I am a firm believer that Stan and Mabel are not the "dumber" twins. They just aren't as interesting in 'nerd' stuff like Ford and Dipper are.

Stan was able to rebuild like 90% of the portal with only the 1 of the journals, most likely having to teach himself advanced mathematics and scientific theories to even understand what the thing is. It barely took him a few weeks to get the portal up and running after getting the other two journals. Not to mention how he was able to create a business and keep people entertained at his day job. The man is smart.

Mabel is able to create sweaters at the drop of a hat. If you don't know anything about knitting, it takes a lot of math and planning to be able to make a sweater, and Mabel is constantly making them for everyone around her. She made a full 2 act puppet shows with musical numbers and sets and well made puppets in like a week. She may not be interested in the 'nerd' stuff like Dipper, but she's creative and thinks in innovative ways.

Both of them are amazingly charismatic. They can make friends and bond with those around them easily, whether it be for business purposes like Stan or simply childlike positivity like Mabel.

They aren't dumb.

I'm sorry I keep posting my tiktok comments but please. What does this mean. What do people THINK shipping is for anymore???

AO3 authors in the lab creating ships purely for research purposes:

Creating ships for the tax write-off

Creating ships to get that fucking whale.

i think the key difference between george lucas’s star wars and disney’s star wars is that lucas is a man with an ideology. someone with a point of view, and all that entails. which comes with ideas of revolution, anti-imperialism, challenging the status quo, cultural appropriation and racist stereotypes. complex and contradictory ideas because that’s how artists are: complex and complicated people. disney is not. disney is a corporation. a corporation can’t have ideology, because ideology defeats the purpose of profit. and when the only thing you do is to turn on the movie manufacturing machine before you sit down and plan what ideas are you trying to convey to the audience, then your results are going to be washed out corporate garbage. and because when you’re a giant corporation who only cares about selling to the widest audience possible, you can’t take sides. you can’t decide on an idea. because you want to sell your product to people who are on the entire political spectrum. which results in movies without ideology, without purpose, without soul.

I have been looking for this post for years after I came across it and it’s finally here and I need to reblog this because it is absolutely and entirely accurate.

tumblr? tiktok did not like this video.

but y'all?

i think y'all will know what to do with it.

they’re tiny

@steddie-week Day 1: Secret relationship

What does rockstar Eddie Munson get up to backstage?

Me, on the welcome desk in the library: Good morning, how are you today?

Customer: I have welcomed Jesus into my heart and so I am well today and every day.

Me, a little unnerved: Okay then! Is there something I can help you with?

Customer, digging around in his bag and pulling out an iPhone in a box: Unfortunately, Jesus can't help me with this fucking phone, so I came to the library.

The Library!

For When Not Even God Can Help You!

hella

A thing of genuine beauty 🥹

Display it above the door of every public library like the inverse of "Abandon all hope, you who enter here"

the way that people disregard nancy’s grief in fic is my biggest pet peeve- like she didn’t break up with steve because she wanted to be with jonathan :) she broke up with him bc she was overwhelmed with grief from the death of her closest friend and couldn’t stand the fact that barb’s family were still wondering what happened to her - even going so far as to sell there house to pay murray to look into barb’s disappearance- Nancy broke up with Steve because he wanted to just bury the trauma they had experienced and pretend to be normal teenagers. Nancy wasn’t saying that Steve’s love for her was bullshit. She was saying- look at us. Look at everything we’ve been through. Pretending like none of that happened, burying the grief I feel, that is bullshit.- She didn’t go looking for Murray with Jonathan because she had feelings for him and wanted to leave Steve for him. Jonathan, he validated her feelings and was willing to go against the NDA to give Barb justice and give Barb’s family peace. (Or as much peace that can come from at least knowing that they don’t have to wonder where their daughter is any longer- to know that in the least she is no longer suffering.) That was what was most important to Nancy. And being validated in those feelings and seeing that Jonathan could truly empathize with her grief after believing he had lost his brother and that he would be there for her and support her in doing what she believed to be the most important thing she could do- that inspired romantic feelings and led them to get together.

Some of y’all write her like she’s this heartless one dimensional person who just left Steve in the dust because she wanted another guy and that is a huge disservice to her character.

Steve and Nancy's relationship is something I think goes so under-explored in the show. The tragedy of two people who liked each other so much and then dealt with the aftermath of a traumatic event so differently that it tore them apart is such a good framework for a story but (as usual with ST) the show just takes it nowhere.

I also agree with OP that the fandom can be so heartless towards Nancy with regard to their breakup. Did she handle it well? No. But with everything she was going through how could she be expected to? I will die on the hill of Steve having not been a terrible boyfriend and I don't think he's awful for wanting to help her move on by making her happy and keeping her distracted, but she's not a monster for thinking that meant he didn't care. She was angry and she wanted answers and she wanted someone to pay for the death of her best friend and she wasn't wrong for any of that. The fact that neither of them is the villain is what makes it so sad.

I also think it's strange that so many people interpret her "it's bullshit" to mean that Steve and their relationship and his love for her is bullshit. In the show I can see how Steve interprets it that way - he's hurt and heartbroken and has a tendency to shoulder responsibility for things that aren't his fault - but as an audience I think it's clear she means the pretence that everything is normal and fine is what's bullshit.

I really hope ST5 shows the development of their friendship. I don't ship them but I think they've both grown enough to get to a place where they can recognise awful things outside of their control were responsible for the breakdown of their relationship, but that doesn't make it meaningless and it doesn't mean they don't still care about each other. They liked each other, made each other laugh and enjoyed each other's company, let them be friends.

I think people misunderstand "x fell first, y fell harder " trope because it's not about like the one who fell harder loves the other person harder. It's just that the one who fell first falls in a graceful way, one step at the time, maybe gradually over a span of time. The one who fell harder smashes trough the air, there's blood everywhere, everything is fine-

It puzzles me when people cite LOTR as the standard of “simple” or “predictable” or “black and white” fantasy. Because in my copy, the hero fails. Frodo chooses the Ring, and it’s only Gollum’s own desperation for it that inadvertently saves the day. The fate of the world, this whole blood-soaked war, all the millennia-old machinations of elves and gods, comes down to two addicts squabbling over their Precious, and that is precisely and powerfully Tolkien’s point. 

And then the hero goes home, and finds home a smoking desolation, his neighbors turned on one another, that secondary villain no one finished off having destroyed Frodo’s last oasis not even out of evil so much as spite, and then that villain dies pointlessly, and then his killer dies pointlessly. The hero is left not with a cathartic homecoming, the story come full circle in another party; he is left to pick up the pieces of what was and what shall never be again. 

And it’s not enough. The hero cannot heal, and so departs for the fabled western shores in what remains a blunt and bracing metaphor for death (especially given his aged companions). When Sam tells his family, “Well, I’m back” at the very end, it is an earned triumph, but the very fact that someone making it back qualifies as a triumph tells you what kind of story this is: one that is too honest to allow its characters to claim a clean victory over entropy, let alone evil. 

So where’s this silly shallow hippie fever-dream I’ve heard so much about? It sounds like a much lesser story than the one that actually exists.

+1 You know how Frodo leaves Sam with the legacy of the quest - the job of bearing witness to what happened - and the duty to finish and protect his writings? Tolkien lost all but one of his friends in WW1. He was founder member of a literary club at school - the TCBS. There was a larger group and a core of four. They all stayed friends, they kept writing and sharing their work with each other. And they were almost all killed. One of them, Geoffrey Smith, wrote this to Tolkien in 1916. My chief consolation is that if I am scuppered tonight – I am off on duty in a few minutes – there will still be left a member of the great T.C.B.S. to voice what I dreamed and what we all agreed upon.  […] May God bless you my dear John Ronald and may you say things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them if such be my lot. And that was his last letter. There’s something eerie about the way he seems to have pegged Tolkien as an eventual survivor.  Sam’s survival (and his emergence as the true hero of the book) are beautiful because they’re suffused with loss, because they’re not the grand conquering heroic narrative that on some level was “supposed” to happen.

Tolkien possibly only survived because he got trench fever - a particularly nasty disease carried by lice - and got sent home because he was desperately ill. Considering how the rest of his unit fared, it probably saved his life. Unpleasant and unglamorous, but if not for that, we wouldn’t have LOTR. I’m sure survivor’s guilt was a factor - as was a sickening sense of dread when “The War to End All Wars” didn’t, and his son went off to WWII.

TLOTR has some of the type of valorization of war that you find in the Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon literature that JRRT loved and studied and taught because he loved that style and it’s deeply fitting for cultures like the Rohirrim, but it’s also full of the slog of war, the waste and tragedy, and the irrevocable damage that even victorious survivors carry for the rest of their lives. Frodo’s symbolic “death” is also resonant for survivors of what was called “shell-shock” then and PTSD now.

I mean, it’s not Game of Thrones. It’s not gritty in the same way. But the protagonist of LOTR was minor gentry from a backwater nobody’d heard of, and the REAL hero who saved the world by saving him was his gardener. All the great kings and queens and lords and ladies in the story are background characters compared to the story of the little people. Literally little people, but symbolically too.

Certified Library Post

was just gonna touch up a bit of this but i went a lil silly w it :3

color update, 2022 version under the cut (ive been getting freaky w hot pinks and teals lately......)

One of the reasons why I love Steddie is how sweet Eddie was with Steve in the forest scene. That’s what got me into this ship. It was nice to see someone being patient and kind to Steve like that and it coming from someone like Eddie who viewed Steve so differently means a lot.

I loved how he told him how much Dustin looks up to him, making Steve smile and even after that wanting to joke around a little to make Steve laugh as well.

It was such a nice change, because all the other scenes we just see him bickering with someone or people making him seem stupid when he asks questions. Eddie didn’t make fun of him for not knowing Ozzy like he probably would have prior to things and instead let it be and called Steve cool. I love them.

The thing I find most frustrating about Steve in ST4 is the potential for this to be a series of deliberate and considered writing choices to tell an emotional, character-driven story but that very definitely isn't what's happening.

Dustin starting to take Steve for granted is interesting, as is the slight role-reversal their relationship demonstrates when compared with their past selves (Dustin having been bullied most of his life now acting like a bully, Steve so ashamed of his past self and afraid he'll never be better that he barely stands up for himself). Even Jonathan's snide mocking and Nancy's tone-of-surprise when she admits that Steve has grown up a lot, despite having been aware that he's been putting himself in harm's way to protect the kids for a long time, says some interesting things about their perspective and personalities.

But actually it's just that the Duffers meant to kill him off, and when they didn't they never really figured out what to do with him, so they show all this character development and growth that he goes through but have most of the other characters treat him like none of it happened, which actually just makes half of the heroes look like assholes!

what are you supposed to do on the days that absolutely no food sounds appetizing but youre sitting there hungry and getting a headache but everything does not sound appealing

Drink something with calories (more is better). Juice, chocolate milk, whatever. Once it hits your blood stream you'll have 10-20 minutes of feeling better where you can get something more solid into your belly. This can be candy at first, but step your way up to something with protein and fats (this'll help you feel full and satisfied and keep you from having a spike/crash of energy).

Often being really hungry/having low blood sugar can make you feel nauseated and give you headaches, etc. Giving yourself a quick sugar jump will help manage those symptoms long enough to do something more lasting about it.

Be aware! You'll feel better once you get the sugar in your body but it won't last very long! You need to eat something else before it wears off again.

seconded, definitely drink something first preferably with caloric content

I combat this by drinking soup. I heat it up in a travel mug and drink it like it's tea or coffee, and it sort of tricks my brain into thinking it's a Beverage and not Food, and it overrides the nausea.

For the last goddamn time...

"Kill your darlings" means "if something is holding you back, get rid of it, even if it sounds pretty."

That's it! That's all it means! It means if you're stuck and stalled out on your story and you could fix the whole block by removing something but you're avoiding removing that thing because it's good, you remove that thing. That's the darling.

It does NOT mean

The POINT is that you STOP FEELING GUILTY for throwing out good writing that isn't SERVING THE STORY.

The POINT is that you don't get so HUNG UP on the details that you lose sight of the BIG PICTURE.

Good grief....

Also, you don't have to like, delete it from existence. Keep a second document full of the Darlings. You never know when you'll need it later.