#im feeling the nostalgia

[puppyeared]

fake ep idea + doodles

[bonetrousledbones]

so when are we gonna start appreciating undertale AUs for fueling a metric fuck ton of the creativity and longevity of the fandom because if i see one more person calling them the cringiest part of the last 8 years i might lose it

[zeffdakilla]

my scout design and concept scout (you could also say he's just lore accurate scout compared to my design 😭)

[beaulesbian]

Oh yeah, i missed kevin the drama queen, andrew his pet goalkeeper monster, and neil the tiny bastard, all from jean's pov

[noname-404s-blog]

[opens-up-4-nobody]

She's turning the rain to snow

[macbethz]

we are operating on levels of penetration metaphor previously thought impossible

[blondeforyou]

BABY YOU WILL NEVER MAKE A MAN OF ME

john d bad from america's next top simp

[wayneprincess]

Okay but guys

guys

JUSTICE LEAGUE IS AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX IN MY HOME COUNTRY

I live in Eastern Europe and I thought that it's never gonna happen yet here I am ugly crying (I am a grown ass, 26 years old woman with Master's degree in Psychology and a corporate job)

It is only 26 first episodes up to the 'Savage time" yet it is here and it is with my beloved Polish dubbing

IT'S STILL UNMATCHED IN QUALITY OF STORYTELLING AND SUBTLE HUMOR AND DYNAMICS BETWEEN CHARACTERS

[limmysky]

My pony sona, not much

[pseudophan]

since i know you're least likely to judge me for this: i wrote something inspired by the dnpcrafts video and it's kinda sorta a little fucked up archiveofourown org/ works/ 54947491

you know what. wherever the author of the hat fic is today, i think they'd be proud

for the love of god if you click on this read the tags, no complaining cause you ate the dead dove

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

hold on i need to get a thought and emotions out. so with Welcome Home, there seems to be a before and an after. obviously, we're in the after. the website is the after. and if it turns out that the story we see, the one where shit hits the fan and the show is practically erased, then... that already happened. whatever horrors we see, we'll know that there is no saving them. there is no happy ending - it happened, and it's tragic. the show is doomed to end and be scrubbed away. if any of the characters are revealed to be dead/gone by the website, then when/if we see them at an earlier point, we'll Know

and there's a special kind of dread and horror in that for us, the audience.

[sonknuxadow]

if the only footage youve seen of the game doesnt actually give you a good idea of what the game/story is like (like its from a parody video or is otherwise heavily edited for example) then it doesnt count as having watched the game and you should pick little to no actual exposure to the game. only interacting with the games content through fanart/fanfic/etc also counts as little to no actual exposure to the game

[noname-404s-blog]

🍃

[lord-squiggletits]

Thinking about IDW Optimus again and the fandom's aversion to even acknowledging he exists bc he's a cop or whatever and like. Most of the time people literally just replace him in fic with some white bread knockoff archivist/librarian, not even bothering to keep in IDW OP's personality (which just bolsters my theory that the problem isn't him being a cop the problem is that he's too multifaceted but I digress).

And it's annoying because you could totally write IDW Optimus as not a cop while still keeping his canon personality. You just have to realize that the reason IDW OP became a cop in the first place is because his formative experiences when he was young shaped him to basically have two priorities: 1. To help people and 2. To do it by being on the ground actively doing something about the bad things happening to people.

IDW OP would not be a fucking librarian or archivist because even though those are noble pursuits that can help people and change the world, and Optimus is educated/smart enough for the profession, he wouldn't be satisfied just teaching people or spreading information about activism or social-historical studies or whatever. He's a mech of action: he needs to be doing things right now, in front of him, to people he sees/interacts with in his own eyes, improving society with concrete actions rather than indirect action or abstract inspiration.

So basically the alternate job ideas I can think of for IDW Optimus are something like being a firefighter (or any first responder really) or even whatever the equivalent would be to international charity organizations, those ones that send volunteers across the world to do stuff like build housing/infrastructure or distribute food or whatnot. I mean I can't imagine that the equivalents to these things would be exactly the same in IDW Cybertron, so you'd have to get a little creative with it, but these are just some ideas of jobs that would fit IDW Optimus' personality while still filling the niche of "not a cop" for people who are just that opposed to it.

Though I think the revulsion against coptimus is annoying in general tbh because IDW is already a continuity that rejects the idea of easily defined good/evil people or groups. It feels like people really want Optimus to be a good person in a very sanitized and academically approved way, so he has to be nice and squeaky clean but also like, a perfect leftist who knows theory and holds the most progressive opinions on every single issue....

There is no room for the idea that good people join bad institutions, there's no room for the idea that the reason people think cops are good guys who help people is bc of the government propaganda everything is saturated with. Hell there's even later issues of the Optimus Prime series by John Barber where Optimus like, MULTIPLE FUCKING TIMES, is shown in flashbacks grappling with the fact that he as a cop/Zeta's regime that he works for might not actually be improving society like they say they are, and dealing with the fact that he feels more like a lesser evil compared to the Decepticons (perhaps not "lesser" at all).

It's like there's this idea in fandom of like, fictional media and opinions on media having to strictly adhere to progressive ideals at all times. So people just go "cops bad, this character is a cop, therefore they suck" without being willing to engage with the idea of like. IDW OP is born wanting to fight injustice and protect people -> a good way to protect people is to fight the people who are hurting them and committing crimes -> surely following the law is a reliable moral code to guide him in this -> becomes a cop because he's been indoctrinated into a society (much like our own) where he was told that the state/the law exist to protect the people and being a cop means you get to fight bad guys that hurt people. There's really so many interesting concepts there that could be (and CANONICALLY IS) explored about how good, well-intentioned people can be led to harmful actions simply because they have been fed the idea that the things they're doing are good/helpful/noble. Which is especially important for a character like Optimus, I think, who has a cultural icon status as The Irrefutable and Perfect Good, so it's really important actually to use IDW Optimus as an example of how even the most noble people you know have held problematic beliefs or done bad things at some point in their life. You know, because no one is born perfect and ideologically pure, and in fact society is constructed in exactly a manner to make people drink the kool-aid and believe that the systems designed to hurt them/others are just a normal, if flawed, society.

I mean the writing in IDW literally has Optimus deal directly and indirectly with the harm he's done as a cop and how people don't/didn't trust him because of that. I don't know what the fuck else this fandom wants if the source material literally saying "OP realizes that cops suck and he hurt people and earned their disdain by doing the things he did" doesn't stop them from going EW cop bastard sucks and is the worst Optimus. Like the narrative barely stops short of outright saying ACAB and Optimus himself would agree with this sentiment.

At that point, the collective fandom beef with IDW OP isn't because he's a cop and the narrative didn't do enough to condemn that. The problem is literally just that people don't read and don't care

TLDR: Consider the fact that good people can do bad things sometimes especially when living from birth in a corrupt society that thoroughly disguises its vices/oppressive structures as completely normal parts of existence

[randomwriteronline]

Ko-Wahi was a short variety of generally not necessarily pleasant things: it was desolate, cold, harsh, and - when the winds didn't rush after one another through the icy peaks with low howling shrieks, cutting through the frigid aether like claws of an enormous Rahi reaching out to grasp any wayward Matoran foolish enough to dare wander in its territory - it was abnormally quiet.

So it reasoned that if Kopaka, Toa of Ice and Hating Being Around People, was not found anywhere else, he had to have secluded himself to a place that at the very least resembled the environment he had first felt at home in.

He didn't even flinch at the rush of air that accompanied the stomps which suddenly stopped by his side.

"You're late," he only commented.

The jovial jab Pohatu had ready for him froze in his throat, and he tilted his head slightly in genuine confusion: "Late?" he repeated.

"I expected you to be here five minutes ago," Kopaka replied.

"You were expecting... Me?"

"Of course I was," the other replied matter-of-factly: "If there's something I can depend on, it's the fact you'll chase me down to the ends of the silver sea just because."

The Toa of Stone blinked quickly a few times, eventually smirking back: "And if there's something I can depend on, it's that I'll always find you somewhere snowy and deserted."

He then leaned a little closer and proceeded to add, in a goofier tone: "Like your heart."

The gentle elbow punted in his side made him snicker as he successfully evaded it the first time; he cackled a bit louder when the second jab actually hit.

His friend did not dignify his amusement with any verbal response. Instead, he extended his finger.

Pohatu followed where it was pointing, staring at the same vast expanse of white he had just sped through (luckily without having to skid through any frozen snow - perhaps one of the very few things he certainly did not miss about the island of Mata Nui), and found nothing.

At first.

His pinprick pupils, so used to the desert sun, struggled a little more, trying to tighten even harder or widen ever so slightly: even with the clouds shielding his eyes from the sunbeams turned blinding as they were reflected on the candid coat of snow, the uniformity of the colors confused and unified all that supposedly existed before him with only few exceptions. There was snow, snow, snow, more snow, a leftover Visorak web, even more snow, another patch of snow, something looking vaguely disgusting half covered in snow, some more snow, a lance of light reflected from a point just outside the clouds' range, a vast amount of snow, a smaller amount of snow, snow, snow, and one last puff of snow over there. Riveting!

But Kopaka seldom pointed at nothing at all just to stretch out his finger; and once he truly focused on the exact location he was indicating, Pohatu saw.

He saw a jagged thing, sharp end splintered and jutting towards the sky like a blade, ever so slightly greyer than the pallor surrounding it; he saw its missing half laying mournfully among the powdery ground, defeated, cracked, open wide.

He saw its entrails, eroded by the weather, far too small to properly distinguish one object from the other from this distance - still they glittered grey and blue in the lack of color as if to remind in silent screams of their existence, once, as tools and furniture and inventions of scholars, before they'd found themselves abandoned in the wake of their master's leave as strange crystalline gore only partially hidden away in the haste of a half hearted burial.

He saw dozens of the jagged corpse's kind - once pillars, columns, immense bastions, now nothing more than ruins. Enormous animals frozen in place, never to thaw awake once more.

He saw frail, beautiful exoskeletons awaiting with such tiredness to be crushed, replaced by larvae in the bowels of which knowledge would thrive.

The wind passed between them without strength, not even lifting a snowflake.

"Breath-taking, isn't it," Kopaka murmured.

Pohatu nodded in silence.

They simply stood there for a long time, side by side, looking upon the carcasses of Ko-Metru's knowledge towers.

Looking upon what was left of a city of legends.

There had never been a Matoran called Kopaka, in the Turaga's tales.

He had never competed with Ehrye as they rushed to run errands for the seers in the hopes of one day being allowed to stand beside them at the top of those magnificent crystal constructions, spending days pondering and reading stars, uncovering the secrets of the future to the point of turning the very idea of tomorrow into such a mundane thing; he had never known Nuju, never looked at him with awe, or respect, or burning envy. He had never walked those streets, or skied down those slopes, or travelled to the Colosseum inside of a protodermis chute.

And yet he had found his chest aching as he had listened to those descriptions, from a nostalgia that wasn't his own. As though Vakama and his stories had handed him a coal that had long singed the Turaga's hand, still weakly sizzling, that now burned his palm in turn.

Mata Nui had been all he'd ever known as far as he was concerned. There had been nothing before; and if there had been, it wasn't the land the Matoran had been forced away from.

Yet despite knowing as much, despite the attempts to soothe the dull pain that had no place in his logical mind, in the long last hours he'd gotten to spend on the chiling peaks surrounding Mount Ihu the Toa of Ice had been unable to keep himself from wandering away from the material world into absentminded daydreams, trying to construct a memory that had never been there, a life he had never lived.

He had imagined Ko-Metru many times. He had imagined Metru Nui as a whole many times, the orderly archives, the silvery canals, the smoky furnaces, the dangling cables, the unmoving statues - a world for smaller eyes (like his never had been) to see. He had imagined the Colosseum, its inner mechanisms, even the Vahki guards, despite their presence being nothing but an annoyance at best and a source of uneasiness and dread and outright danger at worst. He had imagined himself getting in trouble with them often - who would they have been, to tell him what to do? What made them any different from a Bohrok?

He had imagined them often, but he had never seen them. Never whole. Never alive.

As he stared at what remained of a city of seers, he ached to have been there. Maybe he would have understood better. Maybe it would have hurt more. Maybe it would have felt more like home.

But would he have noticed? Any of the beauty, the lack of strife? Would he have liked a life such as this, spent either pondering on who knows what, or reading pages of history before they were even written, or running around tirelessly for people who did both former and latter? Would this sight have stirred something deep in him now, or would his amnesia have kept his feelings at a distance?

His chest hurt. Something inside it ached terribly, pushing hard against his muscle and metal, like a fish suddenly rushing to break the still frozen surface of a lake in a bout of claustrophobia.

He felt strange, uncomfortable.

Like something misplaced.

Kopaka's eyes wandered over the crystal towers, suddenly overwhelmed. He let out a shuddering, watery breath, as quiet as he could.

He needed not worry about being heard.

Pohatu was too enthralled by the sight before them to notice his momentary frailty.

He gazed on, unable to tear his his eyes from what his brother regarded as an enormous grave he could not mourn properly, and beheld only a thing of beauty.

It was not the vast expanse of Po-Wahi's desert, nor the infinite lushness of Le-Wahi's jungles, the burnt forests of Ta-Wahi, the Ga-Wahi reefs, the cavernous labyrinths of Onu-Wahi - it could not even compare to the frigid landscape of Ko-Wahi despite all their similarities, and he could tell from a first glance.

Ko-Metru and its siblings could have never been what the Koro of Mata Nui had been - they were not a breathing nook interwoven in the world around them: they were carefully constructed bubbles, encased, entrapped within themselves, the wild nature that once had run through it tamed carefully only to cry out despite its weakened form once the binds upon it had been snapped to pieces and left to rot.

It was not beautiful in the way he knew a land to be; it was not open and grand to the point of being frightening. It was shut on itself, broken, a pale imitation of what it had been.

And yet he found it all so gorgeous.

It had embarrassed him at first - not feeling. Remaining still and unfazed as the Turaga had longingly described what the Toa of Stone should have regarded as home, a field of statues tirelessly carved by artisans of his people. He had struggled to imagine it properly, managing only hazy scorches of some undefined place, like a mirage in the desert; and hearing his brothers and sisters wonder aloud, so curious, of how they would have expected their Metru to be, he'd been all but mortified at his own lackluster enthusiasm.

Had he really grown so self centered? All the world seemed to feel as though it had only started existing with his birth upon that fateful shore.

A city of legends on the other side of the sea... He could not have ever pictured it.

But now he was there, walking upon its streets, traveling across its lands, and it looked nothing like it had been described: it looked shattered and lost, and broken, and rusted, and standing still where it had once stood so proud and shining only to spite the cruelty of time that wanted it to bend and turn leveled.

Pohatu had lost himself between scattered remains of monumental statues, details sanded down until unrecognizable, or filled with what little life could make its home in such a crevice. He has searched between the broken Kanohi nobody had ever melted down again, seeing his and his siblings' likenesses over and over and over and over, he had followed broken cables back to the towers from which they had once served a purpose, raced along empty canals to make a sense of them, peeked into tunnels the roofs of which had been torn open like dissected anthills.

Metru Nui had never been whole, not for him.

It had always been this gorgeous wreck, this beautiful ruined landscape. He could not imagine it as anything less; he could not see it as anything mournful, or dead, or ugly.

Each toppled building was where it should have been. Each destroyed spire was exactly as the Great Spirit had intended it to be.

Such a frail, stubborn, lovely, wild thing.

A tragedy and a celebration.

Glowing brighter than the twin suns with every ounce of its incomplete, breath-taking beauty.

Kopaka felt something tug very gently at his arm. When he turned, he noticed Pohatu still hadn't taken his eyes away from the shimmering remains of the towers.

"Did you want to show me this?" the Toa asked, quietly, quietly.

His friend looked back to the sight before them and swallowed a heavy knot in his throat: "I did," he replied.

The grip on his limb tightened ever so slightly.

Comfortingly.

"Thank you." Pohatu whispered.

Kopaka did not answer.

They looked on.