#this is just like my opinion man

[arwyd]

so much (for) stardust is literally the album of a generation. it perfectly encapsulates the widespread mindset among millennials & gen z post-Covid.

“the shell’s empty, there’s no point to any of this, it’s all just a, A random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes”

“I’d never go, I just want to be invited”

“we’re told we gotta get ahead, yeah, no matter what it takes / but there’s no way off the hamster wheel on this rat race”

but the album isn’t just nihilism, either. it’s perfectly summed up once more in The Pink Seashell, “so I take pleasure in the detail.”

“the view’s so pretty from the deck of a sinking ship.”

“feeling so good right now, til we crash and burn somehow”

“they don’t know how much they’ll miss, at least until you’re gone like this”

in this album fall out boy is saying “hey, it sucks. we know this, we hear you, we feel the same, but there are still things to enjoy, still love to make. the only purpose in your life is what you give it, and that’s okay.”

[love-me-like-a-reptile]

"This is the hottest new TikTok sound" and it's just a B-side piano ballad from a MySpace pop punk band in that period of the late 2000s where a lot of bands started turning indie rock, sped up 25%

[valentimmy]

sephiroth but this time he did an oopsie :(

[plastic-pluto]

pavitr prabhakar i love you. hobie brown i love you. gwen stacy i love you. miles morales i love you. peter b parker you're on thin fucking ice but i still love you.

[cryptidjeepers]

okay im not british and i admit my understanding of british politics is not great but i found out that david tennant's speech when he accepted the lgbt celebrity ally award made british politicans BIG mad. the way conservative transphobic politicans will weaponize any part of their identity to silence criticism agaisnt them is so disingenious and shitty.

THIS is what he said. okay

and this was the reaction of badenoch and sunak

literally weaponizing her identity as a woman and a woman of colour to distract from how dangerously transphobic she is. like what the fuck. anyways i just wanted to bring this up because it's something that terfs do constantly. especially to shut up trans woman and cis male allies. not to mention david tennant is a father of a non-binary child and i believe one of other kids is queer. he's not just being a performative ally, trans rights are important to him and his family. anyways fuck sunak fuck badenoch.

[relaxxattack]

dave strider will walk around calling himself the gayest gay man alive and everyone’s like ohhh but he loves women. and the thing is he does. but he’s gay about it. you understand.

[i-a-q]

Peter: So… if you were a sandwich, what kind of sandwich would you be?

Tony: *without hesitation* A clubhouse, obviously. And you?

Peter: I’d probably be a peanut butter and jelly.

Tony: Of course, you would.

[tsuchinokoroyale]

Oh no! I’m ass

[phantom-thieves-official]

can I say something controversial. I think by interpreting the Maruki reality stuff w Akechi as 'Joker's greatest wish was for Akechi to live bc they're in love!' is kind of a poor read of the text. Not because I don't ship them or whatever, my shipping opinions aren't relevant to this post. But because I think it overlooks a big part of Joker's actual character. He wanted Akechi to live because he saw an innocent person taken advantage of and discarded. He saw someone who needed help. You can even go further with this and say, okay, Akechi wasn't an innocent person - he killed people and tried to kill Joker himself. And what does that mean for Joker's character? It means he saw someone who had done terrible things - some of them to Joker, personally - and he still came away from Shido's palace with the understanding that while he did bad things, Akechi was a victim of Shido's, too. Good, or bad, or in between, that he still was someone in need of help. Joker wanted to help Akechi. He wanted to give Akechi a chance to make things right, and to show him that they didn't have to enemies - that Akechi didn't have to fight the Phantom Thieves, and he didn't have to be alone; that it's never too late to change course and be a better person and that Akechi's life didn't have to be one of hatred and isolation. He could atone for his crimes, still take down shido, and have a group of people to support him. After the terrible things Akechi did as Shido's lapdog, after he sold the thieves out and plotted to murder Joker. Joker still just wanted to help him. Joker saw that while Akechi was undoubtedly a criminal he was also a victim, and there was something in there worth trying to save. But you know what? He couldn't do it. Right as he seemed to be getting through to Akechi, he was killed by Shido's cognitive version.

And so when Maruki's reality brings Akechi back, it means imo that Joker feels guilty. Out of all the people he'd been able to help, Akechi was the one person he just couldn't save. It's not because they're in love, it's because Joker regrets how things worked out. He regrets that he didn't get through to Akechi sooner. He regrets failing a vulnerable and victimized person whom he feels he could have helped. Even if that person hated Joker. Even if that person had previously tried to kill Joker with his own hands. Joker's sense of justice is imo his biggest character trait, followed closely by his massive savior complex. Of course he wanted Akechi to live. Because in Joker's eyes, despite what he'd done to hurt Joker, Akechi was still a victim. He was still someone Joker should have been able to save.

This all comes to a head when Joker chooses to deny Maruki's reality. He's choosing to live with the guilt; to accept he can't save everyone no matter how hard he tries. He's moving beyond the savior complex and recognizing that sometimes, some people are really just unreachable, or don't want to be helped. It's a moment not only of characterization, but of character growth for him.

anyway that's my hot take. by viewing the third semester through a shipping lens exclusively you lose a huge point of characterization for Joker bc you overlook the nuances of Joker's desire to help everyone all the time and the guilt he feels about failing to help Akechi. You misconstrue Joker's desire to help in the first place as coming from a place of love rather than a place of selflessness and justice; a place of 'doing what's right simply because it is the right thing to do.' You miss out on the subtle ways it shows Joker's not biased by hatred or contempt, how despite the heinous things Akechi has done, and despite the harm done to him directly at Akechi's hand, Joker is still capable of seeing that Akechi is a victim, too - which in itself shows that Joker's idea of justice isn't motivated by personal relationships, grudges, or biases.

[teaboot]

I've always found the idea of using lofty titles like Duke and Deo for baby names hilarious, primarily due to the beautiful image of little baby Warlord smashing mashed peas up his nose at the dinner table, but am I funny enough as an unimpressive 5'3" dumpster-diving transmasc to name myself something as cringingly, lavishly grandiose as "King"?

we shall see

[flockoff]

In a another world, Peak of Combat has a plot that involves Time Travel Shenanigans which puts V in one of the Funniest Situations.

[milkbreadtoast]

idk how i want to draw him yet and not ready to make a srs attempt but here's a bad kdj phone doodle lol🚶🏻

[violetwolfraven]

Wait wait wait remember that post about how Team Starkid/the Lang brothers are going to be comparable to Shakespeare 500 years from now and it was mostly played for laughs like yeah lol you’ll need a paragraph of footnotes to explain the zefron poster but like

I don’t think that’s actually far off from how Starkid’s place in theatre history might play out and here’s why. Just hear me out

Why is Shakespeare so popular today when he definitely wasn’t the only playwright from that era? When he’s not even the only playwright from that era from England that we have surviving works from?

Two main reasons:

1) Shakespeare’s work is (relatively) universally relatable. The characters do things that are so fundamentally human. They make jokes at their friends’ expense. They complain about being awkward in front of their crush. They have daddy issues. The plot lines of the plays aren’t too complicated. The dick jokes land whether you’re watching in 1611 or 2024, and they probably still will in 2637. Shakespeare’s works are timeless because he didn’t try to outsmart his audience. He wrote about things everyone could relate to rather than trying too hard to peacock his intellect in front of the nobility. This is not true of every playwright.

2) Shakespeare was really popular right around the time England started colonizing everything in sight. Copies of his work got shipped all around the world, translated into dozens of languages, performed probably thousands of times. Setting aside the moral implications of this, the important thing to note is that Shakespeare was about the most easily accessible English playwright during a time of rapid, intense globalization.

Meanwhile, Starkid:

1) Invests hard in meaningful, relatable character arcs instead of spectacle and expensive sets or costumes. Also, lowbrow, immature humor and dick jokes that make A Very Potter Sequel funny and enjoyable regardless of if you’ve ever seen any other Harry Potter media in your life.

2) Posts professional recordings of their musicals to YouTube FOR FREE, making their shows about the easiest, best quality musical theatre you can get pretty much anywhere in the world, regardless of if your area has an active theatre scene. Proshots from other companies are rare and usually not free. Bootlegs are all well and good, but even if the video quality is alright (and that’s a big if) the audio is usually garbage. Starkid has been posting the best quality free recordings they can afford since 2009, shortly after the birth of social media, another time of rapid, intense globalization.

In short, I’m not saying that theatre historians in 500 years won’t remember any our current Broadway faves, but I am saying that in my opinion, Team Starkid is probably going to be more accessible for the general public. If you’re a 26th century English teacher trying to teach your class about narrative structure in 21st century theatre, what are you going to show your students? A bootleg of Hadestown with blurry video and garbage audio? Or the professional recording of Twisted, parts of which they will probably even enjoy, because even long after no one remembers Disney’s Aladdin anymore, your class of 26th century 16-year-olds are still going to laugh at “No One Remembers Achmed.”

[gallusrostromegalus]

For the AEIWAM ask thing: 42, What is Zaraki Kenpachi's TED Talk?

I cannot believe I made this exact comic after binging Smarty Pants on dropout last month (Discussion of NSFW Topic Below The Cut)

The key difference here is that AEIWAM Zaraki had A LOT of jobs while wandering around the Rukongai to feed himself and Yachiru and eventually he became a bouncer at the grandest, most expensive and only fully unionized Bathhouse/Bordello in the Rukongai.

Since he had no interest in fighting the whores but does like company, he would hang about and talk with the Working Ladies (and Gentlemen and Those Who Know Better) and rather charmed them. He was a single father who regularly took care of very scary problems for them and had a bottomless supply of Tales of Grand Adventure, starring him in the role of clown. This eventually lead to him being allowed to work as an in-house fluffer. The Madame, a Lady Tsubaki, took rather a liking to him and took him on as a sort of Manegerial Protege. One thing Kept leading to another and by 1900 he was both head of security at Tsubaki House and also the single most expensive whore in the Rukongai.

He is not remotely ashamed of this. He's outright proud of it.

He liked the work (the sex and fights were great, but the fact that Yachiru got personal tutoring as part of his compensation was what made the job worth sticking around for, in his opinion), and if asked he will talk about it for HOURS and not shut up unless you actually fight him.

So when Yamamoto proposed that the captains work together to share knowledge and thus everyone had to make a Ye Olde Powerpoint presentation on their topic of expertise, Zaraki very cunningly chose Sex AND Violence. He'd been wanting to throw down with another captain and in an effort to get him to STOP he got to fight THREE.

Gotei-13 TEDTalk was discontinued after that. (Zaraki with his hair down inspired by the look he had right after he became captain)

[5hrignold]

i meant to put this together days ago but here’s pim gifs from the new episode let’s all pretend it still just came out lalalala

[aroaceleovaldez]

Nico and Percy's dynamic through the series is eternally funny to me, because it's just. like.

Percy's having a constant mental struggle between his fatal flaw of loyalty with a promise he made to Bianca to protect Nico, versus his Big 3 kid desire to maim other Big 3 kids / Poseidon descendant urge to totally maim Nico specifically. He hates Nico so so much. He thinks Nico's annoying and weird at best, and creepy/sketchy when he's older. The only positive thoughts Percy has towards Nico are "He's Bianca's brother and Bianca was my friend and I owe her/He's Hazel's brother and Hazel is my friend and would kill me if I was mean to him," "He's a powerful asset and useful ally (if questionable)," and "He's kinda pathetic and I feel maybe a little bad about it." Percy has multiple occasions throughout the series where he strongly considers - and on one occasionally actually goes through with - throttling Nico.

Meanwhile, Nico is following around Percy like a lost puppy. He explicitly can never bring himself to even dislike anything about Percy no matter how hard he tries. He has a whole bit in BoO where he's mentally going "UGH he's so stupid BUT IT'S ENDEARING HOW DARE HE." He's totally smitten. He's making deals with his dad for Percy. He's making convoluted plans to help Percy stand a chance against Kronos. During the entirety of BoTL it's like he's playing tsundere - "I'm helping NOT PERCY SPECIFICALLY with this quest! Me helping Percy would be SILLY because I DEFINITELY HATE HIM." Then he proceeds to show up to Percy's birthday party to basically ask him on a weird date and spend the entire next book scrambling around trying to help him or protect him or impress him. And Percy could not give less of a shit.

Just. That dynamic is so funny to me. Percy is the founder of the Nico Protection Club in that he's the one they're all protecting Nico from and meanwhile Nico is throwing himself at Percy to the point where the literal god of gay love calls him out on it.