Stalling Tactics

percy watching the minotaur walk around new rome in business casual after nico & his dumbass boyfriend decided to fight for monster reform or something. idk

GOD star wars: the clone wars (2008-2014) was the absolute fucking BEST. u do absolutely not get anymore buckwild than the insane range of emotions that these seven seasons can put u thru. obi-wan commits a war crime in the first episode. anakin drinks a space martini. a sixteen-year-old decapitates four men in a single second and it is literally never mentioned again. anakin, obi-wan, and mace windu find SPACE GODZILLA and the entire jedi order collectively drinks We Love Peta™ juice, decide not to kill it, bring it to the capital city, and it breaks out (ofc) and kills, like, a half million people. sheev just hangs out in padme’s office for six whole seasons being, i dunno, evil and absolutely not a single person catches on. there’s a blue guy in a dope-ass big hat who beats every single jedi’s ass and they still only call him, “that guy in the hat.” darth maul’s been living in a literal garbage dump with eight legs for the past ten years. anakin endorses state-sponsored terrorism. padme once contracted the black death. the jedi order tries to prosecute a twelve-year-old for war crimes. maul is forcibly murdered two (2) times over and still lives for some bananas fucking reason. whenever anakin does something mildly risky the darth vader theme plays. yoda asks anakin if they’re friends. the jedi order tries to prosecute a sixteen-year-old for war crimes. a cartoon made for twelve-year-olds has a four-episode arc about government oversight of international banking. this all happens in the range of three years. this show is absolutely fucking nuts.

in superman adventures #19, there’s a villain named multi-face who can convincingly disguise himself as anyone, even tricking dna tests and x-ray vision. Superman initially can’t stop him

and the only reason he gets caught is because multiface decides to disguise himself as, of all people, CLARK KENT i’m screaming

i did wrestling in middle school. on one hand, i was actually quite good at it, which was nice. being good at any sport was a new achievement for me. on the other hand, i was bi, and i was trying very hard not to notice that i was bi, and getting folded into knots by very kind, very muscular dorks made that task somewhat difficult.

adding fire to the problem was that my parents and my grandparents wanted to watch my matches, because they were very proud that their Gangly Nerd Son was actually Sporting, and they wanted to cheer me on. which would've been sweet and all, but if there are four people you do not want there during a key part of your Burgeoning Sexual Awakening, it is your mom and your dad and your grandma and your grandpa.

right? i mean, imagine some guy's got your head in his armpit, and you're going you know, old sweat smells bad, but fresh sweat has a sort of and then you make eye contact with your grandpa in the stands and you remember you're swearing spandex so if you pop a boner people aren't just going to be able to see the outline, they're going to be able to count the veins, and the only way you will be able to restore your family's honor after that would be by moving to siberia and renouncing joy, forever. that, or lift your entire body up by your kneck then twist 180 degrees without paralyzing yourself.

it’s a lot of pressure, is what i’m saying.

still it did motivate me to win my matches really fast. because i was so tall and skinny, i was stupidly good at the double leg takedown, and then once someone was knocked down, i'd just do the half nelson and kind of flip em over for the pin. then the ref would count to three and i’d win. EZPZ.

i had one match where that went great. won in the first ten seconds, sat back down, and prepared myself for a good hour or two of doing fuck all. didn't even feel bad the parents/grandparents were gonna be bored. the matches went up from me in 5 pound increments (i was in the 115 lbs division) and it was going great until we got to the 145 lbs division. the other school's wrestler stepped onto the mat, and she turned out to be a girl so our guy flipped, because for straight guys, wrestling a girl is not a pleasant experience.

i'm not entirely unsympathetic. my experience wrestling dudes was definitely a little traumatic. but also, i dealt. guy could've dealt too. instead, he refused to wrestle, and the coach went - fine. not even worth fighting over.

so he went to the 140 pounder, and that guy said, nosir, my mom said mormons can't wrestle girls. next guy down, 135 pounder, now he knew he could pull the same card and thus did. 130 pounder, 125, both tapped out. he got to the 120 guy, and that guy was catholic, but he said he was considering being mormon, and thus would have to pass. as a precaution.

coach blew up a little at that. he said "is there anyone - anyone - on this entire goddamn team that is willing to wrestle a girl?" and then he pointed at me and said "YOU. MAT. GO."

and i'll be real, if i'd been paying more attention, i'd have pulled the mormon card too, but i'd just been putting all that audio into a buffer file because i was reading, so i was halfway across the mat before i even processed what had been said and by then it was too late to turn back.

still i had a plan. and my plan - my beautiful, perfect plan - was to do what i'd always done. tackle, flip, pin, win. sit down. read. bore my family to death. move on.

i got the first part right. she was bigger than me, but she wasn't taller. just an incredibly stout woman. god built me like a snake with glasses, just as he built her like a combat cube. the problem was the half nelson. soon as she was down, i tried hooking my arm under hers from behind and for both genders, the defense for this move is just clamping your arms really fucking tight against your sides. if you're a guy, that's whatever, but if you're a girl - especially if you're god's chosen combat cube - that pins your opponents hand right against your boob.

so, i got the hook in, she clamped, my whole arm pressed against something soft, my coach was yelling THE HALF NELSON. BABYLON! JUST FINISH IT! FINISH THE HALF NELSON! and i was just trying to press hard enough to finish, when then my brain went

...oh.

and i flipped out. of course i flipped out. i like girls, and touching a boob is an elemental experience, and i was not ready. i was not prepared. i had not committed the sacred rites. i recoiled like i'd just brushed my arm against the surface of the sun, stood up, and backed away. nobody in the room knew why i'd given up. all they saw was me, right about to win, suddenly flailing around and scrambling. so everyone started screaming at me to just get the half nelson again, and i couldn't really yell back there's a fuckin' boob in the way and it was very distressing, and the only way i could think of to make them stop was just doing it over again the right way.

so i did.

i hunkered down and prepared myself for Wrasslin' Attempt #2: The Sequel.

i knocked her down again, EZPZ. i went for the half nelson again, but she knew what i was about to do so she super clamped, and i knew she was gonna super clamp, so i wound my arm back like a pop-eye cartoon punch before swinging my arm through the gap between her bicep and her side, but the amount of time i spent winding back super signalled what i was about to to do, which gave her time to clamp even harder, which somehow redirected the entire force of the popeye punch to the bottom of her bra.

it spat out a single boob the same way an action hero might spit out one single tooth after getting a solid crack across the jaw. as if to say:

*ptooie.* "that all you got?"

i did not actually see this. my experience was that first there was an arm, then there was a bit of boob, but i was braced, i was ready, forward at all costs, tatakae motherfuckers, and then the boob went away, and i didn't know where it went but my team, and the audience, and everyone who was in front of me, they all gasped like i just kicked them in the stomach. except for my coach. he was behind me, and thus one of the four people in the room who did not see the boob. now my mom, my dad, my grandma, and my grandpa, they all got flashed but nooooooo, coach thunderbutt was behind me, and he didn't see shit so he was still yelling NOOOOOO BABYLON WHAT ARE YOU DOING JUST FINISH THE NELSON! GO FOR THE KILL! BABYLON! BABYLON!

but i did not go for the kill. i stood up and she stuffed her boob back real fast, and we just kind of circled each other awkwardly until time ran out and i won on points. that's not technically allowed, but the ref had some mercy on me.

my coach did not.

i barely had time to sit down before he strode over to the bench to chew me out.

"babylon," he said, in that very calm way people get when they're too pissed to yell. "why didn't you pin?"

and i didn't know how to say well coach, i tried, but there was a boob, and it kept getting in the way, and my mom was watching, and so was my dad, and so was his dad, and his mom, and god (like bible god) and that's a can of worms because i'm pretty sure he was already mad at me, and i'm wearing spandex, and i think i might have to move to siberia, so instead i said

"i uh. i forgot how to do the half nelson."

which is actually impossible. forgetting how to do the half nelson is like forgetting how to swallow your spit.

and he looked at me, like i was the dumbest person in the entire world, and i looked through him like i'd just survived my 250th day in a trench at verdun, and he said: fine.

fine.

but we're all going to practice it for an hour tomorrow because you forgot.

and then he left.

and my buddies had the gall to be salty about it. i got so many comments saying "dude, why didn't you just tell him the truth?" and i said "you can if you care so damn much. you could've wrestled the girl too. maybe someone else should do the hard thing today."

but they didn't. so the next day, we did an hour of half nelson drills, and i spent a decent amount of time getting thrown around the mat, and it was pleasant in exactly the way that i hated and the year after that, to the surprise of everyone but myself, i quit wrestling and joined the trivia team.

and if you want more reasons to love my mom, my grandpa joked after the match that i might have to talk to my bishop about it, and my mom told him he would be allowed to make jokes after he stood in front of a crowd of 110 people in spandex underpants while wrestling a woman that was not his wife.

he paused for almost five seconds after that. then he said: aw. hell. sorry babylon.

and i'd have preferred my apology from god, but getting it from him was pretty good too.

Sex/Gender Swap - Obi-Wan, Anakin, Padme, & Ahsoka Illustrated by BEHIND

One thing I love about the Batfamily is that they’re all so smart and talented and at the same time such dumbasses: 

 Bruce: Is the worlds greatest detective and has contingencies for everything yet can’t have a conversation about emotions to save his life 

Barbara: has the worlds most advanced information network and yet she thinks that the best way to get out of danger half the time is to blow up whatever building she’s in (she has done this multiple times) 

Dick: Has led multiple super hero teams but has no idea how to do his taxes and had to rely on his literal Alien Girlfriend for that 

 Jason: Recites Shakespeare and quotes Orwell. Took over half the Gotham Underworld at 18 and yet he crashes into buildings and the entire reason he wears a mask under his helmet was it became a habit after he did it once for dramatic effect 

 Tim: The Actual Worlds Greatest Detective and he forgets that miles and kilometres aren’t the same thing 

 Cass: Worlds greatest fighter who started learning English at like 17 and can hold conversations easily by 19-20 (that’s an entire language!) and yet she comes up with plans like ‘beat up every mob member until I get the one I want’

Steph: Made puzzles that the police needed to call Batman into solve, she tracked down multiple villain operations multiple times, she knows how to break into the batcave, she once locked Tim out of his own computer systems, she can combat majority of Gotham villains with nearly no equipment or training and has gotten in the way of Penguin’s operations multiple times, she can stay one step ahead of both Bruce and Tim the world greatest detectives for extended periods and can take down the most sophisticated ai in the world yet she falls down in construction sights and thinks crashing a car into a guy with a superspeed suit is a good plan. 

Duke: Is smart enough to listen to seasoned vigilantes & solve crimes yet he thinks being shot is cool & says things like “go go ghost vision”

Damian: Raised by an elite assassin organisation from birth and got PHD’s at like 7 yet he tries to do things like drive a bus even though his feet don’t reach the peddles and jump on guys with gasoline blood in a room that’s on fire

MARVEL women || Killer Queen

watched this for the first time when i was 14 i think? it saved me

Ahsoka with a little more Skywalker in her, killing palp and only returning to the order to train Leia is an AU that really butters my eggroll.

Rex is the most exasperated clone in the galaxy. The 332nd is the loudest and most scary battalion in the republic right after aayla securas 327th. Leia is like Ahsokas temper times Anakins hype.

Part 2! 

Part 1