Prompt: After a lackluster 1st year as a Hero, you’re ready to go rogue. The problem is that the new guy in the team is definitely onto you.

That nerdy guy knows your secret.

You scan the briefing documents as your team leader, Mr. Subterranean, drones on. As usual, the pack of graphs and statistics look impressive. As usual, you seem to be the only one at the table who knows they’re wrong. Or, maybe, cares that they’re wrong.

“Crime is down in the 52nd ward by 30% as compared to 2016…”

You take the chance to glance at the nerd. He’s listening to Mr. Subterranean as attentively as you did when you first joined this team of the Hero Force. His hands are folded very nicely on the table and he’s watching Mr. Subterranean lie through his teeth with a very polite look on his face. His thick, coke bottle glasses sitting neatly on top of his black mask hide his eyes, but you bet he’s the only one at the table not daydreaming while the leader talks. He strikes you as a teacher’s pet.

Teacher’s pet glances at you through his peripherals. His mouth twitches, revealing a deep dimple, and then he refocuses on Mr. Subterranean. A chill races down your spine.

You’re not sure why you think he knows, but you’ve got animal instincts. If your brain is screeching at you that your plan is in jeopardy, it is.

What are you going to do about it?

“We can see marked improvement in commerce in Old Downtown thanks to the consideration and dedication shown by our new patrol routes…”

Because you’re watching the new guy, you’re the first one to notice when he raises his hand.

Clark doesn’t dress as Superman for the Daily Planet’s annual Halloween party just for the sake of irony. 

He also does it because he knows that Bruce will find out, because Bruce always finds out, and he thinks it’ll be hilarious. 

Well, that plus Bruce is always getting on his case about the fact that he doesn’t even bother to wear a mask as Superman. Clark has tried to explain it, how posture and body language can change people’s perceptions, how he keeps his Midwestern drawl as Clark, but drops it for Superman, how he wears intentionally ill-fitting clothing as Clark to hide his body shape… 

Bruce believes him, but only begrudgingly. After watching the fifth talk show where Bruce has to comment about how “Do the butts match?” Clark has to wonder if Bruce isn’t also maybe a little bit jealous. It’s a good thing that Clark isn’t the petty sort, (Except maybe he kind of is, just a little bit.) 

He almost buys the “Stripper Superman” Halloween outfit because it makes him crack up; only the fact that it’s a work party dissuades him. Instead he goes for the one that has fake muscles in it. They’re so awful, and so anatomically incorrect that he has to go for it. The fabric is shiny, and the “S” stretches funnily across his chest when he tries it on; the fabric is, after all, also cheap. The cape only goes down to his waist, and he has to buy the tights separately. It doesn’t comes with shoes, only boot covers, and he immediately decides he’s going to wear crocs.  

Because he’s Superman. 

He can do what he wants.

Bruce finds out about his plans (…because of course he does), and tries to talk him out of it. Clark listens politely, then mentions politely that he’s been watching episodes of drag race to get tips on how to make a fake derriere for his costume. After all, he’s got to make sure that the butts match. 

Bruce leaves him alone after that (except to mutter darkly that Clark’s secret identity is going to be blown, and is Clark really-?) 

When he gets dressed for the party, Clark makes sure not just to slick back his hair, but to make it obvious it’s slicked back. He parts it to the “wrong” side, like he was looking in the mirror when he did his hair, and forgot everything was backwards. He puts on the ridiculous, ill-fitting costume, the crocs, the boot covers, and adjusts all the foam “muscles” so that he “looks like Superman.” 

He wears his glasses, because everyone knows Clark Kent can’t see without his glasses. He makes sure to slouch at the party, to keep to the mannerisms that scream to the world “I Am Clark Kent And Definitely Not Superman Nope.” And if his drawl is a little stronger that night then normal? It’s probably the available drinks.  

Funnily enough, he’s not actually the only person to dress up as Superman; Superman is a popular figure at the Daily Planet, and there are enough costumed fans to have a “Superman look-alike” competition. 

When Bruce finds out that Clark came in last place… Well, it’s hard not to act smug. 

This right here is PEAK Clark

Seeing mundane photos of somewhere completely different is fun, because you never stop to consider that your mundane is unusual to someone else, and vice versa.

 I once had this indian online friend, we used to send photos of things in our lives to each other, mostly food and things around the house. He was sceptical that a human being could survive -35 C cold, and I still have a hard time believing someone can survive +40. Almost every time we showed each other something, the other’s was different, the only real limit was our imagination. This one time we sent each other photos of our beds.

 The beds were the same, but what was interesting was the floor! He had never seen wooden floors in a normal home, and I’d never seen marble. He admitted it wasn’t really marble, just linoleum printed to look like stone. And my home floor wasn’t really wood, it was linoleum printed to look like wood!

 Finland is cold and wood floors are warm, so finnish people prefer wood, even if it’s fake, and India is hot, and stone floors are cool, so indian people prefer stone, even if it’s fake. And little differences like this will never stop being fun and interesting to me.

the thing all sherlock holmes adaptations get wrong is making the guy an irredeemable asshole who treats everyone like shit . not only is it not reflective of the original stories they miss that “nice, smart, well mannered dude who snorts coke when he needs to think” is possibly the funniest character ever devised 

I feel like the modern equivalent is that guy you think is super well put together until you find out exactly how much red bull he ingests on a regular basis.

Modern Sherlock is that very nice English Professor-seeming guy who you bring a problem and while walking from the door of his office to his desk he starts explaining the entire solution you need

And upon reaching his desk he’s like “Excuse me one moment.” and pulls out one of those huge Monster canisters they legally aren’t allowed to make anymore, cracks the whole thing, chugs it, takes a deep breath, and then nods at you and is like “Alright, and then what you need to do is…”

Imagine how much better the dynamic of bbc sherlock could have been if they did this.

why even modernize it to energy drinks??? coke didn’t go anywhere. we still have coke. energy drinks aren’t NEARLY chaotic enough. 

Its is more like you hiring some guy to do private investigation about how your husband maybe cheating on you and Sherlock comes to your house high as fuck. Walks into your living room and without taking a moment to even talk to you or sign any paperwork, he turns around—pupils as big as god—and just says

“Its your best friend Brenda. I’ll email you the invoice.” 

and walks right out of your house. 

Because when it was written cocaine was legal and even considered healthy and useful by some laypeople, even though doctors knew it wasn’t, and Watson was always trying to stop people from encouraging Sherlock’s addiction because HE KNEW BETTER.

So consider this, Holmes, at 2am, desperately searching the flat for the stashes of NOS cans, only to keep coming up with passive aggressive pamphlets about the dangers of caffeine overdose.

Watson wakes up to a stench like Satan’s ass to find Sherlock sitting by his bed with a re-heated pot of cold brewed Deathwish Coffee that had been hidden in the back of the toilet tank (brewing) for five months.  Sherlock is trying to say he’s proud of John’s cleverness in finding most of the stashes, but he’s passed into the fifth dimension and all John gets is a creepy vibrating grin and a sound like a shaken cat.

TLDR, Sherlock did die when he fell off the Falls, but he was so coked up his body didn’t stop moving until like a decade later.

Sherlock as one of those cryptid types the baristas talk about (there’s a post floating around somewhere) who comes in and orders a venti with as many shots as they are legally allowed to add, plus a few more for good measure (and a hefty tip) and then adds energy drink on top of it before chugging the whole thing, to the absolute horror of the cafe staff.

This is the kind of Sherlock Holmes discourse I demand on my dash. Bring me more!

Oh God I choked on popcorn while reading this!

Taako forgetting Lup and the “you fucking took everything” scene is even more painful coupled with the fact that the reason the McElroys started doing Mbmbam in the first place is because they were growing apart and didn’t want to lose their family. Like Justin basically cites the my beginning of mbmbam as Travis and Griffin moved away and he didn’t want to drift apart

Now give Taako a beloved twin sister that not only disappears (“that was the last thing you ever said to your sister” has estrangement of family vibes) but also he FORGETS her. Which HIGHLIGHTS one of JUSTINS INITIAL FEARS with his BROTHERS.

That “you took everything from me” and the line “you ARE my world” with the sIBLINGS DYNAMIC is making ME CRY because BROTHERS

The fae smiled, sharply: “Give me your name, child.”

“Uhhhhh. Stick.”

“What.”

“Does Leaf work better? I’m just kinda looking around this clearing. Look, I’m trans, I haven’t decided on one yet, I’m throwing some spaghetti at the wall, you know how it is.”

Fae are born with features sharp and narrow, yet this one seems to soften as Moss looks at it. Its grin— sharp, teeth gleaming, its eyes— cutting, searching, the jut and pull of its jaw enough to scratch glass. It does not blink. Branch does not blink. It softens.

“I said, give me your name, child.”

“I still haven’t picked one,” Grass defends, even now still hoping for a way out of a faeries deal.

“No. But your parents did. Give me your name, child, and it shall no longer be yours. The entity of your name shall no longer exist, and you will be free for whichever name you choose— Leaf, or Stick, or Lichen.”

“…oh.” says Petal, and in the next moment a name falls from their lips. It is not their name. It never has been. The fae is sharp and cutting and witty, that moment of softness an imagined slight.

“Very well, child. Be warned of mushroom circles, should you lose your name again.”

“Okay,” Mushroom smiles, and the Fae pulls itself away from their reality in a swirl of feathers and silk.

When they go home for the first time in two months, their mother frets over them in a way she had not since they were a child, and she calls them by no name at all.

*does the football touchdown symbol with my arms* @shadeshadow234 IS THE MVP!!!! LOVE THIS SHIT!!!

You live with a Vampire. Every Saturday, you give them a cup of your blood, and they cook you a nice meal.

@biggest-gaudiest-patronuses Please write this.

(Part 1)

We have dinner on Saturdays.

Arcady always cooks. I’m never certain if it’s out of irony—spending all that time on something they can’t even eat—or if they actually enjoy cooking. I think they like the ritual of it. It might almost be arcane, from a certain point of view. A specific (religious, even) set of instructions, ingredients and chemical changes. Strict instructions for a desired transformation.

And isn’t that what spells are, after all? Instructions you don’t understand, but hope will work any way. Arbitrary rules, which may or may not matter. Either it works or it doesn’t (or something in between) and we have no idea until it’s done with, and there’s nothing we can do.

Well now I’m just being theatrical.

That’s another part of our epicurean ritual—Arcady sitting down to ask me how it tastes. They sit across from me, hands folded on the table, and stare intently, waiting. I think they can guess when I lie—it’s good!—so I’ve started telling the truth. In the beginning they used far, far too much salt. I choked a little, on the first few meals. Asked for too many glasses of water.

(Part 2)

Across the table, Arcady is talking, recounting things they read this week. Things they learned and researched, thoughts they had. Ways they tried to make sense of the world. I’m eating slowly, savoring the taste. I don’t quite enjoy it, not yet, it’s not familiar enough. It occurs to me that Arcady has never repeated the same dish twice. I wonder how—why—Arcady knows how to cook. They’ve spent most of their life unable to eat, to taste. Perhaps if I’m lucky, they’ll share that story with me one day.

I focus on the spoon in my hand, on the voice across the table. It’s a bit of a treat for me, having them carry the conversation. More often they’re so… self-contained. In the early years of our friendship, I was the one keeping the conversation alive. Babbling even, nervous at being stared down by an unblinking gaze. Twisting in my seat.

And why not? You meet someone many centuries older than anyone has a right to be, you assume they’re going to have answers. You are eager for approval. You assume there is some grand truth they might conceivably share with you, if only you are good enough. If only you are worthy. So of course I was desperate to impress, terrified of disappointing.

Keep reading

Arcady needs more blood than just mine. (“At least a liter a day,” they admitted once, in a mumble.) Fresh, warm blood is preferable when possible, but Arcady keeps their main supply in the refrigerator. And an emergency supply in the freezer, but they look disgusted if I even mention it. I don’t know.

It’s a bit of an experience, opening a refrigerator to find rows of plastic water bottles filled with blood, but you get used to it. Still more hygienic than most people’s fridges. At least Arcady keeps it clean. I keep yogurt in there.

I sit on a kitchen barstool and spin clockwise while Arcady retrieves sterile supplies from a cabinet. They are always so careful in this. Disposable exam gloves, alcohol wipes, hypodermic needles and standard plastic tubing. Just like getting blood drawn anywhere else. Medical. I’m not sure what I expected. I asked about it once. Arcady just looked confused and asked, How else would I do it?

i think the weirdest thing about the shelter-in-place has been the nightly howl, which i forget about every night until i’m walking my dog and the neighbors just suddenly start fucking howling.

see, we all live literally miles from each other; with the shelter in place in effect, most of us never see other humans FOR DAYS besides the ones we live with.  so my neighbors decided we should just howl— like dogs— every night at approximately the same time to ‘encourage community bonding and release tension’.

it’s also a useful reminder that everyone is still alive. i’m not sure what we’re supposed to do if we notice a howler is missing.

at least one neighbor suggested, “hey, maybe we should just set up a telephone tree instead” but was soundly called off because “listen, we all moved to the mountains because we don’t want to talk to other human beings, we’re just going to howl instead”.

This is created for recent trending #whyIsign. #whyIsign was started by Stacy Abrams. She wanted to spread knowledge about sign language, how it helped so many deaf people and families, like myself, and to encourage more people to learn and use sign language, especially with deaf children.

I am eternally thankful for American Sign Language. You can find #whyIsign on facebook, twitter, and instagram. ★ Patreon ★ Tapastic ★ Twitter ★ Facebook ★

Pixie and the monks

I will never stop fighting for myself. I’m firstly diagnosed with schizophrenia. I’m scared, confused, angry. I tell my friends. They sympathize and ask if there’s anything they can do. I tell them my major trigger is a certain animal. Think of a completely random animal, like a llama or crab. Something like that. I ask them not to bring this animal up in any form, because it will majorly trigger me. They laugh and joke about it. It’s now a running joke in our group. I tell my family. Each reaction is different. One tells me I can be fixed. One cries and asks me how I get through the day. One tells me it’s so hard for them to deal with it. I tell my boyfriend. He tells me he’s known all along, because I have such big mood swings. He goes quiet when I tell him I also hear voices and see things that aren’t real. Horror movies about schizophrenia loom over me. I see a girl with a ‘cute but psycho’ sweater at the state fair. Online friends push me away and tease me when I tell them. I will never stop fighting to end stigma. I am not a joke. I deserve comfort, I shouldn’t have to give it instead. All my symptoms are valid, even the scary ones. I am not a trope, a fashion statement, something to be feared or made fun of. I am creative, soft, caring, funny, and strong. I will protect myself and all my friends who are affected by schizophrenia or psychosis.

Story Time: Get a load of what happened to me at Starbucks today.

There’s a running joke among people who know me personally that I unwittingly go out in public with a sign on my forehead stating “I Am Non-Threatening. Come Talk To Me.” Because if there’s a chance a bizarre conversation with a total stranger is going to happen, I’m typically the person it happens to.

Some context: I have been pretty darn sick this week. (It’s not Coronavirus, don’t worry.) Since the work in my queue for my day job is comprised entirely of audio narration right now, and I currently sound like a waterlogged Demi Moore, I haven’t been able to work these last couple of days. As a result, I’ve been using my down time to knock out as much of Manu’s redesign as possible. Today, to ensure I didn’t spend the day languishing in sinus misery, I medicated the crap out of myself and took Manu to the Starbucks down the block from my son’s day care.

I hit the bathroom, then picked an empty table, but as soon as I sat down with my venti Comfort Tea and started tweaking the inks on my iPad, I felt the eyes of the man next to me looking over my shoulder.

When I looked up, he had his phone out. “I’m sorry,” he said (in a thick accent I couldn’t place geographically), “I don’t want to disturb. I notice you art. You are artist!”

I tried to smile. “Yes, I’m... Well, I’m trying to be,” I croaked.

He leaned in, like he was sharing a secret.

“I am artist, too.”

He stuck out his hand.

I gently took it, grateful for the bathroom trip I just took in which I washed the scourge off of my fingers.

“Can I?” he asked, holding his phone up.

“Take a picture? Uh... sure,” I said. It’s not like he would be able to steal Manu out from under me or anything, I figured. The panel I was tweaking was magnified out to Guam.

“I am artist. Architect and Designer,” he clarified while he steadied his phone over my iPad. “I am Ilker. What is your name?”

“I’m Venessa” I said, trying to be polite. This, I thought warily, is precisely how I get myself into trouble. I’m too damn nice.

“You know, I come to America twenty years ago from Turkey...”

I put down my stylus. This was going to be a while.

“I like Turkey,” he explained. “I like the country and I like the people. But I am artist. I am not... religious man.”

I nodded.

“I told my wife I was going to go to America and she said, “what are you going to do? You don’t have job! You don’t have money! No Visa!” And I said, “I am artist and architect. I will paint and sell my paintings.

“So I come to America alone. To New York City. I sit outside, and I paint. And people, they liked my paintings. They bought them. This one for $30, that one for $50.

“One day, a man comes over to me and he say, “I like your painting. I see you are also architect.” And he gives me his number and asks me to go to meeting at his office. Because he wants to offer me a job. He starts to talk about a building contract.

“I tell him I don’t know anything about contracts. I have no Visa. I am not American citizen. But he says, “That’s okay. I will take care of everything. You will have nothing to worry about.” And this man, he gave me a job. $173,000 a year. And my wife, he gave her a job too. She was project assistant. I bring her and my two daughters over from Turkey.”

“Wow,” I said, not fully believing the veracity of what sounded like a full-on immigration fairy tale.

“Here,” said Ilker, unlocking his phone and opening up his Facebook app. “I show you my work.” He paused and looked up at me. “I am interrupting. You don’t mind?”

At this point, I was invested. I had to see. Because whatever he was about to show me would either prove or disprove this yarn he was spinning. “Please,” I said, gesturing for him to go ahead.

He opened his photos and my jaw dropped. His work... was UNREAL.

“This is building I designed on Madison Ave.... And this one in Chelsea...”

Holy crap. I had just been to Chelsea with my sister last month on a trip to see a broadway show. I had crossed the intersection of the building he was, at this moment, telling me he designed.

He flipped through more buildings. These, he’d designed in Washington, DC. In Bethesda. In Arlington. All beautiful, streamlined, modern structures I had visited and parked my car in front of. He told me he did much of his concept work freehand. That he worked exclusively in natural media. His preferred media was pen, ink, watercolors, and chalks.

Between photos of his wife and daughters, he went on to show me photos from the RUSSIAN EXHIBITION OF HIS ARCHITECTURE ARTWORK.

Y’all, I was stunned. I couldn’t believe the talent I was sitting next to. Scattered among these gloriously rendered images of some of the most beautiful building concepts I’d ever seen were paintings of scenes in Central Park, the National Mall, and nudes from a life-drawing session he attends from time to time.

When he was done flipping through his phone, he looked at me and smiled. “I hope you don’t mind that I interrupt you. I show you all this because what you are doing is very good. And you should be encouraged. To draw is to make beauty.”

I nodded, a lump in my throat. “Thank you,” I managed. “Your work is astonishing. I don’t even know what to say. What is your name again?”

He held out his hand once more. “Ilker Kocahan,” he said. “I am getting more coffee. Can I get you one?”

I looked at my still-full venti cup. “No thank you. But here, please take my card.”

He held my dinky business card like I’d handed him a treasure and thanked me.

Then Ilker got his coffee, and left the coffee shop.

At some point in his ramblings he talked about America as a place of dreams. How he credits this country with helping him rise to the top of his field where he is now able to sell his paintings for $800-$1000 a piece now that he’s retired. My heart ached to hear him talk about that, knowing how our leadership’s positions on immigrants have taken such a dark and horrifying turn.

Imagine the buildings and museums and public places that would never have been if a business man in the park hadn’t lifted up a Turkish painter who spoke little English.

And now that painter was paying it forward on me.

I still feel pretty darn sick. I’ve still got body aches and a nose that has taken the rest of my face hostage.

But today was a really good day. And I just wanted to share it with you in case you are looking for reasons to keep drawing/painting/dancing/writing. It all counts and it is all good.

If you would like to see Ilker Kocohan’s work, please click here.

UPDATE TO THIS STORY! I would have posted this sooner, but quarantine has had the unexpected effect of zapping all my alone-time...

As luck would have it, I saw Ilker one last time before my area received the mandate to start social distancing. I came into the Starbucks to work on the “Simon Is On the Ground” comic while waiting to pick up my kid from day care, and there he was, happily chatting with the Starbucks manager, who gifted him with a Starbucks hat while I ordered my tea.

A week had passed since our first meeting, so I wasn’t sure he’d recognize me. Lo and behold, as I turned the corner, I caught his eye, and he waved at me. This time, I asked if I might sit with him, and he warmly offered the seat beside him.

While I settled in, he told me that his project was being delayed and that he was going to leave the area and fly home before COVID-19 could make it impossible to travel. The hat was for his wife, whose only understanding of Starbucks was that Ilker really liked the coffee.

As one might expect, we immediately fell into another conversation about art, except this time, I eagerly abandoned my work to hear him talk.

And friends, did I ever get a master class.

He pulled up a painting on his phone which he’d sold for $800. It was a life drawing in ink and watercolor of a woman in a demure gesture, barely detailed and colored in but for her rose-tinted lips and the shadow cast across her neck. He said he felt sad that he’d sold it because he really loved how it came out.

“This is no detailed like yours,” he said, comparing his painting to my panel of Simon and Baz. “Mine is simple. But in a few strokes, I can capture the life of the lady.”

He took his napkin, turned it over, and pulled a pen out of his chest pocket. “Look there,” he said, pointing to a man sitting a few tables away. He began to scribble away on the napkin, lines and lines and more lines. “You see,” he murmured as he ran his pen over the napkin, “I can, with speed, capture the man. I don’t have hours to ask him to sit. I must let go of the planning.”

In seconds, the man across the room took shape on the napkin in a series of confident if also messy lines. It was incredible to watch.

I could instantly see what he meant. He had not produced a photorealistic version of this person on the napkin. But he had captured the man’s essence. The aura of a real person sitting contemplatively with his coffee while reading the Washington Post. I could feel the life of the drawing radiate from the paper.

(When he was done, to my horror, he crumpled up the napkin.)

I shyly mentioned that I’ve been working hard on my own gesture drawing, but had a long way to go, so he asked to see my sketchbook.

I mean... is there even a word in the English language to describe the combination of dread and embarrassment that precedes showing an art master your crap-ass sketchbook that no one sees but you? I didn’t know what to do with myself as he sat there and flipped through the pages.

Eventually, he nodded approvingly and said, “Okay! Is good. But this is sketchbook like every other.” He gestured at the page. “Where are you?”

I was lost for how to respond, but lucky for me, he’s a talkative guy seemingly incapable of awkward silences.

“The world needs to see you in the lines,” he explained. “Someone can look at my work and know, ‘that painting is from Ilker Kocahan.’ You need to draw more and more so that when people look at your drawings, they will know: this work is Venessa’s work.” Then he shrugged and said, “And who knows. I will maybe see you in two years at this Starbucks, and by then, your drawings will be truly yours.”

I’ve shared this story with some close friends who took mild offense on my behalf at his observations, but I really think it took sitting there watching him draw to understand exactly what he was talking about.

Ilker Kocahan has no imposter syndrome. He is supremely confident in every possible way where his art is concerned. The lines that flowed from his pen were fueled by his soul, not his brain. I didn’t think artists like him existed anymore until I was sitting there looking over his shoulder while he scribbled a man into existence, like it was nothing. When I asked if he plots out the perspective on his building sketches in advance, he shook his head no and doodled this on my cake pop wrapper while he rambled on about the components he likes to include in his architecture concepts:

(Don’t worry. I kept it.)

So when he talked about “finding me” in my sketches, I really think he could sense—by the light scratch of the pencil, the trace evidence on the paper of my erasing and failed attempts—my own lack of confidence, my second guessing and self-doubt. My desire to be as good as other artists instead of my desire to express myself.

And in that sense, everything he was saying about my sketchbook was correct. He urged me to get off the iPad as often as possible. To sketch with ink, which is riskier because you can’t erase it, and in that way, give myself no choice but to commit to the lines.

The conversation turned to lighter things after that. He’s apparently an extremely talented basketball player who loves hanging out with his wife and kids. His daughters are both designers. He thinks quirky viral videos are the best thing about the internet. (I agreed.) He’s weak for New York pizza.

Eventually, he bought me a refill for my tea and asked if I would meet him again in a couple of days so he could talk to me about my artwork and help me with my sketching. He even added me as a Facebook friend. When I left the Starbucks to pick up Colin, I was so excited and overwhelmed and grateful to the universe for bringing me into his acquaintance, I texted everyone in my family about it.

But as fate would have it, that night, the local government released its mandate regarding social distancing. He’s likely in Belarus right now with his wife.

I won’t lie and say I’m not devastated that I lost the chance to be his student for an afternoon. But the impression these coffee shop chats left on me was profound. I think about it all the time. For one who struggles with feeling like the artist version of Pinocchio waiting around for permission to be a real boy, it makes all the difference in the world to linger in the huge, unstoppable energy of someone who lives without an inner critic.

I hope I get to see him again after the quarantine is over. I’d love to see if I can fulfill Ilker’s prophecy and meet back at that Starbucks in two years with a different sketchbook in tow. One that I can hand over knowing without doubt or trepidation that anyone looking for me in the work need look no further than the bold stroke of my hand.

Taken the last time we chatted:

Just because it’s a beautiful story. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you so much for sharing this, I cannot express how important this is to me.

Okay which one of you is going to write the Ineffable Husbands college professor AU with the extremely sweet and over-sharing professor fawning over their spouse and the standoff-ish secretive professor who reveals absolutely nothing about their private life who turned out to be married?

Everyone at Nutter University loves Dr. Crowley. He's so popular that they've had to beg him to teach two lecture hall courses each term to keep up with the sheer number of students who want to take his class. His fellow biology professors can be quite grouchy about it, pointing out the high percentage of male-attracted students who sign up for his class. He just lets it slide off him like water off a duck's back.

The most he's ever said about it is "Oh, please, Dagon. I never shut up about Ezra. The students know I'm taken."

This is 100% true. Part of Dr. Crowley's popularity stems from the fact that he seems physically incapable of saying the words "my husband" fewer than three times in each lecture. His students have no idea who this mysterious "husband" is, but they know that he loves Shakespeare, sushi, Beethoven, and tulips. They've even started trying to draw police-sketch-artist-style pictures to figure out what "Mr. Crowley" must look like, although Dr. Crowley mostly just describes him physically as "adorable". Rumor has it that there are photos in Dr. Crowley's office, but he always holds office hours in the greenhouse, so no one is sure.

Dr. Fell is less popular with the general student body, but no student who has taken his Introduction to Literary Criticism class has managed to leave without becoming a little attached to him. He's an absolute expert in his subject--passionate and utterly devoted to it. He seems so obsessed with literature that his students have come to the conclusion that he doesn't really have a social life. He never discusses his personal life or alludes to romantic partners, even when covering Shakespeare's sonnets. There are no photos in his office at all.

His students feel a little sorry for him, assuming he must be lonely. His students have taken to suggesting things he should do in his free time or places where he might meet people. They really do love him.

Then two students headed back from a late night astrology lab see him snogging Dr. Crowley in the back of Dr. Crowley's car.

Suddenly, Dr. Crowley's students are quite chilly towards him. They seem bothered by his sweet stories instead of charmed by them. The lecture hall gets a little less crowded each time. It's sad, really, and Dr. Crowley starts worrying about how he's offended so many students at once.

Dr. Fell's office hours are suddenly going by without a single appointment. Students stop telling him about wonderful new restaurants and seem just as interested as he is in skimming over Jane Austen. It's very disconcerting, and he decides to cheer himself up by going to sit in on Crowley's horticultural bio lab one day.

"Hello, Alicia!" Dr. Fell says cheerfully, "I didn't know you were taking Dr. Crowley's class."

"I'm in Astronomy 208, too," she replies, with surprising frostiness.

"Erm, that's nice? I don't know much about stars, but AJ--that is, Dr. Crowley--enjoys reading about them."

Alicia looks like she's about to say something scathing when Dr. Crowley walks in. He lights up like the sun the moment he sees Dr. Fell.

"Hello, angel!" Dr. Crowley exclaims, "To what do I owe the visit? We're past ferns, you know."

Dr. Fell grins back, "I don't have another class until five and thought I'd like to see you before I get home tonight."

"Well, I suppose I can waive the audit fee just this once," Dr. Crowley teases.

"And you might get odd looks at the bank, trying to deposit a check from your own account."

"Wait, DR. FELL is your husband?" Alicia practically shrieks.

"Where have you been?" Dr. Crowley asks, "I talk about him all the time."

"Oh do you, my dear?" Dr. Fell blushes.

"Let me guess, you've never mentioned me once."

more please! ❤

The funniest version of this is when you work in a haunted house

I was super bored one night bc we were really slow, and the animatronic that served as my cue had broken without my knowing, so I didn’t get an alert that someone was coming.

I was in the hallway singing “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” at the top of my lungs and jumping up and down in the hallway. The guy in the next hallway over was singing it with me. I don’t know what he was doing but knowing him, it was equally goofy.

So imagine being a teenager girl and her teenage boyfriend, coming down a dark and spooky hallway filled with fog, and finding a small demonic-looking thing jumping like a madman, shouting “PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME” at the top of its lungs with the voice of a twelve year old boy, and hearing a deep, booming voice repeating it back.

That sounds scarier than most things I’ve experienced in a haunted house to be totally honest

did cinderella ever talk to her man about his faceblindness

#'i met the perfect woman but it was a special occasion'#'so now wherever she is her makeup and hair are probably different'#'this is my nightmare'

rip prince charming, who had to let the whole kingdom make jokes about his foot fetish for the rest of his life because every blonde with an updo looks basically the same as far as he can tell

they call him prince charming because he’s always really polite to strangers to cover for the fact that he doesn’t know if he’s supposed to recognize them from somewhere and when you’re a prince that shit starts wars

Okay but... this really inspired me, because wouldn’t it solve like 90% of the problems of Cinderella if the prince was just blind? Like imagine this handsome, charming prince, who his entire life has relied on his senses of sound and touch to get around and has learnt to recognise people by the feel of their hands and the sound of their voice? As in the fairytale the king holds a ball to find him his wife, and the prince insists every maiden in the land to attend. The crueler guards joke that this is because he is desperate enough to marry even the poorest, “ugliest” girl in the land, but in reality the prince has never cared what others think of him, and extends that principal to his wife. And so as usual Cinderella shows up and he falls for her wonderful voice and the way she can conjure pictures with words, he loves her because she cares about him and ensures he can navigate the newly arranged ball room ( he usually has a guide dog but his father thinks that isn’t proper for parties ). But when the clock strikes midnight and Cinderella flees he feels despondent, he does not know her name, could not describe her face, and he is sure he will never see her again. Cinderella is heartbroken too, she had found a man so kind and good, who would not care about her looks or that she was a simple scullery maid. And so that is why he uses the shoe, it is all he had to go on, others laugh behind his back but he refuses to give up. When he visits Cinderella’s house he passes through quickly knowing immediately neither sister is right. But as he leaves he hears her voice, singing from the tallest tower and knows it is her. He races back and demands she try on the shoe and you know how the story goes. And so they wed and together they live happily because it was never her pretty face or her shoes that made him love her, but the way she spoke to him.

This is so pretty

Reblogging this again bc I love this addition

i’m watching an art theft documentary and they’re interviewing this art history professor from new york who was asked to go with the fbi to authenticate a rubens that had been stolen but it was a sting operation so they had to pretend like they weren’t the fbi, that they were some private buyer about to pay $3.5 million for it, and the fbi was like “this is a VERY delicate operation because you never know how they will react to what you have to say so let the agent do all of the talking, don’t say a word to anyone just nod if it’s the rubens, the last operation we did the guy in your position got shot because things went wrong in a second” and then it cuts to the professor’s interview and he says “i wasn’t going to fly down to miami to be a part of an undercover fbi sting operation to handle what could be rubens’s aurora and just NOT say anything. i was gonna have to ad lib a little” and then he tells the interviewer that when he & the fbi agent got to the hotel while he was examining the painting he started lecturing the other people, first on how badly they had wrapped it, and then about like how it had been painted, the history of it, what the subject was and what she was doing, etc etc, and he was like “i hadn’t taught a class on rubens in 15 years, so for me it was like being back in the classroom except my students couldn’t leave” 

at one point during the deal the professor turned to the woman selling it and he said “isn’t this just the most beautiful rubens you’ve ever seen outside of a museum?” (because the fbi had told him earlier that this piece had been stolen from a museum) and THEN he said “where on earth did you get it from?” and the group of people the woman had with her was like taxidermy-fox.png but the woman was like “inheritance” can you IMAGINE the fbi agent about to have a fucking aneurysm when this random guy you’ve brought in just to nod if it’s the right painting not only starts giving an impromptu lecture but then he asks how they got it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B4Zm-Aa74Y&t=2613s

omg BLESS YOU for the link and the time stamp that was as glorious as described by the OP

Y’all failed to mention that HE posted the video HIMSELF and liked every single comment oh my god

Nobody is obligated to like Travis McElroy, but it really really bothers me how often I see criticism that is grounded in nothing more than “idk, he just feels fake.”

He has openly talked on Twitter about having an undiagnosed and heavily stigmatized personality disorder. Most people who have that disorder are terrified to talk about it because it gets them labelled as inherently untrustworthy, abusive, and manipulative, based not on their actions but solely on their neurotype.

It bothers me deeply that it’s the gender nonconforming man with a stigmatized disorder who keeps getting called “fake” and “suspicious.”

Yeah this bugs me too. 

Ok, I want to share a story about Travis McElroy and how he’s a genuinely amazing human being.

So, my little sister is a huge fan of the McElroys and the Adventure Zone. So, naturally, she was really hoping to get her comic signed by them at San Diego Comic Con. But in 2018, she got appendicitis during SDCC and missed it. She was pretty upset. Then followed an entire year of her having health problem after health problem, culminating in the fact that the only open slot for surgery to finally take care of them is going to be on the first day of SDCC 2019. Basically, she had the year from hell.

The one silver lining is that it’s an outpatient surgery, so she can attend the other 3 days of the con in a wheelchair. The only things she wants to do are to attend the two McElroy panels and go to the signing to get her comic signed. These are THE ONLY THINGS.

She goes to the first panel, and it’s all good, but then she finds out that she had to go into a lottery to get the tickets for the signing, so she’s not going to be able to go. She was devasted, I mean full-on crying. It was just the straw that broke the camel’s back on the worst year of her life.

I decided fuck that, I’m going to try to make this better. So, on Sunday I ditch my panels to go to the McElroy panel with her on Sunday. It’s not all of them, just Clint and Travis. After the panel, I asked my sister to get her comics out and we can see if we can catch one of them outside. She was like no, it’s not worth it, I don’t want to have to push through the crowds, it’s ok, she’s fine.

I knew she wasn’t ok, so I said, what if I leave you against the hallway wall, and take your comic to them, so you don’t have to get pushed through the crowds. She says, ok do it.

So I sprint towards Travis McElroy, comic in hand, and as soon I get close, words are spilling out, please it’s for my sister, she just had surgery, she came all this way in a wheelchair just to see you. But honestly, I didn’t need to say anything, he was already reaching out to sign it, going oh yeah of course.

So he hands it back to me, I thank him, and think that’s the end of it, but then he goes, wait that your sister, pointing at her. I say yes, and he takes off towards her. When I catch up, he’s greeting her, telling her how good it is to meet her, and then he asks “Can I give you a hug?”

My sister’s face lights up, and she instantly says, yes. I then whipped out my phone, and asked if I could take a picture. Travis goes oh, yeah of course, and puts an arm around her shoulders, while I take it.

After that, he had to leave, and once he did, my sister started crying again, but this time happy tears, telling me that I’m the best big sister ever. It was the best moment of the entire con for me.

So yeah, despite having never seen basically any McElroy content, I will always be a massive fan of Travis because he made that happen. He went above and beyond for a kid he didn’t even know just because he could. So actually, you should like him. You don’t have to be a fan of his work, or think he’s funny, but you should like him, because he’s an amazingly kind person, and the world needs more of that.

I’m legit crying because that is exactly EXACTLY how i legit would’ve expected Travis to respond based on literally everything I’ve heard from him or about him, and the idea that people are out there being assholes about this amazing dude who has to make more of a concentrated effort to be that way than most people would have to is just… fuck you. It’s not fake just because it doesn’t always come 100% naturally to him.

If anything, the fact that he has to work at being kind, and he chooses to put in that work every single day…it makes his kindness mean that much more.

Travis McElroy is, from everything I know about him, a living example of how good isn’t what you are, good is what you do.