#non-comprehensive

[macden]

it’s so fucked up that I have to go to work and do my job instead of being paid to make glenn howerton clip compilations

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

Fic things I will never have enough of/get over:

“Oh no, they’re hot.”

“Great, now there’s two of them.”

See above but with more swearing and feelings of dread and impending doom

BAMFs with swords

Old wise person causing 90% of the chaos

“They’ve never met in canon.” “Actually, they’re dating.”

“They’re mortal enemies.” “Actually, they’re married.”

The keeper of the braincell

Sharing one braincell but they lost it

The cinnamon roll goes feral

Tiny feral child and their supportive, enabling, non-parental background adults

“I’m your problem now”

“Welp, guess I’m a parent now”

Accidental world domination

Competence

Competence kink

Calmly sipping tea while everything behind them is on fire

Trying to be a good, supportive adult but you have no point of reference so you end up giving a sword to a ten-year-old

Time travel

Person A and person B start dating and when they tell everyone persons C-Q are confused because haven’t they been dating for like three years now and persons R-Z thought they were already married

*does something previously thought to be impossible* “What, like it’s hard?”

Platonic besties that will help hide the bodies

Fake dating

Accidental baby acquisition

Accidental baby acquisition but they’re a middle-aged to senior adult with like five thirty-something-year-olds that are now their children

Crossovers that shouldn’t work but do

“I need help” “I’ll grab the shovel” “Not that kind of help”

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

Well-written non-canon pairings for characters that have other firmly established canon pairings. Like, fully alters the entire story line non-canon pairings. But done in a way that feels like a reasonable possible outcome.

A protagonist with a million problems to solve still taking the time to be kind

Forehead kisses

Time traveller going apeshit and fixing everything preferably in as Mary-Sue a way as possible

OP character who is oblivious to the fact that they are indeed OP

Character who spouts off increasingly concerning details of their life while not realizing everyone else’s growing concern or the fact that they’re probably about to be mother-henned for the next decade

Character who chooses a parental figure and informs said parental figure of this new development with little to no forewarning

Strong, stoic character is actually the most chaotic one there

Everything in the chaotic portion of the alignment chart

Getting back at a bad guy in as petty a way as possible

Time travel with two or more time travellers who don’t realize they’re not the only time traveller

The guy everyone thinks is going to beat up all the bad guys sitting back and watching the person previously believed to be as strong as an uncooked noodle absolutely demolish them

Any situation where characters play hot potato with a position of great power. “Congrats, you’re king now.” “Not if you can’t catch me, I’m not.”

Unexpected language skills

Unexpected skills in general, particularly if they’re as niche as hell

Two extremely competent individuals who lose all brain cells when within a close proximity of each other

Fixing problems on accident

Fixing problems on accident while actively trying to cause problems on purpose

Surviving primarily due to spite

[markscherz]

I clicked on that wikipedia link you posted for H. fleischmanni and was surprised to see that the section talking about the frog’s natural predators was titled “enemies” instead of “predators.” The word “enemies,” at least to me, seems strange in this context because it seems to anthropomorphize the frogs, which as far as I’m aware is something zoologists try to avoid doing with animals. Is there a scientific reason for “enemies” to be used here, as opposed to “predators”?

Regrettably, a huge number of problems of this kind have been built into Wikipedia by the Wikipedia Education Foundation-supported courses. Students carry out an 'assignment' that involves a dramatic expansion to a given wikipedia page based on any literature they can find. That revised page is then subjected to 'peer review' by their classmates. But because they are unfamiliar with (1) the literature, (2) the contents of other wikipedia pages, and (3) how wikipedia actually works, the resulting pages are often full of misinformation, redundancies, and weird formulations.

You have accurately identified one such idiosyncrasy. 'Enemies' was a very common formulation for 'predators' in the 1800s and early 1900s, but we have largely left it behind, for precisely the reason you say, and hence it sounds jarring to our ears. In this case it is a minor problem (you should have seen how the Paroedura masobe page looked before I cleaned it up), but irksome nonetheless.

[ultramantr1gger]

compilation

[wet-jammies]

Some of my fav omo/omu things:

When a character keeps insisting they don't need to use the toilet until it's too late and they end up having an accident

When a character gets so caught up in an activity they're doing that they don't realize their bladder's full and they have an accident

When character A insists to character B they don't need a diaper, they can handle themselves fine. B relents and they go out together, but A has an accident. B brought along a fresh diaper for them because they knew that would happen 🥺

Character A wants attention from character B, but they're busy. A wets on purpose so B will stop what they're doing and help them.

Characters relieving themselves in unconventional places (potted plants, outdoors, bottles) and making a huge mess because the toilet's out of order.

Characters that flop into bed, exhausted after a long day, accidentally wetting because they're so relaxed and too tired to get up/hold it in

[fromtheseventhhell]

One major factor missing from most debates on Arya and Lyanna's beauty is that they're being judged by their society's extremely patriarchal values. In both looks and personality, that context is essential to understanding how others perceive them. George explores the misogyny experienced by non-conforming women, especially with Arya, and it's interesting how he plays with that regarding their physical beauty.

Her mother used to say she could be pretty if she would just wash and brush her hair and take more care with her dress, the way her sister did. (The Blind Girl, ADWD) "You never knew Lyanna as I did, Robert," Ned told him. "You saw her beauty, but not the iron underneath. She would have told you that you have no business in the melee." (Eddard VII, AGOT)

These two quotes offer a nice summation of this idea. With Arya, her supposed lack of beauty is defined by her being a non-conforming wild child. Her hair is messy, her face is dirty, and she's often in "lower class" clothing while engaging in unladylike activities. None of this says anything about her physical beauty but it tells us everything about how she's perceived. Arya could be pretty...If she conforms to society's standards for a highborn Lady. With Lyanna, however, we get the opposite. Where Arya is judged based on her personality, Robert's romanticization of Lyanna is rooted solely in her looks. He doesn't know anything about the person she really was. There is an assumption that, because she looked a certain way, her personality must fit and Robert imagines her much softer and more passive than she actually was.

That Arya isn't pretty or Lyanna wasn't wild are two perceptions that George specifically pushes back against. This is where people miss the brilliance of them being linked as literary mirrors; it is largely about us learning more about Lyanna, but it touches on more than that. The significance of them being written as wild, willful, and with their own beauty is that George isn't writing his female characters around patriarchal expectations. When people debate their beauty, that's often the trapping they fall into. Beauty and non-conformity are treated as mutually exclusive factors when the story itself never makes that point; this is also the logic that leads people to the (incorrect) conclusion that Lyanna and Arya aren't meant to be similar. Arya's self-esteem issues around her looks and being a Lady make this a topic certain to be addressed in the future; George has made it a part of the story. The conclusion shouldn't be that "looks don't matter", but that looks aren't indicative of a character's value, personality, or morality.

[figureofdismay]

i'm sorry but Genderbender is cool, actually. It's not like. Actually Good, it is of course pretty bad and it's very 1993, but is cool and profoundly strange and surreal the way they lost track of after the first season. It feels like a fever dream! It has Nick Lea before he was Krycek! It has 90s party/club culture murders without it being like 'they were asking for it' (if that's what you took away from it, maybe look at your biases or look again at early to mid 2000s detective "procedurals" that do honestly believe that the party girls deserved to die for wearing low rise jeans and a crop tops and that there were "terrorists" hiding around every corner, the framing is different). There were sexually metamorphosing honest to goodness aliens who made pottery and were immortal. Self resurrecting. Changed sexes as the need arose like certain species of fish. Flew away in their space ship (!! concrete aliens of a fully different type than the Greys! I wonder what they thought of those guys lol) when it all got too hot for comfort, but whose to say the didn't land again in some even more remote place.

Scully gets hypnotized, but she does get information from the guy -- though no, she shouldn't have gone off alone with one of the creepy 'any of these people might be in league with the killer' commune people, even if you took the rape threat off the table that was reckless and I don't even think Mulder was "reprimanding" her as a superior by saying "why did you do that" because it was pretty "why did you do that." The answer was she got cornered into it, but Mulder couldn't know that, and she didn't want to admit she got cornered because she's already feeling vulnerable.

Also 'heroine gets rescued from rape threat by the hero' is an extremely classic trope in genre fiction because it's an id-satisfying one, only people don't want to admit that anymore. Because ""lady whump morally bad and diminishes women"" lmao. No, sorry, even within the same episode, Scully is rescued and feels bad afterwards, but she isn't diminished. They're both unsettled and frustrated, but there's no "stay in the car while i deal with this Kindred guy, you can't be trusted," from Mulder later, because it didn't change anything. They go straight back to splitting up and chasing bad guys with their guns in the dark.

[transpotato5]

i feel like sometimes when people try to include non binary people they just end of invalidating them. like ive seen people include nonbinary people in transfemininity but then just flattening transfem to transgirl, as if reinforcing the binary. can nonbinary people exist without being boy nonbinary or girl nonbinary or even just in between. do you get what im saying

[the---hermit]

Not me adding annotations to a book to make it more accessible for my mom when she will read it

[chayannesegg]

obviously he said as much in that clip from his friend's stream, but i genuinely don't think tubbo will just log on as himself again unless his data is restored by the other players. like, tubbo has expressed notable frustration anytime qsmp storylines feel too much "like a movie" & can't be affected by what the characters do, so i fully believe he has plotted out what will happen if they do solve it and what will happen if they don't which makes me so much more interested in what will happen!! like i trust that what the characters do now will matter

[bassguitarinablackt-shirt]

the funniest emotion a character can evoke is "hes such a fucking freak i hate him /aff"

[nitroglycerin-flavored-coffee]

I love that when people spell out Blitzø's name they do the ø, but I can't read it as just Blitz. Every time it's "Blitz the o is silent." Fully read out in my brain.

[shorthaltsjester]

rewatching c3ep48 for silly reasons and forgot it was also the episode with relvin and matt mercer please tell me everything about that man. there are so many interesting body language choices and facial expressions that are like. not in conflict with but definitely complexify the Gruff Man aura and . i would like to know every thought he’s ever had actually .

[canon-gabriel-quotes]

i switched back from androgel to testosterone injections after 2 years and im having a male puberty crisis over gabriel and this blog isnt helping. thank you (genuine)

oh you are in special type of hell, good luck soldier 🫡

stay strong and try to stay sane

[slavhew]

Hello!

If you're not too busy, would you mind listing some of the things you think count as death flags for Mr. Spender?

There's the obvious fact that he's the "old" mentor to group of young protagonists, but what else do you think would count?

OHH BOY ok so I'd think I'm a crackpot for this but since we're talking about Zack "Foreshadowing" Morrison. I have some thoughts

No harm in leading with the (chronologically) first thing that jumped out at me:

This one IMMEDIATELY made me antsy whenever I came back to it after my initial read, and considering Zack has referred to it on twitter in the past as one of their favorite jokes it's definitely not been forgotten about.

Second, the sheer amounts of near-misses, jokey or not, of Spender narrowly avoiding specifically lightning

Again, not much, but it's weird that it happened thrice, latter two of which had real gravitas rather than an one-off joke.

And third, Spender himself. He's repeatedly shown himself to be kind of a self sacrificing idiot, as well as prideful to a fault. Granted, it's both him and Mina trying to take on all the responsibility of saving Mayview and its inhabitants from their fate.. But Spender is exactly that right measure of doesn't-value-himself-enough (chest footprint aftercare or lack thereof), having an obscene amount of power (enables his loner act + pride) and poor judgement that has the capacity to put him at great risk. And it has!

Spender has not only shown low enough self-esteem to view himself as the de-facto scapegoat for the safety of the town, but also prideful enough to make very bad calls that end up in people, often himself, hurt (COUGH FORGE INCIDENT COUGH)

This is all conjecture, but it's definitely enough to make me worried about him :') Even if all this doesn't mean he'll necessarily die he's definitely getting (even more) seriously injured at some point. I love the guy but he's so far doing a horrible job of convincing me he wants to live bad enough to circumvent at least that