#Specifically The Unexpectables!

[ethereal-feline]

"Hm? Why do I want to join the Adventurer's Guild? One time, some people came into the shop with a big request to fix up some old broken armor. It took my mom three days to fix it up! I asked the customers what happened, and they told me this awesome story about fighting a giant monster! Ever since then, I wanted to be just like them! Slaying monsters, going to far off places, and finding treasure! Mom says I could join when I'm older, but I want to join now!"

[hajihiko]

Trust and belief and trust and belief and trust and belief and-

[revivisection]

my boyfriend who i hate and my bffsie who has never done anything wrong ever

[bithermal]

I’m really excited to see how the Vegas trip gets reflected in the QSMP. Like after the Brazil meetup it was so clear everyone was so much more comfortable roleplaying and making stories together, and it also led to some great dynamics (Charlie and Baghera my beloveds) that otherwise probably wouldn’t have happened. I wanna see what these creators come up with the more they hang out

[dekusleftsock]

Mha fandom when you say that Izuku’s biggest fic mischaracterization isn’t making him twinky:

WHEN DID BEING A TWINK BECOME A BAD THING CAN I JUST ASK THAT

Like yes, twinkifying one male character in a ship can be annoying—it can perpetuate heterosexual roles onto same sex relationships (“who’s the woman in the relationship/who wears the pants in the relationship?”), BUT LET US BE CLEAR:

TWINKS ARE A PART OF THE QUEER COMMUNITY. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BEING A TWINK, MAKING A CHARACTER A TWINK, OR SEEING A CHARACTER AS A TWINK.

WHEN in the ever loving FUCK did that somehow translate into “the twink has to be the stereotypically aggressive one so it doesn’t abide by queer stereotypes”. HOW DID WE GET HERE.

[shiresome]

THE WORLD IS SO BEAUTIFUL

[tooquirkytolose]

I hope Mr. Blue-haired Wizard and his family are doing well

he has kids now :)

[laundrybiscuits]

(continued from this and this)

“Yeah, I just told her to give them the cold shoulder. Don’t have to be mean or anything, just ignore ‘em a little. Play it cool. Drives girls crazy, ‘cause then they have to work to get your attention.”

Eddie stares at him. 

“Holy shit, Buckley’s gonna die alone and it’s gonna be a hundred percent your fault. That is the worst fucking advice I’ve ever heard in my life.”

Steve actually looks offended, like his honor’s been impugned. “What the hell, man? I’ve picked up like a million girls that way. I’m telling you, it works.”

“Yeah, okay, now I’m seeing why my sage advice is required for this whole endeavor. That kind of thing might fly if you’re some alpha dog prom king, but lesbians are like…giant pandas or some shit, okay? The conditions have to be precisely calibrated or they’ll just hibernate in a cave by themselves eating bamboo forever.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” says Steve. 

Eddie shrugs. “Whatever, I’m not a panda scientist. The point is…okay, let’s do a thought experiment.” Oh, this is a bad, bad idea. The Munson specialty. “Say you wanted to get a guy interested in you. How would you do it?”

“I’d just—” Steve stops, frowning. “I mean, girls usually just…laugh at guys’ jokes and stuff. Or wear, like, makeup?”

“How are you so awful at this,” says Eddie. “Jesus. I swear to god I remember you doing better with girls at school. Anyway, I didn’t ask what girls do, I asked what you’d do.”

“Shit, I don’t know. Isn’t that why I’m here?” Steve’s getting a little huffy, fidgeting. “I’d just…find a way to hang out with the guy, I guess. Laugh at his dumb jokes.”

“Yeah, sure,” Eddie says patiently. “But that’s what you do with friends too, right? And when you’re walking a perilous path far from the bright streets of heterosexuality, you probably don’t want to risk being too obvious, in case you’re wrong. So you gotta just…give them an opening to let them, like, signal if they’re interested. If they’re looking for a sign, they’ll take it.”

Steve wrinkles his nose. “Ok, but what if they’re not interested yet? Like…sometimes girls take a while to warm up to you.”

“Cut your losses and move on.” Admittedly, Eddie’s still working on that part. 

“What? Man, I’m starting to think you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Eddie scowls at the skeptical look on Steve’s face. “Jesus, the disrespect. Why am I not telling this directly to Buckley, anyway? She’s the one in need of these hard-earned pearls of gay wisdom.”

Steve lets out a big, gusty sigh and tips his head back against the couch. “Because she said if I tried to give her any more help with dating, she’d smother me in my sleep and pin it on Dustin.”

“Attagirl,” says Eddie approvingly. 

“But obviously she still needs help, so this is like—a stealth mission. For love.”

“For love,” says Eddie. “Yeah, okay.” 

———

“Hey, can you—”

Robin whirls around at the unexpected voice and promptly trips over nothing at all, arms flailing out to avoid crashing into the library returns cart.

“Oh, shit,” says the stranger, reaching out a hand like she’s going to catch Robin’s elbow, but pulling back at the last second. “Um. Sorry.”

Robin blinks down at a girl in head-to-toe black, including dusty black combat boots. “Aren’t you hot,” she says, then wants to die. “I mean—like, just, with the heat and all, it’s a billion degrees out, I think if I tried to wear that much black I’d instantly dissolve like the Wicked Witch of the West.”

The girl stares back at her for a second, then bursts out laughing. It’s a nice laugh. 

“As if. I’m from Utah, this is nothing.”

“Oh! Utah! You’re not—are you, uh, Argyle’s girlfriend?” The way Argyle’d described her, Robin had been picturing some kind of Elvira-themed ingenue in lace, maybe smoking like a 1920s flapper. This makes more sense for a real-life teenager, though: oversized t-shirt tucked into ratty black jeans, with some cheap-looking silver jewelry tied around her neck. Her eyeliner’s heavier than anything Robin’s ever seen in Hawkins, smudging messily a little in the heat that’s apparently nothing to her. It makes her look a little bit like a panda bear, but not in a bad way.

“Not anymore.” She grimaces. “Ugh, that sounds mean. We’re, y’know, still friends and everything. I’m Eden.”

“Robin,” says Robin, gesturing at herself like a loser. “Hi.”

“Hi,” says Eden, and smiles at her.

[maximura]

What he sounds like in my head: Desert Rose

[official-darkforest]

how we feelin chimera / tortie moonpaw truthers

[delusinaldreamer19]

I’ll write cannon complacent Sebagni someday, I just…don’t know when that day is😭.

[sketchy-scribs-n-doods]

i'm a little sad at how sparse steddyhands and stizzy art and writing is on here now after the finale (thankfully, i am still digging through the couple thousand fics up on ao3 so i'm not totally bereft)

because during the airing of the season there was new stuff in the tags every day, sometimes even every few hours, but i think the finale really punched all of us in the face

there's lots of good stuff from before s2 to go digging through of course, and ao3 and twitter still have some new art and fic and memes if you go looking for it, but the difference from before and now seems a bit stark

don't misunderstand me, this isn't me being defeatist, just being a bit melancholy (and mad at the s2 finale tbh lol) about it. shout out to the regulars i see in the tags still making stuff and posting jokes, ya'll are doing the most and i wish you all the passion and motivation and time to create in the world <3

[batsplat]

I saw the post about assen 2016 and Marc cutting the chicane and was wondering if Marc did that a lot to his competitors like the imitation of mind games. Cause I’ve always thought of Vale as the one who used the mind games more. Did Marc use mind games a lot and was just more subtle?

(assen '16)

if you're interested in reading more about marc marquez mind games, then boy do I have a post for you

anyway, I can't really think of anything that's all that similar to assen 2016 because that's such a specific situation... not every day that you have something as memorable and as easy to visibly imitate and as controversial as cutting the final chicane. of course, if we're talking about imitation, it's pretty hard to avoid mentioning how marc did infamously copy two out of valentino's three most well known career overtakes within half a year of joining the premier class, and was also pretty shameless about the whole thing. but at least there you can say it's all about the race situation marc happened to find himself in - and there will only have been so much premeditation possible with both incidents

more broadly speaking, then, targeted behaviour where he's trying to send a message to one of his competitors during non-race sessions... well, that's fairly common. he loves using non-race sessions to study and stalk and at times deliberately harass his competitors. I'll give a little more details on one specific incident here to demonstrate what I'm talking about. it's related to towing, as it so often is with marc, and I ended up only briefly mentioning it in the post linked above. for context, marc spent a fair bit of time in 2019 trying to mess with the rookie revelation fabio quartararo, sometimes during the races themselves and sometimes outside of them. nothing wrong with hazing your young challengers, right? so one of the more widely discussed incidents took place in sepang 2019 qualifying (tw crash):

big fan of how the article very strongly implies that when marc says the words "honestly speaking", he was not, in fact, honestly speaking. did a single person on this planet believe marc when he said he just happened to end up right behind fabio? who knows, maybe there's someone out there, who knows...

obviously, marc and his team weren't really trying to hide what they were doing, which makes it even funnier that marc just goes for this completely shameless 'oh it was all just a coincidence' routine. and of course, this entire episode ended on a pretty sour note for marc. even though he tried to shrug it off in the moment, this incident did come with consequences for him:

which, yeah. lot's to be said here, lots to be said. but let's return to the actual point of the post, the mind games

in the end marc did do a rather nice salvage job in the race, p11 to p2 - and fabio didn't win the race, which I'm sure was appreciated. here's a nicely in-depth description of the incident that I'm going to liberally steal excerpts from. it's a good bit of extra insight on both the episode itself and what it represented in the broader context of the dynamic between the pair of them

it's part of the established playbook when it comes to dealing with promising young talent: you try to rough them up in the races and you try to rough them up outside of them. you try to make them nervous, maybe you even try to scare them. and so the cycle continues

this is the thing, right, marc really does view all on-track sessions as time to 'work' on his rivals. he's never been focused solely on himself during these sessions - and the towing thing has never just been a matter of practicality for him. 'the race doesn't just happen on sunday' 'great riders, champions, are bullies' 'they don't just want to win, they want to rub the rest of the world's noses in it'... marc has always adopted that philosophy in his racing (and he learnt from the best). he's never been shy in his tactics of intimidation - in his efforts to undermine his rivals' confidence and make them suffer. it's all part of the game

and then, of course, there's the bit of insight we get about how marc was reportedly worried about fabio because of his talent and fearlessness... a rookie who hadn't even won a race yet. and yet marc's "been doing his best to instil fear" into fabio. unfortunately it's not always easy to spook young talent, especially when they're so very brave... it's a tricky line to toe - by marking out your rivals like that, you are also letting them implicitly know you see them as a threat. which if anything can help motivate them and make them more confident. inconvenient

anyway, l'll include some more of the description of the incident, which helps illustrate just how little effort marc was going to in attempting to hide his underhanded behaviour (and how that may have been the whole point):

inherently, right, this 'battle of nerves' is a really important element of the whole towing strategy. it's about your read of the other rider, your analysis of their character, how you think they will play the situation... how much you think they're willing to risk, how much you think they'd be motivated to just fuck you over regardless, how prepared they will be to call your bluff. and in the context of sepang 2019, with that year's title very much sealed up, marc decided that he was prepared to play this game for as long as he had to. marc had won the last five races, fabio was still searching for his first ever win... marc knew young and hungry fabio would blink before he did

which, yeah. less than ideal to engage in mind games in a way that ends up getting you injured. this whole incident does serve as a good illustration of marc's overall approach, but obviously this specific episode wasn't particularly successful or indeed wise from marc's side. all in all, it probably wasn't all that intimidating for fabio when marc crashed behind him

anyway, here's some more bits talking about how marc was perhaps not being 100% honest in his post-qualifying interview:

even though in this specific example marc did admittedly fuck it, a lot of this kind of behaviour isn't bad long-term investment because it's meant to be cumulative, where you're just consistently putting pressure on someone... as it says above, "every ounce of energy spent worrying about you is one which can't be spent on trying to go faster". so you're hoping to distract your opponents, you're hoping that this constant tension will eventually unsettle them - or that you've spent so much time studying and analysing them that you can figure out how to bother them more effectively (*coughs* 2008 *coughs again*). or maybe you just can't help yourself in messing with your opponents and sometimes it is counterproductive because you've shown them how seriously you take them as a rival. maybe sometimes it's a bit of all of those things!

on fabio's reaction:

which is a pretty friendly response, it has to be said! but anyway, of course 'if he wants to follow us we are doing a good job' is probably the most healthy and useful takeaway from the whole thing. that's the thing with bullies, isn't it, you do have to figure out a way to stand up to them. fabio might have been annoyed while marc was picking on him, but he's not picking a fight with marc after the fact. he's just making it clear that he's not been intimidated - and has bagged himself pole in the process while marc started from eleventh place. as fabio says, "it's a little bit part of the game". but it is a game, and it's one that marc has always been more than happy to play

[heydocpotts]

blease,,, fem stevetony recs list,, my crops,,,

never fear, i gotchu & ur crops, friend.

1. all of me wants all of you. by frostfall

(teen+, dimension travel, light angst, getting together)

One day, a portal opens up in the middle of Toni's workshop, leaving behind two men who apparently are them, Captain America and Iron Maiden, well, Man, from another universe.

But that's not the only thing that Steph finds bizarre. What's also bizarre is that Captain America and Iron Man are together.

Together in a relationship.

And apparently somehow, they're not the only pair.

(Or the five Steves who convince Steph to confess her feelings to Toni and the one Steve she has to convince to confess to his own.)

- this one is my favorite & my go to for feel good fem!stevetony. the avengers are all genderswapped plus multiversal shenanigans plus steph very obviously pining & toni being completely oblivious to it. i dont want to say too much about which universes show up bc thats not as fun, but one thing thats rlly nice for me personally: natasha stark is trans here & i think that's neat. ❤️

2. Yes, Boss by suitofhumour

(teen+, college/university AU, bodyguard AU, angst with a happy ending, getting together)

When Antonia (Tony) Stark is set to go back to MIT, her mother has only one condition - she needs a bodyguard. Tony hates it and tries to skip out from it using every excuse possible but Maria is firm and Tony is stuck with a bodyguard who is bound to cramp her style. It just gets even worse when the bodyguard is Captain Stephanie Rogers and Tony doesn’t know if her destiny hates her or wants her to just give in to the weird feeling that kinda sounds like love.

- i already love bodyguard AUs & college AUs & this is both ❤️ here, tony is just a girl trying to make her robots & follow her heart & steph is the hot bodyguard realizing oh no perhaps this is not just a job. what ever will she do???? (also steph is trans & once again, that's neat!)

3. The Unintentional Reevaluation of Natasha Stark by kdm103020

(teen+, getting together, pining steph)

Howard's daughter drives her nuts.

In which Natasha Antonia Stark morphs from Steph's personal nightmare into...well, something else. She's not quite sure about that yet.

- this one reminds me of the older getting to know each other stevetony fics that came out after Avengers 1 which is a specific kind of vibe that i love. tasha grows on an oblivious steph, its rlly cute. good soup ❤️

4. Mistletoe (Take a Risk) by greymantledlady

(gen, first kiss, christmas fic, past peggy carter/steve rogers)

Steve stands quietly under the mistletoe, watching, and thinks she could watch all night: Tony is bright and funny and effervescent and sweet, though Steve knows that Tony would never believe in her own sweetness. Tony’s hair is sticking up in the dearest little dark curls over her head. There’s one particular curl over her ear that Steve wants very much to poke her finger through.

Tony’s coming over now. Steve doesn’t move, just smiles a little and waits for her; her heart is suddenly thumping in her throat. Take a risk, Steve had told herself, because Tony was worth it, a thousand times, and mistletoe was mistletoe and sometimes wonderful things happened beneath it.

Peggy would have thought so, Steve thinks suddenly. Peggy would have said that to her: take a risk.

To be read as a standalone fic.

- this one is very VERY soft, very sweet. straight up unabashedly adorable. i have a whole cache of christmas fic i reread around the holidays & this is in there ofc. this author is just generally rlly good at delivering the warm fuzzies, honestly.

5. (let her sleep) for when she wakes, she will move mountains by Portia77

(teen+, pre-relationship, showers, protective steve, comfort no hurt)

“If you get killed, walk it off.”

Pfft.

Sure, easy for Steph Rogers to say. She’s 6’0 and a veritable wall of muscle.

By comparison, Toni feels like a hand blown glass vase left out in a hurricane.

- this is pre-slash & i don't like reading those usually bc im impatient & i wanna see em smooch romantically, but i really liked this one. the vibe is tired toni while she's all beat up & steph taking care of her, which i coincidentally have a big ass soft spot for. its rlly cute, i like it.

-

there you go, pal. stevetony continues to be my emotional support brainrot, lemme know if you want more recommendations

[theeerealpunkin]

Bilbo: Back then I was entirely respectable.. & nothing unexpected ever happened

Title screen: I'm about to ruin your whole life

[nerves-nebula]

*voice of exhaustion* you guys are like, so moronically white