#take it with the grainiest of salts

[leslieseveride]

if there's more than one officer down then that means one of them has to be hurt worse than the other, and if lucy is acting as a t.o. for the day she has a responsibility to protect her boot (not to mention she's just a genuinely selfless person), so the officers that are down have to be lucy and celina, and because lucy feels like she's in charge of celina (and more importantly because their friends) she is going to shield celina from taking whatever dangerous blow is headed their way, and either tim witnesses the whole thing unfold or he's in close proximity to the scene and is first to find them. i have this all figured out.

[userparamore]

the 7more rumors for next year… don’t play with me

[quackle]

You should post your predictions for next season 😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁

placement predictions under the cut. also! warning for leaked spoilers from ep 1 with the first implied elimination:

ok i'm just gonna paste these from my notes so bear with me lol

that... sure is a list! i also have slight explanations/predictions below:

[elshells]

So it's almost two in the morning, and I was on the phone with my sister because she's nine hours ahead of me and I wasn't asleep yet. And she just drops the knowledge bomb on me that the Muffin Man was allegedly a real person? And that he may have been a serial killer?

Naturally, I had to do some research, and if I have to go to sleep with this cursed information, then so do you.

Now, I haven't fact checked any of this 'research', and I'm not fully convinced that this is a reputable source, so take all of this with the grainiest of salts. But this article is so goddamn funny? I don't know if it's just exaggerated from my sleep deprivation, but I had whiplash several times while reading it.

Some article highlights for those who aren't bothered to read it through:

Allegedly, the Muffin Man was a serial killer in 16th-century London named Frederick Thomas Lynwood, a pastry chef who killed his 'rivals' and at least a dozen children.

He lured in his victims using a muffin on a string, and would beat them to death with a wooden spoon once they were close enough.

According to TikTok (no red flags there), the song was made to raise awareness to children and help them "identify his M.O. so that they can report [Lynwood] to the authorities." Which, uh... I feel like that's not exactly apropos in any time period.

Notable quotes near the end:

"According to this version of the Muffin Man story, Lynwood was never caught by the police. Instead, he died around 1612 after choking on a dumpling."

"Though there is a Drury Lane in London, there’s no evidence that it was once stalked by a murderous muffin seller named Frederick Thomas Lynwood. In fact, there’s nothing to suggest that Lynwood existed at all. And there’s certainly nothing to suggest that he was the city’s first known serial killer. That title belongs to Mary Ann Cotton, who killed 11 of her children and three of her husbands in order to collect insurance payments."

"Unlike the Muffin Man, though, Jack the Ripper was a very real serial killer who gruesomely murdered at least five women in Victorian England."

And, my personal favorite, from the closing paragraphs:

Thus, given the dubious provenance of the Muffin Man claims, the true story of the Muffin Man can be difficult to prove. Maybe he was simply a man who sold muffins and other pastries. But maybe his true identity and dark deeds have been lost to time. If so, then the answer to the question "Do you know the muffin man" is no. We can only speculate over whether or not he was an innocent food vendor — or a vicious serial killer.

So, yeah. Hope your day has been blessed. Please tell me this is actually funny enough for me to laughing and crying with real tears over here.

Also, if anyone actually has real info on this topic, please chime in!! Let me reiterate that there is no serious, academic studying going on here, just the product of my unhinged late-night rambling. I'd love to get the facts straight if any of this is embellished and maybe I'll have to do some more looking into this in the morning when I'm coherent.

[song-of-the-rune]

Rikkal food crimes

whole kitkats (free space)

picks apart a sandwich, top to bottom, when eating it. So, for example, he eats bread > tomato > lettuce > cheese > meat > bread. (goes for any "layered" food.)

chews popcorn kernels. on purpose.

eats raw potatoes like apples

eats ice out of a drink with a spoon before drinking it. will not ask for no ice.

will suck on rock salt like a gumball.

wheat salad. ("Whatever, it's basically cereal anyway.") with ranch. like all salads, he picks up pieces with his hands to eat them individually.

eats tamales corn husk and all. he peels off the corn husk but then eats it.

the thickest, grainiest smoothies you've ever had. like drinking unset concrete. take those premade health smoothies and make the texture worse somehow.

[dissonantdreamer]

Okay. Okay. This is gonna be long, rambling and a reeeeach of meta as I am wont to do. So most of the analysis and theory will be under the cut. Anyway, I was going through trailers for a reference for something entirely unrelated to this post and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone talk about this cinematic trailer, with out it being thought of as the bonfire Dina mentions in the record store. 

But what if, what if... it was actually not the bonfire scene Ellie is thinking of mid fight? Rather a completely different moment entirely: A moment they shared on the way to Seattle.

So there was always something that poked at the back of my head whenever I watch this trailer with the idea that it was a bonfire. I had several questions. Who taught the guy who made the bonfire how to make bonfires? It’s so tiny. Where are all the other people at this bonfire? It’d be more romantic to see people milling around behind them in the first shot of Ellie playing guitar only to have the world fade down to the two of them.

The outfits made sense in the context that the bonfire happened in late fall/winter, if it was their winter outfits they are in cold climate. Why then, was Ellie’s hair styled like her Seattle model in her winter outfit? 

(Ignoring ND just using that model because they use that model in a bunch of trailers)

There is one option we haven’t considered.

Our only source of light isn’t a bonfire, it’s a campfire.

This trailer has no in-game context but there are little clues everywhere. They are wearing the clothes they wore during patrol, obviously because it’s winter still, their warm outfits would have to be worn for a little while before reaching Seattle. Winter is not over and the areas they travel to are known for hard winter weather.  Ellie clearly has cut her hair, it’s not the right length for Jackson. So this must be somewhere between when they left and before they made it into Seattle.

We can’t see too far past them, but if you play the trailer and watch beyond the characters there are some flashes of firelight revealing a forest. Which, if it’s an illegal bonfire, does makes sense. The kids of Jackson wanting to drink without supervision might risk going outside the walls of Jackson. Dina implies it’s a regular occurrence when she talks about sneaking out to go sledding. However, it’s clearly just them and you can see snow falling so we’re still in a cold area.

At first I thought it was ash, but after the fighting cut scene snow is visibly falling just beyond the end of the light. The light source from the bottom corner, as someone who has been next to a bonfire or two, you get far more light and the flames would be much higher and brighter at that proximity. The first second we can see flames low to the ground. Which makes me believe this is a much more personal fire. The lighting fits more for an intimate campfire than it does for a bonfire (even if they are sitting farther back from it. Ellie’s journal has a few insights that lead me towards something she done around the time they found Tommy’s trail.

We’re seeing an Ellie who hasn’t been pushed to her brink yet, she’s hurting, yes.  At this point she is still the sweet kid we remember and she wants to do something nice for her girlfriend.

But what about the guitar, you ask? Why does she have it if it’s not the one Joel gave her? It kinda looks similar to the one Joel gave her. Lighting is too warm to tell if its a sunburst on the body of the guitar or if the body is catching firelight. I couldn’t get a good shot but there is a moment in the trailer her hand drops enough to tell for certain their is no moth inlay. My guess it’s a game asset similar to the one in the original trailer. If Ellie found a guitar in Seattle and took time out of her busy revenge schedule to woo her girl, you bet your ass she’s going to show Dina she loves her whenever she can.

People have pointed out Dina’s tears when this shot pans over to her. The perfect image of someone in love with her best friend unable to tell her because they are at a bonfire and certainly Jesse and Cat would not be okay if she jumped Ellie right now.  I’ve seen zero people point out, that Ellie. Ellie is fucking crying too:

She’s got tears in her eyes, the moment seems far more intense and intimate than two people with unspoken crushes.  If it’s her and Dina on the road looking after each other, fighting for each other, of course they would cry when they realized just how much they love and care for one another.

Naughty Dog uses color brilliantly and subtly as an extra layer to their storytelling. Playing the game we know Dina is portrayed through warmer colors, her clothing, her demeanor. Hell, the farm and dance scenes are the warmest in the game. Ellie on the other hand is portrayed through cooler colors, that grow colder as the game and her addiction to revenge progresses. (Though they warm up considerably when she is on the farm with Dina.)

This leads me to believe in this moment:

Ellie isn’t thinking of the bonfire. We haven’t seen that moment.  She’s thinking of the first time she really knew she loved Dina. Traveling the road with this spirited, fierce, girl who has followed her into unknown danger, supported her on her darker days, and fought beside her. All without question. She thinks of Dina, finds solace and strength in quietly shared moments with this warm, open, strong, badass that loves her and has her back. Her guilt makes her believe she is hard to love. Dina believes loving her is anything but. Knowing that she presses forward.

Now the rest of this trailer could be before reaching Nora because this looks similar to the area before her fight with the Seraphite brute in MERCI and these are her Seattle Day two clothes.

Ellie doesn’t believe in luck. She doesn’t believe everything happens for a reason. True faith is a concept foreign to her, she goes back and forth with it. Before her reckoning of self in the hospital and the aquarium. There is one thing Ellie believes, Dina. Believes Dina when she insists in her little ways that Ellie deserves love.

Joel told her, “No matter what, you keep finding something to fight for.”:

and she fucking did.

In conclusion:

TL:DR

Throwing the idea out into the world that ND misdirects the audience all the time and this trailer looks like a moment that happened on the road between Jackson and Seattle. And there is a whole bonfire scene we didn’t even get to see a glimpse of.

Thank you for coming to my T(lou2)EDTalk

[klanced]

Here's a question: If you were to estimate; what percentage of voltron fanfic would you say is good and why

Okay, disclaimer: I am the pickiest person on the planet with EXTREMELY specific tastes and probably too many opinions to live a healthy lifestyle so when I say that only like... 15% of Voltron fanfic is good, please take that with the grainiest of salt grains. I also don’t go on Ao3 that much, let alone Voltron Ao3, so this number/figure may not be entirely accurate.

Uhhhhh a quick rundown of my story tastes:

I don’t really care about Modern AUs or AUs in general. 

The occasional re-imagining of the VLD cast in a new setting can be interesting, but there’s so many of them nowadays that it’s all just kind of white noise to me.

My favorite kinds of fics are canon divergence AUs (UAs?) or stories set within canon. This can include rewrites, but honestly I just love stories where the writers take advantage of the MANY time skips in Voltron to send the team on some wacky adventure that always involves great world/universe building and team-bonding. That’s my shittt.

I actually love chat fic aus but they have to be OUTRAGEOUSLY good/funny like you have to NAIL the characterizations perfectly. Including the typing styles. This is essential, and it’s incredibly hard to do. At least according to my interpretation of the characters lmfaoooo

Ngl, I kind of hate soulmate AUs. 

It’s nice to imagine that you have a destined someone out there, but soulmate aus where you have matching birthmarks or the first words on your body or whatever? I really dislike that. 

It feels like a total jumping of the gun to me. You make eye-contact with someone and suddenly you see in color for the first time; okay??? They’re still a stranger to you? And now you have to fall in love. It takes away the need for relationship development, because you both already know how you’re supposed to end up. 

My one exception to this are Soulmate AUs where you have the words/a birthmark symbolizing the exact moment your soulmate realized they loved you. Because that’s what I want - stories where characters choose, and keep choosing to, love each other.

I also dislike fics that sideline other characters in favor of only focusing on the main couple. This is especially pertinent when it comes to a lot of Klance fics... Bro It’s Okay If Keith And Lance Have Other People In Their Lives. Bro We Are Teens.

i s2g if i have to read pidge serving as a relationship counselor to klance one more time............ bro she is like TEN . 

^ okay oversimplification but i hate fics where shiro/hunk/pidge/allura basically exist only to act as klance cheerleaders because like first of all obviously all the characters want the best for their friends but do they actually give a shit about the complicated and weird interpersonal dynamics of two differently emotionally constipated teen boys?? well yes, but also NO!!!!!!!!!!! they have their own shit to do! stop making them conveniently available so they can hold keith’s hand and guide him towards his own emotional realization!! LET THE BOY WORK FOR A CHANGE . HE NEEDS TO PAY RENT.

*ahem* anyway please don’t take the above as iron absolutes for the Good-Bad scale of Voltron fanfic. these are my PERSONAL general guidelines for fics i look for when i can be assed enough to browse ao3. also i’ve read fics that do involve the above tropes that i DID like, and i’ve also read fics that should’ve been right up my alley that i didn’t like simply because past a certain point, the plot and writing matters more than the initial premise of the fic.

[johnnysux]

yeah this was clearly made by someone who hates her purely because she's with rami so im taking this with the grainiest grain of salt

For those wondering this is what my post was referring to.

Update: this is the disgusting post. I’m taking it with a grain of salt because this account clearly has a strong mast dislike toward her and her being around Rami.