like, honestly, would anyone care or even notice if i just...went away?

can't believe we're all adults being forced into the club penguin level of censorship in 2024

FAMINE: That's one deep, dark nothing you've got there, Dean.

[youtube with closed captions]

dean and his father. dean and his family. dean and how bad it is.

(via @closetoyou1970)

post ep 11

I came up with the idea for today's love fest over the weekend when I saw a lot of comments from people expressing sadness about the cancellation, and then also some embarrassment for feeling that way, or feeling alone in their emotions. I wanted to do something positive that felt personal and that would remind people that fandom isn't going anywhere.

Originally I thought to do it a few days after the WJW with DJenks, figuring we'd need another boost after that high wore off. Obviously the WJW didn't end up happening, but then I realized it was Rhys' birthday today, so that also felt like a great reason to spread a bit of love (not that you ever need a reason for that!).

And honestly, while the whole point was to make other people smile, the whole experience really boosted my own spirits tremendously. While stalking perusing everyone's blogs for inspo, I was reminded quite powerfully just how many extremely kind, talented, smart, funny, insightful, beautiful people there are in this fandom.

So I just want to say thank you. All of you who create gifs, make art, write fic, analyze the show, share shit posts, or reblog all of the above so we can see it again and again and again, you have made a difference in my fandom experience. With every post, you made me fall in love with Ed and Stede and the whole crew just a little bit more. Whether you're someone who's always in the tags or someone who prefers to quietly reblog, you have made my time here very special and I'm so grateful. 💕

we get a lot of really great stuff in system collapse about murderbot's relationships with ART and ratthi, which makes sense, because it spends almost the entire book with them. but i also love how even though mensah isn't there for most of the story, other people keep reminding mb of her:

chapter 2, page 25: “From ART’s personnel file, she [Karime] was older than Mensah and she didn’t look like an intrepid space explorer, either, even in the protective environmental suit.”

2, 27: “It took Karime three seconds to process the abrupt statement. (She was almost as good at not looking annoyed as Mensah was.) She kept her expression neutral and patient.”

2, 28: “In the underground colony room, Karime lifted her brows. ‘Another occupied site?’ I thought she was being careful not to show too much reaction. It was the way Mensah would have played it.”

4, 70: “Iris looked at me and I saw her hesitate, because her hesitation looked a lot like Dr. Mensah’s hesitation. And I realized I really didn’t want to go down there.”

5, 104: "Iris has that same thing as Dr. Mensah, the thing where she’s able to look and sound calm under circumstances where shit is possibly about to go down.”

it's spent so much time with her and it knows her so well and respects her so much that she's the model against which it compares all other humans. it thinks about her when they're not together. it's protective of her. it has such total faith in her competence. it (non-romantically) loves her and doesn't want to not see her again. idk man, it just gets to me! and they were teammates (oh my god they were teammates!!)

bonus:

I said, aloud, "You have to be kidding me." (ch. 2, p. 28)

seven pages later, in reaction to the same thing:

Mensah had had time to review the feed video. She muttered, "Oh, you have to be kidding me." Yeah.

twinsies 🥰

Hello! I hope I won't sour your mood with this ask but I have been thinking a lot about your gay dogs this month especially.

I'll just try to keep the context short but in general I'm someone that has accepted being romantically undesireable. It was hard but in the end I have built my life just around me, my humble family and at this point in time I don't even think I have the time for a partner. And considering that it's the love month and a lot of people are preparing to celebrate it with their SOs I assumed that, actually, this is a thing that I sort of have in common with Machete.

From the miscellaneous lore on your profile I see Machete as someone that also has kind of rejected love. That also has built his life around his job, possibly hobbies, his family or mentors (depending if we're talking about canon or modern au). Who kind of forgot that relationships are a thing and that people bond with others in that way. Well, at least he did until meeting Vasco.

I just love thinking about their awkward beginnings. Machete being 100% sure that Vasco is just joking, maybe even sometimes teasing him (in a friendly banter type way) or just explaining to himself that all that kindness and interest is just him being a very considerate friend. And then we have Vasco that just tries to be subtle, as if he was trying to pass a fawn without it noticing and running away, but also with time gains confidence and tries more risque moves. Vasco being all smug and Machete being flustered when their hands or shoulders or tails brush in passing. And then when both are sure of their feelings we have Machete who has to choose between God and his love. Who, at first, unwillingly accepts that divine wrath will be worth their brief love.

I just love your boys. I swear they are all the love supply one might possibly need

Thank you for such a long and thoughtful message! I don't know why you thought you might accidentally sour my mood, I'm utterly delighted whenever I hear that someone has been pondering my little guys (rotating them in their head, as they say), and when they go through the trouble of sharing their findings and conclusions I'm so happy I could crawl up a wall.

I think you deciphered Machete's inner workings very well, especially those of the original canon version. The concept of love is of course prominent in Christianity, so even as a kid being raised in a religious environment that discouraged overt displays of affection and close personal bonds, Machete wasn't completely alienated from it. But it has always been a nebulous, unperceivable and unattainable thing for him. When he was old enough to lock down his career choice he readily accepted he'd never have romantic relationships, spouse or a family, and I think he must've been too young and socially inexperienced to think of it as a significant loss. Either he consciously blocked out the need for companionship by studying and working like his life depended on it, or he didn't really consider that being genuinely befriended, appreciated and loved as a person instead of a respectable and competent authority figure was even an option for him, at least not until Vasco came along.

Thinking about the symbolic weight of smoking in the TLT universe that comes to the fore in The Unwanted Guest -- the way it moves through from person to person: Pyrrha smoked, and Augustine wanted to impress her in all her stone cold fox MILF James Bond glory (and tbf who wouldn't) so he started too. and even though as far as he knows she's been gone for a myriad and is never coming back, he keeps the habit. Ianthe sees something in the hollowed-out Faberge eggshell of Augustine that resonates with her, all that gilded eloquent emptiness and disdain through the ages, so she picked it up from him to try to emulate it. She picked it up so hard that Palamedes -- the exact spiritual antithesis of the 'smoking! on a space station! what a powermove' ennui Ianthe so admired -- spontaneously unnerded enough to even known how to, simply from a sort of contact contamination of the soul.

G1deon and Augustine sharing a jittery smoke after their near-Harrow experience during soup night, and it's the closest thing to any real sense of brotherhood that remains between them. Pyrrha going ten thousand years dying both literally and for a smoke (and then Camilla sold her fucking cigarettes (for a third of what they were worth, probably Pyrrha's own good, and also more importantly grocery money). what an entirely haunted time to be alive etc.). Augustine and Mercy trading a cigarette back and forth in the middle of their collusion over the love and murder of god.

An act of small and measured self-destruction in the name of something a little bit like connection when you're stuck somewhere in yourself where love itself dares not or cannot tread (ritualized, transmissible)..........

okay, but where's my steddie AU where steve wants to learn to play guitar to impress a girl he's infatuated with and he remembers that munson kid was always hanging up posters for his weird band at school, so he hikes out to eddie's usual dealing spot behind the track and asks (with far less groveling than he really should have) if eddie will teach him how to play, and obviously eddie says no because why would he want to help king steve, but of course, steve offers to pay him, $20 a week, and well, that's the kind of get-the-hell-out-of-this-shithole-town cash eddie really can't afford to refuse, so fine, he'll teach steve to play and they'll spend inordinate amounts of time together tucked away in eddie's room and they'll start to see that they have more in common than they thought and that they kind of had each other all wrong, and eddie will put his hand over steve's to help him get the placement for a tricky chord and it totally won't awaken anything in either of them?? where is it??

edit: i started writing it

manic pixie dream polar explorers or something

I'm really just Feeling Things tonight about the conversation with Gale after Elminster's visit and like. Gale is So Insistent that if Mystra says he needs to blow himself up, then it must be the best option. The only option. And of course he is! Because what's the alternative? If there's another way, any other way, that means either

1. Mystra doesn't care enough to consider whether there might be another option. Gale blowing himself up is the easiest solution, so that's what she goes with. Or, even worse,

2. She does know there's other options, but tells him to sacrifice himself anyways, because it gets rid of two of her problems at once.

Gale doesn't just assume she's right because she's a goddess. He goes along with it because of what it implies about him, and her, and how she sees him if there is another way. He has to believe that this is the only option. Because the alternative? That he's disposable at best and actively unwanted at worst? That's just too much to bear.

Roy obviously knows that Jamie admires/respects/looks up to him but I like to think there's some part of him that wants Jamie to think he's like. Cool. On some level he's just a middle aged man who peaked in his 20s and craves validation from his cool gen Z coworker. I'm not like a regular coach I'm a Cool coach

Hellsing 2002 calendar illustration.

Ein wunderliche und erschröckliche Hystori von einem großen Wüttrich genant Dracole wayda Der do so ganz unkristenliche marrter hat angelegt die mensche, als mit spissen als auch die leut zu Tod geslyffen

A wondrous and frightening story about a great berserk called Dracula the voivode who inflicted such unchristian tortures such as with stakes and also dragged people to death

i have a counter argument to the 'only one person can boop bill' thing, mabel. she's the type of person to slap stickers on people, she would definitely be the type to also boop others occasionally and bill would be no exception. she probably doesn't do it to annoy bill like dipper would, but maybe as a form of a friendly gesture, kind of like those people who will lightly punch friends in the arm when they hang out.

You know what? Good point. Mabel would get away with more than most, as a fun-loving lady! Bill understands those impulses, and being a touchy person! He indulges in similar ones himself.

Though when Bill's not in the mood to be playful and gets booped anyway? The 'sister-in-law' status grants her considerable grace.