#seriously put a lot of thought into it

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

oh hey! i was reading a fic the other day where Wangji was once misspelled as Wangu. which leads me to: MDZS Pingu-style??? noot noot!

Do you think love can bloom on the sea ice?

[bookwyrminspiration]

this isn't a fully formed thought, but some of the ways people "critique" kotlc is starting to bother me a little. there's genuine critique and criticism, but some of them feel like...condescending almost? talking down on the series to show they're better/more mature than to like it. or that they're better than Shannon--I feel I see a lot of condescending to Shannon (WHAT is she doing, why would she do that, we can tell you don't plan, does she even know her own series?)

and i've definitely been guilty of it before and have my share of criticisms, but it does make me want to go like. okay but you do also like the series though, right? that's why we're all here--we're here by choice, much as I joke about being held hostage. there is an appreciation for the good parts and the community and everything else under all that, right? right??

[puppyeared]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[shakingparadigm]

It's a bit silly that found it unlikely for Luka and Till to be the final match back then. The more that I thought about it, the more it made sense. Sure, Luka and Ivan are incredibly similar in terms of personality and image, but in terms of circumstance Luka and Till are opposite sides of the same coin. I really couldn't envision a better matchup.

[jamietwat]

Jamie would 100% make Roy a dating app profile sometime after the Keeley rejecting both of them thing to try to help him move on and meet people when clearly he’s refusing to get back out there organically and he’d think he’s being so helpful and generous and the best wingman ever. He’d handpick what he considers the sexiest pictures he can find and put a bunch of shit Roy would never say thinking he’s being accurate and helpful and not even taking the clear opportunity to make a joke account to embarrass him or anything when he easily could have just made fun of him and chosen the worst pictures possible instead

And then he would be SO offended when it doesn’t go well when Roy finds out about it and is not properly appreciative at all

Roy thinks it’s Jamie’s account when he starts showing Roy girls like what do you think of her and asking him way too many questions when Roy has no interest in participating and has no idea why the fuck Jamie seems incapable of swiping without trying to get Roy’s opinions first. Meanwhile, Roy’s giving one word answers at first and then increasingly trying to brush him off when he doesn’t stop and then he’s just flat out like “Choose your own dates and leave me the fuck out of it” and Jamie’s like “Nah, this is your account. You should have a say” and instead of being grateful and appreciative and thanking Jamie for being oh so generous with his time and energy, Roy just scowls at him and growls out “You did not make a fucking Tinder profile for me” and Jamie just smirks and decides now is not the right moment yet to mention that he actually made him accounts on like three different apps because he wasn’t sure which Roy would like best

Roy barks at him to delete it and Jamie’s all whiny like “Come on, I spent a lot of time on these and you haven’t even considered it. Plus, even if you’re not ready to date someone yet, you’d still be less miserable to be around if you at least found someone to shag in the meantime”

And Roy’s like “Delete it. I don’t want a fucking Tinder profile.” And Jamie looks at him confused for a moment and then seems to have an epiphany as he goes “Oh, do you want a Grindr one instead? Hold on a second” and he flips to a different app and Roy’s too busy being baffled by the fact that Grindr is already on Jamie’s phone and that he’s having to sign out of his own account to try to make one for Roy to even stop him before he’s already trying to sign up for a new account and Roy goes “That’s not what I meant. I don’t want any dating app”

And Jamie pauses his typing and turns and looks at him so skeptically and so judgily and suddenly somehow Roy is trying to fight for his life trying to defend why he’s not looking for some random stranger to date or fuck around with

[official-lucifers-child]

new fanfic pet peeve is when people are writing children and clearly don’t know the difference between a 3-year-old, a 7-year-old, and a 13-year-old. this newborn isn’t saying words, this teenager is learning emotional intelligence, this child is literally not capable of comprehending that complex topic. please, it takes 2 minutes to look up “how should a 9-year-old be speaking” and “how developed is a 4-year-old’s mind”

you could even take it a half step further and look up the various stages of development in people. piaget, kohlberg, erikson, all those psychologists created these stages because we all followed such strict patterns when growing. you don’t need to go into the moral development of your oc’s child but at least make sure they’re speaking and acting like a child would at that age.

also when in doubt, for older children just go for more mature. it’s far better than treating teenagers like they don’t know what an emotion is lol

[wrongcaitlyn]

hey guys! so. i really really really hate to do this, but i've been thinking it over for the past few weeks and i've decided that i'm going to take a short hiatus from tyt. and by SHORT i mean that i will 100% no doubt be returning to this on the first sunday of january (jan 5), and will only be taking november and december off!!

reasons for this are quite a lot, both for the benefit of the dear reader verse and my personal life! just to briefly summarize:

college app's. i really need to prioritize these, and though i'll definitely be finished by early november, it will be taking up a lot of my time

arcane. this seems like a silly reason, but i'm an editor as well as a fic writer, and i just know that the arcane s2 release will consume my brain. i want to allow myself to fully enjoy the season release and not stress about also writing a fic so that i can edit to my heart's content :)

both of those are happening in november, but in december i will be having finals and will leave for a trip for two weeks!! as we all know (*cough* my summer vacation) i am not the best at balancing both writing and vacation, and again, i don't want to stress myself out too much on what is meant to be a vacation

other fics! i still have two unfinished fics, and i'd like to finally get those done instead of having them lingering over my head for another five months lmao

but the main reason is for the overall quality of dear reader and its upcoming one-shots!!! a whole lot of stuff is about to go down in the upcoming chapters, including several one-shots that detail other parts of the universe. according to my outline, in the next five chapters of tgol, i will also be posting 4-5 one-shots in the dear reader series (yes, two of those include the pollen lore!). i want to be able to do those stories justice, and the one-shots do tend to take a longer time to write than the tgol chapters just because i'm usually writing from new pov's and outlining a whole lot of extra plot (especially in those pollen one-shots - they're going into a completely different time period and i want to be able to confidently say i've put enough time and effort into them to be proud of them! i've been hyping the pollen lore up for quite a while now and i want to do them justice!!)

so yes. that's quite a lengthy explanation lmao but i'm justifying it to myself as well because of how much i adore tgol and don't ever want to accidentally abandon it <3 rest assured that i will be using the two months to hopefully get ahead of my outline and ensure a concrete posting schedule when i return! but for now, i will obvi still be active on here (as well as insta and tiktok, if you guys are interested in arcane content) to answer asks and ramble about tyt!!!

[possiblyawesometmblr]

What Hozier songs do you think would fit your characters?

OOOOOH what a QUESTION okay loving this

arisanna: butchered tongue. fun fact, i listened to this while drawing the memory of soraza holding baby ari and cried about it. this song really works for anyone from the aether, and that hurts me so much. something something losing your home in a truly irrepairable way and only having scraps to hold onto, and doing the best you can with those scraps.

sylph: to noise making (sing). very, very narrowly beat out damage gets done. there's a lot of unabashed joy in this song that i think fits sylph very well. they live for themselves and for happiness, and they have never cared what other people think of them. "you don't have to sing it nice, but honey sing it strong" feels very them to me.

owen: in the woods somewhere. it's about the vibes, dude. i can so clearly picture him having a nightmare that goes exactly like this.

rowan: de selby (part 2). this one might seem weird, but trust me on this. i've said before that yes, rowan is a bard, but she has no interest in being famous. she doesn't want to be known. also, not to give too much away, but she's been running from something for a long time, and the line "i wanna lose me" is particularly pointed for her.

mal: nobody's soldier. fuck the law. i think mal's second worst nightmare is having to answer to an authority other than herself. second worst, because we all know what the first is.

bonus speed round because i love hozier:

beckett (wwsmp): jackboot jump

rosie (six feet umber): jackie and wilson

[my-catsface]

When Minecraft first added horses, my brother and I dropped everything we were doing to play it.

We booted up the Xbox, opened a new world, and I waited diligently for his controller to pair for split screen. When it finally did, we set to work building the shittiest, ugliest, most lopsided stable ever. We didn’t add beds, because it wasn’t a house. It was a stable, we knew that. But we added stalls for the horses and an outside area, because of course, the horses should have sunlight.

When we found out they could jump over blocks and run faster than other horses, we set out to make the most elaborate obstacle course we could imagine. We raced against each other over and over again, using different horses and different rules until we were finally bored, hours later.

This post is going to be exactly what you’d expect. I am generally not a person who devotes lots of time to stuff like this. Other people have said better things about the quality of the Minecraft movie trailer (why is everyone backlit?), or how it doesn’t make sense (why are all those piglins normal in the overworld? Why are they even attacking?), and others have already shared their personal thoughts like I’m about to do.

But I have memories and experiences that belong to me, and I want to put them somewhere. I’m aware this won’t reach very far, it won’t change anyone’s mind, and it isn’t exactly full of revolutionary takes. But it’s mine, and I need to say it. And here seems as fine a place as any.

The only game my brother and I ever really played with each other was Minecraft. We’re about as different as you can imagine, with different interests and different ideas. But when we were both much much younger, we loved to play Minecraft together. Of course, that makes sense! Being young kids, we didn’t exactly have an allowance to spend, so our gaming options were in the hands of our parents. They didn’t agree on much, but each of them knew what Minecraft was. They knew it was safe, and they knew it was something we could share (IE: they didn’t have to buy twice), and so it was added to our collection.

And because we had no one else to play with but one another, and nothing else we could really play together, it was always Minecraft we turned to. Different as we were (to the point there are jests between us about being swapped for someone else at the hospital (my money’s on him)) we could find common ground on the same game. I liked to play creative and build houses, but he liked to mine and thought creative was cheating. To compromise, we turned keep inventory on and he would collect materials so I could build our house. We didn’t even know there was a wither. We didn’t even know there was an ender dragon. When we finally finished a house, the game was over for us.

But we would always come back to it. Always build a new house, maybe in the desert or underground. Always rush to our Xbox to play a new update until we were properly bored again.

Eventually, we learned there were worlds built FOR us. It started simple; we found a Christmas map with a giant tree and a massive workshop, and marveled at how beautiful the world was. But of course, there was already a giant house built, so what was there for us to do? We couldn’t built one here, it might ruin all the other houses. Ah, of course! We’ll just live in this one, we thought. So we mob proofed as much as we could, and explored a place we couldn’t even begin to comprehend was made in Minecraft of all places.

Eventually, when we explored it all, we wondered what to do again. We couldn’t just exit and start a new world, we’d just be going back to the exact same place. So we made a story.

He was supposed to be an elf. But he had a frog skin so he couldn’t be an elf. He had to be a winter frog. It made no sense, but it didn’t have to. I was supposed to protect all the “reindeer” because otherwise the winter frog (who we decided was very mischievous) would release them. Naturally, I, armed with a blaze rod (the only thing that could melt the winter frog), would search up and down the place as he would jealously hide his part of the screen, and when I found him, I would hit him. When he made it to the roof of our giant house, he would declare he had won, set off as much tnt as he could, and then we would have to load a new world to play it all again.

I look back on that story, and I think it’s stupid. I think it’s probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done, and as a self-acclaimed writer, I should be ashamed. I’m not. It’s stupid, and it’s childish, and I was a stupid child when I played it. But more importantly I was a stupid child having fun with my stupid brother in our stupid game. And we loved every minute of it. I’m not ashamed of it because it’s nostalgic, because it’s a memory of joy that I hold as close to my heart as I can.

Only a few years later, when my brother and I could finally play on separate systems, we discovered the ender dragon and the wither. Maybe we knew about them before, but we had never beaten any kind of boss before and we were under the impression that those sorts of things were much too hard for us.

So when my brother came to me with a radical idea to beat those bosses, I was doubtful and so… excited. What if we DID beat them? What if we beat a DRAGON? I was instantly in. He had a plan, but he wanted backup, and of course we were each other’s number one choice. Thick and thin. Still are, I suppose, but back then we didn’t realize we could stand up without always making sure the other wasn’t actively falling down.

He agreed we needed creative mode for this. He said it would be hard, but he knew what to do, so for the first time we should use creative mode to get all the items we would need. Nobody ever wants to work something up in their head and then have it all fail in the end, so we made sure it wouldn’t.

I manually enchanted our sets of armor, our diamond swords, our bows. I stacked our gear neatly away with as many “super gold apples” that could feasibly fit in a chest, and declared us ready. We each took our gear, and set off towards… the nether. We could get blaze rods from the inventory easily, we knew that, but we were excited to test out our new gear. We never had a reason to enchant before, so how exciting would it be to test everything out? I discovered my favorite enchantment in the entire game was fire aspect.

When we got our rods (and our pearls) we put them together and shot an eye of ender into the air. We diligently followed the trail we were making on foot (because that was just how you did these sorts of things), and when night fell we didn’t just sleep or skip it. We pulled out wool, made some honestly really ugly tents, and put our beds under those. When we woke up, we left our tents there and kept moving.

The thought was that anyone else who had this world after us would find the tents and be able to use them. We had a pretty rudimentary (and quite incorrect) idea of how Minecraft world seeds worked at the time.

Eventually, we got to the spot where all the eyes stopped. My brother dug down. I jumped in the hole he was digging, but he made it pretty clear that I had to stand in the corner of the space or he’d hit me with his enchanted pickaxe and not be sorry about it.

The fortress was a maze. It was dark and there were mobs everywhere and it looked like a glitch of a structure. But we never gave up. We knew what was waiting for us at the end (pun quite intended). When I found the library, I walked right through it and kept moving (for what use are books to a soon-to-be-dragonslayer), and when I found the portal, I called my brother’s name over the shittiest microphone the world had ever produced, and teleported him over.

He set to work on filling the portal, and I set to work on dealing with the annoying silverfish. A spawner destroyed and a gate created, we readied ourselves. We didn’t place beds down because we didn’t expect to lose, and we didn’t jump in right away, because we didn’t expect to win. Eventually, one of us worked up the nerve.

The end, as many of you know, is an odd place. It is light stone and it is dark skies. It is filled with pillars that aren’t buildings and there is an alter of a stone that cannot (ordinarily) be broken. We knew what the end looked like. We thought it was something new to be there.

I remember staring off into the distance. I remember mentioning how small the end was, considering we had treked at least twenty times its size in the nether and the overworld combined just to get there. I also remember how panicked my brother was at the realization there were endermen LITTERING the place that you were absolutely not allowed to look at.

After dealing with the endermen my brother looked at, we were finally ready for the real fight. We heard the dragon when we got there, we could see it fly in and out, we were very aware of its healthbar looming ominously at the top of the screen. But we knew the dragon had to wait, too.

We aimed, missed, then aimed again at countless pillars until we saw the satisfying explosion signal our first few victories in the war. We knew the ones in cages had to be handled differently, though. We had to march up there and take them out ourselves. The only issue? I forgot to pack blocks. We had stacks of golden apples and tons of junk picked up on the way, but we had thrown most of what we got away in the lava under the portal to clean our inventories.

So, mid fight, we mined. Tunneling underground to avoid the wrath of the dragon, we mined until we each had a stack of end stone (because that would surely be enough), and then climbed. Once we reached the top of an obsidian pillar, we hacked away at the iron bars until the floating core was exposed to us. Without any hesitation, we would strike at one. As end crystals do, it would explode, and then it would throw us off of our platform.

Seeing as neither of us were particularly good at water bucket clutches (at the time we weren’t even aware that had a name), we simply fell to the ground, and let our enchantments eat the damage. It felt powerful. The same blow and the same height that would easily kill us before were nothing to us now.

When all of the crystals were gone, we turned to the dragon. It had seemed almost passively disinterested in us as we struck at its crystals, but we were sure it would be mad once we took out the final one. Instead, I thought it was scared. It ran away constantly and never stayed in one place for too long. That made sense to me. That was good game design. Of course it was scared, there was no chance it could beat us. There were two of us, one of it, (hundreds of useless endermen minions) and no way back.

I don’t remember who got the final hit. I guess it didn’t matter. It’s not like there was an achievement to tell us with all of the creative we had slipped in and out of (but never for the final fight). What mattered was we had done it. We won. An achievement that’s so lackluster today it means almost nothing. But to two kids with terrible headsets and elementary school the next day, it was everything we had hoped for. The dragon went down easily. Not because the boss fight was easy, no, it went down easily because we were that skilled at it. It wasn’t a bad fight, it was exhilarating.

We looked up how to collect the egg. We knew you could do it, we just didn’t know how. My brother clicked on it a few times, and it teleported enough for us to realize we were doing it wrong. With the fight over, we agreed creative was fair game again. I dug a big underneath the egg as my brother supervised up top to make sure it wouldn’t teleport away if we didn’t both look at it. I placed a red stone torch two blocks underneath the egg, and then mined up.

It fell with grace. The moment it landed on the torch, it popped away and slid into my inventory. Excitedly, I flew up and dropped it to him, then pulled a NEW egg out of the creative inventory for me. One for him and one for me. We both got one, because we both did the fight. Not our fault the game only tried to give us one.

We jumped into the portal after. At the same time, just like how we entered the strange realm in the first place. That was my first experience with the ending story. The message from two strangers to me, the player. Me, who explored this world, sure, but countless other worlds like it. Me who knew all the crafting recipes by heart and knew rotten flesh would always give you hunger but raw chicken would only give it sometimes.

I love story games. I did then, and I do now. I love when something makes me feel some way, when something carves its place into me and establishes itself as important. I think Minecraft did that long before I experienced its “end,” but I think that was the moment I realized I loved this game. It felt like everything I had done meant something, every action culminated into where I was there and then. I also thought, when it concluded, that my brother—who preferred action and fighting to stories (yet another difference between us)—would have skipped the ending of the game for being cheesy.

He didn’t.

When my brother and I could buy (with permission) a world from the Minecraft store, we would have to agree on what it was. The first one we bought was the Greek mashup pack, because he loved the hydra skin and I loved the harpy one (it added WINGS, what wasn’t to love about wings in Minecraft?) and we both loved greek mythology. Not that we were well versed in it, of course. When we loaded that world up, we experienced that Christmas one all over again. Years on, and it was the same feeling. There was a beautiful new world for us to explore, there was beautiful MUSIC we had never heard before, and there were countless hidden secrets we could find.

But we eventually ran into the same problem. We couldn’t build a house, there were already houses here! We couldn’t fight the enderdragon, it would mean leaving this place behind and that would just be pointless. Besides, we had done that already.

So, eventually, we made another story.

I won’t go into detail about this one, but you can imagine it was about the same as before. We made up something dumb, and played our hearts away following it.

I am not a kid anymore. I am not easily blown away by the ocean monument or amazed that the moon changes form in game. I don’t laugh aloud when a villager “hrrs” or burst into tears when I lose all of my stuff in a cave.

I dont think the stories I made with my brother over Minecraft are anything important. But that’s not what my point is. None of this is really what my point is.

My stories weren’t good, but that doesn’t mean Minecraft can’t have a good story. In the early days of maps and pumpkin headed men and signs that told you where to go, there were countless wonderful stories. Hell, even now there are countless wonderful SMPs made by communities, and most of them are created for the express purpose of telling. A. Story.

And they’re beautiful. Some SMPs are only between friends (and perhaps they’re short lived sometimes), some SMPs are beloved by hundreds or thousands (or perhaps millions) of people.

Most SMPs inspire artists and animators and everything beyond and between to make things. Beautiful things, from the soul and the heart and the nostalgia of creating. They’re things made with love, for love. The Minecraft movie is made of money, for money.

The biggest argument FOR the Minecraft movie is that it’s meant for kids. I understand. I understand I am not its target audience, and if I am, then something has gone horribly wrong in the nostalgia bait department. But honestly? I don’t even think it’s marketed to kids. Kids arguably love a good story. I would know, I very much was one. I think it’s marketed to parents much like mine, who know the name Minecraft and know it’s safe and figure it’s a fun thing to take their kids to.

And I think that sucks. Because there could have been something better.

Minecraft is not a story game. It’s a sandbox. And the best part about a sandbox is that it can be anything you make of it—which means that, ironically enough, you can turn it into a story game. I think modders probably display that the best (the create mod would’ve blown my mind back then).

But that’s unrelated. The point is that Minecraft can be anything. But to make it into anything good, you have to really love it. You have to spend time developing what you want, be it your story, your resource pack, your mod, your challenge, your lovely world, your book(s), it doesn’t matter. You have to love whatever it is a lot, and you have to want to spend time on it to make it. Like I said before, the Minecraft movie was not made with love in mind. It was made with money there instead. I understand why. I understand every action that was taken for it, and I understand that it is not going to be a detective pikachu, a sonic, a Mario, or even a fnaf movie.

It’s just going to be another stereotypical “bad videogame” movie. And I think that’s a shame, because there could have been something beautiful there. There could have been something that makes someone sit in the theater with their brother and remember a horse race or a Christmas game or a valiant fight. There could have been something that reminded me a lot of when I had nothing to do but waste time with my favorite person in the world and build the ugliest house imaginable.

But there’s not. That’s okay. I understand. But I don’t want to see it. I love stories, and I love Minecraft, and I love the feeling of being a kid.

That movie will have none of that for me.

[foursaints]

thoughts on barty canonically crying for his father to save him while being arrested?

to me, whether or not the crying is “real” is one of the key moments of barty’s ambiguity in the text and i love that it’s never answered. barty’s ambiguity and the unresolved tension between the parts of him that are “true” and “pretend” is one of my favorite things about him (i think of the classical greek term, polytropos) and i wouldn’t rob him of that by trying to give an answer.  

i can definitely speculate but it's just such crucial scene in my opinion. under the cut i'll talk about the implications of both options. if i had to title a barty character thesis it would be the line from that passage: “and the boy continued to struggle” 

OPTION 1: it's fake

this was my gut reaction at first. faking innocent tears is his best move in that situation and we know him to be manipulative & a gifted actor. it would also have been an audacious and hilarious move given that anybody who even remotely knows him would know that he’s not a simpering little loyal sensitive son & serve as a final way to fuck over his dad— playing up the picture of the Son That He Should Have Been. it would also explain crouch sr. being like “Lmfao Take Your Lying Ass Immediately To Wizard Jail” 

OPTION 2: it's real 

however, i believe that it was real. i dont mean that he actually thought he was innocent or anything but i think the tears were real. in my interpretation we’re watching barty grapple with this farcical trial, knowing full well the outcome, and crying for his entire wasted life. to me, that’s more compelling.

 i try to keep in mind that barty doesn’t have a father in the traditional sense, he grew up under imperius with a disembodied Father-Voice in his head telling his body what to do— he doesn’t know him as an actual man. in barty’s experience, his father is more like an old testament God. so it’s fascinating that he was able to leave & rebel to the extent that he did under those circumstances. he continued to struggle. 

i love that he’s acknowledging himself in this moment. it’s a plea for help technically, but i tend to read it as more of a condemnation: “I’m your son!” 

this is the first time in years since leaving that he’s seeing his father again, this time in physical possession of his own body. but again he’s quite literally in chains. and now all that secret dictatorial control over him is in front of an audience. i see his crying as his elektra “filth teaches filth” moment– if I had to place more of my own emphasis on his words it would be “I didn’t do it— I’m YOUR son”. in this context, “Mother, I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me” resonates harder. 

i also cant talk about this scene without calling attention to this specific moment: 

the line “i didn’t know” feels so… out of place? and guttural? it almost doesn’t make sense in context (saying “I didn’t know” feels more like an excuse for guilt rather than a denial of it) and that incongruency renders it so… honest? and then it’s sandwiched in the middle of this confession that we KNOW is a lie but it hurts for some reason… he didn’t know it would turn out like this. but i think that deep down he did, and he hoped that it wouldn’t.

i think that barty thought he could leave, and he thought he could try and arrange himself into a semblance of his own person, and he thought he could have something of a life. but there was literally no other possible outcome for him— who just happened to be born misfitted to the circumstances he was raised in, and who struggled fruitlessly his entire life— and trying to leave was a naive schoolboy’s fantasy and his apology comes out in a naive schoolboy’s words. he didn’t know! 

and this is also why it's so awesome that he breaks out of jail AGAIN and kills that man lmfao. (cardi b voice) Murder scene, Barty made a mess / POP UP, GUESS WHO, BITCH?

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

Kuron as Minotaur, Lotor as Icarus, and Shiro as Ship of Theseus. Is this anything??

[bluebellhairpin]

Nothing gets me more interested in a show than someone telling me who they think my man would be.

[becauseplot]

i feel i should preface this with saying that this relationship analysis "takes place" before qcellbit's emotional exhaustion and motivation crash---

---but i have been having SUCH crazy thoughts abt the archivists (qcellbit n qphilza). guy who needs evidence of Everything 🤝 guy who takes pictures of and hoards Everything. two-cars-passing-each-other meme whenever cellbit (practically nocturnal at this point) makes a late-night run to the Ordo to grab some notes he left there and bumps into phil (trouble sleeping ever since the birdhouse incident) who's sitting in one of the evidence rooms organizing a new backpack of photos to hand over to cellbit.

"oh. hey phil." "hi mate."

their conversations and interactions center mostly around cellbit's investigations---the ones cellbit lets the public know about, anyway---and whatever new info phil managed to scoop up since the last time they saw each other. theories are exchanged, and photos are passed between them as easily as pleasantries. "how're you doing?" "oh, doin' alright, doin' alright. you?" "eh. busy, you know?"

they don't talk about much else.

see, they both understand secrets. intimately. things you did you would much rather leave behind you, if you can, or thoughts, worries, doubts you would much rather keep to yourself for fear of speaking them into existence. sealed lips; a tight lid. they look at each other and know they're only seeing what the other wants them to see, but that's okay. they get it. sometimes, it's just easier to focus on what is directly in front of you. what you can see, what you can touch; what you know is true, what you know is real.

what you can do.

so cellbit generates and bounces his theories off of phil, and phil is more than happy to be a sounding board. phil fills up a backpack with photographs, and cellbit is more than happy to take it off his hands. they focus on The Work, on the spiderweb of red string and loose ends and grainy pictures and scrawled notes pinned to the wall, madness-incarnate sprawled out before them. they trust each other's judgement, and they trust each other's skills, and they trust each other, and neither asks too many questions. they both appreciate it.

[edmunderson]

🎶and shake it till the pearls fall off🎶

it's my favorite day of the week again, @gloomiegalaxie 's femboy friday!!

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

wanna ask how you feel about the eridan bpd headcanon/theory(?? not sure what to call it!) you're so good at your character analysis and i'd love to see your outlook on it

Since I don't have a degree or any formal training in psychology, I feel deeply uncomfortable diagnosing characters. I've made an autism joke before but only because I'm on the spectrum. He's definitely traumatized and anxious, but I mean those as descriptors of his behavior rather than capital-D Diagnoses. I try to focus on those when I can - the cause and effect of cognition, self-image, and behavior - and those factors may very well match up with DSM criteria, but I try not to touch an actual diagnosis with a ten foot pole unless the author has explicitly stated that X character has Y condition.

[haliaiii]

Watched the mlb specials!!