#matthew what are you doing!!!!!!!!

[counterspelling]

day 2 of non-stop thinking about the return of vax. i'm rotating the orb in my mind. i'm trying not to let more than 1% of me hope that this is matt's way of bringing him back and finally giving vax and keyleth the happy ending they deserve bc i simply cannot!!! live through that heartbreak again!! if it doesn't happen!!!

[zombie-jed]

“They didn’t give Afton a motive”

Did Norman Bates have a motive? Nope. Did they ever really decide why Hannibal Lecter liked to eat people? Don't think so. You see, it's a lot scarier when there's no motive, Sid.

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Jesus wasn't Palestinian you dumb heretic. Palestine didn't exist yet. The Palestinian people didn't exist yet. Read the fucking bible. Dumbass

(what anon's responding to)

This is going to sound sarcastic but i mean it genuinely: i love getting called a heretic by randos online. helps me know i'm doing some things right!

In honor of Jesus the Palestinian Jew, here's an excerpt from a sermon (which you can read / listen to in full over here) I wrote back in June on how Jesus's direct identification with those the world calls "least" in Matthew 25 empowers (and challenges) us to envision him as literally one with all who are denigrated, disenfranchised, executed by Empire — as Palestinians are today.

...In proclaiming himself not only kin with the world’s outcasts, but literally one with each and every one of them, Jesus empowers us to imagine him in ever newer, ever more expansive ways. He empowered Black theologian James Cone to declare that Christ is Black, and that every time a Black person is lynched, Christ is re-crucified with them. He empowered disability theologian Nancy Eiesland to declare that God is disabled – to envision the throne of God as a wheelchair, and to point out how the wounds with which Christ rose would have impaired his movement. He empowered gay artist Maxwell Lawton to paint Christ with AIDS lesions, and photographer Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin to depict Christ’s resurrection wounds as transgender top surgery scars. Though some have decried all these images of Christ as blasphemous, it was Jesus himself who told us that he is one with those whom the world denies food, safety, medical care, freedom, and love...

btw if anyone has other examples of theologians declaring Christ a member of a marginalized group it's my fave thing so please add on. Another great one is S. Yesu Suresh' declaration that Christ is Dalit (the "untouchable" class in India).

[dawningfairytale]

one of the many reasons i love the bi paul headcanon (???) is how it’s a fuck you to stereotypes. “bi people are adventurous” “queer men are theatrical” “bi people are sluts”. no. here’s a guy who has lived in his hometown his whole life, hates musicals, and has one canon love interest across three musicals. he is awkward and tired and unsociable and will not see mamma mia. and he swings both ways but he won’t participate in the company softball league.

[puwumats]

first words dimension 20: the ravening war | critical role: calamity

aka: two more crossover seasons and we'll be able to make the atla opening

[raggedy-spaceman]

Oh so this is how it happened!

[larsnicklas]

need to study him not like a bug under a microsope biology major way but in a literary studies major digging into a thesis way. am i making any sort of sense here

[lottieshauna]

Lottie isn't going to die.

[hopetorun]

matthew asking keith not to talk to the media about him isn't new information (the athletic, 5/10/2023), and as the lede of that story makes clear, keith honored that request:

Matthew Tkachuk put his father in “timeout.” That’s why Keith Tkachuk, an 18-year veteran of the NHL and one of the league’s best American-born players, wasn’t available to talk about his son’s remarkable run that has taken the Panthers from “biggest disappointment” to one win from the Eastern Conference finals. [...] Now, there’s no time for distractions, and Matthew wants to keep a lid on his pops, who informed The Athletic of his “timeout” via text.

that article goes on to quote matthew's mother, sister, family friends, teammates, and coaches and mentors at various levels, so it's safe to say that keith's exclusion is a notable one.

as far as i can recall, the interview last night is the first keith has talked about matthew publicly since, and it wasn't a comment on matthew's performance or his team's play. should keith have said on the broadcast that matthew gave him the silent treatment? hard to say from the outside! i don't think "he didn't talk to me for a bit" gives us any meaningful new information* since we could already infer that he was mad, but i can understand why someone else might want to keep that particular detail private.

i don't bring this up a lot in my fannish posts and comments on tumblr because it's a little bit peeking behind the veil, but the tkachuks have very clearly made being a family the brand. now, that was a low hanging fruit for sure, because the nhl loves father-son narratives and fraternal narratives, but they absolutely lean into it. as a consequence, we know a lot about the family, and can often infer even more. (think brady not quite saying it but boy was it clear that he didn't appreciate matthew interfering with his contract stuff.) they can't just not talk about each other at all, because the story they've woven about themselves requires it. there's no version of this where keith never gets asked about matthew again. i think it's quite impressive how long he's managed to go without commenting on matthew's play. did he even say anything during the conference final?

look, i think there's plenty of things to point to if you want to construct a narrative about matthew and keith not always getting along (especially since no one gets along with each other all the time, perhaps especially not their parents). and there's plenty to dislike or find grating about keith! i also have my own beliefs about where in their relationship there's most likely to be tension, which i'm happy to get into on request but aren't the point of what i'm saying here. and if you're just here to play around with the idea of really contentious father-son relationship and have picked matthew and keith as your paper dolls for this purpose, then who am i to stop you? as one of my dear friends always says, all rpf characterization is fake.

but for me at least, the leap from the information we have to "keith hates and/or disrespects matthew" is a big one.

[cellgatinbo]

holy shit cellbit mentioned maybe watching the last game theory on stream later, and i need to know how much it'll fucking kill him to see THIS IN THE VIDEO

[agir1ukn0w]

you guys don’t understand. chandler was my best friend. he was my pal. he was my homeboy. my rotten soldier. he was my sweet cheese. my good-time boy🥺

[gods-favorite-autistic]

Richie invites Pete’s family over for thanksgiving which is how Paul finds out that his nephews best friend is Ted fucking Spankoffski’s brother

[topaz-mutiny]

I think the fans are underestimating how differently people can process things.

I am consistently seeing posts say "Ashton/Tal were repeatedly warned the shard was not for them/will 100% kill them", when this was absolutely not the case, and, more importantly, it is very likely for groups of people to completely misinterpret the warnings. Even if they've known each other and loved each other for a decade.

I certainly thought the warnings were not clear or frequent enough so I was shocked like lightning in the latest episode that they were meant to be absolute death flags.

Please note that I'll mostly refer to the fictional characters, I don't want to bring the people behind the characters too much into this.

First, I would like to point out, the show takes place over weeks and months with plenty of breaks and interruptions. That is plenty of time and opportunity for memories to get faded, muddled, crossed-over with other memories, etc.

The "warnings" happened two weeks to a month ago. And even when they were fresh on the cast's mind, here are the warnings verbatim (bold is my emphasis):

But be warned, holding the strength of the two in one vessel might sunder it. You bear the dormant strength of the empress. Find and bestow the might of the emperor.

- Evontra'vir, episode 74, aired October 5th. The conversations move on to unrelated things with no followup.

Ashton: He also said it might be dangerous for these two shards to intermingle. Or he didn't say dangerous, he said that-- it could destroy me. Orym: --A chance the vessel could break. Laudna: --The vessel <air quotes> could break. Fearne: Wasn't there something if you put them together with the right thing that it'll be okay? Ashton: It might come together and be okay, yeah. -- Dancer: Maybe if it were to meet one of its own ilk, it could awaken. Allura: What you said as a point of warning likely is true. To have both within a singular vessel, it's possible one could survive, but it's also highly possible that it would rend you into a thousand pieces. -- Allura: We're in a strange area of experimentation and unknown knowledge. -- (after finding out Ashton has a fascimile of a Luxon beacon in their brain) FCG: So he's got two things in him or them? Allura: It would seem, which is why I'm a bit--Well, you're either the greatest weapon we could hope for in this time, or will be our end. I couldn't tell you. Orym: Boy, maybe we don't add a third thing. Ashton: I was put together by bits and pieces. This was not an intentional thing and it, I honestly shouldn't have survived it. It was, literally, I was put together with junk. Allura: In an odd way, your fragmented nature might be what keeps all of this in check. ... Perhaps we don't put another powerful entity within your form.

- Various, episode 76, aired October 19th.

To me, these warnings were not clear in the slightest.

To me, these warnings were interspersed with so many words like "possible", "might", and "chance" that I completely misinterpreted the situation as "For Ashton it is dangerous but doable" instead of "The Game Master is telling you Ashton's character sheet will be ripped up."

This is the problem with using in-character voices and using descriptors that imply chance or flexibility. They can drastically weaken the meaning of a phrase such that people like me will mistake it for something else.

Because that's how my brain works. "May", "chance", "perhaps" suggest to me a reasonable set of odds for an action and does not come across as the grave warning a game master would want.

And as a reminder, these muddled warnings were weeks apart and weeks away, which can make remembering the meaning even worse if you've already misinterpreted them. That's why I was 100% on board with Ashton taking the shard. It seemed reasonable but dangerous, so when Matt said "I warned you." in that grave tone and with that grave look I was thrown for a loop. I went "oh no! those were serious warnings!?" and the panic started setting in.

Also a contributing factor was the pressure and lack of communication from Bells Hells.

Fearne did not want the shard, and finally stated that thought aloud to Ashton. For Fearne and Ashton, that meant the only choice left was Ashton, because, for one reason or another, the 5 other people in Bells Hells repeatedly assumed and pushed the shard onto Fearne and wrote themselves out of the equasion. FIVE characters absolved themselves of being active participants. Once the idea of Fearne came to mind and this Emperor Fearne/Empress Ashton/Callowmoore shipping dicotomy, Bells Hells just stopped talking about it and never once considered if any of them should take the shard should Fearne refuse.

So... yeah that's how my brain works.

[lesbianlotties]

they were literally girlfriends

[dazednmatthews]

“he’s my babygirl!”

i shout to the crowd, pointing ahead. everyone’s head slowly pans to matt sturniolo, the twenty year old grown man sat in the audience. the room is silent. someone coughs.

slowly, someone rises. “she’s right,” they say. “he is babygirl.” one by one, dazednmatthews tumblr mutuals rise, applause erupting. they’ve proven the world wrong. grown men can in fact be baby girl asf too.

[irregularbillcipher]

the "paul is richie's uncle" headcanon is really cute but i really love it in tandem with the idea that ted is surprisingly involved in his little brother's life while paul is more just vaguely fond of his nephew, but doesn't really know all that much about his friends or his day-to-day life

like, the idea of ted knowing all his geeky little brother's friends really well, like letting them chill in his apartment every now and then to watch movies or driving them home when they have their stupid library study sessions or whatever is already pretty fun, just the idea that the Local Bastard has accidentally and begrudgingly been saddled with these two loser highschoolers because they're his little brother's dweebus friends that he doesn't want to admit he has a soft spot for, but it's made doubly funny if paul just has no idea that his nephew's best friend is the little brother of the Worst Guy In His Office. ted comes over to paul's desk one day with a stack of dog-eared manga like "pete forgot to take these this morning, so you give 'em back to richie for me, okay? also, ruth's right, stein and spirit are definitely fucking and i want him to stop fighting with her about it when i pick 'em up from the library" and paul is just like. okay. i have several questions about this.