#better than i could have imagined

[cozylittleartblog]

Columbo and the Knight (1984)

put me in the universe where Columbo ran through the 1980s and had a crossover episode with Knight Rider. I think they deserved it, and I am not just saying that because they're my two favorite Old Shows. @telebeast wrote a little fanfic blurb about it and I HAD to visualize it into a comic (which is also the longest comic I have finished thus far at five pages...), so writing credit goes to them.

Autism W!

[yourancestorsarefrowning]

I love how so much of wangxian's relationship during the gusu study arc was wei wuxian going "look at me, look at me! look at me, lan zhan!" and lan wangji angrily pretending not to look, and then post-resurrection wei wuxian tries the same thing but this time lan wangji is like "I am Looking and I will not look away" and wei wuxian is so flustered that he accidentally gets dragged back to gusu anyway.

like, throughout the story people only interact with wei wuxian on a superficial level, with no one bothering to go deeper. he's just an arrogant jiang disciple. he's just a rebellious teen. he's just an admittedly terrifying demonic cultivator. he's just an evil person who needs to be stopped. and lan wangji sees all of this, (and in the beginning is almost fooled by it!) and then is the only one who cares enough to look long enough and see the true wei wuxian.

when wei wuxian is resurrected, he immediately relies on the fact that people only view him superficially to keep his real identity hidden. he slides right into mo xuanyu's cut-sleeve lunatic persona and probably could have gotten away with it except he runs right into the one person who has Seen him in the past and Sees him now.

[justaz]

merlin’s secret being a visual thing. when he is around arthur or gwen or leon or morgana or [insert whatever character here] merlin seems pale and thin, almost like a ghost or an apparition. when the sun lands on him he reflects it like a corpse, he eyes seem dark and dull. he has this ethereal beauty to him, this otherworldly visage that leads many to believe he is of fae blood. he just doesn’t seem to be 100% human. but when he is ONLY with lancelot or gaius (cough or gwaine bc gwaine DEFINITELY knew) merlin is heartachingly human. merlin shines in the sunlight, colors are brighter and more vibrant around him, and his smiles are wide and his laughs are boisterous. he takes on color and leaves everyone wanting to know him. but when other join in or interact with the two, merlin shifts before their eyes so quickly and suddenly that they aren’t sure whether or not what they saw was a trick of the light. the idea still leaves them wanting more and wanting to see the merlin who is just so full of life but that merlin only appears for a small select group of people. merlin who has a guard so high that it has an effect of other’s perception of him.

[starcurtain]

One thing I wish I'd see more of among Ratio fans is some thought about how he views himself as a teacher.

Like yes, of course he refuses to compromise on the quality and rigor of the education he imparts, and he would find it unforgivably unethical to lower his standards in order to pass more students who had not genuinely learned the material. This is core to his character.

However, as someone who is a teacher IRL, I know the absolutely miserable feeling setting that kind of standard can cause. There's the obvious disheartening sense of disappointment ("Are students these days really not capable of doing the work correctly? Is our future in danger, if this is the highest level of understanding our current generation of students can achieve?"), but even worse than that is the self-doubt.

"Is this somehow my fault? Am I not teaching this material in the right ways for the students to learn? Is there something I could have done differently to get through to these students? Would a better teacher have a higher passing rate?"

We know that Ratio does (or at least did) struggle with feeling inferior to the Genius Society, so I think it is also likely, as much as he absolutely will not budge on his academic standards, that he has doubts about his teaching ability as well.

This is the man who wants to educate the entire world to cure the disease of ignorance, and yet only 3% of his actual students are able to get there. How can someone who gets so few of his direct students to a state of enlightenment hope to enlighten the whole universe? If so few students are successfully learning the material of a given class, doesn't that mean the teacher is doing something wrong?Would a better teacher--would a genius, maybe--not be able to impart their knowledge more efficiently and educate even the most challenging of students?

As someone constantly struggling with that balance between keeping academic standards high while also meeting the needs of today's students, I think the passing rates of his courses must affect Dr. Ratio much more deeply than I've seen fans discuss. I think he would question himself harshly over his class success rates, and I think he must be constantly trying to push himself to become the best teacher he possibly can be.

tl;dr: I hope one day the HSR fandom will stop sleeping on the fact that Ratio is an actual practicing professor who probably has astronomical levels of teacher angst. 😂

[greensaplinggrace]

the fact of the matter is that buffy ends up isolated no matter what the scoobies do because she bears the burden of the slayer alone at the end of the day and nothing can change that. the problem with this isn't that she's separate from them, it's that they don't want to acknowledge that she is, and in doing so they drive a wedge between them that just grows and grows. the best thing about spike is that he's similar enough to this other side of buffy to understand it and her by extension. he is the only person around who can support that side of her.

most of buffy's issues in season six stem from the scoobies rejecting a part of buffy that spike accepts. and this shame she feels for her reliance on spike and the presence of this darkness and isolation she cannot avoid is largely because of them. i'm sick of this bizarre assumption that pointing out where the scoobies go wrong in their relationship with buffy somehow equals an uncritical uplifting of spike. just because he understands her and represents a certain aspect of her doesn't mean he doesn't fuck up. i mean that's kind of the whole point of their season six dynamic. one of his biggest issues is that he thinks he's helping her by enabling her completely because he doesn't have the ability to properly identify the line between self acceptance and self destruction - pursuit of the id is one of his biggest character traits. that's what makes the end of season six and his decision to get the soul so interesting (although of course there's just as much i can say about the narrative framing of that in regards to lore consistency and the story's obsession with angel, but that's a whole other thing).

point is, the scoobies cannot understand all of buffy, and when they refuse to acknowledge this they destroy their chances of building any bridges to even a simple relationship with that other side of buffy or helping her carry that burden in any way. meanwhile, spike is in the proper position to understand buffy as the slayer and hold his own with her in such a way, but his definition of love is wholly obsessive and destructive. while i disagree that he's incapable of love and even of loving selflessly without his soul, i think spike's version of love in particular is self destructive in a way that enables buffy's own desire to hurt herself through hurting him (see the aforementioned shame regarding her shadow self). spike cannot identify why allowing buffy to give in to her dark side in such a way is bad because he struggles to understand how she could use this to resent herself - although i do think he realizes it's happening on some level.

spike is also buffy's only form of catharsis and the only one that actually listens to what she is saying during a time when everybody else is dismissing her because of the aforementioned inability to understand her as the slayer. it's a clusterfuck - and a clusterfuck that needed to be shattered with a hammer for any kind of relief. and quite frankly to disregard the scoobies' own part in this situation does a disservice to buffy as a character. to be honest, she deserves fucking better than what everyone in her life gives her, especially the scoobies, who grow to take her for granted and feel entitled to controlling her life as a way of keeping her conformed - again, due to the aforementioned lack of desire to acknowledge this other part of her that they cannot connect with.

which leads to season seven, where spike is the only person on the show who has developed and changed enough to remain at buffy's side helping her carry the burden. while everyone else suffered during season six, none of them opened their eyes to what they were doing to buffy - and if they did, none of them acted on it. spike is the only one to acknowledge the damage he's done and work to become better for buffy in any way he can. he is the only one that ends up able to carry that burden with her because he is the only one capable of facing the truth and acting on his desire to do better.

the fucking problem isn't that he hurt buffy - because to be quite frank everybody did - it's that he's the only person on the whole damn show to acknowledge his place in buffy's life, and to acknowledge the burdens she bears, and actively change himself for her. did you know he has almost all of the genuine apologies in the entire show? seven seasons and all of the harm the scoobies cause buffy, and it's fucking spike that is acting like a mature person capable of being a proper partner.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The Start of the Truth [End of season 1]

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[bandtrees]

they would get divorced in one universe just to find eachother in another one

alternatively titled: sometimes you're the level-headed token flesh-head impulse-control-and-polycule-member of a stubborn, eccentric, and hearty telephone-headed drug addict, and there's cruelty in the world you deem fit to suicidally fight, and that either goes about as well as you'd expect it to, or you learn about love and the value of your life and junk along the way

[januaryrabbit]

ateez texting their crush when they get ghosted!! (pt. 2) (╯✧▽✧)╯

pairing: ½ ateez x gn!reader

warnings: mild cursing, teasing each other, ateez hating men on your behalf

other disclaimers/notes: for jongho's...just pretend the timestamps are at reasonable times of day and not 2am (which is when i finally finished this),,,,,....i was so confused about how to change the date/time and i gave up lmao

a/n: thank you for the notes on part 1!! and thank you for waiting for part 2 :) next post will be more ateez texts from a request i received!! please let me know if you enjoy :^)

✩‧₊˚san

✩‧₊˚mingi

✩‧₊˚wooyoung

✩‧₊˚jongho

[mxtxfanatic]

I just know that the moment Mu Qing ripped the veils off the statues in the Cave of Ten Thousand Gods and the trio found the mural was a religious experience for Xie Lian. I know because it felt like a religious experience as I was reading it.

[navree]

refusing to be undone.

Atia Balba, niece to Julius Caesar, died only a year after his assassination, and was survived by her two children, Octavia the Younger and Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, who she had named Gaius Octavius at birth. Both her son and daughter would outlive her by several years.

[cirrus-grey]

Basira sounds so posh, I love her. Academia suits her well.

[hiimsparky]

He’s finally done!

The robe I made for the prototype kinda grew on me, so I wound up making it the final version. I might make another pass at the belt, though.

Better pictures (probably) to come. My lamp is currently out of charge

[dykedvonte]

A Defense of Benny Gecko

Benny is more of a capable leader and person than people give him credit for.

Seeing as no one challenged his position as head Chairmen for 7 years and even then he only loses the position if he’s caught, killed or forced to leave. Yes, it’s also likely House wouldn’t have allowed him to be killed but he sure as hell would of found a way to remove him if he was causing too much unrest within The Tops power structure. Even Swank and Tommy don’t outright dislike him and more so are concerned with his recent secretive and shady behavior, emphasis on recent.

Taking all we know into consideration, Benny likely knew the future direction that he wanted to take Vegas but was so caught up in the plans to acquire Vegas that he didn’t think of how to make his dream a reality. Something he admits to in canon. I see this being used as the main argument that Benny doesn’t know what he’s doing at all but I see it more in the same vein as you can’t really plan something from nothing. The transformation of Vegas is a sensitive thing that he can’t really work on until he has it. The only reason he ran to the Fort prematurely is the Courier who was causing so much of a stir he would’ve likely been found out much faster, making all that planning for nothing if he didn’t take that chance.

Benny is careful (well a lot more careful than he is regularly depicted in fanon), the Courier being able to trace him was dumb luck on their part and his hair being noticed at the Fort is a realistically small oversight that even Caesar is disappointed in because he admits Benny got farther than he should’ve been allowed by his legionaries. The fact he can plan an ambush on the Courier or tries to quickly and concisely clean up lose ends that don’t lead back to him shows he’s not just acting on impulses or in the moment decisions. Or rather he’s quite good at thinking them out, whether they work depends on how you play really. This is all to say it’s 100% believable that Benny could lead an independent Vegas (house was basically setting him up to do that). If he had known explicitly that House was setting him up to replace him, he likely would’ve bought more time by getting in closer, learning more of the system to then flip House’s edge to his favor. Again something he was doing already but likely without the knowledge of House’s feelings on him personally.

No matter what, Vegas’ future was tied to Benny; House’s plans for him, having to get the chip and if he had somehow succeeded. It’s also interesting that of all the people vying for control of the dam/Vegas, Benny’s plans are the only ones actually oriented towards a new future, not a recreation of something long past.

[mezucore]

next stop on my bookbinding journey is the couple down the street by @godlizzza which was one of my greatest most fun reads ever. i wish it could have gone on forever

[lunarmoves]

Going feral over Bleeding Wires and ngl as much as I GET the reader's freeze response, I'd at some point give into the impulse to deadpan at Sun. /pos

Like "Dude, you're making me feel like a prey animal." Or "Ya know. When Moon says that, it sounds like an intrusive thought. When you say it, it sounds like a threat."

Also separately giggling about him pondering my habit of tacking on "Be safe" to goodbyes and not Getting it until the revolution. Woe, memory of it being used for him too be upon him.

LMAOO BROOO that's understandable. and okay okay well. let me give u a small example of what would happen if you said that after sun says some generic evil AI bullshit:

"sun," you say carefully, wary of the way his smile sharpens in the fluorescent lighting. "you do realize that sounds like a threat, right?"

his eyes curve into crescents, rays giving a little spin about his face. "that is because it is one, friend."

you pause. "right," you reply after a moment. "i have to go make a phone call now, see you later."

[0.5 seconds after you've left the daycare and dialed security]

"yeah the daycare attendant's making super threatening comments about humanity and i kind of fear for my life," you whisper hurriedly into your phone. you'd scurried as far away as possible from the daycare entrance, though you can still see sun standing in the same place you'd left him in--staring at you through the window. you turn away. "maybe get him down to maintenance soon??"

yeah that wouldn't end well.

during the entirety of arc1, there are a lot of protests happening and talks about revolution from the robots, so if fazco catches wind that one of their own bots is saying shit like that? immediate memory wipe and/or scrapping. sorry sun</3 no chances are taken by the megacorporation

(and yeah, sure, maybe a law was passed a while ago saying that it's illegal to wipe a bot's memory without their permission (bc of course sun would be vehemently against that). but when has fazco ever given a shit about the law LMFAOO)

anyways, a more serious answer about reader's reactions... it hasnt been something i've really thought about? but now that i have... i think at the start maybe you brush off his comments easily. you make little jabs back at him or you go /raises eyebrow/ "srsly man?" but as time goes on and sun continues saying shit... you start to realize that oh. he's not just joking. he's being serious about his revolution ruminations or backhanded comments about humans. and so your reactions go from "lmao u know thats a threat right" to "haha im in danger." ESPECIALLY since u are very much vividly aware of how much stronger he is than you. and its not like fazco has the cleanest track record either yk? people go missing. it'd make anyone shit bricks

as for your "be safe" bit... assuming i've interpreted it correctly-- yeah i think he'd be like "oh. i have taken that for granted" in the face of the revolution. bc i can imagine him being like "??? 'be safe'?? no human can harm me" while you and him are still in the pizzaplex. and then he comes face to face with all the nasties of an uprising and the violence and human military etc etc and he thinks about you telling him to be safe. can picture it vividly in his mind, really. and he's like, "ah, i will never hear those words again. i have to make sure i am safe until i can see them again." i think it would haunt him fr

[evansbby]

my opinion on the Blake lively situation