#like that fact came out of nowhere

[not-your-lifeline]

Unsuur's 4th wall breaking line about NPC's limited dialogues and his undying loyalty towards the player even after getting friendzoned

god.... he's giving me the feels

[tokutaiseichan]

i really like how chapter 23 is titled in Japanese. in English, it's simply "Stargazing with A Free Spirit" but in Japanese, it's called "満天を頂に叶えるは空の願い".

i'm struggling to translate and word it beautifully in English but it's roughly around the line of: What Grants [You] a Sky [Full of Stars] at the Summit was A Wish Upon the Sky or Wish Upon the Sky Blessing You with A Sky [Full of Stars] at the Summit

(i know it's kind of a mouthful / repetitive 😅 sorry, i still have a lot to learn)

why i like it? because of how they made it into a wordplay of Towa's name. Towa's given name is written as 叶空 in Japanese and as you can see here, it's incorporated in the title. i just think it's neat! especially when it's a chapter focusing on him. c:

funfact: Towa's name is written as 叶空 (叶 = to grant / fulfill, 空 = sky) but "towa" is also another way to read the word 永遠 (eternity / everlasting / forever, etc)!

[wormchaser]

you are complaining about complaining too much while complaining about the fact that maybe people dont like you because you complain too much while complaining about being alone. just stop complaining and do something about it. talk to people. reach out. dont just wait for someone to come to you first.

i have tried reaching out to different people in the past year or so but it never works. i understand its my own fault for letting relationships decay because of my own insecurities and issues but that doesn't mean i can just will myself to think or believe different things about myself. it's a self fulfilling prophecy ; i think people don't like me so i don't reach out so people don't like me etc . i am sure you do not want to hear me list all the things i want to say in response so i will put them in the tags.

[generalized-incompetence]

“Hey, Dirk,” says Tina, sniggering, “you ever heard of this movie Goncharov?”

Dirk drops a stack of five plates.

“Oh, no,” he says.

(Read on AO3 here)

Tina runs for the nearest broom as Dirk runs for the nearest computer. By the time the plate shards are swept up, Dirk has opened about sixty tabs. “This can’t be happening,” he says, clicking on five more links. “It’s not possible.”

“Mm,” says Tina, “seems around you, just about anything’s possible.”

“But Goncharov,” says Dirk, desperately. “It doesn’t exist.”

“Well, duh,” Tina shrugs. “It’s an internet joke. Crowdsourcing a made-up movie. There’s a pret-ty hot love triangle, too - wanna see?”

“No!” says Dirk, flinging up his hands. “It does exist, it just - it shouldn’t. It can’t, not anymore. I already solved that one.”

Tina stops looking for fanart. “Wait,” she says, “Goncharov is a case?”

—

“The mind wipe,” Dirk announces, half an hour later, “has failed.”

Tina, Farah, and Todd blink at him. “What mind wipe?” says Todd finally.

“The Goncharov mind wipe,” says Dirk. “It’s wearing off. Oh, I told Thor it wouldn’t last!”

“Thor?” says Farah.

“Wearing off?” says Todd.

“Wait, so there’s real footage of the hot love triangle?” says Tina.

“Focus!” says Dirk. “This is important! Clearly, the repressed memories are already bleeding through - if this spreads, who knows what will happen!”

“Not us,” says Todd, “since you haven’t told us anything about it.”

Dirk glares at him. “It’s very simple,” he says. “Loki, god of mischief, weaseled his way into a theatrical re-release of Martin Scorsese’s most famous mafia movie, in an attempt to spread his mind-controlling message to a wider audience - and also possibly for a chance to star alongside famed actor Robert DeNiro, though I have to say, Loki’s acting chops were nowhere near as professional –”

“Loki is in Goncharov?” says Tina, bouncing up and down. “Who is he? Not Andrey? Oh - Katya?”

“Er,” says Dirk, “frozen… Steve?”

“Ice pick Joe?!” says Tina.

“Wait - back up,” says Farah, getting off the couch and heading for one of the six whiteboards scattered around the agency (Dirk refuses to erase any “essential records,” which includes Mona’s doodles, Farah’s grocery lists, Todd’s drunk-after-midnight song lyrics, and Dirk’s confusing string walls, so in lieu of reuse, they just keep buying more). “Mind-controlling message? About - what, exactly?”

“World domination,” says Dirk. “What else?”

“What, like, make way for our mythological Norse overlords?” says Todd.

“Todd,” says Dirk, “the art of mind control is that of subtle insinuation. The smallest nudge to a person’s most seemingly innocuous impulse might one day bring about Ragnarok itself. The pathways of the human brain are far beyond any of us to begin to fathom.”

Todd exchanges glances with Tina. “So…” he says.

“So “Make way for our mythological Norse overlords” was embedded in the credits, yes,” says Dirk.

Farah pauses halfway through busily scribbling a semi-coherent list of Dirk’s far-from-coherent retelling. “If it’s just the credits,” she says, “couldn’t you replace that segment? Instead of mind-wiping the entire human race?”

“Yeah, who watches the credits, anyway?” says Tina. “Farah, you don’t count, no one else cares about the back-up apprentice costume designer.”

“Yes, that was my suggestion,” says Dirk, “but I was, er, overruled. Thor doesn’t generally go in for half-measures, in my experience.”

“And how extensive is that experience?” says Tina.

“We’re getting off-track,” says Dirk quickly. “The important thing is, the mind-wipe wore off. And if everyone suddenly remembers Goncharov, they’ll also remember the credits. And if they remember the credits…”

“Make way for Loki,” says Todd gloomily.

Everyone stares at the whiteboard.

“Okay,” says Farah, clapping her hands together, “so all we have to do is find Thor, find the mind-wipe technology, debug the mind-wipe technology so it works this time, figure out how to deploy it correctly, and get Thor to mind-wipe the entire human race a second time, before everyone remembers Goncharov and Loki comes back. If he’s not back already.”

Everyone stares at Farah.

The doorbell rings, and then the door bursts open. “DIRK GENTLY!” roars a voice. “Hail and well met!”

—

“You broke the mind wipe box?” says Dirk, aghast.

Thor squirms on the couch. Thor is the only one on the couch, because he takes up most of the couch. Farah is still by the whiteboard, and Todd and Tina are standing by Dirk, completely failing not to stare.

“I didn’t break it!” Thor protests. “I simply - misplaced it. Onto a chair. Which I then sat on. Which was, honestly, far worse for me than for that box, given all the unpleasantly sharp components.”

Todd shakes his head and wishes Thor didn’t sound so much like Dirk, with a deeper voice and a slightly different accent. It’s hurting his brain. He tries and fails to stop looking at Thor’s bare arms. They take up an unfair amount of his field of view.

“Thor,” says Dirk, putting his hands on his hips, “we’ve talked about this. You must be more careful where you sit.”

“Again,” says Thor, “I did not know that hat was valuable.”

“It was cursed!” Dirk squawks.

“Can everyone focus!” says Farah. “Thor, do you have the box with you?”

Thor shifts slightly and pulls out a mangled cube. It looks like a movie prop that, well, someone has sat on. The translucent blue sides are faded and dusty, and wires are poking out of the middle.

“...Sorry,” says Thor.

Tina squints at the box. “You’re tellin’ me this thing is why I forgot the boat scene?” she says. “I dressed up as the boat scene for Halloween!”

“...You were a boat?” says Todd.

“I was six,” says Tina, “and in retrospect, the homoerotic overtones went way over my head. Cool costume, though.”

Farah, meanwhile, examines the box. “This isn’t too bad,” she says. “It should definitely be fixable. Probably. Almost certainly.”

“If only we still had Patrick’s lab,” Dirk sighs.

Farah’s eyes twitch sideways. “Well…” she says.

The door opens again. “Farah!” yells Lydia. “Have you heard of this movie Goncharov?”

—

“Of course I can fix it,” says Lydia.

Everyone sits forward on their respective couch, couch armrests, chairs, or, in Dirk’s case, table. “You can?” says Thor.

“Yeah,” Lydia shrugs. “This is all 80s tech - it’s built to last. These transistors are comically huge. If you want, I can swap it out for new stuff - might take a little longer, but it’d be, like, credit card sized.”

“Could you really?” says Dirk. “Is this one of those Boring Law things?”

“Whatever’s fastest,” says Farah, before Dirk can fall down another endless hole of knowledge he’ll forget till his next case. “Lydia, do you have everything you need here?”

“Yeah, it’s all at my bench. Give me a sec.”

Lydia takes off towards the workbench Farah set up two months into Lydia’s Belize stay, and the rest of them sit back to wait. Dirk hums something under his breath. Farah goes back to writing on the whiteboard.

“So,” says Tina to Thor, after a moment of silence, “did you two ever…”

“I’ll order a pizza,” says Todd, shooting up.

—

Todd barely gets back off the phone before Lydia returns with the repaired device.

“That’s it?” says Tina, frowning at the cube.

“It’s an ancient artifact of my people,” says Thor.

“Which you sat on,” says Dirk.

“Something I learned from my dad,” says Lydia, “is that sometimes the smallest things cause the most problems. Even when the tech is ancient. Maybe especially then.”

She sets the cube on the table and taps something on the side. A blue glow creeps up the sides. The cube begins to pulse faintly, seeming to draw space in around it. It’s mesmerizing, in an unsettling sort of way.

“...Yeah, I hate that,” says Tina.

Dirk shudders. “Thor, can you…” he says.

Thor places one large hand over the cube, cutting off the hypnotic light. “I shall need a higher vantage point,” he says. “Wait for my signal.” He’s out the door before anyone can say anything else, to possibly everyone’s relief. A second later, there’s a flash of lightning, and a resounding boom of thunder, and everyone jumps as though they’ve been shocked.

“Well!” says Dirk, shaking himself and standing up. “That was… a thing.”

“Wait - that’s it?” says Todd. “We met Thor, and now he’s just… gone?”

“Yes, that’s how he generally operates,” says Dirk over his shoulder. “It’s part of the reason we… well.”

“Part of the reason you what?” says Tina.

“Popcorn, anyone?” says Dirk.

“Popcorn?” says Farah. “Why?”

“Why, for the movie, of course,” says Dirk, then pauses. “Er. I think.”

“No, there was a movie,” says Todd. “Wasn’t there? Something about - um - shit.”

Tina props her legs up on the table. “Hey, Far,” she says, “what’s up with your handwriting today? That whiteboard’s a mess.”

Farah looks at the whiteboard, where a whole square of notes has gotten completely smudged. “...Huh,” she says. “Must’ve slipped.”

“Pizza’s here,” says Lydia from the doorway, where none of them heard a knock.

“Pizza!” exclaims Dirk, and everyone entirely forgets what they were ever worried about.

(And somewhere, deep underground, Loki sighs and logs offline, thwarted again from his latest and nearly successful plan to escape at last.)

[livsspecialinterests]

Canon

YES EXACTLY THANK YOU

Charles gets to know Beej a little better and then realises he's essentially just a fucking Weird Dude with Issues and my god if Charles isn't himself a closet Weird Dude who married and had a child with a strange lady and then upon losing her almost immediately fell for another, different, strange lady

I'm not saying Beej is exactly Charles' type but he isn't exactly far off....

plus Beej and Delia have a small tiny moment just before creepy old guy where Beej completely outs Delia as a bit of a freak in the bedroom I mean COME ON I'm not telling anyone they have to ship it but it's a viable ship goddamnit!!

(also my dude im so sorry to have gone off in the tags to this post it's not at all aimed at you i am *delighted* with this ask and im going to save the image of Charles smiling at Beej because it makes me so happy ive just got some feelings about how side-eyed i sometimes feel writing this ship)

[johnwatersvhs]

the stupidiest form of discussing queer subjects i ever seen is bringing up this mystified "queer elder" or "queer of the past" that did whatever you agree with as if this somehow says anything about anything except that some queer ppl that lived a long time ago agrees with you.

[rowenabean]

.

[sskk-manifesto]

Finally got around to watching ep 11 (´；ω；｀)

[welcometothejunkpile]

Some minor Spoilers for Mislaid in Parts Half-Known and possibly previous books

Ok, so I've finished Mislaid in Parts Half-Known and after a few days to chew, I have so thoughts.

What the fuck is going on in Prism!?

Like, the doors are an outside factor. No world controls them and Antsy considers them an sorting system for the worlds, give people the opportunity to find a place that suits them better then and world they were born in. (see. the boy who disappeared from Confection)

This doesn't always work out, because losing your conviction and being unable to choose leaves you stuck in your birth world and because the worlds and the people in them have their own laws, bias, and desires that the doors don't care about/understand (see. Lundy, the Queen of Cakes, the false headmaster) but that is the intent.

But is the implication here that Prism is opening doors intentionally to take girls? Antsy describes the door to Prism found in Kade's attic as predatory.

Or do doors open for children who would be happy in Prism and the fairies are idk killing the boys or smth? The hunting party encountered in Mislaid implies that they can just detect a door opening and go to collect whoever falls out of them.

The way Antsy described Seraphina's world also seemed to imply that they were somehow opening doors and targeting specific individuals. Which is not outside possibility. Jack proves that in books 1 and 5, and Rini in book 3.

Everything I'm getting from this latest entry is either the faeries of Prism intentionally kidnapped Kade by sending a door to him, OR he was legitimately meant to find happiness in Prism.

But if the latter was true, I don't think the fairies were supposed to be the ones to find him. He described going into the goblin woods because he found them calming. Still rainbow and color changing, but slower and more gradual about it. The goblin(s) who speak to Sumi refer to him as their Prince and appear to have always had only the highest respect for him. And Kade talks about the Goblin King as the first adult/adultish figure to have allowed him to be himself and exist without expectations. Possibly still the only adult other than Eleanor, who herself was still expecting Kade to be a nonsense traveler at first.

So what I'm saying is,

Did the fairies steal Kade from Earth, from the Goblins, and what the fuck is happening in Prism!?!?!?

[thelasthalloween]

I am a firm believer that Dakavendish is unironically the most well developed ship in all of MML

[aro-aizawa]

me, whenever i figure a plot twist in a 20 year old anime: oh wow i am SO big brained rn i am such a genius

me, two minutes later, conpletely blindsided by a major plot twist:

[sidesteppostinghours]

i talk a lot about how ortegas approval shaped cynthias perception of her own morality but not nearly enough about how the warping is mutual.

[2-late-2-the-party]

okay but am I the only one who doesn't hate the ending of Never and Forever? Like yeah, it could've been better, but I don't think it's the disaster that everyone makes it out to be.

[aceyanaheim]

No one

Absolutely no one

Not a damm soul:

Me: S5 Debbie is actually a pretty realistic effect of S4 Debbie realizing every single adult in her is fallible as a result of Fiona's arrest and her endangering Liam and Liam's hospitalization

Me: further it's what marks a change in her relationship with Fiona since before that she very much saw her as a mother figure but the last mother figure she had left and this one made mistakes that shook the whole family. When Fiona says "I don't know what I'm doing either" and Debbie says "everyone knows that" she's almost resentful. She's grappling with the fact that not everyone in her life is solid as she thought and she's still at an age when she needs them to be. This is also the time when Fiona's working more and Lip is at college and Debbie goes from having a family dinner every night to only some nights seeing her older siblings.

Me: Lip was probably the last person she saw as infallible but then with his alcoholism she also realizes "oh he's a dumbass too" this is what leads her to feel the need to be hyper independent something she fails miserably at because she's fifteen and her brain hasn't fully developed. This is also what leads her to look to people like Sletvana and her fake friends as role models because she feels like the ones she had before she can't use and That along with her needing family both to having friends up depending on one and realizing later she ( felt like she) Couldn't depend on hers leads to a lot of her bad decisions and when you think about that and how she wasn't some simulation doll in s1-s3 but a person who developed and reacted to everything that happened it-

The Uber driver who just wants his tip: ma'am you good?

[fanatics4l]

shows that refuse to let the main characters die are so annoying and lame. yes this is targeted

[tariah23]

Rolling my eyes at ppl still acting all surprised by what tumblr has been doing.