#much to think about!

[autism-swagger]

Various Quakes I drew while thinking entirely too hard about alien/human hybrid physiology.

Reblogging is better than just liking.

[manchestereyes]

I had kinda dipped out of the phandom during the was era (sorry) so I would to hear how that era led to them being so connected in this one

oh that is so valid, friend! 🧡 i kinda did too since it was announced right when i got my first full time job and suddenly i didn't have time to engage with phandom stuff anymore 😭 but things are a lot chiller now, so let's dive in! (under the cut because this is gonna be loooong--dnp please do not read if you happen to stumble across this!)

i think to get a full perspective on this journey, we really need to look at the full history of dan and phil. how they forged such a deep connection in 2009 and did whatever they could to be together. how they were blowing up more and more in the early 2010s and seeing more opportunities come from this youtube business. and how one youtube glitch could've ruined those opportunities forever.

i'm sure we all know by now how big of a deal the vday video was but if you don't... it was a huge deal. suddenly this very private piece of their lives was out in the open, long before either of them were ready to publicly address it. and it changed everything. yes, their love story was basically documented already, but they never expected those posts would be seen by millions of people one day, potentially even by people who could give them jobs. so they shut down. they insisted they were separate people and made completely different videos while also showing us the family sized box of shreddies they'd bought for the two of them.

and this is where wad comes in. yes i know i'm jumping really far into the future here, but hear me out--in a way, i believe wad is directly connected to everything that went down in 2012. see, phil's told us that he's always been happy doing amazingphil and dan and phil things. but dan's different.

SPECULATION TIME -- IF YOU ARE DAN AND PHIL, PLEASE CLICK AWAY NOW. THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING.

dan grew up desperate for validation from parents who never had time for him and from peers who constantly bullied him. he's always had a voice in the back of his head telling him he's not good enough, and even when phil tells him his videos are great, he still wants them to appeal to all the people who dismissed him growing up. he wants to be his full self, yet he's also terrified of acknowledging that he could be the very thing he was tormented for. meanwhile, phil (as far as i can tell) had that validation growing up. his parents were older and had more money and therefore, more energy to devote to phil and martyn. phil's always been super close with his whole family, whereas dan (from what we know) has only ever been close with his nana and popsie, and now with his mum too. phil had a whole group of friends growing up, whereas dan flitted from group to group, never quite fitting in, and even had no friends for a while. this is why he developed the cynical, sarcastic persona he's worn for so long. it was his battle armor. every time he'd shown his real self growing up, he'd been rejected. but once he saw how lovely we all are, that battle armor was quickly becoming restricting. but he'd spent so long wearing it that now dan didn't know who he was now.

so we got the hiatus, while dan worked out who he was and how he wanted to present himself and threw himself into different projects that did and didn't see the light (rip dinok our strongest soldier 💔)--one of those projects being wad. suddenly dan, theatre kid extraordinaire, who'd spent two tours working with his favorite person onstage, was now facing the prospect of carrying an entire stage show on his own. on one hand, that was terrifying as fuck, but on the other, it was a culmination of all the work dan had done on himself. and he did it. he spent months physically apart from phil only to find that we loved him for who he is. and that was deeply healing for him.

however, being apart for several months was SO hard on him and phil. phil said he was having a lot of trouble with his migraines around that time and i have to wonder if that could have partly been from the stress of not having dan around for long periods of time. and we know dan had plenty of crises on the road that he frantically texted phil about--enough to have him credited as "remote crisis manager" in the wad recording. and that's the thing, isn't it? i think dan especially needed that time apart to realize that he and phil are truly magical together. and with all the pressure he puts on himself for solo content, he knew it would take a herculean effort to put anything out on his main channel. but phil's been working with a really cool editor for his main channel. and the gaming channel has never had that content threshold.

so they finally both dropped the masks (for the most part) and dove into this new version of dan and phil that emphasizes their connection. because it's okay for them to be this close now. they've already worked with some hugely powerful people (and been accepted by their families) and now all they need is us. and we've not only accepted them for it, we've celebrated it--all the way to the finals of the rpf tourney. and i think that acceptance means more to dnp than we will ever know.

tl;dr: dan and phil had to be apart for a while to see just how much they needed each other. and now that they've experienced that, they know they can never let each other go--and that their connection is just as special to us as it is to them, so there's no harm in showing it off every chance they get.

[bestworstcase]

thoughts cooking.

mountain glenn, grimm overwhelmed the city and the people took shelter in caves, building an entire underground city after the destruction above. an explosion later opens a breach into a grimm nest, grimm flood the city again, and vale seals off the tunnels, implicitly without attempting rescue or evacuation, sacrificing the people to protect the core city.

<- same choice ironwood made.

“i see lives that could have been saved,” and all. vale created the world’s largest tomb.

fast forward a few decades. a single transport ship approaches vacuo with the news that salem came to vale and “there’s nothing left.” the huntsmen aboard “led the civilian retreat, brought as many people as we could…”

that turn of phrase—‘led the civilian retreat’—doesn’t evoke a panicked, disorganized scramble to get away from vale. it calls to mind the orderly evacuation procedures we saw during the battle for beacon, where people were loaded efficiently into transports to move them from beacon into a safe zone established in vale. port and oobleck were in charge of that retreat too. (and it demonstrated generally that emergency evacuation is something vale has on a lock—the assault on beacon blindsided everyone but the kingdom’s crisis response plan sprang into action like a well-oiled machine.)

only one ship, though.

when cinder attacked beacon, they retreated to a safe zone in vale. when salem hit vale, the immediately obvious place to establish a safe zone is patch—it’s close by but separated by a body of water, and it’s relatively defensible (an island). unlike vale, patch probably doesn’t have the room or resources to support a large urban population indefinitely, but you can use it as a relatively secure staging area for a subsequent evacuation to somewhere else. what you probably can’t do is squeeze anything like the majority of vale’s population onto patch island. (i mean, you could if it’s as huge as it appears to be on the map, but the map is NOT to scale and i get the impression that patch is supposed to be quite small.)

mountain glenn. “i see lives that could have been saved.” vale’s greatest failure, standing abandoned as a dark reminder. and “if you can’t learn from [history], you’re destined to repeat it.” did vale learn from its failure in abandoning mountain glenn to die?

in this fractal spiral of a story. ironwood didn’t get his way, but what if he had? “we are saving who we can” -> “brought as many people with us as we could,” with the history teacher whose chosen purpose is to prevent another mountain glenn from happening hunched over, haunted, in the background. is this a fucking counterfactual.

also if there were people left behind in vale, the mountain glenn undercity is the obvious place for them to flee. it’s not safe, but you can get there from vale through the tunnels (less exposed than driving or flying above ground) and if you can barricade the points of ingress to the cavern, it’s at least a more defensible place to set up an encampment than anywhere out in the open.

and i mean it might be that salem massacred the city and let one ship escape to maximize the damage to morale and provoke as much outrage as possible for the sake of getting the sword out of that vault. but mountain glenn is such a crucial narrative cornerstone, and vale has a history of making the kind of sacrifices ironwood tried to make with mantle, and the specific phrasing used here is interesting (“nothing left” vs “no one left,” “civilian retreat” implying an orderly process a la the evacuation from beacon).

i think it’s also the more narratively interesting and dynamic choice for there to have been a judgment call to leave a large number of people behind—it’s a counterfactual vehicle for unpacking team rwby’s conflicted feelings about their decision-making in atlas through comparison to what vale’s leadership did in the same situation, and there being some ambiguity as to whether anyone else survived allows for a thin ray of hope (maybe there are some people still alive) to galvanize the coalition into a counteroffensive (if there’s even the smallest possibility of survivors, we need to help them. we have to try.) and you draw the tension in salem’s character between her extremism and her effort to chart what she believes is the minimally destructive course to the surface by putting a survivor’s encampment within her immediate reach.

[eric-bogosian]

Idk I've seen some theories about this gif lately and what it means for Daniel; does Louis cause it? Does Armand? But what if...

What if it's Lestat?

I feel like we're sleeping on the possibility that he comes crashing back into their lives (literally) and this is the aftermath of it.

Not to mention Daniel here himself. Of course, it's hard to guess what's really going to happen with such a small clip. But for me, it's the way he's just... sitting there. He doesn't start to flinch until after everything comes falling down around him. Like he's anticipating it?

Like if there was already a fight going on, and he knows he can't escape the damage because it's too late. The danger is already there, he just didn't know it'd be this severe.

I've seen people speculate this is what will cause Armand to turn him - he gets hurt here, probably. And I 100% agree.

[feketeribizli]

thank you singapore

[plusultraetc]

do you see what I mean 😭

[pattydia]

are we considering the possibility that randy pissed himself in bbb and that’s why benson had him change his pants even tho they weren’t bloody

[tophthedaydreamer]

maizy goof, ballerina extraordinaire!

[myoldiaries]

hits different (2022) // fortnight (2024)

[apocalypticdemon]

tell me about the jirving recovery fic!!!!!

okay! i'm about to get very rambly and unhinged, you have been warned. this one is a canon divergence fic; it's still very much in the works, and i haven't finalized everything, but the basic premise is that people discover Hickey mid-murder attempt and his plain kill Irving is foiled (Farr is still dead. sorry Farr). I know for a fact that I want Tozer and Hodgson to see it, but I don't know who else will be witness yet, nor how they get alerted to it all. Irving still very much gets stabbed multiple times, but he survives it this time around. Haven't decided how, but I'm probably just gonna write it off as "he got very lucky" and move on.

Anyway, in the aftermath, Tozer winds up staying at his side for a while while he initially recovers, and they bond closely with one another.

Somehow, they get rescued, and Tozer and Irving wind up living together. It's generally an amicable existence, but sometimes it can be kind of fractious, especially as winter rolls in and Irving gets sick from the damage to his lungs (i am weak for sickfic, what can I say). But eventually they wind up happy, and will probably end up romantically involved, but I'm still not quite clear on the exact endgame. I have a vague idea of Hodgson getting close with both of them, too. I'm thinking he starts to get closer to both of them before they are rescued, and that continues after they reach England again. My justification for this is that he was already at least amicable with Irving, and I think there's potential for him and Tozer to be at least friends, especially after Hickey's mutiny setup attempt falls apart. I keep thinking about the meeting with Hickey, Tozer, and Hodgson in the tent with the bag of Neptune meat, and I think Hodgson would feel pretty guilty after an attempt on Irving's life. I think it would be a complicated process, reconciling All Of That, but I'm intrigued by the thought, and kind of want to write all three of them grappling with Hickey's stuff and with surviving/returning home/recovering in general from their journey.

it's very quickly getting out of hand, lmao.

anyway here's a relatively unedited snippet from the very opening of the fic, from Tozer's perspective:

"Even a few paces away from the cluster of frantic men, Irving’s breath gurgles loudly in his chest, wet and sucking as he strains weakly away from the hands that press to save him.

Irving blinks slowly, eyes sliding from place to place, but focusing on nothing. He speaks incoherently, insensate to their questioning, just murmuring Hickey's name over and over, like an accusation, like a prayer. 

From the periphery of the throng, a knee squarely planted in the middle of Hickey’s back, Tozer wonders if anyone will answer him."

so yeah! it's a lot of very vague ideas at this juncture, but i think it has the potential to be a pretty fun project to tinker with through my next few breaks.

[trenkir]

so if Jimmy is 15 in 2006.... would that make him class of '09?

[timeflow]

someone is playing clash royale in the shower. k am scared.

why are they doing that when they could be looking up more beautiful things such as "diy hrt" and "girls kissing"

[golden-stag]

Thinking about making an illustration for the holidays but I have no idea if I should do a serious one or something silly-

… Or even if I should make it summer or winter themed

[falsenote]

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)

[bestworstcase]

HAVE YOU SEEN THE STORYBOARD THING SHOWN AT RTX YET https://twitter.com/sapphicnal/status/1677433741633781761

I AM A PARODY OF MYSELF BUT WHEN I SAW THEY WERE HANDING OUT BREAD TO ANGRY HOMELESS REFUGEES I YELLED

they are writing this story for me

i’m also pumped that it appears qrow is not only not falling off the wagon but also helping willow stay on the wagon too

“what do you do when there’s no hope left”though. Where’s Salem. Where Is She.

[lifesizedmuppet]

i need to hear your essay on how balladeer casting changes the show 👀👀

<3333 hi yes i did not forget about this, i’ve been hit with the infamous “5-day headache” spell (never ending psychic damage) so unfortunately i do not have the brain cells to phrase this in the way i want :/

all in all, i think it’s very interesting to look at how the balladeer inserts themself as this audience tour-guide/teacher throughout the ballads. the verse that begins with “listen to the stories/hear it in the songs” in the ballad of booth is the best example i have off the top of my head. that in tandem with the balladeer as the personification of the american dream carries a very specific tone for audiences (‘who is it telling us as audience members to pay attention, and what are they trying to tell us, and who are we within the world of the show?’ kinda deal!) the same goes for the proprietor as a character, and how the balladeer and proprietor are played against each other throughout the play.

not to boston assassins post on my personal read of the balladeer, but it was veeeeryyy interesting to hear the director’s thoughts on the balladeer and proprietor as well! the boston production was done w thrust staging, so there were many moments where the balladeer and the proprietor entered during scenes and just sat and watched the show silently next to audience members. idk!! i think the relationship between the balladeer, the proprietor, and the audience in terms of casting and blocking is so incredibly important to the show :)