#( this is a big one

[skulkingfoxes]

Kingfisher is 1920s occult mystery webcomic that updates weekly, about an amateur scholar and his roommate/bodyguard try to unravel the strange mysteries of the Kingfisher Box.  

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[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

🌸 !!CHAPTER ELEVEN POSTED!! 🌸

Title: Four Walls

Tags: slow burn, domesticity, friends to lovers, smut, pining post sias/pre am era

Summary: Disillusioned with LA and on the heels of a breakup, Alex goes to stay with Miles in London.

[butterflysweety]

JWCT S2 SPOILERS

THIS. OMG. I GOT JUMPSCARED I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS NGL LOL

[goodluckclove]

clove my kind comrade. i have a very emotional writing advice question for you. this turned kinda long, i apologize

i've been working on college applications these last few months, with the majority of that time taking the form of essay writing. and in these months it has been discovered that, at least to my dad's standards, my normal nonfiction prose writing skills are absolutely abysmal. i would write a draft, think i had everything pretty much shiny and complete, only to have everything i had worked so hard to finish absolutely picked to shreds by my dad and told i needed to start over. and there's nuance to this; i do quite literally forget a lot of writing tips and processes that worked for me, and it took last week's adhd diagnosis 17 years too late for me to stop hating myself for not being able to write a 300 word essay in a week. but this has left deep scars on my psyche and sent me for the most intense mental heath loop ive had in years.

that all contributed to a very intense anxiety ive developed about writing. i'll open a wip (or hell start writing an ask) and i will feel such a sense of dread. it's like i'm reaching into an oven that i know i've burned myself on so many times before. i can barely write a sentence before i start overthinking things too much and give up. this is specifically talking about my own personal writing. five minutes ago i opened my most self-indulgent wip that only four people on earth would ever be allowed to see and felt such an overwhelming fear of "what if it's bad". "what if it doesn't read this way to people". i've never had that before. i write what i write, and it's generally pretty damn good. but the anxiety i have about these stupid college essays has bled into MY work, MY own fun projects.

essentially, what i'm asking you is if you can offer any advice of how to conquer this anxiety. i know that an essay and a gay little fanfiction are fundamentally different things that cannot be equated with each other, and i know that other people's opinion on what is ultimately a self indulgent project can be easily and happily disregarded. but i can't have a self indulgent project if i can't even bring myself to physically write it.

this turned into a vent lmao. i hope you and Wife and the cats are doing splendidly.

Hi Bas! This ask made me deeply angry when I read it last night! Shame from artists, especially young artists just starting out in life and in their craft, apparently provokes a pretty deep rage in my soul.

I'm fine now. I'm at a coffee shop. Thank you for a pretty vulnerable and heartfelt insight into your brain-space, and I'm going to give it a pretty long and ramble-y response because that's what it deserves - and honestly, you've known me for long enough that I'm sure you kind of assume this is what's coming. Before that, though, I get the sense you're pretty anxious and drained. In the name of meeting your sincerity I would like to offer a look at the drawing my surrogate child demanded I draw for them after they saw the terrible Sonic the Hedgehog I drew from memory last night. Their prompt was "T4T Sonic/Shadow"

What do you think? I gave Shadow a wallet chain. I've never drawn fan art before but I do think going forward I'm going to give most, if not every famous IP I draw a wallet chain. This made me grin a lot because it's so fucking weird. Also it's not canon. Canonically Shadow would not smoke a blunt. Canonically Shadow the Hedgehog vapes.

Okay I made myself properly silly time for business. Come follow me into a hypothetical situation so I can talk to you (and anyone in your position - which is a lot of people your age) more intimately.

Okay, so I'm at a new coffee shop. It's open concept, fairly minimal an industrial in decor. I'm in this seated nook in the back at a bench by a large round table. The lighting is soft. There's a lot of plants and the baristas are like kind of anti-social which usually means the coffee is going to be great or pretty bad. Luckily it's the former - I got this iced maple cardamom latte. They have other drinks too. Tea. Your usual coffee varieties. They have a rosemary syrup you can put in lattes that I might try if I feel like I want another coffee later. Take my card and order something. I'll wait here.

You're back? What'd you get?

Mm. Fuck. I should've gotten that too. Nevermind, it's fine. I'll probably come back here again.

Okay, so college essays. I'm going to go ahead and just open by saying that college essays are absolutely not the same as nonfiction prose. Flat out, end of sentence. They're aren't apples and oranges - it's like comparing an apple and a used 2007 Honda Accord.

Good nonfiction means different things to different people. I personally enjoy a bit of humor and love for a subject, even if it's mundane to most of society. My wife prefers a Wikipedia-level of dry Academia. Different strokes.

College admission essays, however, are not good. They're really not. From a vague amount of research it seems this has been an issue for decades now.

You can still write like a bad college essay, don't get me wrong. Something riddled with typos or dribbled out by a generative AI. But if you look a little bit at what the people who actually check applications are, it seems the spectrum isn't "bad to great" as much as it is "bad to fine". My own college essay was some bullshit about how I learned about myself and the world around me by going to the grocery store before school and buying a baguette to have for lunch. It was stupendously mediocre. I got into college.

There's a lot of reasons for this. It could be because the average 17-18 year old isn't given the tools or opportunity to write really solid nonfiction - probably because the society we live in doesn't expect them to have anything to contribute in that way, but that's beside the point. You're taught essays. Ways to format papers that, from what I gather, only really apply in academic settings. When I was in high school the average essay had pretty stark parameters students were expected to follow, and from what I've heard those parameters have only gotten more specific.

With all that in mind, I understand why you're freaked out. If you look up tips on solid college essays the advice is like just comically vague. Be authentic! Focus on deeper themes! Pose a philosophical question! That last one actually made me laugh out loud when I read it, because it's so insanely discordant compared to how I've seen people you're age be treated. To go straight from people assuming you need your hand held on nearly anything to having a person say "Hey solve nihilism in 450 words " is baffling.

There's real advice in this odd, clickbait-y quips. You shouldn't feel like you have to play a character or pretend to be something you don't want to do, because that comes across in the text pretty easily. You should consider exploring a topic, because it reveals more about you as a person and that's valuable to the application as a whole. You - I'm going to go out and say you don't need to pose any sort of philosophical quandary at all, actually. That's a pretty wild thing to ask a huge portion of New Adults to be able to do.

So this isn't nonfiction. This isn't a think piece or a memoir, even though people might compare it to both. This is closer to a cover letter. You should still try, but do so knowing this is separate from your skills as a writer. Once you do that, you'll hopefully be able to relax enough to actually let your character slip into the work. What you mainly want to do is express a sense of your voice and sort of imply an idea of the type of presence you would be as a student at your school of choice. That's the point of the application as a whole. It's not going to win a Pulitzer. It would be truly, very weird if an admissions essay won a Pulitzer.

The other thing that I think might be making you and people in your shoes feel crazy is that you're in the period of your life when a lot of adults around you are going to say just the wackest nonsense. Oh this application determines the rest of your life! The stakes have never been higher! This is your future! You're setting the entire course of the rest of your life right now, somehow!

That obviously is also not true. Next year will be a decade since I graduate high school, and I still actually have no idea why some people had that level of intensity. It strikes me as incredibly counter-productive. I explained this to my kid, and they were shocked when I told them how many paths there are to get a higher education. You can get your first few years at a community college and then go to a university. You can go to a polytech school (They make them for the arts too! my brother went to Cogswell and it was such a cool campus) and get straight into industry experience. You might get into a university and transfer to a different one because it has a better program or opportunity.

All of these are cool. Not going to college is also cool, although it comes with other pitfalls. You can also go to college later on down the line. If you haven't figured it out yet, existing in the world is actually really flexible and open in terms of life choices. A college application, essay included, is not likely to play a huge part in the grand scheme of your life. The results of this will give you a sort of better understanding of your options for a plan for the next - like - year, maybe? It won't even determine it. It's more of a cool, maybe or a cool, I guess not right now situation.

It's also way harder for most people to work with a smaller word count. Less words mean less margin for error. That's stressful. You aren't a failure for struggling to write 300 words in a week when you can't choose the parameters of the writing, can't change the deadline, and probably have a bunch of people saying how crazy important all this is. Those are batshit work conditions for someone who doesn't have ADHD.

For someone who does, I can see how easily this would warp the perspective you have on everything else you do. Being picked apart by someone who hasn't been where you are in like 20+ years but still expects you to take their words as gospel? Confusing! Maybe feeling the inexplicable need to compare yourself to any published nonfiction you've read and loved, even though this isn't even nonfiction - and if it was, those writers have definitely been working in the genre longer than just goddamned now.

I think I've told a few people your age that this is the point where you kind of have to pick and choose how often you listen to the adults in your life. That feels irresponsible for me to say, but I do stand by it. When it comes to the transition between high school and college, most established adults are just crazy biased. Maybe because they raised you. Maybe because they're blinded by nostalgia and think that high school was the best part of their lives. Maybe they aren't familiar with the work you want to go into and what's needed to get a start in it. Or they could just straight up not understand how the college system works now.

It is such bullshit that you eventually have to craft a sense of internal intuition out of essentially nothing but it is a thing. It takes time, though. I won't pretend like you can make it happen immediately right now.

What matters is that you're okay. I promise you that - you're okay. Looking you straight in the eye, Bas, you're a good writer. Not "good for your age", I have read enough of your actual writing to know that you're pretty solid already. I've also read enough of your posts and had conversations with you to know for certain that if you wanted to pursue nonfiction you'd be pretty good at it right off the bat. This would be under the usual standards of a nonfiction writer, of course - meaning you get to pick the length, subject, and when you finish it.

You are in the unfortunate period of going through multiple transitions at once. It's hard enough to navigate the way relationships change when people decide (or struggle to process) how you're an "adult" now (also not really true in a lot of ways, but that's another ramble). But going so long under the assumption of having a Default Brain Experience and then realizing that all of the struggles you assumed were normal are actually an imbalance of chemicals is jarring.

It's treatable, yes. Once you get on a medication that helps with the dopamine everything is immeasurably easier, holy shit. But even then it's still painful at times because the difference is so palpable you sometimes stop and think why did it take so long for me to be able to have this? Why did no one see I was struggling? That was my experience, at least.

This is a crucial point in life where you have to be extra kind to yourself however you can. Once you get on stimulants, if you go that way, drink a lot of water and remember to eat (Some of them can make appetite wonky and I think they all dehydrate you). Be careful with caffeine because they do make you more sensitive to that. Maybe like just stop thinking about whether or not your writing is bad or doesn't work in certain ways because I am a Professional Writer and those kinds of thoughts have literally never been helpful to me. When they pop up in my brain I literally say "no" and force myself to think about something else.

Whether your writing is "good" is not an actual question. Is it coherent and does it contain a noticeable and unique voice? Yes. Is it what you want? I can't answer that, but if you say no the way to fix that is usually read more/write more/think more/share with other more.

Also does it read the way it should to other people? Stop it. Don't worry about that yet. You have to finish the damn thing or else it won't read any way to anyone. So much of writing is Second Draft You's problem.

Anyways that's all I have to say. My heart goes out to you for being pulled in so many directions. From my own experience it gets slightly easier once you submit the apps, but people do continue saying dumb nonsense until like midway into your first year in college. And if you end up leaving college for some reason or another people will keep occasionally saying dumb nonsense. But usually by then you're more equipped to ignore them.

You're going to be okay. You are an intelligent, insightful, artistically capable and deeply kind individual. Whether you share your thoughts and make your stories, true or not, through text or art or a mix of both, you have so much to offer. Just remember that.

Also I'm hungry. I've been writing this for a while and I didn't get any work done on the painting for my wife, but it's almost noon and I didn't have breakfast. There's an American Chinese place near here and they have pretty cheap lunch specials. Come on, get your stuff and let's take a break.

Mongolian beef yum yum.

[cornix-the-void-crow]

Here is updated colour design for RHD au Alastor. He became very purple

And here are notes on his design!

The reason why he became more purple is because contracts cause demons to shift their forms under influence of owner of their soul. Therefore Velvette's purple affected/infected Alastor's red and magenta (?) of his hair.

I am of the opinion that powerful demons and overlords can afford to wear less practical for their demonic traits clothing because they can defend themselves just fine without using everything in their arsenal. Other demographic that would wear impractical clothes are those under protection of powerful demons and expectation to look specific way, like actors and models. Average demon cannot afford that luxury, and so have to adapt their clothes to their demonic traits. Therefore, no shoes for Alastor, because he is no longer an overlord and has to use more things to his advantage. He has leg wrap things though.

Alastor, without his intimidation, is really pretty and cute, let's be honest. In fact, this prettiness and cuteness is what caused Velvette to essentially snatch him under Vox's non-existent nose. Because of that, Alastor can't hide his more cute aspects of his appearance, like his tail.

Even worse, under contract's influence, new cute traits started to appear, like fawn spot-like freckles.

The hair was cause of a lot of yelling, after Velvette learned that he has been straightening it almost every day for over 80 years.

High-waisted swing pants and bishop sleeves on Alastor is my favourite type of look, that would be the truth. In lore though, there is some gender fuckery that's going on with Alastor, because he quite literally wears what women wore (if they were to wear pants that were not workwear) in 1920s and 1930s.

The bowtie is actually ascot tie, tied in what is called a strawberry knot. It also has a little deer head tie pin.

Cane is a fashion accessory, but microphone is a conduit of power that is no longer Alastor's. So his microphone was morphed into a cane.

His eyesight was actually aided by his powers, and now, with most of the powers gone, he actually needs prescription glasses. They sit on his nose and have beaded chain looping around his neck, as to not lose them.

Make up is part of being a model, and while the make up stylist that works with Alastor on set is fine with being occasionally eaten, Alastor kinda developed a habit of doing some of make up himself, just to avoid unnecessary touches from others. (And here is where the vintage vanity compacts rabbit hole started)

The ponytail is stylish, and hair bow is cute, that's just it

You would ask, how can Alastor be a model if he cannot appear on camera? Well, he probably can appear on film photographs, shown by that photo with Vox. Therefore the modelling photoshoot would be made initially using early 20th century film cameras, which would be then digitised and posted on the Internet. Polaroids work too, weirdly enough, but not the modern ones that are more digitised

[likeamadonnau2]

A new chapter of You Wanted Me Alone, titled Baby, is here!

[beautifulterriblequeen]

TDP autistic-coded characters: Runaan

Inspired by this post, which gave me the kick I needed to create my own for Runaan. I’ve always kinda pictured Runaan as “Zuko but instead of befriending Aang he grew up and married Ethari.” 

I’m not going to go into how precious this headcanon is to me. You have headcanons that are near and dear to your heart. This one is near and dear to mine. Let’s go:

Physical traits

Sensory dampening

Autistic people often have sensory issues that result in them feeling overwhelmed, overloaded, or hypersensitive. It can result from a combination of mental and physical input, and autistic people develop a variety of coping mechanisms to deal with it.

One way to dampen an overload of physical sensation is with clothing. Loose and baggy works for some, tight and gently constricting works for others. It can turn overwhelming nerve input into a kind of white noise background so it’s easier to focus on other information.

Runaan wears a lot of clothes on missions, leaving only his face and upper arms exposed. I’m not talking about layers so much as skin coverage. While there’s a variety of coverage among the assassins, Runaan is the only one with long hair covering his neck, long pants, high boots, and gloves.

Though Rayla’s dressed very similarly to him, her hands are bare, giving her a more approachable and vulnerable look, as befitting a character trying to find out who she is. 

With all his layers of insulation, Runaan appears as if he’s trying to separate himself from, or protect himself from, the world around him.

About those gloves and leather gauntlets. It seemed a little odd (read: foreshadowingly important) that those gauntlets would get a mention in Callum’s Spellbook as part of Runaan’s look, but they’re in there. Runaan’s gloves are black, a nice dark undistracting color. When he moves his hands around in front of him, he won’t be visually distracted by the light hue of his own gloves. And he does use his hands a lot, as a major form of his communication with others, so keeping that contact to a comfortable level, both visually and tactilely, lets him touch and move as much as he needs to without overwhelming himself in the process.

Meditation

Meditation is another way to calm an overload of input, or to psych oneself up for something that will require a lot of focus.The first time we meet Runaan, he’s meditating while the others set up camp. 

Rayla’s been gone a while and he’s probably worried. It’s her first mission, and he vouched for her skills, so he can’t just go traipsing off to find her. He has to wait and trust her, so he spends his time calming and focusing. 

We also see him meditating in the dungeon, several times.

Even though the room was dark and quiet, all that sensory input from his injuries must’ve been intensely stressful. Falling back on his meditative coping mechanism was the only tool he had to handle the stress and pain of his environment and situation. But all his years of using this technique means that he’s pretty good at it. Every time Viren came in to pester him, Runaan was always able to keep his wits about him.

Stimming

Autistic people stim as a self-soothing technique when they’re hit with intense emotions--good and bad alike. They’re basically a way to anchor during a storm of feels until it passes, by doing something familiar and repetitive.

Runaan’s stim is clenching his hands. His hands are very clenchy when he’s stressed. With those dark gloves on, it’s not terribly noticeable, but they’re opening and shutting constantly when he’s worried over Rayla and how she’s endangering herself/messing up his mission.

Runaan is an elf of action. His skill set is entirely physical. When Rayla acts insubordinate on the mission, he knows he should punish her--a harsh physical tactic--but he quietly refuses to do so. Instead, he talks to her. And though he keeps his voice calm for the most part, he’s upset, nervous, off book. It takes him a while to be able to make eye contact with her (more on that later). And his hands start twitching, possibly because he’d be far more comfortable with a  physical fix to the situation, a tactic he’s far more familiar with but in this case he’s deliberately choosing not to employ.

Long hair

Devon Giehl confirmed way back when that Ethari braids Runaan’s hair for him (awww), and he’s really good at it. It’s possible that Runaan had a very different hairstyle, or not much of a style at all, before he fell for Ethari. Autistic people sometimes struggle with haircuts or complicated personal hygiene routines. Some very much enjoy the asmr of having their hair brushed, or the comforting weight of long hair. A warrior needs to see what he’s doing in battle. A Moonshadow needs to look stylish. Enter Ethari, who probably still cannot believe he gets to play with all this long glorious braidable hair every day. 

Maybe this beautiful hairstyle that we all love and adore and draw over and over in our art is Ethari’s creation, tactically designed to bother Runaan as little as possible. It’s not hanging in his eyes or tickling his neck or bugging his ears. He has a clear line of sight in all directions. No dangling fringe, unlike almost every other Moonshadow we’ve seen.

Those hair cuffs Ethari made keep Runaan’s side tails out of his way when he’s spinning in battle, too. There’s basically nothing that will get Runaan’s hair in his face.

And he hasn’t cut it in a very long time.

Interaction Issues

Processing time

Runaan comes across as a stoic and calculating character. He uses silence and stillness on the regular. These techniques can be used deliberately to give an autistic person time to process new information. Autistic people can have processing issues, hearing issues, and comprehension issues, and our first instinct upon hearing new information can be to blurt, “What?” because we don’t collect all the details on the first pass. Letting the mind continue to process for a few extra seconds can help to fill in the gaps, though. Remember this iconic moment? 

Runaan takes 17 seconds to make his way from “Give me the egg” to “Don’t do this.” He stands dramatically, the clouds part, it’s all very epic. But he could’ve acted the second that Rayla defied him. He didn’t. Looks like he genuinely needs a minute to process what Rayla is doing and how to handle it. It’s very unlike her. He wasn’t expecting it. He has no plan for this. He has to stop everything and think. So he holds still and keeps his reactions under wraps, until he has formulated a plan. Runaan lives by plans and rules. More on that later, too.

The Kiss

 Autistic people can be sensitive to being approached and touched. And martial arts training does wild things to your personal space. You have none and all at the same time. It��s vastly more comfortable to keep everyone at arm’s length because there are so many options to choose from if they get close enough to touch.

An autistic person and their loving spouse can easily create little rituals--social and verbal cues--to be recognizable indicators of desired behavior. Ethari’s line, “My heart goes out with this one,” acts as a code that Runaan has heard over and over. Ethari’s worried, and he’s seeking comfort. So he prompts Runaan and patiently waits for Runaan to respond and initiate the kiss in his own time. And Runaan does so, with the smoothness of long practice. He reaches out, he steps forward, and then he also steps back, breaking the kiss. 

Ethari chases the kiss as long as he can, but he does let it go when it’s clear Runaan is backing up. It’s clear that Ethari is an enthusiastic lover, and Runaan knows it. Though the kiss is complete, Runaan takes time to reassure his husband that he loves and trusts him, and he does that by ensuring a long moment of close eye contact and physical touch--both things that can take extra focus for an autistic person to offer. But for Ethari, it’s definitely worth doing.

Eye contact

Eye contact can be stressful for autistic people, and we often avoid it when we’re already uncomfortable. When Runaan takes Rayla into the woods to tell her she’s off the mission for being too soft, he can’t look her in the eye for the first part of their conversation.

He keeps looking in her general direction from the corner of his eye, but he can’t look her in the eye and tell her she failed him. It’s too uncomfortable for him. He has to work up to it for a couple of minutes. And though he does manage to meet her eyes for a short while, he ends the conversation by walking away while he’s still talking. As far as his plans extend at that moment, he’s never going to see her again. He believes he’s marching off to die, and he can’t look at her then, either. .

This look is Runaan’s emotional lockdown. Everything is tense and no feels are getting in or out. Hands totally fisted up.

Time Out

Autistic people can get so overwhelmed that we lose our temper, go nonverbal, or otherwise shut down, and we need to step away from the environment that’s caused the overload. Runaan lost his cool and yelled at Rayla when he learned that she’d lied to him about Marcos.

Losing his temper wasn’t good because he yelled at his daughter. But it was also bad because he lost his professional cool in front of his team. He had a little domestic right there in front of them. When you’re supposed to be in charge, especially in a culture that prides itself on cooperation and perfection, falling apart in public has got to be humiliating. 

The next time we see Runaan, he’s taking a break in a tree with his second while the other assassins chill, clearly waiting on him. He might have been here five minutes. He might have been here for an hour or more.

My favorite part about this is how Runaan isn’t alone. His friend has come to sit with him, but silently. He doesn’t ask any questions, he doesn’t try to touch Runaan, he just waits. And eventually, Runaan gets his focus back and talks about the mission. 

This moment is also an instance where Runaan needs time to silently calculate until he creates a whole new plan out of nothing. In this case, he’s deciding to set Rayla off the mission for being too childish to complete it properly, rather than executing her or otherwise punishing her as a full-fledged assassin. But first, he needs the time out, because he can’t make that plan until he’s emotionally calm again.

“Enough Brooding, Elf.”

When Viren dumped the coins out and Runaan saw that they were cursed objects that somehow contained his dearest friends, Lain and Tiadrin, he was so overwhelmed, shocked, and upset that he had his only eyeshake of the whole series, and he ended up going nonverbal. 

Everything that Runaan had done with regard to Rayla over the last several months turned out to be for nothing. She didn’t need to avenge her parents’ honor because they never ran away. Runaan didn’t need to fight with his husband and go into emotional lockdown. And he, his husband, and Rayla never needed to ghost Lain and Tiadrin in the first place. All that stress and emotional suffering was for nothing. And on top of that, the man who’d taken him prisoner had cursed his friends and imprisoned them this whole time. Runaan just can’t catch a single break. His voice drops into a stressed whisper as he says, “You’re a monster.” And then, judging by the next words Viren says a whole scene later, Runaan doesn’t speak again. 

Viren leaves him alone after the coin threat backfires, because he realizes he’s not going to get anything out of Runaan in his condition (and he could recognize this state because Soren is autistic-coded as well!). When Viren returns, he calls what Runaan was doing “brooding.” 

Brooding is generally defined as being two things: quiet, and thoughtful. No one broods out loud. But a nonverbal shutdown while chained to a wall is going to look pretty similar. Runaan can’t do anything to physically escape Viren, so his brain just switches off his mouth for a while. He has a lot of bad things to process and he has no room for responding to Viren in his state of extreme emotional distress.

Courtship Rules and Replies

From interviews with Devon and Iain, we’ve learned that Runaan fell in love first, but that he also needed Lain’s prompting to confess his true feelings to Ethari. One way to describe the difference between autistic and allistic people’s thinking patterns is to call one oft them Microsoft and the other Apple. They can generally do the same things, but the ways they get there are always a little different. Because allistic people outnumber autistic people, they have generally framed the society we live in, and we often feel like we must rote-memorize the rules of the world around us instead of using our own system. This does create a strong reliance on rules, and specifically on knowing the rules before proceeding. 

If Runaan had never courted anyone before--or if he’d tried to and it had gone poorly because Runaan didn’t fully understand the rules--he would be very, very hesitant to make the first move with Ethari. 

Additionally, Runaan was making all his good-faith efforts to show interest in Ethari via the proper channels, but meanwhile, Ethari was skirting the rules. He was interested in Runaan, but he’s a playful elf and was teasing his suitor by pretending not to be interested That Way. This might sound cute, but to an autistic person, such a lack of hoped-for feedback would be intensely exasperating. Runaan was trying to communicate in what possibly felt like a foreign language, and he didn’t feel like he was doing a good job of it. He was probably doubting his metaphorical grammar and accent constantly. Autistic people aren’t always good with reading facial expressions or unfamiliar moods, so he didn’t pick up that Ethari was genuinely interested and just teasing him. He was too uncertain and vulnerable to take the matter to Ethari straight out, but there was an elf he trusted fully: Lain. 

Lain could probably see Ethari’s interest when Runaan couldn’t. (And if I had to guess, I’d say Lain’s clue was Ethari’s intense eye contact, which Runaan wouldn’t notice if he was avoiding eye contact due to anxiety!) If Runaan was really so uptight and protective about his feelings, Lain wouldn’t have encouraged him to share them unless he was confident that Ethari would reciprocate. And because Runaan did trust Lain so much, he took that next step, confessed his feelings, and sure enough, Lain was right! Ethari loved him, too.

Free Time

Runaan’s birthday post for 2020 told us that he would prefer to spend the day reading alone, but he considers Rayla’s wishes and lets her decide otherwise. Runaan is more introverted than most and he’s perfectly fine entertaining himself, but Rayla drags him to the adoraburr meadow to spend time together, and because he loves her, Runaan lets her do it. If he were truly uncomfortable, he could put a stop to the whole thing. But he understands that this is how Rayla shows love, and so he lets her show her love through shared companionship, instead of shutting her out and keeping to himself.

Special Interest Sharing

Runaan tells Rayla that there’s an instinct to being an assassin. He has it, and he’s realizing now--only now--that Rayla doesn’t.

Callum’s Spellbook tells us that he began training Rayla to fight when she was just a toddler.

Autistic people often have special interests that appeal far above everything else, and can last a lifetime. For some it’s coding, photography, marathon running, or collecting something. Could be anything, really. Runaan’s special interest is combat. He’s a deeply physical elf who feels very present in his world, and sometimes too present (hence the gloves and the meditation). It’s only natural that he takes the body he’s got and trains it as hard as he can. Being ready for battle is a form of freedom for him. He can run anywhere and fight anything. His intense dedication to his training contributed to his promotions through whatever ranks assassins have, allowing him to contribute meaningfully to his community and his society through his service. Runaan’s special interest has made him uniquely qualified to lead the assassins.

When we meet someone we like, we tend to use our special interest as a form of communication and bonding with them: “I like you, so I will share this thing I love with you.”

Lain and Tiadrin had a precious baby girl, and Runaan and Ethari helped them raise and care for her. And the moment Rayla could move around, Runaan was right there, showing her all his favorite little tricks and techniques, steadying her, patiently demonstrating and explaining every little thing. Stances, physics, trajectory, angle of attack, center of balance, weak spots. All the physical things he knows and loves, he shared with his tiny new friend.

Having a full-grown adult pay her the respect of assuming she could learn all these things, even as a little child, must’ve been so important to Rayla and her self-image. No wonder they bonded so tightly. He truly believed she could do everything he taught her--and he was right.

Mental Effects

Hyperfocus

Autistic people can experience hyperfocus on a new and interesting person or thing. The more ways a person, like say, Ethari, appeals to someone like Runaan, the stronger his focus will be on them. All free time--and time that isn’t free--will immediately be diverted to thinking about and experiencing this delightful new phenomenon.

Runaan is described as putting his duty first, and he takes his job very seriously. But this is also the elf who deliberately damaged his weapons in order to have an excuse to see Ethari and ask him to fix them. To Runaan, the one thing he and Ethari had in common was weapons, so that’s where he started. Runaan gave himself a crash course in Ethari and his interests and ways of expressing himself, and found a way to speak the same language in order to ensure they’d connect. He literally hampered his own ability to do his job in order to find a way to connect with the craftsman.

Once they were a couple, he threw himself into learning How To Boyfriend so he could continue to communicate his feelings to Ethari in an understandable way. It was of the utmost importance to Runaan that he be able to speak a language Ethari could understand, so that he could tell him how much he loved him, and so that Ethari would believe it and trust it.

Small Talk

Runaan learned Ethari as a language, and he learned Rayla’s language as she learned his. He probably speaks Lain and Tiadrin fluently. But everyone has slightly different tics and cues in their speech, and they can all seem like separate languages sometimes. It takes true effort to connect with someone, to truly get to know them and all their little quirks. Runaan simply doesn’t have time to learn every single elf in the Silvergrove as a separate language. He’s learned how to connect with those he values most, and that’s all he feels he needs. Everything else is just small talk--a jumble of things Runaan doesn’t have room to care about beyond his special interest, his duty, and the few elves he’s taken such pains to learn so well.

[unfinished tdp meta]

[pe0ple3ater]

please write melissa/etoiles sounding if you want to because that sounds (pun intended) DELICIOUS.

the way you wrote melissa domming him… oh it’s so perfect. i simply adore etoiles content.

- ✒️

YESS sounding...sounding Etoiles specifically. My dream. Okay, this is not the best but I've been thinking about this since it was requested. Here you go!

They've done this a few times, so Etoiles is utterly relaxed in the seat he's tied in. Despite the red ropes around him, he squirms in anticipation. He's wanted to do this forever and been patient and good enough to indulge.

"Miss, I am going to die if we do not start soon," Etoiles whines, typically not one to speak out of turn, especially with Melissa. Still, he's so eager that the buzzing anticipation under his skin is starting to make him restless and uncomfortable. Melissa hums and looks at him, cooing and letting her eyes drag over his body.

Etoiles tries not to preen at the attention. His hands are tied behind him to keep them out of the way, and his legs are tied to the legs of the chair to keep him still. He's entirely naked other than the collar around his neck, bright red leather, the one he uses for Roier and Melissa. He breathes slowly and straightens his back, looking up at her with big eyes.

Melissa laughs at him and pats his cheek gently, cupping his face and smiling when he leans into her touch. He turns his head to kiss her palm, and she moves her hand back to scratch at his scalp.

"Be patient, perrito. I'm almost ready." Melissa says and kisses his cheek; Etoiles' face burns, and he nods. He forces himself to relax, laying his head over the seat's backrest and closing his eyes. He focuses on breathing and the feeling of rope around his wrists to satiate himself.

Melissa's hand wraps around his cock, and Etoiles hums, lifting his head and looking at her. Melissa smiles and drags her hand up his dick slowly, and Etoiles' breath catches. He fights to stay still, pulling at the rope around his wrists and feeling it dig into his skin.

"Good boy, stay still for me. I'm going to start," She says, reaching to the side table to pick up a thin metal rod. Just looking at it has Etoiles whining and shivering, body feeling like it's on fire from the anticipation. "We'll start small, okay, perrito? So you can get used to it; if you're good, we'll go bigger," she explains, and Etoiles is so thankful for her gentle reassurance. As much as he's excited, the thought of a metal rod in his dick is enough to put even the bravest men off a bit. Etoiles nods and takes a deep breath, shaking his nerves off and relaxing into the seat. He trusts Melissa; she's the perfect blend of cruelty and kindness for Etoiles—a push and pull between pain and pleasure, just like Etoiles needs.

The sound is drenched in lube, and Melissa pours more over his dick to make sure. She presses the tip of the rod to his slit and looks up at him, gazes soft "You're positive?" she questions, and Etoiles nods again, swallowing hard.

"Yes, please," he whispers, voice already a little hoarse and breaking. Melissa nods and slowly presses the sound into his urethra. Etoiles' jaw clenches at the feeling. The stretch hurts, but the feeling of the rob inside of him feels like nothing he's ever experienced before. Melissa is staring at him, watching his reactions closely to make sure he's okay. Etoiles pants, and once the sound is as deep as it can be, Melissa wraps the hand, not holding the sound does a long drag up and down his cock.

Etoiles gasps, hips twitching up just a little. It feels so good that he's dizzy, close to when Melissa forced him into a prostate orgasm, but still not the same. Melissa coos softly and pulls the sound out a little before fucking it back in. Etoiles groans and whines, nails digging into his palm.

"How's it feel?" Melissa questions, jerking Etoiles off slowly and smiling up at him. Etoiles' brain scrambles for the words to describe it. His eyes flutter, and he whimpers desperately. Melissa doesn't help, moving her hand faster and giggling at him.

"It's-" Etoiles gasps and throws his head back, the feeling washing over him so intense it takes his breath away "-good. So good, miss," he chokes out, voice high and whiny. Melissa smiles at him, and Etoiles shivers. He's so close, teetering on the edge. He whimpers and looks down at Melissa between his legs. His body curls into itself a bit. "Close," he whines, and Melissa coos.

"You're going to cum for me, perrito? Such a good boy, cum for me," she says softly, jerking him off quicker and smiling at the way he thrashes a bit, and his head falls back.

Etoiles' vision whites out, his back arches, and he chokes on his moans. He's shaking like crazy, and Melissa is still jerking him off, sending sharp spikes of overstimulation through Etoiles' body. He gasps and jerks, hips twitching up into her hand, broken whimpers leaving his throat.

It takes a second before Melissa finally decides he's had enough. She very slowly pulls the sound out of him, every inch making him groan in a delicious mix of pleasure-pain. She sets it aside gently and stands, looking down at Etoiles with a smile.

Etoiles falls asleep, satisfied and hazy.

Etoiles is dizzy. His ears are ringing. He closes his eyes and tries to catch his breath; vaguely he registers Melissa untying his hands and legs, cleaning him, and stepping away. Etoiles floats in post orgasm haze and allows Melissa to pour water down his throat and lead him to the couch. Melissa sits and pulls Etoiles to lay with his head on her lap. She pulls a blanket over him and runs her fingers through his hair. Etoiles' eyes close. He melts under her hands and shivers.

[wintershub]

I am cooking with Poms muse list

[baronaliswritingcorner]

Legend of the Warbling Banshee Ch. 8

Fandom: Fire Emblem Three Houses

Pairing: Felix Fraldarius/Annette Dominic (Felannie)

Summary: Wherein Simon Dominic gambles it all on one last performance.

Commentary: There's two certain scenes here I've been dying to share for at least half-a-year -- I'd like to think they'll be quite obvious, but in any event, please enjoy! https://archiveofourown.org/works/52915033/chapters/151214170

[lyriumrain]

Anyone what it means when your brain is constantly flip-flopping between thinking "I'm the best!! I'm amazing!!" And "I'm unbearable and stupid and should just die" ?

[countlessgifts]

Help! Curly hair Luffy is to gosh dang cute! WIP

[4aceclover]

I think the manga just gave us a way to let Shirley gain her human form again

The manga goes out of its way to show how the fragment of favor physically affects the morphs around them and it also goes out of its way to saying this

This means that not only can Shirley possibly gain her human form back and a bit faster than what we expected but this also means another character could potentially come back to us as well

(For anyone who doesn't remember Douglas had a very kind senior that he looked up to named Finn, but because of his old leaders habits of blaming others for his mistakes the poor boy got disposed of, with this being the most likely outcome being his living doll got turned into a veil doll like Rum while Finn himself ended up becoming fuel for the shadows house)

If this theory ends up being true not only can Shirley gain her human form back a bit quicker or there could be another morph that could bring back other living dolls who lost their masters and heck other dolls whose Shadow Masters were unfairly disposed of could come back they just need to be rebuilt from the ground up or find their own identities

I mean after all the manga does make it clear Shirley never actually reunited with Rum after they saved Louise and Lou it could be possible that she still in the unification room if that's the case where is she now plus we also got to see her expelling soot in that tiny morph form for the first time ever

Plus after the most recent chapter monologue gave us all that crazy information it definitely feels like the Manga could be building up for Shirley and Rum to have a big moment.

After all everyone else has had a great moment where they've grown stronger in a way

Physical by

like John protecting Kate's honor,

Patrick increasing his power exponentially, or

Mentally by

Louise finally realizing Lou doesn't belong to her,

and Kate herself has had some pretty good moments.

So why have all this buildup and not have it be paid off by allowing Shirley to essentially exploit the system that we just got laid out before us

And since Christopher is using the morphs to bring back his master, and her power allows her to transform into other people or creatures just by wearing the switch she emits, she essentially has a stronger version of the morphs already given mimic power. If she did have a little bit of that fragment of favor not only could she grow her human form back a bit faster, her soot expulsion could be stronger. Allowing her to transform herself into Christopher if they ever need her to so that way she can learn more about his plans and relate this information back to her beloved Rum and Kate, after all Rum is the only one of Kate's classmates who never drank that coffee Barbara gave everyone during the party, (and it could be possible that she's there during the party and witnessing all of this) meaning the only real living doll not brainwashed is Rum. Which means we could have an actual moment where Rum and Shirley could finally shine

(and plus this would make up for the fact that these two were supposed to be the ones to save Louise and Lou, but instead they opted to give that moment to Anthony which almost got the two girls killed. Plus since Anthony and Rum have worked together, but it's obvious she doesn't trust him, we need to be on the lookout for this man. Considering the fact that he's perfectly fine with killing off people who are like him, I do not want him anywhere near Rum.) (But my previous post I've already proved how angry I am at him for doing that and how I want him to stay away from the little angel)

[lesbian-in-leather]

Audition time lads........

[baby-girl-e]

YOU GUYS!

My first Red, WHite, And Royal Blue fic is UP ON AO3!!!!!!

This one has big emotions so read with caution!

This is also very personal to me so please be kind this is me being extremely vulnerable!