#might as well self sabotage

[noodles-and-tea]

For the twins in time AU, I genuinely wonder what kind of people the young twins grow up into because of Stan’s/Ford’s influence. Especially if it takes years for the portal to get fixed.

(Sorry if it seems like I already sent this question, I don’t know if it got sent the first time I asked)

I haven’t fully fleshed out how Ford grows up in the past but I do have thoughts on Stan presently

[oceanwithouthermoon]

people who dislike saiki kusuo i need to pick and prod at ur brain. whats going on in there?

[bitchthefuck1]

you know what, I actually will talk about this because it's bothering me. The issue with focussing so heavily on syd and carmy's potential for a romantic relationship isn't that there's something inherently unintellectual about romance or whatever, it's that a lot of people seem incapable of doing that without immediately flattening the story and ignoring or intentionally misreading any and all nuance for the sake of that romance. Every scene suddenly becomes about how it impacts their relationship, every analysis is done through a romantic lens, every frame or line of dialogue becomes about finding some easter egg or hint that "proves" these people should start dating. Their dynamic is absolutely a fundamental part of this show, but if you can only see it as a will-they-won't-they, you miss so much of what the story is actually trying to say with these two.

There are good versions of this story where their relationship is romantic and there are good versions of this story where it isn't, but as soon as you decide them being together is "the point," you lose the ability to actually judge the story for what it is, not what you want it to be.

[hopeinthebox]

how do u curate your playlists? they're so good (listening to the glen powell one rn lol)

dearest anon, please know you've made my entire summer with this ask <3333 (here's the playlist in question)

now while i recognise you probably weren't looking for a legitimate breakdown of the process here, you've inspired me to take a deep dive, and i'm prone to getting carried away (and yes, i read high fidelity recently and rewatched the film and the series. but i'm sure that has nothing to do with it). so here goes, under the cut:

Lizzy's Guide to the Delicate Art of Making a Playlist

#1 - What's the Point?

There has to be a theme or mood or connecting thread for the playlist. That being said, as long as it makes sense to you, you've pretty much got this covered.

What's the story? Is it based on a mood, an event, a time in your life, a person, a character, a genre, an era, etc. etc. There's plenty to choose from, so there's plenty of playlists to be made. Go crazy, get weird with it.

(In this example, the overarching theme is: Glen Powell Hot (Twisters Edn.) with a sub-theme, if you will: Country Music for Beginners.)

#2 - Song Selection

Once the theme is set, I gather a few tracks that spring to mind immediately. In this instance:

• Why'd You Come In Here Lookin' Like That - Dolly Parton

• Cowboy Take Me Away - The Chicks

• Country's Cool Again - Lainey Wilson

All of these are fairly self-explanatory if you have been caught up in the Twisters press tour at all recently. No further comment.

From here I flesh out the ~general vibelist~ with more tracks, some classics and some deep cuts. I'm cross-referencing my own musical knowledge, previous playlists, spotify mixes (god forgive me, the occasional algorithm picks), and other user's Powell playlists (topgun-heavy, but you certainly can't blame them).

#3 - Order Matters

There's got to be some sort of flow to the playlist front to back, unless your theme is audio whiplash, for example.

Now here I am a devout follower of the High Fidelity rules, which are as follows:

Track 1 - Open with a killer - sets the tone, gets people invested

(Here, Lady Gaga's You And I ~ it's a banger, and it's country enough to get away with. Can't bring out the banjo prematurely, we'll lose people)

Track 2 - Bring it up a notch - let them know we're just getting started

(Alannah Myles, Black Velvet ~ country-ing it up a notch but staying firmly in the mainstream, because again, we don't want to scare anyone)

Track 3 - Cool it down - now we're settling in

(Chris Stapleton ft. Dua Lipa - I Think I'm In Love With You ~ Dua keeps us firmly rooted in the crowd pleasers, and we can sneak in some Stapleton)

N.B. There is a rule here that I don't abide by, the "only one track per artist" - there's three dolly tracks in this lineup alone and i stand by all of them. Provided you're not adding an entire album or two, I think you can get away with it.

Anyway, this three-track run fires us into a classic (Islands In The Stream) which melts into Tyler Childers and suddenly we're knee deep in Kentucky and you didn't even know it.

The trick is to not overthink it, which is always easier said than done. Ordering only has to make sense to you from start to finish. This journey's gotta go somewhere - throw in a few peaks and troughs, and the songs are just connecting the dots along the way.

#4 - As Does Shuffle-ability

Now, having said all that, I feel like this is a safe space to admit I am a chronic shuffler, so a degree of shuffle-ability is required.

All this means is that your underlying theme is evident throughout. Any wildcards are going to make sense wherever they pop up.

With this one, the thread of country through all of these tracks is what ties the theme together (saving a horse). There are some classics (Faith Hill, Willie Nelson), soul-heavy tracks (Secret Sisters, Leon Bridges), and and few more pop-adjacent (Haim, Ashe) but they've all got that twang - so it's shuffle proof.

#5 - Points for Presentation

A good cover, title and description can offset a multitude of sins. Don't underestimate the power of presentation.

Duration comes into play here also, where anything shorter than half an hour feels like it has nowhere to go, but over three hours feels insurmountable. Unless you're going for a compilation, year in your life playlist, or some background low-fi stuff, keep it tight.

And there you have it folks, my (lengthy) guide to playlist curation. Final note, don't love it and leave it. If you come across something new, jostle things around to get it in. Similarly, if something doesn't fit anymore, toss it. The beauty of the modern mixtape is you can edit it as little or as often as you like.

If you made it this far, I'm personally sending you a little kiss on the forehead. And to the anon who inspired this article of a response, I can only apologise. MWAH

[mad-hunts]

[couterror]

[rodentblood]

gonna go on a social media break I think with my mental state so fucked up atm I probably just really need some time to process everything

likely won't be super active on discord either but I'll try to get back to people when/if I can

[ofcowardiceandkings]

the sinus headaches are already not great but Extra Shit has been added to the pile and im just sat on that right now trying to figure out what the fuck to do

[schmafs]

to be human

redraw of this from four years ago (wow!)

[snackward]

Hi I'm actually so fucking sick of people/society/media telling me that I might be wrong about who I want to date and that I might be dismissing people for the wrong reasons. I am officially not willing to do work to try to make myself have romantic feelings for someone. If I'm going to get in a relationship I want to be UNCOMPLICATEDLY AND ENTIRELY ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT IT

[playingonedchess]

if i was going to actually get a job instead of sitting around playing computer games i reckon the top skill on my cv should be coming up with excuses to sit around doing nothing and not get a job

[starlight-storytime]

essay in tags :p

[anarcho-catboyism]

Horrible fact of the day: Chevron just released a new boat fuel that WILL give you cancer.

Not "might", not "could", WILL. It has a cancer ratio of 1.3:1, as in, in a group of 10 people, 10 would contract CANCER.

(Edit: apparently some articles are now saying 1.4:1, and some are saying a little under that. Either way, the consensus seems to be anywhere between a 95-100+% of contracting cancer, with some expectations of this fuel not even needing a full lifetime of exposure for you to get Cancer.)

The EPA's safety limit is 1:1,000,000 as in 1 in a million people get cancer.

The EPA approved it anyways. I am not joking. The EPA approved a boat fuel that has a near 100% chance of giving someone cancer. It has such a good chance of giving someone cancer that if you DIDN'T get cancer YOU WOULD BE AN OUTLIER.

Fuck the oil industries.

Edit: If you find this (rightfully) horrifying, have you considered industrial sabotage? /hj

This isn't something we can vote away. This isn't something the rich are gonna apologize and make a 10 minute apology video for this. They don't care if you starve or wither in hospitals or get blown up in their wars.

If you don't know where to get started:

If you already know what to do, then it's time to do it. Participate in mutual aid, raise awareness in real life as well as online, participate in or train in self defense and emergency medical training classes.

[genekies]

still on the hunt for a malewife so we can be malewives together, the hunt is unsuccessful so far

[scarysanctuary]

Yeah, don't mind me, just been walking around feeling weepy, like my hearts been ripped outta me and stomped on, I related to Ed too much in those 3 episodes, it was like being forced to look in an ugly, sad mirror that I'd had hidden away for years... I don't want to see myself nor for others to see me, it's all just very raw.

[sunderwight]

Been thinking about the potential of a Luo Binghe transmigration fic where he has a similar experience to Shen Yuan's -- meaning, he transmigrates into a story that didn't originally have a "Luo Binghe", but rather a different character with a similar name, and Bingmei himself still has his canonical personality and broad strokes modern version of his backstory (i.e. abandoned, adopted, orphaned, struggling with the foster system, etc), whereas the character he transmigrates into has a different background and personality.

So, concept: Luo Binghe transmigrates into Su Binghe, the spoiled prince of the demon realms, son of Tianlang Jun and Su Xiyan and scum villain of the novel he read.

In said novel, Su Binghe was driven by a perpetual lack of satisfaction with things. He had almost everything handed to him on a silver platter, but none of it seemed to actually matter to him. His parents were powerful and loving, but also extremely busy and somewhat distant. His sibling relationships were soured by the fact that they were all basically raised separately by different groups of servants and expected to compete with one another for the supreme throne of the demon realms one day. The servants who raised him also had only limited authority over him, thanks to his rank, so he was encouraged to be self-centered and tyrannical from an early age because behaving that way helped him get whatever he wanted. Yet he felt ultimately purposeless and lonely, lacking any actual friends or companions.

Shen Yuan, the main character, was the third son of a wealthy noble house and was stolen by demons during a raid on his family's properties. He was rescued by Tianlang Jun's people, who officially disapprove of attacks on humans (special cases like Huan Hua Palace being an exception), but not before the rest of his family was killed or else sold off into less friendly territories. Shen Yuan himself was subsequently taken on as a ward of the emperor, as a sort of apology for the whole deal, and inserted into the somewhat younger Su Binghe's household as a companion and tutor to try and curb the prince's loneliness. The empress also took Shen Yuan on as a personal disciple, as the only person able to teach him human-style cultivation.

This worked about as well as anyone expected, which was to say that the spoiled prince treated his weakling human tutor like his own personal chew toy, blowing hot and cold, manipulating and mistreating, jealously resenting Shen Yuan's attention from his mother while also taking every opportunity to insert himself into the additional lessons as well.

Eventually the situation came to a head, with Shen Yuan lashing back after being pushed to the limits, and Su Binghe using the "attack" as an excuse to exile him in the midst of hostile demon territory. Thus began the protagonist's power-up montage segment, where he was forced to fight and survive, leveling up his skills until he came across Xiu Ya.

Xiu Ya was a legendary sword that had been wielded by an equally legendary human cultivator, an actual secret ancestor of Shen Yuan's, long ago. It was sealed away by a past Heavenly Demon emperor, after its wielder managed to use it to successfully kill one of their kind (a difficult feat). By sealing the blade deep within the demonic realms, the past emperors had assured themselves that no human cultivator would successfully venture so deep into their territories nor uncover its hiding place, and so they mostly warded it against other demons (who might want to return it to the humans in order to sabotage the Heavenly Demons). Thus, Shen Yuan successfully liberated the blade, and after winning a harrowing battle against an ancient evil (boss fight!) with it, he ascended to godhood.

But, even the heavens weren't merciful in this story, and Shen Yuan was tasked with using Xiu Ya to end the threat of the Heavenly Demon race once and for all before he could claim his rightful place among them. If he failed, his soul would be forfeit and Xiu Ya would shatter, eternally condemning the mortal plane to the tyranny of demonic rule.

Luo Binghe absolutely loved the character of Shen Yuan, even though his story was kind of trash, and he did not want to transmigrate into Su Binghe, especially not with a mandate hanging over his head that he had to one day cast his favorite protagonist out into the wilds, and then let him kill Binghe in order to fulfill a mandate from the heavens!

Featuring:

-Modern day culinary student Bingmei, absolutely revolutionizing food prep in the demon realms and desperately wishing he could change the genre to one of those slice-of-life cozy escapist novels instead.

-Bingmei being actually a thousand times sneakier and more self-aware than his predecessor, taking Su Binghe's absolutely pathetic attempts at politics and making it work for him instead (between the foster care system and the food service industry, Bingmei takes no prisoners).

-Su Binghe originally had a sprawling harem by the time Shen Yuan reunited with him. Luo Binghe wants nothing to do with it, so he has to just keep on dodging his parents attempts to set him up in political matches.

-Some of Shen Yuan's original household and family actually did survive, so Luo Binghe dedicates himself to rescuing the rest of them to try and farm points with the protagonist. This results in him retrieving Shen Yuan's brother, Shen Jiu (asshole rat bastard feral cat of a guy, Luo Binghe almost wishes he'd failed), Shen Yuan's personal companions the Liu siblings (terrible decision, Shen Yuan's always waxing poetically about how beautiful they are), Shen Yuan's younger sister Yingying (annoying but nice), Shen Jiu's situationship Yue Qi (there is something deeply wrong with that guy), and the son of the family's head servant, Shang Qinghua (weird rodent man, somehow has evil advisor vibes despite also looking sort of like the designated non-threatening one in an idol group).

-Bingmei identifies Mobei Jun as a fellow transmigrator pretty early on, when he absently whistles the notification sound for a smart phone and Mobei reaches for his pocket. Mobei Jun's approach to transmigrating is basically to say and do as little as possible. Bingmei subsequently doesn't find out that he is in fact the author of the original book until some time after the main plot has passed.

-Despite not wanting to, Bingmei is fully prepared to die in order to secure Shen Yuan's eventual destiny as a god. He only hopes he might go out cleanly and with more sympathy than the original goods got. Imagine his horror when Shen Yuan decides he's going to fight the gods instead of wiping out the Heavenly Demons.