#kind of a joke post

[bylerposting]

I still haven't moved on from this line Nancy had in the 4x09 script that never made it in to the final cut

Why were these words arranged in this order on the script. Why do they need a babysitter Nancy. Care to explain why you are glad Jonathan was there accompanying them (PLURAL) ???

[spiribia]

once you hit adulthood a day will come when you’re suddenly like VEGETABLES 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 and it never goes away

[egophiliac]

bring back zooterkins, the best 17th-century swear word

I don't normally do Just Characters Swearing, but. ...this kind of wrote itself and then wouldn't leave my head. it comes from both a piece of character-writing advice that has always stuck with me, and also my conviction that Leona is 1000% funnier as a character if his dialogue has to stay G-rated. let Kalim say fuck, but don't let Leona say bastard.

(I'm sorry)

[adobe-outdesign]

there was a period of time during the early days of Neopets wherein they would redesign an older pet. in order to pick a redesign they'd offer a poll with a few different options, like this:

but during 2001—2004 they would do polls with several completely normal, similar-looking options and then one (1) just completely messed up option that they never acknowledged or explained

my personal favorite was the Gelert one

[tofixtheshadows]

This is one of my favorite minor details in Dungeon Meshi, firstly because what in the femme fatale, but also because it's one of those little things that raises so many questions about worldbuilding.

The Occam's Razor defense attorney in me says that Ryoko Kui gave Kabru a boot knife because she wanted him to escape from his bonds here. And Kabru is a very competent swordsman, why wouldn't he have a boot knife, sure. He's already got a dagger, he can have this too.

And yet: the implications. Kabru, why do you have that? That is not remotely something that could be easily accessed or used in combat. Nobody is pulling out a pen knife from the heel of their boot during a fight with a monster. It's useless in the dungeon ... unless you're the type of person who isn't just worried about monsters.

I've mentioned this before, but I consider one of Kabru's functions in the narrative as being the character who fully brings the idea of human ecosystems into the story. There's a reason why he's always connected to large groups of people (Toshiro's party, the Canaries). He (along with Mr. Tansu, briefly) introduces the reader to the social and political forces working on the dungeon, showing us that none of this is happening in a monster-filled vacuum. His confrontation with the corpse retrievers, who very nearly kill Kabru's party permanently with their reckless murder-for-money scheme, reminds us that monsters are not the only things that prey on humans. Kabru understands the ways the dungeon causes people to put profit over human lives.

We only get hints of it in the story, but like any gold-rush-style economic boom, it's implied that there is a lot of crime and corruption surrounding the dungeon.

So yeah, it really makes me wonder why Kabru keeps a tiny knife in his boot, meant to be carried on him even in situations where he would otherwise be unarmed. Stored exactly in the place where it's easy to reach, even if, for some reason, your hands are tied behind your back.

[trashmancer]

“It feels like I’m wearing nothing at all~”

How I see the Minthara and Gale relationship. (Yes it’s a play on the classic Simpsons scene)

[totalswagisland]

this stupid ass meme redraw. maybe someday ill draw normal ship art but not today

[lizard-fashion]

there are more genders on heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your women and gender studies class

[ingravinoveritas]

Michael talking about how attractive David is over the years.

[wellfine]

Zoro & Sanji before Zoro got to see Sanji's fighting style

Follow-up:

[s0fter-sin]

soap's whole deal being sniper and demolitions gets me going bc on the surface they sound so different but when you get into it, you realise it's bc soap's smart

sniping is all math; calculating distances and wind interference and bullet drop. something i think people overlook is he was listed as a sniper first so it can be implied that he's better at it than demolitions. he does more sniping in both campaigns than demolitions work; in capture or kill, ghost specifically calls on him to take down the aq snipers

and demolitions is math with a hit of chemistry; knowing what mixes with what, knowing how much to use, recognising environmental factors and adjusting accordingly. it's not just about the boom; so much work goes into contained/ planned explosions. especially when having enough power for a breacher charge and not bringing down the whole building is the difference between mission success and failure

the chemical bombs he makes in alone can't just be any old cleaners, they have to have the correct reaction to each other; he just knew off the top of his head what would mix with what to create what reaction. he would also potentially have to recognise them by sight/smell bc they would’ve been written in spanish

soap would also have to know architecture; recognising structural integrity and weak points so he knows exactly where to plant a charge to bring it down and how it'll come down

he has an incredible soldier's mind people just forget that bc he's sociable which itself is a skill

we know he tends to buck against orders he doesn't agree with like when he pushes back against ghost in capture or kill and shepherd when he tells them to release hassan

he gets closer to people and sees if he can trust them and that's when he follows them without question. really think about how he talks to alejandro and rudy; he asks about their home and alejandro's family and rudy's relationship with him. those aren't questions you ask a stranger after a few hours of knowing them. that's not even touching on his relationship with ghost

he also deliberately brings people of higher ranks down to his level; talking informally with ghost and giving him a shoulder punch, addressing alejandro (a colonel!!) by his first name and rudy by his nickname despite literally just meeting them. he personalises all of them and it’s in direct opposition to the reason most characters do that; it’s not due to insubordination or lack of respect, the more he respects and trusts someone, the more casual he is with them

he digs into people; he wants to know what makes them tick and that determines if he can one, trust them and two, follow their orders. once he decides that, he's the ultimate soldier; he bleeds loyalty which makes him vicious when that loyalty is taken for granted

he isn't naive or bubbly or insecure; he's an incredibly smart and aware soldier. he's aggressive and bloodthirsty and loyal and intuitive and i love him so much

[chongoblog]

A couple days ago, I took a look back at my life online that all led to where I am now.

It was crazy. The very first thing I made for the internet 16 years ago was a video called “Mario Kart Glitches”, a camripped video that featured no actual glitches. I then made Youtube Poops (although less with sentence mixing and more “take a video and replace words with CDI voice clips”)

Then high school came around and I started to fall in love with collaboration. I made an abridged series with my friend, and I started doing voice work, looking around for dubbing projects and making friends that way, usually through Pokemon-related stuff (including one friend who kinda disappeared off the face of the earth one day. I don’t know if you’re still out there, but if you’re reading this: Hey, Kasumi)

Later on in high school I would start collaborating on Newgrounds and would eventually change my name to Chongo, as it is today. I’d made friends with a small circle of animators on there who took part in an annual animation tournament, usually willing to lend voice acting and occasionally music.

When I went into college, I branched out a lot more. I started my Tumblr, which led to a lot of posting and meeting more people. I started a side blog that ended up more popular than my main blog for a while (shoutouts to @dhmis-audio and All The Stuff I Did There)

Then one day I reached out to send in auditions for a Gravity Falls fan project where I’d meet one of the most important people in my life: Penny Parker. After meeting her and having an incredible time during a table read and a voice call afterwards, we started collaborating. And from there the rest is pretty well-known history. Spagoots, leading to Snapcube and Spagoots Realms. Snapcube would lead to the dubs and making a whole host of friends like Red, Scout, Joy, Alfred, Mar, Ellie & Bee, Camilla, Katy (and that’s just naming a few), and Realms would lead to the Red Kraken.

From there, as I went into the working world, my content went more by the way of music and mashups, but I’d still have an urge to tell stories like with CPU Kerfuffle, with my storytelling getting deeper with stuff like NCCT. And the mashups would lead to stuff like Mad Rat Monday.

And now here we are. It’s crazy to think I’ve been a creator online for well over half my life. 16 years. I wouldn’t watch most of the stuff from my past (and I wouldn’t urge you to look into stuff from more than 7 or so years ago for multiple reasons) but I’m glad it all happened. It led to who I am today.

[wacky-wonders]

watching tv =]

[tofixtheshadows]

Hot take: Laios wouldn't actually mind an arranged marriage. Obviously "reluctant royal being pressured into marriage" is very fun for shipping purposes. But I have harlequin blood, so bear with me. Join me on this journey of character theorizing/shipping nonsense that makes it abundantly clear I have a Scrivener document I'm neglecting.

Laios was promised to someone from a young age. He and Falin both were; it's probably how their parents ended up together. They both broke it off by leaving their village, but it didn't seem to be a factor in Laios's own decision. And when Marcille, presumably, asks about his hypothetical love life (bicorn chapter), he not only brings it up readily, but actually seems kind of flattered? lmao

I love when smug Laios comes out. Underrated factor of Laios's personality for me is how much he enjoys being seen as cool. I think you'd expect Laios to be embarrassed or uneasy over this line of questioning, and the fact that he isn't is fun to me.

So when Yaad and his other old advisors bring up his need for a wife, Laios is ready to go along with it. Not necessarily thrilled by the prospect, but he was raised to think of marriage as a business arrangement you do because it's beneficial for your household/bloodline (as was often the case historically). He's already made the big step to claim a throne, and the idea of becoming village chief after his father seemed to have been vaguely in the back of his head all his life. Besides, if he has to do it anyway, I think he'd take comfort that there was a formalized process for an otherwise socially messy undertaking.

This dovetails neatly with my personal headcanon that Laios is gay but unaware of it. He comes from kind of a repressed culture- or at least I can imagine he does based on context clues- and has spent most of his life being ostracized in one way or another, feeling like he's on the outside of humanity. So he doesn't realize that his lack of attraction to women is unusual- he assumes that nobody really enjoys romance that much. It's not like his own parents married for love. It's just something people play up for stories, right?

It's all tangled up with his fraught desire for human connection and platonic companionship anyway. Meanwhile he's blithely unaware that the things he says about Toshiro are not normal bro things. Oh you'd totally marry Toshiro, Laios? Tell me more.

I see this in Marcille too. Firstly due to her unstable development, which has only recently allowed her to reach maturity (I headcanon her as somewhere between 20-22) and secondly due to her being a half-elf (infertile+a too-long lifespan), I think she has the expectation that she's simply not destined for love. The half-elf character she relates to in her favorite books says as much. So she, too, confuses a genuine lack of heterosexual attraction with the belief that this is just because of her half-elf status distancing her from it. Plus, she spent over a decade as a student/researcher in a nice little sheltered academic bubble, at an all-girls academy populated by adolescents. She's the most sheltered of all the characters: she's only spent the past year in the "real world", and she still focuses all her romantic attention on living vicariously through her favorite characters or her friends (except for Falin, conveniently!).

And Marcille would absolutely want to live vicariously through Laios and his future wife. She would not want him to go through a dispassionate formalized process: she wants her bestie to have a fairytale romance! What is the point of being a heroic king in a mythic castle if you can't even get a love story for the ages out of it?

This would result in a lot of Laios meeting with eligible bachelorettes at Marcille's urging, looking to Kabru for help the entire time and being grilled by Marcille afterwards about what he liked best about each girl. "She had nice, um, teeth?" They're both so close to getting it.

Kabru, meanwhile, is agitating for Yaad and the other advisors not lock the country into a hereditary monarchy, they have the chance to do something radical here, to break away from the systems that the elves and dwarves uphold. At the very least, let Laios marry for love, or formally adopt an heir and name them his successor if he wants, he's already sacrificed enough for the sake of Melini. Don't make him jump through these circus hoops for the chance of some trade agreements, we can get those without a royal marriage. And even if Laios was willing to go along with it, he does look at Kabru like he's his hero for sticking up for him.

The vague unhappiness Kabru feels at the idea of Laios being married off is easy for him to ignore. Kabru didn't actually get better at honoring or even recognizing his own wants just because he's moved past the dungeon. And Laios hasn't gotten the hint about his crush on Toshiro and is still 50/50 on saying casually shocking things, so when he remarks that he doesn't need a wife anyway when he has Kabru, he has no idea why that gets him the looks it does. After all, where he's from, men marry women to run their households, but Laios has castle staff for that, and Kabru is handling the rest?

That comment alone ticks one month off their collective gay awakening countdown.

Anyway. How many repressed gays in their twenties does it take to run a country?

Answer: Yaad can tell you.

[foursaints]

barty characterization is so troublesome because he is at his most canonical (and most compelling) when treated with utter seriousness & placed squarely in context of an austere, repressed upper class childhood leading to patricide… he is not goofy! his prevailing theme in canon is the violent denial of his bodily autonomy - the living body horror and tragedy of his stint under imperius!

so the fanon version of barty as a sleazy trash-talking fuckboy with a tongue piercing is…. uncanonical. there’s literally zero basis for his fandom treatment as hogwarts’s resident dirtbag and in fact it makes no sense… but it’s such an entertaining direction to take him that i would argue fanon’s reshaping made him more interesting? or has given us more opportunities?

like the fan decision to shove hp canon’s most tortured martyr-machiavel into a thrasher hoodie is objectively hilarious and ripe for exploration. basically my point is that true barty enjoyers can juggle both interpretations at once, explore the inherent contradictions, and decide which better suits their purposes for different scenarios. also i would like to see canon!barty and fanon!barty making out