#so take it with a grain of salt i guess

[sakasakiii]

not really a modern au but more like a weird future timeline thing where beach hermit maglor Hibernates™ all through the 2nd and 3rd ages & misses the last boats to Valinor.... thus resulting in him skulking about history until he ends up living among modern day humans haha?? the kicker is that he one day finds an abandoned baby thats all-too-suspiciously like a certain dead brother and becomes a single dad-younger brother-adopted guardian person...

i wrote a few pages of this back in 2022 but never really thought abt it further after i started posting less frequently hahaha.... heres just some feel good domestic sketches of this AU bc i miss drawing modern clothes 🤭 i have sooo many thoughts about it that i couldnt fit into these doodles !! its quite a lot of yapping so feel free to skip past the cut haha

assorted au thoughts:

i planned for maglor to eventually find all 6 of his brothers one by one through the power of Accidental Child Acquisition ✨ example: he'd spot a kid lurking around some woods near his home and eventually realise said wild child living amongst stray dogs is a bit too similar to celegorm

i just couldnt fit in the time to draw that this round... maybe next time!

though he's raising reincarnated-Maedhros, i think it makes more sense for him to give him a modern name and not explicitly call him Nelyo/Maitimo/Russandol just bc he'd not want to get his own hopes up or shove said identity onto the kid

(the occasional 'hey Nelyo' does slip out by accident from time to time however)

i think as Mae-the-kid grows up he will in time start to remember bits and pieces of his original identity? with the nicer familial things (like valinor, his brothers, feanor and nerdanel) first, and then the darker things (kinslayings, angband, war) once he's grown up that Maglor will struggle explaining or even helping him through

i promise this is a wholesome au 😭

side characters include a high-strung but good guy policeman named Officer Borden who's very suspicious of Maglor bc of all the random kids he keeps adopting.... and his younger brother Farren, who happens to be Maglor's scholarly coworker

as well as Maglor's next door neighbour Morgan, a witch-woman married to some guy named Hugh... she's got 3 kids who visit from time to time but from what Maglor's heard, the oldest son is followed by misfortune and has supposedly never met his youngest sister...?

credit to Ted Nasmith and Cartoon Network for some assets used in the doodles :D

[applestorms]

on another note. it genuinely kinda surprises me how many people interpret ivan to be the type of person to Repress and Deny his feelings when, from all the evidence we actually have, he actually seems to be quite open about it?

he does do the dumb stare and watch from afar thing that till does with mizi, yeah, but even there i don’t know if i would necessarily interpret that as ivan like. pushing his feelings away. compare the difference between how till and ivan are framed in these two shots:

in till's, we are pushed way farther back, seeing his full face and a good deal of his body as he slouches back. the colors are bright, fitting in with most of the happier mizisua angst memories, and you can read till's expression pretty clearly, even with his face beaten up. it's cute and mostly innocent, the kind of thing that makes you want to gently push him out from behind the wall to watch him stutter and get all embarrassed but reach out and play with his friends.

in ivan's... jesus. i mean, he looks like a freak (affectionate). you can't read his expression, despite the fact that we are zoomed in much more closely, only really seeing his eye as the placement of his hand covers his mouth. there is very little body language to convey the same type of sweet, childhood Yearning that till has in his staring shot. instead, for ivan, it all comes down to the Eye, how intently he stares as he watches till and mizi. it almost doesn't even feel like he wants to join in at that moment, or not yet, like watching alone is enough to feed the starvation.

don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of Yearning and Angst in that boy-- round 3 alone is enough to demonstrate that. but what i think people sometimes forget to account for is the fact that ivan acts like that specifically because he has already been rejected.

up until [whenever this moment happens in the timeline] ivan seemingly has absolutely no qualms about getting all up close and personal with till. we see this in plenty of the round 6 flashbacks:

he is plenty comfortable getting all up in till's personal space, whether it be to beat him up or just exist near him.

i also like how in this shot (below) we can see him specifically stand up and move seats, just so that he can bother till during lunch and have his little vampire weirdo moment (aww).

ivan's behavior only really shifts after till has already rejected him-- which, i'd also like to note, seems to genuinely catch ivan off guard. perhaps he genuinely didn't even consider the possibility that till would ever push him away?? i guess it's hard to know the specifics of what he was feeling or thinking in that exact moment, but at the very least this speaks to the ease with which they existed around each other previously.

thus: ivan doesn't begin with the belief that till could never love him. he only starts to doubt whether or not his feelings are requited after he has already been rejected, after he pushed too hard and too quick.

after the failed meteor shower date, his affections become a lot more subtle-- sneaking around to take care of till when he needs it, but only when his eyes are closed. the love and obsession and watchfulness is all still there, but he takes more care to hide it better now. until... well, y'know.

he lets the selfishness win. :]

[hoofpeet]

can u do a faygo flavors tierlist now....

Ohhh fuckk Michigan moment incoming

-Creme soda (tha best)

-Rock & Rye (Also tha best)

-Red pop

-Black cherry

-root beer faygo

-Grapefruit

-Cotton candy

-Ginger ale

-Peach melon

-firework

-candy apple

-can't remember any other ones

[slowdrippingnoise]

i like rose actually hes full of Concepts. i like how leon could easily remind him of peony and of himself (personality, talented champion / older brother, beloved golden child) and i like how bede could also remind him of them/what his remark about seeing himself in bede could mean if taken as truth (ignored child, desperate to prove his worth / uncompromising confidence, needs to feel in control, perfectionistic) so he gives them both important roles to keep them around. very normal very well adjusted good job man.

swsh should have had 500 more lines of major npc dialogue. also leon and marnie should have talked about the whole being a symbolic king/princess thing. or she could talk to hop about it and he could talk about how he thinks leon feels about it which could be interesting also. even more economic fuckery talk i know its a sports thing but leon's Sponsor Cape drives me a little nuts. catch him between his own hopes/the needs of the league/rose's ideas specifically. he's been champion since he was like 10 right. something like that. im going back in time sneaking into the swsh writers room and taping up a big poster of N Harmonia. how soon we forget Boy King Prime. also pokespe was right rose should just be Objectively Correct about the impending energy crisis, his problem is that he tries to solve everything by himself by manipulating everyone around him, and is cool with putting the whole region in danger if he thinks it will Solve The Problem. his problem isnt being pro-nuclear power his problem is he thinks like a king. ideal swsh is anti-monarchy as well as anti-monopoly it would make more sense.

[indestinatus]

it's interesting and downright sad sometimes when your creativity wave doesn't match the interaction wave of the fandom you know you can't and won't leave but still wish the excitement of others matched yours

[inkykeiji]

bnha manga spoilers!!!!!

EEEEEEEEE I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!

his hair!!!!!!!!!!!!! his fucking HAIR!!!!!!!!! i just AAAAH i cannot get over it because !!!!! that is exactly how i picture touya-nii’s hair to look 🥹🥹🥹 just down/undone n fluffy n shaggy n soft <333

anyway i am sickly in love with him, i’m not surprised to see what he actually looks like after the war, but the fact that he’s still got his eyes makes me think that his blue irises must be so stark and vivid and just pop against the rest of his injured body—which makes me both swoon and sad, because goddamn you’d recognize those eyes anywhere, the very moment your gaze meets his…but enji still didn’t, not even when he first came face to face with them, not until they were thrust in his face and screaming at him ._.

[revenantghost]

The fact that I've heard second-hand from convention attendees that Orange has said that Knives and Vash share the same basic body model. And yet. And yet. For some reason they stole his ass. Why

[minyard-05]

Where do you get motivation to write?

can i say spite

honestly though, i've been doing it too long by now not to. i'm ALWAYS writing or working on something, i'm always thinking about something, so i guess my motivation comes a lot from the fact that i kind of always need a creative outlet or i'll lose my shit. i don't write on a regular basis, but i'll scribble things down and plan things out just as i'm living and that'll turn into me writing paragraphs, then chapters. when i post a chapter of golden that's because i hit some streak where i managed to finish the thing in a day, edit for 20 minutes and post. that's just how i work

if you want advice to motivate yourself through writing, take it back down to its bare essentials. planning out a heist scene that's getting too complex? go back to the 3 original points: what's the aim, who's doing it, how much time do they have. build everything else around that

second point is you just HAVE to let it get a little weird and confusing at times. it's not going to be clean and polished for a while but if you get the vibes down, the right words can happen later. one of my scenes for a current wip was entirely planned around 1 line of dialogue and then me typing [OTHER STUFF] [KABOOM] [HE SAYS SOMETHING COOL] etc etc. if it's weird, maybe you'll end up liking the weird. if it's not, maybe you'll find the perfect way to change it later. who knows. just write whatever and see what happens

point three: FUCK THEM RULES. seriously, 90% of what you've seen on writing help blogs and internet sites is maybe useless and probably bullshit. if you write best in the form of notes in your pocket that you don't discover for weeks and forget what they're about but find a way to plug them into something else? then that's how you work. believe me, i tried nanowrimo, i tried writing routines and exercises and all kinds of shit that i thought would make me better and what made me better was constantly reopening my notes app and typing any old shit into it. i have a 66 page document entitled "bullshit" and it's literally where i keep all my bullshit

TLDR: writing should be fun before it's anything else. if it's not fun, stop doing it, back up, take a walk, and come back. write for yourself and the 1 friend who loves hearing about your wip, make as many playlists as you want for whatever you want, and don't be afraid to write shitty stuff.

[thebaffledcaptain]

actually part of what bothers me so much about this fandomification of historical figures is that it feels so disingenuous. if you love a person… you treat them with all the respect with which you would treat another human being, because that’s what they are. the same thing goes for historical figures—they are not any less human for having been dead 250 years. I don’t know. I just feel like if you really do care about these people then you don’t engage with them and their histories by blorboifying them, and if that’s the only way you can engage with them… well, then i’d take a step back to assess whether you can really call that history.

[revvethasmythh]

An idle thought, really, but I think it's interesting to see fandom latch on the metaphorical interpretation of things like Laudna's relationship with Delilah as a metaphor for addiction or Imogen's psychic powers as a metaphor for either chronic pain or queerness, but there's much less attachment to or discussion of the characters who explicitly, canonically dealt with exactly those things. By which I mean Scanlan's substance abuse, Veth's alcoholism, and even Ashton's chronic pain (which feels like it was discussed much more before it was confirmed canon, and seems to be brought up mostly just as ship fodder these days). I suppose one could argue the devotion to the metaphorical interpretations lies in the fact that it's an interpretation of canon as opposed to being explicitly so, meaning there's more wiggle room to project a personal interpretation onto it. Explicit canon is more concrete, less malleable to the individual viewer. Still, if we're going to talk about addiction now in a metaphorical sense via Laudna, it leads me to wonder if we will see further discussion of the characters who explicitly dealt with addiction (Veth and Scanlan), as opposed to Laudna's purported allegorical version of it

[thetomorrowshow]

scars

empires superpowers au masterlist (not up to date)

i have no clue where this idea came from but here *hands you a tattooed jimmy*

this takes place about 8 months after then end of ‘poisoned rats’.

cw: past abuse, mentions of needles, scars

~

“Look at that one,” Jimmy points at the screen; Scott pauses in his scrolling. “It’s a poppy. You love poppies.”

“. . . I do,” Scott says, glancing at Jimmy quickly before resuming the scroll.

“That one’s a flag, but it could be a pride flag. That’s why I saved it. The birds are a bit cheesy, but I thought I’d include them anyway.”

Scott doesn’t say anything, just keeps scrolling through the document. He knew Jimmy had been researching something, but . . . he hadn’t been expecting this.

Before him, on Jimmy’s laptop, is a three-page document that is a collage of tattoos.

Some are better than others—there’s a celtic knot that looks pretty bad, and Jimmy’s right about the birds being cheesy, but the poppy is understated and delicate, and a cute cartoon cat makes him smile.

That’s all well and good, but the problem is: Scott has no clue why Jimmy is showing him tattoos.

Jimmy points at a bundle of stars, saying something about how it reminded him of Scott, then at a feather, then a ladder, which he explains could be combined with the stars. He quickly passes over an abstract canary, hands twitching and tripping over his words, to point out an intricate subway car, then a tiny soccer ball.

Scott interrupts right as Jimmy starts to explain an iceberg tattoo.

“Jimmy, I—this is great, but I don’t think I understand. Are you wanting me to get a tattoo?”

Jimmy blinks, laughs nervously. “I—Scott, these are—these are cover-ups. For scars.”

Oh.

Suddenly, there’s a lump in Scott’s throat.

“I—a tattoo is a big decision,” Scott manages to say around the lump, his eyes catching on a long scar down Jimmy’s left bicep. “It’s something you can’t change. Are you sure?”

Jimmy levels an exasperated look at him. “For one thing, I’m an adult. I know it’s a big decision, you don’t have to remind me. And I promise I’ve thought about this. I shouldn’t have to tell you that I have.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Scott starts to amend, but Jimmy forges on.

“It’s my body,” he says. “It’s mine, and I can have the freedom to do what I want with it, because I’m an adult and it belongs to me. And when you—when you asked if I was sure, it felt like you were treating me like a kid, or like I don’t own my body. And it felt bad.”

Shame curls in his stomach. Jimmy’s right, he shouldn’t have responded like that. It’s perfectly normal for people to get tattoos, and for their partners to support them in it. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes again. “I didn’t think before speaking. I said something my parents would’ve said, and I should have considered what you just told me.”

Jimmy smiles, leans his head against Scott’s shoulder. “It’s fine. I was showing you because I wanted your opinion, and it’s all right if you don’t like the idea of a tattoo. But I would’ve liked for you to say that outright if that’s true, instead of telling me things I already knew.”

“No, I think it’s a great idea,” Scott hurries to amend. He pauses, taking a moment to get his thoughts in order. They’re working on having more open conversations, so that they don’t have repeat events of Scott’s Nightmare Situation of Last Month, as they’ve dubbed it. “I think a lot of tattoos are good,” he says eventually, “but some suck. So I’m happy you’re asking my opinion, because I don’t know if I’d be able to look my boyfriend in the eyes if he got a skull surrounded in roses on his bicep.”

That gets a laugh out of Jimmy. “Don’t think yours is the only opinion I’m getting,” he teases. “I know better than to trust a man who dyed his hair red all through college.”

“It looked good!”

They look at tattoos for a little while, Scott immediately vetoing the trio of birds and a guitar. Together, they separate the pages into ‘no’ ‘maybe’ and ‘yes’ images, dragging the little Darth Vader holding a lightsaber (a scar being the lightsaber) into ‘maybe’ and the celtic knot into ‘no’ and so on, until about half of the tattoos have been sorted.

And if they get distracted halfway through and end up making out right there on the couch? Well, they can always finish it later.

-

Three weeks later, Jimmy exits the tattoo parlor with the long, thin scar on his left bicep covered by a poppy, red and irritated from the procedure. Scott had been with him the whole time, holding his hand. They’d had to call for a break halfway through, but it had overall gone very well, and Jimmy had gotten into the passenger seat with a huge grin on his face.

“I thought I would be scared of the needle, but it wasn’t even that bad!” Jimmy says excitedly, twisting his arm around to check out the plastic-wrapped tattoo. “Did you hear when she said I was really good at staying still, especially for my first time? I’m going to get a good grade in tattoos, which is both normal to want and possible to achieve.”

Scott laughs out loud at the meme reference, resolving not to think about why it is that Jimmy’s so good at not moving while needles are stuck into him.

“Do you like it?” Scott asks instead, adjusting the rearview mirror before shifting the car into gear.

Jimmy doesn’t answer for a long moment. When Scott glances over at him, he’s let his arm fall, staring straight ahead, chewing thoughtfully on his lip.

“Yeah,” he decides eventually. “I really do. Now when I look at it in the mirror, I can be reminded of you instead of them. And . . . I can make choices with my body. That feels really good.”

“I can imagine.”

Jimmy twists his arm around again, peering at what little of the tattoo can be seen through the plastic. “I like it,” he says, quieter. “Do you like it?”

“It was my top choice, Jimmy,” Scott reminds him. “And it looks cute on you. Much better than that fish would.”

Jimmy snorts. “You know what, since it was Lizzie’s idea, I’ll tell her I’ll only get it if she gets it too.”

“Please—if you get fish, get a different one,” begs Scott. “It was huge, it had that horrible ‘gone fishing’ sign—get something cute, not something that screams fifty-year-old midlife crisis.”

That gets a laugh out of his boyfriend, and a little tension that had been in Scott’s body since before the appointment finally dissipates, allowing his shoulders to ease and his fingers to loosen their grip on the wheel.

“I’ve been watching videos on word cover-ups, so I think I might get one of those,” Jimmy says when they’re almost home. “I’m . . . I think it would help, even though I can still trace the letters. But I’d like to try scar treatment first, so I don’t think I’m gonna get another tattoo any time soon.”

“And here I was thinking my boyfriend was about to get all inked up and awesome,” Scott teases.

“And something for words would have to be really big, and there’s not much I want that’s good for that,” Jimmy continues. He glances at Scott quickly, then turns his gaze out the window. “That’s life, I guess.”

Scott thinks that’s the end of the conversation. He’s happy leaving it there, with vague plans and ideas in mind to experiment with.

But later that evening, at home, as Jimmy washes dishes and Scott dries them, Jimmy blurts out, “Would I be wrong for wanting a canary tattoo?”

Scott pauses. “Um. No?”

Jimmy sighs. “See, it’s the only one that I think I would want that’s big enough and colorful enough to cover any words. But I don’t know that I could be okay with having it cover up one of those words, because of . . . connotations. But also. . . .” he sighs again, sets down his dishcloth.

“Scott, being the Canary was the only freedom I had, as awful as it was,” Jimmy explains, and it’s a credit to how far he’s come that Jimmy’s voice doesn’t even shake. “I didn’t love it, but I could go outside. I could literally fly. And I looked pretty cool, honestly. So if I got another tattoo, I think it would be a canary, but . . . I’m afraid that’ll cause more harm than good, with my mental health and all.”

“I . . . don’t know,” Scott says honestly, sliding a plate into place in the cupboard. “I’m not in your head. And it’s not my body. But you don’t have to decide today. You don’t have to decide any time soon. You can talk about it with other people, and with Nora. And we can start looking into scar treatment, if you think you’re ready for that.”

Jimmy picks up the cloth again, runs it under the water. “I don’t know,” he says eventually, voice unreadable. His face has set back into that guarded look, the one that Scott is now so familiar with. “Maybe.”

Whatever Jimmy’s unspoken other concerns are (and Scott knows that they exist, he can tell in the tenseness of his stance), Jimmy abandons that topic of conversation. He doesn’t bring up tattoos again for weeks.

But every so often, Scott catches him admiring the poppy, and he can’t help but feel a bubble of happiness.

Jimmy finally has a good reason to look in a mirror.

[evilhasnever]

I am on record disliking "centrist" LXC jokes, because they have been disproven by canon analysis already in better essays than I can manage right now, but I also don't buy "I can fix him" jokes!

Rather than "I can fix him" syndrome, LXC's attitude (towards everyone: his brother! his friends! his uncle!) reads to me as "I want to do good and make the best of our circumstances (within my power)". That means, for example, encouraging Wangji to make friends but still following sect rules when it comes to punishment. It means supporting his brilliant friend's ambition and making sure his angry friend doesn't kill him first.

None of those things include fixing, because I don't think he is under any illusion that Clarity will fix NMJ - he'd have to change his way of thinking, first, and LXC canonically has given up on this or never even entertained the thought (as shownfor example when he does not argue further in front of NMJ's mulish responses about JGY's abuse in Jinlintai, or when he has to concede to NMJ and other sect leaders clamoring for the Wen slaughter).

As for JGY? He does not need fixing, and LXC is the first to recognize that. His goals are worthy and his methods, well... are often the only ones available to him. So what he needs from LXC is just support and understanding, and tbh JGY gives back as much and more than he gets (as shown in canon with the rebuilding of CR, being his confidant, etc.) So LXC does not try to change him, because he believes in the man he is now and in his overarching goals being in line with the greater good.

Basically, LXC does not try to change JGY because he believes him to be right, and he does not try to change NMJ because he knows he won't listen. So I don't get where this headcanon of LXC as the "I can fix him" man comes from when he is just a decent guy who helps the people he cares about, supports his little brother's unwise decisions and protects him from repercussions, provides palliative musical therapy to his friend who is bound to die regardless, and is emotionally present for the man he loves even when he cannot do anything else but offer him a handkerchief in times of struggle.

Basically, "I can fix him" implies a naivete and a rejection of the reality of their circumstances that is in fact not in line with Lan Xichen's canonical diplomatic skills and emotional intelligence.

[transmascutena]

okay am i the only one who has never quite understood why everyone's always saying that the characters in utena look older than they are? like idk i guess they don't necessarily look 14 to me either, but that's more because they don't look any particular age, because of how it's stylized. i don't look at them and think that, idk, long legs are a trait of a 16 year old not a 14 year old, i just think "those sure look like shoujo proportions"

[clarabowmp3]

I feel like Taylor hanging with the nfl crowd has really questioned everything I thought I knew about her as a person. The people she is hanging out with just don’t have the values I thought were important to her. And I get maybe Travis is super famous in the us, but she can do better. He’s a total meathead (and ugly af)

actuallyyy tho like as far as possible i try to give her/him the benefit of the doubt but as time passes more and more embarrassing things come out abt him/his circle/that damn podcast (was it jason kelce or Patrick mahomes that gave that terrible graduation speech? and also one of them, I think jason, apparently isn't a very good father. idk how taylor feels abt this but if I were her i'd be embarrassed to be in any way associated with people like them but ok...)

and yea ever since the whole matty healy thing, I think she is, to a certain degree, a bit selfish/cavalier about issues that don't directly affect her, which leads me to think maybe those values/issues she talked abt in miss Americana were never all that important to her in the first place

[lovelikeafuneral]

what do you mean the focus of guillermo del toro’s frankenstein isn’t on the relationship between victor frankenstein and the creature 🫥

[queenheritageposts]

chat i have a question because it’s been bugging me for years