I’m Feeling Such Secondhand Bittersweetness Right Now; 100 Episodes Of An Awesome Show Is A Great Accomplishment,

I love when a gifset is epic and powerful, and then you look up the song that it’s set to and it just gets that much more epic and powerful with the music sweeping behind it. I’ve found some darn good songs from gifsets, too. This set is just wonderfully done. 

I can’t decide if I want El to get her powers back in season 4, or if it would be better for her to be free of them... I mean it’d be nice to have them back, but maybe she’s safer without them... 

carry your flame, carry it higher // torches - x ambassadors

I completely agree, this is the best happily ever after for them. Like “get married, have kids” doesn’t have to be everyone’s happy ending always, but I do think it would’ve been the best fit for these particular characters (and it’s certainly a darn sight better than Ben winding up dead). 

After all, as a lot of people have been saying, Rey has always been looking for a family, and as great as her friend group is, I still think she would have loved this life. It’s the opportunity both characters need to do better with their own family than what they had in the past (no offense to Han and Leia’s parenting, but just things obviously went awry). Also this would be a perfect setup for future movies if they wanted them, with another next generation.

Anyways, mini-rant aside, this is simply gorgeous art; I love the coloring and the depth of it. And, of course, it fills the heart with much-needed warmth. 

This is how it should have ended

Credit to jabberwockyface

Picton Castle also has a ship cat! I got to meet her at the Green Bay Tall Ships Fest this summer. Her name is Fiji and when I found her she was chilling at the pet booth in the ‘Maritime Marketplace’–the lady working at the booth said Fiji just waltzed right up and started nuzzling in her catnip toys, haha. 

Very friendly, very smart, allowed me to pet her–10/10 would run away to sea for her :)

Hi! I have a bunch of sailing questions if you don't mind. What's the usual minimum time commitment for someone with no experience? What if you get a job on a ship but can't take it? You recommended the sail training international website - was that to find a paid job or just to take part in the training voyages? I'd swear I've seen someone on tumblr talk about working on cargo tall ships, but I can't for the life of me remember who, do you have any info? Also, are ships cats a thing? Thanks!!

Hi!

Usually the minimum is two or three months - just the maintenance period, or summer break while in university, or because you’re working on a boat that has a three-month contract, or because you’re only free the first half of the season, discussed it in advance, and the company is willing to half you for just half.

It’s not uncommon for at least one crew member to head out unexpectedly over the course of the seasom. Sometimes it’s because sailing’s not their jam after all; sometimes it’s disputes within the other crew, or because something in their personal lives demands immediate attendance. My first season only myself and the first mate made it through the entire season; conversely this year out of about 16 crew only two people quit that I can remember. Obviously if you’re able to give the captain some warning to find a new deckhand that’s best, but people do leave. (Also why it’s worth checking in with captains even in the summer - someone might have a position just opened up).

If I remember right, I mentioned sail training international mostly as a list of ships that operate internationally, and a resource for finding the names and whereabouts of more tall ships, since I’m best informed on New England and only shakily beyond that. At least some of the ships on there will offer paid positions, so it’s worth contacting interesting vessels to ask (might be limited to crew who already have experience/certain certifications/nationality of the vessel, but I couldn’t say for certain).

I’m afraid I have no idea about cargo tall ships; I know of Tres Hombres, which is frankly The Dream (at least one shipmate of mine would kill to work on her!) but off the top of my head, no others.

Ship’s cats are a thing! I believe it’s the Adventuress out west that has one, and I know the Mary Day had one for several years before she passed away of old age. Not as common as I personally wish, but they’re around!

My boyfriend @ravenfal told me he had something that would make me laugh...

(Inspired by this post)

I love how soft and whimsical this art is; it feels subtle and minimalistic and yet still very pretty. It’s like something out of a story book, and it captures the aesthetic mood of daydreaming. Lovely :) 

Also I still haven’t seen 13 yet but now I own her coat since I dressed as her for Halloween and it’s very fun to swish around in her long flowy coat :) Definitely putting her season on my Christmas list. 

Yellow 

(with @turtleneckandtee‘s handwriting)

Our production of Matilda opens tomorrow!! It’s been a while since I made a proper Opening Night Eve tumblr reblog, but then again, it’s been a while (like... 2 years) since I had an opening night! Actually, I realized the other day, it’s the longest I’ve gone not being involved in a play since I first got into a play in college, which sort of makes sense (given, you know, the whole pandemic) but also doesn’t make sense (because I still cannot begin to grasp the ceaseless flow of time). 

I loved this movie so much as a kid so it’s exciting to be a part of it in musical form :) It really is pretty touching with some lovely songs. It’s been quite a while since I saw the movie, so I’m having trouble remembering whether some things are different or whether I’m just forgetting them--for example, was the Russian mafia involved in the movie at all? I don’t recall them being there, but I’m playing Russian Henchman 2 in the musical! I also don’t recall the acrobat/escapologist story but those are some of the prettiest scenes in the play I think. Anyways, it’s a fun show to be in; here’s hoping we break lots of limbs tomorrow! (Which I suppose is all in a day’s work as a mafia henchman, haha ;) ) 

‎ Sometimes Matilda longed for a friend, like the kind, courageous people in her books. It occurred to her that such talking dragons and princesses with hair long enough to climb… such people might only exist in story books. But she was about to discover she had a strength… a strength she wasn’t even aware of.

MATILDA (1996) dir. Danny DeVito

This is such a thorough photo analysis! Oswald and Ed are just so deeply fond of each other; it’s lovely. 

And, though I’m a bit behind and won’t be watching the finale tomorrow or checking my dashboard until I have a chance to catch up, it still seems like a fortuitous night to reblog some Nygmobblepot things from my drafts folder... 

Oswald looked so proud when he told Barbara that Ed figured out a way to get out.

They may be villains, but they’re polite. Polite in a ‘general threatening gesture with a firearm’ sort of way, haha. Oswald is a good evil boi. 

This scene was so funny, though :)

even in gotham you don’t point guns at babies

What can I say? I love me a good complex light side/dark side ship with hope for redemption.

cross-roads of destiny

I love how a discussion of tropes can turn into an actual, full-length, illustrated story and get me emotionally involved. This was beautiful. Admittedly I could predict the gist of the villain’s motivations from a ways out, but that twist about MC-kun caught me by surprise and definitely gave me feels. I’m not even that familiar with anime tropes, but the mechanics of this story world were fascinating, and that was a quite the battle scene! 

This is exactly the sort of random find that I love about this site. 

You know those anime meta posts along the lines of “I was born with pink hair. The doctors told my parents I was a Main Character and ever since my life has not known peace from demons/spirits/sports competitions/harems who find me”

Well I see that, and I raise you this:

An anime boy whose appearance is, by absolutely anyone’s account, completely and utterly average. Mundane hair. Mundane eyes. Not even glasses to set him the tiniest bit apart. A simple, unmemorable, unrecognizable civilian among a backdrop of millions.

And he has a lot of passions, and a lot of ambitions, which he hones every chance he gets. He’s dabbled in sports and archery and cooking and just about anything you could wrap a competition around. And he’s competed in many of these. Every chance he gets. With all of his passion and all of his might.

He’s crushed by the competition every single time.

Until one day–one day something clicks for him. Something that should have seemed obvious from the start and yet never was–as though everyone, including himself, was unwittingly blind to it. It clicks, when he realizes every kid who’s beaten him in competition, every kid who’s gone on to fame and glory and acclaim, has been some candy-haired gel-spiked ridiculously-dressed fucker. 

There’s some trend there that this Main Character boy can’t explain and can’t understand but he decides, this one time, fuck it. He’ll play along too. He’s got a model train competition in four days, and he’s got nothing more to lose. He hits up the department store, buys the pinkest, noxious-est, fruitiest hair dye he can find, the spikiest hair gel available, and the gaudiest clothes on the thrift rack. He enters the model train competition looking like a bubble gum gijinka.

And he wins.

Suddenly, the other candy-haired contestants notice him. They talk to him. They pledge rivalries. Girls notice him. Judges applaud him. Acclaimed model train aficionados offer him internships across the world. He’s hit on something. 

The main cast expands to cover just about every candy-hair cliche in the book: from the mostly-normal-looking demure school girl with the blue hair to the Naruto-est, yelling-est boy with the red-and-green spiked hair. The cool megane senpais, the purple haired tsunderes, suddenly everyone is interested in him. They’re prodigies and upstarts and underdogs and they truly believe that this main character boy is one of them.

So the main character boy maintains his ruse. He touches up his roots at dawn every morning and carefully attends to his gelled spikes and tells absolutely no one about this great, uncanny, unfathomable secret he’s stumbled upon. He wins his competitions left and right. He racks up the acclaim. He’s hailed as a prodigy of all trades, just now bursting onto the scene, and boils to the top of all his candy-haired peers.

He’s rising up, his every dream within his grasp. Until one day he gets a note under his door, taped to an old picture of his Normal Boring self from middle school, that says “You don’t belong”