#actually this does not seem normal

[yuumebow]

why is it always that whenever i see ANY character literally throw me any fucking character and i will be like "they are just like me fr" ???????? WHY DO I HAVE LIKE EVERY PERSONALITY IN THE WORLD

[kirianthedivorce]

I don’t think this is going to end with Gemma being completely alive and back to normal and everything’s happy but like, I am a little baffled by people’s insistence that mark trying to get her back is unhealthy

Like. If you think your wife dies but then it turns out she appears to be alive and being held hostage in a basement somewhere, presumably stolen just before death by the deeply unethical medical company who has contacts and influence in just about every organisation in your area (including the hospital and the morgue), and you happen to have access to some parts of said basement then doing what you can to get her out of there isn’t an unhealthy refusal to move on. That’s like. A relatively normal response to an insane situation.

Like is the healthy option to just leave your seemingly alive and well wife in the basement of the evil medical company to be experimented on? Mark doesn’t even know she can’t remember anything (and to be honest, neither do we. We’ve only seen her innie. We have no idea what her ‘outie’ is like. I doubt it’s normal regular Gemma, but we don’t know). The experimental brain surgery is unideal but the desire to rescue her is like. The only normal response to that information

[itsnotacostume]

we as a fandom do not talk about this scene enough. what the fuck is this. why did he feel the need to install this? so he could stare at his boybestfriend all day without having to get up?

[wolfstarlibrarian]

Re-posting fics: How not to be an asshole

I know, kind of salty for a heading, sorry, but we got some stuff to talk about. (Also, sorry I haven't been around as much but my life has been WONDERFULLY full, so thank you to everyone who's checked in. ❤️)

I've gotten a few asks in my inbox and I don't want to embarrass anyone and I also don't want to inadvertently give any future scoundrels and any tips.

"I love this fic but the author took it down, so I'm going to repost it on AO3, and just mention that I'm not the author"

NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! *sprays you with water*

You have a copy of the fic. Kudos. But if they author wanted it on AO3 then IT WOULD BE ON AO3. Taking a fic not on A03 and putting it on A03 is a massive "fuck you!" to the author. The ultimate sign of disrespect to someone who put HOURS AND HOURS of work into their. FOR FREE. The LEAST we can do as fans is GIVE RESPECT.

Authors are not corporations. Authors are not sponsored. Authors are not "content creators". They are HOBBYISTS who are sharing their HOBBY with you.

Enjoy the fact that you have the fic.

If the author wanted it shared in ANY WAY they would put it back on A03.

Also I hate that I have to say this, but this same logic goes for Wattpad, Goodreads, Fanfiction.net, PDFs on reddit, and every site ever. Please stop.

"But no one is getting hurt"

Many authors took down work because they don't want their art mined by AI and you're putting it back up for AI.

Many authors took down their work as a rebellion against JKR and you're spitting in their face while they're trying to protest something.

Many authors took down their work because they're trying to pitch it as a book and they can't because agents and publishers search for the phrases and go "Well this exact story is already up for free and it's got gross, X-rated material I didn't see in my draft, so I'm definitely not giving them a book deal now". Congrats, now you'll never get a published and bound copy of your favorite fic.

Many authors took down their work because they are no longer proud of their work and they've grown as an artist and having the work up brings them daily shame, but you put it back up anyway.

Many authors took down their work for reasons that WE WILL NEVER KNOW and it's still our place to respect that.

Look, I support piracy. Corporations don't let us own anything anymore, so pirating isn't even stealing. But fanfic authors are not corporations. And you can't own a fic that isn't yours.

These authors have NOTHING but control over their work and you are stealing that. You are ruining their art, after they made it for you, for free.

If you love something, respect it.

I know you think you're helping fans by reposting a fic but I can't tel you how many authors I know that no longer post their fics BECAUSE THEY KNOW PEOPLE WILL STEAL THEM.

Reposting fanfics is killing fandom.

What do you do as a fan when you see reposted fanfics?

If you can, find and tell the author so they can take legal action.

Bully the author. Respond to every single comment on A03 and tell them exactly why the fic shouldn't be online, and why they shouldn't be supporting the non-author who published the fic without the author's consent

Go to the re-poster's social media and spread the word there. IDC anymore.

Talk about it with your friends and in servers. Every time you see someone asking for "PDFs of a fic" on tiktok go ape shit in the comments and get all your friends to help.

Okay, rant done. And remember, if you feel powerless, you will always have the power fanfic authors. You're part of this community. Your value and actions matter.

[fairyroses]

He was about to kill you, Lex. Or divulge something you didn't want me to know.

— SMALLVILLE, "Forever" (4.21)

+ bonus from "Arctic" (7.20):

[doe-eye-oswald]

'Characters watching the show'-type situation except it's just the incredibly dangerous whacky stunts conan pulls on a regular basis (including the movies) being shown to people that aren't in the know.

Oh you think the child is staying over at the professors TOO BAD he's following a murderer!!! Ran is looking for him bc he's run off again SIKE he's chasing a car on the highway on his janky little skateboard!!! Oh thank god this high stakes case got somehow resolved WHAT'S THIS it's conan confronting the suspect by kicking a football unnaturally hard!!!! Thankfully we all escaped the burning building WHELP there's conan running back into it!!! We need to evacuate the premises bc there's a bomb WHOOPS there's conan defusing it!!! Where's the child gone now WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT it's said child jumping of an exploding building using his suspenders as a jumping rope while being actively shot at HAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At no point is it mentioned that Conan is anything more than a smart six year old.

[spasechip]

my stuff from @potato-lord-but-not is here!!

i’ve been too scared to stick them anywhere (what if i put them in the wrong place and they are stuck FOREVER!!!) so instead they have been put up on my wall and now they watch me sleep 🫡 i LOVE THEM SO MUCH

[schizospec-culture-is]

Schizospec culture is sitting and watching the ceiling flow for what ends up being hours

-

[cent-scratchnsniff]

it was just going to be a few warmup doodles but then she infected the rest of the page like the ever eternal and spreading spores. hod!!! hod. hod :)

[anghraine]

It feels extremely silly that only today did I realize that pantry and panadería are slightly similar-sounding for a reason >_>

(The English word pantry is one of the many, many common modern English words derived from Anglo-French: in this case, panetrie, from Old French paneterie, "bread room" ... Spanish panadería also has a complex etymology, but all are related to Latin panis, "bread.")

[javierduffy]

“uh … it’s a bit girly … no?” javier examines himself in the reflection of his knife’s blade, looking this-a way and that, the dark blue of a large silken bow now peeking sheepishly around his neck as it sits gently in his hair. next to him, kieran clams up a smidge, hands still held close to his chest nearby his completed ribbon project on javier’s head. he finds it in himself to wring his hands a time or two rather than immediately undo his work as javier seems to continue to formulate his final opinion. “you … think so? look at me?” kieran asks, politely as a mouse. javier easily complies, turns at his hips and looks behind, up at kieran where he sits on the stump above him.

kieran, as he peers over, can’t help the meadow of flush that blooms over his neck, then his ears, then his nose and his cheeks. he can tell javier is deep in thought by the look on his face, mouth twisted just a might sideways, cocking his mustache awry, and the deep wrinkle sat between his brows. the ribbon he used matches javier’s vest perfectly, and the shine of the silk warms bright in the sun, just like every piece of jewelry and metal javier has adorned himself with. with this ribbon, javier’s hair sits lower on his head, ponytail draped down his nape and more hair framing his face in his bangs. kieran resists an urge to tuck one side back behind his ear.

kieran thinks that he looks like a painting, a muse, a love letter so heartbreakingly full of adoration that the only language it could be written in is bright swipes of pigment on a canvas. as he makes eye contact with the silk squinting around the red of a necktie, he thinks that javier may be right, if ‘girly’ could sum up ’poetry written in effeminate reverence’.

kieran always did think women made better art, wrote better books- found a better way to love. softer. warmer. prettier. like javier.

the world sounds like it’s underwater.

“i think … it’s very pretty. it suits you real well.”

earnest to a fault, the look in kieran’s eye dances gingerly with javier’s internal voice. it dips and sways him, and javier, despite his instinct, finds himself charmed by its rhythm.

“-b-but! i could take it out! if you don’t-“ javier looks down at himself in his knife again, the sunlight filtered through the leaves glinting a yellow green around his dark features, and kieran hands him patience on a silver platter. a rich blue makes friends with bright green quite easy, javier thinks. this is how he must look through kieran’s mossy lens.

“pretty … yes. you know, i think you may be right. i’ll keep it. gracias.”

[creativity-deficient]

I’ll never quite understand the discourse around whether or not Tweek is a part of Craig’s group

He may not appear as frequently as the other members but he still is pretty consistently associated with them, and has been even before he and Craig started dating

Even South Park studios lists him as a part of the group

[day-mark]

god i fucking love competitive play, i love watching high level, skilled gameplay from passionate players, i love learning the statistics for each player and the game as a whole, i love hearing everyone and especially the casters glaze the fuck out of my favorite players. mc summit/mojang and mc.c you will be fucking dealt with .

[chemical-processes]

I think the description of Benson and Randy's relationship as "parasocial" is quite apt. Benson says "I've been watching you, and I know for a fact..." He posits that Randy is not like anyone else in their small shitty town, that there's something uniquely 'fixable' about him. It's something that Benson stakes most of his motivation on throughout the movie 'it was the only thing I believed' and in some ways this is reflected in Randy as truth, but sometimes the character traits Benson projects onto Randy just fall short of reality. Randy says that his mom held him back a grade and Benson paints the picture of a domineering authority figure that Randy must rebel against, And clearly believes this is the case based on the tenacity with which he listens to--and disapproves of-- Randy's conversation with his mother on the phone. However listening to the conversation is just dull. His mom does come across as over bearing, pointing out the number of rings it took him to pick up, but she's otherwise normal compared to the image Benson seems to have of her. Same with Lisa. Benson strolled into the mall with Randy as though a great revelation was to be made, like Lisa was this monumental event in Randy's life, but Randy and Lisa's relationship was underwhelming. They were briefly dating in highschool and they broke it off rather amicably because Randy was not an emotionally fulfilling partner to Lisa. Randy claims not to know why Lisa broke up with him, and to Benson this is an injustice, but in reality it's just Randy being a little obtuse and naive about Lisa's emotional needs. Lisa could've been more transparent about why the relationship ended but they were kids, and she took the path of little resistance, likely in an attempt to spare Randy's feelings. There's nothing unique or life-altering about Lisa and Randy. Benson seems to project this false narrative onto Randy--and the rest of the world, tbh-- that is further highlighted by Marsha's character, who is another NPC that Benson decides to codify within his world view. Marsha once again deviates from the role Benson believes she fits in, standing up to him and rebelling against the notion that all other people in this town are aimless and complacent. Part of me wondered, after they went to Beard's house, why Randy's 'transformation' felt flat for me, and part of it is because the journey Randy takes is somewhat belied by the fact that Benson did not do any of that for Randy. Not any real version of Randy, anyway. Benson did it for a made up version of Randy in his head and he went along with it because there was a gun at his back.

[cosmogyros]

That moment when you have to let people be wrong about you because correcting them would make you seem like an unbearable show-off

I was at a bookstore with a friend the other day and I was looking at a book in German that I was interested in buying, but then I saw that it was a translation and had originally been written in French

I commented idly to my friend "Sometimes I don't buy a book because it's a translation and I always prefer to read in the original language when possible" and she said in an agreeing-with-me way, "Yeah it would make more sense to read it in English"

and I realized she assumed I meant English when I said "original language"

but I couldn't bring myself to say "Yeah, or French or Dutch or Spanish or Italian or Portuguese or one of the other languages I read..." because like. who says that kind of thing.

[twoa-plus]

dissecting stanford pines and finding organs that don’t exist but like in a metaphorical way

that’s it that’s the title i’m going with. this is a long one folks o7

most of this isn’t sourced or canon at all it’s just personal interpretation/headcanon/whatever else u wanna call it, but!! since more people are seeing my deranged gravity falls ramblings now i figure i should probably give some perspective as to why i like/defend ford as much as i do

(in my other gf posts i do try to stick to canon to back up whatever point i’m making - this is just about my personal opinion of ford as a character, and should be able to be thrown out in regards to my other posts)

so for some background/setup/whatever (it’s important i promise bear with me), different people have different instinctual responses to anxiety/stress. i come from a family (genetics are fun) where the default response is to start (metaphorically ofc) biting and hissing like a cornered animal. this doesn’t necessarily mean there’s any actual hatred or malice or anything towards the people that end up getting scratched - they might just be at the wrong place at the wrong time, they might’ve done something super minor and insignificant that added on to a preexisting pile of stress, etc etc

i cannot stress enough that i am not saying this is ok. you dont need me to tell you that hurting people who don’t deserve it is a bad thing, lol. what i am saying though is that sometimes people can kind of suck for reasons other than just genuinely wanting everyone around them to be miserable

this is the last “background” part i swear BUT another thing thats less genetic and more just me being weird is that i’m the type of person where like. any minor environmental change can really stress me out lol. like even just reorganizing my desk can be pretty emotionally taxing

SO. finally back on topic. stanford pines. i see a lot of the behavior/patterns i just described in him. like i’ve spent my entire life around people like this, and while i understand why a lot of people see him as just some asshole, i can’t help but see him as a guy who’s just kinda going through it lol

just talking about the more recent events as of the series, he’s just spent 30 years god knows where doing and seeing god knows what, he has an abusive ex who wants to murder him and his entire family (plus the whole dimension, really), and in the three decades he’s been gone the entire world - including his own house - has changed and left him behind. add onto that that he went missing in 1982, way before we had all of the emotional/mental health resources we have now, we all saw what the stans’ childhood was like, and that ford is terrible with people - including, imo, himself. if there’s anybody out there who would have Feelings and not understand what they are or where they’re coming from or what to do about them, it’s this guy

this entire setup is the perfect circumstance for fear and anxiety and stress and uncertainty to all get translated into anger. a really big example of this, to me, is how he talks about dipper in journal 3. i’ve talked about this before somewhere so i’ll try to summarize as fast as i can lol

reading his initial entry about dipper would make u think he like. hates this kid lol. but i really don’t think he ever did - he was really excited to meet the kids in the show and already seemed to care about them just by virtue of existing, and his opinion on dipper in journal 3 seems to do a complete 180 pretty quickly which ,,, doesn’t really fit ford as a character. like i love the man but that guy can hold a GRUDGE

here’s how it reads to me:

ford gets back to his home dimension after 30 years and everything is different

he’s subconsciously kind of struggling with the fact that he doesn’t really have a “home” anymore - the sense of familiarity and comfort that would normally come with the word is gone. (i specify that it’s subconscious because, like i said earlier, i do not get the vibe that he’s particularly aware of his own emotions)

he finds out that journal 3 - something he made with his own two hands and considers part of his life’s work - has also changed in the decades he’s been gone. this adds to the feeling of unfamiliarity with the world around him

it’s easier to blame that “final straw” and say that he’s just upset about his work being tampered with rather than address the actual root of the problem, so that’s exactly what he does. this still doesn’t mean that there’s any genuine hatred towards dipper. anger in the moment, yeah, but not hatred

again, this is entirely personal interpretation, and i completely understand if u don’t see it like this!! this is just a pattern of thoughts/behavior that i’m very familiar with, so it’s easy for me to apply it to situations like this even if it’s not really part of the canon

i also think there’s a big problem in this fandom with just ,, not seeing ford as a Person with Emotions? idk how to explain it but it feels like people expect him to always know exactly what to do in every situation just bc he’s old and academically smart. like whenever another character does something objectively bad it’s “well there were extenuating circumstances,�� (which is usually true and i agree !!) but ford never really seems to get that treatment. if he does something bad it’s just because he sucks

a big example of this i think is the fight between him and stan (y’know the “you ruined my life”/“you ruined your own life”). you cannot look me dead in the eyes and, in full seriousness, with the context of everything ford was going through with bill at the time, say that he was fully mentally/emotionally stable during that conversation. “oh so you’re blaming stan-“ NO!!! stan was also going through it!!! that’s the entire point - they’re both people with their own lives and emotions and everything else that comes with that, they had very human reactions to their respective situations, and they both ended up hurt!! hopefully i’m explaining this right but i just don’t like it when people pin everything on ford, like there was a lot going on and at the end of the day he’s just a human

wasn’t really sure how to work this in so i’ll just put it here - i don’t think ford ever truly hated stan, either. familial bonds are complicated, and there can be a whole lot of anger towards someone without true hatred being present. i briefly mentioned the stans’ childhood sucking earlier, and i don’t just mean stanley - it’s easier to pinpoint him as a victim of abuse/neglect, but that doesn’t mean ford had it great either. their parents (specifically filbrick, but caryn didn’t exactly do a fantastic job with them either) expected nothing of stan and the world of ford, both of which would weigh heavily on any child. plus, ford being the favorite doesn’t mean all of his emotional needs were met - filbrick seeing him as an opportunity to make money doesn’t mean he was suddenly an emotionally present and caring father towards him. WCT wasn’t just an opportunity for ford to go be a famous scientist or whatever - it was a chance for his father to love him, something both of the stans desperately wanted. (WCT was also on the opposite side of the country from where they lived but i’m sure that’s completely unrelated !!!)

do i think stan deserved anything that happened to him after the science fair incident? no, absolutely not, he was a child. do i think it was right of ford to just stand there as his brother got thrown out? no, absolutely not - but he was a child too. as for them not speaking for a decade after that, like i mentioned earlier ford can hold a grudge like no other. (this doesn’t just apply to stan, either, ford dedicated half of his life to trying to kill his ex lmao.) i think ford’s ability to hold on to anger like that is actually a pretty major part of/flaw in his personality, but again, anger - even the strongest, most long-lived of it - is not synonymous with hatred. stan, who ford has always gone to for help when he truly needed it, it not what ford’s hatred looks like. bill, who ford actively wants to die, is

anyways!! i never know how to close these things lol. ig in summary i just see ford’s behavior (in the show at least) as more of a sign of internal struggle rather than like ,, genuinely hating the people around him and wanting their lives to suck. did/does he have an ego problem? absolutely. is he incapable of love and human connection? no. is he immune to manipulation/abuse/neglect/etc and everything that comes with that? also no

he’s an interdimensional criminal why can’t he go to the theraprism. i think he should