Listen, have you considered? cats?

she/her, a bunch of stuff, mostly cats, some naruto. i love cats. a good sprinkle of art, some poetry

[kujakumai]

DSoD post-credits scene of Kaiba trying to look apathetic while Ishizu reams him out. You can't hear what she's saying but there are six Egyptian cops standing behind her and she is almost not calm, which for Ishizu Ishtar is really saying something. Mokuba is visibly wincing.

[atrusovaartist]

acrylic, canvas 40*50 cm «Lighthouse of the Northern Sunset» 2025

[that-angry-noldo]

which of the silm characters were at the club:

- finwë was delighted by the club. unfortunately the concept of the club only began to form after finwë hit the elven equivalent of having to go to bed strictly at 9 pm with a set of your comfiest jammies on. probably clapped his hands and said "how quaint!" when he was invited to the club's opening.

- miriel was too busy being dead to go clubbing.

- fëanor was NOT at the club. are you kidding me? that man had gems to smith. the forge was his club.

- fingolfin was NOT at the club. he was born in an age where the eldar began to develop classism and decided that clubbing is not for the blue-blooded aristocracy. we cannot blame him for being a product of his time.

- you better believe lalwen was clubbing. whispers are still told about her unparralleled moves at the dance floor and somewhat concerning taste for elven tequilla.

- findis did not go to the club, she was too busy making her resume look perfect for ingwë's court.

- finarfin had his first child by the elven equivalent of 20 yo. he was not clubbing.

- finrod was clubbing for the joy of it. he made many a friend at the club. once nargothrond opened its own club, he want disguised as a commonner and as he reminisced of the careless time of his youth he saw visions of death and ruin and floors covered in blood. he did not go clubbing again.

- maglor was HITTING it at the club scene. the best parties were thrown when maglor was around. unfortunately the constant threat of morgoth's destruction kinda stood in the way of establishing a club at Maglor's Gap. you might say it really killed the vibe.

- galadriel did not go to the club because she was too good for the club. she also didn't drink (valid) and had a meticulously plotted out diet tracking her daily protein intake (the most athletic of noldor hitting the gym? unbelievable.) she was really into cottagge cheese for a while. thankfully she grew out of that phase but still didn't go to the club because 1) she was god's favourite princess and 2) as we established earlier, blue-blooded aristocracy did not go to the club.

- beren was too busy being haunted by horrors beyond comprehension to have a chance to explore the local club scene

[s-hhhit]

No longer clinical depressed, flowers bloomed

[all-pacas]

do you ever find something that is so funny and you want to share it with everyone but it also requires 18 layers of context spanning things like. 90s anime. aviation history. europop. canada. in order to even remotely understand why it is so funny

[all-pacas]

in the late 90s there was an anime called initial d which was all about street racing and drifting. naturally every single drift was played for great drama and excitement.

in 1999, an italian named giancarlo pasquini released a europop song under the alias dave rogers called Deja Vu. this song was picked up as the theme song for the above anime. it in turn became a meme, a shorthand for drifting and Cool Moves as a concept.

in 1983, air canada flight 143, a full sized 767, ran out of fuel halfway to edmonton, alberta. this is not something you want to have happen to a huge airplane. the flight chose to try and make an emergency landing at a nearby decomissioned airforce base (as they were falling fast and could not make it to a proper airport), where they ran into a second problem: they were falling out of the sky at 500 feet per mile, but reached gimli (the base in question) while still too high to safely land. normally a plane would just do a big loop-de-loop to lose altitude, but they had maybe three minutes of airtime left before they hit the ground: not enough time to make any kind of circle. the pilot, therefore, decided to execute a side slip to lose speed and altitude. this is Not a move you want to do with a massive 767, because airplanes are not built for that and if you screw it up that plane is hitting the ground at a high speed at a weird angle and breaking into a million pieces. nevertheless, the captain tried it... and succeeded. the plane landed perfectly, and there were no major injuries! (a couple of people did get minor injuries when evacuating the plane after.) he did it so well, in fact, that the plane was refueled, flown out of gimli a couple days later, and continued to fly for another 20 years with the nickname "Gimli Glider."

what is a side-slip, you ask?

it's drifting.

the guy goddamn drifted his 767.

in 2008, the tv show Mayday: Air Disaster featured the gimli glider with full reenactments as an episode on season five of their show.

and so, in conclusion, the thing i have been giggling to myself about all weekend:

[all-pacas]

this is somehow starting to make the rounds so because i am a pedant i am going to take this time to talk a little more in depth about air canada 143, the GIMLI GLIDER

so you may be wondering: how the hell does a 737 (capacity of roughly 100-120 people) run out of fuel midair? the METRIC SYSTEM, that's how!

up until the early eighties, airplanes would have three people in the cockpit: the pilot, first officer, and flight engineer. generally speaking, the pilot's job is to fly the airplane; the first officer's job is to provide support, monitor instruments, and assist (the pilot and FO will swap roles periodically), and the flight engineer's job was to watch over all the fuel gauges, electrical systems, hydraulics, etc., to make sure they were all working properly, as well as taking charge of things like "setting engine power."

however, in the early 1980s -- when this story takes place -- the flight engineer role began to be made obsolete as computers and more advanced systems became capable of doing most of that work. the boeing 737 of this story was one such plane: actually, air canada 143 was quite a new airplane at the time of the accident, and had no flight engineer.

also in the early 1980s? canada was making the switch from the imperial system to metric.

neither of these things is bad in and of themselves. but put together? one of the flight engineer's jobs was to monitor fuel; it hadn't yet been made clear whose job it was now. canada, at the time, was doing refuelling in a convoluted "the fuel is weighed in pounds but put into the plane as liters" system that required Math and Conversion.

let's talk about AIRPLANE FUEL. unlike a car, you don't take your airplane to the station and fill 'er up: fuel has weight, and airplanes care a LOT about weight. way more than you'd imagine. it's the pilot's job to therefore calculate a) how much fuel they need to get from A to B b) how much extra/emergency fuel they need for safety and c) if and when they need to refuel and by how much. is there bad weather in the area? where's the nearest backup airport? if i need Ten Fuels to get to alberta and there's storms in alberta, i need another Two Fuels to circle around and kill time before landing safely, plus another Five Fuels to get to calgary in case alberta is impossible. my airplane is fully loaded, which means it's heavier than usual, so needs another One Fuel for takeoff power. so altogether i need Eighteen Fuels. except i'm in canada in the 1980s so now i need to figure out what that is in liters, and this used to be the flight engineer's job, and idk man. maybe it's 5 liters? that sounds right?

...you see the issue. it isn't that anyone was slacking off, but no one was quite sure what the conversion was, and so instead of giving the soon-to-be Gimli Glider 18 Fuels, they took off in that fucker with nowhere near enough fuel. to make things worse, the plane had a broken fuel gauge, which was a whole other thing and series of comical misunderstandings, but basically it meant that not only was there No Fuel, but the fuel gauges looked something like this:

the very-soon-to-be crashed airplane's day started off normally. they did a little hour long flight from one city to another with no issues. because they knew the fuel gauges were being silly, while on the ground they did a "stick test", which i'm imagining involved a tree branch, basically checking that yep, there was fuel in the tanks, we're good! (in actuality, what it was doing was measuring the weight of the fuel. except, again, they had their maths all backwards, so due to this convoluted conversion process they went "our fuel weighs 5 kilograms, which equals 20 pounds, which equals 18 fuels, which equals 900 liters." just. silly math. i don't want to make these guys out to be idiots: they would obviously have never flown the plane if they had realized their mistake. but the other problem was of course that the process was already convoluted and required multiple conversions; imagine how much worse it would be if, like these pilots, it was a new system you weren't used to!)

so they boarded their passengers and set off from montreal with the intention of flying to edmonton. and that's when things all went terribly wrong.

pictured: the intended and my interpretation of the actual flight.

all this set up leads to the actual flight, which is almost boring in summary: while high up in the sky, the plane suddenly ran out of fuel. this is bad. we do not want this to happen. the pilots had no idea what was happening at first, but i mean: it was pretty obvious. there's no fuel. no engines. no power. you're 30,000 feet in the air in a 64 ton machine and gravity is going hey girllll heyyyy.

but the thing is, airplanes are really cool. like, this is what got me so interested in these plane crashes and accidents: airplanes are awesome. because first of all: just because you weigh as much as a building and are thousands and thousands of meters in the air? doesn't mean the airplane just falls. hell no! without power, an airplane will still stay in the air, losing altitude, sure, but gliding fairly safely and manageably. this doesn't mean you're safe, but: when air canada 143 lost all power, it still had time and options. it also had... the RAT.

the Ram Air Turbine, or the RAT, is an amazing fucking guy. if an airplane loses power? a hatch pops open, and a little propeller drops down automatically. he's wind powered, and he will provide just enough backup power to keep the most critical systems online, even without fuel or engines or god. we LOVE the rat. and the rat leapt into action here, providing the pilots with enough basic systems to keep going.

this doesn't mean that air canada is out of the woods. landing without power is not easy! the trick to landing an airplane is doing it at a nice shallow angle and low speed, which involves things like "doing nice steady turns to line up with a runway" (no time, we're falling steadily), "using engines to get our speed right" (what engines), "getting to the correct altitude and speed to touch down gently" (we have NO POWER we can't go "oopsie too low" and pull up and adjust). if a plane loses too much speed, it WILL fall out of the sky (a stall) because the aerodynamics stop working. if it's going too fast, you're not landing, you're diving cockpit first into the ground. without power, you can turn, but turns will reduce speed. you can't level off or go back up. you are Going In A Downward Direction. the trick is figuring out how fast and how far and aiming at a runway.

this is also where ATC comes in! we love air traffic controllers!! air canada called a mayday, and ATC leapt into action. their job becomes to Get Them What They Need. air canada wants to go anywhere in canada? atc will move everyone out of the way and get them any runway in the northern hemisphere. when this happened, air canada 143 was near winnipeg, which was their initial goal: this IS going to be a crash landing, and the nearer they can be to emergency services, the better. however, the first officer was doing Good Math, calculating their rate of decent vs distance flown, and soon realized that even though they could literally see winnipeg from the windows, they just weren't going to make it. they were falling too fast.

enter: GIMLI. the first officer had actually trained there during his air force days; it's a former base with two runways. it wasn't ideal, because ATC had no information on it and it lacked instruments and equipment (normally, for example, airports will have locator beams and so on to help an aircraft lock on to the runway at the Correct Safe Angle), but... better than a field or lake. one of the dangers of this type of no engine landing is actually being non-committal: waiting too long to make a decision, trying to maximize time in the air rather than land. this makes sense! it's probably pretty human instinct! prolong that crash as long as possible! but it's much, much better to simply Commit and Prepare and Go For It. and that's exactly what air canada now did.

they told ATC they're going to gimli and made the turn. the cabin crew was meanwhile preparing the passengers for a crash landing.

the crazy thing about plane crashes is, actually, that they are very survivable. don't get me wrong: they're bad. people die. but the number of worst case scenarios where dozens of people still, somehow, survive? shockingly high. of course, you don't want ANYONE to die. i would be terrified if it was me. but cabin crew had to know it would probably be... well, not okay. but that if they got everyone prepared and braced, people were going to make it out. people were going to survive this. possibly most of them. possibly all of them.

as the plane approached gimli, problem #87 came up: they were still too fucking fast. they're gliding down! they can't stop! normally, a plane would simply slow down with flaps, or maybe do a couple of big circles before reorienting themselves towards the runway to lose some speed and altitude, but they don't have time -- or altitude. and that's where the theme song KICKS IN

here are reasons you DO NOT DRIFT airplanes, by the way. it can fuck up your engines: engines work in part by taking IN air, so flying at a Drifting Angle means that's all wrong. the aerodynamics are wrong. you're losing speed VERY fast. you can get OUT of the drift, but now your engines are fucked. on the other hand, this plane effectively HAS no engines, but... there's a reason people don't drift planes, okay.

another plot twist: gimli air force base was no more. the runways were still there... but it had been turned into a drag strip, ironically enough. and it was family day! picture this. you're a nice canadian racing fan in 1983, at the strip with your family, cooking hotdogs and poutine on a grill. and a fucking 737 APPEARS OUT OF NOWHERE in front of you. because that is exactly what happened. there were KIDS. on BIKES. with a PLANE HEADING RIGHT TOWARDS THEM. in the mayday episode, the kids tried to outrace the plane in a panic: in the pilot's telling, the kids simply froze in fear.

by the time the pilots realized the runway was occupied, it was way too late to turn back. they landed. in a twist of bad luck that turned into good: without power, they had to manually release their landing gear.... and the nose gear didn't lock. this turned out to be a weirdly good thing: without nose gear, the plane's nose hit the runway and acted as one hell of a brake in ITSELF, grinding on the asphalt as the plane barreled down at high speed. the pilot also intentionally steered the plane into the rail in the middle of the runway, trying to slow the plane even more. and... it worked! the plane came to a stop. everyone was fine. even the kids on bikes.

all this friction caused a small fire in the nose, and so the pilots called for an immediate evacuation to be safe. this caused a bit of an issue: because the nose was on the ground, the butt of the plane was higher than usual, and the back slides were basically just vertical drops. a couple people got mildly hurt using them, as you'd expect.

meanwhile, the drag strip folks were rushing over with fire extinguishers and the like, and the small fire was easily contained (note: do not fuck with burning airplanes. this one had no fuel so COULD be contained). by the time ATC got emergency services to gimli, everyone was safe, ankles were being iced, and presumably everyone was eating hot dogs.

the airplane itself had some minor damage (from when the nose acted as a brake), but was largely intact: it was patched up, refuelled, and took off from gimli a while later, where it flew for another 20 years before retiring of old age.

and that is the story of the Gimli Glider: that time a pilot drifted his plane so hard that he saved the lives of everyone on his plane.

all 69 of them 😎

[athelind]

I had read the story of the Gimli Glider before, and I had seen the video with "Deja Vu" playing, but I never understood where the song came from or why it was supposed to be funny before.

This is "The Most Tumblr Punchline" in action, only I didn't realize there was something to look up.

Now that I do?

Okay, that's funny.

[anxietyproblem]

[luobenn]

[homunculus-argument]

Imagine if you met someone who can't eat watermelon. Not that they're allergic or unable somehow, but they just haven't figured out how to do that. So you're like "what the hell do you mean? it works just like eating anything else, you open your mouth, sink your teeth in, take a bite and chew. If you can bite, chew and swallow, you should be able to eat a watermelon."

And they agree that yes, they do know how to eat, in theory. The problem is the watermelon. Surely, if they figured out where to start, they'd figure out how to do it, but they have no clue how to get started with it.

This goes back and forth. No, it's not an emotional issue, they're not afraid of the watermelon. They can eat any other fruit, other sweet things, and other watery things ("it's watery?" they ask you). Is it the colour? Do they have a problem eating things that are green on the outside and red on the inside?

"It's red on the inside?"

Wait, they've never seen the inside? At this point you have to ask them how, exactly, they eat the watermelon. So to demonstrate, they take a whole, round, uncut watermelon, and try to bite straight into it. Even if they could bite through the crust, there's no way to get human jaws around it.

"Oh, you're supposed to cut it first. You cut the crust open and only chew through the insides."

And they had no idea. All their life this person has had no idea how to eat a watermelon, despite of being told again and again and again that it's easy, it's ridiculous to struggle with something so simple, there's no way that someone just can't eat a watermelon, how can you even mange to be bad at something as fucking simple as eating watermelon.

If someone can't do something after being repeatedly told to "just do it", there might be some key component missing that one side has no idea about, and the other side assumed was so obvious it goes without mention.

[therainstheyaredropping]

Yep.

https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/how-to-do-everything had a nice list of additional examples like this, with (non-)obvious major insights with regard to opening stitched bags, cleaning your bathroom floor, using a search engine, catching a ball, pinging somebody, proving a theorem, playing sudoku, passing as “normal”, improving your writing, generating novel ideas, and solving your problem.

If you’d asked me six months ago how to get better at something, I’d probably have pointed you to how to do hard things. I still think this is a good approach and you should do it, but I now think it’s the wrong starting point and I’ve been undervaluing small insights. [...]

I think my revised belief is that if you are stuck at how to get better at something, spend a little while assuming there’s just some trick to it you’ve missed. You can try to generate the trick yourself, but it’s probably easier to learn it by observing someone else being good at the thing, asking them some questions, and seeing if you have any lightbulb moment.

[hergan416]

My fiance played the clarinet when he was in school. When he was first learning to play, he rented an instrument from the school to learn on. He was the last chair clarinet, had been for years, because he could not make notes that required the register key. For years, they kept making him do embrature exercises and he started to get a few notes, with lots of effort. Eventually he had to get private lessons to stay in band.

Every time he tells me this story, his frustration by this point in the story, years later, is evident. He still sounds frustrated by it, despite all the time that passed. Teachers had been giving him crap for years because he hadn't been making much progress with the instrument.

When he got to the private instructor, she acknowledged his frustration, and asked him to try to play for her. He did, and she saw all he was doing. She then did something no one else had done before. She asked him to put his mouthpiece on a different clarinet and try to play the same notes. Like magic, it worked. She looked at the clarinet he had been using and found that the school's clarinet needed it's pads replaced.

He went from last chair to first chair nearly overnight, having been taught far more techniques than typically taught at that age just to overcome the broken instrument preventing him from making noise.

Sometimes you don't need to brute force a problem. Sometimes your clarinet is just broken.

[nowordsandnotune]

Not quite sure why the clarinet addition got me crying, but here you go people: just in case, let's get you some new pads.

[hollowistheworld]

I really can and will blame the 9-5 for everything. "We're in a loneliness epidemic" well, we have to spend a third of our day interacting with people in a professional way that makes forming real friendships difficult and then we're peopled out by the time we're done. "People are eating more and more unhealthily" people have to spend more than a third of their day doing work related tasks and they don't want to spend their tiny amount of free time making food. "People aren't involved in their local communities" after spending more than a third of their day doing work related things people are tired and also all those community events take place during normal working hours. "People need to get more hobbies" after spending more than a third of their day working, people are TIRED and don't want to do anything that takes yet more energy. "Literacy is dying" to maintain your critical thinking skills you need to read/watch things that make you think and after spending more than a third of your day doing work related stuff you are TIRED and don't want to expend even more brainnpower. "People need to get outside more" People. Are. TIRED. Because they have to spend all of their time working or preparing for work or recovering from work or doing all the chores they couldn't stay on top of because of work. I can blame fucking anything on having to work, it is truly the root of all fucking evil.

[importantcatpics]

[shanastoryteller]

Happy Pride!! Dealers choice ✨️

a continuation of 1

Sasuke wakes up with his arm around a slim waist and face first in some very nice cleavage. This has happened often enough that he doesn’t so much as pause, nuzzling closer, perhaps licking a little bit, but he keeps his teeth to himself. Mostly.

There’s a hard flick to the top of his head and he looks up enough to see annoyed blue eyes glaring down at him. The hair’s still red, but at least the contacts are gone. “Pervert.”

“You started it,” he murmurs, rolling Naruto onto her back so he can pin her wrists to the bed. She clenches her hands into fists before relaxing, not even offering a token resistance.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” she grumbles and Sasuke kisses her before she can continue complaining.

Then it’s down her neck, her sternum, and he drags her hands down with him rather than letting her go. He licks across the seal on her stomach, the sensation leaving his tongue feeling scraped raw like sour candy. She makes use of the chakra often enough that it’s almost always lingering and warm to the touch these days. The first time he did this, it tasted the same as all the skin around it.

She huffs, spreading her legs impatiently. “You going to do something useful or should I leave the two of you alone?”

He rolls his eyes and dives in with expert ease. The real reason he keeps her hands pinned is she’ll rip out chunks of his hair if he doesn’t.

After, they’re both sated and really need to brush their teeth, but he can’t really summon the energy to move with Naruto laid out across his chest. He absently runs a hand through her hair, trying not feel too disappointed when she sighs and says, “I should meet back up with the others.”

“They didn’t miss you yesterday?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “Nah, that was strategic. The delegation met with the hokage yesterday. Putting him face to face with me and Mom is pushing it.”

“She’s part of the delegation?” he demands then frowns. “I didn’t see her in the streets yesterday.”

Not every foreign shinobi entering the village is part of their village’s official delegation, which is why he hadn’t thought much of leaving with Naruto, even considering how he was dressed. Brining Kushina here is risky enough. Making her part of the delegation is so ballsy it’s just stupid.

“Oh, you saw her,” she says, amusement crinkling her eyes at the corners. Before he can do more than frown, she pushes herself up to kiss him again. Just when it’s getting interesting, she pulls away and walks to the bathroom.

He watches her go, always a nice view, and then gets up to follow her. If they shower together, it’ll conserve water. Maybe.

~

Itachi, for the sake of his sanity, does not led credence to any rumors he hears about his little brother.

But this one came straight from Hinata. His fiancé isn’t one to exaggerate or engage in practical jokes. He hadn’t thought his brother liked anyone, so a passing dalliance with a foreign ninja should be more of a relief than anything else, but from the way Hinata had described it, it’s not something so innocent as that. Especially considering Sasuke’s teammates’ comments. He wishes he could gather more information on his own, but it’s unlikely he’d be successful. Sakura fought hard to gain his brother’s trust and is likely to respond to any questions about him by drop kicking him through a wall. Hanabi likes him mostly for marrying her sister and getting her out of the way of the line of succession, but if she scents any weakness then she’ll hold it over his head rather than telling him anything useful.

In this instance, it’s best to go straight to the source.

He swings in through his brother’s bedroom window is greeted by a kunai to the face.

Itachi deflects it easily, launching an attack of his own against this stranger in Sasuke’s home. It’s only after they’ve exchanged a half dozen hits that logic catches up with his surprise and he realizes the red haired, green eyed ninja with half his face covered and in nondescript black clothes is likely the subject of his visit.

He’s never met Uzumaki Naruto before, but of course he’s heard of him. Very few people haven’t. Three times Iwa has attempted to raze Uzu to the ground. The first failed, barely, and Uzu closed its borders. Not even other civilians from Whirlpool are allowed inside without an escort. The second attempt was six years ago and they say the walls of Uzu were painted red with Iwa blood. That’s when people first started whispering about Uzumaki Naruto.

The third attempt was last year and what launched him into an S-class nin in the Bingo Book. Iwa hadn’t even made it into Whirlpool. They’ve apparently learned their lesson, now giving Naruto a flee on sight order, the same as they have for the Yondaime.

“Don’t break anything,” Sasuke says crankily from the doorway. He’s shirtless and holding two cups of coffee.

Naruto breaks away from their stalemate, ducking beneath Itachi’s frozen arm and going over to Sasuke. “Relax, we’re just saying hello. Right, Itachi?” He narrows his eyes and doesn’t answer, finally falling back into a more relaxed position. Naruto is facing Sasuke and so has his back to him when he takes one of the cups and pulls down his mask. He chugs the whole thing quicker than is advisable considering the steam he can see rising from Sasuke’s cup. He hands Sasuke the cup back and curves his hand around the back of his brother’s neck. He pulls him in for a quick kiss before tugging his mask back up. “See you later.”

“Bye,” Sasuke returns. He waits until he hears front door open and close before asking, “Can I help you with something, aniki?”

He glares. “What are you doing?”

Sasuke raises an eyebrow and sips at his coffee. “Care to be a little more specific?”

He doesn’t wait for a reply, instead turning and going back to the kitchen. He puts Naruto’s mug in the sink and then turns to lean against the counter. Itachi wishes Sasuke was still small enough to beat up without causing significant property damage. “Getting involved with someone from Uzu, especially him–”

“We’re allies,” he interrupts, irritated. “What’s the big deal? They stole one scroll twenty years ago, it’s not like anyone died.”

“They closed off their village,” he starts.

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, because it was nearly destroyed? None of their allies, including us, got there in time to help them.”

“They’re secretive, even for a ninja village,” he insists. “It can’t be for anything good. Who knows what they’re up to, coming here for the chunin exams? They haven’t come for a Konoha chunin exam in over two decades. They’re not here for no reason.”

“You think they’re moving against Konoha?” Sasuke asks, the laughter in his voice absolutely infuriating.

The hokage does, but Itachi isn’t cleared to tell Sasuke that. Especially now. “You don’t? Why? Because Naruto told you they weren’t?”

“Watch it,” he says coldly, all trace of laughter gone.

If the Yondaime could fall for a honeypot then clearly it can happen to anyone, but he’d have sworn his little brother was safe from such tricks. “His name probably isn’t even Uzumaki. Almost all Uzu ninja use it.”

“I know his name,” Sasuke says, sliding back to exasperated.

“You think you do,” he says. “You have no idea what he’s called inside the walls of Uzu.”

Sasuke’s expression doesn’t change at all. There’s not a single tell or twitch.

Itachi feels his stomach drop. “You snuck into Uzu? Do you have any idea what would have happened–”

“I didn’t sneak,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “Will you just drop this?”

If he didn’t sneak, he was escorted in. But that’s not possible. No foreign ninja are allowed in Uzu. No matter how important, no matter their rank, those gates don’t open for anyone but their own.

His brother wouldn’t defect. It’s not even possible to defect to an ally village. But the hokage has been suspicious about Uzu’s true feelings for a long time.

“Don’t,” Sasuke warns, because of course he knows exactly what he’s thinking. “It was extenuating circumstances.”

“What could those possibly be?” he demands. “You’re not making any sense, otouto. Give me something to work with here.”

He shifts his weight and Itachi feels real alarm start to build in his chest. He licks his lips then asks, “You remember that whole Orochimaru thing?”

His whole body goes cold. “Do I remember when Orochimaru snatched you away as a genin on your first mission out of the village and we all thought you were dead and that he’d carved your eyes out of your head? Yes, Sasuke, I haven’t forgotten.”

He still has nightmares about those long weeks when he thought everything was lost.

Sasuke at least winces. “Yeah. Well, he didn’t carve my eyes out, but I didn’t exactly get away unscathed either.” Itachi straightens, because Sasuke had been fine when Hiashi had found him, tired and sunburned but alive and whole with two untouched eyes. “He bit me. He gave me the curse seal.”

He rakes his eyes over his brother, as if a curse seal is something he wouldn’t have noticed in the nearly seven years since, as if he isn’t standing shirtless and with no seal to show for it right now. He barely keeps himself form activating his sharingan. He’d looked over Sasuke himself when they got him back and so had their parents there was no curse seal. “You must be mistaken. Once applied, it can’t be removed, only suppressed.”

“Well, that’s true in Konoha, at least,” he agrees and then shrugs. “Uzu’s earned their reputation with sealing fair and square.” He bites the inside of his cheek. “Don’t spread this around, okay? If people find out Orochimaru put his curse seal on me, they’ll think I still have it, and if they find out Uzu made an exception to save me, it’ll make things harder for them. I kept quiet about it this long for good reasons, aniki.”

It doesn’t seem possible, but Sasuke wouldn’t lie to him. Not about this. He nods, hesitates, then asks, “Who brought you past the gates?”

Sasuke smiles, his eyes going soft. “Who do you think?”

Right. Of course.

~

Naruto heads to the inn, following a familiar chakra signature and knocking once before stepping inside. “How’d it go?”

“How’s Sasuke?” Kushina asks absently, not looking up from her scroll.

He grins, going over to her bend and bouncing down on top of it with his hands behind his head. “Great. Awesome. Fantastic.”

That gets him an amused glance. “Should I have even bothered getting you a room?”

“I’ll use it!” he protests. Probably.

She shakes her head, but says, “We’ve confirmed the Suna delegation is approaching.”

He perks up. “Temari or Kankuro?”

“All three.”

Naruto pushes himself upright, incredulous. “You’re joking! That asshole hasn’t answered a single missive for months, but he just rolls up to Konoha like it’s nothing?”

“Something’s wrong,” she continues and he frowns. “According to our scout, his chakra’s all over the place and not in the usual ways.”

Normally he’d dismiss that kind of assessment, but everyone they brought with him is more than familiar with him, and, before that, his mother. If anyone knows, they do.

He’d expected the kazekage to have locked Gaara in the basement or something. This sounds like it might be worse. But this is, among several any other reasons, why both he and his mom are here on this mission. Just in case.

More important than their status as demon container and former demon container is their status as Uzumaki and the clan techniques they’re better at than anyone else.

“I’m going to see for myself,” he announces.

She hums, focusing once more on her scroll. “Don’t get caught.”

He waves a hand in acknowledgement and then jumps out the window.

[spontaneousmusicalnumber]

In The Road to El Dorado there is only really one inexplicable thing within the plot. Miguel and Tulio plausibly bluff their way through or slip out of most situations. However, I’d never figured out why the volcano actually stops erupting when Tulio commands it. 

The conclusion I finally came up with is that the actual gods were watching their big entrance go down, and thought “oh, this’ll be hilarious”

[sweetvantass]

theres a lot of evidence throughout the movie to say that the armadillo (whose name is bibo) is a god.

they first find him in the jungle, where an armadillo has no business being

they find the entrance to the city, while being followed by him

he is present when the volcano starts to erupt (previous concept art also showed him in the background actually stopping the eruption)

miguel and tulio sucked ass at the ball game, so they used Bibo as a ball. He ricocheted himself all over the place and defied physics to get into the hoop every time

they come up with the flood plan to stop cortez when bibo pushed a glass over in front of them

[famouslysleepy]

YOUR TELLING ME THEY USED GOD AS A BASKETBALL?

[degenezijde]

There's construction (well, mostly destruction) going on next door and I have turned into menwatchingworkers.jpg for highs like these.

[degenezijde]

Apparently I should've tagged this 'rapture' or something

[shanastoryteller]

Happy pride Shana!

Anything FMA please!

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Esther has spent half her life as the Xerxian ambassador to Amestris and has weathered all sort of political tomfoolery and two wars. King Pakor's newest scheme with Ed is amusing, but ultimately a strange whim of a mostly stable monarch.

She's known many Furhers and many powerful men. She trusts Roy Mustang's intentions.

When Ed slips into her home in the middle of the night, she nearly goes after him with a frying pan. He's quiet and serious, and one of those things is bad but both is disastrous.

Then he tells her that the Dwarf in the Flask has somehow gotten involved in Amestrian politics, is likely embedded in this country in a way that's not good for any of them.

King Pakor must be alerted. This is too delicate and too important for the usual channels, but she promises to take care of it.

~

Al thinks this whole mess that Ed has gotten himself involved in is hilarious and his own fault really. This is what he gets for still going to court instead of ignoring all the missives Pakor sends because, really, what's the king going to do about it? There's no prison that can hold them and they already make bi annual trips to Xerxes to do the work of months of several construction crews. Pakor should just take what he gets out of them and be grateful.

When Ed calls him, he's expecting more whining and funny anecdotes and hearing what the hell he and Ling have gotten up to right under the Fuhrer's nose.

Except what he says is, "Do you know where Dad is right now?"

His stomach drops. "What's wrong?"

Ed never has any patience for their father. Whenever he sends a letter home, he refuses to read it.

"His old friend is in Central," he says, voices carefully casual. "He might want to swing by."

Al locks his knees together. "Get out of there."

"Aw, Al, don't be like that," he says. "If you don't want to visit-"

"I'll be on the next train out," he interrupts. If Ed won't leave, then of course Al will go to him.

The last time his family went up against the Dwarf in the Flask, their mother died.

~

When Van Edris steps into the office, Maes doesn't recognize him at first.

His hair is braided back. His jewelry is gone and the bright red and gold traditional outfit has been replaced by thick black boots, leather pants, and a black tank top with a wide neck. He's got on a long red coat that's not exactly subtle, but also isn't gold embroidered silk. He only has a moment to wonder who took Van Edris shopping when he stops in front of his desk and catches his eye before jerking his head towards Roy's office.

Confusion fills the rest of the office, but Maes only shrugs at the others before following Van Edris, since that's clearly what he wants him to do. He closes the door behind them and Van Edris stands, eyeing them both carefully. Roy doesn't seem to have any more of a clue about what's going on than Maes does and he looks at Van Edris and says something in Xingese.

Van Edris bites the inside of his cheek then says, "You guys are fucked and if you don't want to stay that way, you're going to need some help."

In perfect, unaccented Amestrian.

Roy's mouth drops and Maes tries not to be distracted by all that implies, instead asking, "Fucked how, Van Edris?"

"If that's even your name," Roy mutters. Clearly he's not interested in prioritizing.

"It's my name!" he snaps, then frowns. "Well, one of them. The other is Edward Elric, but that's really not the point."

Elric? Why does that sound familiar...

"The alchemist?" Roy demands incredulously.

Oh, right, that's why.

Maybe they should be focusing on the implications, actually.

[wreegis]

naruto on main for a moment bc i miss my beautiful orange son (and the others are there. i guess)

[pridoo]

when you're strolling on a beach with your best frenemy and suddenly

[kokodrawings]

Artober day 1: Minato's kids