#to work on solving things

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

not "i ship these characters" or "i want them to bond platonically" but a secret 3rd thing (I want them to be forced to interact by the Narrative bc they would HATE that)

[tesseractingrey]

i think one of the coolest things about dan howell is the example he sets of how your life isn’t over at 25, and one person won’t fix your life but you still can. dan met his actual soulmate at 18 and is only now, in his 30s, finding true and genuine happiness and fulfillment. meeting phil didn’t automatically solve all his problems, although he was clearly a significant part of the motivation to bother doing the work at all. but dan still put in the work himself for YEARS to improve himself and his life and it WORKED. your life isn’t over if you aren’t completely happy and fulfilled and the person you wish you could be in your 20s. putting in the work takes time but it is WORTH IT.

[stealingpotatoes]

In Skywalkers Apart:

Why doesn't Anakin go overthrow the Emperor sooner? (since it appears that the Empire is still in power around the Rebels time period)

What do Anakin and Sabine think of each other? Bc I think they'd get along quite well 😉💣

What does Anakin think of Chopper and AP-5?

anakin & sabine would get on GREAT (especially bc this is ultimate girldad au anakin) but uh. on the first point. i think you're overestimating anakin a little like you've gotta think abt that matchup

[sesamestreep]

it’s wild to me that like every modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes (and by modern I mean “made recently” not “set in modern times”) is like Hell Bent on coming up with a Reason™️ that Watson stays with Holmes and trots around with him on adventures all the time despite the inconvenience and the danger and all, and so it’s like “oh, Watson’s a gambling addict, he loves uncertainty and mystery” or “oh, Watson’s an adrenaline junkie, he gets off on being constantly in danger from criminals” or even like “Watson’s atoning for sins of the past of BEING IN THE WAR by solving crimes with Holmes now” or WHATEVER. And it’s like, girl, maybe he’s just in love! Did you think of that?? Maybe he’s got a crush and it’s making him do stupid things. Maybe he’s just got bad taste and his type is guys who don’t know how to refold newspapers properly but can identify different types of cigar ash by sight, smell, and taste. And wrote a monograph on the subject. Maybe he’s down bad is all. I mean, Keep is simple, stupid!!!

[rad-roche]

oh a fun stylization thing i never thought to mention because it's so miniscule, but it might be an interesting bit of trivia!

whenever i draw mouths, especially in close up, i like to cheat angles a little bit and show a gumline at the back, even if you wouldn't see it normally. i think it adds character, and i don't like teeth looking a big flat slab, but also i think doing too much makes them creepy. problem: that's a very organic thing, and nick is a robot. doing that makes him look creepy

solution

inhuman gumline! his teeth are square and uniform. just the right side of subtle and unsettling to me

i've been doing this for months now. it's easiest to see in that one valencock pic i did

square!

[gothra]

I’ll never forget when I was arguing with a person in favor of total prison abolition and I asked them “what about violent offenders?” And they said “Well, in a world where prisons have been abolished, we’ll have leveled the playing field and everyone will have their basic needs met, and crime won’t be as much of an issue.” And then I was like “okay. But…no. Because rich people also rape and murder, so it isn’t just a poor person thing. So what will we do about that?” And I don’t think they answered me after that. I’m ashamed to say I continued to think that the problem was that I simply didn’t understand prison abolitionists enough and that their point was right in front of me, and it would click once I finally let myself understand it. It took me a long time to realize that if something is going to make sense, it needs to make sense. If you want to turn theory into Praxis (I’m using that word right don’t correct me I’ll vomit) everyone needs to be on board, which mean it all needs to click and it needs to click fast and fucking clear. You need to turn a complex idea into something both digestible and flexible enough to be expanded upon. Every time I ask a prison abolitionist what they actually intend to do about violent crime, I get directed to a summer reading list and a BreadTuber. It’s like a sleight-of-hand trick. Where’s the answer to my question. There it is. No wait, there it is. It’s under this cup. No it isn’t. “There’s theory that can explain this better than I can.” As if most theory isn’t just a collection of essays meant to be absorbed and discussed by academics, not the average skeptic. “Read this book.” And the book won’t even answer the question. The book tells you to go ask someone else. “Oh, watch this so-and-so, she totally explains it better than me.” Why can’t you explain it at all? Why did you even bring it up if you were going to point me to someone else to give me the basics that you should probably already know? Maybe I’m just one of those crazy people who thinks that some people need to be kept away from the public for everyone’s good. Maybe that just makes me insane. Maybe not believing that pervasive systemic misogyny could be solved with a UBI and a prayer circle makes me a bad guy. But it’s not like women’s safety is a priority anyway. It’s not like there is an objective claim to be made that re-releasing violent offenders or simply not locking them up is deadly.

[notbecauseofvictories]

it's not that there aren't enough hours in a day...more like there aren't enough days in a week. I need the exact same amount of sleep and "switch off your brain" time I'm getting day to day, I just need to jam a few more days in the week (or even just in the weekend) to catch up on all the other things I need to get done.

[superbat-lmao]

Tim and Jason go on a roadtrip.

It’s not entirely intentional.

It starts as a case, both of them following separate leads and ending up scheduling their takedown of the operation at the same time. They literally stumble into each other and Tim gets a good wack in before realizing it’s Jason.

The reason they stumble into each other is because the case isn’t in Gotham.

Jason, who has been piecing shell companies together through physical evidence, had driven to all of the stops along the way because hunting down a digital paper trail looked like it would’ve taken too much time.

Tim, who figured hacking wouldn’t take as long as it did, but eventually found the main base of operations, had taken a flight out for the final pieces of evidence.

When the op is finished, Jason takes Tim back to his hotel, because he actually has a place he’s staying and didn’t go straight for the base. They’re both kinda beat up and have a couple more threads to work through to tie their respective information together, so they stay at the hotel for another day.

There is little small talk, but not none. Jason says he’ll go get coffee from the lobby. Tim says that stuff is always shitty and Jason makes fun of him for being able to rank hotel chains based on their coffee quality. Tim just says that’s because Jason isn’t as well traveled as he is. Jason laughs in his face, saying with all the time he spent abroad, he’s sure he’s been around more than Tim.

They talk about domestic work they’ve done too, places they’ve been for cases between here and Gotham. Trying to one-up the other in terms of experience. Jason even mentions cases he worked back in his Robin days, which Tim recognizes from his stalker days of following their busts in other states.

They really believe that’s all they have to say on the matter. Jason even offers to drop Tim off at the airport. But by then, they’ve also discussed how neither of them have anything pressing back in Gotham. How they had each planned on taking a few days after this op to reset a bit.

Tim asks which way Jason is taking back to Gotham and critiques it. Tells him to stop by different towns and check out things that Jason laughs at him for mentioning. They snipe at each other the whole time, and before they really realize it, they’re on the road.

The whole thing is begrudgingly happening. They’re siblings, there’s a fair amount of fighting. There’s minimal “emotional” conversation, but it’s there. Unavoidable in how they each bumble through each other’s trauma. They stop at tourist traps, listen to shitty radio stations, they tell stories of previous cases and places they’ve been with friends, small family diners, switching off driving, aiming for potholes to catch air, sleeping in the back seat, driving under the stars, sleeping in shitty motels, buying their siblings joke souvenirs.

They talk about Titans tower, the pit, Shelia, Bruce. They judge Discowing and Damian. Jason asks about Steph, Tim asks about Catherine. It’s small snippets of thoughts about the most meaningful things. They are dancing around it and also finally talking about it. Getting it all out in the open.

When they get back to Gotham, it changes a lot of small things. They still hash it out occasionally, but everyone notices the change. How much more casual they are around each other, hanging out off-hours more often, working together on more ops.

They’re brothers and they act like it.

[artgletic]

case study of the self-identified god

[brokenphoenix99]

Out of All the Stars in the Sky, I Choose You to Light My Night

For @codex-week Day 3: Inspired by this stunning piece - Alt Prompt #3 - art BY JAMES FENNER

Cody and Rex finally get some downtime after a mission on a distant planet and enjoy the beauty and calmness of a rare Celestial event.

(Tried a painterly style for this one - it was so much fun!)

Also on AO3

Tiny art Tag list: @loverboy-havocboy @chaicilatte @elismor

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Why The Ending Sucks

Ok I figured it out. Hear me out:

The entire comic has a running theme best summed up as "who is controlling the narrative, and why are we listening to them?"

Hussie plays a caricaturized version of himself that he describes as "buffoonish" and "oafish". Caricature!Hussie is well-meaning, but a dumb idiot who's incredibly biased in favor of certain characters and in disfavor of others (the most obvious example being his "love" of Vriska, but there's also the way he constantly disparages Eridan). As a result, you have to be VERY SKEPTICAL and VERY CAREFUL when approaching Homestuck's narration, because even when the "best" narrator is at the helm, he's not 100% trustworthy and incapable of giving the readers an unbiased view of the story.

I say "best" because, importantly, Hussie isn't the story's only narrator. He and Doc Scratch explicitly fight over control of the story - Doc Scratch, the child abusing predator who engineered Alternia's fascist murder society, whose shaping of its history is explicitly described by character!Hussie as "fanfic". He is then killed by Lord English, who is described by Hussie as embodying the "toxically masculine" and by extension, the patriarchy, and Caliborn explicitly takes control of the story. John even grapples with Caliborn's version of events, calling out how sexist and misogynistic and shitty it is.

So if we're keeping score: control over the narrative is LITERALLY wrested away from Hussie (who was already struggling to be unbiased) by fascists, abusers, and the patriarchy. It's stressed multiple times that Caliborn/LE are responsible for literally everything that ever happens; the reason the Game Over timeline ends the way that it does is because the alpha timeline is, in essence, the narrative LE is telling: the forces of fascism get to claim the new universe, thereby propogating itself, while friendship dies and all hope is lost.

Who's in control of the narrative, and why are we listening to them?

There are other minor examples of this, too: Aranea is an exposition fairy, and she's biased as fuck and wrong ALL THE TIME about her own teammates. Karkat's explanations and rationalizations are constantly tinged with his own self-loathing and self-blame. Sollux and Meulin are both prophets as per their Mage class, but are both so bogged down by their own emotional issues that the futures they pick out are actively harmful. So on and so on. At nearly every turn, you have to interrogate who's telling the story, what their motivations are, and what they're overlooking or deliberately obfuscating.

So given that this theme is so prevalent, and so thoroughly weighted toward "well, actually, maybe you shouldn't take narration at face value and should interrogate it and come to your own conclusions," it would be Really Weird for the story to go "actually, you can totally trust the narrative now because everyone gets a happy ending".

So, I know that it makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist, but here's my genuine take on Homestuck's ending:

The ending is shitty on purpose because the viewer is intended to take it as a dare to refute the narration and make something better.

Why are we letting character!Hussie tell the story? He's a biased idiot. Why are we letting the various avatars of LE and Caliborn tell the story? They're fascist, misogynistic, predatory assholes.

And - because Homestuck is a story about life - why are we letting idiots, assholes, abusers, and creeps dictate the story of real life? The world is full of forces that would try to take control of the story and make everyone else play along, represented in microcosm within the text of Homestuck. We cannot let those forces win.

So please go out and do something kind and hopeful and loving in the world today. Thanks for reading.

[pratchettquotes]

"It wasn't a nice thing to do," Adora Belle Dearheart went on, in the same level tone.

"There wasn't a nice thing that would work," said Moist.

Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

[lightgamble]

DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN | 1.09

Hey, this is it.

[fictionadventurer]

This AV Club comment is making me so desperate to write a romcom, you have no idea.

[tea-cat-arts]

I simply think this fandom doesn't give Wei Wuxian enough credit for the various ways in which he saved Lan Wangji

[fantasticgothicpeachsludge]

Sometimes I think about Cal being an explorer/archaeologist for the Order if it had never fallen and I cry