#beginning middle and end

[maladaptations]

certifiable HEA

I keep using my girlfriend with unusual work hours to get out of coworker interactions and happy hours and hanging out.

But now the company holiday party is upon us.

And I’ve been lying about the girlfriend.

I suddenly really empathise with the characters in Hallmark Christmas movies.

[sevastiel]

So I was listening to the new Warframe Isleweaver soundtrack, and this song in particular REALLY caught me.

We dont currently have any instances of violin/viola that I can think of in warframes sound track that are that prevalent, and I was like, hmm. It uses Duviri's/the drifter's theme, but not in the regular way, and other than that its all over the place, its Kinda... lacking in regulation. It's highs and lows and oh my god its Thrax, isnt it.

Anyway. Now there's an image in my head of Thrax playing what I'm currently thinking of as a 5 string violin/viola combo that'd cover the whole register here, and atm I'm oscillating btween violinthi and vilthiari

(Vinthiri? Vilitha? vilithis? Violiri? Viliri? Violara? its gotta sound similar to how it would sound to play, while keeping the vi bit.)

[wynterstrawberry]

(Almost) breakfast in bed

Seth woke up somewhat jet lagged and still having to remind himself he didn’t have anywhere he had to be currently. The clock flashing 6:55 am seemed to be taunting him. Since he couldn’t fall back asleep he begrudgingly got out of bed and decided to make breakfast for the two of you.

Normally his breakfast would consist of a breakfast bar or maybe cereal. But today he was going to go fancy and all out while attempting to make your favorite breakfast.

Seth was pretty proud of how the breakfast had turned out so far. His own multitasking skills impressing himself. But he got over confident and both plates slipped out of his hand. The sound of glass shattering woke you up.

You hurried in and saw Seth attempting to clean up while blood dripped into the mess.

“You do know you’re bleeding right?” You asked as you gently guided his hand to the sink to clean it. Seth stood there shocked wondering how he was oblivious to the cut on himself.

As the water made contact with his hand he couldn’t help but flinch. You cleaned up his hand and applied neosporin before putting a bandaid on it.

Seth held his bandaged finger up to you expectantly. “Kiss it.” You laughed at his childlike antics and lightly planted a kiss to his finger.

“If you wanted me to kiss you there were other less painful ways to get that you know?”

“Eh I wanted to spice things up this time anyway.” Seth bantered back. With his hand bandaged you cleaned up the mess and realized unfortunately nothing could be salvaged.

Seth looked at the ruined breakfast “oh no we have to go to our favorite restaurant now. How tragic.”

[aroaceleovaldez]

What is the PR disaster in question that made Rick announce TSATS? I wasn’t active in the online fandom at that point

Of course! This was awhile ago so it figures people don't remember it/aren't familiar:

Basically a couple years back (2020) the fandom had some posts circulate discussing the ways different characters in the Riordanverse were written poorly or offensively. There was a masterpost that went around tumblr but the two major points people were particularly focusing on were Piper and Samirah (particularly because Piper had featured prominently again in Trials of Apollo recently and the third MCGA book had further emphasized and discussed Samirah being Muslim, since it was supposed to take place during Ramadan). Basically each had multiple posts breaking down the ways they were depicted incorrectly or offensively. The entire fandom for a little bit was VERY intensely discussing this (and it's around this time the "RR crit" tag got very popularized on tumblr - it did exist before, but suddenly was being used VERY frequently - cause it was that wide-spread - though the discussion took over basically every side of Riordaverse social media on different platforms). People really wanted Rick to respond to these criticisms, so he did!

He made two blog posts, one about Piper and one about Samirah. He has since deleted both so the links are to archived versions. The short version: he essentially tried to justify his poor research and double-down that he hadn't written them offensively, actually, people were just being mean to him. The fandom, of course, reacted poorly to this.

[Further elaborated events under the cut since this got a bit lengthy]

(Fun fact, this all happened within a month or so of the time i posted an open letter on aphobic tropes in the Riordanverse that Rick replied to, and then he immediately followed with announcing that Reyna was intended to be ace-coded [which cause a LOT of fandom debate] before Rick dipped for a couple of weeks, and then came back to post the blog posts in response to Piper and Sam stuff. So I like to jokingly refer to this as "The time I imploded the fandom/drove Rick off of twitter." Twas I that set the house ablaze.)

Rick fully left social media after this and the LT Musical social media manager became Rick's social media manager for the time being.

So this all happened June/July of 2020. Tower of Nero would end up being published in October of 2020 and a few months after that Rick would state that he was done with the series and wouldn't be writing any more series installments involving Percy, and also that he wouldn't be writing a Nico quest following Tower of Nero as it "wasn't his place to" and encouraged the community to write their own versions of Nico's story.

The community continued to circulate the tumblr posts and discuss the topics of Rick's offensive character depictions, and this is also where we see the dramatic shift in how the fandom depicts Piper in fanwork (though in most cases it is admittedly not an improvement 😬) because of all this discussion. This is also around the time when the fandom brought Viria under scrutiny claiming that she was whitewashing Piper as part of the same discussions, through the justification that she was drawing Annabeth as having tan skin (which she does canonically), and if Annabeth has tanner skin then Piper then that's whitewashing Piper? Except they were using completely separate images of not fully rendered Piper art versus Annabeth in dramatic lighting, so it's all very awkward and poor logic, and did actually get kind of racist. A lot of people were calling it "Tannabeth Blackchase" (yeah, i know) or similar and a common sentiment you'd see repeated is "Don't draw Annabeth as having darker skin than Piper, because that's offensive/racist/whitewashing." (Note: it was not phrased "don't draw Piper as having lighter skin than Annabeth" - we also won't get into certain offensive depictions of Native Americans, but I digress). But yeah, the Annabeth stuff in all that did not age well at all.

Anyways, in October of 2021 however Rick would announce that he was co-writing The Sun And The Star - with a lot of heavy emphasis on how Mark Oshiro works as a sensitivity reader, and some false advertising from the official social media that Mark Oshiro was the first time a non-Riordan author would be collaborating on the series (disregarding the ghostwriters completely). One of the big criticisms in the breaking down of issues in Rick's writing was his lack of ever seeking a sensitivity reader, and fans claiming that a sensitivity reader could solve a lot of the problems. This was basically Rick's "look! I totally listened!!!!" (though it did little to actually improve things, based on the book) and in TSATS as well Piper gets a large cameo at the end where the text very directly addresses a lot of points made in criticism of Rick's writing of her.

We also then of course got the CoTG trilogy later, explicitly stated to be for advertising purposes for the show.

So basically, short version: Rick came under scrutiny for a lot of offensive writing within the span of two months, made some bad blog posts doubling down about it, left social media. TOA ends. Rick says he wasn't going to continue the series/write what would become TSATS. Community celebrates the end of of the franchise but also continues to discuss Rick's poor writing and the blog posts at length. Rick suddenly announces TSATS and Mark Oshiro's involvement. Everybody gets distracted from being mad. Show announcement stuff also happens and the discussions peter out.

[ineed-to-sleep]

And what if I said I scrapped like half of this comic, rewrote it and started redrawing it 👉🏻👈🏻 :3

[birb-tangleblog]

I know we all hate Chris, but where does the idea that he wrote Varian out of season 2 as a reaction to his popularity in the fandom come from?? I've been here for a long time and it seems like I'm only recently hearing ideas like this get circulated and repeated more frequently. It feels like since the show ended the fandom has turned into a rumor mill/game of telephone.

When you purport the idea that Cass replaced Varian due to creator bias, it implicitly places blame for Varian's lack of inclusion on Cassandra as a character. It unnecessarily pits the two characters against each other when this is already kind of an obnoxious issue in the fandom.

Varian also isn't the only victim of bad or messy writing in the show and I find it hard to say he was specifically targeted/excluded when there were tons of other character inconsistencies, loose ends, or concepts that were introduced and then dropped. (As an aside, when you look at the lead time on production for animated shows, the timeline just seems unrealistic/unlikely to me.)

I don't want to preclude the idea that Varian really was deliberately written out of S2 - of course I could be incorrect, but in that case, it's an example of why citing sources when making claims is important and responsible.

[orions-aether]

this might be truly the most niche reference I could ever make but the scene where van's arm is out of her control felt so fucking real like sure my version was my smart drive randomly turning on in a board game cafe and almost flipping the table in front of me onto the people I was with and not strangling my good friend but the fear and frustration and anger and embarrassment that comes with not having control of the thing that's supposed to be an extension of your body is so fucking real

[dark-lord-of-awesomeness]

More from Smile's AU:

Jimmy had been acting strange for a while, so Stanley went to check on him. It turned out that this was the opening for the demon to infect Stanley.

But, unlike most witnesses, Stanley reacted and tried to save Jimmy, and managed to delay his death. Considering that this demon kills within a week, this meant more time for the twins.

Ford is the one who picks him up from the hospital because his hands were burned. Jimmy was still alive, so the curse hadn't completely infected Stanley yet.

They go home, Stanley is more reserved than usual, and Ford is worried. And then it starts: the nightmares, the confusion, the paranoia. Stanley feels constantly watched, and he can't hide it because Ford watches him like a hawk.

Ford calls Fiddleford to help him keep an eye on Stanley so he can better research how to help his brother. But every professional he takes Stanley to, every book he reads, every doctor he talks to all say the same thing: Stanley is reacting to a massive and abrupt trauma, and only God knows what he's been through before. All they can do is support him and hope he recovers.

Jimmy's death is what convinces Fiddleford that this is supernatural. Stanley woke up in despair, saying Jimmy had died. He couldn't rest until Fiddleford called the hospital to try to prove Jimmy was still alive. And guess what? He had just died. Ford believed this was Stan's subconscious finally realizing Jimmy wouldn't last long.

Stanley's condition worsens afterward. He begins seeing Jimmy in corners of walls, in shadows, beside him at bedtime. But Fiddleford knows the human mind and finds it strange that psychosis should develop so quickly and suddenly. But Stanley himself admits he's going crazy, that it's obvious this has broken him.

Fiddleford begins researching extreme trauma responses and goes down a rabbit hole. Developing psychosis and such an obsession with smiles that he smiles even while killing himself? This story has happened before. Many times. He manages to discover that the same thing happened to Jimmy.

The curse warns Stanley that he only has two days left, and Stanley ends up confessing this to Ford the next day. Ford becomes desperate, thinking this is Stanley's way of admitting he's going to kill himself. He gets closer, and Stanley begins to attack him, thinking it's the curse.

I think Fiddleford could build some binoculars or camera that can finally capture the supernatural activity surrounding Stanley. This ends up convincing Ford completely. Stanley enters that delirious state caused by the curse, making him believe he's winning while the demon takes over his body

Ford realizes this and manages to immobilize Stanley so the demon doesn't do what it needs.

From there, there are two paths:

1- Fiddleford uses the memory gun on Stanley, which kills the demon the same way he killed Bill

2- They manage to stop Stanley's heart and resurrect him.I

n both cases, Stanley would suffer the after-effects, but he would still be alive and free. In option 1, he would lose his memories.

In option 2 (my favorite): Stanley still has the demon in his head, he's just weak. He spends the rest of his life seeing Jimmy in the dark, knowing there's something in his head that doesn't want him well. But he lives with it; he has the Fords to help him when his head gets too noisy (A parallel to mental illness and how you are not cured, you just learn to live with it)

At this point this is just your au, not gonna lie! You've put so much thought into this, way more than I have. I genuinely don't have anything to add, its a whole complete idea you've got going on here. Thanks for sharing this whole story here!

[colorful-horses]

For Florid: what aspect of your artworks, or which sculpture itself, do you feel best represents your spirit?

[knockknockitsnickels]

Not sure if anyone's pointed this out before, but I think across the endings where you free the princess in the three new routes (princess and dragon -> cage -> happily ever after) you can see a bit of an arc for the narrator.

In PATD he is Mad as hell and tells you he hopes your happiness is ruined even as he fades away, in Cage he's more resigned (he doesn't like it but he'll still give you a good ending) and in HEA he outright admits he was wrong and wishes you well.

I don't have a good conclusion lol. Good for him.

[grossdyke]

we as a society really need to get into the torrid awful years long harry/hermione affair that started with them stumbling into bed together during the horcrux hunt when ron left. btw

[armatages]

hello current little guy obsessions i have assigned you jon archivist and martin blackwood because you didn't have enough problems already

it is funny to me that this is my first time drawing jayce

[rad-roche]

feels nice to draw gloria's lumpectomy scar in the pinups n such. it's not the focus of her character, but it's a big part of her character. but she's got other stuff going on. she's smart, funny, has a bunch of hobbies. no matter how things shake out, you'll always, always have other stuff going on

[lauraisakilljoy]

I love how they explained the D&P lore for the parents and straight boyfriends that were dragged along to the show and those people probably still had no idea what the fuck was going on 90% of the time

[aroaessidhe]

2025 reads / storygraph

The Memory Hunters

scifi/fantasy set in a postapoc future US

follows a hunter - a woman who uses a certain kind of mushroom allows her to dive into memories from blood, collecting them for the institute she works for, and her bodyguard / best friend, who needs the job to care for her family in the storm-torn south

when they come across a site with memories that uncover secrets about the past and the hunter’s religion that diverge from the official accounts of history, it tests their relationship and causes them to question everything

f/f

arc, out July 29

[r26yz]

Top 3 reasons to not open a multidimensional time rift: number one will surprise you