grand ones. Though definitely smaller fish than Vox Machina at this level, they were very independent and gaining solid political clout.

While we're at it: level 13 is one level lower than the Ring of Brass, who had a huge amount of sway over Avalir. They ended the world, and also saved it, while in the grand scheme of things being only a smidge more powerful than Bell's Hells are now.

Can you really see the Hells wielding that amount of influence, when they're constantly being told what to do next?

The god-eater might be unleashed, so Bell's Hells have no time to do anything but what is asked of them. No time for therapy unless stolen from Feywild time, no travel on foot and late-night watches. They haven't even had time to grieve FCG. Percy was grieved in the middle of the Conclave arc. Molly was grieved when half the party was still in irons.

Matt is in the very unfortunate spot of not being able to give the Hells the same agency as the other two parties. Not only because of the world-ending plot introduced so early on; they are surrounded by characters they know (and the cast knows) are stronger and wiser than them - the familiarity of the past PCs and NPCs is to their disadvantage.

Why would the party reasonably ignore Keyleth's task that will help save the world and go off on a romp? Why would the cast when they know well Keyleth has to be sensible and with the best intentions in mind? The stakes are just too high.

It means that the Hells still feel like they're running errands instead of pursuing their own destiny. Their accomplishments are diminished as just being parts of a to-do list, and any stakes feel padded by several level 20 PCs/NPCs standing 5 steps away ready to catch them.

This isn't Bell's Hell's fault, nor is it Matt's. It could be amended, I think, if the Hells are really left to their own devices for a long period of time without support and shortcuts (like during the party split)... which would be really tricky to pull off at this point in the campaign.

They're level 13. They're big fish, but they're stuck in a pond full of friendly sharks, so they don't feel big at all.

[vurelly]

how am i meant to ha wahoo yippee through life in these conditions

[ender1821]

im a child of divorce

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 196

So. Tucker might’ve done an oopsie. But it’s not his fault! How was he supposed to know you weren’t supposed to even be able to hack into the watchtower with a PDA? He uses PDAs for everything, and it’s not like it’s even hard???

…

Why are the heroes looking at him like that? 

[ironladders]

"I circled half the globe searching for him, but he was gone."

Starscream ;_;

RIGHT?? IT'S SO SAD .

and i have sooo many thoughts about this whole situation with skyfire/starscream that's been presented to me, if you dont mind anon im gonna use your ask to ramble a little

(disclaimer im sure nothing i have to say here is particularly new & has been said by those who've been deep into TF longer than myself but i need to get this out my system anyways. and also im still watching through g1 so if im horribly mistaken about anything #oops)

unless i missed something, i don't think it's specified in "fire in the sky" how long starscream looked for skyfire?? but just thinking about that line.... he obviously didn't immediately go back to cybertron, he didn't just give up on skyfire. starscream cared about skyfire enough to look for him, only leaving after (i assume) he realized he didn't have the resources to conduct a proper search for his companion. and i mean can you imagine being starscream in that situation???? your partner just disappears into a storm, and no matter how far and long you look you're unable to find them????????

i get starscream, man. i'd also become awful if that happened to me.

and here's the thing: i stumbled upon this post which posits that the decepticons happening to stumble across skyfire in the ice was no incident, but starscream's own doing, and i LOVE this theory/headcanon so much. when i first watched the episode yesterday i was thinking that it was funny they just happen to be mining right where skyfire was frozen so it's nice to see my suspicions affirmed LMAO

i honestly love that episode so much because as i learn more about starscream and transformers as a whole i think little tidbits like that offer a deeper look into who he is (or was, idk) beyond just megatron's second-in-command. he was a scientist, an explorer, a friend. "was" isn't even the proper word here, because he still is all of those things, he just...... applies them differently, i suppose. which is the real tragedy in who he is as a character.

beyond starscream and his search for skyfire, you wanna know what i've REALLY been thinking about a lot with these two? when skyfire becomes a decepticon (for like a day lol but still), starscream immediately declares that when he overthrows megatron, skyfire will become his second-in-command. not any of the other seekers, not either of the waves, not literally anyone else who's been a decepticon for more than an hour, but skyfire. his long-lost science partner. on starscream's end, virtually nothing about his relationship with skyfire has changed. he still trusts him as much as he did millions of years ago, to the point he'd be willing to have him at his side as leader of the decepticons.

but on skyfire's end... the starscream in front of him is different from the one he knew. war and being a decepticon changed starscream for the worst, something that unveils itself very quickly to skyfire. one of the first things he asks starscream after becoming a decepticon is if starscream is genuinely happy about being a decepticon warrior over the scientist he used to be. skyfire can't believe that the person standing in front of him could be the starscream he once knew before being frozen. still, it's starscream, so skyfire ends up going along with things up until he can't ignore his morals and deny that he's on the wrong side anymore.

that is where the second tragedy happens for starscream: betrayl, by the man he'd waited to get back for so long. he finally got skyfire back, only to lose him all over again.

if skyfire had never crashed that day -- if they'd never gone closer to explore the earth in the first place -- would starscream had gone down such a dark path? would he have taken countless lives, and become the ruthless decepticon he is now? does it eat at skyfire, knowing that in his absence starscream lost who he once was? or perhaps he'd still be the same starscream, but skyfire would be at his side serving the decepticon cause. maybe they both would've been so drastically changed by the years of cybertron's war together.

skyfire is a living, formerly frozen relic of the past before everything went wrong. starscream has aged far beyond that, to the point of no return. as much as they surely both want it, and regardless of what happens to them, their bond can never go back to what it once was.

god i just. i need more!!! i need to watch more transformers and read more of the comics and see more of these two!! i watched tfp + some of the live action movies as a kid but this is my first time learning about skyfire and this thing he's got going on with starscream and it's fascinating to me i can't believe i didn't know about this before!!!!! but it's also so fucked up oh my god!!!!!

ok yeah ive gotten the brainworms out my system. idk how to end this here's screenshots i took that i found funny

[waymond-wang]

SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (2023) dir. Joaquim Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson, & Kemp Powers ↳ Everyone keeps telling me how my story is supposed to go. ↳ INSP.

[egophiliac]

heeey guess what, I'm obsessed with this idiot flamingo now

[dirtyassvoiceactors]

Dorian gets offended/jealous Orym is talking about working out with Beau, so he tries to show off, Imogen calls him out on poor execution, so he just walks off to help Caduceus (who also quickly kinda roasts him) kkkkkkk

i need next episode to after Dorian and Orym wakeup together, Orym goes workout with Beau and have competitions, so the whole time is just Orym and Beau showing off to Dorian and Yasha, like doing push ups with them in their back or sm, doing upsidedown pullups

[navree]

Incorrect, the fact that Biden has dropped out and a candidate with history of supporting medicare for all and being more receptive to a ceasefire in the I/P conflict has made me go from "I cannot morally support the Democratic nominee" to "I am voting for the Democratic nominee despite the fact she isn't perfect in every respect." I'm really happy this played out. The Dems for the most part abandoned the old Obama platform and it feels like its possible an actual progressive agenda could come to pass in my lifetime.

Kamala 2024!

If you weren't going to vote Democratic in this election before Biden dropped out you're a dorkass loser who does not care about any of the issues you're yammering about here and also a fundamentally bad person, and I hope you get run over by a bus.

But you got one thing right in all of this gibberish, Kamala 2024.

[taitavva]

NEVER GO HOME, DON'T SLEEP, DON'T EAT JUST DO IT ON REPEAT, KEEP?

[365 - Charli XCX / alt vers under cut]

[thelaurenshippen]

okay, but, like, THAT'S how you do a villain story. in the FIRST scene, you watch him shoot a man in cold blood. the show tells you right away "this man is not a good man".

but then it gets you to sympathize - look at how much the world has stepped on him. look at how terrible the whole of gotham is. and even when he kills more people, does more terrible things, you still root for him. because it's fun to watch someone be terrible to terrible people. you root for sofia too, because if anyone deserves revenge its her, but you're rooting for both of them somehow.

and then the show tells you "when he was a boy he killed his brothers". but even still, you want to see what he'll do. the show is called the penguin, you want to see the penguin rise. when he lets his mother's finger almost get cut off, you pity him. he's a sad, broken thing. how could he be anything but bad? but he loves, so there must be something else there.

but then. but THEN

the show always told you: "this is the devil". but you thought, maybe the devil can make hell a little more bearable for some people. the devil is so often nuanced, sympathetic, complex. maybe he's like that.

you're wrong. there's nothing good within him and YOU rooted for him to succeed. you wanted to watch the destruction. and now you have to live with the consequences of thinking, even for a second, that he could be redeemed.