#(this is a personal hangup not a judgment on anyone else)

[aethersea]

And We Danced and December

If you have energy for both.. otherwise dealers choice :3

Man I wrote up an entire answer and then tumblr ate it >:( Most disheartening. But! I can do better the second time, so there.

I’ve done december here, so we’ll do And We Danced! This is the Bridgerton au of Stranger Things, which I’ve been posting snippets of here from time to time because, frankly, I think it’s hilarious. There’s just something so funny to me about jarring register shifts, and I’m writing this whole fic in regular teenager vernacular except the dialogue, which is 100% in the Regency-era style of Bridgerton. Ah, I crack myself up. What a nerd.

It's named after the 1985 song by The Hooters, and it was almost called Liars In Love (after a lyric from that very song) because that's what Steve and Robin are! In this game of love, they're lying through their teeth! But it's a lot to expect readers to understand what I mean by that, and specifically to understand that I do NOT mean that they’re IN love. And I like the joy of And We Danced. These kids could use some joy.

I’m probably only ever going to actually write one scene, the one where Steve and Robin decide on their fake-courting scheme. But I do have a bunch of other stuff hashed out for this au, so I’ll just use this ask as an excuse to babble on about it, thanks anon <3

Mike and Lucas each have a title to inherit.

Dustin’s dad was a successful merchant, who upon his death left Dustin’s mom with enough capital and investments to keep her in comfort the rest of her days. She’s canny enough at maintaining the investments, and sensible enough to live within her means, so her funds stretch to send Dustin to a good school and give him plenty of opportunities. Dustin kind of wants to follow in his father’s footsteps, but he also loves science enough that he kind of wants to be a scholar. His mom is super indulgent and insists that he should do whatever he wants, the money will sort itself out.

Joyce runs a reasonably successful tailor’s shop – it used to be Lonnie’s, but when he ran off and left her with more debts than business, she took over and kept the place running by the skin of her teeth. Most of Lonnie's clients were willing to work with Lonnie's wife instead, but most of them also tried to bully her into taking worse deals. A few of the clients just refused to do business with a woman altogether. But the other boys' moms doubled down on hiring her for everything, and talked her up to their friends too. This was years ago now, and Joyce is no longer scrambling desperately to keep the bills paid. She doesn't need their support to keep afloat. But there is a – not a friendship, perhaps, but a camaraderie. They all know they can rely on one another.

The boys all played together when they were little, because social class matters less when everyone’s five. At eleven, they’re getting too old for it to be socially acceptable, but their parents are mostly turning blind eyes to it because, well, they like their sons. They like their sons’ friends. They don’t want to deprive them of this until they absolutely have to.

Max’s family is from The Americas. Her stepfather is a minor lord who’s here to settle some family affairs, and has timed it so Billy can experience the Season – practice for when he gets himself a wife, though Billy’s father scoffs in the same sentence that he’ll never be good enough to net an actual English lady. Max’s mother is of the American upper class, that New England elite that thinks highly of themselves and yet is thought so little of by the British. She might be (gasp!) divorced, or she and Neil might both be widowed. 

Max is too young to come out, so she’s supposed to stay at home all day doing nothing. Practicing piano or something, idk. She hates this, and instead sneaks out dressed as a boy to experience the city. This is how she runs into the other kids.

[tossawary]

Between the “pretending to read a book so he doesn’t have to talk to Shang Qinghua or Liu Qingge but accidentally holding it upside down” incident and the “being forced to learn to read by Qiu Jianluo” aspect of things, I’ve been thinking about an interpretation of Shen Jiu who just actively dislikes reading.

Maybe being forced to learn to read by Qiu Jianluo has given him trauma-related hangups over reading! Maybe during his time with Wu Yanzi, Shen Jiu’s only reading materials were stolen, possibly from the cultivators who were murdered by Wu Yanzi, giving him even more trauma-related hangups. Maybe Yue Qingyuan’s recommendation getting him onto Qing Jing Peak gave him resentment surrounding the idea that Yue Qingyuan wanted to forcefully “improve” him. Maybe ruthlessly playing catch-up to his peers (who may well have disliked him for his sudden appearance and strange background) in the arts practiced by Qing Jing Peak made reading a grueling task necessary for advancement, killing off any joy in reading for fun or curiosity.

Or maybe Shen Jiu has dyslexia or needs reading glasses! (I know this potentially means SY would experience these issues and he doesn’t appear to have these problems in canon, but we already handwave away how brains work regarding both SY’s transmigration and his plant body, so whatever!) Maybe Shen Jiu is just not fond of sitting still and would prefer audiobooks if they were an option, so he could do something else at the same time. Maybe he just doesn’t enjoy reading for no particular reason.

I like this interpretation particularly because I think that Shen Yuan would be a little horrified by it. Like, yes, he understands logically that a person can be well-educated and intelligent without enjoying reading, sure! But reading is kind of Shen Yuan’s whole thing. This is the guy who had [Expert] after his username in the comments section part of the Airplane Extras. He at one point claims that he’s been reading stories like PIDW for 10 years and he appears to have made being an “expert” reader a huge part of his personal identity. I don’t think that Shen Yuan could fully wrap his mind around the idea of anyone actively loathing reading, even if he was trying to be respectful and reasonable about it. He would totally squirm judgmentally at first. Doesn’t compute.

And, of course, Shen Jiu would then turn around and judge Shen Yuan for too much reading. Equally if not even more judgmental “go touch grass” opinions. I enjoy fics where Shen Jiu and Shen Yuan interact, and I enjoy it when those interactions are positive, but I also enjoy when they’re a little incompatible. Totally different people even if they are getting along.

[saigontimemd]

Thoughts After C3E107

I think I'm getting irritated with Campaign 3. It took me a while to figure out why, but after the conversation with the Archheart, I think I've got an answer.

It's the huge mismatch between the story the DM wants to tell and what the characters of the party are capable of as people. I don't mean combat-wise, I mean personality-wise.

The narrative issue - what to do about Predathos, what to do about the Weavemind's forces, etc. - is one that requires characters to make a commitment to a course of action that takes all factors into account, and Bell's Hells as a collective are not fundamentally capable of doing that. Most of them are either apathetic to the gods or actively hostile to them; a lot of their attitudes are myopic and selfish.

The forces of the Red Moon are set to invade and colonize the planet, killing hundreds if not thousands of people as they assert themselves in whatever way they want.

Everything held in place by divine magic - such as it is currently - will be unleashed if the gods depart. We've seen that in small form with the demons that overran the Iridon Bastion - a lesson none of the Hells seemed to have realized will happen to the whole of Exandria without the gods' magic.

Ludinus clearly has designs on conquest, and he's arguably the most powerful arcane magic user in Critical Role right now, to say nothing of any powerful servants or sycophants he's able to draw to himself.

Almost none of the Hells seems to realize this - or at least give a shit about it.

Ashton blames the gods for every terrible thing that's happened to him, and hates them on principle anyway, petulant child that he is. FCG would be horrified at his friends' actions.

Dorian is consumed with vengeance, a dark inversion of his father's experience with far-reaching politics, and would rather see the gods destroyed if he could work his will, ignorant and/or apathetic of the countless lives that would be lost just to avenge his brother.

In spite of being revived by the Everlight - a life-changing, paradigm-shifting experience for most people - Laudna continues to be apathetic at best about the gods, seeing them as distant and irrelevant.

Fearne, even having made strides in not being so mindlessly selfish, is still too enticed by the chaos and possibilities of a world without the gods to feel too strongly about saving them. She's got power approaching divine within her very being at this point, and she can theoretically protect her friends, so who cares about the rest of the world.

The rest are wild cards.

Imogen still isn't quite sure what she wants, whether she wants to even be rid of her powers or not. She's shown signs of understanding the bigger picture, but she'll go whichever way she feels in the moment.

Chetney has seen kingdoms rise and fall and understands that dramatic events are necessarily the end of the world, but also seems to recognize a catastrophic possibility when it presents itself. He's concerned about himself (and the rest of the Hells to a lesser extent) but as long as the decision doesn't pertain to one of his few hangups, he's made historically sound decisions.

Orym, Captain Exandria, is about the only member of the Hells with his head screwed on straight, but his complete inability to see himself as anything but a disposable bodyguard has prevented him from taking the reigns of this unwieldy beast of a party in spite of proving himself hundreds of times over to have more sound judgment than anyone else. He doesn't care much for the gods in general, but out of anyone he's the one who understands their necessity in both the wider ecosystem of Exandria and their aid in the coming conflict.

Now, the party is not alone in this. Matt, for better or worse, has not only put this monumental decision - save the gods or not - before a party that mostly dislikes the gods, but has almost completely failed to impress upon them the value of keeping the gods. There have been moments (the bull in Uthodern, the Iridon Bastion) that's shown a world without them, but the players aren't transferring this information from the context it first appears in to a greater understanding of the consequences of the path they're on. They're not fucking getting it. If anything, he's continued to present various perspectives on getting RID of the gods, to the point where it's been obvious there's a disconnect at times between what the players as people want to do and what the characters they're playing would do.

I'm still enjoying the performances and storytelling, but it's been an increasingly frustrating experience watching the characters stare the fate of the world in the face and just kind of give a shrug. Campaign 2 was my introduction for CR, and it felt like that campaign had a good balance between morally ambiguous heroes and doing the right thing, but Campaign 3 feels like it's gotten lost in its own moral complexity. I don't mind an 'evil' campaign, but this just feels like watching a bunch of selfish assholes twiddle their thumbs over the end of the world.

[an-organism]

sort of continuing on an earlier ramble or two - core contradiction of hermione is that she thinks systematically and values systematic thinking but often makes snap judgements and decisions on pure gut instinct and systematically justifies them after the fact, which leads her to act idiosyncratically. ruthlessness is arguably her single strongest defining personality trait in that she’s pathologically goal-oriented, relentlessly so, willing to disregard any obstacle for the sake of a mission, but she also has these weird hangups and grudges and pet causes that are rarely productive in or of themselves and hardly ever serve a greater goal. things will just rub her the wrong way and she can’t get over them, or they won’t and she’ll get over them before anyone else does because it’s necessary that she does so, and there’s not always an obvious pattern.

everyone else sees spew as a dead-end cause, it’s ill-constructed and there’s very little going on in the way of coherent grand strategy, but she decided it was important and couldn’t let go of it, and she was going to do it her way and no other way. there’s no reason for her to despise divination as a school of magic beyond just straight up hating it on principle, regardless of its eventual importance to the war in the way of prophecy, etc. meanwhile she has every reason to hate snape, who is frequently a dick to her specifically and has been for years, but once it’s established he’s on their side she’s among the first to compartmentalize, because they’re at war and he’s an ally and that’s what matters.

it’s the irony and the hypocrisy of her near-universal revulsion to the irrational often leading her to act irrationally in disregarding genuinely useful things she instinctively deems irrational. she's 100% do as i say and not as i do; rationality is both one of her greatest strengths and her most significant blind-spot! that’s just good character construction tbh

(this is also why i love the idea of her simply not being able to stand luna, who not only represents everything she hates in terms of the irrational, but worse, is sometimes actually right about things)

all those snap judgments also make her weirdly averse to outside influence- she does listen to others if she’s already decided she values their perspective on a particular issue (dumbledore and mcgonagall come to mind), but even then, once her mind’s made up it’s not likely to change, and the mind-making-up process can happen super quickly. sort of a positive and negative leadership quality; if you need a decision made in a high pressure situation, she can make a decision and stick to it, but she's probably never going to be a great listener, and there's always a chance the whole thing gets sidetracked to follow a hunch. the hero you need but not the one you want, i guess. (she would not be great for morale.)

she's like if you designed a person specifically to be invulnerable to hypnosis. if she'd gotten tom's diary i legitimately don't know if she'd have ended up taking over the world, deciphering the horcrux plot in its entirety, driving tom insane, or just throwing it away after an hour (isn't there a fic about this?)

i almost want to make her a seer just to see what the fuck she'd even do with that. curse her with unexplainable visions that keep coming true despite her best efforts to prove them wrong, pure magical thinking that she can never escape and has to force herself to trust, an instinct that betrays everything she stands for. oh my god she'd hate it

[littleabriel-blog]

As someone who's been in kink for a couple of decades, all of this is entirely correct.

"Squick" still gets used a great deal in the kink community as a way to avoid kink shaming. It's basically the short version for "your kink is not my kink and that's ok". Saying that someone's kink is gross sounds judgmental. Squick kind of diffuses that....rather than say it's gross which basically implies "I don't like this and therefore I don't think anyone else should do it either" it's more "Look, I don't like this personally but you do you". It's been around for years.

It needs to be more widespread, but sadly you have way too many people who can't "live and let live" and have to project their personal hangups onto everyone else. "I don't like it, therefore other people shouldn't be allowed to do it/write it/read it" seems to be the growing trend, especially among younger people. And it's disturbing.

Lmao you’re an adult, you shouldn’t be using the word squick. Use trigger. Use your grown up adult words to explain how you feel instead of leaning on a cutesy uwu term that no one outside of tumblr uses. It’s embarrassing.

Idek if this is serious or ironic honestly

[compassionatereminders]

Wow, people coming out the woodwork with the most dumbass takes ever, again. That fuckwit really just implied talking about sex is bad for recovery somehow? A cAsE mAnAGgEr my ass, people who are this shallow and judgmental and stuck in the framework of their own divorced-from-reality puritanical ideals have no business working with anyone mentally ill or disabled, that just sounds like a person that'd be determined to make others' lives as miserable as they have the power to do and feel righteous in doing so. And again, people continue to miss the point of this blog, which is not therapy and not recovery counseling, but your personal space, and has never been advertised as anything else. You're just some chick with schizophrenia posting positivity and occasional personal things, not a recovery role model and not a medical professional aiming to guide anyone through recovery (don't know where they got it from that your goal is to do that), they can take their hangups about sex and contempt for drug users elsewhere.

Yeah I'm literally just some person writing and reblogging things in order to entertain myself and improve my own mental health. Of course it makes me happy when I manage to help other people feel better too, but this is a personal blog when everything comes down to it - not a professional resource for other people. And I've said that from the start. If I'm your role model, then that's YOUR issue!

[mbti-notes]

Hi mbti notes, I'm an enfp dealing with the issue of transition: when developing my aux Fi, i realized that i wanted to be a man. Like most enfps, my Ne-Fi led me to live in many different countries and cultivate many friendships over the years, so my friends are cool and accepting. however, i would like to know the best strategy / possibility for handling this in a professional situation. My company is cool and forward-thinking but I'm struggling with Ne and aux-Fi development

[con't: Although i like the work itself and find my colleagues open, cool & friendly, i realized that I find it difficult to express myself around them; instead becoming paranoid and worried about whether people will accept/reject me. In addition, it became very difficult for me to come up with conversation topics to discuss with others - my brain feels like it's perpetually made of swiss cheese. as a result, i noticed people distancing themselves from me and only approaching me for Te-related matters.]

Relationships are inherently risky. You can't control what other people think, how they feel, or how they behave. Nor should you have such control because it's their business - not yours. Do you think it's reasonable to hold yourself responsible for other people's existence, including all their hangups, biases, and prejudices?

The only thing you really have control over is yourself and whether you present yourself to people authentically. Generally speaking, if you continually choose to be inauthentic, be it out of fear or some other reason, your relationships won’t advance, because people will never know who you really are. When you don't let people in, they have little incentive to make an effort with you.

That said, it is very important to draw healthy boundaries in relationships. No matter what you do, there will always be people who dislike you for their own reasons. Not everyone has your best interests at heart and you don't want to put yourself in a position to be victimized. At work, there should be a boundary between professional and personal life, otherwise, your relationships will get messy and complicated very quickly, which might make it difficult for you to do your job well. It isn't always a good idea to get close to people at work, depending on the workplace culture you're dealing with.

With regard to transitioning, it’s better for you to speak with people who have gone through the process. All I can say is that each person's journey is unique. Some people choose to move gradually and give everyone around them time to adjust. Some people choose to move quickly, like ripping off a band-aid. It is not for me or anyone else to tell you what is classified as "private” vs “public” in your life. You have to trust your instincts and exercise your own best judgment based on: what your circumstances are, what you need, what you want, what you're comfortable with, and what is right -> Fi.

Fi only gives you one choice: Do what is right. Especially when it's hard. Fi is the means through which you feel genuine pride in who you are. When you fully own yourself, no one else can own you. The more you resist/reject Fi and keep doing things for the wrong reasons (Te loop), the worse and worse you will feel about yourself for not staying true to what you believe is right. The choice is always there. Every choice has its consequences, so you must decide which option leads to the most bearable consequences.

[empoleonz0]

That's cool and all, but everything you just said was wrong.

First some context: years of exposure to “funko pop discourse” has left me with the impression that most intelligent adults understand that funko pops are just a really shitty product that only sell due to consumerist culture driving up the perceived values of these things. Like I basically just took it for granted that most intelligent adults knew this.

So when I referred to OP as a teenager, I didn’t mean it in a derogatory way. I literally thought that they were a kid who wasn’t aware of concepts like “consumerist culture” and basically the whole wider context of why funko pops are stupid, and that they were just really really into what they thought was a cool toy because they didn’t know any better.

OP goes on to claim that casual ableism was used. They’re referring to when I remarked how “you people” always seem to think that if someone thinks, for example, that you look dumb for caring about funko pops, then that must mean that someone is ignorant about funko pops or they’re an asshole, there’s no way that funko pops could be silly! 

“You people” did not refer to neurodivergent people as OP thought it did, in this context it literally just refers to people on the internet who can’t comprehend that some people you claim are “judgmental assholes” aren’t just “mean internet trolls attempting to impose some horrible ideals,” they can literally just be people who casually observed that you’re doing something weird. I tried to tell them that but....well you know (hint: it’s because they blocked me).

OP seems to have a lot of weird hangups about stuff like this. Like, the words they use are kinda telling...

“... and then spewed bs about how they were allowed to belittle someone’s special interest without being called a horrible person.”

I never said or even remotely implied this? I definitely think you’re “allowed” to call me a horrible person....I think you’re kinda dumb if you think that about me over funko pops, but I think you’re “allowed” to do it yeah. 

I never thought I was “allowed” to do a thing without you being able to say such a thing, you just assumed I did, because in your head, someone having an opinion about a thing you do is the same as them believing that you should or shouldn’t be allowed to do such a thing, because as I said both in this post and on Reddit, you literally can’t comprehend that a person having some kind of dissenting opinion could be morally acceptable.

And finally, about the Disney adults thing, I understand that your point is that “if something doesn’t affect anyone else, i’m not allowed to judge it” and Disney adults is therefore not a good analogy since some of them do things that affect other people whereas buying funko pops “only affects you.” I understand that, but I think even if we ignored the actively bad things that Disney adults do, I still think the fact that adults treating their annual trip to Disneyland like a pilgrimage to Mecca is weird, and that I’m allowed to think treating a trip to Disneyland like a ritual is weird even though “oh but it’s not affecting anyone so you can’t oppose it!!!” because again, thinking something is weird isn’t a moral issue.

What the fuck was that redditors problem?! I hope you’re ok

Eh, I’m fine, I just got heated, which is why I deleted most of the screenshots.

I do find it ironic how this person did all this on a Percy Jackson subreddit- one that they seem to interact with frequently. There are so many people who would call them childish or “silly” to be “obsessing” over a children’s fantasy book series.

I blocked this person, after they proceeded to be casually ableist, and then spewed bs about how they were allowed to belittle someone’s special interest without being called a horrible person.

Like okay, dude. I didn’t call you a horrible person, I called you an asshole, big difference. It takes a lot for me to call someone a bad person, and being an asshole doesn’t cut it.

But, yeah, belittling me for how I choose to spend my money, or my interests, when it’s harmless, does make you an asshole. Like sorry you like to sit in a bland ass room, but I like my space to represent what I like- and Funko POPs are a good way to do this.

Then bringing Disney Adults into this, not even understanding why people actually have a problem with Disney Adults, told me everything I needed to know. To be clear, many Disney Adults do problematic shit, but most people don’t have an issue with an adult who happens to like Disney.

And people who do, absolutely do get called judgmental.

But yeah, tbh, this was a pretty tame interaction compared to other shit I’ve seen, but its the first stereotypical Reddit interaction I’ve encountered.

[storiesofwildfire]

dragon age sentence starters – status; accepting

@bifrostgold​ said: "How do you do that? Make everything better with a smile?" (for Loki ❤)

♔—- Her father didn’t really seem to like Heimdall. Ever since they arrived on Vanaheim, Kratos kept his guard up. Sure, that wasn’t abnormal in the slightest. Her father had a tendency of mistrusting before trusting, never took anyone for their word unless they proved themselves, and despite training her to survive alone, he had a shockingly protective streak. 

She understood the reason, of course, and as she grew older, Kratos’ motivations became more and more clear. He’d hurt a lot of people in his time, but he’d been hurt just as much. So much had been taken from him and Atreus was... well, really one of the only things he’d managed to keep hold of for so long. She believed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that her father’s biggest fear was losing her. He didn’t even seem to bat an eye when it came to his own death if it meant she got to live.

Even some of the personal trials she’d gone through that she’d been so fearful of sharing with her father for fear of his judgment or fear of losing his approval had done little to distance them or put a dent in their bond. Kratos and Atreus were rarely apart as they lived together and traveled together. Even now, in her adulthood, her father was always there. She couldn’t have wished for him to be anywhere but by her side, but she now faced an interesting dilemma...

At first, she mistook her father’s wariness as standard procedure. It would take him a while to feel safe on Vanaheim, to trust the Vanir in any way, especially when he did have such a horrible hangup about any type of God that wasn’t his own child. But as the days stretched to weeks and weeks to months, and Kratos saw how beneficial it was for her to be in such a magical place, learning not only control of her ever-growing magic, but how to harness it to its fullest potential, he seemed more confident that they’d made the right choice to come. Mimir hadn’t been wrong and while it could be very difficult to tell when Kratos actually enjoyed himself or approved, Loki knew without a doubt that he did. He was even warming up to Vanaheim and its people.

Everyone but Heimdall, that was.

A unique situation, as it had never really come to fruition before. For all the years that she traveled with her father and went through wave after wave of self-discovery along their journey, she’d never taken so fondly to another person. Sure, brief crushes that never lasted and occasional sneaking off for a date that she would never tell her father about cropped up, but Heimdall was something different entirely. 

Her magic sang with joy when he was near, constantly reaching out to him in hopes of enticing him back to her without her consent to do so. Hung up on everything he had to say and so easily found swooning just from watching him for a brief window of time shouted clear as day that she’d fallen in love for the first time. It hadn’t been planned. She didn’t expect it, not when she’d never felt so intensely for another person, but she could hardly deny it. Unfortunately, it became very obvious to her father as well and Kratos did not seem to take well to it, almost going as far as to try and frighten the young Chief away from his child’s heart.

Kratos meant well, Loki knew. He only wished to spare her as much pain as possible, but his interference in her attempts to get closer to Heimdall grew exasperating to say the very least. They took to sneaking off for private studies or hunting trips that allowed them to be alone and away from the rest of the town, her father and Heimdall’s mums included. 

Sitting with him on one such hunting trip now, she bent over Heimdall’s back to help him readjust his hold on the bow in his hands for more efficient aim and angle for the drawback. With her suggestions, Heimdall’s arrow split through the air quick enough that if you blinked, you missed it entirely, and it stuck its mark. A target, admittedly, rather than an actual animal. They were supposed to be hunting, but they both knew the true nature of sneaking off like this was more to spend time together. Loki would ensure they brought back something sizable so no one could fuss at them, but the real hunting could come later.

After hitting the target, Heimdall sat the bow down and shifted position so he could lean against a large tree trunk. A little frown tugged at the woman’s lips, though she easily slid into his lap and brought surprisingly soft hands to the Vanir’s cheeks to guide his golden eyes to her. Troubled, she could feel it. An unease that covered the stretch of their time together despite the obvious joy at getting to spend time with Loki at all. 

Kratos, she assumed. Heimdall, she quickly learned after meeting Heimdall, could see literally everything within Yggdrasil. Nothing could be hidden from his sight ( though, admittedly, she was determined to find out a way to prove that wrong. Purely for the challenge of seeing if she could more than anything ), including her father’s treatment of him. The disapproving glares, the attempts to literally force Heimdall and Loki apart, the threats Loki saw and no doubt didn’t see... They were getting to Heimdall, and why wouldn’t they? Serious romance seemed to be a relatively new concept to him as well despite how much older he actually was. What they felt for one another was as genuine as could be. Even their magic pinned after one another, but Kratos did not seem to approve. In many ways, it even read negatively on Heimdall’s character, as if Atreus’ father did not believe him good enough or trustworthy enough to court his child.

Before she spoke, she offered her newfound love a soft smile that radiated warmth and understanding while her thumbs caressed his cheeks fondly.

"How do you do that? Make everything better with a smile?" Heimdall asked, returning Loki’s smile with one of his own.

“That would insinuate that something was wrong at all?” Loki murmured. She’d taken to her Norse name, especially in her later years of life. She did not choose Loki over Atreus. Both names belonged to her, but as she interacted with more people from her mother’s dominion, it felt right to use the name that her mother had given her in conjunction to the one her father gifted. Atreus would always be her father’s first choice and a name she carried with pride and honor, but Loki rapidly became popular amongst the Norse. 

Loki’s story existed long before she had been born, after all.

“It’s all right,” she continued, though she did lean up to press a gentle kiss to Heimdall’s lips before she said anything else. Lingering there for a moment, she found herself wrapped in the desire to lose herself in the kiss. Every time she kissed Heimdall, she felt an overwhelming need to press on. That need wasn’t always sexual, it just manifested in a desire to be as close as she possibly could to the man. Surely, the overwhelming sense of desire would die down eventually, once their romance moved past the stages of being new and exciting and, at least as far as Kratos was concerned, still a bit forbidden. 

“I get it,” she whispered, finally pulling back enough so she could look at the man again. “My father has not exactly been kind or welcoming to you or to us. I’ve seen it wear on you. It’s becoming more and more intrusive on our time together and it almost makes us slipping away together feel like we’re doing something we shouldn’t be.” Shared feelings, in truth, ones that she could feel in Heimdall, but ones she felt as well. Kratos meant well, but he hadn’t made falling in love for the first time easy by any stretch of the imagination. 

“But you know I would not be out here with you if I did not wish to be. I have never...” She paused, blinking by her own fear in admitted what she nearly admitted. Mentally debating whether she should finish her thought or not, she finally continued. “I have never been in love before now,” she confessed. “My father has seen a few crushes, endured a few nights of me running off to meet with someone, but he has never had to deal with the idea that I could actually bind myself to another person. He isn’t handling it well, but the way he looks at you is his protective nature canceling out all other forms of logical thought. He wants to find something wrong with you so he has an excuse to pull me away, but he’d been unable to find one for this long because there is no reason to. He knows this, he just hasn’t accepted it yet.

“It must be strange for you, seeing how welcoming and open your mothers are. They’ve all taken to me so well so quickly, having my father act as a polar opposite to that is enough to give anyone whiplash, but he will come around. He’s just stubborn--” She had to get that from somewhere, didn’t she? “--and often struggles to break out of his ways. Eventually, he will come to terms with us, though. He doesn’t exactly have a choice in the matter. You are my choice, not his, and I wouldn’t back down from you for anything. Not even my father. Surely, you must see that?”

She kept his gaze for a long few moments, emerald eyes staring without falter into those bright golden eyes that she knew could see everything and yet, so often focused on her. His eyes were one of the first things that drew her in, both in their unique qualities and beauty, and she loved them all the more now, watching the way conflict faded from them and formed into fierce determination or, perhaps, love?

Swallowing, she let her arms slip around his neck. Her slim frame didn’t look as if it possessed much strength but her appearance no matter her chosen form always had been deceiving. Pulling Heimdall close, she pressed to him and dipped her head enough to bury her nose against his throat, slowly inhaling the scent of him. 

“I love you, Heimdall. Nothing will change that.” Nothing more than a whisper, truly, as her heart thrashed a mile a minute against her sternum. The first time she’d ever admitted aloud that she’d fallen so deeply in love and now it was out there, no longer able to be protectively guarded by her paranoia or fear of rejection. 

“I love you,” she whispered again.

[eridiumangel]

‘ROMANCE’ Headcanons Dashgame

Name: Angel

Nickname: Guardian Angel,Blackbird, [insert Jack petname here] Gender: Female Romantic orientation: Panromantic Preferred pet names: N/A, Jack kinda killed the pet name industry for Angel Relationship status: Single Favorite canon ship(s): Angel and A SINGLE FUCKING OUNCE OF HAPPINESS Favorite non-canon ship(s): Angel/Zer0, Angel/Axton, Angel/Gaige Opinion on love at first sight: It’s not real How romantic are they: Angel likes romance, but if she’s instigating usually sticks to small gestures for fear than anything larger wouldn’t go over well. She’s a fan of wholesome and sweet things that offer a reprieve from the constant violence on Pandora. Ideal physical traits: Strength, both in terms of posture and physical wherewithal; it’s something Angel strives for for herself and is attracted to people who have already accomplished that. Ideal personality traits: Humor and thoughtfulness, confidence--those who can both offer Angel support and enjoy the better moments, someone who can and wants to find things to enjoy even if they’re small things. It’s really about a balance of being serious and being carefree.  Unattractive physical traits: Too many body modifications; she doesn’t mind tattoos, piercings, or more cybernetic modifications, but she doesn’t really like people who go overboard and are covered with them. Unattractive personality traits: Being overly judgmental, cruelty or apathy toward others, arrogance Ideal date: Exploring Pandora, or even finding a high place and simply watching the wildlife is perfect for Angel. She’s enjoyed the freedom of travel after finally leaving the Core, but she doesn’t know where all the best places are nor does she have much time to go exploring without any other objective. Just being somewhere and taking in the world around her with someone important would make Angel’s week. Do they have a type: Not particularly, though she seems generally drawn to people who are confident enough to initiate things, since Angel is incredibly shy when it comes to matters of the heart and relationships.  Average relationship length: Angel has no relationship history, it’s difficult being an AI Preferred non-sexual intimacy: Cuddling. Angel is a big ol’ fan of cuddling and being close to her s/o Commitment level: Once Angel catches feelings for someone she isn’t likely to look anywhere else, and she tends to be all in once a relationship is actually started. She is a bit slow to open up completely, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t committed to that person or that relationship, it’s just one of Angel’s hangups. Opinion on public affection: Given how easily flustered Angel gets, she likes to keep PDA to a minimum. Things like hand holding and the very occasional kiss on the cheeks are acceptable, but she’ll stop anything that crosses that line.  Past relationship(s): None

TAGGED BY: @numericalassassin

TAGGING: @mechrenegade, @radicalstimulant, @wiresdonttalk, and anyone else that wants to do this

[pyjamaenzel]

Body type/height chart for a bunch of my characters. A bunch of rambling under cut.

Tallest is Imry at 7' 8" (full adult height. 7' 7" at age 17) [she/her] Raiya: 7' 3" [she/her] Nergui: 7' 1" (at age 19. Full adult height 7' 4") [he/him] Weinblyss: 6' 10" [she/her] Elouan: 6' 8" [he/him] Ketenbraena: 6' 5" [they/them, she/her]

Sivana/Noline: 6' 4" [she/her] Whispering Glacier: 6' 4" [she/her] br> Laelius: 6' 4" [he/him, they/them] Nennali: 6' 3" [she/her] Enzel: 6' 2" [they/them] Ragna: 5' 11" [she/her]

Tannem: 5' 10" [she/her] Uriah: 5' 9" [he/him] Aerling/Keiho: 5' 8" [he/him] Faunh: 5' 6" (not including ears) [she/her] N'valyh: 5' 4" (not including ears) [he/him] Tache: 5' 3" [she/her]

Kototsuki: 5' 2" [she/her] T'mhati: 5' 1" [he/him] Jaliqai: 5' 1" [she/her] Pyha: 4' 10" [she/her] Paoriri: 3' 4" [she/her] Relulu: 3' 3" [she/her] Memenu: 3' [she/her] shortest is Yulili at 2' 6". (She's still growing lol) [she/her]

This made me realize how few dudes i have lol. tbf this is mostly characters i have alts of so it doesnt include some that i rp or are important to the others.

Laelius is nb but leans more towards dude & passes as one generally. Keten is basically right in the middle but doesnt really know/care abt pronouns so most characters ICly refer to them as she. I use 'they' oocly to indicate they're not actually a woman tho.

Enzel (the character's) gender is 'nah', wheras Enzel (me the creator's) gender is more like Keten's. It's a bit of a long story but i used to have a lot of trouble making custom protags in games bc i had this idea you were supposed to make a self-insert and it made me uncomfortable. (Personal hangup and not a judgment on anyone else there.) So i made a sort of 'default' character for that purpose and also started using their name as an internet handle since I wanted a new one. I'm just used to it by now, but aside from the gender thing i don't think the character resembles me that much, lol. (Imry is closer to a self-insert personality wise but i'd say I'm more like a mix of her and Raiya than anything, hah.)

So Enzel (the character) has quite a few incarnations. (Radiant Mythology, KHUX, etc.) (There's also an original story I'm working on thats sort of a reverse isekai where an MMO NPC becomes a sentient person that starts acting like a player character.) Their FFXIV version is based on an idea i had ages ago for a narrative called Wizard Apprentice. Ragna is also from that story, though I hadn't come up with a name for her until i made her in FFXIV. I may or may not change it (since i just went with "lore compliant Highlander")

All the other characters were made specifically for FFXIV, with the exception of Nennali and Tache, who were old OCs of mine that i adapted to the lore. Also Imry Crewe, who Imry Ceigwardwyn's parents named her after, was a character from a story I started with a friend way back in middle school about pirates. (Melchior & most of Weinblyss's old crew are also from that story. Though originally he was Imry's surrogate older brother instead, and in FFXIV verse they never met.)

[ge-anne]

Reflections on Psalm 51

Psalm 51

Prayer for Cleansing and Pardon

To the leader. A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

1 Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your steadfast love;

according to your abundant mercy

blot out my transgressions.

David cries out for mercy, knowing that God possesses steadfast love and abundant mercy. Sometimes the father of lies whispers to us that we’re too far gone, too evil, too sinful, too wretched for God to redeem. David knew that God was merciful, but there was work to be done on David’s part. He'd committed a terrible sin.

2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sin.

Cleansing comes from God. It is nothing we can do for ourselves.

3 For I know my transgressions,

and my sin is ever before me.

Oh, the weight of sin! In our hearts, in the most secret places of our soul...the places no one else sees, we know that we are full of sin and transgression. There is nothing that can ultimately silence that truth because we are spiritual beings. It is the human condition to deny this...to run from the truth of our sinful heart and our dark deeds. We pretend no one knows and yet, the truth eats u alive. “my sin is ever before me”. Efforts to silence this truth can result in extreme pain, both for ourselves and for those around us. The habits, addictions, hangups, and outright acts of sin potentially cause damage to anyone in our path.

4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned,

and done what is evil in your sight,

so that you are justified in your sentence

and blameless when you pass judgment.

5 Indeed, I was born guilty,

a sinner when my mother conceived me.

6 You desire truth in the inward being;[a]

therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

How often we lie to ourselves!“I’ll quit tomorrow.”“Just one bite won’t hurt!”“I’ll do ___ when ___ happens”“Everybody does this!”And on and on. David acknowledges that God desires us to be honest with ourselves in our hearts. How can we ever expect to live in any kind of peace or relationship with Him if we don’t?David asks God to teach him wisdom is his secret heart. This is a skill that God can teach all of us. . .to counter the lies that we tell ourselves or that Satan plants inside of us.

John 8:31-32 Holman Christian Standard Bible

31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word,[a] you really are My disciples. 32 You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”Truth. Sets us free.

7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Hyssop is a shrub with medicinal properties. It can be used for digestive problems and has been identified to have antiviral properties as well. God can clean us up, both curing our ailment and by washing our filth.

8 Let me hear joy and gladness;

let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.

9 Hide your face from my sins,

and blot out all my iniquities.

Repentance and lament over one’s sinful state is a painful process. Grief and anguish hurt and we may indeed feel crushed under the weight of such emotion as we realize our true condition.

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and put a new and right[b] spirit within me.

God is our Restorer. He is not our scorekeeper. His one desire since the foundation of the world and the fall of mankind is to restore us to Himself. This is a supernatural event that He offers those who repent and who seek Him earnestly.

11 Do not cast me away from your presence,

and do not take your holy spirit from me.

I never understood this verse as well as I do now. In a sense of desperation, I have literally begged God not to leave me outside of His presence, outside of His love. Never before have I begged from the deepest parts of my soul. Then, as I was filled with the Holy Spirit, I again, asked God to never remove this precious presence from my life. I am still praying that!

12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,

and sustain in me a willing[c] spirit.

When a person comes to Christ, there is great joy! Most new converts cannot help but share their story every time they get the opportunity. For many, however, the joy fades as our connection with God gets overtaken with other things. It takes a willing spirit to stay intentionally connected to our Creator. David prays that God will sustain, or hold out, that willingness so that he, David doesn’t lose connection to the joy of his salvation.

13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,

and sinners will return to you.

Then…

After all these conditions are met, David promises to share with others the ways of God. Hearing this truth will turn sinners back to God. We don’t talk about sin much in the 21st Century. It’s polarizing. It seems to be critical and judgemental. It’s not polite. Or, some in the body of Christ reduce sin to a checklist of acts that get the label “sin”, while they largely ignore the heart. Sin recedes as a natural consequence of sanctification. As we grow closer and closer to God and learn His heart, our own sinful nature slips away as we take on His.

And…

Transgressors who repent and follow the heart of God will follow His ways. The issue is not behavioral. It’s a condition of the soul...the separation from God must be restored through repentance and a longing for His presence.

14 Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,

O God of my salvation,

and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.15 O Lord, open my lips,

and my mouth will declare your praise.

As we begin to grasp the goodness of God. . .His deliverance from whatever things are trying to harm or even kill us, He delivers. Deliverance leads to jubilation and rejoicing. How can we NOT praise the One who is our Creator, Redeemer. and Restorer?

16 For you have no delight in sacrifice;

if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.

Our doing doesn’t impress God. It is completely useless if we don’t surrender our heart. There are no merit awards for effort.

17 The sacrifice acceptable to God[d] is a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise

God only wants one thing: All of us in our broken state. As we lay the mess of our broken lives at the feet of Jesus, our heart breaks as we see a Holy God who can not be fooled or tricked by outward appearances. He sees us. In our wretched state and he demands that we take a good look and see our true brokenness as well.He does not despise us, Instead...That’s when His perfect love reaches through and restores us to fullness in Him.

Amen.

[therisingtithes]

So 1. There is no "merely body-checking" anyone. Almost any violence has the potential to kill someone. If you're going to advocate using violence, at least have the decency to acknowledge that you will kill people, even if unintentionally. 2. Compared to Nazis, republicans here in the US actually pose a far greater threat to my life in several ways. Why not kill them? What possible reason could there be not to do so?

I really do not get why, in a conversation about the inherent lack of moral value of premeditated murder, you find physical resistance so much more odious than premeditated murder that you would... literally insist upon committing premeditated murder, and then blame your insistence on your own hangups about physical resistance.

Re: #1--

Your assumption that I do not somehow understand that someone can die in a physical altercation, to me, says more about what you consider an obvious fact about a physical altercation than it says about my assumed disingenuousness. That still doesn’t mean I want anyone to intentionally kill anyone else, that I want anyone to die, or that I don’t want anyone to take responsibility under the law for taking someone else’s life.

It sounds as a result as if you’re insisting that the physical restraint used against ideologies that directly endorse violence cannot be critically immobilizing rather than murderous–or worse, that you want to kill people. And I mean, if you would like to kill people, or to make a case for killing people, that’s on you, but I think people that kill people should face punishment under the law (and that, the moral value in denying the amassing of power to fascists notwithstanding, people should be responsible under the law for punching Nazis, too–another thing I imagined to be painfully obvious). I just also think that empowering people who want to kill people to amass the human, financial, and status resources necessary to kill people will inevitably lead to them killing people. If your nitpick, therefore, is that asking to hitstun people can potentially kill them inadvertently, or whether people should or shouldn’t take responsibility for that, then I shudder to wonder what is the rebuttal to asking to purposely kill large groups of marginalized people as a valuable sociopolitical imperative–and whether the people who intentionally want to do so can be swayed by reason, which is the primary concern. 

Re: #2--

To begin, with the very least assumptive quality possible your second statement presupposes that there are other groups of people–Jews, Muslims, Black people, Hispanic/Latino people etc., especially those on multiple axes of marginalization, such as women, LGBT persons, the disabled etc.–whose vastly different lived experience makes the question of the threat of Nazis somehow moot. I submit that those groups of people are under threat by both the far right in general and fascists in particular, which makes acknowledging both, and the shared political power between both, noteworthy.

As for the rest of that… again, if you want to make a case for killing people, go ahead, but given the moral guideline I have already put forward, I will see you as worthy of judgment similarly. I draw the line at killing people or endorsing the killing of people, hence the hitstunning. If that is a more morally reprehensible notion to someone than that of a group of people who do endorse killing large swaths of people, already wish to act, and don’t care about moralizing, that’s on that someone.

In particular this is a good place to add that part of the reason this is an issue at all is that if a group of people is already committed to the perceived sociopolitical value of killing people, has already begun to amass political status and manpower, and is not moved by the similar moral concerns as you, then pacifism fundamentally comes down to waiting for marginalized people to be destroyed in order to intervene by law (which, at least to me, obviously is not the same moral guideline one uses in a micro level, like when someone breaks into your home and threatens to harm you). And if those people finally amass political status, the law will inevitably be challenged to intervene–a thing history has literally proven.

Put simply, if radically violent ideologies should be allowed to recruit via propaganda, should not be punished for literally inciting genocide, and should not be opposed by any means when refuse reason, then the alternative should be one posited by those who insist upon debate as a last resort. Either those people can tell us how the instated fascist officials of an elected leader can be deposed, those people can illustrate how those officials’ power can be devalued, or those people can proffer solutions to when the violence actually begins that somehow allow the victims of that violence to maintain the high moral ground while also being literally bulletproof.  

The functional alternative is that someone proves to me that nations like the US and the UK have legal systems in place that see the power of hate speech enough to punish someone for literally writing that there is moral value in wiping out Black people or refusing to recognise the citizenship of Jewish people, and then telling me that individuals like Spencer have been duly punished or are on the way to being duly punished. Seeing as Spencer is literally still selling his fascist wares in public, I am unconvinced.

I guess you are in part being fundamentally asked either a.) whether you think the phase of one’s moral turn when one is expected to act to prevent violence against marginalized people is after; b.) whether you think the moral card that can be played in that phase is purely intellectual even when the opponent is not moved by the value of marginalized lives; or c.) whether instead you (and only you out of the two of us) think the moral card that must be played in any phase is premeditated murder against the opponent.

‘cause if you ask me–and after all, this is an ask… sent to me, however potentially intense and problematic that ask is phrased–it is more morally sound that some opponents are not asked to play primarily because their game is premeditated genocide in the service of sociopolitical untruths the lack of value of which they cannot be convinced, and they have already amassed enough tokens and power required to act on any turn murderously.

Intentionally seeking to destroy a group of people as a rule, attempting to persuade others that there is sociopolitical value in willfully destroying a group of people as a rule, or seeing sociopolitical value in willfully destroying a group of people as a rule, is an indefensible position, and people who have or seek the power to do so should not be allowed, even physically, lest they actually destroy people. 

I don’t know what to tell you. If you want a reason to kill people, ask someone else. Maybe a Nazi, I guess?