Least convincing poll HERE

How y'all think Carlisle acted in Volterra

How I think Carlisle acted in Volterra

sometimes i be saying im gonna go to bed and then i dont go to bed. frequently in fact. this is because i have the heart of an optimist and the soul of a liar

So this sentence is not grammatical. This is a general PSA using this as an example; I’m assuming here OP just didn't know.

“I be saying I’m gonna go to bed” is fine. ‘The general state of affairs is that I say this.’ The second a single-time modifier like “sometimes” gets added to habitual be, the grammar is wrong. The only temporal adverbs that are grammatical to modify habitual be are ones which also indicate habituality like “always” or “every day” or “every time.”

If the habitual aspect isn’t part of your native dialect and you haven’t been explicitly taught its grammar, don’t copy it. It’s not Internet language. It’s actually quite complicated agreement syntax but because it isn’t used by a group in power, we happen not to have put it on the SAT.

Good news, they found Mendel's genes:

Now he can rest in peace.

What I love about this is that this paper is from April 2025, this year! Mendel discovered these principles and published them in 1866, he didn't understand what the units of inheritance were (he didn't even call them genes, he just called them factors) just how they were transmitted and expressed, his work went unexamined until it was rediscovered (decades later in 1900) and forever changed biology, it is taught in every single biology course since then

But we didn't know WHAT those specific genes in pea plants were exactly, we just knew how they were transmitted and expressed, we were the exact same as Mendel after all this time

But now we know, we know the exact genes, their locus, their pathways and DNA sequences. We finished his work. I hope he's happy.

I hate that the "x reader" or "x Y/N" style of fanfic has become sooooo popular, partially because it's just not for me and partially because they clog general non-fic related tags and those authors seem allergic to the "read more" function on this website, but ALSO because I believe that you should have to go through the trouble of creating an absolutely batshit self-insert character, with a backstory that makes no sense and a name that doesn't really gel with the aesthetics of the universe. Legolas and Aragorn should be in a love triangle with Kylie, the angsty sixteen year old half-human half-elf and inexplicable tenth member of the Fellowship. Do the WORK. If everyone was doing "Y/N" nonsense back in the day, there would be no Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, or probably Bella Swan. These are important women. They deserve to be named, confusingly and with no regard for the fictional world they inhabit.

My most detailed but subtle headcanon is that Carlisle is super into coffee.

It started as a way to make people wave away his alertness: they would think he was awake because he was a caffeine junkie. He would just make sure that he was often seen getting coffee as he worked, and he was the generous guy who would make it even back when it had to be hand ground and steeped. When office pots became commonplace he was the helpful colleague who out of his own need was always refilling the percolator.

When it started to become common to bring a travel thermos to work, he started making a cup at home so that he would smell human. When Starbucks became commonplace, he developed a standard order (venti skim latte with three shots or a doppio in a tall cup: the cup is important because he has to hide that he’s not drinking it). This quickly evolved into him realizing that since coffee was getting more complicated and he was supposedly such a big coffee drinker, people would expect him to have opinions.

So the need to seem like he knew what he was talking about coupled with his general obsessively curious nature has meant that nowadays he has gone full on craft coffee at home. Esme vetoed him roasting his own beans, but he has a very expensive burr grinder. He has a thin-spouted electric kettle and a Chemex and he blooms his grounds and stirs them as he’s making the pourover. It has turned into a little bit of pre-work meditation and everyone knows not to bother him when he’s at it even though they all think it is ridiculous.

Then he takes his cup to work and someone goes “ah your coffee smells great” and he’s all “it’s this wonderful single-origin fair trade yirgacheffe that I have shipped directly from Ethiopia” and they are all “yeah this level of snobbery tracks” and so it adds to his mystique and the general sense of “Carlisle is really rich and really weird, so when he does something strange, don’t look too closely.”

What he doesn’t know is that a tiny part of his mind that he can’t access anymore remembers going to the London coffeehouses in the 1660s with his best friend. The scent makes him happy and peaceful and he doesn’t even notice that’s what’s happening.

He just really likes coffee.

Peter Facinelli as Carlisle Cullen TWILIGHT (2008) dir. Catherine Hardwicke

Some Carlisle Baseball Headcanons for World Series Week

Carlisle is serious about baseball. 

He loves baseball because the U.S. is where he really came into his own as a man and a vampire. It represents his home. 

Baseball is also his love because it is a game the enjoyment of which is improved by advanced brainpower. Vampire memory and thinking enables him to memorize the statistics of every player in every league and calculate on the fly the probabilities of particular outcomes which keeps things interesting. 

He has a baseball card collection of cards he has actually acquired over two hundred years which is worth several million dollars. It is stored in a museum-quality archival space. He acquired most of the cards through bubble gum and cigarette packs. 

He delivered Joseph Jefferson “Shoeless Joe” Jackson while he was working in Appalachia in the late 19th century, which has made him a lifelong White Sox fan. 

In 1917, he would sneak into the upper deck of Comiskey park where he could sit in the shade. He went to almost every game. The players eventually noticed him and decided he was their good luck charm. They nicknamed him “The Ghost” because of how he vanished after each game.

Edward is a Cubs fan. It is understood that Carlisle must fly the W flag any time the Cubs beat the Sox. He was required to keep the flag up for all of late 2016 and 2017 after the series win. 

Carlisle is the person who got the Cullens to play baseball, even though sometimes he’s too busy to play these days. He loves that this is a thing that brings his family together. 

Having a catch with his sons (and when he can get them, his daughters) is one of his favorite ways of having a deep conversation. 

Bella’s being related by marriage to a AA player was a big deal to him but he didn’t want to frighten her so he didn’t mention how excited he was. But he asked Phil to bring a signed ball to the wedding.

He and Esme joke about their annual “marital separation” during the World Series. But seriously, he is not a great husband during the playoffs and the World Series, especially if the franchise he is rooting for is losing/loses. 

He is skeptical of newer franchises but roots hard for older franchises. He has rooted continuously for the Atlanta Braves since their inception in Boston in the 1870s. Atlanta, Chicago Sox, and Cincinnati are his favorite teams. 

It is understood that no one in the family is to spoil the outcome of a baseball game, whether by telepathy, clairvoyance, or even just having watched live a game which Carlisle put on the DVR while he was at work. He will sulk for at least a day if he finds out the outcome before he has a chance to see it.

He taught Renesmee to bat in the usual “lean over you and hold the bat with you” way. She is a reasonably good hitter for a half-vampire.  

For the 2023 reblog:

He’s rooting for the Rangers because he rooted for the original Washington Senators in the 1800s, and even though they are technically a spawn of a reboot of the Senators, he goes for the oldest loyalty he can.

He was not expecting to like the pitch clock, but he loves it and it reminds him of the days when slugging was truly only for the greats.

Both he and Edward are taking flak from their wives for being buried in both the baseball and their phones as they WhatsApp each other about four times a minute during the games.

2024:

Carlisle’s been rooting for the Dodgers since 1884. Even though, of course, his memory is perfect, he still calls them the Grays from time to time for old times sake.

He hates the Yankees. He’s intrigued by Ohtani, but also pays careful attention to the pitching rotation strategy, especially with the deep bench of relievers.

And if Esme interrupts him on game 4 with a possible clean sweep on the line, God help her.

2025:

Carlisle was supposed to go in to work at midnight after Game 3 was supposed to have been over.

He called in sick when it went into the 11th inning.

In the top of the 13th, Esme found him sitting on the couch with a Dodgers hat on with his weighted blanket pulled up to his chin , mumbling to himself about the Blue Jays bullpen and repeatedly WhatsApp messaging Edward. She curled up at his side and let him jabber at her for almost three more hours while she nodded and asked questions which were mostly designed to get him to keep talking. When Freeman hit the final home run, he just stared at the screen in what was obviously sheer glee for the better part of twenty minutes until Esme poked him in the ribs and asked if he was okay.

"This might be the best night of my life," he sighed contentedly, sounding for all the world like a ten-year-old boy.

She laughed. "Your son getting married? You getting married? Your granddaughter being born? None of those ranking high among a hundred and forty thousand nights?"

Shaking his head, he replied, "None of you have ever played eighteen innings."

Then he grinned mischievously and laid in her lap to watch the rest of the postgame commentary.

There are 4 books from Bella's pov, one from Edward's, even about the life of a random girl, but we still don't have material about THEM!

No thoughts just...