Glitter and Metal

GlitterAndMetal on AO3. Lots of Star Trek. I blog about everything...with occasional reblogging sprees about whatever I happen to be obsessed with at the time. 🖖

[glitter-and-metal]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Woooooooo! Let's get ready for the December holidays!🎅

It's time for the 2025 Star Trek: Enterprise Secret Santa Gift Exchange for fanfic and fanart!

Sign-up opens on October 6th and runs to November 1st, 2025. Assignments will be sent out on November 7th, 2025 and must be submitted by December 20th, 2025.

It is open to all those interested, regardless of which fan communities or social media ecosystems they have come from or what preferences participants may have regarding ships, characters, or types of fic they like to write/read.

Follow the link for all the rules, FAQ, and sign-up.😁

🎅🎅🎅

I always have so much fun with the Enterprise Secret Santa. Hope to see you there!

[delta-yuri]

They share one brain cell and it belongs to Hoshi

[vitariesocks]

just received the best text message I’ve ever had. from my mom

[vitariesocks]

2 pics. no caption

[natoraptor]

“Tour Guides”

-2026

[poikaboo]

{ID - full colour digital painting of someone's hands, holding a map of new york city. a pigeon sits on each of their hands, also looking at the map.

END ID}

[systlin]

So my parents are on vacation for a couple of weeks, which means that I am going up (literally up, they live just up the hill like a block from us) once a day to look after their cats.

They have 2 cats. Both very raggedy and now elderly former feral boys, both gingers. There is not a single braincell between the pair of them.

Wash (full government name Washburn) thinks all humans are friend shaped. Sherpa (Full name Stop Climbing That Get Down From There What Are You A Sherpa) is terrified of every human on the planet except my parents.

So, whenever I go up and let myself in, I hear the scrabble of claws on the hardwood floor. Wash then runs full speed into my shins demanding attention, and Sherpa ramps off the whatever he was perched on, a wall, another wall, and scrambles up the stairs to hide under the bed upstairs. Note that he has seen me regularly for 9 years now.

My mom texted me the other day to ask 'Did u see both of them'

Me; 'Wash is clinging to my pants and refusing to let me leave and Sherpa was on top of the fridge again somehow. He's upstairs hiding now.'

Mom; 'that cat is 14 years old HOW IS HE STILL CLIMBING THE FRIDGE HE KNOWS HE IS NOT ALLOWED UP THERE. ANARCHY AS SOON AS WE LEAVE UGH'

[the-haiku-bot]

My mom texted me

the other day to ask ‘Did

u see both of them’

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[devincastro]

[tguzz]

I will always reblog this

[bradspace3000]

still remember how revolutionary this ad felt 10 years ago

[annesophiewashere]

excuse me but it still feels revolutionary

[stevviefox]

Keep reblogging until it feels normal everywhere.

[ruffboi-mags]

For context: this came out in 2011 in Australia. Same-sex marriage would not be legalized until December 2017.

It was only legalized in 8 US states (the 8th only a few months before), and wouldn’t be legalized nation-wide until 2015.

It was only legal in TEN COUNTRIES in 2011. We wouldn’t hit 20 countries until 2017. (Australia was 23rd)

As of today (April 14, 2026), I believe only 38 countries have fully legalized same-sex marriage. Out of somewhere around 200 countries in the world. That’s only ~19% of countries.

This is still revolutionary.

[bundibird]

[canishaliaetus]

Color study of one of my favorite screencaps of Malcolm

[imagineyouricon]

Imagine you and your icon reenacting the boat scene from Titanic.

[retrolizard]

…..the “boat scene”?

………..

…………the entire movies takes place on a boat

[imagineyouricon]

Happy 10th birthday to the post that completely destroyed us

[kurja-tales]

Pretty things #1

[more-better-words]

Paging @deadheaddaisy 😄

[deadheaddaisy]

Ohmigosh so gorgeous!

@glitter-and-metal lookit the pretties!

[glitter-and-metal]

GORGEOUS GORGEOUS GORGEOUS!

[infectiouspiss]

i love being a fag and a pansy and a fairy and a pervert and awhat who the fuck is egg bacon

[infectiouspiss]

happy birthday to Egg Bacon and to the post that fucking destroyed my notifications and shot to over 100k notes in record time, i still don't know who Egg Bacon is

[real-ebenezer-scrooge]

oh not again why is always you

[infectiouspiss]

hey baby let me come over i'll make your old crusty scroogeussy feel good

[inkfleck]

no please they're like my friends

[veilthycanis]

“bloodweave” this and “bloodweave” that but nobody talks enough about the fact that the dynamic between Astarion and Gale is literally just:

— gale trying to explain some ancient weave theory while astarion lounges across furniture like an overfed cat, interrupting every five minutes with “you’re very pretty when you’re pretentious, you know.”

— astarion pretending he doesn’t care about magic until gale casually lights candles with a flick of his wrist and suddenly astarion is staring at him like he personally hung the stars over waterdeep.

— gale being one of the first people to compliment astarion in ways that aren’t transactional. not “beautiful,” not “seductive,” but clever. funny. observant. things attached to personhood instead of performance.

— astarion absolutely abusing prestidigitation once he learns what it can do. gale walks into camp and all his wine has been chilled perfectly and there are dramatic rose petals everywhere and astarion’s sitting there acting like he has no idea how it happened.

— gale reading aloud at night because astarion likes the sound of his voice even when he claims the books are “terminally boring.”

— astarion stealing gale’s clothes specifically because they smell like parchment, cedar, and expensive spell components.

— the first time gale sees astarion genuinely, uncontrollably laugh, he forgets what he was saying mid-sentence because he’s too busy staring.

— gale, who spent years loving a goddess who felt unreachable, falling disastrously hard for someone painfully real and sharp-edged and frightened.

— astarion acting smug whenever gale gets flustered, only to completely short-circuit the second gale starts flirting back intentionally.

“careful, my dear,” gale murmurs, leaning close enough for candlelight to catch in his earring, “you do realize wizards are capable of learning patterns.”

and astarion just. visibly bluescreens.

— they would either spend the entire evening making out dramatically over a study desk or arguing over semantics for three hours straight. sometimes both simultaneously.

— gale kissing astarion’s hands like they belong to something holy.

— astarion, who spent centuries being consumed, discovering what it feels like to be adored. slowly. reverently. without expectation.

together they become absolutely insufferable in the most romantic way imaginable.

[sunderwight]

Mulan AU where she does get caught by the other fresh recruits while she's bathing but Mushu helps her spin it like the lake is cursed by an evil lizard demon and will turn men into women if they stay in it for too long.

From there it's not actually difficult to get the other soldiers onboard with covering up the fact that poor Ping took one for the team and got afflicted by the vagina curse, especially since it would have been all of them if they hadn't gotten the warning ahead of time. So they agree to help him cover it up, because obviously the army's not going to understand.

Shang is... tentatively glad that the men are bonding and getting along, even if they continue to be deeply weird about it.

[great-art-and-a-purple-tongue]

Ling: Hey man, what's up— you've got boobs?!?!

Mulan: Uh, what boobs? Huh? Where did these come from?

Mushu: *facepalms and thinks quickly* (speaks from the shadows) I AM THE SPIRIT OF THE LAKE! BEWARE MY CURSED WATERS FOR THEY WILL TURN MEN INTO WOMEN!

Ling, Yao, and Chien Po: Oh no! The spirit of the cursed waters!

[scribeofchaos]

Chi-Fu: SHE'S A WOMAN LI SHANG!

Mulan: Look-

Ling, Yao, and Chien Po: WE CAN EXPLAIN!!

[One convoluted, chaotic explanation later]

Shang: ...is this why you've all been insisting we don't camp anywhere that doesn't have a lake.

Shang: and then none of you actually swim in it.

Shang: and you all keep jumping at shadows.

Shang: wait a second Ping did this happen before or after you became insanely good at fighting?

Shang: did you get better at fighting after you became a woman.

Shang: are women better at fighting than us.

Mulan: ....uh. well. maybe? no one's ever tried to find out.

Yao: [thinking very fast] y'know Captain it's just so hard to find recruits these days.

Chien Po: Real shortage of men.

Ling: Lots of women, though.

Mulan: [catching on] Without marriage prospects.

Shang: You're right, men. The spirits must have done this in order to show us that we should be recruiting women as fighters.

Mushu [from the shadows, seeing an opportunity to do the funniest thing]: EXACTLY, LI SHANG. I HAVE TRANSFORMED PING INTO A WOMAN BECAUSE YOU HAVE TOO LONG OVERLOOKED THE TRUE WAY TO WIN THE WAR.

Mulan [seeing an opportunity to get all the stories straight]: O Great Spirit, is it reversible?

Mushu: WHY WOULD YOU WISH TO REJECT MY GIFT? I HAVE SEEN YOUR HEART, CHILD, AND HAVE ALREADY ALTERED THE MEMORIES OF EVERYONE WHO KNEW YOU BEFORE YOU LEFT FOR THE ARMY. YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THEIR DAUGHTER.

Li Shang: Welp, the spirits have spoken. Ping - wait is your name still Ping if you're a woman now?

Mulan: Uh. Actually, I was thinking of renaming myself. How do you feel about Mulan?

BONUS:

Mulan [climbing out of the eleventh lake the men have arranged for her to swim in]: Yeah no, it didn't work. Still got boobs. [tries to appear dejected].

Chien Po: If it makes you feel better, they're very nice boobs.

Mulan: Thanks, Chien Po.

[somestorythoughts]

Mulan and Mushu, somehow opperating on the same wavelength: oh haven't you heard?

[ymutate]

Filippo Palizzi (Italian painter 1818–1899)

Excavations in Pompeii, 1870

Oil on Canvas

119.5 × 86 cm.

Private Collection

[rabid-transcendentalist]

@anthropologist-on-the-loose get peer-reviewed because your shared experience with the subject of the painting really heightened the emotional impact of this artwork for me ( An impact which was already high tbh. The idea that Pompeii was built by generations, buried by generations, uncovered by generations. What if I just started screaming and never stopped. )

[anthropologist-on-the-loose]

"Built by generations, buried by generations, uncovered by generations" is ruining me, thanks

[anthropologist-on-the-loose]

But it was buried by generations! Yes, it was buried in a volcanic eruption, but it was also figuratively buried. Over the centuries the location of Pompeii was lost, and it was found again by accident during construction projects. The ruins were not conclusively identified as the city of Pompeii until the 18th century (more than a millennia and a half after the eruption!) and it has been excavated ever since. People have been digging there since before the formation of the United States.

It's truly an incredible, one-of-a-kind site.

[mjn-air]

[sgt-cookie-2]

Me (A time traveler visiting 20-year old Mozart): OK, so, this is called an electric guitar, basically instead of the body functioning as a resonance chamber, it produces music by harnessing the power of lightning. Do you have any other questions?

Mozart (Currently shredding Violin Concerto No. 1 on the guitar, having figured it out within 30 seconds): What other music can be made from harnessed lightning?

Me (Loading up some heavy dubstep): Oh, we're just getting started.

[egberts]

the world's smallest carnivore is called the "least weasel" 😭😭 i'm dying but like if it's the smallest carnivore then it sure is the least amount of weasel you can have 😭😭😭

[sator-the-wanderer]

Look at him: this is absolutely the least amount of weasel you can have

[daughterofsarenrae]

To really put it in perspective

[flootzavut]

Immediately I love him