#truly i have grown

[orionshounds]

he cares so much about them, but he has never known how to show it

and now, it’s too late.

[lilithofpenandbook]

Something about Snape, 31-38, with pure black hair, not a single sign of white, despite that being the age most people start going grey

Something about how he had the full dark hair of youth and died like that

Something about how he never truly grew up like he should have

Something about how he was always stuck there in the past, stuck as that Snape boy from Spinner's End, stuck as Snivellus the boy who the Marauders hated for just existing

Something about how he died there in the same place he nearly died as a boy

Something about how he died in that place, bloodied and wounded, raven black hair, no difference between him and his boyhood self

Something about how that black hair was perhaps a sign that he was still living in the past, that a piece of him was eternally frozen at 21, at 16, at 15, he died a man yet he wasn't one, he wasn't a boy but not quite a man

Something about how his portrait among all the other heads of Hogwarts is the only one whose hair is fully dark, whose face isn't lined with age.

Next to them, he is a boy. Perhaps he always was.

[idontmindifuforgetme]

sorry if this is a weird question, but i was wondering if you knew respectful words in arabic when talking to older women? ive been talking with Palestinian women in Gaza, and it always feels wrong or rude to call them by first name esp since im young. maybe its just the east asian in me but was curious if theres any cultural respect norm that i should know here since its hard to find online

OHH this is tough bc the Iraqi in me grew up referring to older women by “khala” or “ama” which is literally just the Arabic word for aunt …….. and most times it goes well but sometimes women take offense to it bc they’re like I’m NOT that old lmao I love Arab women

[markscherz]

In which my not-yet-two-year-old son catches a gecko for the first time, and I barely keep it together.

[sysig]

How much of me is me? (Patreon)

[kickedin17]

There's something about blurryface (album) that's kind of like. Sticky. In the way that your skin is sticky when it's summer and it's past midnight and you have the window open to try to sleep but it's still too warm. Or, sticky, in the way that your hands are clammy when it's drop dead winter and you're driving around someone else's suburb, looking down the weird little leftover alleys between houses and wondering if something's going to be standing there looking back at you. And you are profoundly lonely. And you walk to a gas station, it's september maybe, and everything smells like spilled gasoline and stale cigarette smoke and there's brightly colored trash in all the gutters and all the neon signs glare off the asphalt, and when you go into the convenience store the single employee looks at you like maybe there's something weird about you, but you don't know what it is. Too quiet, maybe. Something wrong with your face. You don't smile enough. You don't want to be smiled at. It's dark all the time. But it's also springtime and the sky is pink and everything feels fleshy and delicate and rabbit-esque (tiny little heartbeats bursting everywhere), and you pick the first dandelion you see growing through the sidewalk cracks and it gets sticky milk all over your fingers. And you are profoundly lonely. You're pretending things would be better if you lived in a city where it rained more often and you could feel the hum of passing train tracks under your feet, but the truth is you're going to be lonely everywhere you go because there's this sticky ugly hollowness in you that you can't wash off no matter how hard you scrub. And maybe it would be better if you drove back home and closed the window and never left your house again and let all the lightbulbs die because something about the dark hurts less. You're running from something. What is it? Why can't you ever quite catch your breath? Why are you so sure this all has to end badly? You grew up but haven't yet learned how to grow out of anything. It's dark all the time here. Your face isn't the right one but there are no other faces. Your skin is sticky and you can't sleep. You are profoundly lonely.

[jerreeeeeee]

okay so i was going to post a poll on peoples' interpretations of taako & sazed's relationship but i went and looked back at the transcript of the chalice episode and i can't even post a poll because i just can't think of enough options that would actually be supported by the text?

its very very clearly a predatory apprenticeship where taako is getting free labor from sazed in exchange for teaching him, and then sazed begins to feel entitled to an equal share, at which point taako shuts him down and speaks to him in actually a pretty cruel way.

taako 'hired' sazed to be a driver and assistant and "general roadie" and i think it's perfectly fine for taako to not want him to be performing as an equal partner, but also, he was clearly taken advantage of. like sazed's proposition is an equal split of both the work and the "glory" and presumably the profit, which is a fair suggestion, but also fair for taako to turn down. but also taako was exploiting sazed's adoration in order to not pay him for his work.

i don't think that equal partnership was something taako ever even let on could be a possibility, he's pretty clear in the conversation he has with sazed that it's not something he's interested in and he "doesn't wanna keep having this conversation." its definitely something sazed really wants, but i don't think it was ever promised to him, it seems like something he's thought of that he's bringing to taako, who immediately shuts it down.

and as unfair as paying for a lot of work with cooking lessons is, it seems like that's what sazed agreed to, and it's also worth acknowledging that even though this is an arrangement i would consider unfair within my own cultural context, it could be considered completely normal and fair in faerun, like similar to a blacksmith's apprentice or something

so i guess the only questions are what sazed agreed to and why, and whether or not taako actually liked him or was just mean to him all the time. idk its all very interesting on its own let alone when compared to taako's later relationships with angus & ren, but not really open to as much interpretation as i’d thought

[cementcornfield]

Did you see the clip of Joe yesterday?

Is it a clip now? Oh lord....was it funny at least?

It was the first time he ever used the F word in a conference.

He cursed? Y'all lying...I be trying to get him to curse, he don't curse when I'm talking to him...

[esther-sinclair]

[id: character cards for the PCs of Fantasy High: Junior Year. They are all in the style of multimedia collages, with the actor and character names. The first is for Siobhan Thompson as Adaine Abernant, showing a drawing of the smiling elven Adaine from the torso up, along with an image of a sword with an eye on the hilt, a spherical Boggy the Froggy with a pennant reading "ESF," and a sketch of Jawbone, the smiling werewolf guidance counsellor.

The second is for Lou Wilson as Fabian Seacaster, showing a drawing of the half-elf Fabian dancing with a long sheet wrapped around a separate image of his sword. There are Hoot Growl owlbear stickers, a drawing of his father labelled "Pa-Pa", and a couple pieces of paper with the words 'toxic masculinity' scratched out. The background has dance step diagrams.

The third is for Ally Beardsley as Kristen Applebees, a human whose head and flexing arms are drawn on three separate paper cutouts. There is a crossed out sun, as well as a crossed out "yes?" and painted corn in the corner next to a curved staff. Off to the side is a labelled drawing of the deity Cassandra with flowing hair.

The fourth is for Brian Murphy as Riz Gukgak, a goblin who is sketched from the shoulders up and surrounded by a large conspiracy board. There are drawings of Kalina, the corn cuties, Daybreak, and Goldenhoard, as well as a number of notes with the words "night yorb" written on them.

The fifth is for Emily Axford as Fig Faeth, a tiefling who is sketched from the torso up next to the anarchy A. There are a number of sketches on graph paper including a bust of Gilear, a spattery drawing of her guitar, a spiked collar, and her skateboard. There are a number of phrases as well including "Burn towns, get money" and "burn it up."

The sixth is for Zac Oyama as Gorgug Thistlespring, showing the half-orc hefting a large axe over his shoulder while wearing a hoodie and headphones. A large paper reading "are you my dad?" has the answers "yes" and "no" both circled, and there are doodles of a skull and a rose in the background.

The seventh is a drawing of all six of them together, looking forward with various expressions of shock and horror over a boarder of skulls /end id]

[thewhizzyhead]

ya know, what made epic the musical such a joy for me personally is seeing it actually develop throughout its 4-5 year long history and I don't just mean like from the ground up and everything. I mean it in a way as someone who immediately clocked Jorge Rivera-Herrans as a fellow playwright heavily inspired by Lin Manuel Miranda's style - which fucking meant of course most of the early publicized drafts of epic were raps because of course they are (this is not meant to be a slight because like I totally get him)!

But like actually seeing Jorge apply the lessons in LMM's writing into his own original style that is befitting to the story he wants to tell - and not only that, he literally took his audience along with him on his journey with every tried-and-tested demo and audition and everything, and the actual pre-production and production process of writing an album is something we don't usually get at all, especially in something as extensive as a musical concept album!

Like what really had EPIC make it's mark on the internet and on musical theatre (especially INDIE MT) is that it was a literal Odyssey of sorts - the creation of this entire fucking thing was a journey from beginning to end and we were all invited to witness it from behind the scenes while also having many artists among fans be a part in its creation one way or another, while also observing how Jay had his own artistic development throughout - from someone whose epic was quite obviously heavily stylized after Hamilton, into an artist whose style he can call truly his own.

I have so much more to say on how and why epic became such an iconic piece of work and perhaps being the first MT work in 2020 to truly define the decade, but all in all let's just say I'm glad to have witnessed the growth of an artist - and I'm excited to see what art this will inspire in turn.

[elexuscal]

i think it's interesting which tropes and concepts catch on more in different fandoms.

like a big deciding factor is just the genre of the original story. a piece of historical fiction gets a bunch of fanfics based on historical fiction tropes. a superhero movie series gets a bunch of buck-wild superhero tropes.

as a clear example of this trend, the Murderbot Diaries is a pastiche, deconstruction, and reconstruction of a lot of science fiction across a lot of genres, but it's specifically a love letter to adventure-of-the-week style serials like Star Trek and Star Gate. so while there are plenty of more low key fanfics with POV swaps, missing scenes, realistic explorations of post-canon, etc, there's also a LOT of playing around with things like "body swaps", "mind control virus", "time travel", "mirror universes", etc. They're normal, they're mundane.

Meanwhile I bring a selection of those tropes to the Temeraire series, which aside from placing some dragons in the Napoleonic wars, is relatively grounded historical fiction, and they stick out like a sore thumb.

But okay. That's straightforward. Popular fanfic tropes mirror the genre of the original work.

But there are exceptions. it's the exceptions that fascinate me.

there's that corollary of 'fandom adds anything missing from the original work'. that's why you'll end up with deep explorations of incredibly shallow characters; of very sexually explicit works for PG cartoons; dark fic like Fallout: Equestria in MLP:Friendship is Magic.

you've also got the stock AUs. you know, the ones that show up in pretty much any fandom, regardless of the original genre. Coffeshop AU. Daemon AU. Magical School/Hogwarts AU. Vampire AU. Librarian AU. the fun of these is specifically that they are different from the text, so that makes sense.

but funnier than either of those, i think, is:

'One writer or group of writer friends wrote a particularly buck wild premise but they did it REALLY well and other people started doing their own takes on it so now this fandom inexplicably has an outsized number of fics with this incredibly specific premise'.

[robynostornwyn]

Roevember 15: Pride

HOW DARE YOU!

The path to ruin? Do you have any idea what your children have accomplished? How many lives they have saved? So much changed for the better!

All the while never losing hope, never giving up, never wavering in their ideals despite the pain and hardships faced.

They should be their father's greatest pride and joy. They certainly are mine.

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Well, at least Fukuzawa got his wish granted, I guess.... he's finally inside Fukuchi <3

[theresa-of-liechtenstein]

god, i’m so lovesick / what have you done to me?

[art--harridan]

[Image description: A digital painting of Jimmy Cooper from the film Quadrophenia. He's at the centre of the piece. His hands are clasped together and his face - which is looking to the side, past the audience - is resting upon them slightly. He hunched into himself, hands pulled closed and his green parka jacket dwarfing him, as if he's drowning in it. His mouth his set and his eyes are squinted as his eyebrows begin to pull together. He seems tired, and his hair is messed up. Jimmy's skin uses warmer colours - although it primarily uses yellows and beiges - while his jacket is mostly colder blues and greens. His hair is comprised of colder tones too, with mostly blues and purples, with some greens are browns. The background is a light blue, with scratchy concentric circles drawn around Jimmy using a slightly darker blue.]

Inktober - Day 13 (Horizon)

Film - Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam, 1979)

[distinguishedstudentfishalien]

In light of what is about to happen, I would just like to send a very heartfelt

JESUSCHRISTWHATISWRONGWITHYOU,YOUCOWARDS

To all of you, so called liberals, who decided not to vote.

Your cowardice spoke volumes.

"Oh, I could not possibly vote for Harris, what about Palestine"

Trump will be worse for Gaza, guaranteed.

"Harris does not support trans people"

Trump will be worse for LGBTQ rights, guaranteed.

"Democrats did not make abortion into law"

Trump is ALREADY worse for women's reproductive rights.

You decided to show how disappointed you are with the Democratic party by letting the Republicans win? Then you chose to condemn people with your inaction.

"How could the good people of X conflict/genocide/tragedy let that happen??"

Like this. Exactly like this.