#FOR REAL THIS TIME

[percydoodless]

ITS FINALLY TIME

[hiveswap]

[steggymus]

the current male fox lineup (sorry seth)

[ratbreadd]

backgrounds are NOT my thing so forgive me if this looks a little rough whoops

ermm but weird study thing from a few days ago!! think i’m gonna do all the little campsites eventually ::3

[wiseabsol]

The Ithaca Saga is banger after banger, but what makes me sob every time I listen to it is Athena's part in "I Can't Help But Wonder." Like DAMN is her arc amazing, especially in parallel to Odysseus'. And the gentle sadness of his response makes my heart ache.

[fairygothmotherisgay]

DC Social Media AU Part 7

I'm back

[abstractpenny]

What Cole actually saw in the tomb of the FSM

[gin-juice-tonic]

So, for Starters: Book Of Bill Spoilers warning. Another opinion from me below. This new one is about the lost journal pages again, of course.

Originally, I wanted to make a super big crazy essay about all the reasons I think the journal pages in BOB (The Book of Bill’s given name) are fake, and show off my super-cool totally completely sound deductive reasoning techniques in the process.  

Unfortunately, knowing myself I’m not sure I’m actually capable of accomplishing such a feat. You all know how I tend to post things in parts, sometimes out of order, often never finished. However I would like to share something in particular that’s been eating at me that I’ve seen… partially discussed, but only partially. And certainly not the part that I would like to discuss. 

It’s about the rats.

You know, the rats.

I saw these rats being talked about since before I was even able to have a look at the book myself. 

But before I get further into it all, I would like to start off with a joke: 

Why did dead rats, eggnog, a land orca, shrimp colors, It’s a Small World After All, and an Anti-Cipherite Suit cross the road? 

Well, that’s easy. To get to the other side. 

Of the book, that is. 

If you’re anything like me, you probably skipped right to the journal pages upon contact with the book. And if you’re even MORE like me, you were probably left a little confounded by them. Not only did they seem… wrong somehow. But they also felt random. Full of odd choices of subject that didn’t make a lot of sense. Could these pages really have come from journal 3? If so, why do parts of them feel so… completely out of context? 

And this is where the rats come in. As I mentioned before, I saw many people discussing them. In particular, they were noting a connection to this passage from earlier in the book:

Many of the related discussions also felt odd to me. Though I lacked the knowledge to be able to articulate why at the time. UNTIL, I read the book for myself from start to finish. That's when I realized something:  This is not the only time something from earlier in the book connects back to the journal pages. In fact, it happens many, many times throughout the earlier passages. (Here is a small collection of them for your perusal.)

And then it started clicking into place. The reasons the pages felt like they were so abnormally out of context… is because they WERE lacking context!

Now, before you can finish saying “Gin, you’re an idiot.” I would like you to ponder these three questions: 

1) Why, if these pages were taken from Journal 3, should they require context from outside of it to be able to be completely understood?

2) Why is it that this context can be found in what Bill Cipher has been writing in the preceding passages up till now? 

3) If you put food in a mogwai’s mouth at midnight EST but drive it over the CST time zone line back to 11PM before it can swallow, will it still transform into a gremlin? 

Okay, you caught me, that third one is unrelated. But the first two I believe require further thinking. So let’s delve a little further into the idea. Consider this the real third question: 

3) Are we to seriously believe that these, the only pages of J3 still lost to us, just so happen to tie into the new topics from the rest of the Book of Bill over and over like this?  

And since you’ve done so well thinking thus far, I’ll ask a fourth question: 

4) Are you aware of the concepts of Watsonian and Doyalist analysis? 

Assuming you don’t and you won’t google it, I’ll skip to the important part. Watsonian analysis is to analyze a story from within it, as if you yourself were Watson making deductions in a Sherlock Holmes novel.  

Now, from a Watsonian point of view, what happens when we try to answer our earlier questions? Why should it be that the Book of Bill provides so many of these points of reference to the journal pages? 

One possible line of thought could be that Bill wrote the earlier passages of his book *around* the idea of what was contained in the pages, but I think this doesn’t work for a few reasons. For one thing, the purpose of the book is to get the reader to make a deal, not to take a whole novel to set the stage for a 3 day mini Ford adventure. For another, not all of what I described prior is really fit to be called “context”, is it? The rats, the “Small World” cassette, and the Bill-Suit are one thing, but Eggnog? Shrimp colors? Land Orcas? I certainly wouldn’t define them that way. If anything, they’d be better suited to being called “references”. And unlike the more contextual ideas, there’d be no real need for Bill to sneak mere references to the pages into his grand story.  And lastly, there are a great deal of Bill pages that have nothing to do with the content in the journal pages at all.

So what exactly am I trying to say here? 

If we do intend to think of the callbacks outlined above as references, the only logical conclusion within the story is that the journal pages themselves are referencing back to the Book of Bill, not the other way around.

But… how? And why? Something Ford has written in the 80’s shouldn't be able to reference something Bill is writing post-weirdmageddon certainly. 

That’s because “Ford” isn’t referencing it at all!

And as for why… Well, have you ever noticed when you're writing a story on the fly, things you wrote earlier all come crashing back to you as you try to wrap things up? I believe personally that the journal pages are not pages actually written by Ford, but more a strange endcap on Bill’s crazy train of thought! That Bill is the one writing them, and the "references" are just fuel that further the pages creation. Almost as if, to quote someone much more knowledgeable than me on this subject…

(This single paragraph has been inserted a good deal after the original writing of this post.) I would like to clarify, I am not trying to claim the ideas presented in the pages have no basis in reality whatsoever. Ultimately, what I'm saying is I think Bill wrote them, and they should be taken with suspicion instead of as complete fact. "Did this event happen exactly this way?", "Does some of this feel distorted?", "Did this part even happen at all?" I think those are questions worth examining with the events detailed on these pages.

In the end, all I've described above (as well as other aspects of the pages I've not mentioned here) leave me with the impression the pages are not real.

As I stated only a bit earlier, the idea that these pages, the only pages of J3 purported to be lost, should be so connected to the rest of the book is beyond coincidence to me. Not to mention that in order to take these pages as total truth, you must give credence to several other passages of Bill's book as well. And I'm not too keen on having to trust him that much.

To all who have read this far, even to those who may have scoffed at the ideas in here or think I've only written up nonsense. Thank you for reading and considering my thoughts.

I am not saying anyone must agree with me on this. I know some people have found the pages to be important and meaningful to them, and I do not wish to give the impression that I think my view is the end all be all correct one, or that I think lesser of those who believe them to be Ford's own writings. I only want to share my own thoughts on them. And to anyone else who found the pages to feel "off" somehow, possibly validate their feelings too.

[frnkiebby]

now i’m very dead~🎃

[nerdynuala]

Damn it's getting angstier in here, I need to go back to stupid ass art before I accidentally hurt myself with feelings

I already have something cute prepared in my drafts, don't you worry

I just needed him to be openly vulnerable to Rosie and the angst was kinda inspired by the emotions in this fiction by @intel-ramblings

[ohithankyou]

chim calling ravi “ravioli”…….most adorable thing ever and he should do it again

[feral-geges]

Fangs of Fortune Ep.33 (2024)

I once vowed to protect the Wilderness until my death. I, Li Lun, live up to my vow and keep my promise.

[faiell]

favour

for @drarrymicrofic, G, 900 words

Malfoy isn’t expecting anyone. He's hunched over his work with elbows like two knife points stabbed into the desk, one hand threading through his soft downy hair and the other fidgeting on his face, knuckle running back and forth against his bottom lip. The yellow light from his lamp flickers temperamentally, barely able to offer anything other than a glow on Malfoy's cheek. Malfoy squints at the cascade of parchment before him, then pushes his fingers against his eyes. He inhales, slow. Blinks his eyes back open, exhales.

Harry's been standing there a while. "Sorry to interrupt," he says.

Malfoy's mouth parts in surprise. It takes a moment before he registers that Harry is a very real thing, and not some conjured spectre. Then every part of him straightens into place. The papers flutter as he sweeps them back into their folders, snapping the covers shut—away from Harry's prying eyes, presumably.

"What are you doing here?" There's none of the usual bite to it, not when the small hours have got Malfoy whittled down like this. He looks feather-light, blurred to softness in the midnight blues and greys.

Harry approaches the desk and sets down his peace offering. It's Muggle coffee in a nondescript paper cup--Malfoy's favourite order from his favourite café, though he doesn't know it yet.

"My shift just started," he offers, which explains nothing at all. He sees Malfoy beginning to think through it, mouth and brow curving towards each other. "Picked this up for you on the way."

Malfoy’s expression of bafflement is delightfully wide-eyed. All of his usual mechanisms don't seem to be working. Harry keeps expecting a switch to flip, for Malfoy to shore up and retreat into icy waters, but it doesn't come. Instead his pale hands reach for the cup and cradle it, fingers skittering against the paper texture, thumbnail underlining the scrawl of 'Harry' on the side. The steam tickles his chin. With the coffee clutched close to him, Malfoy speaks, voice flaky and uncertain, "I can't accept this."

"Don't be daft," Harry insists. "It's two in the morning, take it."

Malfoy's frown grows deeper as he contemplates this additional fact. "There's nothing open this late."

It's true. Harry's kept that coffee under a stasis charm for twelve hours now. "I got it for Ron, but he's not in today," he amends, and gestures with the cup in his other hand, "Got myself one too."

Malfoy wants the coffee, craves it badly. Harry can see it in the way that he holds the warmth of it towards himself, shoulders drooping as he savours the rich chocolatey aroma. He's about to give into it, has brought the coffee all the way up to his mouth when he stops, eyes trained on Harry, glinting like burnished steel. "You must want something from me."

Harry shrugs, nonchalance teetering on his shoulder. He takes a sip of his own, lets it sit bittersweet on his tongue before swallowing it down. Malfoy's gaze slides from his mouth and catches on his throat, before it scuttles back to his own hands again.

"No, I don’t. You don't have to overthink it, Malfoy. It's just a favour."

The word holds more tension than it should. Harry knows Malfoy hates owing him, and that's why he's gone to all this trouble, cajoled him so carefully. He’s been at it for weeks now, first out of kindness, then out of spite, and now because…—well, because he’s tenacious, probably. The room slips into silence as Malfoy considers, until both of them become invisible and there’s just the coffee on the desk, lit up by weak lamplight. 

Harry’s so hopeful he forgets to breathe. His pulse climbs from his chest up to his head until it’s deafening. He’s sure he’s about to burst when, abruptly, Malfoy gives in with a little jerk of his shoulders, the scarcest of shrugs. He drinks. His lips wrap around the plastic and he tilts it back, slow and delicate, taking the shallowest sip.

Malfoy's eyes widen just a fraction when he recognizes the flavour of it. His tongue works inside his mouth as he rolls the taste around, once, twice, and again, just to be sure. A small, pleased sound comes out then, and before Harry can even register what that means, Malfoy brings the cup to his mouth again and takes three big gulps.

He sighs, eyes closed, contentment chasing away the shadows dragging at his face, and suddenly he’s years younger. There's cream on his upper lip. Harry is transfixed. The flickering lamp grows a bit brighter, buoyed by Malfoy's magic and finally illuminating the workstation properly, bathing his washed-out figure in warm hues.

"Well thanks," Malfoy says, smirking, because that's what he does instead of smiling. A pointed tongue darts out to catch some cream, missing most of it. "You should probably go, Potter. You don't even work on this floor."

[clowniconography]

favorite ghibli movie poll except i left out the most obvious ones that dominate every poll because porco rosso is my favorite and nobody ever includes it. also not all of them are strictly miyazaki movies

[jade-efflorescence]

yor telling anya she can read her mind perfectly because she wants to understand every part of her 😭😭😭