#(im writing this at 4am)

[much-ado-about-whomst]

So I've been seeing a lot of boycott the new hogwarts game (honestly I don't care enough to look it up atm, but if youve spent even 5min on tumblr you know what I'm talk about.) and I wanted to talk about it.

Now these opinions are probably going to be a little shocking, but please bare with me and give this some thought before you just respond.

Jk has already stated how she funds anti-trans orgs with the money she has earned from HP. And that is not okay, I hate that she does that.

But

I think the thing that really grinds my gears is that ppl on this website are sitting here and acting like Terf-queen rowling and chickfila are the only two conservative piggy banks that bank roll this kind of shit.

They're not

In fact according to this article, the top 5 companies to donate money to politicians to vote for anti-lgbt laws between 2015-2021 were

AT&T

GM

Anheuser-Busch

The Coca-Cola Company

NBCUniversal

Now, do you have to boycott these companies? You can if you want to. Thats your decision.

I could go on and on about the never ending spiral of, but what about what X company supports. What does company Y do?

The reality is this is a never ending cycle. An endless rabbit hole if you will.

Boycotting can be an effective form of activism. But boycotting a billionaire who's still earning royalties, won't get you very far.

If you guys are this passionate about this stuff then get involved with your local lgbt community. It also would hurt to get involved with your local goverment. Go to city council meetings, be apart of the community, help advocate for lgbt rights.

[gooptroupe]

As long as I need.

a continuation of this sketch

[ping-ski]

"Remember, no tears, okay?"

[deserthusbands]

cody: you need sleep.

obi-wan: i’ll sleep when the mission’s done.

cody: no, you’ll sleep now.

obi-wan: are you tucking me in, commander?

cody: if i have to.

obi-wan: ...okay.

[lizardbrainlabs]

sketched out all the human partners!!!

[inoreuct]

*drums my fingers on the table* so… weretiger zoro angst, anyone? (happy ending tho bcs. always happy endings) [cw: slight gore]

Zoro is on the hunt. There is something in the back of his brain snarling protect them, protect them, chase it down—

“—arimo!”

He’s so hungry. Hell, he doesn’t even need to chase— His prey is right there in front of him, fresh blood racing through its veins as its tiny heart works overtime. He can taste its fear at the back of his throat, and he bares his fangs in a grin; the poor thing screams, a sharp, high keen of terror as it scrambles backwards, and Zoro pounces. 

“—arimo!”

He is kind enough to give it a quick death. Its throat rips out easily, trachea crushing between his jaws as he slits its torso open with his blades. Blood sprays across his body. Why hadn’t he shifted? He spits out a mouthful of bone and cartilage, pierces his fangs through a forearm and yanks, feels something pop and hears a wet tear. This would be so much easier with his claws—

“Zoro!”

Oh. His human is calling for him. 

Sanji looks scared. Why, though? He drops the arm in his mouth, lets it hit the deck with a wet splat as he croons a soothing apology at not replying sooner. Gore is sticky beneath his boots as he stalks forward and he holds in a growl of irritation, nimbly avoiding the guts strewn across the wooden planks. 

Rumbling his reassurance does nothing. Sanji still looks vaguely afraid, and so Zoro tries again; safe, he purrs, and the tip of his tail does not swish through the blood puddled on the ground like it’s supposed to. He cannot feel it at all. 

The cook doesn’t budge. Zoro can smell his apprehension, his nerves, the slight sour tang of fear that makes him want to go hunt down whatever’s causing it and make it hurt. He smells it on the rest of his crew, too, and he doesn’t get it. The threat is gone, no? He senses no danger. Scanning their surroundings on the enemy boat yields no answers; all the men around them are still very, very dead. Zoro had made sure of that, so what was the problem? They should be back on the Sunny right now, sitting in the galley debriefing and having dinner—

Something clicks into place in the recesses of his mind, and dread starts to prickle through his body. 

He had been so… He’d almost eaten—

Oh, no. 

Zoro tries to shift the shape of his soul and fails. He does not feel his body changing. His shadow is, has been, in the shape of a man’s, and the blood on his skin suddenly feels disgusting. 

In the span of a moment he becomes hyper-aware of it all, pouring down his front, dripping off his chin, salty-sweet-metallic on his tongue. He turns to the side and spits multiple times, tries to get the cloying taste out of his throat as he raises a hand before realising that it, too, is coated in red. Zoro almost retches as he swallows instinctively, nausea slamming into him in a wave so strong that his stomach churns. He tastes bile. He’s thankful for it— It’s better than blood. 

Anything is better than blood. 

“Zoro?”

His head snaps around so fast that something cricks in his neck. His eyes are saucer-wide. Sanji takes a step forward and he is rooted to the spot, frozen statue-still; he is sure his heart stops beating for a second. Fitting. He knows he should step back— Knows now that he had been the threat, and yet he cannot move. 

“Let’s just… go back to the ship, how about that?” Sanji says tentatively, wincing as he kicks aside something that looks like a liver to put his foot down again, and he’s so close. Too close. “Let me—”

“No,” Zoro rasps, and God, fuck, he sounds like a fucking death rattle and he wants to claw his own voice box out of his fool mouth. The cook’s expression is a twist between desperation and something else, something that makes Zoro want to gag and cry and scream. Sanji should never look like that and it’s because of him. “No,” he tries again, quieter. He looks away. He doesn’t think he can stand looking into those blue, blue eyes. “It’s my mess, I’ll clean up.” Sanji makes a noise like he’s about to protest, and Zoro pierces through his own heart as he turns his back. “Alone.”

A beat of silence, and then Sanji is walking away. His crew is walking away. Zoro stands, surrounded by bodies he’d ripped apart, and thinks that perhaps this is how everybody that has ever been under his claws had felt. 

And that’s that. 

*

The following days are hell. He breathes in and everything he smells is wrong; anxiety, worry, an undercurrent of tentativeness that makes him throw himself into his training with renewed fervour. He is torn between the urge to bare his throat, show his belly and prove to his crew that they will never come to any harm from him, and the pride that insists he will not go against his nature to make himself more palatable for anybody else. 

He is all fang and claw and wickedly sharp teeth. He is a predator by nature, given humanity and a mortal form. This is the shape of his soul.

But they are his family. His nakama. And sitting here on the floor of the crow’s nest after running every kata he knows countless times, Zoro feels painfully, inexplicably sad. It is unfamiliar; he doesn't really do regrets, but it reminds him that at least some part of him is still human.

He lost control. He doesn’t do that, either. He never does that. But he did, and now none of his nakama can look him in the eye. 

Somebody climbs up the ladder, and his nostrils flare.

“Zoro?” Chopper asks, peeking his head up, and the swordsman immediately tries to look like he’d been busy, which… is ridiculous. He is sitting on the floor and moping. The sigh that whooshes from his lungs is defeated.

“Hm?” he prompts, when the tiny reindeer doesn’t say anything else.

Chopper climbs up fully, rubbing his hooves together. “I’ve checked everybody over except you.” 

Zoro can see the way he takes a fortifying breath and walks closer with a purpose. He stretches out his legs and allows Chopper to do as he wishes. 

“…We’re all worried about you,” the reindeer says after a while, staring intently into Zoro’s eye and testing his pupillary reflex. 

The swordsman gives a non-committal hum. “Scared of me, you mean.”

“No!”

Zoro jumps when a hoof whacks him across the forehead. “Wh—?!”

“We’re scared for you!” Chopper scolds, sounding dangerously close to tears. His distress turns Zoro’s stomach. “Do you know how scary it was to see you like that?! And then! You haven’t eaten in three days, and you probably haven’t slept, either, have you? Sanji’s been trying not to push because he knows you’re upset, but he’s been pacing a hole into the galley floor and chain-smoking like—”

“Wait,” Zoro interrupts. Replays that chunk of speech in his head. “You just said it was scary to see me like that.”

“Because we didn’t know what happened to you!” Chopper cries, huffing shakily. “And the look on your face when you realised—”

Zoro’s back bumps into the bench as Chopper grabs him in a hug, arms around his neck. His breath catches in his chest.

“Don’t do that again,” Chopper says firmly, shoving Zoro’s shoulder for good measure as he pulls back. “You seem okay, at least physically. Any pain?”

“No.”

“Any trouble shifting?”

“Haven’t tried.”

The doctor makes a noise, a cross between displeasure and something softer. “Well, try soon. Can Sanji come and see you?”

“…Yeah.”

“Okay.” Chopper stands, giving Zoro one last look. “For the sake of our cook’s lung capacity, come down to dinner.” 

Zoro sucks down a breath and holds it until it burns. He smells worry-care-care-anxiety-care and pats a hand over Chopper’s hat. “Alright.”

He sits back against the bench as their tiny doctor leaves, and within a minute someone is climbing up again. Sanji stands, silhouetted by the late-afternoon light. Zoro’s chest aches.

“Marimo,” the cook says evenly, and Zoro resists the urge to scent the air.

“Swirly-brow,” he returns, neutral. Testing the waters. “Heard you missed me.”

Sanji is silent, and Zoro’s heart gives a sickening squeeze. Has he overstepped already? He opens his mouth to say something, anything, and nearly jumps when he ends up with a lapful of gangly limbs, his spine pressed hard into sanded wood.

There are hands on his face, in his hair, lightly callused and holding him in place as Sanji kisses him like he’s got a point to prove. Zoro freezes up at first, because even in his human form his teeth are sharp and he doesn’t know what he will do if he draws Sanji’s blood. Maybe run away to live out the rest of his life in well-deserved exile. 

But then he smells salt, and something wet smears against his cheek, and Sanji’s lashes are clumped with tears as he pulls back and there is a slender finger jabbing hard into his sternum. 

“Don’t you ever,” Sanji hisses, poking him again for emphasis, “do that shit to me again, you fucking bastard.” 

He smells like bitter fatigue, acrid worry sharpened with anger and underneath all of it— love, lemon-bright and so goddamn sweet that it coats Zoro’s tongue like honey, wipes every memory of red iron and rust from his mind. “I’m sorry,” he breathes, eyes roving over Sanji’s face; the curled ends of his brows, the long lashes, the high cheekbones and strong nose and a sharp cupid’s bow, so familiar he could trace it in his sleep. “I thought you— wouldn’t want to see me.”

“Fucking bullshit,” Sanji spits, his face crumpling, and he goes easily when Zoro coaxes him to his chest. “Do you know how long I spent worrying about whether or not you were okay?” 

“I know,” Zoro soothes, and his heart is beating so fast that his ribs hurt. “I’m alright.” 

“Well, I’m not,” Sanji announces, digging his knee up into Zoro’s side with a vengeance until he gets a wheeze. “You owe me three packs of cigs. You owe the whole crew an apology. Luffy’s damn near lost his appetite; even Nami won’t so much as insult me when I try and get a rise out of her.”

Sanji’s glaring at him with the force of the sun, fierce and beautiful and golden-bright, but the dark circles beneath his eyes make guilt drag razor-thin talons across Zoro’s stomach. “You shouldn’t smoke so much,” he says softly, brows furrowing as he cards Sanji’s bangs out of his face and cups his cheek. 

“You shouldn’t go berserk and then isolate yourself without considering the fact that your crew would be worried sick about you,” the cook fires back without missing a beat. He leans into Zoro’s touch anyway, and Zoro smooths a thumb into the hollow between his bridge and brow.

“Weren’t you scared?”

“More— unsettled, maybe. Marimo,” Sanji’s throat bobs, eyes flickering over Zoro’s face. “Your eyes were slits. Like you were expecting to get attacked. We didn’t know how to talk to you without you panicking and running away.”

“I do not run—” he begins, scowling, and then shuts his mouth. What has he been doing these past three days, if not running away? “I think…” He digs deep into the memory, lays everything out in his head and ah. 

That man had crept up in Sanji’s blind spot, a wickedly long knife in his hand, and Zoro hadn’t thought. Hadn’t planned, just jumped. “He was gonna get to you,” he mutters, forcing himself to hold Sanji’s gaze even as the cook frowns. “I’m sorry, cook. I lost control. It won’t happen again.” 

The words are clunky and unfamiliar in his mouth. He’d almost eaten a man in his human form. That had to have looked all kinds of fucked up; he really didn’t blame his crew if they—

“Oi,” Sanji scoffs, flicking him in the forehead. “Are you always so distracted even with pretty people in your lap?” 

Zoro huffs through his nose. “Oh, I’m sorry, princess. Just contemplating how I nearly ate someone.”

The cook’s mouth twitches. “There are a great many jokes I can make about that, but I’ll save them for later. You’re a tiger, marimo. You were just protecting us. We really can’t hold it against you.”

“…You’re not scared of me,” he murmurs one last time, because he has to be sure.

“I’m not,” Sanji confirms easily, rubbing his thumb over the shell of Zoro’s ear, dragging through his earrings and making them tinkle like wind chimes. “Come down and the rest of them won’t be, either.”

Something in him gives. Shifts, releases, crumbles in his chest like a little collapsible galaxy as he pulls the cook down for another kiss. He feels Sanji’s tongue trace over the points of his teeth, utterly fearless— It steals the breath right from his lungs, this blatant, unwavering trust that he’s been allowed to hold cupped in his battle-rough palms. He gathers flaxen hair into his hand so that he can look the cook in both eyes, blue as the sky at high noon and crystal clear. Sanji leans into his chest with a ragged exhale and Zoro slides one palm up to the nape of his neck, one over his ribs, if only to feel him breathe, and the words slip out. “I love you.”

He doesn’t know why it feels like he’s never said them before. They must have crossed his tongue hundreds of times by now, his mind a hundredfold more. He loves Sanji, he knows; it aches under his ribs, next to his heart, woven into his soul. He loves his crew, he knows; he gives them leeway he would allow nobody else, and refuses to accept that he needs their affection as much as they want his. 

But it feels new. Every single time, it feels brand-new. Like a freshly-minted coin that never tarnishes, pure, solid gold— So he lets himself be greedy and leaves his fingerprints all over it, goes to sleep with it tucked in his fist like a child holding on to a dream. “I love you,” he whispers into Sanji’s hair, and he feels the cook shift in his arms, feels the same words shaped against his throat, teeth to bone, fingers around his heart.

He purrs the words subsonic, over and over even when his crew cannot hear. He will put them out into the world until his nakama know and he will think them a thousand times more. 

But for now, they have an hour left till dinner. Sanji is breathing slowly, his arms tucked against Zoro’s chest. The lines of worry between his brows are smoothed out.

Zoro thinks he’ll take a nap. 

[wasteofpain]

it really has been driving me insane the confidence with which oliver talks about his feelings for felix while undervaluing them to elspeth but how he becomes so little and raw when he has to tell them to felix.

scenes where oliver becomes so intimately himself like the one in the maze or the grave scene are literally baby sensory videos to me i can't look away at how he let's go in comparison to the scenes of him older trying to appear like this is all okay.

its the best example of the difference between feeling your feelings and intelectualizing them. he has thought about them and pulled them apart and analyzed every corne so he doesn't have to actually feel them.

the way he says "yeah i hated him" like he's trying to remind himself WOW

[sleepyminty]

Controversial takes:

In ng bad end drama, it was stated by yashiki that Rosé was a friend of Saya. Sure sounds normal until u realized that Rosé was actually a doll if u had Rosé killed during the investigation. And in the blue demise, after hearing about Saya’s death, blue demise!Rosé actually grieved over her death. What do i get out of this?

1. Whatever saya and rosé had is the equivalent of whatever yashiki and mashita have right now

2.It’s in the Kujou blood to charm haunted dolls and supernatural beings

[neurodiversebones]

it's the five year anniversary of my best friend's death and i'm coping via thoughts about brennan and grief.

sixteen year old brennan in foster care, facing the world alone and being so angry at everyone she's lost that she can't even feel the sadness anymore. furious at her parents for not protecting her. furious with russ for lying to her when he said he wouldn't let her go into foster care. furious at the whole world that she just doesn't seem to fit within.

brennan in her early twenties, graduating with yet another degree, and just feeling empty when she sees all her classmates parents hugging them and bringing them flowers. going home to an empty apartment to stare at the ceiling because it doesn't matter how incredible she is, it's not gonna bring anyone back to be proud of her.

brennan at 28 after finding her mothers remains. radio silence from her as she sits in her apartment trying to piece together everything she thought she knew about her life. staring in the mirror trying to figure out what parts of her are her mother, what parts are her father, what parts are real and what parts were lies. breaking the mirror in a rare moment where she just lets herself feel so angry at what the world has done to her.

brennan looking at baby christine and just crying. because part of her knows she would do anything to protect this perfect being, but the other part can't comprehend how anyone could leave someome they love so much. being so afraid that she won't know how to be a mother, crying and wishing she could just ask her mom for help.

brennan, burying her father, being orphaned for a second time over. despite knowing that she is so surrounded by love, feeling like the two people who loved her most in this world have abandoned her again. wondering what she ever did to deserve this.

brennan, trying to tell stories of her childhood to her children, but having to work through the haze and fog in her brain around every good memory she's ever had. realizing that every wall she put up is still standing strong, being so afraid that she'll make her children the same way.

brennan, refusing to get close to her interns for years after what happened with zack. no matter how intelligent, hard working, and truly brilliant they are, always having this feeling that something is going to go wrong and they will be gone just like him. finally letting her guard down and letting herself care, only for vincent to bleed out in her arms.

brennan, feeling a pit in her stomach every time she walks past vincent's plaque, the memories of his smile and the scent of his blood twisting together in her mind. the gnawing guilt that the best things in her life came to be the night he died.

brennan, who takes every change like its the end. who feels the changing seasons, her birthday, her friends new phases of life like everything is about to come crashing down. who looks around corners like a scared animal in case someone is coming to take another person away from her.

brennan, who feels like nothing but a vessel for grief some days. who, in a rare moment of self awareness, wonders how much more her body and brain can take. who feels more like a graveyard than a human more days than not. who spent most of her life feeling like a ghost.

[performapals]

hi guys. hello

[wizardsix]

i guess i have to say it a million times since people insist on being dense: gale is just as much of a victim as the other companions. this isn't the trauma olympics. everyone has been through shit and deserves healing and redemption.

gale is not the self entitled, manipulative abuser people are painting him as. he's a lot of things, but nothing so heinous. he was groomed by a goddess who has a history of preying on wizards that threaten her power, and as a result, gale's ambition and faith was what drove him to discover the netherese orb. what he did was for mystra - in his mind, it was to prove his love by restoring her missing power - and by extension for the betterment of mortals. his actions were never malicious or selfish, in fact he puts himself so low on the priority list it's pretty much non existent. he was never going to use that power to usurp her, but mystra definitely saw it like that, which is why she didn't hesitate to present suicide as his only solution. he never crossed her personal boundaries in the way people are twisting it, he only wanted to cross the boundaries she put on wizards and their power.

people who insist he's all of these things and more clearly only spoke to him once or lack the reading comprehension to see past how much of an unreliable narrator he is. i can understand first impressions might put some people off, but you can say the same about the other companion introductions. i don't like comparing but since people insist on doing it; gale is one of the easiest companions to get along with just by being a good person, yet his honesty and selflessness makes people think he's secretly evil? while the companions with the capacity to be evil don't even try to hide it? how are people being so backwards about this? it's genuinely baffling and tiring to see people continuously spit out incorrect takes all too confidently.

no one is forcing anyone to like him, but it's unfair to completely mischaracterize him because you refuse to learn critical thinking. i promise using your brain is not as scary as it seems, or you can just. not talk about things you don't understand.

[littencloud9]

"KUNIKIDA!"

The voice slices through the haze like a blade against ice—sharp, sudden, and groundbreaking. Kunikida lets out a quiet gasp, his eyes snapping to the source. He looks up, away from the endless crowd and towards a balcony, where someone is leaning over the railings, waving wildly.

"Ranpo," he whispers, the name ghosting past his lips and leaving behind a sweet aftertaste.

or, a prince, a knight, and all the ways they couldn’t say i love you.

👑 [G] 11.3k || kuniran (knight kunikida x prince ranpo)

🗡️ written for day 2 of @bsd-rarepair-week-2024 : dancing || royalty AU

[cowpants147]

I can't sleep so I'm just laid here and I started thinking about the Foxes that go on to play exy professionally and what they'd do after retirement:

Andrew

I know for a fact that this interaction happened during Andrews last press event after his last match.

Reporter: so Andrew, now that you've officially retired, what are you gonna do now?

Andrew: I'm gonna be a stay at home dad.

Obviously the reporters run w it and suddenly everyone's trying to figure out when Andrew had kids and who with all the while he's at home with the cats aka his children all day.

I also think he either starts coaching exy at a school or at a youth centre because he recognises the out that exy gave him and he's great with kids.

Neil

Neil's got too much of a mouth on him to go quietly into retirement so I definitely see him being a commentator and providing some of the highest praise and most iconic insults ever known to the sports channels.

I feel like he'd miss actually playing though so he'd probably become some kind of coach. Maybe even goes back to PSU to help Dan as assistant coach after Wymack retires.

Kevin

That boy was born and bred for his own sports related show. I like the idea of him and Jeremy hosting this exy post show where they go over everything that's happened in the week. Jeremy is ever positive, Kevin is harsher with his commentary but they've both got smiles made for prime time TV.

They have a 3rd on the panel reserved for a different special guest each week. Such special guests at one point include Neil, Wymack, and Andrew who only went on to see if he could get Kevin to crack and break character.

Matt

100% becomes a stay at home dad to his and Dan's actual human kids and their golden retriever. During this retirement press conference he says something about proudly being Dan's trophy husband.

Coach's his kids little league team, even if they're not playing exy. Makes homemade signs with the kids for when they go watch the Foxes play.

Buys Andrew a matching "best dad ever" mug the minute Andrew drops that line in his interview. When Neil teams up with Dan to coach the Foxes these two become random best buds, going out for food and and drinks together, sitting together at games, worldlessly teaming up to make sure Dan and Neil have lunch every day at practise.

+ Jeremy and Jean

The minute Jean retires he's done with exy. Jeremy goes on to do a shit ton of charity work and be on the weekly prime time exy show with Kevin but Jean is more than happy to stay out of the public eye.

They live on a farm or like in a super cute small town where nobody bothers them. Jean spends all day reading books, painting, takes up photography and becomes so good that he's hired by the locals for weddings, newborn pics, etc. He's a regular at the farmers market. Maybe if they live on a farm then he has his own stall selling eggs, jams, and family recipes that Jeremy passed down to him from the Knox family and that Jean has perfected over the years.

And they travel as much as they can! They have a second home in France and use that as their home base while they trav around Europe every chance they can get.

[hermesmoly]

tiny snippet of the Hera Enyo fanfic I will post soon🕺

[sora-of-uranus]

This is gonna be a mish mash of cultures and ideas so bare with me. In eastern Europe (specificly slavic countrys) the vampire was an almost ghostly spirit rather than our common undead sexy friend. They were trixters to some extent, spread disease but in the way rats do rather than the specific bite we know. They also didn't consume blood. So this is the technical truth aspect of this idk 'theory' (but more headcannon I suppose). From this, I headcannon, it evolved into two specific paths: the vampire as we know and the seer. Both evolved to revolve around blood since blood is commonly seen as a holder of the human spirit and life force making it a very powerful energy source. Vampires evolved specifically as almost undead creatures, focusing on that ghostly aspect and almost making the souls haunt the dead body in such a way that it becomes 'imortal'. The sucking of blood is to create a constant source of energy to power the 'possession' and inturn their existence- like food for us. The 'infectious bite' then becomes a combination of corpse germs and supernatual infliction that continues to create vampires- something their ancestor obviously did not have due to the lack of biting and corperal form. on the otherhand, seers found their powersource in blood by creating their own. Specifically in having a functioning human body. The living body acts as a conduit for the supernatural power wich is displayed by divination and prophecy, what which ghosts being conected to the past and human life being seen as something of the future. This ghostly ancestor also explains why Ethan can see ghosts when touching their objects, he's channeling that energy. Of course if having a living body was such an easy way to have blood the vampire would have done it too, the problem with using your own body as a conduit continuously is that it starts to degrade over time either with natural circumstance like being old as shit and dying, or your body contracting ilnesses. It's has it's ups and downs. anyway the idea of a common ancestor is so intresting to me, especially since in the few mythologys I research prophecy and disease are strangely commonly linked. And I mean blood has ALWAYS been apart of seeing the future, think of literally any form of animal sacrifice amongst religions. Or how in some underworld storys the souls must consume the blood of a sacrifice (not necessarily human!) to be able to comunicate.

[aibouart]

compilation of my other fav palette challenges from the years past... i should do them again sometime......

chara #9 belongs to @askbookwormflareon