barney stinson saying “daddy's home” the first time stepping into the bar after his breakup from robin and barney stinson saying “daddy's home” to robin when she asks about his daughter is my roman empire ( i love barney so much it makes me physically sick)

The ending of How I Met Your Mother makes me even more angry now that I’m in a similar situation to Ted’s kids.

Rhys Darby as Hamish (the night clerk at the Farhampton Inn) in How I Met Your Mother S9E7

i saw a very interesting post recently from @fellthemarvelous about how Aziraphale is often treated the way female love interests are— likely because his hobbies and emotions are more traditionally feminine whereas crowley’s style and anger are more traditionally masculine despite the fact that neither of them are gendered. the thesis of the post was essentially that because crowley is the one who fell, fans have decided that aziraphale only exists to comfort and protect and bring peace to crowley rather than be his own person with his own emotions and ambitions. i’d never been able to put this into words, but it’s like this person stole what i was feeling right from my brain and i am so thankful to their eloquence.

but it did get me thinking about the end of season 2— specifically how many fans, even people who defend aziraphale for what he did, believe that the “only” way for his choices in the finale to be valid are if he did them for crowley’s safety/well-being. i’ve seen so many arguments along the lines of “oh, he has to go back so he can fix Heaven for Crowley and make him heal from falling” or “oh, he has to go back to Heaven because if he doesn’t, Metatron could go after crowley and he needs to keep him safe”. and while both of these very popular aziraphale-defenses are valid (this is not an attack on anyone’s opinion!) and i wouldn’t be surprised if they played into his reasoning for leaving, i can’t help but think of that lovely person’s female-love-interest argument.

i don’t actually think aziraphale leaving for heaven needs to be related to crowley at all. it can, of course— and likely does— but aziraphale has gone through just as much Heaven-induced trauma as crowley has, something that many fans (and even the characters themselves, sometimes) like to forget. aziraphale knows first-hand how abusive Heaven is to young angels and humans who they deem unworthy of being saved. and so to me, it is just as valid if it turns out aziraphale going back to Heaven wasn’t “for” crowley at all, but rather a way to protect these other generations from the abuse of Heaven that aziraphale has witnessed and been victim to. is it so hard or unacceptable to think that aziraphale could make a choice that doesn’t have to do with his love life? he is not obligated—nor is crowley!— to live entirely as though he’s making something up/repaying/protecting his love interest. that kind codependency is not something to idolize. i guess what i’m trying to say here is that there are other reasons to go back to Heaven having nothing to do with keeping crowley safe, and while that is a perfectly valid interpretation, i’m not personally a fan of the widespread belief that it’s the only interpretation that makes what aziraphale did “forgivable”.

EDIT/ADDITION: i ALSO think that this is why i’m so bothered by the argument that while Crowley being “selfish” and choosing his own path at the end of s2 is perfectly valid, aziraphale doing the exact same thing is not. i do not blame either one of them for making a different choice, but in my opinion far too many people believe that crowley had a right to his own autonomy and do what he thought was best for himself, whereas somehow it was Aziraphale’s job to choose the same thing in accordance to what was most healthy for CROWLEY and not for himself/his own ambitions as regards to Heaven. people think that crowley has an obligation to do what is best for crowley, but that aziraphale’s subsequent obligation is to also do what’s best for crowley. no one seems to particularly care what may be best for aziraphale. at the end of the day, if one of them can make a self-prioritizing choice, the other can, too. aziraphale is his own person, not a love interest!!!!

list of my favourite otps → [11/∞] barney stinson & robin scherbatsky

I love everything about her, and I'm not a guy who says that lightly. I am a guy who has faked love his entire life. I thought love was just something idiots thought they felt, but this woman has a hold on my heart that I could not break if I wanted too. And there have been times that I wanted to. It has been overwhelming, and humbling, and even painful, at times. But I could not stop loving her any more than I could stop breathing. I am hopelessly, irretrievably in love with her. More than she knows.

“Kids, I won’t lie, that was a long weekend. More ups and downs that I can count. It was a twisting, turning road that led to the end of the aisle, and not everything along the way was perfect.

To be honest, not everything to follow would be perfect either. But what is? Here’s the secret, kids: none of us can bow to be perfect. In the end, all we can do is promise to love each other with everything we’ve got.

Because love’s the best thing we do. And on that lovely spring evening, that’s exactly what Barney and Robin vowed to each other.

And it was legendary.”

Thanks for the follow, we're mutuals now :3 It's always nice to meet a fellow bard. Also, Karlach/Shadowheart? NEED!

Yeeeeaaaaah, new moots, high five!!!

(Also, I forgot I had started this in my drafts my apologies 😭 Thank you so much for sending this in <3 <3)

[Ask me about a fic on my WIP List]

My Karlach/Shadowheart ditty is still mostly brackets and bullet points in my WIPs folder, but I'm looking forward into making more words out of it one day soon! I'll ramble about it a little in the meantime.

Working title is "Absence", Shadowheart POV. Set in Act 2, just after Karlach's gotten her touch-enabling engine tune-up, but before Shadowheart's completed the Gauntlet of Shar. (Technically set in the same universe as my Astarion/Tav longfic, but they're busy off in the background, hehe). Shadowheart has gradually come out of her shell, and finds herself often acting on instincts that run contrary to Sharran teachings as she grows closer to the other tadfools. She's reprimanded by the sharp pain in the scar on her hand each time, but that hasn't stopped her from forming those friendships.

Those feelings grow stronger even as the Gauntlet of Shar and everything she's ever wanted/trained for sits just on the horizon. She finds herself acting on another want, another instinct, without thinking: when Karlach can finally touch again, Shadowheart pays her a nighttime visit.

And after, when Shadowheart is alone again, it's a whole war inside her head :( Here's a little snippet from a (very) rough draft of the angsty afterwards piece:

Shadowheart’s braid is loose where Karlach’s claws knotted in it. It weighs against her back, suddenly heavy as an anchor. Frantically, she wrenches the chain free, knuckling through the snarls until dark, tangled waves hang past her shoulders. But Shadowheart still wants to cut it. All of it. Every inch Karlach clutched.  Maybe then, she’d be free of this chill setting in where there was heat on her skin only moments ago. She would wear the day’s sweat instead of budding gooseflesh. Maybe then, she’d smell only of spent effort and not of smokey sweetness mingled in her mouth with the taste of dry wine. Maybe the only pain would be in the scar hissing against her hand. There would be no tender ache between her thighs. There would be no loss of what she never had.  It’s a gift, the old mantra echoes faintly in her mind. Absence is a gift. Shadowheart’s fingernails scrape her own scalp. Harder than the feathered flame of Karlach’s fingertips. Hard enough to wet her lashes and set a tear free down her cheek. So gentle. Why was she gentle? Shadowheart thinks desperately. Why couldn’t it have hurt then, so it didn’t have to now?

I only enjoy and consume 3 types of TV shows and this is why I have never seen Wednesday or stranger things or euphoria and I do not plan to ! (This is very much NOT in a me thinking I'm above popular media or trying to be controversial way bcs I am about to name some very popular media)

Type 1: questionably written late 2000s early 2010s American Sitcoms that I think are okay to rewatch despite not standing up under a 2020s lense bcs I watched them for the first time in the mid 2010s - e.g. the big bang theory, how I met your mother (which I have watched 17 times) and glee

Type 2: cartoons targeted towards children and/or preteens but are enjoyably consumed by adults - e.g. bluey, pokemon (to be fair I watched this for the first time as a child), Gravity Falls (to be fair I watched this for the first time as a child) and dead end paranormal Park (or adult animation bcs i love futurama)

Type 3: heard there was a gay person in it - e.g modern family, shameless (US), Brooklyn 99, good girls, sherlock (I too was queer baited)

My TV hyperfixations of the past 8 years have been (in no order): gravity falls, how I met your mother, shameless (US), sherlock (2 different times) and the big bang theory followed by young Sheldon if that contextualises any of this.

Unfortunately I will not watch shows outside of these categories so I am not up to date on shit!

Anyway u should talk to me about these TV shows unless you are a brooklyn 99 or sherlock stannie (I am very ashamed of my sherlock hyperfixations) in which case please stay very far away from me

What do you think barney and robin be as a couple reunited after the divorce in the alternate ending?

In my AU, I like to think Barney still ended up having his daughter. And one night Barney called Robin in a panic because she wouldn’t stop crying. After they had got Ellie to go sleep, they ended up talking about how much they missed each other, and realized they still wanted to be together. But they stilled had to work through their problems that lead to their divorce in the first place. And their was also Barney’s kid they had to think about as well.

So they spent months just talking and thinking. They figured out a way to communicate and compromise better than they did the first time around. They started dating again, but decided not to get married again or tell Ellie until they were sure that it was truly going to work out this time. They got married again when Ellie was in the second grade with her as the flower girl. She made a speech saying it took them long enough. And that was glad to have a second mom.

From NPH's Choose Your Own Autobiography. It makes me feel better (vindicated?) to know that the cast didn't like the ending either.

Binge-watched How I Met Your Mother, and I may never recover 😱

'cql finale was bad' to YOU. I understand subtext and symbolism and unspoken connections and the realities of censorship and also they were literally together at the end what the fuck more did you want

why did Hannah go straight to Sophie???? What does it mean....

I’ve been binging How I Met Your Mother again and god, the soundtrack still gets me so emotional. They might not know how to stick an ending but God did they know how to build a good playlist.

I am forever moderately amused by the fact that I have a biology degree but somehow wound up with a biologist OC whose specialty is not at all what mine is.

like, don't get me wrong, I love amphibians and reptiles. I used to volunteer for a summer camp where I got to show off amphibians and reptiles to kids and tell them all about the creepy crawly critters.

but my specialty is microorganisms. the macroorganisms I've done the most schooling in are invertebrates, in particular molluscs. which are not the purview of a herpetologist.

but character development just sort of happened and now I have a herpetologist OC.

I HAVE FIVE PAGES. LEFT. TO DRAW.