#and this is the exact reason why

[pollenallergie]

I had the thought of Tom or Billy sniffing their new babies and I thought of you for some reason.

-cj aka @cheesewritings

no bc billy loves the new baby smell. like from the minute you bring your baby girl home (he’s a girl dad, first and foremost, fight me. maybe he’ll have a son later on, but his first kid? a girl, the girliest of girls.) and she stops smelling like hospital (probably after her first bath… which was somehow both a chaotic scene and a warm, wholesome bonding moment for the three of you), he’s got his nose to her dome like all the time, just breathing in the newborn baby smell mixed with the lavender nighttime baby shampoo you two had cleaned her fluffy, downy hair with. at first, billy tries to be discreet about it, because he thinks it’s weird. however, when he catches you sniffing her too one night as you rock her to sleep, he realizes that maybe he’s not so weird after all… or maybe you two are just equally weird… but, billy thinks, if he’s weird in the same ways that you’re weird, then that truly wouldn’t be so bad after all because at least your brand of weird isn’t off-putting (in his opinion… you disagree on the grounds that 1) you don’t think his brand of weird is off-putting because you don’t think anything about him is off-putting and 2) you think you can be at least a little off-putting sometimes).

as for tom, i hc tom (at least the version of him from my older!tom au) as not ever having kids (simply because he doesn’t want to have them), but you can bet that anytime he meets one of his newborn nieces or nephews (he has quite a few siblings… which means he also quite a few nieces and nephews) for the first time, he’s always quick to cuddle up to them, cradling them gently in his arms (now that’s been through this whole thing a dozen or so times, he’s a pro at holding newborns), and luxuriating in their soft skin and sweet newborn baby scent.

[weaver-z]

Does anyone want my analysis of why Aziraphale Said That after the confession? Context: I am an ex-member of a fundie church/borderline cult.

[goldenpinof]

Dan got hit on at the nightclub

[frogayyyy]

first kiss + hesitation + ‘not like this’

good omens s2e6 ‘every day’ // star trek: the wrath of khan

[oh-warizoro]

Perfect take on Zoro. Perfectly executed by Mackenyu.

The way EVERYONE is trying to have him work for them. Mr 7, I'm here with an invitation. Captain Morgan, Join the marines or you'll die tied to a cross.

Luffy, sets him free, doesn't force him to join, let's him go, let's Zoro decide where he wants to be;

And Zoro finds out that place is by Luffy's side. Ain't that beautiful?

[gumm1defloor]

Vox can understand Velvette just fine. They don't necessarily need to get along all the time, but they have a mutually beneficial contract that guarantees her support in the most efficient way possible, just how they both like it, short and strict and to the point. Vox does not understand Valentino. It drives him unimaginably, disgustingly insane. He knows how to handle him, make no mistake. Valentino is a never-ending powerhouse that wrangles out content from his employees like there is no tomorrow. He's proven himself to be Vox's most lucrative investment yet. He is resourceful, well-connected and most importantly predictable enough to rein in. Because he listens to you, because he needs you.

He is also, undeniably, out of his goddamn mind. Yet you've already invested too much in the corporate empire you've built together and there is no point turning back now that you have him so close to your side. It's OK however! He couldn't possibly be stupid enough to throw away the best partnership deal he's ever had just for the sake of something petty cause -oh, wait - he genuinely might just be that stupid and you never would've guessed because he's so cocksure of his bullshit that 80% of the time it ends up working in his favor anyway.

Fuck his life indeed. The kicker for this of course is that Valentino, genuinely does believe he has struck gold with Vox. Valentino is a clingy, possessive, immature, perverted, sadistic, egotistical man-child with severe rage issues and zero impulse control. No he is not aware of this at all. No he does not know why nobody is able to tolerate him and why every single person he gets close to hates his guts with every inch of their burning rotting souls. All he knows is that hell has now given him a flat faced prince in shining liquid crystal armour, riding on a cash filled horse with promises of power and luxury, who's practically handing him success on a silver platter. Doesn't mean that Val trusts him, doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy seeing him lose his shit. But at the end of the day vox has his back, and as long as Val keeps calling for him, he'll eventually turn up and make everything better. Cause hey if Vox hasn't left him yet for this long he must be doing something right. Right?

[otaku553]

I have Thoughts about them

[gay-jesus-probably]

Seeing as the Gerudo turned on Ganon, he might not have been that much better of a ruler.

First of all, we literally have no idea, because the only ancient Gerudo that we actually get to interact with is Ganondorf himself, and he has nothing to say about his own people. The ancient Gerudo sage doesn't count btw, she doesn't have a name, we never even see her face, and she has literally nothing to say except repeating the exact same dialogue as the sages for the other races. The narrative does not treat the ancient sages as people; they are four completely interchangable weapons that are owned by the royal family.

And secondly, I don't care how Ganon ruled them; the Gerudo only get one man every century, if their king sucks, they've obviously got their own system of government to fall back on. I have no idea what kind of authority the sages had among their own people, but honestly I'd say if the four of them were in charge of their respective people, then they were just puppet rulers appointed by Rauru, given that all four of them happily agreed that to sell their entire race into servitude the second Zelda asked them. Say what you will about Ganondorf, but I fucking know that if he was told the Gerudo people existed for the sole purpose of serving the glory of Hyrule, he'd drop kick Zelda into the fucking sun.

And don't get me started on the implications of the cultural differences we see between the independent Gerudo and the annexed Gerudo. The background Gerudo characters all have their own models, and we can clearly see that the ones siding with Ganon have their own unique looks - for example, the amazing lady with the mohawk that summons the molduga swarm in that one flashback. And men are never mentioned in these flashbacks at all, which implies that the Gerudo genuinely didn't care about settling down. Ganon even speaks derisively about marriage, implying that it's very rare for Gerudo women to make serious romantic commitments with men. It implies that their culture is more along the same line as their portrayal in OOT - they are a closed culture. Men trying to force their way into their areas are arrested, and mocked for being entitled dumbasses. Outsiders are only welcome if they can prove that they respect the Gerudo as people, and aren't just there to try and pick up chicks. It's never outright said, but OOT also makes it pretty clear that the Gerudo women just aren't interested in marrying outsiders - close relationships occur with other Gerudo, Hylian men are only considered useful for making babies.

Meanwhile the Gerudo we see serving Hyrule are all trying to measure up to Hylian beauty standards, and appeal to their men. Their one goal in life is to meet a man and get married. Men are welcome in their lands, and only kept out of the town itself... and even then, there's a small army of guys trying to force their way into the town anyways, which is brushed off as just haha, boys will be boys. No men allowed isn't even about independence, it's just a silly romantic tradition.

Of course this is just a fictional culture in a game world, but it's still really fucking uncomfortable that the 'evil' Gerudo are the ones that have independence, both politically and socially, and display a unique culture that refuses to tolerate disrespect from outsiders. Meanwhile the 'good' Gerudo are the ones that canonically exist to serve a kingdom where 95% of the population is light skinned (even setting aside the unfortunate implications, just saying one race exists to serve a different one is super fucked up), they have classes on how to be more appealing to Hylian's, and their entire social structure is built around finding a Hylian man to marry, making them all inherently dependent on the goodwill of outsiders. Even their biggest value of 'women only' is treated as a joke; men trying to trespass in BOTW are just shoved back out the door, letting them keep trying all day if they want. The crowds of men plotting to force their way in are laughed off as a joke. Nobody cares that there's a guy running laps around their city walls and trying to trick women into being alone with him. I mean for fucks sake, in TOTK we find that the creepy guy trying to lure women away has taken advantage of a massive disaster to get into the town, and he's still there once things return to normal. You can't kick him out, or alert anyone to his presence. And the Gerudo just tolerate Hylians blatantly ignoring their boundaries. For fucks sake, TOTK even reveals that the seven legendary heroines they've been revering the whole time were actually completely useless and unable to achieve anything... because they needed the eighth hero, a Hylian man to teach them basic tactics and do all the heavy lifting.

TOTK does not respect the Gerudo people in the slightest. It doesn't respect anyone who isn't Hylian or Zonai.

...This got a little off track, but the point I'm trying to make is, no, I don't consider the Gerudo turning on Ganon to mean anything. The entire game does not feel like the real story of what happened, it feels like the propaganda version of history meant to make Hyrule look as good as possible. I genuinely cannot believe that we're being told the real story about the Imprisoning War, because none of it feels real, and we don't get to know any details that might have made Hyrule look even slightly imperfect. We're told that Ganondorf is evil because he hates Hyrule, and he hates Hyrule because he's evil. The Gerudo people followed Ganondorf and saw him as a hero of their people, then suddenly he was their worst enemy. Hyrule is a perfect kingdom that has strong, equal alliances with the other races, but also all of the non-Hylian races exist for the sole purpose of serving Hyrule, and their leaders are expected to swear eternal loyalty and submission to the Hylian royal family. King Rauru and Queen Sonia united all of the races in peace and equality, which is why they're sitting on the world's supply of magical nuclear missiles, and every member of the Hylian royal family is allowed to walk around wearing them as cute accessories, but everyone else only gets them at the last second, and they all need to outright swear to only use that power to benefit Rauru and his descendants.

There's just so many fucked up contradictions, and so many hints of something more nuanced going on... but the story refuses to acknowledge any of it, and just keeps aggressively pushing the narrative that Hyrule is the ultimate good and couldn't possibly do anything wrong. I don't even believe that Ganon was a bad king honestly; we never hear why his people stopped following him. We also never even see if the Gerudo people turned on him at all; all we know is the ancient Gerudo sage wanted him dead, and given that she also happily sold her people into slavery, she's not exactly the most trustworthy source of information. All we know is that Ganondorf was a hero to his people, only one of his citizens is ever shown having an issue with him (and her motives are never explained), and then he lost the war and was sealed away, leaving his people open to be conquered by Zelda and annexed into Hyrule. By the time we see any Gerudo actually opposing Ganon (apart from the ancient sage), it's been ten thousand years since the war, and all anyone knows is the Hylian version of the story.

[vcrnons]

i just want you, i need you.

[yellowocaballero]

Reading 'Solo Leveling' (a webtoon/webnovel about a guy who uses a game-like interface to level up and fight monsters and become ridiculously OP and the coolest and hottest guy in the whole wide world) really proves something to me that I've thought about.

The goal of a story is to achieve what it wants to achieve. Different genres have different certain marks the story should achieve. If it doesn't hit those marks, it's not a good example of the genre. In a lot of was it's not even a good story - it doesn't entertain the audience in the way that they want to be entertained. A romance novel isn't a bad story because it doesn't feature great action scenes, but neither is it a bad story because it doesn't delve deep into the sociopolitical implications of neocolonialism. Does it make the reader feel happy? Is it cathartic? Is there a happy ending? Then it's a good romance story - even if you think stories shouldn't need happy endings.

The 'satisfaction' of stories like Solo Leveling is the fact that is very entertaining to watch a guy be super powerful and mow down bad guys and have everybody around him go "WHOAH that's a cool guy". Maybe it's cool because you're projecting, or maybe you like great action scenes, or because you like 'underdog gets powerful' stories. It's a power fantasy. That is the goal of Solo Leveling, and so long as I'm going "WHOAH COOL", then it's a good story. And Solo Leveling is the example of the power fantasy video game dungeon OP protag. It does those elements, it executes them competently, it's a good story.

This is the third of these types of stories I've read more than 5 chapters of. The first was Omniscent Reader's Viewpoint. And baby. This is no ORV.

ORV a big reaction to Solo Levelling in a lot of ways, since Solo Levelling was very genre defining and influential, and it's hard to write these OP stories without having a relationship to Solo Leveling. It's like the most popular webtoon out there. The OP hero, the gaming interface and rules, the gods fucking you up, power fantasy - they're all checked off by ORV. It doesn't subvert them much. You watch kdj pull one over on a shmuck and you're like HEY YA BABY and you watch him utterly decimate some schmuck and you're like WHOAH COOL. You like ORV, basically, for the same reasons you like Solo Leveling. They're the same genre and in a lot of ways the same story.

But ORV has driven me nuts and after a while Solo Leveling has gotten boring. Because ORV has a fantastic supporting cast that puts the MC's OPness in relative perspective. Because there's cool action scenes with different teams, of different dynamics, giving freshness to each chapter. Because you get to see kdj slowly implement some nuts gambit of the course of the entire arc and when we finally hit the end point where it all comes together it's FUCK YEAH. I'm leaving out the actual depth here. But ORV and Solo Leveling do the same thing, except ORV has a great deal of other story elements that build into the main 'point' and escalate the satisfaction, joy, and intensity of those points. You don't read these OP hero novels for the supporting cast. You read it to watch a dude be cool. But ORV's supporting cast - and, like, the fact that they're actual characters, even the women - gives us a lot of other smaller 'hey yeah!' moments, gives it buildup, makes the OP moments meaningful, and gives a grand climax and huge satisfaction when kdj does what the SL guy did by himself. And the supporting cast is only one example of this. A story is a good story if it accomplishes its point, but a story like SL will never really deliver its promises nearly as well as ORV could. Not because ORV is deep and has """themes""" or fucked up shit like that. The 'WHOAH COOL's are just better. Because ORV knows why stories are good and what makes a good story.

Anyway I'm fucking begging you I have tears in my eyes this is why your fic needs more than the hot ship of the day I promise it won't detract from the ship it will make the ship BETTER but you have to get WHY you like these homosexuals so much and it's NOT just because they're CUTE sometimes there's OTHER REASONS THAT ARE IMPORTANT LIKE THE WOMAN YOU'VE BOOTED AND -

[jopkajabki]

wtf!!!!!she groovin!!!!!!!!

[imsodishy]

thinking about the parallels between S1 Steve rolling up on the Byers' house and S2 Billy doing the same.

Steve ostensibly went there to apologize, but when he encountered suspicious circumstances (noticed that Nancy was injured and acting strangely) he immediately jumped the the most logical conclusion (that Jonathan had hurt her) and was completely ready to barge in and cause way more problems. But then a demogorgon conveniently crawled out of the wall and did all the necessary explaining for them.

Billy arrived already primed to find a bad situation, his stepsister is missing in a strange town, that's a fact, and when he encounters suspicious circumstances (literally everything going on that night) he immediately jumps to the most logical conclusion (Steve and the boys are up to no good with said stepsister) and he barges in and causes problems... because no demodog falls out of the fridge to conveniently explain everything.

denied deus ex monster

[imminent-danger-came]

So, this parallel, right.

That parallel and the 4x11 shadowpeach fight as a whole:

Macaque: "No that's YOU! You're the one always running off! Looking for more power, more sources of immortality—you're the one who wouldn't quit while were were ahead! Not the great sage, he's got to drag EVERYONE else into his mess!" Sun Wukong: "You're not in this mess, you're still free! Everything I did was for us!" Macaque: "You did it for yourself! You've become like this, obsessive demon! I told you going against the Jade Emperor was a bad idea, but no, Wukong doesn't listen to anyone! He just does whatever he wants! You put yourself here, not me."

(4x11 A Lifetime of Mistakes)

-

A large part of Wukong's motivation to keep getting more power was the freedom of it—the more power you have the easier it is to do whatever you want. It's easier to ignore everyone else and focus solely on yourself. It's also easier to ensure yourself and your loved one's are protected and have the ability to do what they want.

So, a punishment where the great Monkey King is imprisoned and trapped for hundreds of years? It's effective and tragic and fitting. Wukong wanted to have the freedom to protect the people he cared about, and in trying to reach for the power to do that, he completely had his freedom removed. He went from the mountain, to then the circlet, and then all of a sudden he had morals and was bound to those.

And then I think about his end of s3 choice to go face the Lady Bone Demon alone. Once again Wukong was trying to protect his loved ones (not to mention the whole reason he went after the Samadhi fire to begin with was to have the power, the freedom to stop LBD (which in itself is another case of SWK believing he needed to be stronger for such freedom)), but he also wanted to make sure MK and himself both had agency. He didn't want MK to have to fight LBD, and he didn't want LBD to end the world.

This is exactly the sentiment he tells Macaque in the 4x11 flashback:

Sun Wukong: "It's so we don't have to worry about anything or anyone ever again! Just living a lazy life, sitting in the sun, eatin' fruit, and doing whatever we want!"

But where does it all lead him?

To possession, imprisonment. Once again Wukong no longer had the freedom to do what he wanted (which is to protect the people he cares about). Once again in his attempts to help his loved one's, he only hurt them.

This can be applied to his relationship with Macaque, to MK in s2, hell, even Wukong trying to get the map in the first place left him powerless, which then led to him and the gang being imprisoned in 3x02. It's a familiar pattern, one we see with antagonist and protagonist alike.

MK in s2 trained to become more powerful, which in the end only strengthened LBD and forced him and his friends on the run. Mei in 3x12 protects MK by letting herself get captured and placed into LBD's crystal. Mei in 4x05 goes to protect MK, breaking her sword and leaving her vulnerable to being captured by Kui Mulang ("How am I supposed to protect everyone without my sword?"). DBK reached for more power and then became possessed by LBD, hurting his wife and son. Azure reached for the Jade Emperor's power and bound himself to that role, jeopardizing Peng and Yellowtusk in the process.

It's a cycle of reaching for power, endangering others, and then being imprisoned.

So anyways, here's why MK is going to lose control (his agency) next season and hurt his friends with his own- *get's shot*

[taikanyohou]

"Because you made a mess of my feelings, just like this."

CHASER GAME W (2024). Episode 2.

[yellowloid]

the real question here is why did alex turn to miles when he sang the first half of "i'd probably still adore you with your hands around my neck"

[ao3commentoftheday]

I really wish people who asked for instructions how to do a thing didn't also feel the need to explain why they need the instructions because I'm super happy to tell anyone how to filter stuff out of their ao3 search results, but so often I end up uncomfortable or insulted or taken aback when I could have been saved that reaction if the person had just stopped talking after asking their question.

Good: Can you help me filter out stories that are shorter than 3000 words?

Not-so-good: Can you help me filter out stories that are shorter than 3000 words because I hate short fics and half the time the people who write them are really bad and I just get really annoyed when I have to scroll past them all the time

I love short fics and I encourage people to write them and I love writing them myself. You really didn't need to insult me (unknowingly) to my face while asking me for a favour, y'know?

Anyway, if you want to filter out fics that are shorter than 3000 words, use the Search Within Results box at the bottom of the filters menu and type in words>3000