I just find it funny how any interaction between Poseidon, Hecate and Athena in smartwatermagic context in my mind always ends up with undertones of all of them thinking "I am a better parent than the other two" without fail

Athena and Poseidon by viria and Hecate by CarolMylius on deviantart

yall have fun w ur headcanons, but the idea of that devil squirming like a virgin and cumming too fast is the thing that endeared me to him so ya kno,,, skill issue lmao

this is a joke. I don't actually care what u headcanon.

Steve looks up when there’s a knock on his cubicle wall. Robin stands on the other side, leaning over the flimsy partition that gives the busy office floor the illusion of privacy.

“Hey, Steve, wanna get lunch?” She asks him.

“Yeah, let me finish this,” Steve says before turning back to his computer screen to save his notes from fashion week. He can’t help but sigh as he looks at the endless lists of what celebrity wore which brands and who sat front row at each show.

He and Robin make their way downstairs to the cafeteria, where they head to the end of the long line. The lunch room was always packed at this time of day. Steve thinks for the thousandth time that they should plan their breaks better, maybe for a time when the entire building wasn’t battling a sudden salad bar craving.

After about twenty minutes and several sharp elbows to the ribs at the refrigerator where the pudding cups are kept, they make their way to the only open table with their sad, wilted-looking lettuce. Steve stares down at his plate, stomach rumbling, before Robin catches his attention.

“Ready for the pitch meeting?” Her brows are furrowed, anxiety written across her face.

“I mean, yeah.” Steve shrugs his shoulders. “Not much to pitch. I’m just gonna get that lame premiere assignment anyway.” His voice comes out an irritated grumble.

“What about that story about the teachers’ strikes you wanted to pitch? The teachers organizing across districts?” The furrow in her brow deepens.

“Face it, Robin,” Steve sighs. “If we want to write what we really want to write, we’re not gonna do it here. Best to get these few years under out belt and do what we’re told, so we can get a good reference for a publication that actually cares about the things we care about.”

Robin looks down at her own plate, moves her fork around her pile of browned lettuce and ranch dressing. “Well, I’m pitching my rail nationalization story. Imagine what this country could do with a high speed rail system organized by the state. It would be a game changer!” She sounds excited about her pitch and Steve wonders if that’s the way he used to sound, too, before he’d been relegated to “Who Wore It Better”s and celebrity advice columns.

As Steve’s contemplating his entire career trajectory, Nancy makes her way over to them with a tray in her white-knuckled grip. Steve would never say it to her face, but he thought it was only a matter of time before she popped a blood vessel because of the cafeteria line.

“I fucking hate this place,” Nancy practically snarls as she slams her tray down on the table between them. She takes a chair from the neighboring table without even asking before sitting and hanging her crossbody bag on the back. She glances at Steve’s tray. “You got a pudding cup?” Steve says nothing as he moves the pudding cup further from Nancy’s reach. She rolls her eyes.

“We were just talking about the pitch meeting,” Robin tells her. “I’m really gonna pitch the railway story. This is important stuff, Nance, we should be publishing it.”

Nancy takes a sip from her orange juice before responding. “I don’t disagree, Robin, but Erica will never go for it. You know those serious pieces are reserved for Terry, Patrick, and Elaine.”

“Terry, Patrick, and Elaine are practically geriatric,” Robin rolls her eyes. “The magazine needs fresh new voices. Erica understands that. I’m pretty sure it was her who said that at last month’s meeting.”

“Well, good luck,” Nancy says, twirling her fork in her pasta. Steve’s not even sure what sort of sauce the pasta’s supposed to have. He grimaces.

“Thank you,” Robin grins, choosing to ignore Nancy’s sarcasm.

~*~

Steve, Robin, and Nancy sit side-by-side in the conference room as they wait for their editor, Erica, to finish the phone call she’d taken in her office. They were surrounded by their coworkers--photographers, stylists, journalists--and there was a massive pile of donuts in the center of the huge polished wooden table. Steve’s fingers itched to reach for one, but the last time he’d eaten a donut at one of these meetings, he’d gotten a huge glob of strawberry jelly on his slacks. He’d had to beg to borrow a pair of pants from the fashion closet so he could go do an interview without a massive red stain on his leg later that day.

Everyone looks up when Erica enters the room. She always looked to Steve like she floated around the place, somehow both intimidating and approachable all at once. Steve’s palms were always sweaty whenever he had to have a one-on-one conversation with her.

The meeting starts and Erica directs the conversation around the room, hearing pitch after pitch for the next few editions of the magazine. Steve’s head is starting to bobble as he listened to the stylists pitch five different fashion spreads. He’s startled from a daydream when Erica says, “Alright, what do you three have for me?” from the end of the table.

Robin looks at Steve and Nancy before she speaks. “Well, uh. I had this thought that we could, uh, maybe do a piece, like, an article, you know? With, uh, interviews and first-person accounts and statistics and all that stuff--”

“Right, I know what an article is, Robin,” Erica says firmly, but not unfriendly.

“Right, Robin swallows, squirming. “Sorry. Um. Well, there’s been a lot of talk recently about the railway workers unionizing and the derailments and how corporations are going about handling these issues.” Steve notices how Robin’s voice starts to sound much stronger when she really gets in to her pitch. “And there’s a renewed interest online and in DC in a potential nationalization of the railway system in America and I think that could be a really worthwhile and interesting story for our readers.”

Erica looks at Robin for a long moment, thinking. Steve holds his breath, waiting for Erica to speak.

“I like it,” she finally says, a slow smile spreading across her face. “We’ll talk to residents where the derailments occurred, doctors and scientists, state representatives, workers, officials. It could even be a serial piece.”

“Wow, really?” Robin’s eyes brighten.

“Yeah, really,” Erica smiles again, before turning to her right. “Terry, what do you think? Can you handle that?” Steve sees Robin’s face fall out of the corner of his eye. Terry responds in the affirmative, before Steve cuts off the conversation that they’re having about Robin’s story.

“I have a pitch,” Steve says, voice loud in his own ears. His hands shake in his lap.

“Really, Harrington?” Erica asks, eyebrows shooting up in surprise as she turns to look at him.

“Yeah,” Steve nods. “About the teachers’ strikes and how they’re organizing across districts in the city.”

Erica looks at him, like she’d looked at Robin. Her eyes shift back and forth between the two of them.

“That’s not a bad story,” she tells him. She pauses again, looking at Steve for another long moment before continuing. “Listen, I see what’s happening here. You want a chance at more serious stories. But you’ve both been here only a year. I need to know that you can write more than an analysis of what Selena Gomez was wearing when Justin Bieber broke up with her.” She looks at them and she looks so far away from where Steve is sitting. He feels like his vision has taken on a fish-eye lens, distorting at the edges, making everyone look tiny. “So, here’s what we’ll do. I was just on the phone with Corroded Coffin’s PR. Apparently the band is coming out of retirement and they’re announcing a new album and a new tour kicking off in March. They’ve asked us to publish something about the band, with full and complete access to recording studios, one-on-one interviews with each member, and live shows before the tour starts. We’re doing a whole issue on the resurgence of grunge and metal style from the eighties and nineties for it. I’ll let you, Buckley, and Wheeler have the central article. If you can get me some new, interesting, and relevant information on the band’s personal lives, I’ll let you start writing more serious pieces for the magazine.”

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise as the blood rushes in his ears. He hadn’t expected that to actually work. Plus, the Corroded Coffin article itself was a huge deal. Nancy’s saying yes on everyone’s behalf before Steve can even really wrap his mind around the offer.

~*~

After the meeting, Steve sits at his desk doing a cursory Google search of Corroded Coffin. He wasn’t the biggest metal fan and the closest he’d ever come to really giving the genre a try was adding a few Nirvana songs to his workout playlist.

He’s scrolling through the search results when he realizes that there’s a significant lack of interviews, even though the band has been active for almost a decade. Most of the articles were descriptions of the lead singer’s rather outlandish public stunts.

“Hey, Rob?” He calls out over the partition that separates their cubicles.

“Yeah?” She responds. Steve doesn’t like when he can’t see her while they’re talking, so he rolls his eyes and pulls himself from the chair to look over their shared wall.

“Have you noticed that there’s, like, no interviews with the band?”

She looks up from her computer screen. “There’s a few,” she says, sighing. “On the second page of Google. But there’s none with Munson.” Robin throws herself against the back of his chair. “A few of the articles say he’s ‘notoriously private.’” She rolls her eyes as she puts air quotes around the last two words.

Steve stomach drops. This was supposed to be an easy article. Full access usually meant a lot more intimacy between the journalist and the subject, but Steve knew first hand how hard it was to get a cagey and jaded celebrity to talk, even when the request for the interview came from their own camp. Sometimes especially when the request came from their camp.

“Is this going to be harder than we thought?” Steve asks, brow furrowing in concern. “”What are we going to do?”

Robin smirks. “We’ll just have to get creative.”

part one part two

I’m not cut out for even slightly more intense health issues than my usual stuff yall so here’s my will for when i die of feel too bad disorder: i’d like to dedicate my few life achievements to all the sapphics out there and also they can have all my stuff i guess

OK NOW YOUR TURN

pls pls ramble abt any niche interest you have

HELLO THANK YOU

*invokes inner history nerd* so. listen here colonizer and listen good. i will subject you to my random knowledge cuz due to youtube, undiagnosed neurodivergency and most importantly- bad jokes. i have a vari-tea of niche interests but the first thing that came to my mind was my knowledge of the history of how Indians became one of The Top Consumers of Tea.

how did this wonder-drug make its way into our masala covered hearts? what led to the fact that everyday at 4pm the word at the tip of most indians' tongues is "chai"?this is my thesis as a pro desi tea obsessed freak.

This story, like most in our history, starts with the arrival of the British. i would like to insert this picture i found in a video that i laughed at for a solid five minutes:

anyway

technically tea was invented in china, and for a very long time it was exclusively grown there. it was a very high class commodi-tea. it was considered so precious that in 1662 when king charles the second married the Portuguese princess catherine of braganza: her dowry was a chest of tea and THE ENTIRE ISLAND OF MUMBAI (then, bombay) for an annual lease of 10 pounds. let me make that clearer. THE PLACE WHERE A 1BHK HOUSE IS SO EXPENSIVE MOST PPL CANT AFFORD WAS EQUIVALENT TO THIS:

needless to say the brits was so freaking addicted man. they wanted this. so bad.

By the 18th centuary there was a war between the english and the dutch and the brit resources were down the toilet so they couldnt afford to spend all that silver on the trade of tea leaves with china. and china was uninterested in anything the white boys were offering.

UNTIL they discovered something china wanted.

✨Drugs✨

the white boys wanted that tea. and they would do anything. so they started growing opium in india (by that time they had colonized us bruh. they came into our backyard and were like "bro we're such good friends pretty please let me use ur backyard" "ok what do you want to do w it?" "i wanna grow drugs bro" "....ok" "you'll work for me no bro?" "why would i do that" "bro its ur backyard bro" "what-" *england pulls out slavery* "SHUT UP AND DO IT") (dont come at me lmao this is a very rough simplification of what happened)(imma get blocked for this?)

anyway, brits grew opium and smuggled it to china in return for TEA. FOR TEA. 40.

now after the charter act of 1833 (idk what that is exactly but basically brits lost its trade monopoly with china and so now china said we should see other people and it was an open relationship and britian got very pissed but they signed the act anyway i think)

to deal with this they established the Tea Committee (this isnt the first government board specifically for tea. there were plen-tea of others like the Tea Board Of India) which dealt w the extraction of techniques, tea seads and resources from the chinese. this was highly unsuccessful and china was not impressed. this is an example of british desperation they'll do anything at this point. (took everything in me to not insert pictures of how they treated indian farmers. it was *inhales, lets go of anger for my ancestors treatment* bad)

but in the end this qoute i found (undoubtedly by a white man) "fortune favours the white men" came tru and they got their way.

oh you thought i was done? haha babygurl i am not

in 1843 robert fortune, who was a scottish horticulturist, went on a solo trip to china to study (read as: steal) tea plantations. no actually apparently he did study cuz he published a book(i forgot the name).(yes. HIS NAME WAS ROB. FORTUNE. talk about being born for a job)

lemme insert a quick meme here:

(they actually hired him on the spot and gave the amazed man 500 pounds per annum and sent him off to china)

he was to perform what we call The Great British Tea Heist the brits had found their vigilan-tea

my guy was committed to his role and shaved his head and pretended to be a monk and after 3 months wrote a letter to his company saying "bro i got the goodssss"

lmao no this it what the letter said- "l have much pleasure in informing you," he wrote, "that I have procured a large supply of seeds and young plants which l trust will get safely to India."

NOW they finally had the greens and started planting it in india. over the years indian tea topped the market in britian as the best tea. mostly cuz the white boyz HYPED it up. they even started doing diss tracks for chinese tea. this is something read right out of an advertisment- "indian teas are more wholesome, purer, cheaper and better than chinese teas in every single way". white boyz started saying stuff like they got out of a toxic realtionship with china and a healthy one with india (but they were the toxic ones)

now brits tried to globalize indian tea to get the moneyyy~ from indians.

their first experiment with (another) government body for tea- Indian Tea Association began on the indian railways. these railways were the ancestor of the IRC-tea-C. basically they started making tea on the railway platforms. this started the trend of tea being the signature experience on every indian train journey, from the first class to economy, everyone was having it (cuz trains were introduced and quickly became popular in use). train tea was said to be better than the quality of tea in 5 star hotels. and this converted us from a nation of tea-totalers to teach addcits.

now i just have one thing to say in the end. HOW did the quality decline so badly my desi brothers and sisters? nowadays the tea on trains is basically water but brown. milk is a lie.

anyway. on the end we got it right. we took tea from the chinese and brits and we added milk and we added sugar and we got:

✨chai✨

you have reached the end. congrats.

mincey cast of 23 @ mincefluencers when they drop the cast change

can the bb punnett squares people come back and explain this to me

as much as i appreciate all depictions of trans masc people in art, this isnt some kind of put down like omg you gotta draw ALL your art like this but... its honestly quite nice to see some trans masc characters that  have breasts  and are completely fine with that. like i get that top surgery scars have just become the visual short hand for ‘trans man/,masc’ character but thats not the reality for every trans masc person, not all trans masc people experience top dysphoria all the time, or even at all, and i feel like if we normalized the idea of breast tissue on men it would help to lessen the social stigma of men with breasts, cis or trans. i just love to see trans masc characcters who still have their breasts because its a reflection of the sort of trans experiences and bodies i am familiar with

in the year 2023, why are people still tagging their hate posts???

if you don’t like rwrb, good for you, leave the tags alone so we can enjoy our trashy romance in peace, ty.

unless you have some genuine thought provoking analyisis/critique of the way something was handled, go somewhere else. i’m down for constructive criticism. there are absolutely things to critique surrounding rwrb, doubly so w the movie. but there’s no need to ruin people’s fun for enjoying something meaningful to them just bc you didn’t like it. 

what are you getting us for ashton’s birthday

some respect for fanfic authors as people will be first on the list <3

You made me wnat to watch mysterious lotus casebook

I’m so sorry

also i REALLY didnt need to see this fatphobic filth on my yt recommended, i rly rly rly didnt and i wanna cry now thanks a lot

(not rp) oh dear the things i would do for a hit of the weed that was in kim's bra (i am shot and killed instantly)

SILGKTWDSYUTJSKRGTGDFG

YOU'RE SO FUCKING FAIR FOR THAT THOUGH. AGREED.

(*I am shot immediately as well*)

Me, panicking, staring at the toy aisle: What do little girls like? What do 4 year old little girls like? Bean, this is for your friend, you pick. What do we get her for her birthday?

Almost 3-year-old girlchild: SHE NEEDS A DINOSAUR

Me: A dinosaur.... To give as a gift to Princess Elsa at her Princess Dress-up Tea Party Girls-Only Birthday Bash. Yes, I think you’re right. She does, in fact, need a dinosaur.

The Man, The Myth, The Legend… my man haru 💖

Hello, I've been thinking about code and selling code and sharing code in the rpc because someone posed the question to me of what I'd want to happen if someone was heavily editing a skin I sold, and to be honest, my first instinct was 'take my name off it'. That was met with some surprise, but let me explain why.

Code, to me, is a largely democratic landscape. If you want to learn, hundreds of thousands of people and websites have come together to teach you. Masses of people share open source work on codepen, stack overflow etc. Code as a skill is like assembling an especially abstract puzzle where you can only think about the pieces, not really see them. But most puzzles have similar strategies to solve- start with the corner pieces, then the edges, then the most recognizable patterns etc etc etc working your way down to the more and more difficult details. Most of code- most of my job writing code- involves minimizing the amount of time working on those shared strategies so we can have more time to work on the the interesting bits, the hard bits. the bits that make the site we're working on unique and useful. Frankly, jcink is the easy part of code, by and large. Your data is already structured and provided to you in a very particular way. It is inefficiently, but largely documented. Many other people have solved all the problems you are likely to have trying to build a skin. Skinning is html and css for the vast majority of items. It is the easy stuff. If I sell code, that code is now the property of the person I sold it to. It is not shareable or redistributable. You can't take my code and resell it as your own, but as far as I'm concerned you can do whatever you want with it. If I solved problems that might otherwise feel difficult (accessibility and responsiveness come to mind) cool. You can solve the easy ones, like styling and colors and fonts you like. You can add or subtract things that vibe with what you want that code to do. Once it is sold, it is yours to do with what you like when it comes to personal use. This is true of almost all coding contracts that exist in the entire world. If it weren't, no one would ever hire external contractors to do any work for their company, and I can tell you now, even companies which could fully afford to do all their tech in house absolutely do not in 99% of cases if their business isn't selling their own tech. The rule is generally- you may do anything you like with this, except resell it to someone else. So why take my name off it? I don't endorse how other people code. Even in my professional life, I've taken projects off my portfolio because the client took a project I worked on and broke it (imo), often with other professional developers doing the breaking. If a prospective employer were to go look at it, I'd be embarrassed by what it looks like today. Tell me why I (and my team) created a website that was fully responsive, and they went back to make it adaptive in the year of our lord 2022 because they preferred to have pixel perfect views at 3 specific breakpoints rather than a responsive site. I don't know, it's infuriating. I can't cite that project as an example of my work anymore, because it isn't. I would never leave a site in that state.

So, my first instinct with the idea of people using a skin i sell them as a base is 'take my name off it.' I don't want to be associated if responsive/accessible features are lost due to others working on a skin I wrote. But at the same time, where is the line between using something as a base, and editing a few small features? I certainly don't want to be an arbiter of that, or have to field questions or navigate feelings about it. In fact, personally I would not feel upset at all if someone used a paid for skin as a base, and inviting that kind of discussion is the only way I possibly could get upset since people have weird attitudes about a lot of this stuff. So I think the more practical standard is just to put credit, but make it explicit that the work has been heavily altered. Don't resell or redistribute, and you're golden, imo. Anyway, those are my feelings as someone who writes code for a living. I'm interested to hear counterpoints - constructively of course.