#my list of shame

[anetherealpoetess]

obsessed with charlie vickers's commitment to the idea that sauron wanted galadriel as his assistant--as if the dark lord of mordor believed the key to ultimate dominion over middle-earth was convincing the most chaotic of elves to somehow manage his shadow empire's day-to-day operations. 'if only galadriel could handle my travel arrangements, manage my digital platforms, and keep track of my appointments, maybe then my dominion would be truly unstoppable??'

maybe charlie is right though? maybe sauron is out there building his fortress and dreaming of the day galadriel shows up to streamline his evil agenda? maybe in sauron's control freak mind organizing files and arranging documents is romantic and so these are highly intimate moments: the two of them coordinating the perfect invasion and going over supply chain logistics while he teases her about her chaotic attempts at record-keeping (because you know his records are perfect and hers are a complete disaster.)

you can almost imagine him wistfully slipping the one ring over his wedding finger and thinking that if she would just join him, manage his calendar, book his dragon flights, rent his horse drawn carts, and manage the evil fortress guest list, they could be unstoppable--just a dark lord and his assistant forever bound by middle-earth's most nefarious to-do list.

[cait-sith]

Day 18: Candy

[amazingdeadfish]

Day One: Casual Kidnapping

[whatudottu]

Sketchy sequel to this little thing I drew on an 8 hour plane trip without references because no wifi :(

Shockwave's logic tree of 'only breakdown's brave/stupid enough to call him breastie' and 'breakdown saying "hey breastie" is in reference to him' meets Breakdown's rarely seen mischievous side like a downball piffed against a wall-

[beautifulstorms]

t/v tango is objectively one of the better fds of the season in that it's memorable and cunty and works for them, but it's also such a direct comparison to older ice dance (pre-2022) that it just makes me sad. the only top team tango fd we've had in the entire quad and it has maybe fifteen seconds of tango/foxtrot hold combined and the dancers directly performing to the audience instead of to each other. judges and fans are eating it up and i get it and the current state of ice dance is obviously not t/v's fault, but like... what are we doing here man

[merlinfromberlin]

Imagine. TFP but there was an ancient spirit/deity living in the Star Sabre.

Bee, after the fight at the Omega Lock, can't remember anything that happened after picking up the Star Sabre for the first time. His memories only set back in once he pulls Optimus back up onto the platform.

None of the Autobots discuss it either. The only thing they told him is that he killed Megatron. But they refuse to elaborate beyond "you grabbed the star sabre, jumped down, stabbed Megatron & saved Optimus".

Bee himself is not even aware of the hole in his memories at first. But then Raf starts asking questions about the fight and Bee always answers with the same sentence. "You know... it was a real doozie, but I got... lucky, I guess."

The first time Ratchet hears Bee say that, he flinches violently and then pretends like that is absolutely normal behaviour. No, you did not just see him crunch his incredibly fragile medical equipment. It's always looked like this.

Optimus also starts acting odd towards Bee. He can't quite look him in the eye but keeps observing him from a distance. They've also stopped their philosophical discussions (yes; I'm going to insert my headcanon that Optimus and Bee watch ATLA together and then use it as a jumping off point to discuss Cybertronian philosophy and culture into everything).

None of the bots would admit it, but all of them are doing their best to keep Bee confined to the base. He is barely out on patrol anymore. It gets even worse once they are back on Cybertron because now he doesn't even get out to pick up Raf anymore. He's always kept busy indoors. Not even Smokescreen wants to sneak out with him.

Still, no one wants to answer his questions about what happened at the OmegaLock. He tries to corner Smokescreen and Bulkhead about it because they are the weakest link when it comes to resisting Bee, his shenanigans and questions, but neither of them budge.

And then Bee starts noticing other signs of change. Sometimes, his optics will suddenly just burn brighter. Bright enough to illuminate dark rooms or reflect on metal surfaces around him. Sometimes he is no longer sure that they're really blue.

Then, one night, he has a dream. He is lying somewhere, prone on his belly, unable to move and incredibly tired. It's hard to comprehend anything that's going on. His surroundings are bathed in blue (?) light and he can't see him, but he can feel Optimus being there, incredibly tense as he stands in between Bee and something that's so old it should have dissolved into dust eons ago. Optimus and the thing are talking but he can only gauge snippets of their conversations before something soothes him back into deep recharge. Last thing he hears is Optimus' yelling his name.

Then he wakes up at the entrance of their base, Optimus and Ratchet waiting for him as he returns from a drive. He has no clue where he went. Or why they look at him as if he was a ghost. Until he checks his internal chronometer and realises that the equivalent of a week has passed.

And when he asks what's going on, Optimus just pulls him into a hug and holds him for a long time, not saying anything.

[freneticfloetry]

from the bottom of my heart

So it turns out the presentation was so extra it was too large to upload to Slides, and the best I could do was export it as a video. His ass literally wouldn't fit on Google.

Either way, please enjoy this visual ode to TK Strand (and yes, his bottom).

And please note that this was created for shits, giggles, and @hoko-onchi-writes, and is in no way intended to praise or condemn any pitching or catching preference. All opinions are my own. In other words, don't @ me, it's not that serious.

[monsterfuckermilligan]

hey… not so quick question op……… are you not cishet? or do you love and respect any not cishet? better yet, have you ever even spoken to a not cishet person? or do you have knowledge about the cishet industry and the predatory behavior towards non cishet people? or do you just think that being not cishet is something cute and fun for stuffed or real animals that doesn’t happen to real people? i need you to explain why this is fun for you. you and all the people that do this stuff (voting or making these polls) owe real not cishet people explanations on why this is cute and not insensitive towards a marginalized group.

- hope you can hear how you sound bc ngl, it felt crazy to read your post. fucking. block people and shut up.

you really thought you did something with this but it really just puts it more into perspective on how adoptees are not taken seriously lmao. could i have blocked and moved on? yes. should i have? yeah, i even apologized to op because of it. i was unable to maintain control of my impulses, manage my own triggers, and practice solid emotion regulation at the time, and that’s on me. i take responsibility for that.

but your anon is just…yeah of course. how could i ever expect anything less? the fact is adoptees are mocked and belittled when we don’t think adoption is cute or act as if adoption is the human rights issue that it is.

adoption agencies are the backbone of the private adoption industry. they make money off of babies. they make money selling babies. this is an irrefutable fact.

they base our prices off of gender, age, disability, and race. they advertise in low income communities the most and tell first parents that their child will be better off with someone else. they tell them that it is an act of love. they take money from infertile couples, who are constantly told that they have ‘other options’ and given very little respect for the trauma and deep sadness infertility causes. they were started and popularized by a human trafficker named georgia tann. the adoption industry is now a multi billion dollar industry.

you are speaking to someone who just has to live with the knowledge that my adoption agency could’ve forged my documents because they did it to others. i am someone who has to accept that my adoption agency has been investigated for human trafficking. i am someone who exists with the knowledge that there is a price tag on my head. i was given to the people who bought me in a hotel room. compared to some of my friends, i am lucky, and my adoption was not wonderful by any means. i lost my first family, my siblings, my language, my country, and that doesn’t even count anything that happened after. i sounded like a person who’s been adopted who is angry that adoption is often not taken seriously, especially in fandom, and especially especially by (presumed) non adopted people.

you felt the need to parody my rb in an attempt to mock me and minimized the issues of two marginalized groups, and walked directly into the point.

one of the big differences in your comparison is that queer people and trans people are recognized by the majority, and legally to many countries, as a marginalized group. this is not true for adoptees. adoptees are 4x more likely to attempt suicide, more likely to be harmed and abused by their adopters, more likely to be killed, have higher rates of institutionalization and incarceration, and we even have our own remembrance day for those of us who don’t make it. it is this month. october 30th.

and as someone who is exceedingly educated on adoptee issues; the history of adoption, how it coincides with colonization and genocide when we talk about transnational adoption, transracial adoption, not to mention just the sheer amount how many of us have our records falsified by adoption agencies, how we are rehomed online, and the lack of regulation with the private adoption industry, and the way our identities are legally changed with no way of ever undoing it, this is genuinely not a 1:1 comparison.

queer issues are seen as real. adoptee issues are not.

it’s ironic to me because as a queer and trans person, i am allowed to be angry and pissed off to many people, even according to cishet people! i am allowed to make mistakes and still be seen as having a valid opinion even when i don’t express it correctly.

as an adoptee, however, i am always expected to be the bigger person, to just deal with it in silence, and if i have an issue, say it in the most polite way as to not offend anyone. as adoptees, we are just supposed to sit back and be fine with not having access to our medical records, we are supposed to be fine with how kids get posted online for people to buy adopt, ignore the amount of suicides and those of us who die by abusive adopters, and just be accepting of how the ACLU fought to give queer couples the right to adopt but won’t fight for adoptees’ rights because they financially benefit from the adoption industry. we’re supposed to just get therapy and never publicly express complex emotions or anger about the adoption industry or the way we are invalidated.

and honestly? that’s fucking bullshit. i don’t subscribe to that idea.

adoptees are allowed to be angry and make mistakes. we are human beings who have survived a trauma that isn’t even deemed as one by many. we shouldn’t have to be happy and grateful, kind and polite. this shouldn’t be the case. it’s not a commonly accepted practice to tell queer and trans people that we should be grateful for having to be closeted and shouldn’t express any negative emotions about our oppression or the violence we face. it’s not expected of us to just be quiet or respectful about our oppression.

adoptees deserve that same grace and respect. if you think otherwise, then do some internal reflection. that’s not my problem.

but… thank you for being an example of how adoptees are gaslit into staying silent about our injustices.

thank you for showing your whole ass and proving my point.

not to mention the hypocrisy of this anon in the first place; you could’ve just as easily blocked me and moved on, but you didn’t. you felt the need to mock me and say something you’re clearly uneducated about. you wanted me to know ‘how i sound’—well, you sound like maybe you should take your on advice. it’s also interesting to me how you kept it on anon so i couldn’t have a genuine conversation. hey…not so quick question anon……are you a fucking coward?

[frogaroundandfindout]

Deathstroke shows up as Roy talks to Jade and says that Roy is no Nightwing (titans #22)

[pynkhues]

I recently read an article in which Quentin Tarantino stated that fewer movie stars exist as a result of "Marvel movies in Hollywood." I think Jennifer Aniston made a similar argument before saying that there are no longer any movie stars. I'm not sure what that means. I can think of a lot of movie stars right now, such as Zendaya, Timothee Chalamet, and Zoey Deutch etc. what do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and Quentin's comments.

QuillBot's

Months ago, when you sent me this ask, anon, I wrote out a really long reply and as soon as I hit post, my laptop crashed and ate the answer, and I was so annoyed at myself for not saving my reply, that I couldn't bring myself to try and re-write an answer. I'm really sorry for that, especially because I think this is such an interesting ask (or well, two asks, because I think the death of the movie star and the impact Marvel's had on the broader concept of a movie star, are kinda two different things).

I've been thinking about it a bit again recently though, particularly as the Oscar race gears up, and Jacob Elordi and Charles Melton''s respective stars are rising in an industry currently desperate to find the new young Hollywood male 'talent', and I've been thinking about it again because honestly?

I agree with Jennifer Aniston, I think the movie star is dead.

We are a long, long way from Golden Age Hollywood where actors like Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe could captivate a public imagination in a way that translated to big box office effect, after all. Hell, we're even out of New Hollywood, an era dominated by names like Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, and Jane Fonda, and the Blockbuster era with Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone and Harrison Ford.

My original reply went into a lot of the different reasoning as to why this is (like with many things, I don't think there's any one reason for it), in particular how the advent of streaming has changed our relationship with films and TV shows, how the saturation of the market has diluted the staying power of celebrities, how social media and the perceived accessibility of celebrities removes personal mystique which in turn removes intrigue and increases a sense of entitlement, and the fact that so many people having stopped going to the cinema means that the experiential element of seeing a film in a setting larger than life has been diminished.

I think call out culture plays a role too, with any actor on the rise being torn down by tweets they made eight, nine or ten years ago impacting how their star rises, I think the dismantling of the studio system (which is a good thing!) also harmed actors in the long run as studios stopped investing the same resources into making and training stars (they used to be able to sing, dance and act! Now some can barely even act!), and I think, of course, the rise of prestige TV changed the industry substantially (after all, movie stars were movie stars - they traditionally did not, and would not, do TV, which created a clear class structure in terms of screen-based storytelling).

And yeah, I think the language shift from film and TV to content has done irrepairable damage to the artistry of filmmaking and the consideration of a movie star as an actor at the top of their field instead of an actor with the most Insta followers or YouTube subscribers (after all, if everything's content, isn't it the same thing? [no lol]).

Which I guess is kind of where Quentin Tarantino's argument comes in, right? What he's saying is that Marvel's made it so that the IP - the content itself - is the star, not the actor, and I'd say he's probably right with that.

Think of it this way - back in the New Hollywood/Blockbuster era, Harrison Ford was the movie star - he was leading new franchises left-right-and-centre between Star Wars and Indiana Jones, sci fi epics like Blade Runner, leading action thrillers like Patriot Games, The Fugitive and Clear and Present Danger and getting nominated for Oscars for Witness.

He was a movie star in every sense of the word because you could hinge a film - one with a new concept, not just remakes or sequels - on him and be virtually guaranteed a success. He was what sold the tickets, the director just hopefully had to make something good enough people would leave the cinema glad they saw.

Tarantino's argument is the Marvel model - - hell, even the new Star Wars properties, turned the franchise into the star, for better or worse, which means original films can't compete because nobody knows the IP. Back when Harrison Ford was at the top of his game, his name was what helped original films including smaller, standalone works like Witness find an audience, but the studios have changed that. Capitalism has changed that.

Properties with existing audiences and deep pockets for merch were prioritised, only now those franchises are faltering and you've got a generation trained that 'cinematic events' are reserved for blockbusters in established universes, instead of taking a risk on a new film because you know you love an actor who's in it.

Do I think we could go back?

Maybe, but probably not.

I think the place we are now in the history of cinema / TV / 'content' means you can't make a movie star anymore because I think the industry is simply so different that no actor can break through in the same way that even Leonardo DiCaprio could 30 years ago. That industry doesn't exist anymore, actors aren't guaranteed draws (Bones and All proved that for Timothee Chalamet, and Wonka I think could go a similar way), or they have to heavily rely on other industries to become household names which I think dilutes them as a pure 'movie star' (Zendaya's a great example of this - I like her a lot, but how many movies has she even been in? They built her career up in peripheral industries long before they tried to sell her as a movie star, and frankly, I'd question her even as a leading actress yet given she's typically only either been in ensemble casts or clear supporting).

It's a whole new world, and yeah, I think the movie star is dead.

[outlying-hyppocrate]

i can't often get myself to be properly excited about eating but i just had cold soba noodles and they were okay. {:

[wildstar25]

What physical part(s) of Arsay does her partners find the most attractive! Is it the same for all partners or does it differ between them?

(also optional bonus ask of what part(s) of/about Arsay generally do they love the most, physical or not!)

Meanwhile, if you were to ask the same of Arsay:

[inniave]

sometimes i think about how much i got in trouble as a kid for showing signs of sexual abuse and how many adults punished me and passed me back to my abusers rather than try to help me at all and i just get so fucking angry

[wayfinderships]

Goodnight Gamers👍 Someone remind me to make Peppermint an official f/o tomorrow lest I get too busy and forget-

[being-of-rain]

Jac Rayner finally putting some form of official Sixth Doctor timeline in Six's 40th anniversary story BUT making it deliberately convoluted and nonsensical for a joke is simultaneously the funniest and most infuriating thing.

[myawesomemovielist]

my awesome movie list of 2011:

melancholia (dir. lars von trier)

the tree of life (dir. terrance malick)

take shelter (dir. jeff nichols)

another earth (dir. mike cahill)

drive (dir. nicolas winding refn)

shame (dir. steve mcqueen)

the ides of march (dir. george clooney)

the iron lady (dir. phyllida lloyd)

one day (dir. lone scherfig)

extremely loud & incredibly close (dir. stephen daldry)

warrior (dir. gavin o'connor)

the girl with the dragon tattoo (dir. david fincher)

tinker tailor soldier spy (dir.  tomas alfredson )

moneyball (dir.  bennett miller)

the help (dir. tate taylor)

bridesmaids (dir. paul feig)