etraytin

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my favorite thing about navigating fanfiction is finding a really good one and being all “oh boy this was good, I hope they have more!” and literally every other story they’ve ever written was for like Miami Vice 

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Ranchers in a corn maze!

Anyone else always have to go on the hay ride last because the chainsaw maniac jumping out of the corn would make you too paranoid they'd just appear and kill you while you're lost in the maze?

Also all dads are the "I found a short cut" guy

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the whole "lipstick on a pig" thing makes no sense because the second we gave a pig access to makeup she became god's cuntiest soldier

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This is a debate on Tiktok lol:

A husband has a wife graduating with her master’s and his daughter graduating preschool. Who should he go with?

*if it’s important, she isn’t the daughter’s biological mother.

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Seed packet cabinet (1940s) via

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Okay, you know what? I must know, because I know many of my LiveJournal friends jumped ship for Facebook and Tumblr and we all have enjoyed Tumblr a lot:

Who here used to be on LiveJournal? Who still has a Dreamwidth account but it's not the same? Who came to Tumblr initially hungry for something that resembled LJ Community but included more visuals?

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they went off with this

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My high school did Damn Yankees as the spring musical when I was a freshman back in the mid-90s. I have no idea how they got away with it except that the theater teacher was a very charismatic man, but in my small town we had to do things like censor the marquee sign to say “D**n Yankees” so as not to shock people. I always kind of assumed the extremely weird dance in Whatever Lola Wants was another accommodation, making it clear that no, this high school girl is definitely not doing a sexy seduction dance at this boy, no matter what she’s singing. Turns out that no, that was just an homage to the original, no desexification required.

I haven’t seen this musical but I’m obsessed with this number

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All my haters become aligators when I activate my gatorinator.

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I love baby birds because they look like grown-up birds who’ve gone through a tumble dryer. Shrunken, rumpled, and an indescribable mix of baffled and enraged about the whole thing.

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5 and 14 for the fic rec ask game?

5. Recommend a gen fic (no pairings)

*rubs hands together* This prompt was made for me, I love gen fic.

Ourselves and Immortality, by ETraytin on ao3 (@etraytin on tumblr).

Fandom: The West Wing; WC: 69,330

"Roger, I'm sorry you drew the short straw on this. Next year it'll be the Surgeon General, I promise. Meanwhile, you can watch TV in my study." Roger Tribbey becomes President.

A great tragedy, a story full of people who have great power thrust upon them, and how complicated it is to wield when that great power used to belong to your dearest friends and colleagues. Sort of a disaster fic, in its way.

14. Recommend your favorite fic.

What a mean question! I could not possibly choose just one, but I will, anyway.

Hardwired, by SainTalia on ao3.

Fandom: Iron Man (2008); WC: 233,346

AI meets Girl. AKA The epic love affair between Tony Stark’s assistants that happened right under his nose.

I've read this one in pieces and as a whole more times than I could honestly tell you. It's about loneliness, and innovation, and power, and hedonism, and the American military industrial complex, and betrayal, and love. A few notes, because I really will take any opportunity to extol this story's virtues:

The story of a woman falling in love with a real artificial intelligence rings a lot truer now than it did when I first found this story in progress in...2019? 2020? Some nebulous before time.

Lacking physicality is a great complicating factor for a romance—JARVIS doesn't have any single corporeal form, but it's impossible not to fall in love with him, anyway. It's especially compelling because (spoiler) Pepper doesn't know that JARVIS is an AI at all; she believes, from the beginning, that he's simply ten steps above the very best of a mix of what we today understand to be computerized assistants and LLMs. But not sentient. Not real. And yet, she falls in love with him, anyway.

This story also, to its credit, has the single best interpretation of the MCU's Tony Stark that I have ever read. There is not one moment the author shies away from who or what he is—and yet, she manages to sell Tony being impossibly dear to Pepper anyway, without any romance at all.

I could go on, but I'll leave it here. Love it to bits.

Note: this story has "AI" generated art attached to the beginning of each chapter. That art was added after the story was finished, but before I think we really understood what "AI" art really is. Nevertheless, if that turns you off, please pass this fic by.

Fic rec ask meme

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Can’t wait for, like, 2025 when we look back on the 2018/2019 era and say “hey, remember when we were all really freaking depressed? That was a crazy time! Glad we aren’t like that anymore”

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Have you ever had a "viral" post on Tumblr? (200 notes or more)

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(x)

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June 5th can't come fast enough