#you sly dog!

[lynnedwardswrites]

Happy STS! Hope you've had a great week ❤️ If your WIP had a candle or fragrance what would it smell like?

Hi Opal! Thanks for such an interesting ask!

I've been trying really hard to answer this question with a quintessentially Mormon smell, from the endless number of meeting houses and temples and other church-owned space I've been through, but doing so has made me realize what a deeply sterile environment Mormon churches are. No candles, no incense; even our anointed oils (on the rare occasion they are used) are just olive or another, even more neutral, oil. Our sacraments are white bread and water. The church grounds are parking lot and boxbush and perfectly manicured grass. Baptisms, I guess, are done in chlorinated pools, but besides the literal cut of bleach, worship is scentless.

Which honestly makes sense, I guess. Mormonism prides itself on being practical and "unworldly." And why waste money on creating a fully sensory, immersive, pleasurable experience when your entire worship cycle relies on isolating and emotion-starving your congregation until they start branching out into "bad" stuff like drinking coffee or watching rated-R movies or noticing the people they find sexually attractive, shaming them for doing those things, and then convincing them that the way to stop feeling ashamed is to pay the church a bunch of money and isolate and emotion-starve themselves some more. 🤦🏽 Maybe it's no surprise that the strongest scent-associations I have with Mormonism are the chain of MLM companies and their product that worshippers engage with outside of services. First Scentsy then DoTerra and YoungLiving, (dont worry, capitalism will let you feel something) and the olfactory onslaught of "vanillasugarchristmas" homes that mirror every woman's vanillasugarchristmas smile. Mormons are so scent-starved they go home and douse themselves in essential oils.

But I digress.

It occurs to me that while vanilla-chlorine Mormonism taints every aspect of the setting, maybe I ought to base the candle on the rebellion against Mormonism that pervades every aspect of the story. The smell of black tea with lemon in it, the smell of coffee with hazelnut creamer, the smell of the suntan lotion you're putting on your lower back and thighs because you're daring to wear a crop top and shorts this summer, the smell of incense you burn at a pagan altar while exploring your new lease on spirituality, the smells of beer and bourbon and gin all muddling as you taste your friends' drinks at the bar, the smell of isopropyl as the tech cleans your ear for a taboo second piercing, the smell of water-based marker as the tattoo artists sketches flow lines on your skin, the smell of cherry chapstick when you kiss a girl and you like it, the smell of sweat and sex as you learn how to let yourself love being in your own skin.

Much better, much richer, and much more pleasant.

[foldingfittedsheets]

My mundane super power is that I love blue heelers so much that every time I see them I ask to pet them and their owners always warn me they’re not overly friendly which I know because my boy Sly was also very aloof but every time the dog feels my infinite love and always greets me warmly.

[sadclowncentral]

IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER - speech written by Bill Saffire for the Apollo XI space flight, in the event the astronauts were stranded on the Moon and could not return to Earth. (source)

Transcript under the cut

To : H. R. Halderman

From: Bill Safire

July 18, 1969

IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice. These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding. They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown. In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to fees as one; in their sacrifice, they bin more tightly the brotherhood of man. In ancient day, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood. Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts. For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

PRIOR TO THE PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT:

The President should telephone each of the widows-to-be.

AFTER THE PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT, AT THE POINT WHEN NASA ENDS COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE MEN:

A clergyman should adopt the same procedure as a burial at sea, commending their souls to "the deepest of the deep" concluding with the Lord's Prayer.

[polisena-art]

I’m jumping in to submit a request! I love it when people draw one of the caballeros cooking. I think they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Personally I feel like Panchito is a dream in the kitchen. Part of me wants to make a joke about Donald burning water but he can probably at least make a good fucking sandwich. Zé…. Man I have no idea. He is a mystery to me.

I ended up rambling about headcanons OTL but! I’d love to see you draw a cab of your choice cooking or something like that!

OK SO,, Zé has been shown cooking in his comics and apparently he's pretty decent at it (his nephews do like his food) but, as everything in those comics, it all depends if it's gonna be relevant to the plot.

José might not be a chef but I'm sure he can make the Brazilian classics like rice and beans, strogonoff (the Brazilian remix), pasta with sausages, farofa de ovo, canja, bake a cake AND OF COURSE he can work a grill for churrasquinho of whatever mystery meat he can put his hands on. He doesn't do much cooking because it's "ARGH... work", but for his nephews and when it comes to showing his friends what Rio's cuisine is like, he will do it. Also, I think if he's feeling truly inspired and has people helping him, he can make a traditional feijoada, just... don't criticize it. like, EVER.

Traditional Feijoada is supposed to be rich, it's not supposed to be spicy/hot!

[xerorao]

Keep your fangs sharp, and your cash hidden 🐺🪙

[pomefioredove]

i personally think vil can be shipped with SO many characters (including, but limited to, leona, azul, and idia) just because of his perception of beauty. you’d think with how obsessed he is with his looks he’d be vain and cruel and think beauty is the conventionally attractive features society agreed upon. but he isn’t!! and not a lot of people know that. (my take! :) vil finds beauty not in the conventionally attractive features many others do, he finds beauty in doing the best you absolutely can. in taking care of yourself. and so many of the twst characters do not do that. it’s why yuu is long overdue for an overblot 😭 the characters i listed earlier. (my take!! again! :) leona is super unmotivated to take care of himself and shows a lot of signs of depression!! he stopped giving anything any amount of effort until the spelldrive tournament (which obviously went… not so well) because he felt hopeless and basically?? worthless,, both azul and idia have a low self esteem, i don’t know too much about them (on. book 3… im just a pro listener to my friend’s lore ramblings) so i won’t give my take yet! yuu…….. yuu is…!!!! tries their best of course but. it’s kind of hard to. take care of yourself AND a cat AND all of your friends(?) AND your literal principal at the same time. and also try to have that principal not hang the fact of ‘you’ being poor and having no recourses over your head every time you try and say no when he asks you to help him out with something ridiculous that should not be your problem at all. maybe that was a little specific but. yuu’s been through it is what im getting at. and they are hardly appreciated enough as they should be. now. VIL. VIL would appreciate yuu to the absolute best of his ability. and more. in this essay i will

ANON.

ENOUGHHHHHH GGGGRRGRGR I WAS LITERALLY THINKING ABOIT THIS EARLIER

yuu is so overlooked as a character, I know they're supposed to be a vessel to project onto but that's a whole Guy to me. a whole Person. like there's so many traits that canon gives them. and one of them is "motherly". whether that's WILLING or not depends on the player, but everyone in CANON!!! makes constant comments about how grim is like yuu's little baby and how yuu essentially takes emotional care of so many students. in the recent event ace said something like "there's crowley's official beast tamer" in reference to how yuu just. takes care of these chaotic little things.

vil is literally the only other character who plays a similar role in the story.

... cause chars like trey and lilia are almost there, but distinctly different in their roles, while vil is THE mother.

one of the things that elevates vilyuu to otp levels for me is that vil is one of the only characters in game that treats yuu with respect, and as an equal. I like to think that he kind of admires yuu, and almost looks up to them in a way, for all they're capable of. yuu having not overblotted or melted down (yet) is probably something vil finds fascinating (and kinda worrying), because he knows them well and he KNOWS how much shit they go through. I'd imagine he's almost envious of the self control they have

and I think they're the closest out of everyone in the overblot gang. yes that includes malleus idc. literally everyone in this game is so fucking mean to yuu but vil isn't.

he canonically has such a huge soft spot for the prefect, platonic or romantic or whatever, that's just. so different from what he shows others. to me

[zeefaring]

so basically. there was a labyrinth. built for the express purpose of sealing a monstrous abomination born of a sacrilegious union. a labyrinth that needed tributes to be sacrificed to it. ladies, gents and delicious friends: we got minos'd.

[detectiveneve]

see the thing about Astarion to me is I don't actually think he has a clue who he actually is beneath all of the everything he's got going on. he's got impulses, he's got drive, a will to live, he's got desires and amusements and cravings, but an actual selfhood?? no. there's a blue error screen where the person of him should be, the person -- whoever that was, I'm personally of the mind he likely wasn't good then either, but we'll see where the story takes us -- before Cazador. the man in front of us today is this mishmash of interior delight at freedom and sunlight but also capable of true unapologetic cruelty and willingness to be ugly in a multitude of ways. so he follows the impulse. he follows what intrigues and amuses, and nothing will take that freedom from him again. and he reflects back onto others the violence that was done unto him. a lack of power kept him down? now he wants to accumulate power, so it can never be turned on him again. but he also misses the sun while he's underground. he's mean and desperate and ruthless and it's interesting because he's unapologetic about it, he's unflinching about it. he's vindictive and mean and desperately floundering around throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks in terms of personhood because who is he now. 200 years of horrific servitude and now he's just out and about and he's in the mud.

and he can be horrible. and yet when you take the routes of prying open the faaairly shallow veneer he has of smug and snark and snappiness, he'll give you pieces of the raw and the desperate -- "I want to know what the world sees when it looks at me. what you see." is a line you only get if you're earnest with him. any other path in the dialogue will have him continue the shallow persona you've come to know. and in all of that I think nothing is "this is real, this is an act," set in stone because I just don't think he even knows, I don't think he has a CLUE what's his and what's the protective measures and what's the real delight and what's the cruel mockery of his surroundings and what he's willing to give vs what he needs to hide vs what he lets slip out on accident. the inconsistencies in his own ideas and what he says and what he does. I think most everything about him is in a weird place of deeply uncertain. is it a lie? is it a glimmer of truth? for me, I like to interpret him in this weird menagerie of half-truths and shallow lies and omissions, because we've only known him a short while and maybe also he doesn't even know the answer yet. who is he? fuck if HE knows. anyways. smash.

[bunabi]

Bioware has the chance to do the most busted twist of all time by not only killing Varric but also making the Inquisitor the Veilguard advisor and/or romanceable

I'm leaning in again

[largemandrill]

Hey guys don’t worry about why I’m asking this but say I am in the process of drawing Elden Ring characters as Disney’s the Robin Hood esc furries and I don’t have an exact list of what character would be which animal. Allegedly I already have a few of them planned out (most of the roundtable), but I would love to have idea thrown at me like spaghetti at a wall.

[zackstriker]

Their recent inability to shut up about sex is making me craaazy because it’s giving “we’re not having sex right now so we’re incredibly sexually frustrated and will not shut up about it!”. It’s a more recent thing too, not their typical sporadic comment but literally every video and occasional tweet and reply has had sex and positions and top and bottom since June. Idk maybe it was Dan’s birthday maybe it’s the summer weather but they cannot shut up about Phil being a bottom and their love of sex.

ohhhh that’s an interesting take… with phil’s medical stuff that definitely could be the case. I firmly believe there’s truth in every joke (universally, not just w dnp) so i could see that.

i assumed its more of the boiling frogs theory. i think they’re purposely including lots of romantic/sexual moments within videos a) because they know we will eat it up (and we do), but also b) because they have the freedom to do so and there’s a sense of reclamation (kinda like when baby gays only talk about being gay because they actually can for the first time) and c) to either let us know they’re together without explicitly saying it or to prepare us for a hard launch post tour (dan did similar stuff to soft launch the gay before hard launching it after II).

They’ve been doing so much subliminal couple-y stuff lately like the bride+groom look in dnp dress each other and the matching shirts in todays video. i used to not think there would ever be a hard launch (i think they’re together but i thought they would want to keep something to themselves bc of how much the internet took from them) but they keep pulling more and more shenanigans that makes me think they might just be boiling us for the hard launch after all.

It’s interesting though because you can see moments when they still limit what they say bc of how it could be perceived, like in the video today when Phil changed the lyrics of paparazzi into a joke bc he didn’t wanna say the “i’ll follow you until you love me” part out loud. Similarly there’s been a few jump cuts in recent videos where they have been laughing at a joke that was seemingly cut.

I also must admit i did not participate in top/bottom discourse or anything back before the hiatus, so my lore knowledge in that particular regard is somewhat lacking in historical context.

All that being said, I do love a good bottom phil joke tho.

[astralleywright]

it was great to have Matt really emphasize a point he's made before last night-that the history of Exandria (including that contained within the official books) is not a neutral, untouched retelling of events but a narrative written by the victors.

one of the many thoroughlines of Campaign 3 has been the power of knowledge; of who has it and who doesn't, and how the powerful employ it for their own ends. the most obvious example is surely the Weave Mind, whose staggering control over what its subjects know on both a macro (erasing entire histories, making Ruidians see the dreams of Exandrians) and micro (being able to enter their minds at any time) level compromises much of what we learned of Ruidis during our first trip there. but similar behavior is reflected all across Exandria, by the Weave Mind's enemies as much as it's allies.

like the Weave Mind, Vasselheim also erased massive parts of Exandrian history-the death of two gods by Predathos, and the subsequent creation of Ruidis as a prison- from the world. Both they and the Ruby Vanguard hunted down members of the Grim Verity and the Omen Archive for discovering this information, and for conducting research about Ruidis and Ruidisborn. the Vanguard infiltrated and actively recruited from that research as well, even, as seen in the case of Liliana.

Liliana, who left her home and her family in the first place to find answers about her powers and her nightmares-and thus, her pain-that she would never have a chance of learning in Gelvaan. in fact, many Ruidisborn we meet seem to find their way to the Vanguard because they want answers, or belonging; this reveals the harm done by Vasselheim's repression of knowledge. by trying to keep the truth of Ruidis out of "the wrong hands", they helped create the conditions, the lack of access of answers, the suspicion and ostracization of Ruidisborn, that have let their worst enemies thrive.

there's a problem with accessability to education across all of Exandria, really. public libraries seem to be largely nonexistent, especially with regards to higher level knowledge. even the incredibly benevolent Cobalt Soul restricts access to the wealth of information it has, and for many of the same reasons Vasselheim obscured information regarding Predathos; they don't want that knowledge being abused by the wrong person. but determined practically, "the wrong hands" tend to be those who don't already have power and access. the very first scene of the campaign is Imogen being denied entry from a university library, all but explicitly because of her lower class status and lack of connections with the upper echelon of Jrusar. if Imogen hadn't been able to get in, or if she had been found by members of the Ruby Vanguard before the Grim Verity, who knows where she'd be right now? what she'd believe, even if she had doubts about the Vanguard's methods? (would she even know the full breadth of their methods? or would they keep that from her, too?)

and on the other hand: surely the head of the Cerberus Assembly wouldn't be restricted from almost any library, right? especially not after a trade or a bribe or a spell or two?

[starredforlife]

ok top five scenes from the kung fu panda universe (any of the movies, shorts, shows, etc). could be fight scenes, character moments, etc etc so on and so forth

FERN THIS IS SO HARD. FOR ME. UHM !!!!

ESCAPE FROM GONGMEN TOWER please watch it right now please please it's such an underrated scene musically and visually. this is the scene where tigress catches a flaming arrow and that's the exact moment i became a homosexual. vic history. it's also the scene where we see her chops as a leader of the five and the way she's fit into this role to balance out Po so well. and also all her potential as who she could've been, if she'd been chosen to be the dragon warrior herself. but she's not.

MUSICIAN'S VILLAGE I LOVE this scene the way it introduces, to the audience, that the score is going to play a part in the fight scenes of this movie is absolutely magnificent. and the way we get reintroduced to the furious five's + po's fighting style, and it reminds us immediately that they are formidable--and then sets up the inciting incident of the plot with so much mystery (and we see the 2d animation style again too, which has always represented po's inner subconscious. WHY DIDN'T THEY DO THAT FOR THE FOURTH MOVIE. whatever)

i would say the bridge fight (kfp1) and i adore that scene but i have to say, i really love the performances, the ambience, the color boards, the sound effects, and the emotional impact of shifu and tai lung's fight in the 3rd act more. i love when kfp actually invested time in its non-main protag characters. tai lung was an absolutely fascinating villain and this scene just rounds out his character so well

The entirety of the secrets of the scroll short film oh my god i love that one so much. teenage tigress. my baby girl.

FUCK okay and then the fireworks factory (2nd movie) where Po confronts Shen about his past. And he gets shot with a cannon and Tigress doesn't get to him in time. breaks my heart every time. i'm going to include the scene where Tigress and Po fight right before that in the jail too bc the musical score called "Fireworks Factory" starts with THEIR HUG. AND IT ENDS WITH HER RUNNING TO CATCH HIM. AND FAILING. MY BAKA LIFE !!!!! i don't even ship them anymore like i did when i was 14 i mostly just love tigress but their platonic relationship is v important to me. i have to include their hug bc that did irreparable damage to me as a tween. sorry the quality of the first vid is so ass. their relationship in the entire 2nd movie is so good i could write a whole analysis on it probably. it's paining me physically to not include their earlier boat scene talk.

this is also the scene where tigress snarls at the gorilla and that changed my brain chemistry forever.

i love the entire second movie this is so hard for me AUGHHHGHGH okay quick honorary mention: i also love the scene where we see shen fight the three masters (rhino, croc, ox). that quick fight scene is SO well executed. the dialogue and the performances are incredible. i used to have every line of dialogue of this movie memorized and especially loved reciting this scene (skip to 1:10)

and then if i had to pick a moment from the third one it's the one where oogway's statue gets wrecked at the jade palace. it lands emotionally very well for a scene that could have easily been mishandled too comedically or too quickly. like it still gives me chills. and i'm not even gonna touch on the character animation/acting of tigress and shifu here bc GOD. kai's theme does rock also!!! AND i LOVE the colors in this movie SO MUCH holy fuck

and then a minor detail from the first one is i love how the characters act with each other, namely the five and shifu. they clearly have a history and/or comradery with each other. shifu undoing the nerve damage tai lung did in a way specific to each of his students stands out to me in particular.

1 and 2 are masterpieces to me and i have my Things about the 3rd one but overall, a beautiful trilogy. i wish the 4th one didn't exist im killing it with my bare hands. vic hate movie? vic murder it. 5th rule of the streets.

[sullyfortress]

This all came to me because I wish we got more Mo'at and Jake/Neytiri content. So I had an idea: what if Jane and Tanya's mom, more specifically Piroatused Tanya since she was the smarter one so their bio mom and Jane had a rockey relationship so what if Mo'at saw Jane as the daughter she never had.

OMG I love this idea!!!! I might have to expand on this more cause it's too good. Like Tanya was their mom's hope for a better life and a better future as a scientist and overall smart kid, but Jane was the rough and tumble troublemaker who there mother had a hard time understanding.

Because I love angst and pain... what if their mother resented Jane a bit because she reminded her of their father who s a mysterious figure that neither Jane or Tanya ever met l but they know things ended badly between him and their mother. Like their mother never spoke about him and was real defensive when the girls asked questions.

Popped off pandoras box anon you beautiful bastard you.

This is yummy angst.

[starmocha]

Rafayel: don't be nervous

Xavier: what's wrong

Zayne: you scared me, so take responsibility for my racing heart 😏

[virtkha]

fanart of my favorite cartoonstitute short ever