#or not particularly funny because of the out of contextness like they were just already funny

[driftwooddestiel]

do you guys wanna see my totally awesome studio c and jk studios out of context video (if tumblr lets me post it)

[steddiealltheway]

!!!!! Tw: faked suicide not by Steve or Eddie. There are ⚠️⚠️⚠️ before and after the most graphic parts which can be skipped without needing too much context. I tried to be vague but it can still be triggering. !!!!! (Thank you everyone tagging it as such)

A sort of different type of TikTok Modern AU…

Eddie Munson is a famous rockstar and honestly doesn’t post much on TikTok, but he occasionally finds himself scrolling though the app which is how he finds Steve.

He’s gorgeous. Exactly Eddie’s type with luscious, gravity defying hair, a sharp jaw, pretty lips, and he bets if he had a closer look, Steve would have the most charming eyes. It’s a shame the camera is so far away from him, and Eddie almost wonders why until Billy Hargrove is in the shot.

Eddie’s stomach sours at the sight of the man. Yes, he’s attractive, even Eddie could admit that, but there was something about him that made Eddie feel uncomfortable. Plus, there were a few scandals surrounding the tiktoker regarding previous racist Tweets and comments which he has responded to with a thrust trap to “Nobody’s Perfect” by Miley Cyrus / Hannah Montana.

So yeah. Eddie didn’t particularly like him and the stuff he got away with just because he’s hot.

He tunes back into the video which has him holding his finger to his lips, and Eddie is already rolling his eyes. The caption says, “Pranking my boyfriend, Steve 🤣😱” and Eddie can already tell it has to be fake with all the dramatics that Steve just happens to not see.

But then Billy carefully sneaks behind the couch where Steve is sitting and dumps a bucket full of water and ice onto him which has the man yelling and standing up in shock. He stands still for a minute and then yells, “Why the fuck would you do that, Billy??”

The tone and overall reaction has Eddie actually wonder if the video is fake or if Steve is just a really good actor. But he watches it again and notices that the man doesn’t look toward the camera once and something about that makes him feel really uneasy.

Eddie has to reason with himself, if the man is dating Billy Hargrove then he must not be a great person, and maybe he deserved the bucket of ice water. But Eddie still closes out of the app and tries his best not to think about it.

-:-:-:-:-:-

He opens the app a few days later, having forgotten about the whole incident until he comes across another video by Billy and the word “prank” in his caption catches Eddie’s eye. He sighs wondering why it’s on his for you page, but right before he swipes past it, he catches the gist of the prank.

Billy fills a syringe with mayonnaise and injects it into a donut, and then it cuts to him giving it to Steve from a camera that once again seems to be hidden although Billy keeps glancing at it with a smirk on his face and evil in his eyes. Steve, on the other hand, doesn’t glance toward the camera, but his face lights up with glee when he’s handed the donut. “You got this for me?” He asks in an awe filled tone as if the donut means the world to him.

“Yeah, why don’t you take a big ol’ bite of it for me?” Billy asks, voice low. Eddie watches as Steve shifts uncomfortably and puts the donut down.

“This isn’t another prank, is it? You know I don’t like them,” Steve says which honestly surprises Eddie. His tone is entirely genuine, and he feels like he’s peering in on a private moment.

“Of course not baby. Told you I’d stop,” Billy replies with a big smile.

Eddie can’t help but click on the caption: “Simple prank makes boyfriend storm out!” With a shit ton of hashtags that Eddie doesn’t bother reading.

Sure enough, Steve bites into the donut and immediately spits it out. He doesn’t say a word, just shakes his head and storms out of room.

Billy laughs loudly, “Oh, don’t be like that, babe! You know that was funny as shit!”

Eddie opens the comments, and is surprised to find people actually defending the prank. There are some people who comment shit like, “date me instead! I would never get mad at your pranks 🥵”

There’s only one comment that says, “Don’t really find this funny.” But it’s swarmed with hate comments from Billy’s fans that has Eddie scoffing as he scrolls onto the next video. He watches for a few seconds before scrolling back up when he realizes something. He looks at the date of the TikTok and realizes it was posted the previous month which means…

Eddie sighs realizing that him looking through Billy’s videos will only give him more attention and views, but he needs to know how long this has been going on for. And he really needs to find out if Steve is in on any of it or at least had gotten Billy back.

He begrudgingly clicks on Billy’s profile and scrolls through. He finds several videos with the thumbnail being of Steve mid reaction to a prank, and Eddie notices that every time, the camera is far away, and there doesn’t seem to be a single video of him up close.

The whole thing doesn’t feel right to Eddie. But what can he do about it? It’s not like he can report the videos. He could simply just block Billy and try to forget it all.

He scrolls back to the top and accidentally refreshes the page. He’s about to block him when he notices a new video pop up, where Steve looks like he’s in the middle of a panic attack. Eddie immediately presses on it.

⚠️⚠️⚠️

Billy smiles at the camera, no shirt in sight as he laughs, “This is my biggest prank yet. Steve should be home in less than a minute. And look,” he holds up his phone and shows a bathtub filled with red water that almost looks like blood.

Eddie’s shaky hand covers his mouth. He wouldn’t.

Billy laughs and continues, “I sent him a text that says ‘I’m sorry’ and a picture of an empty pill bottle, and he’s been texting me non stop for the past few minutes. Shit, he’s on his way now so it’s time for me to hide my phone and make this look as real as possible.”

Eddie watches as Billy puts his phone on a shelf and seemingly stacks towels up to cover his phone and hold it in place. He looks away when Billy takes out a bottle of fake blood and stages a suicide. He practically shakes with anger. Steve has to be in on this. He has to just be a good actor.

Eddie’s stomach drops when he hears Steve yelling Billy’s name rushing through the house. He bursts through the door and falls against the wall in shock. “Tell me this is a damn prank Billy. Billy…” he gets closer and shakes him. “Billy!” He yells shaking. “Shit. Shit. No no no. Fuck. What the fuck…”

Steve sits next to the tub and puts his head in his hands having a panic attack. Billy’s eyes open and he winks at the camera before grabbing Steve’s shoulders and yelling, “Boo.” He starts cackling loudly as Steve confusedly looks around trying to catch his breath. “I got you so good!” Billy yells through laughter.

Steve shakily gets up, tears streaming down his face and runs. Billy gets out of the tub and makes his way to his phone. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it up to him later,” he says with a wink before the video ends.

⚠️⚠️⚠️

Eddie sits as the video reloops. He’s shaking with anger. He doesn’t think as he duets the video and mutes the other audio. “This is the most fucked up thing I’ve ever seen. These ‘couple pranks’ are stupid enough and not funny, but to fake a suicide and call it a joke… you have to be an extra type of fucked up asshole. There aren’t enough words to describe how evil of a human being you have to be to do something like this to someone you love. I don’t care if this is staged or not. This is not okay. And fuck you.” Eddie quickly censors Billy’s half of the video with a note of “watch at your own risk.” He doesn’t care if his manager is pissed or if his account is filled with Billy’s fans hating on him or whatever. He presses the post button and turns off his phone. He needs fresh air.

He grabs his keys, a hat, and sunglasses, and makes his way out of his apartment. Hopefully the damn paparazzi back the fuck off today. He makes it down his street and walks quickly, fuming with anger. He weaves in and out of people and curses the busy LA streets.

He turns the corner and rams right into someone walking at an equally fast rate. He holds onto the stranger to steady himself and keep them up. “Sorry,” the man chokes out and Eddie is about to brush it off when he realizes he recognizes him.

“Steve?” He asks. He knew Billy lived in Los Angeles but he didn’t know he lived so close. The thought makes him kind of sick to his stomach. He thinks he might punch him if he ever saw him in person.

Steve wipes at his face and narrows his eyes at Eddie. “Sorry, do I know you?”

Eddie glances around before lifting up his sunglasses and hat, waiting for Steve to recognize him enough to gain his trust. Instead, Steve just stares at him blankly.

Eddie’s heart races. This has never really happened to him. He puts on the hat and sunglasses sheepishly. “Uh, I’m Eddie. I know you from Billy’s TikToks.”

Steve just tilts his head in confusion. His eyes are red and puffy. He wonders if Billy posted the video so soon after his prank and if Steve is currently in the aftermath of it. “Um,” Steve says and clears his throat, “Was I in the background or something? He told me I wasn’t in his TikToks.”

Eddie’s heart drops. He opens his phone and goes to Billy’s TikTok, ignoring the way his own TikTok is blowing up. He turns his phone to Steve and picks a less traumatizing prank to show him.

Steve grabs his phone and his eyes widen. A look of confusion crosses over his face that slowly turns into realization and numbness. “He’s been using me for views after promising he wouldn’t, isn’t he? I even asked if the pranks were somehow stupid content but he said they weren’t. He…” he trails off and shakes his head. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be unloading all of this onto you.”

Eddie shakes his head. “No, no. It’s okay. I’m sorry that I told you.”

He watches as Steve numbly nods and scrolls presumedly through Billy’s profile. He looks down at the screen and back at Eddie. “Is this you?” Steve asks hesitantly as he turns the phone back to him.

Eddie confusedly looks at his phone and sees that Billy has apparently replied to his TikTok already. Then, to his left, he hears a bit of commotion and sees some cameras flashing. Fuck. “Do you trust me?” Eddie asks.

Steve looks at his phone and back at Eddie.

Yeah, that’s a lot to ask of him. “Okay, how about this? You keep my phone, and we run back to my apartment around the corner and talk in private before we both end up in shitty magazines?”

Steve tilts his head and glances toward where a few people with cameras make their way to them yelling, “Eddie! Eddie Munson!”

“You’re not a famous serial killer or something, right?”

“Musician,” Eddie says and holds out his hand. “One who hates Billy Hargrove.”

Steve looks down at his hand and takes it running alongside Eddie who tries not to think about the stories that might come out of this. Gosh, he thought his biggest scandal would be when he came out as gay.

He makes his way back to his apartment telling his doorman, “Paparazzi! He’s with me!”

Hopper just nods in response and opens the door quickly. Eddie sighs in relief when he makes it through and to the elevator. Steve looks at him and asks, “How offended are you that I don’t know you?”

Eddie laughs. “Mildly, but it’s a relief really.” He realizes that isn’t the biggest concern in the moment and changes the subject. “Are you okay?”

Steve sighs and runs a hand through his hair. He opens his mouth but the elevator dings, and Steve almost looks relieved. Eddie doesn’t press it as he leads him to his apartment. “Make yourself at home. Do you want water, coffee, tea, soda, or anything?”

Steve numbly shakes his head, so Eddie grabs two bottles of water and two cokes from his fridge. He puts them down on his coffee table and sits on the couch, watching as Steve kind of hovers in his living room with his arms crossed. “I won’t bite, and I certainly won’t pressure you to do anything. But you can sit on the couch if you like.”

Steve eyes him and asks timidly, “You’re not in on anything with Billy, right?”

It breaks his heart seeing and hearing how on edge these pranks have made Steve. “Fuck no. I promise on my guitar I have never had anything to do with Billy and I never will. Well… unless you count me calling him out on his shit on TikTok.”

The words seem to get through to Steve who sits down on the couch next to Eddie while keeping his distance. “So… that’s why you were on his TikTok.”

Eddie’s heart hammers. He nearly forgot that Billy had apparently dueted his own video. “Yeah, but it has to be really new because I only posted mine literally a minute before I ran into you.”

Steve looks down at Eddie’s phone still in his hands. “Why?”

“Why what?” Eddie asks genuinely confused.

“Why did you call him out?” Steve asks, not sounding angry just… curious.

Eddie shifts and play with a string on one of the rips of his jeans. “His most recent video with the faked suicide. That wasn’t fucking cool, man. None of the pranks he’s done have been okay. And I’m sorry that you were put through them - especially this last one.”

Steve’s face turns almost white. “He posted that? Was I… was I in it? Like… my entire breakdown was…” he trials off as Eddie slowly nods. “Fuck,” Steve says burying his face in his hands. Eddie is about to apologize or go on a rant about how much he hates Billy Hargrove when Steve asks, “Can I see the video you made?”

Eddie’s cheek flush red, but he replies, “Yeah, uh, I don’t exactly remember what I said because I kind of went into a fit of rage and posted whatever came to mind. But yeah, my password is 051599.”

Steve types the password into his phone, and stares at the screen blankly. He looks at Eddie and asks, “I’m not on social media… ever so… could you show me?”

Eddie nods and slides over until he’s a few inches away from the beautiful man, and he does his best to try not to think too hard about how attractive he finds him as he goes to his profile and presses on his recent video. His nose scrunches up at the sound of his own voice, but he doesn’t disagree with anything he said. Billy Hargrove is a dick.

“Can I see the comments?” Steve asks. Eddie nods and clicks on them.

“Woah,” Eddie can’t help but say as he sees blue checkmark after blue checkmark. The top comments are from @ ronancetheromance with the couple saying: “Only an absolutely vile person is capable of such a fucked up prank. #SaveSteve”. Another from @ willthewise: “remember to comment on here instead of the original video so it can get less attention!! #savesteve”. Several of the rest of the streamers who call themselves “The Party” reply to Will’s with the hashtag “SaveSteve”.

“Who are these people?” Steve asks as he scrolls through the comments. He comes across one from @ billyfan4everandalways saying: “Watch Billy’s new video and stop being so quick to judge!!”

Eddie clicks on the replies, and the top liked one - having more likes than the original comment - is from @ ericasinclair: “that ugly mullet man’s explanation is bullshit and everyone knows it. let Steve talk for himself or I’m not buying it. #SaveSteve #CancelBilly”

Eddie nearly follows the girl, but realizes that Steve had asked a question. “Most of them I don’t know personally honestly.”

“Then why are they defending me? I’m nobody,” Steve says as if it’s a common fact.

Eddie turns off his phone and puts it down, properly facing Steve. “I know I don’t know you well, but you are not nobody. And these people are defending you not only because Billy is a dick, but this prank stuff is abusive and shouldn’t be normalized especially with the following he has. Nobody should go through that.”

Steve turns slightly red and looks away before asking, “Can we watch his reply?”

Eddie shudders a bit at the thought, but turns on his phone and goes to his page. “Are you sure? I haven’t seen it yet either, and I’m a little prone to getting pissed at him.”

“I’m sure,” Steve says and even reaches over to open the video.

Billy still has fake blood on him and is scrubbing it off with an angry look on his face. He looks at the camera every so often, and it’s clear that he’s staring at himself in a mirror. What a fucking asshole. “These pranks are harmless, and even my boyfriend would agree with that. He enjoys them and he makes sure to show me how much once the cameras stop rolling and his shock has died off,” Billy says so with a smirk on his face that sends chills down Eddie’s body. “So, stop making assumptions about me and my boyfriend and keep making shitty music instead asshole.” The video ends with him flipping off the camera.

“Charming,” Eddie comments, pausing the video so it doesn’t endlessly loop, and turns to see Steve’s reaction. He runs a hand through his hair and shakes his head.

“He’s lying. I’ve been begging him to stop for weeks. Even slept on the couch in protest. But that last one was the last straw. I just… don’t know where to go,” Steve sits back against the couch and mumbles, “Fuck.”

Eddie shifts and looks at him. “Do you have any friends or family that could take you in?”

Steve laughs humorlessly. “My parent disowned me when they found out I was dating Billy. Didn’t want a bi son ruining the family image. I had to move in with Billy, and he used to be sweet really. Well… I thought he was for the first three months. When his TikTok career took off he moved to LA, and I felt like I had no choice but to go with him. I grew apart from the few friends I had before the move, and I was just stuck with Billy here. And I… I don’t know,” Steve sighs and puts his head in his hands. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to dump all of this on you. I just… haven’t really had anyone to talk to.” The man lifts his head, his eyes are tired and filled with unshed tears. He’s gorgeous really, but that’s the last thing Eddie needs to be thinking about.

Eddie takes a moment to consider things. Steve seems like a good guy. He has plenty of extra room in his too big apartment and money to spare that he doesn’t know what to do with. Honestly, he’s not meant for this lifestyle and never has been. He’s happy that his uncle Wayne is retired and living comfortably off his too big income, but it’s lonelier than he imagined it to be.

And with that thought Eddie tells Steve, “Then live here for a while. No pranks. I won’t use you for clout or whatever. I have a guest bedroom with its own private bathroom, and I usually never have visitors. And I hate parties, so you don’t have to worry about that either. I may be writing songs in the middle of the night, but my music room is fairly soundproof. And trust me, I would appreciate the company or feeling like my money is going toward something important.”

Steve stands up and shakes his head. “It’s okay, man. I don’t want your charity. You’ve already done enough.”

Eddie stays on the couch and says, “Please, Steve, stay a week or just a few days. If you hate it here, I’ll help you get on your way. But trust me when I say you’ll help me too. It’s…” he sighs and runs a hand over his face, “It’s lonely in LA.” He cringes as he quotes the title of his favorite song that he’s written. It’s also his least popular one, but it’s the most honest thing on any of his albums.

“Reminds me of that song,” Steve says with a small smile.

Eddie’s head snaps up. “You know it?”

Steve hums the chorus of Eddie’s song and Eddie joins in. Steve stops to ask, “You know it, too?”

Eddie huffs a laugh. “I wrote it.”

Steve looks at him for a few moments longer with a combination of shock and hesitation. Then he surprises Eddie by asking, “You really wouldn’t mind if I stayed?”

“Not at all. Unless you ended up doing something really drastic like trying to murder me.”

Steve snorts, and Eddie finds it endearing. He tries to shake the feeling away. He can not fall for this man when he’s a guest in his house and especially not after everything he’s been through. But then Steve gives him a real smile and holds out his hand saying, “It’s a deal.”

And when Eddie takes his hand and feels how warm and nice it feels in his, half of him wants to argue that it’s just because it’s been a while since he’s actually had a genuine conversation with another person. But the other half is quick to accept that he’s absolutely fucked when it comes to this stranger that he feels like he’s inevitably going to fall in love with.

[alexxncl]

‼️NIGHTBRINGER HDD CH. 3 SPOILERS‼️

masterlist | events | ch. 2 | ch. 4.1 | ch. 4.2

mc stop being the most important person ever: challenge impossible

damn is this how the boys acted before they got to the devildom the first time ??? i see why they love mc so much, especially lucifer. family is the most important thing to him, it's why he acts the way he does and it's why the celestial war happened in the first place. being clouded with this much tension as a family had to have been extremely emotionally strenuous for him, aside from the frustration that comes from rowdy younger siblings

and it was obviously just as bad for his little brothers. they couldnt understand why lucifer was pulling away from them so much. and caused trouble to get any kind of attention from him, to keep him from holing himself up in his room and drowning himself in paperwork

it probably especially hurt mammon to see lucifer like this. his big brother who wants afraid of anything suddenly afraid of addressing his own feelings and fears of his family falling apart

i would like to let it be known that i was not AT ALL being serious when i picked the "can't we talk it out" option...why are we talking to a clump of glass petals ??

why am i even questioning anything that happens in this game anymore ????

BYE THIS IS SO UNSERIOUS i love it here. not obey me pulling a spiderman no way home and acting like i wouldn't catch on

and mc asking "can't we just gang up on the bitch" has to be the FUNNIEST thing ever i love them 🫶🏽 just like me fr

mammon would literally never say that. not those words at least. he respects and looks up to lucifer way too much to that. and satan wouldn't say that. the old satan would say what mammon said if we're being honest...and the new him would find a more respectful and less snippy way to say it while still getting his point across

every almost negative vision is really just lucifer's nightmare. not having the love or care or mutual respect that families are built upon is like nit having a family at all. we already know how luci feels about family. like i get that it's supposed to be funny but when you think about it in context with the game's events, this is actually really sad ???

this is also SEVERELY ooc. like i'm not crazy right ??? mammon does not use his powers like that for something as petty as a lackluster insult, and satan would come up with a much better insult than that

all jokes aside, i couldn't ever see the boys acting like this. ever. under any circumstance. even early on in the 1st game, it wasn't this bad. they butted heads and were emotionally constipated, but they still acted like brothers

i feel like the flower is showing them the worst versions of themselves, not just the way things would be without mc. bc things were relatively ok without them before. they werent the best, but they survived and didn't kill each other for millenia before mc came into the picture

fighting back the urge to go on yet another big brother mammon tangent...fighting hard

...no way they used the power of friendship to fix the situation AGAIN

now i didn't trust or particularly care for raphael in the og game, but that's mainly bc of the way he was talked about by the characters well before his appearance and the fact that he seemed standoffish. i like this raphael, and i want more

but depending on where we are in the timeline and which timeline we're in, this could be michael

oh they big mad

satan being angry is a no brainer

but beel? he's the textbook definition of a gentle giant. a himbo if you will. he goes out of his way to be gentle with everyone and everything that comes his way because he knows his strength and how easy it is for him to overuse it on accident

baby don't play when it comes to his family. just like his big brothers

[intothedysphoria]

It took a while but Steve eventually got Lola to put on her socks and go into daycare.

To say that Lola was a precocious child would be putting it mildly. Lola Harrington was one of the oddest four year olds Steve had come across and he could admit that as her father.

Her current mission was a “pre-school boycott”. Steve still wasn’t sure where exactly she’d learned that word. It was nothing bribery couldn’t solve though, and with the promise of yogurt, Lola was finally through the maroon doors and Steve could go to work.

By the time he came to pick her up, she’d already figured out a new demand and the new one was much harder to avoid.

There had been a revelation in the world of boisterous toddlers. A revolution even. A new favourite adult had emerged during a class trip to the movies and now Lola was insisting on rewatching Inside Out 2 to speak to the funny man selling the tickets.

Steve thought it was going to be a problem in that the man would be sickeningly sweet and refuse to address Steve by name. Instead, Steve was greeted with the kind of guy who’d reject him a nightclub back when he still went clubbing.

His voice was the kind of voice Steve would dream about as a teenager and he was definitely wearing mascara. Steve may have had the more lucrative career but this guy had definitely won the genetic lottery.

He was also charismatic in the kind of way that Steve could see deals being sold left and eight if put in front of the right person. Steve may have been a cynic but he could definitely see himself being swept away by that silver tongue.

The name tag said Billy and Steve already knew that name was going to haunt him for at least the next 6 months.

Billy certainly didn’t disappoint. He had a way of sticking in Steve’s life, especially after Steve found out that he also had a job at the local coffee shop he frequented.

It felt like madness, being so consumed by a person who he’d only spoken to twice. Four times if you counted polite small talk in professional settings. He did seem to have a soft spot for Lola’s forthright nature but nothing particularly special towards Steve.

Not that he seemed to have anything particularly against him but he didn’t really have anything for Steve either.

The first time they spoke without Lola, Steve had left her with Robin so he could watch Deadpool and Wolverine. No date, just Steve.

Billy had dyed his hair green and was wearing very thick eyeliner. More in the realms of emo than traditional beauty. He was also swearing under his breath as he tried to get the coffee machine to work.

Steve, being Steve, offered to help and Billy actually accepted.

He was apparently a bit of a technological Luddite and anything made past 1997 seemed to hate him. Steve could relate and they made a few minutes of mindless conversation about hopeless technology fails.

There was a point where Billy’s hand brushed across his, just a little and Steve felt his stomach start dancing with butterflies.

It was probably nothing. Billy was talking to him more now but it was probably nothing.

Lola continued to obsess over Billy to the point where Steve had to explain that Billy was just someone they knew in the context of him being at work and they didn’t have infinite money to spend on movie theatre tickets.

Billy decided to disprove Steve’s point by both giving them discounted tickets and his number. Landline because he didn’t have a mobile.

Steve listened to a lot of Chappell Roan that weekend. She just suited his vibe.

Considering her track record for acidity, Carol was uncharacteristically engaged while listening to Steve’s plight. That may have been due to her planning to hook up with Chrissy Cunningham but Steve took what he could.

She also told him under no circumstances was he to fall back into “high school Steve” because in her own words “he was a colossal bitch and you aren’t that babe.”

Those words were echoing in his head still when his car came to a standstill on a quiet road, hours away from home. There wasn’t a gas station or mechanics anywhere near and there was no way for Steve to contact Lola’s babysitter because his phone was out of battery.

He was at the point of sobbing of frustration when a literal bright light saved him.

Billy in his fast car, stopped by Steve’s Beemer and asked if he was ok. Well, Steve had certainly been better.

Instead of just taking Steve’s word and driving off, Billy sent a ‘wait there’ hand gesture and started fiddling before making a satisfied grunt and watching the engine come to life again.

Billy was explaining with a lot of mechanical jargon what exactly was wrong with his car but the stress had made Steve lose his head. Because he kissed him.

Billy kissed back even more intensely so Steve guessed he wasn’t exactly opposed to Steve’s little crush.

And judging by her face when she found out, Steve was almost completely sure Lola had been planning getting them together since the beginning. She really was such a crafty four year old.

For @dragonflylady77 happy birthday Guin ily ❤️❤️❤️ ( I think I’ve timed this correctly for UK to NZ time)

[alexanderwales]

Art and the Artist

I generally prefer to read things without knowing much about the author. There aren't that many cases where it adds much to the work to know that they were a plumber before they got into writing, or that they immigrated from Jamaica, or that they served in World War II. To my thinking, a piece of media should stand on its own and not need the context of the author's life story. If you have to open up with "this story is about the Holocaust" then in my opinion, you've already failed as an author.

With that said, it's often inevitable. Sometimes it's just the nature of the work itself, and it would bleed into your understanding even if there weren't a little "about the author" blurb at the end. Sometimes a story is painful obvious in how personal it is, or the metaphor to the real world is so poignant that it's impossible not to make the connection. And sometimes you just get a sense of a person from their writing, particularly if you've read a lot of their writing. It can be the authorial voice you come to understand, the things they choose to show you, the way their mind works, and you think to yourself "yeah, I could get along with them".

And other times, you find yourself drawn to the author because they're the person who best knows their own work. A book leaves lingering questions, and it might be better for you to understand it by communing with other people, but the author is often right there, and you want to hear their takes on their own work, what they were thinking, what lies behind the scenes, the cut chapters and the ways the ending might have been different. You finish gobbling up what the author has prepared for you, and then you gobble up the scraps in the kitchen, and when that's not enough, you start gobbling up the author: you read interviews, you read their blog, you start as a fan of their work and become a fan of them.

Sometimes their understanding of their own work does not match your understanding, and that can be a little bit heartbreaking. Sometimes the stuff behind the curtain is awful and bad, worsening your enjoyment of the text because now it seems phony and poorly thought out. Sometimes an author turns out to be a piece of shit.

Usually, I can move past it. If I like a book or a movie, then I like it for the feelings that it produces in me, and the person who created it is irrelevant except maybe for the fact that they're getting $5 from me or whatever, which is not the level of microutilions that I generally worry about.

Sometimes it impacts my understanding of the work itself, casting a shadow over the things that I once felt, tainting the art.

I was a big fan of Louis CK. The self-deprecating humor did it for me, the introspection and irreverence, the way he was saying things that felt real and true, things that I had always noticed but never really considered. And of course I found him funny. But then there were allegations, and his mea culpa, and I stopped finding it funny. Partly that's because his comedy was autobiographical, so the taint was worse than it might have otherwise been, but part of it was the comedy itself: if the comedy rests on me recognizing myself in Louis CK's stories about himself, I'm going to be less able to do that if drawing those comparisons gives me a curdled milk feeling.

I was a fan of Buffy and Dollhouse and Firefly and Cabin in the Woods and Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog, and I think that these don't suffer nearly as much from being from the mind of Joss Whedon. It's easier to dissociate the stories from the man, and harder to read his personal shittery into the character arcs and setting details and elemental units of plot. Some of that is just the medium: comedy specials are the product of a singular vision, while television shows and movies are the result of team of people working together. Even then, I think shitty people can make good art, so long as they're good at separating their shiftiness from their art. Most people with a bit of awareness would do this naturally, I think: they know what's unpalatable, and present an image to the world, which also comes from the art they make.

Information about the artist informs a reading of the art, as much as we might try to have it not do that. I think some art survives revelations better than others. Someone who writes about murders being revealed as a murderer certainly seems like it would poison my enjoyment of their books. But it's the nature of art that's it's all pretend, and sometimes people don't create because they're spewing self-confession onto the page. Then, I think, you're usually safe.

I hadn't written this with Neil Gaiman in mind: it was sitting in my drafts folder, as so many posts are. But I think Gaiman's work will, for me, survive the accusations, even if the man himself is exiled. I'm certain there will be passages and plots that read differently, places where he can be seen defending himself, chapters that are now unseemly. But I think that for me, the stink of his crimes will wash off quickly, and I'm hopeful that unlike other cases, separating the art from the artist is easier for me.

[ecogirl2759]

~~~NEW UPDATE~~~

(I'M A DUMBASS WHO DOESN'T KNOW HOW TUMBLR WORKS SO IF YOU SAW THIS ALREADY NO YOU DIDN'T)

I'm glad people liked my 4コマ KINGS post so much lol. I love spreading the word about obscure lore :)

Under the cut I've responded to some of my favorite tags, given a little more backstory into the source of these pictures, as well as posted a few new ones :D

There's also a question at the very bottom that I'd love to hear opinions on, but no pressure if y'all don't feel comfortable answering ^w^

You're welcome >:D

Same, bro. I was basically thinking that the entire time I was reading these books lol

I feel like I should give a little context to these comics and where they come from lol. I wasn't very clear about the backstory in my original post. I do agree, when I found these, I thought they were super important, too, particularly because I don't think a lot of the fandom knows about these books lol.

The Danganronpa 4コマ KINGS anthology series was published in the early 2010's featuring a bunch of different artists. The series is 4 volumes long and published by Spike Chunsoft, meaning, while these aren't necessarily canon, they ARE official :)

There is another series of anthologies in relation to both the first and second games, but I don't have those.

The first two volumes of this series is relatively well documented. There are sites where English translations have already been added to all of the comics in them (I'm pretty sure), as well as some screenshots popping up on places like Pinterest.

The third and fourth installments, however, are really poorly archived. The third has some content from it floating around, but it's hard to come by. The fourth had almost no information on it no matter where I searched.

I say this because a while ago I found the ONLY pictures of the Mastermind!Taka comic on this really old Tumblr blog from 2014 and REALLY wanted to figure out what it was about. (Didn't help that I couldn't read some of the bubbles in those photos.) First I searched for an English translation (there wasn't (so I'm working on one hehe)), then I tried to find which book it was even from, and NOTHING!

These books, since they were in circulation around 2014-ish, have stopped being printed, so copies of them are very hard to come by. Luckily, I was able to get my copies from a kind stranger on Ebay :)

-NOW-

Here are a few more pictures that I thought were funny/interesting that I couldn't add in my first post because of the picture limit lol.

Sorry for the really long post, I just thought it'd be interesting to share :)

Here's the page of artists that contributed to this anthology! Please go check them out (or see if they have any socials since it's been so long). Some credits change per volume, hence how many photos there are. (And sorry for my hand, it's hard to hold these open lol.)

You've probably all seen the covers, but have you seen what's behind the covers? (Also including the opening illustrations. These have probably been posted online already as well, but they're worth including imo.) (Again, please excuse the fingers, I'm trying my best ;-;)

^ Sayaka came with a smudge :( she still pretty tho

So, uh, remember when I said Hifumi made ship fodder? ......Here it is. Eat your heart out lol

Also remember when I said that Mondo's hair was fluffy and bouncy? Here's the proof:

Sakura has been de-buff-ified twice LMAO

ALSO remember when I said Syo was a fan of BL? ...... :)

ALSO remember when I said Kyoko was kinda socially awkward?

(Context: Kyoko sees Kiyotaka and Mondo calling each other bro and, thinking it'll strengthen their bond as well, calls Makoto "Makoto-oniichan," or "big brother Makoto" lol. Also, second picture says "I have come to save you, Makoto")

Chihiro Shinji chair meme

I'm at my picture cap, but there's a lot I haven't brought up lol

-SO-

For a different thread, would people like me to find pictures of certain characters? (i.e. just photos of the characters looking cool/hot/stupid without a lot of the text.) Because I am totally willing to do that :)

I've already got a lot on Byakuya, Sakura, Aoi and Mondo for all you simps out there, and it's not hard to find even more lol.

So lmk :D

[1moreoffkeyanthem]

Greetings and salutations and welcome to the FIRST EPISODE of what I’m calling

Bedtime Stories With PCE

Let me explain.

So I, like many other people, make up little stories in my head in my downtime, particularly when trying to fall asleep, and for the past year or so those stories have been South Park related, and wound up driving me to make an ao3 and actually write those stories down and curse the cyberspace with them, but the thing is, not all of my mental stories make it to even my notes, because I didn’t have the intention of writing them down. Either because they’re way too self indulgent and most people would be bored with lack of plot, or they’re just a continuation of an old Whumpshot that I think abt before bed, and I feel like if I were to put these bedtime stories out there it would be SUPER annoying, ESPECIALLY because

A lot of my little bedtime mental stories are OrangeJuiceVerse. Which is off putting enough as is, because I feel like while the series is all essentially stand alone stories that take place in the same universe, people look at a series with over 19 works and get overwhelmed because to be fair, that’s a lot even if most are oneshots. So I wanted to start a tumblr exclusive series, for the handful of people who would welcome the stuff I don’t feel confident enough to put on ao3, my little continuations to things that didn’t warrant a chapter 2 structurally, that kind of thing.

So, here’s the first episode! the most self indulgent couple thousand words of Stan taking care of an injured Kyle that I have ever done, following the events of Bicycle Lane , if ya read it lmk what you think, y’all know the drill, here

•covered•

Kyle woke up again without Stan beside him, and to to the noise of his phone ringing on the nightstand. Against his better judgement, he answered, already disgruntled at seeing the caller ID.

“Can I help you?” He grumbled.

Cartman’s grin was audible. “So you’re alive.”

Yep, this asshole would never learn to start a call like a normal person. “Why would you think I wasn’t alive, fatass?”

“Uh, because you look at least half dead in the picture your dildo sent?”

Kyle pulled the phone away from his face to open the ‘SP Survivors’ group, and groaned. Stan had sent a photo of Kyle, asleep with one arm draped over his eyes and the other holding Moose to his chest like a kid with a stuffed animal, and the caption was “Speak No Evil Take No Shit Broflovski won’t let a car take him out 🤘🏻”, which was definitely Stan’s attempt at calming himself by joking about the events of the day. Just without nearly enough context, naturally.

“I can’t believe he sent you guys that,” Kyle groaned.

“So you actually did get hit by a car?” Cartman’s tone took on that thinly veiled concern of his. “You hurt, bitch?”

Kyle rolled his eyes and glanced at the open bedroom door, pretty annoyed that he was starting to feel the ache in his body again now that he was fully awake, not to mention that he had woken up alone, but his boyfriend and cat were probably just downstairs. “I’m alright, jackass. Just banged up, but not bad.”

“Good, because if you died, the hippie would totally kill himself, and I plan weddings, not funerals.”

“That’s NOT fucking FUNNY, Cartman!!!”

He heard footsteps on the stairs after raising his voice. Thank God.

Cartman snickered. “Sorry, sorry, I think it is, though. Did you get a look at the license plate so you could sue the driver?”

“No, dude, it was fast as shit and they barely hit me anyway.”

“Traffic cams, idiot. You show the courts the picture of your battered little body, go to the er and milk it for all it’s worth, get a doctor to testify-“ of course Cartman was already scheming.

“I’m hanging up on you.”

“Not if I hang up on you first.” Then he added, “I’m glad you’re okay.” And dropped the call. Asshole always had to get the last word in.

Kyle laughed weakly and covered his eyes again, pulling his hand away only when he felt a tiny weight jump onto the bed. “Hi, little man.”

“Don’t know what world you’re in that’s got you calling me “little”, dude,” Stan joked, joining them.

Stan knew full well Kyle was talking to the cat. And he felt a thousand times better when Stan leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips. “Hi, baby, you okay? When did you wake up from your nap?”

“Mm. Hi. A few minutes ago when Cartman called.”

Moose butted his little head against Kyle’s hand, looking to get pets. Stan smiled apologetically. “Yeah, sorry, dude, I figured the guys would call me for details since you were, like, asleep in the picture.”

“You know how Cartman is.” Kyle waited for Stan to get settled and then shifted himself so that his head was on his partner’s shoulder. “Did you have a panic attack while I was out? That why you went around telling the group that I faced off against a car?”

“Not a panic attack,” Stan assured him. “I just-I went to get our shit out of the truck and I was gonna start fixing your bike, and then I got to thinking about it again, what could have happened, you on the side of the road like that, you know.”

So definitely close to a freak out then. “Poor Stan.” Kyle placed a hand over Stan’s chest, feeling his heartbeat. “I’m okay, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

“You’re gonna stay that way,” Stan declared, his voice sounding like he did when he got really into a cause, like last year when he recruited Kyle’s ever eager to protest something mother for an anti-seaworld campaign. “Because I’m gonna nurse you back to health and never let anything happen to you again.”

Dramatic, cheesey, adorable, overprotective loser. Kyle snorted. “Nurse me back to health? What, am I a maiden who caught some mysterious illness and now must languish on the sitting room couch while my suitors bring me flowers? Is this a Jane Austen novel? What’s next, we have a dramatic kiss in the rain?”

The attempt to lighten the mood worked. Stan laughed and tenderly pressed his lips to his cheek.

“Sarcastic little fuck,” Stan chuckled. “Moose, I’m only giving your father a pass to be an asshole because he’s in pain and he’s cute.”

Moose had fallen asleep between them.

“Staniel, I have literally had worse, and so have you.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m not gonna baby you.”

He’d let Stan baby him, just a little, but only because he’d nearly had a full breakdown seeing Kyle hurt in the snow. Kyle would still pretend to argue against the coddling. “You better not-“

He was cut off by Stan’s phone vibrating with a FaceTime request from Kenny. Stan held it up with a grin.

“At least Ken has some sense.” He answered, and Kenny’s voice flooded forth.

“Stan the man! Show me the firefox!”

Kyle rolled his eyes at the nickname before Stan held his arms out farther to get them both in frame. “Hey, Ken.”

Marj popped into the screen too. “Kyle Broflovski! You’re tellin’ me you got hit by a car?! You better explain, mister.”

“I didn’t get hit by a car, it was more like a tap,” he insisted. “Driver didn’t even notice, it was so fast.”

Kenny gave a low whistle. “Still, though. Shit’s wild. You hurt bad?”

Stan handed him the phone so he could run his fingers through Kyle’s hair. Kyle showed his friends the bruise across his arm from trying to break the fall, which had developed into a blotchy purple over the past few hours.

“Gnarly, right? But it’s just some bruises and a twisted ankle. I’ll live. You guys tell Stan he doesn’t need to baby me.”

Marj laughed incredulously; Kenny grinned and shook his head. “That’ll be a sunny day in hell.”

“Huh?” Stan paused playing with Kyle’s hair. “Dude, the saying is cold day in hell.”

“Yes, but a lot of hell is actually cold, other than the lakes of fire and shit,” Kenny explained with that mischievous smile of his, like this should be common knowledge. “There’s no sun down there, though.”

Kyle was thoroughly confused, but his leg hurt and he needed to use the bathroom, so he didn’t ask for clarification. Plus even if he didn’t want to end the call, he’d learned that Kenny’s explanations for some of the stuff he said only confused you more.

He sighed. “I’ll take your word for it, man. Thanks for checking on me, guys.”

“Hey, we gotta keep an eye on each other, even if we went our separate ways,” Kenny said. “Can I draw a comic of you fist fighting Lightning McQueen?”

“He already started it,” Marj added.

Naturally. “Yeah, yeah, go for it. Love you guys.” He passed the phone back to his boyfriend.

“We’ll keep everyone updated,” Stan promised, like this was a life or death situation and not something that would have him laid up for two days, tops. “Bye, guys.”

“Peace.”

“Bye! Hope ya feel better!”

Kyle rolled his eyes again when Stan hung up. “Dude, should I be expecting a call from my mom next?”

Stan chuckled. “Nah, I figured you’d obliterate me if I told her.”

“And you were correct.” Because that would result in not only a three hour call, but also Sheila driving up so she could smother him. Kyle sat up slowly, irritated to discover that his back was stiff now too. “Bathroom quest,” he mumbled, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He didn’t push away Stan’s arm around his waist either.

“Easy, easy.” Stan helped him up, warm and gentle as ever. “Can you put any weight on it?”

When he did, it didn’t feel great, admittedly. The bruises on the outside of his calf from the car grazing him ached with the weight at standing, his ankle was pretty sore, and his knee felt stiff. But it was for sure more annoying than, like, agonizing or something, so he gave Stan’s arm a comforting squeeze.

“It’s not that bad.” But he figured he’d let his partner take care of him if he wanted, because Stan had been really fucking scared this afternoon, and Kyle knew he needed this. “You can help me, dude, just don’t try to hold me up while I piss or something.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Stan said with a smile, helping him walk carefully across the hall. “You got it?”

“Yes, honey, I got it.” Kyle sighed when he shut the bathroom door. Ignoring the sting of the abrasions on his palms when he braced his hands on the counter, he studied his reflection.

If he was completely honest, reality was finally starting to set in. He hadn’t fully accepted until Cartman mentioning funerals that, well, he could have died. Kyle could keep it together for Stan’s sake, but it was starting to get to him too. If that car had been going any faster, if they’d been a few inches closer, if he hadn’t been wearing his helmet, if he’d been knocked into oncoming traffic rather than into the ditch…

Kyle quickly peed and limped back over to the sink to wash his hands. There was cat hair stuck to the bandaid on his right hand, which helped a little to see. He was okay now. He was at home with his sweet blue eyed boys, both of whom would be ridiculously affectionate, but right now, seeing the (well tended) scratch at his hairline in the mirror, the gravity of everything kept tugging at him.

Can’t panic right now, Kyle told himself. He was a damn middle school counselor, had been for a couple months, and he had grown up with what he now knew was generalized anxiety (thank you, psychology degree). He knew the signs of a ‘what if’ spiral and when it was more helpful to “play the movie” or focus on the present.

Chronologically organizing where he’d been versus where he was now was an exercise his therapist during outpatient in high school had taught him, to contextualize progress and the order of events, keep out of the spiral of hypotheticals. Okay.

He’d ridden to the library down the road when Stan went to the gym, because his boyfriend was trying to get back into a routine of self care since coming out of a depressive slump and working out reminded him that he was alive. Kyle’s library mission was to find more book recommendations for his students that were a little more recent than his personal favorites, and he’d started the ride home with a decent list of YA novels and a few authors to research for the next time a kid was sent to his office not feeling engaged. He had been particularly excited to revisit the Inheritance series and order some paperbacks for his desk library that students who just needed some quiet time could choose from when there was a *vrzroom!* and he was flying off his bike, immediately pissed.

Not scared, not upset. Pissed.

Which was the whole reason Kyle didn’t drive unless he really needed to; because he got awful road rage when other drivers were fucking stupid. So, yeah, his first reaction was to be mad upon landing in dirty snow and seeing that his bike was definitely not in good enough shape to ride home and neither was he. His second reaction was to call Stan, and then call him again when the first time went to voicemail, because Stan would always rescue him if he needed it.

Another thing that had him mad was that while only a few cars had passed during this time, someone should have stopped. It’s that whole “oh no, someone else’ll help” hive mind mentality. Kyle was that person who stopped if he saw someone in trouble. So was his boyfriend.

God, Stan had been so visibly close to a full breakdown there in the beginning. Kyle got it now.

With one more mental reminder to stay in the here and now, Kyle pulled open the door and let Stan pick him up.

“Baby, you look like you just saw a ghost,” Stan said gently. Yeah. He was safe. Stan had him.

“Mm okay.” He wasn’t sure if he was reassuring himself or Stan. Probably both. “I think I just need some water.”

“Here.” Stan set him back on the bed and grabbed the massive “Ass Pro Shops” tumbler (another Kenny custom job) from the nightstand. Ice cubes clinked inside, which made Kyle’s heart ache with fondness; Stan had refilled his water while he was sleeping.

Moose settled himself back on Kyle’s chest after Kyle set the cup down. Stan sat on the mattress, carefully pulling Kyle’s legs into his lap. He was wearing one Breaking Bad sock and the other had Godzilla on it, and Kyle felt the back of his eyes burn again, because he was just so fucking cute, with that worried expression and the stupid mismatched socks and the Fall Out Boy shirt that was tight in the shoulders but he’d been too awkward to tell the Hot Topic employee she’d grabbed the wrong size when he bought it. And Kyle actually did almost cry at his partner’s broken murmured, “I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, dude, hey. No, why are you sorry?”

“I- I missed your call, you could’ve-“

“Stan, I’m okay.” He was okay. “We’re not doing this again, sweetheart, I’ll be good as new soon; yeah I’m a little beat up, but gimme a few days and I’ll be back to normal.”

Once again, he was saying that just as much for his own sake. And he definitely wouldn’t tell Stan about Cartman’s comment regarding Stan killing himself if Kyle died. Absofuckinglutely not. But really, he WAS alright. Stan took a deep breath and smiled that dimpled smile down at him. That was a ‘fake it till you make it’ smile, for sure, but they’d make it.

“I’m gonna check on this, okay?” Stan said, the worry still present behind his eyes as he slipped his finger under the tucked in edge of the bandage halfway up Kyle’s shin. “Been a couple hours. You should probably take something too.”

Kyle nodded. If the color of the bruise on his arm was any indication, his leg was definitely gonna be gross. “Just don’t get freaked out if it looks crazy, dude. You know my pale ass skin shows bruises really hardcore.”

“I know, I just wanna make sure there’s not a hematoma going on or something.”

Between Kyle’s year of premed before switching to psych and Stan’s degree in veterinary science, they had a pretty solid understanding of injuries. Yeah, both of them would deny the extent of how bad off they were, but they had enough knowledge to know when the other was hurt bad enough to get some professional help.

They weren’t going to need professional help, Kyle determined, watching his partner unwrap his leg. It hurt a little more without the compression, but the mottled bruising on the side wasn’t raised, just dark.

Still, though, Stan looked upset, gently holding the slight puffiness at Kyle’s achilles and trailing a hand up the contusions to support his calf. “Dude, your poor leg,” Stan whined, “That looks really painful, Ky.”

“Looks worse than it feels,” Kyle reminded him. “I’m just white as shit and can’t even run into the kitchen counter without getting a bruise.”

Stan cracked an actual smile again, definitely remembering the time Kyle had whacked his hip on the counter and later that night hadn’t noticed until Stan interrupted Super Best Spicy Time to go “JESUS! DID I JUST DO THAT?!”. Always worried too much, that one. Not that Kyle wasn’t the same way, but still.

Stan carefully felt around his kneecap. “Is this aggravated too? You twist it at all?”

“It’s okay.”

“Alright, baby, just tell me if you need me to find your brace.”

Kyle nearly laughed, because even if Stan had trouble keeping track of most things sometimes, he knew exactly where all the medical supplies were. He wouldn’t have to “find” anything; the first aid kit was under the sink, knee brace in the top of the closet, diabetes supplies in the third drawer in the bathroom, melatonin, vitamins, cold meds, and ibuprofen in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Speaking of, the bottle of painkillers was currently on the nightstand; one of those instances of Stan thinking ahead. Kyle reached over and shook out a few while Stan gently started wrapping his ankle, swallowing the pills dry.

Stan looked up with disgust. “Dude! Are you a fucking snake?! Your water is literally right there, don’t do that in front of us!”

“Sssssss.” Kyle laughed when Stan didn’t find him hissing funny and Moose gave him the side eye. “Why do you get so grossed out when I do that?”

“Because it’s weird!” Stan stopped his ‘medic duties’ to throw his hands in the air in exasperation. “Most people can’t swallow like that. I can’t.”

In all actuality, Kyle mostly took meds dry to get a rise out of his boyfriend, who was godawful at taking any kind of medicine and complained about the taste of any liquid cough syrup but had to literally swallow pills in food, like he was a puppy.

“So we’re talking about “swallowing” now, are we?” Kyle was definitely a fan of anything he could use to segue them into a lighter mood, even a sex joke. Kenny would be proud.

Stan shook his head, but grinned, going back to his self appointed task. “Why is it that you always get flirtier when you’re hurt?”

“Because your goddamn knight in shining armor complex is hot,” Kyle answered, wincing a little at the bruises being touched but completely endeared at Stan cradling his lower leg with careful hands and lightly kissing the top of the bandage when he was finished wrapping him up.

“Thought you hated the white knight routine,” Stan teased.

Kyle pulled him down to kiss him. “I like it when it’s warranted,” he murmured against Stan’s mouth. “You’re cute.”

“You’re still gonna complain about it.”

“Mm, you know me so well.”

Then Moose *mrowed* in protest from between them at not getting attention too, and Kyle laughed. “We’ve annoyed the creature.”

Stan picked the little brown cat up and kissed his tiny face. “What, young nastyman? You bored? Wanna watch Animal Planet?”

More like Stan wanted to watch Animal Planet. Kyle rolled his eyes and sat up, reaching for his adopted son. “Did you get fed, beasticle? Want a treat?”

“Oh he got his favorite,” Stan assured him. “And extra treats because someone’s upset that his father got banged up by a stupid driver.”

Moose let himself be cradled against Kyle’s chest, purring like a lawn mower. “Baby boy,” Kyle cooed, rocking the cat a little. They’d only gotten Moose a few months ago, when Stan was volunteering at the animal shelter before working up the courage to actually apply at the vet clinic, and their fur child had quickly become a staple in their lives. And Moose was a really chill cat, just the sweetest thing. “You and your dad don’t need to worry about me.”

“We’re gonna,” Stan pointed out. “So, the critter’s been fed, but we haven’t. Whatcha feeling?”

Ugh. Yeah. Food was a thing. Kyle tended to get nauseous when he was stressed, but he knew damn well the nausea also came from not eating. Still, though, nothing sounded particularly appealing. “Whatever you want, dude. I don’t have much of an opinion tonight.”

Stan clearly didn’t like that answer. “Baby…”

“Just make what you feel like and summon me when it’s ready.”

“You should stay lying down,” he insisted.

“You know I don’t like eating in bed.” That was part of the hang up too. Dinner involved getting up, and moving would remind him that he wasn’t at 100%, which would stress him out more, because he had work the day after tomorrow and needed to be all good for stopping hallway fights, and crumbs were gross to sleep on which would make it even harder to drift off than it usually was.

“And I don’t like you not eating.” Stan could be just as stubborn as himself sometimes. “I’m gonna doordash something that isn’t messy, and we’re eating in bed, and I’ll wash the sheets.” Standing up with a determined expression, Stan caught Kyle’s hand and brought it to his lips. “Give me a moment, melda târ, I have an idea.”

He hurried down the stairs, and Kyle felt himself scowling, definitely not wanting to acknowledge that if he was this pissy this fast, even with Stan being adorable, his sugar was dropping, and like hell was he gonna check. Which also meant his partner was right, and he did need to check. It had been a good five or so hours since lunch.

“God fucking…” in the 70s, which was far from the worst he’d seen from himself, but not great. No wonder he’d suddenly plummeted into a mood. Moose made a little squeak.

“Yeah, your dad’s right. I gotta eat.”

Stan triumphantly announced his presence back in the room with a “let’s fuckin’ gooooo”, precariously balancing a pint of ice cream, two spoons, a glass of cheap wine and a can of miller lite. “Bed picnic ice cream date while we decide!”

The enthusiasm was so sweet. Stan was trying really hard to cheer him up and make sure he didn’t let getting hurt be an eating disorder trigger. That was something Stan never stopped worrying about. For real, the calorie count on the ice cream container was crossed out, even though that whole ordeal had been like six years ago. Stan Marsh, the most adorable man on the planet, who had brought the only thing in the house that wouldn’t leave crumbs in the bed, and the only thing that sounded good. Fuck, he loved him.

Kyle managed a smile and accepted the ice cream. “Dude, yes. I didn’t even know what I needed.”

Stan sat down beside him and propped them both against the headboard, one arm around Kyle, who was starting on the ice cream (Stan had grabbed the vanilla instead of the chocolate chip, probably in case Moose started begging for some), and the other going for the remote to start finding something to watch.

“You always have an opinion, babe. If you don’t, that probably means something’s up,” Stan said simply. “Figured with that and if you haven’t eaten in a while, you were starting to drop, right? You check?”

“I’m… on the lower side,” Kyle admitted, and fuck, that ice cream tasted like a video game health potion. “Why ice cream?”

Stan selected the first episode of The Last Of Us, and sporting that dimpled grin of his, grabbed a spoonful. “You crave sweet things when you’re upset or hurt, and ice cream never fails to kickstart your appetite. I know you better than I know myself, dude.”

And that went the other way around, too. Kyle sighed and let his head drift to Stan’s shoulder, watching as his boyfriend scrolled through the list of food options.

“You feel like a sandwich?”

“I mean, I feel like a Stan, but-“ Stan cut off with a laugh when Kyle nudged him. “Yeah, yeah baby, you want grilled cheeses from that diner on the square?”

“Mhm. Just put in the order notes for them to leave the condiments out of the boxes so they don’t get covered in fry grease.”

Stan kissed him lightly on the forehead before taking a sip of his beer, grinning around the lip of the can.

“Why are you making that face, Stanathan?”

“Just… there you are.” Stan finished placing the order and wrapped both arms around him. Moose sniffed at the abandoned ice cream container while his humans held each other. “You’re here. You’re okay. And you’re feeling good enough to make requests on the packaging on a food order.”

“I mean, it’s kind of off putting when your ketchup cups are all slimy because they were in the same container with the fries that just got pulled out of the oil, plus the grease smell is gonna linger in the bedroom after anyway, so might as well minimize the stain risk, and- *mnh*!”

The kiss that Stan stopped him with tasted like vanilla, and that distinct taste that was all his own. His Stan; his hero when he needed help, the one who Kyle swore could read his mind sometimes. The man who was so gentle when he was injured but so strong if someone he cared about was threatened. Stan, who was a massive dork at the same time he was the coolest person Kyle knew. “Luck” didn’t begin to cover it.

But Stan had him covered.

[danmeichael]

Dumbass thought but instead of shizun (sy) x Tony the tiger what about shizun (sj) x Tony the tiger (yes iam the same person no I haven't stopped these asks is just that no on has been answering :<)

have you considered that the reason people are answering is not because your thoughts are dumb or uncreative as you've told me you feel previously, and instead because you aren't opening a collaborative dialog with people where both of you can have fun?

for example, the possible text responses to "could lqg do a sonic rainboom" are "no" "yes" or "i do not know what a sonic rainboom is" (i thought it was a sonic the hedgehog thing.)

people generally don't want to respond with "no" or "i don't know" unless they can think of a funny way to say it.

this isn't a question most people can infodump about unless they're already interested in it.

drawing art for a response takes time, effort, and energy and people will only draw what you're sending them an ask about if it's particularly inspiring, funny, or something they're already passionate about. i don't draw 90% of my own ideas, let alone a response to every ask people send me.

i don't even answer every ask people send me! i have over 300 unanswered asks in my askbox right now. i want to answer a lot of them, but just couldn't come up with something good to say in response. most people don't answer every ask they get, presumably for similar reasons.

anon. i am leveling with you here. i am reaching out a hand to you.

have you considered, if you want people to answer them and have a meaningful interaction with you, instead of sending a dozen people the same ask about something they potentially have no context or passion for, you could ask them about something that both of you actually care about?

if i were going to send my friend fish, for example, an ask i would probably look at his blog and notice that he writes fic, and that he seems to like mermaids and q!jiu (censored so it doesn't show up in the tag). i also really like shen jiu and yue qingyuan, and mermaids/monsters. that gives us common interests we're both excited about. i would probably send him an ask saying "have you considered writing a mermaid qijiu au?" or "if you were putting sj in a mermaid au, would sj be more of a classic mermaid (misleadingly beautiful to lead sailors to their death) or would you go with the modern monsterfucker idea of mermaids where they're uncanny and a little bit scary?"

if you want to shitpost about tony the tiger and his attempts at wooing every peak lord, you can post about it on your own blog. that allows people invite themselves over to play with you if they're interested instead of you struggling against trial and error on anon.

i don't send random people anons asking about vampire sj even though i'm passionate about it, because they might not be. i post on my own blog about it, and then other people who like vampire sj come over and play with me and we all have a good time!

[inposterumcumgaudio]

Oh, I forgot my favorite thing about Dr. Faraday! How foolish of me!

Dr. Faraday is the least ambiguous of a concept that I think permeates the entire game, but is not understood by people who think there are "rules of narrative fiction" that say you have to take everything at face value unless it's contradicted otherwise.

She is a contextual villain.

This is an idea that exists in lots of other media, but I saw it explained most memorably in one of Kieron Gillen's BTS essays for Phonogram: Singles Club. It's in the back of Laura's issue, right after you've watched the girl who you thought was Penny's mysterious and aloof ride-or-die bestie turn out to be her bitter, overshadowed plus-one.

In Arthur's act, Faraday is presented to you as a victim of her own utility to Wellington Wells, imprisoned in her own lab and conscripted to make security devices against her will. You are made to sympathize with her desire not to contribute any further to the subjugation of the populace and assist with her escape plan (although you are admittedly more motivated by the need for her to fix the Plassey Bridge for you). Her stated wishes are altruistic and ethical in this context.

In They Came From Below, however, she is the main antagonist and you find that her lack of emotional intelligence prevents her from seeing what Roger readily can: that the robots she's discovered are sentient and have feelings. Consequently, she's out here committing atrocities and shit. Not very sympathetic now! Although, to her thinking at the time, her motivations were still altruistic and ethical: the people of Wellington Wells had stopped farming so she meant to reprogram the robots to do it for them. If the robots had been exactly as they appeared, this would not have been a problem.

It is for this reason that in my story, her change of heart is actually not emotional, but logical. She's been convinced that the robots have their feelings, but she must reconcile that if forcing them to feel ways convenient for civic use was wrong, then it also wrong to do so to the people of Wellington Wells.

But consider that Roger, after all this, remains loyal to her. It's not just the job or the security she's provided either; after she's gone, he's reluctant to hand over his bee cannon to Ollie because "she made it for me". Roger's seen her at her worst and he's seen her at her best too. He's weighed all her actions together and made his decision about her.

It's rather special what They Came From Below does as well, in making her an antagonist. It poses a question: are you sure about your impression of this character? Do you have the full picture? In Arthur's and Sally's Acts, Faraday is witty and even a bit charming for someone so devoid of empathy.

Dr. Verloc is described the same way, you know.

But let us imagine they gave us a Verloc DLC. Do you think he'd be a villain in it? No, 'cause he'd be the protagonist. A Byng DLC? Same thing. You'd be forced to reconcile their world view with those you'd already been shown. Might they still wash out to be villains overall? Maybe. Probably, even.

The only reason why these guys are so thoroughly vilified is because we never get to see them on their own terms or from any perspective other than that of their enemies (particularly each other actually, which is pretty funny!) But they are surely as dimensional as anyone else in this world.

And this goes the other way too. You play as Arthur and immediately you meet a character who knows him: Danny Defoe. And Danny does not like him! Now granted, this is because when they worked at the O' Courant together, he copied one of Arthur's articles word for word and submitted it as his own, Arthur told on him, and he got fired. Which reflects poorly on Danny, but we also know by this point that Clive Birtwhistle isn't exactly Arthur's biggest fan either. And maybe Clive's not as diligent a worker as Arthur, but he also thinks Arthur's a kiss-ass and we learn from the Ploughboys later that this may not be an unsubstantiated opinion. 0-2 for coworker relations. When you find Prudence's diary in the Maidenholm hatch, we learn she didn't like him much either. Paints a picture. I mean, Arthur's the only constant in this equation.

And Sally. Lordy, for someone so popular and friendly, she sure does have a lot of people not particularly pleased with her.

Ollie at least understands he's a miserable prick and how that informs his relationships with everyone else. But Arthur, Sally, and even Victoria speak of him fondly so we know he's actually being more critical of himself than they are (without yet knowing he has his buried reasons to see himself that way).

We were given all this, and yet a lot of people were still asking why Arthur and Sally's versions of events are so different and who was "right".

In being so obviously and unambiguously shown in a controverting light from her established impression, Dr. Faraday is the game's invitation to question your perception of every character.

RSVP.

[panelshowsource]

this is such a great episode!

for anyone who hasn't listened yet — it deals with some heavy things including food addiction and eating disorders, death, and more, so anyone who wants to check it out should be aware it's about richard's own history and his self-identified "failures", and it's not particularly light-hearted or funny even though it's endearing and inspiring in many ways

i really appreciate his honesty and how carefully he speaks. he has every right to be angry — with his father leaving, with his relationship to food and shame, with the ever-present confines of modern masculinity making life so lonely for men — but he never seems to be. he just cares about being the best, healthiest version of himself. and i appreciate that he doesn't talk at people, preach, act like he knows more or best; he just knows what he knows all while seeking to always be learning more. i really appreciate him!

i've never heard of a podcast by tailors, how interesting! i listened to the episode with alex and it was really sweet! i'll post this in case anyone else wants to check it out :)

(of course 💜)

same, i'd only really heard of it because i got a bunch of messages about it! (i was a little unplugged from scripted tv when the first series came out 😅)

TOTALLY AGREE about jon pointing! his comedic timing, his facial expressions, he is just too hilarious — even though...can i just say...why was that old ass man playing a uni student X_X

anyways — i knew him from plebs!! that's quite a famous itv2 series, so you should check it out and see if you like it! i love tom basden ugh and if you check my non-panel shows masterpost i have live at the moth club and he does standup in ep1!

i am somewhat familiar with it as someone who likes to watch some of the nextup specials (alistair barrie was one i enjoyed recently!) and tries to keep abreast of the festival nominees & winners, but i don't have as much time as i'd like to really weed out my favourites only because there isn't enough time in the day and i'm already trying to watch 100 things a day 🥲

one thing i find funny is how i pay more attention to who would do well on tv opposed to who is just GOOD. like, i didn't get john kearns until stopped thinking about him in the context of dictionary corner and started acknowledging his written set as a very, very specific piece of work that really shouldn't be disassembled and consumed in morsels. but i do see my interest in — and potentially my preference for — panel shows reflected in some of the circuit guys i like, such as alasdair beckett-king, huge davies, larry david. i just know they would kill panel show world if they were pushed properly :')

i find that i like standup a lot more live than i do on screen — which i think a lot of comedians would understand!

as well, i find the discourse about how difficult it is to get started/off the ground now that edinburgh fringe is becoming less and less accessible extremely fascinating and try to listen to all of the podcasts/convos about that that i can. it's costing comedians upwards of 5k just to debut a modest set at edinburgh — which is madness. here is tom mayhew talking to bbc news about this just a couple of weeks ago...

anyways, is there someone you wanted to recommend? i would love to check out anything 😚

—

daniel sloss standup — added a couple of those to drive! god i looooooved him when i was in high school and still do! highly recommend him on roast battle uk if you need extra sloss content. i'll work on the others over the next couple of weeks

alma's not normal — added to drive!

here we go — i know exactly where this is so i can hook you up but imma need you to dm/ask me off anon for the deets!

hold the front page + the unofficial science of home alone — sorry anons i don't have these on me but they're very easy requests someone can hook you up with on r/tv_bunny, so post them there!

—

PANEL SHOW WATCH LINKS / NON-PANEL SHOW WATCH LINKS FAQ / TAGS / ASK

[moni-logues]

Hiiii

12 - 18 - 30 for the writers ask! 💜💜💜

12. A trope I'm really into atm

Is this the time I finally admit I am actually a fan of f2l? 😂 I am having a slightly stressful, unfun time rn (mostly because of my period 🙄) so I want those close, familiar, nervy vibes, comfort, safety etc.

30. share a fic you're especially proud of

Well, the real answer to this is Kintsugi but I'm not gonna link that because I feel like people know it already 😂

SO I'm gonna share A Simple Favour because Binnie does not get enough love and I always feel particularly pleased with fics that just came out of nowhere yknow? No plan to write it, no plan whilst writing but suddenly, 20k later, there's a fic!!

18. if you keep them, share a deleted sentence or paragraph from a published fic

I actually have a document full of stuff I've cut out of fics! And this (from Home Run) is long so I'm adding a cut but this is the part that I had honestly imagined most frequently from that fic and I was sooooo sad to cut because it was silly and fun and I wanted them to have fun, fun with a little edge of something, but I just couldn't make it work.

Context: this is just after the, shit do you have a condom moment

You had wriggled out from beneath him and hopped off the bed before his eyes had even opened. He turned, still dazed, to watch you root around at the bottom of your wardrobe. The sight of you: on your hands and knees, bare and exposed. There was a tight, low pull in his abdomen and he swore under his breath, hand encircling his heavy, dripping cock unconsciously, automatically, ceding control to it.

In one swift motion, you stood and emptied what could have been 100 condoms onto the mattress.

“You forgot you had these?!” he exclaimed.

You tutted and rolled your eyes.

“These were part of my ‘Last Singleton Left’ prize at my sister’s hen do. I think it was supposed to be funny.”

“Christ, how much sex do you have?”

And he meant it rhetorically. Desperately did not want to know the answer—not that it was his business anyway. You could do what you liked but the last thing he wanted to think about was you with someone else, anyone else, anywhere but here with him.

“Well, depends on how you look at it.”

And you were playful again, hands on your hips as if you weren’t naked, as if you were evaluating something other than a pile of condoms, one of which he was eventually going to use to fuck you. He grinned because, no matter what, there you were. He’d done his best to make it weird, being awkward and uncool and utterly unable to believe that this would really happen, but it was happening and it was you. He knew it was you because you were grinning at him now, in the way you usually did. You

“On the one hand: so much sex that I do need this many condoms. On the other: well, let’s just say my sister got married last year and I've still got this many left.”

“Which is it?”

He wanted it to be fun and cheeky but there was an edge in his voice that was a little desperate. A little desperate to be yours. A little desperate to write his name on every one of those foil packets. A little too keen for it to be the other hand because he wanted to know your secrets and be the only one who knew. He wanted to be the best you’d ever had so he needed the competition numbers to be low. He wanted to be yours and yours alone and you the same for him. Please, he thought, don’t be sleeping with other people.

You shrugged, a coquettish look on your face that he hadn’t seen before. You scooped both hands across the pile and dumped what you had gathered into the bedside drawer. Then you did it again and again until you hand-picked the last, took it between thumb and forefinger and pressed it to his chest.

“Want to talk about my sex life or want to be part of it?”

“Part of it, please.”

Ask me a fic writer question!

[nesiacha]

My funny (or stupid, from your point of view) anecdote at Puy du Fou and a more serious analysis of the park and its founder, who is known for double standards

Iwas young, just a teenager, carefree, and not particularly observant—or I just lacked awareness—and I had a totally offbeat sense of humor. I was watching a show about King Arthur, getting bored and roasting under the sun, barely paying attention (mostly because of the heatwave and the fact that we were outdoors).

I had this bad habit (sometimes, luckily I’ve outgrown it now) of speaking out loud when I sensed my neighbors were as bored as I was during a show. So, when one of the actors said that the king was dead, I shouted, "Long live the Republic!"—a reference to the execution of Louis XVI (yes, my dark humor was deplorable, I admit that). But I had no idea where I was or the context. Like I said earlier, I was slow to pick up on my surroundings. My relatives panicked, telling me to be quiet, and I still didn’t understand why. Maybe they just didn’t want me to disrupt the play, which I could understand.

I found out right after they scolded me and explained where I was. Then I got angry because I had paid for a park run by a man who had said appalling (unacceptable) things about the French who had fought for Algeria’s independence—he had called them traitors to the nation, which was completely false, dishonest, and insulting. Not to mention the awful things he said about Algerian revolutionaries, reducing them to mere assassins (yes, even back then, I was quite interested in learning about the Algerian revolution). But my relatives thought I had read the brochure they gave me before agreeing to go, so the misunderstanding was cleared up—it was my fault for not reading it (it flew right over my head because I was focused on visiting as much of Brittany as possible). I agreed to watch other shows to avoid ruining the already awkward mood with my stupidity, and I kept quiet for the rest of the visit.

That said, some shows were worth seeing. For example, the one about the Three Musketeers was pretty good in my opinion, so if you get a chance, don’t hesitate to watch it. The Viking show wasn’t bad either, although I was skeptical about how quickly they converted to Christianity without much debate and stopped attacking a village right after pillaging it (but it’s a children’s show, so I understand the simplifications). Still, the effects were good, so it was a solid performance.

However, when I went to the souvenir shop, the books didn’t appeal to me at all. The classic portrayal of Robespierre as a bloodthirsty figure and the glorification of Bonaparte in one of the books really bothered me. Isn’t it Bonaparte who practiced illegal torture through Fouché’s police against his former Jacobin comrades, betrayed many of them just for power (not because he wanted to save the Revolution in a dire situation, though that would still be hard to justify—but betraying out of greed is even worse)? He lied about the horrific massacre in Jaffa, abandoned the French army in Egypt, allowed a special court in Guadeloupe to commit atrocities against slaves and those who fought him (I had already read about the three white leaders of the slave rebellion in Sainte-Anne, Barse, Millet, and Barbet, who were condemned to a terrible death by this court in November 1802), committed an unequivocal massacre in Saint-Domingue with the aim of illegally restoring slavery, and likely schemed with his close associates at the Bank. He implemented even more oppressive and bloody laws for women and dragged France into a dreadful adventure. I’m not saying the revolutionaries were saints—they committed unforgivable acts during the internal and external civil war (though not all of them, several revolutionaries denounced these acts)—but this double standard can be frustrating.

Anyway, we later went to see Le Dernier Panache. @amateurvoltaire explained it better than I ever could, so here’s the link to that excellent post: https://www.tumblr.com/amateurvoltaire/759825512261664768/hejdzz-as-usual-thanks-for-the-insightful?source=share.

In the end, it’s not so much the park’s ideological orientation that bothers me. After all, the park’s founder can do whatever he wants with it. If it had been someone on the left, I imagine they would’ve done the same. But the bias becomes annoying when the park claims to tell history while deliberately omitting certain parts (for example, no show about the Bretons who revolted against Louis XIV with the Revolt of the Red Bonnets, during which the rebels proclaimed a Peasant Code—the repression was brutal, and there’s no mention of this in the park, as far as I know). On the other hand, as a fan of the royal feuds during the Merovingian period—which was one of the most significant civil wars with twists worthy of Game of Thrones (I’m not even exaggerating: proactive queens engaging in fierce tactics in a relentless struggle, although we shouldn’t be sexist—the male monarchs were just as ruthless and didn’t face as much negative legend)—I was disappointed not to see more focus on that. I would’ve liked to know how Brittany was keeping an eye on all of this, as it wasn’t part of the Frankish territories, though Chilperic (married to Fredegund) did face one of the Frankish kings (but maybe there was something about this that I missed).

Another possible distortion of history—I don’t know if this is true—was mentioned by someone who complained about the park’s bias. A Puy du Fou show was supposed to feature two famous Vendéens: Clemenceau and de Lattre. The person complained that Clemenceau only got 15 minutes, while de Lattre got an hour. The person speculated that this was because Clemenceau was a staunch republican (though let’s not kid ourselves, he was called the strikebreaker and could be quite fierce towards strikers), while de Lattre de Tassigny was a royalist.

I don’t know if this is true, as I didn’t attend that show. However, it was uncomfortable to see tributes to Bonaparte, but not (at least, not prominently) to Kléber, who, despite being a fervent republican, was disgusted by the atrocities committed by some French generals during the Republic and did everything he could to stop them (he even risked his life for it). Maybe this is because Bonaparte was more conciliatory towards royalists than republicans once in power (even though he ordered the horrific assassination of the Duke of Enghien).

I’ll conclude with the double standards that we must always fight against: Mr. de Villiers is very moralistic about the Vendée, which is his right, and that’s completely understandable. But instead of following Babeuf’s example (who always fought against double standards), whom he tries to cite (very questionably) to prove a genocide that never occurred, he isn’t as moral when it comes to Algeria, as I mentioned earlier. It’s fine to denounce the atrocities committed by Carrier with the drownings of the Vendéens, but if he defends criminals like Bigeard, who organized multiple atrocities during the Algerian War, including the drowning of Algerians (and I’m not talking about those drowned in the Seine in 1961—that’s another atrocity to talk about it) , then it undermines his fight to condemn what happened in the Vendée. I talk about the drowning of Algerians by Bigeard and in the Seine in 1961 here (sensitive souls should refrain, as the method was even more painful than Carrier's drownings) https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/764614899683950592/october-17-1961-algerians-drowned-this-recounts?source=share, unfortunately for him, in my eyes, this undermines his fight to condemn what happened in the Vendée.

That said, I’m not trying to tell anyone not to visit this park. First of all, I don’t have the right to influence anyone, and secondly, I admit that there are quite a few good things to see there. :)

[cptn-m]

One Piece chapter 1127 review

New arc is a go… but things aren't feeling quite right here. I'm not usually one to get on board with conspiracy theories - sometimes a weird detail is just something Oda threw in because he thought it would be fun or funny, not the key to unraveling the plot; sometimes an inconsistency is legitimately a mistake or typo, to be fixed in the volume. But here, I'm not so sure. Maybe it's because we have so little in the way of context, but things are feeling wrong about the setting we're shown in this first chapter.

We are not in the Elbaf we thought we were in. From the first page: look at Yggdrasil. Compare it to the enormous tree shown in the backgrounds of Big Mom's flashback. It's too small, it's not the right shape, it doesn't cast shade over the whole island the way the real one does. Though dressed like giants, the people in the town have roughly the same scale compared to the stingermole and Lego buildings as the Strawhats do. And while the environment certainly looks like a giant child's Lego playroom, watch the way the castle comes apart during the cat attack: it doesn't scatter into pieces like a real Lego construction would, the bricks themselves crack and shatter and crumble into shards, suggesting cemented concrete or stone rather something designed to come apart and be rebuilt. Even the title plays up a "Land of Mystery" even though it would be no spoiler at all to say "Land of Giants" or something similar given all the setup this arc has had.

So where are we? Some kind of human settlement on the edge or off the coast of Elbaf? Are they people who came hopeful to emulate giant culture like Usopp has? Or is this a human zoo or pet enclosure run by a particularly cruel giant leader? Maybe whoever is playing the part of a sun god (very intriguing setup by the way) But in either case why the toy look without toy materials?

And then there's the question of absinthe hallucinations. If the whole scenario was meant to be a trip, we probably wouldn't have seen the people in the town. That kind of objective POV from people who weren't drinking wouldn't fly, we'd have been kept limited to only the Strawhats' perspective. The animals cause real physical harm, and Nami trips on and interacts with the Lego bumps on the floor, so they're not illusions. But things are weird here. They keep changing. Both the spiky thing (which has hedgehog ears but more of a porcupine snout, and doesn't fully match up with either creature) and the cat transform dramatically for creatures without (apparent) devil fruits. And the weapon of Luffy's back changes between two panels, but that one I could chalk to being a mistake, or a last minute mind change. The panel with the sword also lacks the strap going across Luffy's chest, which feels like a major detail of this new design to omit. But it adds to the strange feeling all this gives off.

(Luffy calling out the wrong gear, however, is definitely an error. It hasn't even been that long since the wrong number was used for a Cipher Pol division in the final chapters of Egghead. Sanji winding up with one leg and kicking with the other feels the same, some of these little glitches happen all the time.)

Mysteries and theories all aside, this is a tremendously fun Usopp and Nami chapter. Every single gag landed for me. Nami's expression at meeting the spike monster sets the tone and the chapter just rolls from there. Usopp taking a hit, assuming the cat is a hallucination (even he'd just been in its mouth, and Nami's reaction. (Love the cat's claws curling over the panel boarder there too.) Then she uses the broken and beaten Usopp as a shield before claiming to Sanji he was already dead. I loved it all.

I've seen some upset that Usopp is taking such a beating in what they think should be his arc, but I can't imagine being upset by something like that. You can't have much of a character arc without the character having things to learn and challenges to overcome from the experience. The last time we had a genuinely designated character's arc was Sanji at Whole Cake Island, and whatever else you can say about it, that arc brought Sanji low and kicked him while he was down, physically and emotionally. He got no climactic fight. And he lost his memory of getting the girl. But it all set him up to be stronger than ever and face even more interesting character decisions in the next arc. So if we're going to make Usopp grow on Elbaf, putting him in situations that showcase his weakness and trigger his cowardice is a good starting point.

The Egghead outfits so far are fine. Pretty standard medieval gear. The choice for Nami threatens to follow the Egghead design trends, but I'm going to wait and see on that front. The problem with Egghead's outfits wasn't that Nami was showing a lot of leg - her characterisation has always had her comfortable in bikinis and similar pieces that make sense to wear when you're around the sea. The problem was that every single female character in the arc unquestioningly picked up Nami's fashion sense and level of comfort, no matter how they were depicted previously. So the amount of variety and how in-character the outfits of Robin, Lilith and (depending on what age she presents as) Bonney will make or break the fur bikini.

As much as it can hurt to be left with a lingering mystery, I'm thrilled to see Oda still finding the inspiration to give us something new and different to start a new arc on. And with a break coming up and the new arc underway, I think now is finally the time to properly reread and review Egghead in full, which feels like a good thing to put in the place of a review next week.

[o-uncle-newt]

Cabin Pressure Advent Day 8: Helsinki

OK, so Helsinki doesn't get the ultra-enthusiastic "HELSINKIIII" that I've been giving to episodes like Fitton and Gdansk because, well, it's just not a favorite of mine particularly. It's been a while since I listened to it, and there were a BUNCH of things that I noticed that really surprised me on relisten.

Like, it's significantly nastier than I'd remembered! I was expecting Ruth to be horrible and Kieran to be an annoying little shit, but I didn't expect Martin to actually hit Kieran (I remembered a contretemps and Kieran beating Martin up but couldn't remember Martin's precise role) and I also, less flashily, didn't expect Douglas to directly call Arthur an idiot while addressing Carolyn, and her basically being okay with it. I guess in the context of a defense of Arthur's zealousness in trying to find Carolyn a present for her 63rd (that very significant birthday...) she let it go? But I feel like that's a lot.

(Also, as one of four children... Arthur is the onliest only child I have ever heard of. Like, everything about every one of his plans and interactions this episode... wow.)

I was also kind of surprised that the plot felt a bit weaker than usual- it's hard to really understand why Carolyn was okay with paying for a whole flight largely on the strength of Douglas's ulterior motives. I can't decide whether the Northern Lights viewing is meant to have been one of those ulterior motives and is therefore worth it for her... which is sweet, but doesn't really explain her taking him at his word for what would seem to be, on the surface, literally no reason with every reason to reject him (the cost, the fellow passengers...). Maybe this is me not being subtle enough or something, but I was really surprised when she agreed to do the flight, it felt under-justified. Idunno, YMMV.

It's interesting- I REALLY can't decide whether I think that the Martin and Kieran scenes work better alphabetically or as aired. Is it funnier to listen to it in Helsinki already knowing that Martin isn't paid, or is it funnier to take this scene for granted as written and then only the next week in Gdansk have it be suddenly retroactively funnier? I'm not really sure, and I welcome all opinions on the matter.

The episode as a whole was definitely on the darker and bitterer side, and I can't decide what I think about it. Martin hitting Kieran is pretty insane, though of course after Arthur LITERALLY MANSLAUGHTERING A GUY it's tame relatively speaking, and while Kieran is annoying as fuck the storyline is fine. I did feel, though, like I would have liked just a bit more of a throughline for the Carolyn and Ruth storyline. It's SO vitriolic and angry, and I feel like, in order to be entertaining and not just discomfiting it needed to either have a clearer emotional throughline OR to just be funnier/sillier. Them leaving Ruth and Kieran behind, and Philip hiding away on the plane and turning out to not be deaf, is very funny, but it doesn't really change, for me, that their fight felt very bitter but in a bit of a pointless way. We learn a bit about Carolyn and her past and some of her sore points, but Ruth herself as a character is basically just there to be nasty and I wish she could have been there for just a bit more than that. (NOT that I think that they should have reconciled or whatever- just that their interactions felt kind of pointless except for the sake of being mean. And she was right that the fact that Martin hit Kieran is nuts, and ideally to be funny a character like that shouldn't be right about anything...)

Helsinki has some super funny bits (obviously- the fact that I keep saying that feels a bit redundant at this point- it's Cabin Pressure, obviously there are funny bits- so I'll point out that Arthur celebrating his numbers winning the lottery is precious), the birthday celebration at the end is sweet and a sign that they're simpatico with each other by now, and of course this is the episode that launched a thousand and one Douglas-centered ships. So it's fine- but not really the kind I go for.

Unlike tomorrow... when we go to IPSWICH!

[veebs-hates-video-games]

I should really listen to myself and stop trying to play the older Fire Emblem games or remakes of them, because they're clearly not my thing.

viBRAToryblurriness: First impressions of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, the DS remake of the very first game: it has zero charm and feels like a SNES game (derogatory) viBRAToryblurriness: Like not like a good one, like one of the mediocre ones you'd rent because it looked vaguely interesting from the box and then be stuck with it for a few days despite it not being particularly good, and now you know why it was still on the shelf and the one you were looking for wasn't viBRAToryblurriness: Yeah my Reddit dude, extremely bland dialogue in faux archaic English and character/place names that look like keysmashes are totally Shakespearian viBRAToryblurriness: I don't know how they basically traveled back in time a full decade in terms of presentation compared to the GBA games viBRAToryblurriness: The pixel art is mediocre at best bordering on bad, and the animations really are as bad as everyone said they are, which is a shame because the GBA ones had so much personality

For context, someone on Reddit recently was complaining about modern Fire Emblem and how Awakening is a dating sim and older games were Shakespearian. This is extremely funny to me both because they clearly have never read/seen any actual Shakespeare and because pairing up units for marriage/making child units originated way back on the SNES in Genealogy of the Holy War (or I guess Super Famicom since it never made it out of Japan).

At least in SoV I really liked the characters and art style and overall presentation pretty much immediately, and that kept me going into act 4 even if I wasn't really enjoying the gameplay that much, but after nearly an hour of this one I'm not into basically any of it. It's done pretty much nothing to win me over so far.

Should I go finally finish Path of Radiance already (which I technically never quite have even though I started playing it for the first time ~18 years ago) or just replay Engage? Yes, almost definitely. Will I actually go do that instead of continuing to subject myself to stuff I'm not enjoying? Eventually I hope, but apparently not quite yet.

[get-back-homeward]

Ram Revisited

Paul and Linda record their album Ram from October 1970 to March 1971, and it is released May 17, 1971. By May 26, John already had his infamous response, recording How Do You Sleep. This song gets a lot of attention for how cruel it seemed. One of John’s defenses by the album’s launch was that Paul had written special messages to him on Ram, only Paul didn’t print the lyrics so you couldn’t hear them. He mentions it a couple times, in print...

and at St Regis hotel press conference for the album release:

JOHN: But... I was laughing at [Ram] later, but first, I was saying, “Oh! Hmm. Oh, I see. Oh, that’s what he thinks,” huffing and puffing. That’s the first thing I heard on his album, was all this – this message, you see. [x]

JOHN: It’s just a moment of anger. But I just put it down on paper. And also, I’m answering Paul’s last album, which mostly because he didn’t hand out a lyric sheet, [people] don’t know what he was saying [on it]. [x]

JOHN: You mightn’t hear ‘em, but I can hear ‘em, and I know Paul. [x] 

and during live interviews, where he gets cut off from finishing his point every time. But he seems particularly bothered by the lack of printed lyrics.

JOHN: Little messages that Paul sent to me on Ram. Which, funny, I publish my lyrics you see. He doesn’t, so you have to listen. [x]

It’s tempting to laugh at this, if you think it’d just an excuse for HDYS, or call him kookoo, if you think he’s just obsessed with Paul and reading things that aren’t there. But I find the comments rather curious in light of idea that the Beatles, particularly John and Paul, had a shared language that dates back to when they were kids in Liverpool and was used as late as 1969 as seen in Get Back. By design, the language is used to protect and exclude, so any analysis by outsiders will probably be utterly meaningless. But I thought I’d take it on face value that John was hearing something the average listener couldn’t without printed lyrics to try to understand the root of the anger that drives HDYS.

As a thought experiment, I decided to relisten to Ram for the first time while reading the lyrics, with an eye for words I couldn’t hear (or misheard before) along with album themes. Full disclosure, I’ve always listened to this album while working on something else, so while I may be have seen looked up lyrics for a song or two independently (Too Many People, Back Seat), I didn’t read them while listening to the song or consider them in the context of the full album, all of which create a different experience. I used Spotify’s lyrics function while listening to the 2012 remastered album, so any lyric variations may be Spotify’s fault.

Starting from the top. The album begins with Too Many People, which opens with an indiscernible line that’s a play on words.

Piss off cake-->piece of cake. I had no idea that’s what he was singing at the start. For 20 years, I heard this line as “this I got to say-ay-ay”. That said, “piss off cake” still doesn’t tell us much. I’m with this guess that this phrase is an in-joke turned nasty, like a firing shot John heard right at the start.

Two “mistakes” are mentioned here. The first mistake gets a lot of attention (”going underground”, “took your lucky break and broke it in two”) and is generally attributed to John asking for a divorce/leaving the band, though I question it (see below). But the last mistake is the hidden dagger I never heard without looking up the lyrics:

“I find my love awake and waiting to be...” followed by the stinger chord is an unfinished sentence. The verb ‘be’ is doing all the work, suggesting a missing past participle left unsaid. John is no stranger to using simple verbs to stand in for prohibited ones, as Norwegian Wood and Don’t Let Me Down show. Paul stops just short of making it vulgar, but the implication is there. By making the arena in bed, the suggestion is inherently sexual--not only in the unfinished sentence but also in the 1-minute guitar solo climax that follows, complete with dog howling. This makes the dagger a sexual taunt, and I keep trying to hear other interpretations, but I only hear one: Literally this could have been you in my bed but you blew it and now I have her. Not ever but never again. It’s a closed door. Slammed in your face. Now what can be done for you? as the guitar goes wild. Suggestive of bedroom fun you’re shut off from.

Okay, I can see how that could ignite someone’s anger, especially one prone to jealousy.

The trouble I have with this is timing. If “first mistake” is the divorce meeting (Sept 20) then what is the “last mistake” that deserves this sexual taunt? Paul always talks about the divorce meeting as if John declaring he’s leaving the band and wanting a divorce (from him) as the same moment. Maybe the “first mistake” is mislabeled, as John’s “going underground” wish begins in 1968 with Yoko and his controversial public actions from nude album covers to bagism events (not to mention private actions like covering personal debt and bringing outsiders into the recording studio) that caused a schism at Apple at its crucial first few months. Paul talks about summer 1968 as a difficult time for him, where he felt like everything was falling apart. Dick James their publisher is watching all of this and making business calculations. By March 1969, in the middle of their honeymoons with their wives, he decides to sell Northern Songs.

Would John pinpoint his "first mistake” as Yoko? IDK. He’d know when his relationship with Paul got rocky, at least professionally. They seem to be arguing about this underground direction as early as May 1968 (NYC), perhaps even earlier. In interviews, Yoko seems to focus on this part, which may indicate her feeling it was about her.

But if the “first mistake” is May 1968 and in the realm of music/business/professional, then the “last mistake” is the final straw and it’s personal.

Don’t let them tell you what you want to be

Paul recounts September 20 as if John betrayed him, getting him to sign the EMI contract before telling him he wanted the divorce. Paul felt tricked, like the rug was pulled out from under him. The hidden dagger in the song works the same way.

The second track, 3 Legs, begins innocently enough (When I walk on my horse upon the hill). It seems like empty nonsense until this accusation:

It’s a explicitly John-directed lyric: Paul’s emotional state is caused by John’s actions. I still hear “you let me down” (recalling Don’t Let Me Down) even though the original lyrics sheet says “left” and these printed ones say “laid.” So it’s worth taking a closer look at the rest.

This is a weird lyric taken literally. Paul’s doodling a three-legged thing and a three-legged dog on the lyrics sheet for this song. The dog doesn’t look like any of the dogs they had at the time to my knowledge. Dog could be a stand-in for another word John understood.

I enjoy @jobey-wan-kenobi’s​ idea of “three leg” as surrealist imagery that suggests an off-kiltered scene and reflects the writer’s state of mind. Both John and Paul spoke about being inspired by surrealist art and using it in lyrics to mask.

Didn’t John talk about having a reoccurring dream of flying above the clouds as a kid? I believe he used it to justify his whole egocentric interpretation of Strawberry Fields. But this flying seems the opposite of an ego trip:

He’s so unstable, the listener could knock him down from his flight with a feather.

But you know it’s not allowed

Ram On is the nearest to the title track but only a wisp of a thing, so it gets lost in the attention to Too Many People. I swear every time I hear it, I hear it another way.

Is it about needing love quickly? You’ll take anyone who appears next around the bend? Or is it about the unpredictability or impermanence of love? The someone round the bend coming to take the somebody you just gave your heart to? It shapeshifts, depending on how you approach it. But the second one reminds me of what John says later about love slipping away as soon as you look at it directly, as soon as you try to possess it completely. And hey what was that in 3 Legs?

When I thought, when I thought you was my friend... But you laid me down Put my heart round the bend

That lyrical link suggests the latter option. The earlier question in 3 Legs also fits with this theme of the unpredictability of love.

When I walk, when I walk On my horse upon the hill... Will my lover love me still?

But it may also suggest freedom. To do your own thing outside and then return home with a lover waiting. Like Too Many People. She’s waiting for me...

Big Barn Bed (not released til 1973) is first recorded with other 1970 Ram home recordings. It starts as a coda for Ram On and later becomes its own song. It has a similar “round the bend” line: Who’s that coming round the corner? Will it be my friend?

Which suggests more anticipation than worry but gives the same feeling of unpredictability toward the listener who is also the friend who let him down.

Bug lore is that John thought Dear Boy was for him, though I’m having trouble finding a source on that. I always found it pretty hilarious, as I do think it fits best with Paul’s story that it’s Linda’s ex-husband. The “When I stepped in” part makes sense with that interpretation. But it’s funny to think about John thinking it’s about him:

What’s John hearing Paul say here? I loved you and you didn’t even see it! And you know what, maybe Paul knew John would hear it like that and it was half the fun. It’s not hard to see that Paul identified with Linda’s feeling of being unappreciated in her prior marriage. And it’s common for Paul to start a song about one person or idea and then it becomes transformed into being about something else. Layers are possible in all their songs. John talks about the layers he hears in their old songs in Jan 1969, layers that he didn’t hear when they wrote them. So it’s possible John heard this connection. It may have just made him angry because John suggests elsewhere that he was the one who felt unappreciated and neglected.

However, even with Paul’s interpretation, John still shows up as the reason Paul’s heart was down and out and positions Linda as an antidote:

Oh what a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive

I always filed away Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey as a simple character mashup. But looking at the words, I started to question that. Could Uncle Albert, a real uncle of Paul’s, also act as a stand-in character for someone else? The theme of no one left at home is echoed in Little Lamb Dragonfly, which is home recorded with RAM songs but held back until 1973 Red Rose Speedway.

But the line that follows is a peculiar one. I always thought I was hearing it wrong, surely it is it’s gonna rain. But the lyrics tell me it’s I’m gonna rain:

So could it be a metaphor or stand-in for an emotion like sadness or a visible reaction like crying? Or is it like 3 Leg? More surrealist projection of instability when charting new waters.

The second section, Admiral Halsey, has nautical themes that suggest more than meets the eye. Remember both John and Paul talked about the Beatles as a boat, with John talking about leaving the Beatles as jumping off Paul’s boat and onto Yoko’s boat.

Paul’s delivery of “berth” sounds like “bath” to me, so I can’t see how anyone could pick up this line in full before, except maybe if you knew that’s how Paul pronounces -er- sounds. But it certainly is a suggestive of a metaphor for a significant event. Perhaps about the day that Ringo as the messenger notified Paul about the McCartney release date change (to make room for his own album)? Or more personally, about Paul having to back away from John to make room for Yoko?

But what on earth is butter pie? Wiki tells me it’s a Lancashire-based savory pie of onions and potatoes (so meatless). But my mind goes straight to Penny Lane (finger pies), so I’m just gonna assume it’s something dirty.

Hands across the water, hands across the sky

Linda’s harmonies and backing vocals are just so cool. It had to have gotten to John that she so easily fits into this vocal role next to Paul, especially in the more silly moments featured here. Especially considering humor was such a large component of John and Paul’s relationship.

There’s limitations to printing lyrics though and I get Paul’s right to not print them earlier because sometimes it take away from all the wordplay and double meanings inherent in the sounds of the words. For example, I always heard some of these “smile away”s in Smile Away as “it’s my way,” and so I’m surprised that phrase is never printed in the lyrics:

However, given the double meanings elsewhere, I think it’s worth still considering because "it’s my way” fits into the album theme of not blindly following along and finding your own path.

Don’t let them tell you what you want to be

A lot of focus is on Too Many People as the trigger for How Do You Sleep. But it’s a question directed a line from Heart Of The Country.

I’m gonna get me a good night sleep

It’s the one respite on the whole album and I can see how the image of smug Paul could send John in a writing fury.

Monkberry Moon Delight plays with “ketchup” and “catch up” and both of these appear in the lyrics. But is it beretta the gun or biretta the hat? Or something else? Ram sessions include Oh Woman Oh Why with gun sounds that gets left off the album, and photos from the session show Paul holding a prop gun. There’s also a gun-like object drawn on the Ram back cover. So maybe he did mean the gun. Inclusion of that song would have turned the tone of entire album, from jaunty taunts to serious violence, so it’s the right choice to keep it off. John would only hear the beretta line here with “banana” and the gun on the back cover:

and i don’t get the gist of your letter

Considering John and Paul are sending letters back and forth across 1970, this line sounds like a taunt for John alone. Along with what follows:

don’t get left behind

which makes this...

...another sexual taunt like Too Many People. Haha, look at what you’re missing!

If you’re doubting that, the track order clears it up fast because it’s followed immediately by....

Eat At Home. No explanation required.

It is an outright banger. No way John wasn’t a tad impressed by it. Even if it exudes those aggressive “I am having so much fun with my wife right now and not even thinking of you” vibes that left John shook.

Am I the only one that thought some of these “little lady”s were “lad”s? Paul stresses the -d so the -y sounds silent except for Linda’s backing. The result is pretty...ambiguous at times.

So I’m left thinking it’s a bit odd how this song ends on the negative: don’t do that. If the sexual connotation starts it, it ends with something that sounds unwanted, like it goes too far. A revoking of consent. But is it the lad(y) going too far? Or someone else?

Don’t let them tell you what you want to be

Long Haired Lady is an ode to Linda that starts with a jokey call and response between Paul and Linda and builds into a section that channels The Mamas & The Papas with lush, blissfully layered harmonies:

I’m good up til “win or lose it” but I don’t know if anyone could have heard “into the soul”. I’m not so sure it matters much, but the suggestion seems to be that love continues whether or not you “win or lose” love. That no matter if you are wrong, love is stable, constant. Wait, where have I heard that before?

Generally, I find Back Seat of My Car to be the strangest one for John to think was directed at him (and Yoko?). It’s just so big and sweeping and wasn’t Paul and Linda the one who did the joyriding? But that whole we believe that we can’t be wrong really got to him. He mentions it a lot, sometimes attributing the line to him and Yoko and other times to Paul and Linda about them (”well I believe that you could possibly be wrong!“). It’s a real hangup for John around this time, the idea that Paul is always right and he is wrong. Seeing Paul’s predictive powers, I can see how infuriating it would be after a while, and how comforting it would be to have people around you who counter that, to tell you “no, you are right and he’s wrong.” How it’d make you dig your heels in and work hard to get people off the McCartney bandwagon.

There’s a whole gibberish sounding section not picked up in the printed lyrics that sounds like “everyone’s tried to love her” or “i’m gonna try to love her” sung at an auctioneer’s pacing. You could possibly read something into that depending on what you hear.

Here’s another mention of “my way” after “highway”, suggestive of the idiom “my way or the highway”. The second half of the “looking for a ride” lines I can’t hear even with the lyrics:

“and all I found” would have been my guess.

But if you’re taking everything else as a sexual taunt, looking for a ride could hold a double meaning.

The climatic ending of the song and album is the height of choosing your own way and building your own world:

We believe that we can’t be wrong

A brash assertion of confidence in your own choices? A mocking condemnation of someone else’s choices? Or aggressive positivity to vanquish agonizing about whether you’re right or wrong? Like others on the album, it depends on how you look at it. But the first option fits with the overall album theme, with the third behind it as another layer.

There’s a snowglobe imagery to the feeling of this ending. Swirling and wondrous and heady but also contained and protective and isolated by design, living in this world you’ve built for yourself. You control it to a point while fearing what’s outside, the unpredictability of the future and the unknown of what’s waiting for you around the bend. 

Wrapup

Overall, there’s a story in the album themes. Starting with a declaration of independence and naming mistakes and ending with the denial of wrongness, suggesting your own. From John’s comments, we know he got that part. In between a conditional: if you choose wrong, love is long. Throughout, the main theme is strong, finding your own way and building a new life to push forward, which makes the cover less of a joke and more of an apt metaphor for a precisely crafted album. The pronouns look fairly consistent too, which is a big surprise to me: you are sending hearts around the bend, but she waits for me. There’s double meanings galore with possible sexual taunts as hidden daggers. But, above all, there is the repeated need for love that’s in alignment amidst confusion and miscommunication.

Will my lover love me still? (3 Legs)

Bring the love that you feel for me in line with the love I see (Eat At Home)

Do you love me like you know you ought to do? (Long-Haired Woman)

The trouble with any shared language is what may get lost from the communicator to the listener. If you get 9 out of 10 things but the 10th thing was important for understanding the other 9, the risk of misunderstanding is still huge. So I’m left wondering whether John listened to the album enough in those first 9 days to hear these lines before recording HDYS. He may have regretted venting his anger in more obvious public daggers than Paul’s more hidden ones the more he listened. By September, he knows the album well enough to sing an exact match on the spot.

Undoubtedly, John knew just where to hit because he knew Paul’s weaknesses. He shows that by dragging it into the public sphere. If Paul’s messages are directed at John but subtle or hidden, John’s messages are blatant as neon lights about Paul to the world. There’s an unevenness there that makes us uneasy.

By focusing on John brandishing the dagger so obviously in one song, it’s easy to miss the hidden daggers in Ram along the gems. A concealed dagger can do the same damage. But the overall theme of needing a constant unwavering love is one they ultimately shared, signalling a place where they could find common ground once the anger cleared.