#five for obvious ones

[sheepfulsheepyard]

the thing about stark is that he is thee most adoptable son around. any father figure within a five mile radius comes SPRINTING out of the woods with adoptions papers in hand, signed, and notarized. so far stark’s Dads That Have Tried To Adopt Me count is at one (1) dwarven warrior, two (2) random nobles with dead sons (bonus points for the son who stark inexplicably is twinning with), and at least two (2) townies who drop everything to get a solid long weekend in of mentoring stark. kudos to stark’s brother (rip in peace king 😔✌️) for stepping up to the dadly plate. i mean stark may have daddy issues but he is CATNIP to dads with son issues.

[angel-hole]

SUPTOBER DAY 01 - liminal in the beginning

4 And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.

5 Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance;

— Ezekiel 1:4—5

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

I have the smallest crumb of a theory. But what if howdy is mean to Latter because he’s self-conscious of being the only caterpillar (and repressed) and takes it out on his brother as a consequence. Because social expectations at the time gave him an excuse to do so?

no. ok. hoo boy. Allow Me To Be Insane Over The Most Prominent Thought I've Had Since Seeing The Update (about howdy)

i will try to be as eloquent and articulate as possible. ahem:

THAT FRUITY ASS CATERPILLAR IS REPRESSED AS FUCK, ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? DID YOU SEE THAT SHIT?? MY GOD. HOMEBOY HAS ISSUES STACKED ON ISSUES. GET HIM SOME THERAPY.

ok. ok ok ok. Now allow me to be articulate and eloquent

so obviously Howdy is almost certainly queer in the men-loving flavor. if i'm wrong about this my confidence will never recover. But I'm Willing To Take That Chance. so he's definitely queer, right? his.. well his everything points to it, but the final nail in the coffin are his rainbow suspenders from the group Homewarming artwork from Eddie's prolonged breakdown.

but this update i think showed us deeper into that part of him. and i take the shipping goggles off for genuine analysis, so when i say this i believe that there is Serious Evidence and seems Genuinely Plausible - if Howdy doesn't have feelings for Barnaby, i'll eat my cat.

the above is important to say because it Directly ties in to how Howdy treats Latter AND Eddie.

so. Howdy is likely gay or bi, what have you. i'm guessing gay. he obviously has feelings for Barnaby. SO WHAT I'M SAYING IS that i don't think Howdy treats Latter the way he does because of the caterpillar thing, I think Howdy treats Latter the way he does because Latter is genuine and Howdy is not.

what does this have to do with Eddie? well. look at Latter and Eddie in relation to each other. they're both... how do i say... Open. and not - not effeminate, but yes, for lack of of a better word, effeminate. just enough to make one go "huh." and Howdy treats them the same way - dismissive, apathetic, one could even say avoidant.

i wouldn't be shocked if Howdy picked up on their queerness (and if Latter isn't queer, his comfort with himself / his behavior & interests) and is on the defensive about it - likely subconsciously.

and with Latter specifically. Howdy could have also picked up on the way his other family members treat him if they're all also dismissive - as Seeya seems to be as well. i mean, it fits right in line with the time period! homophobia - internalized in Howdy's case (again, most likely). the blatant favoritism, the dismissive nature, it all adds up. even if no one outright knows, that subconscious recognition (or outright suspicion!) will do this

i mean, Latter makes me think of two things. 1) being the only queer kid in a family (especially large). 2) being a middle child. there was a third but i forgor. it felt important! it's gone now! anyway it's also Super telling comparing how Howdy treats Latter (emotional, earnest, open) to how he treats Beeya (oozing stereotypical masculinity)

tl;dr so i don't think it's really "expectations giving Howdy an excuse" as it is "subconscious / internalized homophobia causes Howdy to act the way he does"

as always, take all this with a Hefty grain of salt!

[robiinurheart33]

My heart is squeezing fuck in another lifetime maybe Simon would be able to run away with Johnny. Maybe in another lifetime they could hold each other in their arms and feel safe for the first time. Maybe in another lifetime Simon didn’t have words choked in his throat, jaw flexing and neck twitching just to get the words out to express his undying love for Johnny. Maybe in another lifetime they would be able to feel their skin against each other and to understand what it means to have a soulmate, not that either of them believed in it in the first place. Maybe in another lifetime Simon wouldn’t be holding Johnny’s hand for the last time, watching the red trickle down the side of his head. Maybe in another lifetime simon and Johnny would just have someone to love without an outworldly force determined to tear them apart

[melanodis]

heartbreaking! local convicted murderer who deeply likes color purple is gnc as fuck

[deus-and-the-machina]

I caught up to the oshi no ko manga recently and can I say whatever aquakane has going on is fucking insane good lord. Not platonic not romantic but a secret third thing (fake dating to “I have feelings for you” “I have feelings for you too” *narrator voice* the feeling was friendship to willing to commit a murder so the other won’t return to a spiraling revenge quest, a murder she was 100% down with since the moment it was implied to complicated exes but goddammit I still see through your bs and care about you idiot I’m gonna ruin your clearly self saboteering revenge quest and also it’s all super ace coded)

[monbitemon]

posting this late cuz im not sure how much yall care but i felt the impulse to make my own "six fanarts" thing but with the fictional "men" i've had crushes on over the years

and before yall say it, yes one of these does Not look like the others

i added my approx age when i liked these guys on each of em too

[pastafossa]

How do you get past writer's block? I have a fic that I'm working on that is updating on a schedule, and I made the mistake of giving myself a month off in between parts and now I can't really get back into writing it. I don't want to leave it abandoned because I have a few people who I know are really invested and I don't want to leave them hanging, but I'm having a hard time getting as excited to write it as I did before.

Ok so I'm in a weird place for this, hilariously. Because The Answer That Usually Works For Me (TM) and that carried me through a regular weekly update schedule for almost two and a half years is, in fact, not at present working for me apparently my brain can write through a pandemic but not through recovery from the shit that went down in December/Jan so we found my writing kryptonite. However, I'm going to assume you're closer to 2021 Pasta than 2024 Pasta. SO LET'S GO WITH THE METHOD I NORMALLY USE SINCE IT WAS SUCCESSFUL FOR YEARS. Cause that's the thing: sure, I've written almost a million words, and pumped out chapters for years (ignoring the past few months) but I promise, I hit the same walls as everyone else even when nailing weekly uploads. But over those years, I came up with a fairly solid list of steps that I'd go through one by one.

Fun one first: when I'm in a block, I almost always try re-engaging with canon first. I'd rewatch my favorite episodes, binge a whole season, or even the whole series depending on how much of a boost I needed. For me at least that was often like Pavlov's bell, my favorite story triggering a flood of affection. I'd remember why I loved this fandom and the characters so much, and it could often kickstart my brain and excitement back into gear. If you really want to dangle a carrot and your fic touches on canon, focus on watching parts you're excited to get to in your story. A big one for me in TRT for example was the post-Nobu, Nelson v. Murdock episode, since I'd had that planned for TRT almost since the start, and I was very excited to reach the hurt/comfort I had planned. Even if your fic isn't following canon though, see if it'll give you a creative rush again!

So let's say step 1 doesn't work, either because the canon just isn't hitting the spot or because your fic is dealing with something else. In this case, my next step was usually to jump ahead to write a scene I was really eager to get to. It was often a short blurb, but it was always something I REALLY wanted to explore, and because I'm also a reader who likes exactly the tropes and plots I'm writing, I want to read what fucking happens. Except, fuck, I'm not there yet, am I? And I can't see how that scene finishes until I write my way up to it and finish it. This is my own carrot. Multiple scenes in TRT were written months or even years in advance, simply as a way to bribe myself. This is also an option!

But maybe this doesn't work. Sometimes it didn't. This is when it got a bit more serious. For anyone who was reading at the time, you'd have noticed that I'd sometimes drop side fics, either Matt POVs or one-shots. This was me, in essence, working on the shower principle (basically, ideas/solutions will come if you stop thinking about it and do something else, like take a shower). I figured if I went and wrote something else - either with less stress, or something fun and dopamine-inducing - the part of my brain focused on my Big Fic would wander around the writer's block beneath my notice. And it almost always worked, all while I still kept my brain trained that, hey, even if we're not writing This Thing, we're still writing.

But let's say this doesn't work either. You're well, and truly, stuck. Been there now and then. And, you're going to hate this one. I hate it but it works 9 times of 10. And it is: Write anyway. Half of it was spite. I was not going to give up my schedule, I liked my schedule. The other half was that I knew myself. I knew if I could just get past the chapter/plot/dialogue I was struggling with, I'd be able to roll along again. And so I made a rule: whatever I wrote didn't have to be pretty. It just had to exist. If that meant I wrote, "Jane chased the cat in circles and caught it. She was happy." then that's what I wrote. Because everything, EVERYTHING, can be fixed in editing. But you can't fix what doesn't exist. And so there were those nights when I would scowl and groan and snarl and bash my head against that writer's block until 5 in the morning, but in the end Jane chased that fucking cat adn caught it, it was written. Hilariously, sometimes those chapters have wound up amazing (likely because I spent so much time hammering at them) and reader favorites. There are absolutely, I believe, moments where you can, and should, see if you can push through.

But that brings me to *waves* now. A lesson I've only recently recently and with encouragement. Namely... sometimes brain no go and that's ok. My steps work for me 99.9% of the time, but I've done the above during the past few months, and it just... hasn't dragged me out entirely out of it yet. Sometimes, our brains demand that break, especially when things just aren't going great. There's a reason TRT had a break of roughly 2 years between chapter 4 and chapter 5 (feel free to check the chapter index with dates on AO3!). I had some life things happening and I just was not in a place to write, even if I was still busily plotting and planning and thinking about TRT behind the scenes. And that was ok. We're not machines. I came back like a bulldozer in Jan 2021, yes, and bulldozed through weekly updates, but that break was needed. And now I'm obviously taking a short one again while I recover from everything. It's ok if you're not in a place for it. So the last step is one I've been told a lot by dear friends recently as they helped me through this: be kind to yourself, and try not to stress if none of the above works. The story will always be there, and if TRT is any indication through all its highs and lows, your readers will be there when you start up again.

[shannonallaround]

After pondering on it for several days, I have officially decided I did not like the direction of KFP4 and have banished it from my brain. It is no longer canon. KFP4? What's that? Don't know what you're talking about.

[darth-sonny]

made a better ref for One

the oldest of the turtles, although she acts mostly like an only child (cuz...she kindal was for a while before Four). very tactical, practical, and perfers to keep out of fights when she knows that it won't benefit her in any way (she can kick ass though. she is, after all, Lou Jitsu's kid)

a perfectionist through and through, she absolutely loves the business part that comes with being part of the battle nexus. she's capable of keeping the fighters and champions in line without any backup and helps Big Mama out with all the paperwork that is required

and as you can see, she very blatantly has a favorite brother

[joyflameball]

Why was Meatly surprised that Sammy so popular he's literally skinny canonically blonde shirtless has suspenders ties you up tries to kill you and is tragic what did you expect people to NOT wanna fuck him

[mewniemoon]

Got my wisdom teeth removed and thought it be fun to try and draw while the anesthesia was wearing off.

Fun game: Try and guess which ones I did first and which ones I did last lol.

[lupine-nebula]

oh to be cuddled by your immortal wife who just stole your sweater vest because she's "cold" or whatever but you don't care because you love her so much and would do anything for her because she'd do anything for you and-

[givemewallywestorgivemedeath]

Feeling very violent rn so here's a very controversial opinion:

Everything after season one of Young Justice sucked.

Look, I know I'm obsessed with the show but that doesn't mean it's good, it means that I'm too deep into it at this point to get out. There are good moments within the other seasons but in general? They were not good.

I'm sorry. I understand that they wanted to be creative and have a neat narrative and deep lore and all that. And they do! The narrative and lore is extremely deep.

But the plot? The characters??

Season one was an actual functional show that balanced character development, plot and dialogue with world building, lore and messaging.

The other seasons do not do that.

Season two bounced back and forth between like 16 characters. We got some development for some characters but even that was minimal compared to the character development in S1. And this isn't me complaining that the og group wasn't in S2 enough. That's not my issue. I would've loved to focus on a new group and I think that Jaime, Bart, Ed and Gar would've been super cool to focus on. I loved what character development they did have and I craved more.

But the problem? The problem is when you have 16 fucking characters that you are trying to develop and shove into a coherent plot and have actual meaningful scenes. There just wasn't enough focus on S2. Imo, S2 was meh because the characters got left by the wayside. The plot, dialogue, world building, lore and messaging was fine, there just seemed to be a lack of heart/warmth in the show because of the characters. It's hard to get invested.

Then holy shit. S3 introduced more characters. And the plot got more contrived and 'big picture' to the point that it started to abstract. It felt like nothing mattered. There were no stakes, you were just watching things happen. There was 50 fucking things happening an episode and 80% of it was lore/world building. It felt like I was studying for a fictional history exam.

I'm pretty sure the main character in S3 was earth 16. Just the entire universe. Because goddamn. We checked in on almost every living being and EVERYTHING was a plot point. Most of it wasn't even relevant to anything happening in the season. Man it was.... it was bad.

And at that point it just wasn't enjoyable at all to watch. I probably should've stopped watching but at that point the sunk cost fallacy had already kicked in. I knew it could be good. Maybe it could be good again. And people were constantly praising it as cinematic genius so I was like 'okay well maybe I'm missing the point? Maybe you aren't supposed to enjoy shows? Maybe this is fine?'

But season four broke me.

The creators heard that people were frustrated by the lack of character focus and the episodes following 72 characters and the episodes switching between 50 different subplots every episode and their solution? Their solution was to take allllllll the different unconnected plots and, instead of evenly spreading them throughout the season, jam them all into 'arcs'. So you had a bunch of mini seasons consisting of 3-5 episodes dedicated to a cast of ~5-8 characters (some of them new). And each of these episodes had unconnected a plots, b plots and c plots.

THAT IS NOT A SOLUTION

Holy shit that is not a solution.

Not to mention the overarching plot of the season, in which we had no fucking clue what was happening until the final episodes where everything became a speedrun to wrap everything up. We literally had no idea what the main plot was until it was ending.

Good god it was bad. It's bad writing!

I know people liked it and good for them. You should like what you like and you don't have to justify it. But for me it was insanity. I'm sorry I actually don't want a season long subplot where Beast Boy is depressed and sleeps all day. I would be cool with it if it had anything to do with the larger story but, surprisingly, spending five minutes watching Beast Boy sleep every episode didn't make for compelling storytelling.

I'm still not over how we didn't even know who the main villain was until the end of the season. And then all of a sudden he does a villain monologue to tell everyone his evil plan and his motives. Super cool actually. I love it when I have no idea what the stakes are for the majority of a show. It's incredibly good storytelling when you leave the audience in the dark about a major player in the plot for all of the plot. And then doing an info dump evil monologue in the final episodes to rush through the explanation??? Fucking fantastic and not a sign of terrible pacing at all.

I'm just so frustrated. The show isn't about being a show anymore. The show is an entire cinematic universe shoved into 20 something episodes. It's desperate to tell every single story at once, audience, pacing and good writing be damned.

I'm so tired of the constant praising of Greg. His whole 'i don't write endings because life doesn't have endings' and 'i don't write cliffhangers, I just leave things open ended' thing is pretentious bullshit. I'm tired of pretending it's not. A good story has an ending. Stories are not life! Some of the best shows I've ever watched had planned endings. And oh my god. The cliffhanger thing... that's just semantics my guy. Greg you write cliffhangers. You can insist they aren't but I'm going to call a spade a spade.

It's also.... I'm fine with explaining things, in fact I love it because it's an excuse to talk about the stuff I love, and I have a fairly decent knowledge of comic book lore. So, I could not only understand what was happening in the show but I was also super enthusiastic about explaining it to people. But hey Greg? Hey buddy? If 90% of your audience doesn't know what the fuck is going on and needs to be familiar with super specific obscure comic characters from the 70's then you might have a problem.

I think I realized halfway through s4 that the most enjoyment I got from an episode was when an obscure comic character would cameo in it. But then I realized that a) they generally weren't explained at all and b) 50% of the time they weren't just hanging out in the background and they were vital to the plot. So to understand who the fuck they were and what the fuck was happening you had to be familiar with... well all of DC comics actually.

Anyway this rant is getting long and unhinged and I don't think there's a point so I'm going to cut myself off even though I have so much more to say on the topic. I think my general point is just that I didn't enjoy watching the later seasons and it's chill if you did and we should all respect each other's opinions ✌️

[teruel-a-witch]

what if one day steve and danny stumble into what they think is a crime scene but actually turns out to be the production of a cop tv show and the more they find out about the show the more familiar all the details seem until they realise to their horror that someone is making a tv show about a fictionalised version of their team. of course it's highly sensationalised and inaccurate but has just enough details for it to feel creepy and make steve and danny suspect someone they know has fed the production some information. (jerry, it was definitely jerry)

turns out they can't shut it down because all personal information has been changed and there's not enough actual accuracy in the show to impact their procedure/operations since the viewers don't care about accuracy so much as entertainment and interpersonal relationships between characters.

they are, however, welcome to stay and watch the filming as long as they don't interfere. it's actually a bit amusing to watch their all too familiar banter from the outside, danny grins and pointedly looks at steve when his counterpart lectures his partner about recklessly risking his life and steve smirks when his calls danny's 'a nagging wife' which makes danny huff and glare adorably.

nothing could've prepared them to what they saw next, when their characters' usual heated argument suddenly turns into them making out against the wall in the interrogation room right in front of the 'suspect'.

their simultaneous 'what the hell?' startles everyone but the writer and director defend their choice 'just because it didn't happen like that with you guys doesn't mean we aren't allowed some creative license and our viewers respond well to passion. especially since two episodes ago captain o'malley finally confessed his undying love for his partner and sergeant walters reciprocated they are supposed to be unable to keep their hands off of each other. just like you were, i imagine, when you first succumbed to the obvious attraction between you two. all that flirting couldn't be for nothing.'

afterwards danny is quiet and steve angrily promises to have a word with jerry. when they confront him steve asks why, on top of everything, would jerry say that steve and danny are a couple? they are in for another shock when jerry says that he didn't. apparently the production team just assumed, based on all the details and behaviour, because it made more sense for their characters to be romantically involved rather than not.

steve is rattled because he feels exposed but the absence of danny's ranting is worrying so he overcomes his fear to ask what's wrong. danny surprises him with how small and resigned he sounds when he murmurs 'is the idea of being in love with me really so off-putting to you??'

steve realizes his reaction was misinterpreted and ended up hurting danny's feelings so now he has to risk admitting the truth even if it means making things awkward because he can't stand danny thinking he's not worthy of his or anyone else's love.

he never realised he was that obvious and being confronted with the opposite made him act defensively. 'i was bitter, and resentful, it felt like they were throwing what i could never have in my face. how unlikely is it to be hopelessly in love with your best friend and have him magically reciprocate? the chances are probably one in a billion'.

steve is afraid he made things awkward with his confession and tries to leave a speechless danny, until he is stopped with a hand on his wrist and a blinding smile. 'you big oaf, did it never occur to you that i am your one in a billion? now let's make our fictional selves jealous.'

once they are done making up for lost time they send jerry a gift basket.