#���.the peddler answers

[solas-backpack-mug]

a collection of some rauatai and hazanui karu lore i found interesting because it's relevant to rangi <3

[potionpeddlerpatchy]

Just came to the conclusion that Ushijima and I, when we have a totally free and open weekend, would totally bust open a 5000-piece puzzle and finish it.

[bloodyarn]

anonymous sent

The smut peddler has brought in a new book, it is titled The Legend of Jizzt Dong'Urden: the Diphallic Drow

   𝚂𝚖𝚞𝚝 𝙿𝚎𝚍𝚍𝚕𝚎𝚛 𝙰𝚗𝚘𝚗 .   unprompted interactions

────────────────────────

     Ah, so it was a repeat offender.     Already acknowledging the book   —   a good portion larger than the last   —   she nodded, waving them goodbye, probably delivering some copies to the other companions next. Would this one cause as much turmoil as the one from last week   ?   A shudder ran down her back, remembering the various embarrassing moments between herself  &  her friends.

So glad nobody was in sight (yet), the seamstress lowered herself down to her tent's blanket on the ground, beginning to read. Diphallic. What a strange word. Maybe an illness.

 . . .

   [ . . . ]   Oh deary.

That woman was invested, unfortunately so. All the smut peddler ever brought were some cheap, quick romance novels meant to read by adults. Nothing so catching, nothing that kept her hooked like this. She winced when her eyes swept over the clumsy soup scene. Then, closing the book, placing a tiny flower between pages   —   She better continued later. With a glass of wine.

What was obvious by now   —   The Legend of Jizzt Dong'Urden had a new fan. She should definitely tell Crabby about this. He loves fighting scenes, Babette heard.

[vonpharma]

“handwaving genuine, good-hearted concrit, to refusing to even engage in the conversation at all, to constant changes that make the event less fun for a huge chunk of us”

Do you mind if I ask more about this? I’ve also participated in sicktember (casually) and I haven’t really noticed anything that fit this, so I just wanted to ask more about your experiences if you were comfortable elaborating. I’m mostly curious what changes were made that made the event less fun (other than delay in prompts released I heard about that)

yeah sure! right off the bat i wanna say that this is not something i was like. PISSED OFF or intending to start any drama about, just some stuff that made the event less enjoyable for me.

i also wanna say that you haven't noticed it because sicktember is very very careful to not publish anything that makes them look bad. they do not engage with any of their replies or asks unless they can spin it in a very sanitized, pr-friendly manner. try creeping through the tags and replies on some of their posts, and while a lot of shit is deleted or lost, you can still see traces of it, some of which i will link to here.

the prompts becoming more delayed. i wasn't here in 2021 (when they dropped in early march), but in 2022 they dropped in mid may. that was awesome because it gave us all lots of time to prep--my favourite thing about sicktember is how accessible of a prompt event it is! the prompts don't all drop like a week before the event starts, you have all summer to write so if you have a full time job or responsibilities you can still participate. this year they made it very clear the prompts were ready to go in may but didn't drop them until mid-june.

when people started sending asks about this, they responded thusly. they maintain this weird kinda... pr-friendly, stepford smiley vibe whenever anyone tries to open a dialogue with them? and it just comes across as so dismissive of anyone trying to make genuine points.

here they say that "many things go into planning prompts" but don't elaborate on that at all. for context, the night before this ask, they had made it clear that the prompts were all ready to go. the hand-waving comes in the form of all the "suggestions" they offer here--"well, you don't have to do every prompt!" (but i want to. it's fun. it feels good. and that's what i've done in the past) "you can write after september!" (i did that last year. it was kind of miserable. i like posting with everyone, it feels like a big celebration!) "we give you like 100 days!" (that's cool. but you could give us more at no detriment to yourself. a lot of us didn't make the deadline last year.)

check the notes on this post and you'll see several disappointed contributors/fans who are trying to open a dialogue with the event runners, all of whom were ignored. several people have reached out to me saying that their asks about this were ignored.

2. last year, they said they would only be accepting fills on the sicktember blog through submissions, and only posting 10 random ones a day. in the past, sicktember has reblogged every single fill directly from the writers.

here's why this is shitty:

when you submit something to a blog, the blog owner then becomes the one who effectively "owns" its engagement. that means any notes, reblogs, comments, follows, etc. all go to sicktember. they do not go to the person who MADE THE STORY. if you, the author, want to see what people are saying about your work, you have to pull up the sicktember window and obsessively check it. if you want to respond to any comments, you give sicktember more notes.

this is just more work, especially if you still want those notes. you would then have to make TWO posts, one on your personal blog and one on sicktember's. and people are probably disinclined to reblog a story twice. it is not exposure or engagement to do this, it actively robs authors of engagement.

sicktember might not even post your fill. they pick ten random ones a day. this is because...

they literally admitted that they lose followers when they reblog every fill. they said aloud that it is all about engagement for them. maintaining followers means more to them than highlighting the contributions of all the people who are making their event what it is. they are quite literally trying to maximize followers and stealing engagement from their contributors. it's kind of fucking insidious.

the only valid point here is the thing about reducing mod workload. still, they could've just... opened apps for another mod? inquired for some extra help? lord knows i would've jumped at the opportunity to curate! i'm sure others would've too.

contrast this to whumptober, who religiously reblog every single fill despite being a much longer running event than sicktember.

this is why i started @sicktemberfeed. with permission, but the mods were even weird about THAT... i asked if it would be ok to make, and they said "well, it's not like we could stop you." weird fucking answer. it's fine to say no.

3. i didn't speak out about point 2, but did speak out a little bit on this blog about point 1. @yes-i-am-happyaspie's husband (@spaceninjas42) dug through my blog, somehow found my untagged critique (it was not vitriolic or cruel, just a plea for an open discussion) and started getting on my case for talking about it on my personal blog. there was a second, much more vitriolic reply that he left but i was a dingus and blocked him as soon as i saw it, which means it's now marked deleted and i have no way of getting it back or proving it. that's kind of a "just trust me bro" situation.

4. the prompts this year were not very good. that is a purely subjective opinion i have, but a lot of us agree that they really stray from the concept of sickfic. we have a lot of heavier whump events floating around and the appeal of sicktember is that it is for fluffier, more low stakes stuff. seeing "cardiac arrest" and "anaphylaxis" and "medieval treatment" on there had me and a lot of others scratching our heads. their response to this is always "just sub it out!" but when we start running out of alt prompts because so many of the main ones are not what the audience is vibing with... there is room for critique there. there is room for a discussion.

i can't stress enough that the problem isn't necessarily these changes--they are not dealbreakers! the problem was sicktember's attitude. every single time anyone in the community tried to say 'hey, i think this idea could use work/tweaking' the response was basically just, again, the happy-go-lucky stepford smiler pr voice "we'd like to remind you that blah blah blah! happy writing, authors!" and absolute refusal to talk to their community at all. as i've said many times, this is not a dichotomy--where one side is "we fold to any criticism! our fans control us!" and the other side is "you're not entitled to anything! we run this event for free despite our busy lives!" like you can very much find a happy medium there but they just. do not.

none of that is a deal breaker, genuinely. i was still planning on participating up until the very end, and i obviously am now.

what was a deal breaker was them posting harry potter shit.

[howlingday]

I was asking about the side guys. Like the Prince,Herbalist, or Jinxy(The Racoon). I didn't need anything deep just who was the best side character.

I guess Jinxy since I like raccoons.

[astramachina]

I think I asked originally on your old sideblog, but you said to check back in february if you would open writing or fanfic commissions. I'm checking back if youre open to doing commissions.

Ah yes, my old sideblog which tumblr nuked and I'm still fighting to get back. But I am, yes! I have a commission segment over on KO-FI that covers some general information regarding pricing and stuff, if you want to check it out and are still interested.

Although, as a heads up, KO-FI is cracking down on NSFW content, even the written kind, so if that's what you're aiming for your best bet would be to message me off anon to talk shop. (Unless we're moots on discord or smth, in which case, you could just hmu over there.)

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

So uhhhhh given certain fics of yours, when I saw that totally innocent donut post then scrolled further and saw what was clearly a buddie post, I was absolutely expecting something different on that buddie post. Thought you'd like to know

I am APPALLED, APPALLED I tell you, that you thought there might be something not safe for work going on there. What kind of person do you take me for!?

[transmutationisms]

Feel free not to answer this ask so you dont have to step into this particular hornet's nest but do you have any thoughts about people sharing inaccurate science about COVID in order to push for more COVID regulations? I agree that COVID is being neglected and we need better policies but I'm also a biochemist so it pisses me off to see people cite research in a way that makes exaggerated and terrifying claims. Two years ago, I was warning my colleagues against this condescending "just trust the science" approach but now the same crowd pushing that has shifted to pushing "don't trust any of the positive science, only my catastrophic interpretations of it". Can't we mask without also trying to convince each other that COVID is a guaranteed one way ticket to death and permanent disability?

you must be new here haha i swing bats at this hornet's nest like once a month. yeah i think the current state of covid communication sucks a lot. i mean the truth is that "follow the science" is always a disingenuous sentiment; Science doesn't speak, and scientists disagree with one another. and it's naïve to pretend majority consensus is a reliable mechanism to identify truth—anyone who has followed the covid aerosolisation about-face will recall that although linsey marr was not the first researcher to challenge medical orthodoxy on airborne disease transmission, even well into the covid pandemic the idea of aerosol transmission was marginalised by global health authorities because it was politically inconvenient, out of favour with powerful established academics, and reminiscent to some of pre-pasteurian miasma theories of disease. those who would "follow the science" were not presented with a convenient dichotomy between reasonable evidence-backed expert consensus and fringe peddlers of heterodoxy; to evaluate these positions required actually, yknow, reading and evaluating the arguments and evidence from multiple competing positions, and deciding which had the greater explanatory power. which is good epistemological advice only insofar as it's so obvious as to be trite.

fundamentally a huge driving force of this situation is the social, political, and institutional forces that make expert knowledge (a generally good thing) all too often synonymous with inaccessible knowledge. i don't mean inaccessibility caused by knowledge being specialised; obviously this is inevitable to some extent simply as a result of the fact that no one person will grasp the entirety of human knowledge. but the fact that knowledge is specialised, specific, highly technical, and so forth doesn't automatically mean, for example, that it has to be monetarily gatekept from all but a select few with the resources to persevere through a highly punishing, nepotistic, hegemonic university system; this is a political problem, and one that additionally has the effect of enabling and sheltering low-quality work (see: replication crisis) behind the opaque walls of university bureaucracy and the imprimateur of the credentials it grants. in lieu of an ability to actually engage with, read, or challenge much of the academic research being generated on any given topic, the lay public is supposed to rely on signs of reliability like possession of a degree, or institutional reputation. what we in fact see again and again, and with particularly high stakes in the case of something like a pandemic, is that these measures are instruments of class stratification and professional jockeying that don't inherently ensure quality information: MDs can and do peddle anti-vaxx lies and covid / long-covid denialism; the CDC and WHO can and do perpetrate bad and outdated scientific advice, like that masks are unnecessary and isolation periods can be shortened for convenience. many of these are just blatant cases of kowtowing to political pressure, which arises from the capitalist logic that counterposes disease prevention to economic growth.

this all leaves us in a position where it is, in fact, smart and correct to evaluate the information coming from 'official' and credentialled sources with scepticism. the problem is that in its place, we get information coming out of the same capitalist state-sponsored scientific institutions, and the same colonialist universities; the idea that some chucklefuck on twitter is telling you the secret truth just because they correctly identified that the government sucks is plainly absurd. where covid specifically is concerned, the liberalism of academic and scientific institutions is on display in numerous ways, including the idealist assumption, which many 'covid communicators' make, that public health policy is primarily a matter of swaying public opinion, and therefore that it is always morally imperative to form and propagate the most alarmist possible interpretation of any study or empirical observation. this is not an attitude that encourages thoughtful or measured evaluation of The Science (eg, study methodology), nor is it one that actually produces the kind of political change that would be required to protect the populace writ large from what is, indeed, a dangerous and still rampant virus. instead, this form of communication mostly winds up generating social media Engagement and screenshots of headlines of summaries of studies.

meanwhile, actual public health policy (which is by and large determined at the mercy of capitalist state interests, and which by and large shapes public opinion of what mitigation measures are 'reasonable', despite the CDC repeatedly pretending this works the other way round), remains on its trajectory toward lax, open exposure of anyone and everyone to each new strain of covid, perpetuating a society that is profoundly hostile to disabled people and careless with everyone's life and health. this fucking sucks. it sucked that we have treated the flu like this for years, and it sucks that we are now doing it with a virus that we are still relatively immunologically naïve to, and that produces, statistically, even more death and disability than the flu. and it sucks that the predominating explanations of this state of affairs from the 'cautious' emphasise not the structural forces that shape knowledge production under capitalism, but instead invoke a psychological narrative whereby individuals simply need to be sufficiently terrified into producing mass action.

[rwby-encrusted-blog]

Yang: This reminds me of the Time we learned about the decision making Framework of the Sugondeez.

Jaune: Who are the Sugondeez?

Yang: Sugondeez Nuts.

Jaune: GOD DAMN IT!

~~~~~

The Jinxy Peddler: It you want that, All I need is your greatest joke. I already have one in mind.

Yang: Oh? Which one?

Weiss: The one the gods hate the most...

Yang: But I was saving for the Grand Finale!

~~~~~

RK!Jaune: So you had to get stuff from Jinx? What'd it cost?

Yang: Well, the price wasn't too bad. For a moment I was worried he'd turn me into a Mind Goblin.

RK!Jaune: What's a Mind Goblin?

Yang: *Opens mouth to speak, no words come out*

RK!Jaune: Yang, What's a Mind Goblin? Help me out! I've never heard of one!

Yang: It's- It's a psychic-

RK!Jaune: I don't understand, like, Finish the thought, why would you open your mouth to answer if you can't articulate what's a Mind Goblin? Didi you run into one? Is there something I haven't seen yet?

Yang: *A Single tear running down her cheek* Yeah, Yeah it's something you haven't seen yet.

[glutko]

Today, on Echoes of Wisdom's release day, I'd like to talk about THE most obscure place in the Zelda series.

It's Durod.

...What? You don't know Durod?

Hm. I don't blame you...

It was only mentioned in a character's name in an official Dutch guide of Zelda's Adventure that was only published in its entirety across the last three 1999 issues of the CD-i magazine CD-interactief, which itself was reduced to a section in a different magazine.

Okay, let's sort this information out.

Like many other CD-i games, Zelda's Adventure had a guide that named a bunch of characters and enemies, and - at the very least - was based off official material. Characters such as Alice and Kron the Peddler have unused voice lines where they say their names, and these names are used in the guide. (A similar thing happened with Kulvan, the blacksmith from TFoE).

Due to the late release of Zelda's Adventure (1996) in the CD-i's lifespan, there were almost no publications that published the guide... apart from the Dutch CD-interactief magazine. It posted small tidbits from the guide in its tips and tricks section until, by 1998, it was reduced to a section in the Oog & Oor magazine. There, it started posting full guides of CD-i games, including Zelda's Adventure.

This was one of the last guides they published before ending, and this is where Durod comes in. According to the guide, one of the White Steed Lodge patrons sitting around the table is named Debblin van Durod - in a Dutch name, "van" indicates a person's place of origin:

Another character has a partially translated Dutch name; Bitterbeck de Bergman.

So we have Debblin, a person from Durod. Cool! The guide might also say they're a deerhunter, but it's hard to tell as I don't know Dutch and had to machine translate it.

And that's, um... literally all we know about Debblin and/or Durod. No other NPC mentions Durod, not even in unused dialogue. The lone person at the table you can talk to (the brown-clad man who I'm assuming is Debblin) reuses the owner's dialogue line, even though there appears to be dialogue for him in the game files:

And, as far as we know, no other place in Tolemac is called Durod, not even in the guide or the known development assets.

This person and the land they hail from are complete mysteries, even within the absolutely anomalous series entry that is Zelda's Adventure.

Who in the world is Debblin from Durod?!

Maybe we'll find out some answers if more Zelda's Adventure pre-release stuff gets released. But until then...

[potionpeddlerpatchy]

Which one of your faves is the best cook and what is his best recipe? 🌚

Now, I do believe that most of my faves are decent cooks - at at least cook 3 meals (one breakfast, lunch, and dinner)

There is a scale with Bokuto being at the bottom, and with Nanami being at the very top, by a country MILE.

Spends his days being the best househusband he can be!! And he'll make sure you have the best breakfast when you get up, a perfectly made bento for lunch, and a delicious dinner waiting for you when you get home!

[jiubilant]

cw: blood

“Do you love your brothers?” asks the priestess of the god Ofaanruvaak.

The god, licking the gore from his great maw, grants her a burning look. He’d caught the god of the hillmen, his brother, winging over his land without tribute or tinvaak—and had named him anew for this insolence, that Ahrolmal who had been Ahrolmul would not again forget who was thur from pines to fens. Nor would the hillmen forget. The priestess, before sending her marshmen to make thralls and crowfood of Ahrolmal’s folk, had painted their faces herself.

Now she stands at the foot of the godsroost as Ofaanruvaak Raven-Gift clambers down. Stones skitter down the slope. The ground trembles like a supplicant. A tree trodden beneath the god’s foot groans, prostrates itself, and snaps like a twig.

“Tell me a riddle,” he croaks, his voice still hoarse with flame. He bends his head. Smoke vents from teeth longer than seaxes. In the gilded hall of Konahrik Jun, hung above the pelt-strewn throne, the priestess had once seen a god’s fang taller than herself.

“My beak is bent to the base of things,” she murmurs, her face as still and wooden as her mask. The answers of her god are often as circular as his paths in flight; she spends her days treading patiently after the shadow of his wisdom, which seldom eclipses her whole. “I go grave along the ground. My going-forth is green on one side, and my track is black—”

“Do they love one another, these words that you speak?” The vast neck coils around her. A breath, or perhaps the heat of the huge eye, scorches her back. “The parts of the lawspeaker’s speech—proposition, examination, refutation—do these love one another, sonaaki?”

“If the speech is wise,” the priestess suggests. Her hand drips with the blood of Ahrolmal, which she had daubed on her warriors’ brows. “If the riddle is glib.”

Her god snorts. A pillar of smoke swirls from his jaws and dissolves in the mist of the night.

“It is a plough,” he says. Like a child studying an ant, he rests his chin on the ground to look the priestess in the face. “Tell another.”

“I have one single eye,” says the priestess, her voice dry. The riddle is one of Konahrik’s. “And two ears, and two hands, and two feet. And twelve hundred heads.”

A pause.

“I do not know this riddle,” says the god.

“A half-blind onion-peddler.”

Ofaanruvaak’s huff of laughter ripples the priestess’s robes. He straightens. He’s not as large as the World-Eater, her god—but his scales, as slick with blood as her sticky hand, are almost as black.

“I love my brothers,” he says, lifting his head higher than the trees, “as you love yours.”

He nods to the western hills. A glow like sunrise crests them: the burning houses of the hillmen, abandoned by their god.

[copperbadge]

lightwit

I love your mindfulness posts. I personally hate the concept of mindfulness with a passion because to me that's just normal being human and using your effing brain properly, but as an educator I have had to accept the fact that manymany people do not in fact have much self awareness and actually do benefit from this mumbojumbo. So, I am so glad I am not the only one struggling out here. 😜

I hope it's okay if I pop this into its own post because it actually gets at something I'm contending with. So, in order to get my research lined up and my thoughts in a row for therapy I turned all this research into a powerpoint called "Doing A Stupid Powerpoint For My Stupid Mental Health". And one of the slides in it is titled "Mindfulness: Petition To Rename It".

Mindfulness, as a term, is uselessly broad; it's such a bad way to identify a category of treatment/behavior that there appears to be an entire subgenre of scientific papers that work to create a framework of what Mindfulness actually is -- I read at least three papers, all published in the last ten years, that are like "What is Mindfulness in a useful sense?" and all of them had different answers. And because Mindfulness is now a buzzword, if you're researching it then you're likely to run into everything from scholarly articles to pop journalism to clickbait, to both harmless and genuinely dangerous peddlers of quack science. And sometimes the quack scientists are also publishing scholarly articles where they've just been p-hacking.

So I'm inclined to agree that mindfulness is mostly nonsense, but that's a problem with the term, not what falls underneath it. There are therapeutic modes that call themselves mindfulness that actually are rooted in real science. I think these should probably have a new name, like Therapeutic Awareness or something, but it'd just get co-opted back into the woo, I have a feeling.

So there's a lot of nonsense, but the goal of being present in the moment and self-aware isn't an idle one; there's an increasing body of knowledge suggesting that it's a foundational skill for emotional regulation and healthy coping. The scholarship goes way beyond "mindfulness arises from Buddhist practice" which if I have to read one more time I'm gonna throw stuff. Clinical testing is looking at things like physiological responses to mindfulness behaviors that have nothing to do with what's going on in your conscious mind. There's some woo surrounding "Coherent Breathing" and I don't trust the foremost proponent of it as far as I can throw him, but he didn't invent it, and testing shows that people trained in and practicing Coherent Breathing have better focus and can, to an extent, lower the level of stress hormone in their body. "Positive affect" (happy emotions) didn't rise, but "Negative affect" (sadness, anger, stress etc) was lowered.

A lot of what's being studied on a clinical level involves us as humans somehow activating shit in our nervous system that we have no conscious control over, the same way we develop muscle memory by doing a task repeatedly. That has measurable value for the issues I'm trying to solve, but it's not universally applicable, which is another reason so much of mindfulness comes across as junk science, because it tries to tell us that it's a cure-all when it isn't.

But there's reason to believe that if you can reroute your nervous system when you're starting to become upset, you can short-circuit maladaptive reactions and prevent it from causing a spiral or an over-reaction or similar, and some practices called mindfulness can train for that. And that's my goal, so I'm willing to rummage in the garbage for the gold.

[bg-brainrot]

Hello, I am writing Astarion fanfic with no signs of stopping 👋

Note: All Astarion x Tav, all written with gender-neutral pronouns and from second-person POV. Will continue to update this! This blog is all BG3 + Astarion

Love at First Knife

Rogue!Tav and Spawn!Astarion

This series is based on my double-rogue playthrough. Tav is an assassin rogue, chaotic neutral, chooses mostly good options but a ton of options just for the laughs or the money. Astarion remains unascended. Everyone shows up sooner or later, though main group includes Karlach and Shadowheart.

The Trap is Set: Two 8 strength rogues get stuck and need to wait for rescue; one of those rogues doesn't like being trapped underground

Failed a Dex Save and Fell for You: the gang plays Truth or Dare and Tav starts to realize their feelings

Healing Threads: Astarion is an expert at embroidery -- Tav finds this out through an injury. They later find out *why* he’s such an expert

The Night They Slept Together: Tav pines, and their relationship with Astarion shifts ever so slightly. (They literally do just sleep) [Tumblr]

One Small Bedroll, Two Confused Hearts: oh no, one bed! But both Astarion and Tav are scared to admit they're catching real feelings

Failed Every Insight Check and Fell all the Harder: Astarion POV, he begins feeling some new feelings. It's only after Moonrise Towers that he can put a name to them. [Tumblr]

Stolen Hearts: Tav "picks" Astarion over Karlach (Tav and Karlach were never really together but oh well, semantics)

NEW! To be Known: Astarion reads a book and wonders what it means to be known. [Tumblr]

A Stolen Moment: Tav and Astarion are on a thief date

The Rogues that Slay Together Stay Together: Tav goes down protecting Astarion, Astarion has never been this worried

A Pair of Penguin Pebblers: Both Astarion and Tav love stealing, they steal through a shopping episode and go on a date afterward

The Smut Peddlers of Sharess' Caress: the group finds smut written about Astarion and Tav [Tumblr]

A Bad Counterfeit: Tav is replaced by a doppelganger and Astarion immediately notices something's wrong, some angst as he comes to term with being a "hero"

Hugs for a Vampire: Rogue!Tav and Astarion's romance as told through hugs [Tumblr Masterlist]

More than Vampiric Charms: After some banter between Jaheira and Astarion goes too far, Rogue!Tav reassures Astarion [Tumblr]

Would You Still Love Me?: Rogue!Tav asks the question everyone wants to know the answer to "would you still love me if I was a worm?" [Tumblr]

Of Bets, Bluffs, and Briefs: The gang plays strip poker, though it seems like not everyone (Astarion) is playing by the rules [Tumblr]

Brawls Fair in Love and War: What starts out as a scuffle turns into a full out tavern brawl for the gang [Tumblr]

Alone in a Crowded Camp: Astarion reflects and realizes that company isn't so bad. [Tumblr]

Their First Winter Together: Astarion and Rogue!Tav enjoy a lot of winter firsts in this fluff-filled extravaganza [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]

Unraveling Plan Meet Immeasurable Insecurity: Tav tries their damnedest to propose, only to be rebuffed by Astarion at every single turn. [Tumblr]

(smut) The Thousandth Time: Astarion and Rogue!Tav make love for the thousandth time. In a bathtub. [Tumblr]

Random post-game rogue!Tav headcanons

A Star in the Dark

Evil!Dark Urge and Ascended!Astarion

Evil!Dark Urge and Astarion have a tumultuous relationship, make dubious choices, and become a power couple. *This playthrough scares me so I'll update this sporadically hah

(smut) In My Head: Dark Urge has an all new kind of daydream after Astarion approaches them

(smut) A Bloody Sacrament: Astarion licks Dark Urge clean after they bathe in a pool of blood [Tumblr]

Other

Tav x Astarion fics that don't belong to a series

IN PROGRESS When He's all but Forgotten How to Love Again: Elf-Tav reincarnation story, they dream of him in their reverie, and go out to find him once they reach maturity [Tumblr Masterlist]

IN PROGRESS The Consequences of Convenience: Tav enters a marriage of convenience with their unromanced, best friend Astarion-- feelings ensue.

Spicy Astarion Headcanons (both A!A and Spawn!A)

Horny Astarion Headcanons (both A!A and Spawn!A)

If you're looking for some more fics, check out my fic recs here!

If you're wondering which Hozier songs fit which pairings, check them here!

[femmefatalevibe]

What advice/resources would you recommend for someone who is trying to decentralize her life from men (or really anybody other than herself)?

Any books/videos/advice/etc. that you have would be great!

Thanks! Your blog helps me so much xo

Hi love! I'm so glad to hear this <3. Sharing some tips/resources below. Hope this helps xx

How To Decenter Men In Your Life:

Consider the values, goals, and desired lifestyle that feel most authentic to you if social scripts/stigmas didn't apply to you

Take time to become radically honest with your desires as an individual – outside of the perception of men, your family, boss, teachers, peers, etc.

Cultivate a sense of personhood and identity established in your interests, hobbies, skillsets, learning capabilities, creativity, and desire for growth in all aspects of life

Act in your own best interests. Speak up for your needs, and advocate for yourself. Be more "selfish." Don't apologize for what you want and go after it. Act in your own best interests

Become confident in negotiating, assertive communication, and standing on your own two feet. Establish relationships in all aspects that are based on mutual benefit and equitable exchange

Unlearn your self-sacrificing & people-pleasing. Stop shrinking yourself or suppressing your needs to make others feel better or more comfortable

Validate yourself: your needs, desires, goals, dreams, preferences, and opinions. You need to choose yourself every day. Your appeal to others means nothing if you don't like the person you are or are becoming to satisfy the needs or desires of others

Consider the ways you're consciously and subconsciously confining your self-expression and belief system to fit the mold/appease the patriarchy. Actively work to deconstruct this mentality and way of being

Be honest with yourself about how men enrich your life. Not the other way around. Do they fulfill you romantically, sexually, both, or neither? There's no right or wrong answer, except the one that requires you to put on a performance rather than live in alignment with your true self

TikTok Creators:

Melanie Hamlett (LOVE her! My favorite creator/author on this topic.)

Katie Jgin

Soberside

Rose Hackman

Hope Peddler

Therese Lee (@thereselee6)

SpirtualWhistleBlower

Books On Decentering Men:

A Single Revolution by Shani Silver

Patriarchy Stress Disorder: The Invisible Inner Barrier to Women's Happiness and Fulfillment by Valerie Rein, Ph.D

What a Time to Be Alone: The Slumflower's Guide to Why You Are Already Enough by Chidera Eggerue 

All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation by Rebecca Traister

Enjoy Your Solo By Mary Delia Allen

How to Be Single and Happy by Jennifer Taitz

Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After by Bella DePaulo, Ph.D

On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good by Elise Loehnen 

We Are Not Born Submissive: How Patriarchy Shapes Women's Lives by Manon Garcia 

The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy 

Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne

Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling  Men by Lundy Bancroft 

Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How it Affects Us All by Laura Bates

Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward by Gemma Hartley  

[shirefantasies]

Clear As Mud- Ori x F!Reader

Gotta show my boy some love on this blog 😌 Warnings: some language, a suggestive joke

(Gif by @the-hobbit! Will take down if requested)

It was an absolutely lovely day for some bullshit. Nothing like you had been going through yourself, of course. For you had been traveling for weeks with this company of dwarves and yet the object of your affection had somehow not caught wise to it at all, and while you found that endearing, even from the most adorable dwarf you had ever met it could only be endured for so long.

Thus, taking matters into your own hands was the natural conclusion of it all. Nothing left to do but put the idea in Ori's head by a new means, means you couldn't help deviously smiling to yourself over. You could just picture the way his eyes would widen in wonder, jaw dropping in innocent awe, and it made your heart smile and skip a beat.

Wandering over to where the scribe had sat down, legs folded to hold his drawing pad up and hands, of course, scribbling away at the very same, you took a seat on the rock adjacent to his.

“You know, it still surprises me that Thorin has no interest in utilizing my services,” you remarked in mock-surprise, a hand resting beneath your chin, “Have you heard much about it?”

Ori’s attention snapped fully up from his drawing at that. “Services? We were supposed to be at yours! Perhaps he’s like me and he doesn’t know what you offer! What is it that he wants none of?”

Fighting a grin, you shrugged. “Not everyone takes stock in psychics. Don’t want to find anything out from foresight, I suppose. That can change things, for certain. Even just a fortune telling might be nice, though. Put him at ease, you understand.”

Sure enough, Ori’s eyes widened just as you pictured. Line cast, time to pull it in.

“I think I do! So you can read fortunes? And Thorin doesn’t want one? Who wouldn’t want one?”

His gloved hands spread in excitement, brown eyes positively glittering upon you, sending your heart leaping and lips smiling.

“You’ve got that exactly right,” you nodded, “No one’s wanted one yet. Maybe they indeed are not all aware.”

“Oh, do me! Do me!” Ori jittered, folding his pad completely shut and casing his charcoal. “Let me be the first- oh, Nori will be quite jealous!”

Your smile only grew at his pleased look. Shifting on your rock’s rough surface to find a more comfortable sector of your arse for it to dig into, you reached into the depths of your pockets for the props you’d prepared. You could make plenty a choice joke about his initial phrasing there, but when you had him so reeled there was no sense in risking scaring him off. Snickering and flushing to yourself would have to do.

Props you’d brought readied, you twisted the point of crystal a peddler had given you between your fingers, hopefully mysteriously.

“My focus. I will call upon it to channel my power,” you told Ori, eyelids fluttering shut and the fingers of your other hand drawing a swirl in the dirt with a feather you’d found between them.

“Do I need to do anything?” He asked, eyes still wide as he leaned forward on his rock.

“Take my hand,” you answered in a solemn voice, extending yours facing palm-up.

Complying immediately, Ori extended his and took yours firmly, sending thrilling sparks up your arm as the warmth of his gloves hit. His fingers were thick, strong as a dwarf’s were expected to be, but longer, nimbler than those of the rest. No wonder he was such a skilled artist. The sight of them upon yours was nice. Right. Quite right indeed.

You hummed for a moment before speaking again. “Your fortune is very…fortunate. Much luck coming your way, yes indeed. You’ll make it through this all, you know.”

Should you have felt guilty for saying something you didn’t truly know? You couldn’t, not when you knew you spoke it as a promise. As you lived and breathed you would let no harm come to Ori. And beside that, thus might he find his own courage. In fact…

To a smiling Ori you continued. “You will find your courage. I see it. And you will go on to great things. Perhaps even find your One. Your One, yes… It is faint, I grant, but I can see her. She loves to read.”

He grinned. “Just like me!”

And me, you thought with a smile of your own, you know that. “Big fan of a good cuppa, too, she’s got one in her hand. Lavender, it looks like. Good taste.”

“That’s your favorite, isn’t it?”

Humming, you nodded. “I’m beginning to make out something beyond the shadows. Colors. A complexion.”

Naturally, you described your own in as vague a terminology as you could manage. Her dress was your favorite color as well.

“Another vision. It appears she wields a staff.”

That, certainly, was the cherry on top of the bullshit pile, for you wielded the very same and surely Ori didn’t know that many young ladies who carried such. Or if he did, maybe you’d challenge them.

“You’ll have all the wealth you can want, too. Certainly comfort will be yours, Ori. You’re meant to be a great scribe, a piece of the history of your people.”

“Wow,” your beloved dwarf puffed out his chest a bit at that, suddenly looking adorably proud of himself, “You can really see all that? Tell me more about my One- when do I meet her?”

“You should know that when it happens. Or if it has already.” Biting your tongue, you subdued the frustration threatening to rise into your tone, working back into the mysterious rhythm you’d been using. “Search within your heart and you will surely find the answers it seeks.”

“I will,” Ori replied, big brown eyes wide, “I already am! Thank you.”

Your name, sweet as always upon his lips, brought your ‘reading’ to a close and Ori’s hands folding dreamily upon his pad as his eyes drifted up toward the rolling clouds. Leaving you wondering, should you leave him be? Should you-

Motion alerted the peripheries of your vision, shifting over the grey-blue backdrop of sky and the distant horizon of trees and mountains. Ori had moved his head. Ori was staring at you. Glancing back away, you pretended not to notice, focused instead on that beautiful sky, the point of peace amidst the chaotic weeks.

When the sound of your name cut through your introspection, though, you finally turned to look him head-on.

"Can-can I draw you?"

Head cocked. Still the brown-haired dwarf looked at you with an intense focus you'd never seen before, focus tempered only by the faintest of fear, as if you might hex him or else he was a rabbit looking into an enticing trap, thrilled but worried for his life.

A thrill of your own slid down your spine. "Of course you can! Do you want me to pose?" You joked, leaning forward with your head upon your folded hands.

"No, I just want to look at you like you are. If that's alright, of course!" Ori hastily amended, charcoal in hand once more.

Heart leaping, you nodded and smiled. "It is. Of course it is."

"You know," Ori leaned in closer, eyes narrowing and widening again, "I never realized it before."

"What's that?"

"The way the lines of your smile trace," he answered softly, the sound of charcoal running gently over paper overtaking the flushed silence that followed.

~

Ori had been hovering about you more of late. Talking to you that much more. You, in turn, had been wearing that many more smiles, though you'd started to suspect you needed to have another vision. Practiced it in reflections upon bathing streams, clutching your head and stumbling until it looked natural. Of course, it would also have to be just the two of you lest someone like Dwalin or Thorin or worse, Fili and Kili, call bullshit and never let you forget it again-

"Are you alright? Are you scrying or something?"

Starting, you whipped your head up and lowered the cup of tea you'd been inadvertently grimacing into, suddenly aware that Ori had called your name somewhere beneath the muting of your reverie.

"Uh, yes. Absolutely," you answered, "Scrying. It's a bit harder to do in tea, you know."

"Of course," Ori nodded with far too much understanding and focus, "Well, I won't bother you then, maybe later-"

You were at his side, cup totally abandoned on whatever rock had been your seat, before he could even finish dismissing himself. "Bother me? Hardly. Wasn't even a good vision. Just something about Thorin failing to catch a deer for dinner. Not exciting at all. What did you need?"

"Oh, really?" Ori brightened, posture perking up. "Well, I was just wondering if you'd like to take a walk with me."

"Absolutely," you said, following his lead.

Into the woods you strolled, path crunching softly beneath booted feet and breeze whistling pleasantly past ears and over hair. Ori’s sleeve fluttered against the bare skin of your hand. Fingers momentarily twitching, you just barely resisted the urge to reach out and take his hand, sighing inaudibly into the crisp rush of woodsy air surrounding you. Ori led you deeper until you emerged into a clearing, a smile appearing across your face at the way the sun filtered onto the verdant grass.

“You’ve probably seen what I’m about to say,” he told you sheepishly when your gaze returned to him, “You surely know.”

“No,” you replied, “I, er, cannot see all futures.”

“Well, I’m glad for that, then, in a way. At least you don’t have to stop me telling you how I feel.”

How he…

“I can’t stop thinking about your vision, after all. Of my One. I was pretty sure it was you, but… Well, I got scared. Scared what I was feeling was too good to be true. Not actually it. Or that yours was someone else. Well, I think it’s me, if that’s all right, and I really like you, if you don’t mind my saying so. I really do. I can make you happy. I will. Whatever it takes.”

Your eyes widened at the way he reached out and took your hands in his, peering so earnestly at you, that soft, innocent smile upon his lips. Your heart was shot from its hammering soar, however, by arrows of guilt… and humor. Near-manic humor bubbling up out of your chest as laughter, laughter painted half with joy and half with every momentary shock you felt.

"You do already. I thought the only way to convince you I might do the same was by pretending to be a clairvoyant," you admitted, grip on his hands tightening.

"You were faking it?"

"You weren't making a move!"

"You were so convincing!"

"Well," you grinned, "That's because I really do think I'm the one for you."

"You're lucky I agree," Ori shot back with a shake of his head, "Or else I- I'd..."

"You'd what? Get me back with some bullshit of your own?"

"Something like that," was all he replied before his lips were on yours.

Those thin blades of sunlight struck your cheeks and shoulders, warming you far less than the plush of a gentle kiss and the clutch of joined hands. Ori's sweet lips were everything you imagined, respectful, loving, not prodding but simply reveling in the taste of joy. You held him close as you separated, running a hand along his cheek as the fireworks of finally continued bursting through your illuminated chest.

"See?" It was Ori's turn to grin. "I wasn't afraid. Not this time."

"Clairvoyant or not," you told him, mirroring the love in his eyes tenfold, "I wouldn't have seen that coming."

"Guess we'll have to figure out the future together."

"Now that doesn't sound so bad."

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