#talking about whatever

[pancakedcats]

this endinf is actually ruining my life i hate every single ending where tsugino cries out to maeno after hes dead im gonna kms

[art-for-whatever]

Trollzart and Dante’s friendship song is ‘P.U.N.K girl’ by Heavenly (warning: long text post analyzing and relating lyrics to the two of them)

The first verses going with Trollzart describing Dante (“She is honest and kind, but in a way that people see/As telling lies and being mean/She has thousands of dreams, but what they are, I'll never know/I hope I figure in them, though”) as he reads the bs Dante sometimes puts up with in Trollstopia while living with his life ruining OCD

(COUGH COUGH race to the crest/the joy chord COUGH COUGH)

The second verse is Dante talking about Trollzart who usually is closed off aside from a ‘positive attitude’ (“She is hardened to hurt, her softness hidden from the world/But almost ready to unfurl/She tries so hard to change, but something always happens to/Persuade her, it's too hard to do”) mainly due to not really expressing his actual feelings to the other tribe leaders and not giving much info on himself too often

“She is honest and kind, but in a way that people see/As telling lies and being mean/She has thousands of dreams, but what they are, I'll never know/I hope I figure in them, though”— Trollzart talking about how Dante is sometimes struggling with his OCD and how literal he can be but still sees the Dante he’s always known, even if the other ambassadors/delegates can’t at times

“She is hardened to hurt, her softness hidden from the world/But almost ready to unfurl/She tries so hard to change, but something always happens to/Persuade her, it's too hard to do”— Dante talking about how Trollzart literally doesn’t share information on himself due to always being closed off as a kid ((read: his father basically teaching him early on to not give his opinion unless asked)) with Dante trying to help him sometimes since Trollzart has expressed to Dante that he does want to be in the other leaders conversations but feels like it would be weird/unnatural for him to do so, with him usually just staying quiet in the end

Especially with the pre-chorus..auug

“I don't care if they can't see/Just how great that girl can be/But I wish she'd find a way/To act well for just one day/I don't mind if they can't see/Just how much she means to me/I still know what I will say/If that girl comes my way”

For Trollzart talking about Dante: He’s never minded what others think of Dante since he’s been friends with him since they were 5 and had no one but each other—showing how much they mean to one another—but does hope that Dante could be ‘kinder’ (read: not be so blunt) when it comes to others

For Dante talking about Trollzart: He doesn’t can’t that the some of the other tribes see Trollzart as ‘boring’ or ‘plain’, he just sees his friend whose been able to ground him so many times. He does wish that the other can actually express his genuine feelings instead of either freezing up before he says them or sugar-coating them so they aren’t ‘harsh’

The actual chorus also applies

P is for the painful way she makes me feel some days

U is for Utopia, the other times with her

N is for the new wave dreams she had back in her teens

K is for the kid in her, my P.U.N.K. girl

This goes for both of them: The days they both do things that annoy/tick off the other. The times they express their actual feelings even in front of others. The past memories of them as teens in a ‘marching’ (dunno what the classical troll equivalent would be) band before Dante transitioned and they were just teens trying to survive (Trollzart dealing with personal issues and Dante single handily raising Forte) while balancing band. And finally them enjoying the simpler things in life that they couldn’t enjoy as teens—like Trollzart keeping small trinkets and Dante getting to chill out instead of keeping an eye on Forte (mostly)

I’m so unwell about their friendship…might make another post describing their childhood together and maybe a separate post about their parents (AKA Trollzart’s daddy issues and Dante’s mommy issues :p)

[agnarid]

Why do billionaires spend their money on useless stuff like private jets? Imagine how many cats you could have, or all the comics and video games. Smh.

[hell0mega]

people are drawing Steamboat Willie Mickey doing all this crazy shit and whatnot, but you could always do that. you can do that now, with current Mickey, just fine. it's fanart and it's legally protected. hell you could take Disney-drawn Mickey and put a caption about unions or whatever on it and it would still be protected under free speech and sometimes even parody law.

what is special about public domain is that you can SELL him. you could take a screenshot and sell it on a tshirt. you can use him to advertise your plumbing business. people have already uploaded and monetized the original film.

you could always have Mickey say what you want, but now you can profit off it.

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[fairsweetlonging]

truth serum / system reveal au where shen qingqiu gets hit with an uncloaking spell that reveals the system in the reflection of his eyes every time it pops up.

during one of his missions, in the treasure hoard of some dragon-like creature, he finds a golden, oval shaped hand mirror, its gaudy style more victorian based than anything (airplane you hack!), that doesn't seem to do anything when he looks into it. but when he does, it reveals the system's screen in his eyes.

he doesn't notice this, of course, because he can't see it, and the system, surprisingly, stays quiet.

the peak lords think he's cursed.

maybe mu qingfang is the first to notice, during the mandatory post mission check-up, when shen qingqiu is scrolling through his most recently accumulated points and mu qingfang can see the strange vividly-blue lines reflected in his pupils. it's gone when shen qingqiu blinks, like it was nothing but a trick of the light.

it comes out when yue qingyuan is visiting and, just as he's done laying out the plans for a new mission, shen qingqiu's eyes glaze over and a bright blue box takes over the whole of his iris. shen qingqiu goes quiet; the thing in his eyes moves, shifts, pulses for a second, like static worms crawling all over his pupils. then he blinks, and it's gone, and shen qingqiu accepts the mission that yue qingyuan was almost sure he would decline.

maybe there is an intervention, when the peak lords corner shen qingqiu at qian cao peak and try to figure out what's wrong, subjecting him to all kinds of treatments and curse-finding spells that turn up empty, they can't find anything.

of course, the silencing threat is still very much up and running. at first shen qingqiu was kind of confused by the whole ordeal, but when the peak lords start describing a "strange blue box", he realizes, with sickening suddenty, that they're describing the system. and he can't say anything.

this only makes everything worse, because their fellow peak lord now keeps evading every question and acts like he doesn't understand. liu qingge points right at his face and asks, "that blue box, what is it?" and shen qingqiu laughs nervously and starts talking about how bright the weather is and surely it's the sky and nothing to worry about!

even worse, during the intervention the system thought it was a good idea to start talking to him, so now even the peak lords who hadn't seen it and who might have been persuaded by light tricks and reflections, get a first row view that no, that definitely isn't a trick of the light.

they try to do the whole thing of "are you in danger, blink twice" but shen qingqiu can't even do that because it's still a direct admittance!

maybe eventually he starts saying vague confirmations that don't actually confirm anything, like "this master hears what you're saying", or maybe he goes with a classic "this master can neither confirm nor deny that." but the system starts warning him for that too and eventually he stops saying anything, which worries the others more.

luckily mu qingfang catches on that every time they ask a direct question about the box or shen qingqiu says anything vaguely confirming, it appears. it doesn't appear when they ask about curses or demons, so it must not see that as a threat.

for a little extra angst: maybe the peak lords keep pressuring him for answers, and at some point shen qingqiu gets fed up and snaps out something like, "why don't you understand that i'm not allowed to answer that!" the system counts this as a direct admittance, threatening it's existence. so it punishes. shen qingqiu has a qi deviation so bad it lasts two weeks and takes two people every day to cleanse his meridians. the system doesn't appear in that time. it doesn't appear for a long while after that, either. the peak lords stop asking, mainly because shen qingqiu will instantly leave the room if they do. they don't stop searching for a cure, though.

shang qinghua returns from a business trip and catches on the second someone mentions a blue box and forced silencing.

[its-your-mind]

[favroitecrime]

world war 3 jokes on twitter meanwhile none of them live in the region and none of them understand the severity of the situation. these next few hours will really determine whether or not we head into a regional war…

[science-lings]

my dad saw ao3 open on my computer and asked if that was like my writing club and just so you know that's what fanfic writers are now, we're all in the same writing club where we all write about the same media and show each other our little stories and that's kind of cool actually

[bastardiando]

posting across the targetverse here bc it did numbers on twitter

[owlbelly]

so. i understand where the sentiment "listening to an audiobook is the same thing as reading the book" is coming from - i mean, yes, the bottom line is you are taking in the same words in what is possibly a more accessible (or maybe just more enjoyable) format for you! and i'm 100% in agreement that "book snobs" who say "no you didn't really read it" if you listened to the audiobook are full of shit. ofc you should engage with stories in whatever way works for you, there is no moral or intellectual superiority to reading words off a page vs. listening to them

but it also is different? an audiobook is a performance. choices a narrator makes about line readings can drastically influence the meaning of the lines. even just different voices, accents, etc. - there are creative choices being made by the person delivering the words to you, and that affects your experience of the story in a different way than if you were making those choices in your own head. it might even change the way you visualize what's going on!

this isn't a bad thing it's just An Actual Thing & i think it's worth talking about. it rubs me the wrong way when people act like accommodations (and for many people audiobooks are an accommodation) always result in a completely identical experience, or even that they should, & if you suggest that people accessing media in different ways are having different experiences it's somehow ableist

anyway on rare occasions i really enjoy audiobooks but mostly they are much less accessible to me than words on a page (i need to be able to reread, flip back and forth, go at my own pace) & i also just really strongly prefer to encounter a text on my own before hearing someone else's performance of it, if possible! again i don't think it's "better" to read a physical book i just think it is a Distinct form of experiencing a story & acting like the two things are entirely the same is sort of doing a disservice to both

[art-for-whatever]

Another Trollzart headcanon :D

He gets seasonal depression around winter and summer, sometimes going gray if it gets severe.

It’s mostly due to the workload being Conductor but factors such as personal memories of his shitty shitty father having him do mini concerts since he was like 6 and some spiraling from being left alone for awhile with only paperwork

It got especially bad when Dante and Minuet were away in Trollstopia and it left Trollzart with not many people to celebrate (whatever the classical troll equivalent is to Christmas) aside from some staff

[agnarid]

Does everyone hate me

[akanemnon]

How to be an annoying little jerk 101

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference

[ashoss]

pierced jason: a saga

text under cut bc i feel like my handwriting is messy lol

in the batcave medbay

stephanie: i've only pierced ears before so you can't blame me if i fuck up, jason.

jason: its fine - can't be worse than an exploding building

bruce: jason, remember to take your piercings out before you go on patrol.

jason: fuck you, b! i have a helmet for a reason

bruce: what did i tell you jason?

jason: yeah, yeah. whatever.

arrow pointing to bruce: had the same thing happen to him when he was younger

arrows pointing to jason: had an earring ripped out. angry his dad was right