#Congrats on being first ask

[copper-9spurgatory]

Don't worry J! You're not defective! You're just different and better at meeting company standards!

Fair enough, there’s other ways to approach company standards. At least I can just lurk around Copper-9 without needing to tend to someone’s needs almost constantly.

OOC//: I got jumpscared seeing 3 of you guys from my main follow this account not even 3 minutes after I posted art of Jackie

[inkskinned]

she's singing in another room and my dog is asleep at my feet. my grandma asked me why i haven't found a man yet and i laughed. oh, you know. i like my house clean.

my girlfriend is also my man is also "my partner" if i'm in a professional setting. yesterday we went to a ren faire and a man mimed at me - you're together? and at my delighted nod, his baffled, you're gay? made me laugh. a woman with rainbow hair said i love the two of you together. you're both so beautiful it's absurd.

my dad introduced my partner as my "..... friend. or whatever" the other day. he knows we're dating. in the same way, i was never able to get my sister's husband to stop saying that's gay like it's 2008. he still uses the word fa***t, and my sister's defense of him has always been well, he's just kidding.

my lover and i dance to old music in a tiny kitchen. we judge new music together and take food critique very seriously. we watch love is blind before we fall asleep and agree that if they had a queer season, it would be bloody but also make for excellent tv. of fucking course queer people would know someone for only 2 weeks and agree to get married. what are you saying.

at a bar with friends, a man puts his hand on my wrist. got a boyfriend? and yes, i do have a boyfriend, she's amazing. i am texting her while i wander around a gas station named after geese. i am visiting a swing state for a wedding. in the candy aisle i overhear: she's actually like a lesbian it's disgusting. two teenage girls with packaged sandwiches in their hands, giggling. no literally, like. i'm not, like. okay with her being there while we're all, like, naked and changing.

my girlfriend and i tailgate, drink gin and cider out of cups. from the frat group beside us, a man corrects himself with one of his friends: bro, i mean, nonbinary entity, and it makes everyone around him laugh, myself included. he razzes his friend the same way i would have killed for at 19 years old - like nothing happened, he continues: you apply sunscreen like an alien. he does a little sassy (and fairly accurate) dance interpretation of the motion. his friend is laughing so hard they're crying.

i am lucky, i live in a safe neighborhood in a safe state. my masc passenger princess comes up from DC. i drive her for an hour to where all the leaves are a violent arrangement of color. we walk along the trails, letting autumn into our blood. in this part of the state, there's a lot of pickup trucks and trump signs. when we chastely kiss before getting into the car, i accidentally make eye contact with a woman holding her child's wrist. she looks disgusted. she looks fucking pissed.

two hours later my girl and i are eating dinner on a patio, soaking in the last warmth of new england sun before the chill of winter sets in. we are giggling and trying to talk through plastic vampire teeth. at another table, i see a young woman sit up straighter. i watch her watch us. she blushes and takes her partner's hand from across the table. shy, like the taste of evening has just become something deeper.

it's worth it for this moment, i think. my lover is still humming the same song she's been singing for four days straight and i don't want to kill her for it. her guitar is beside my bed. her toothbrush is in my bathroom. in a few moments i will make us lunch. we are lucky enough to have found each other. it is lucky enough to be in love.

[starheirxero]

hi .D.

art fight's fun :) (vvv bonus silly)

gay

I FORGOT TO POST IT THE MOMENT I GOT IT THANK YOOOOOUUUUUU 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏 I KNOW I ALREADY EXPRESSED MY INSANITY OVER THIS BUT I AM SAYING IT AGAIN I'M SOOOOO WEIRD ABOUT THIIIIISSSSS

I will never get over this Entire Scene. the balace if intimacy and care with horror and fear..... UGHHHH FANTASTIC!!!!!! they're so inseparable in makes me sick /pos. thank u for 1 million years ^_^

[b4kuch1n]

the king shunned, the lion dead, the knight lost, the princess absent. but the wizard lives.

[asksableye]

(@watchful-lady-of-shadows) Osseth had tried to fit in front of the camera, she really did! But it seemed no matter when she tried the camera and device it was attached to just couldn't capture her full form. Dismayed but not beaten, she decided to just stick her large head in front of it as much as possible. All the Sableye would see is her large snout and parts of her silver plates, but it would have to do.

“Hello!” she greeted with a chirp. “It’s been quite some time since I’ve spoken to mortal pokemon of other realms! I see you are taking care of an egg. I do hope the little one is well! I must ask, however, how is it you plan to care for the little one? Have you gathered the general materials necessary to care for a child?”

OF COURSE I HAVE! I GATHER FOOD FOR MYSELF EVERY DAY, I'VE GOT A NICE SAFE SHELTER, WHAT MORE COULD THEY NEED?

[Conny's smile drops into a face of contemplation, quickly turning to something of horror as he glances around at the dumpster he lives in.]

...

ACTUALLY... NOW THAT I THINK ABOUT IT...

I. MAYBE. AM. LACKING. IN THINGS. THAT I SHOULD. HAVE. GOTTEN. MAYBE. JUST A LITTLE. I...

DON'T KNOW WHAT JUNIOR'S GOING TO HATCH INTO. I DON'T REALLY KNOW WHAT. EXACTLY. THEY NEED.

BUT I'M SURE I'LL HAVE PLENTY OF TIME AFTER THEY HATCH TO GET EVERYTHING THEY COULD POSSIBLY NEED!!!!

... right?

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The whole discourse about the privacy/secrecy/support thing has been sitting with me for a few days (I mean other than it always does to a certain degree) thanks to all the excellent discussion happening and I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said a million times before, but I think what we're seeing and what we're going to learn (e.g. from TTPD) is that it wasn't just the support issue, but how it was shown/handled.

We've all gone out of our way to show that introversion =/= lack of support. Someone can be shy, reserved, etc. and still show up for their partner, whether in public or at home. To chalk any of the differences up to the clash between introversion and extroversion is unfair to folks who count themselves among either tbh.

@thisisctrying said something the other day that hit the nail on the head about how if that support had been offered in private, there very well may not have been a Joever to begin with, or at least not at this point in time. (Sorry for loosely paraphrasing, and for namedropping you! Long time listener, first time poster.)

If this were a case where the "shy" partner said, "I am really uncomfortable with the spotlight personally and do not want to court it, but I will support you in your ambitions and offer you whatever you need to make them happen and make the glare bearable," I suspect that would have gone a long way to making Taylor feel seen and comfortable in pursuing her goals in the way that she now has. Again, that might have been more akin to the balance that seemed to have been struck around 2019 from what we can see, but even speaking in a general sense, there are lots of couples out there, celebrity or not, that have similar approaches where there are highly driven people and busy careers involved.

(A famous example being Dolly Parton's marriage. Tbh I know next to nothing about her and Carl, but she's always heralded as an example in this regard, because her husband is famously uncomfortable with the spotlight and hasn't accompanied her to public events in decades, but she's said that she never minded that because that was always work to her, and what was important was that he supported her in pursuing all her career goals and basically ensured she had a place to call home to return to at the end of the day.)

We're kind of in a brave new world with her current relationship because it felt like, at least at the start, we were maybe watching her figure out her boundaries in real time as to what she was comfortable with or not and adjust accordingly. Like so many have said, I fully believe the extreme privacy thing was initially driven by herself and her experiences in 2016, and she needed that quiet time to recover from all of the things and figure out how to exist in the world again.

Stating the obvious, it seemed like eventually privacy was equated with secrecy, turning the relationship and the celebrity into the elephant in the room and something to never be spoken of to the outside world. People are free to choose whatever works best for themselves and their relationships, and for some the separate public lives might work, but the “kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath” theme is all over her work and it’s clear that it’s a sore spot for her, because she’s been made to feel shame just for the life she leads so many times in the past.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s pretty obvious something Not Great was happening behind the scenes, which didn’t just amount to “she wanted to be a public celebrity and he wanted to be a private hermit.” (Also, in case anyone forgot, this is a person who also chose a public-facing career who also has to engage in press for it, but I digress.) As her career reached new heights post-folklore, if she had the support at home to do all the things without judgment and with encouragement, and in turn offer the same support to her partner, she may have very well lived just fine with that, not unlike Dolly Parton’s case.

By reading between the lines in all the press since, as well as comments on tour and general ~vibes~ with TTPD teasers, it seems like one of the issues was that that was likely not the case. There was all the stuff that we saw — the reticence to acknowledge each other in the media (particularly on one side), the lack of public support even at events at which they were both in attendance for their respective jobs, the great lengths they went to not to be photographed together at events they attended yet no problem taking pictures with other friends and coworkers, the jobs that separated them, the withdrawing from the public even for work accomplishments, etc. Which could all be manageable if a couple chooses to do so together and are not inherently a sign of trouble in themselves.

But what we’re seeing now I think is a reflection of the things we weren’t seeing then, and it seems to indicate some very deep hurt. (I know, call me Captain Obvious.) And like so many have been saying, it feels likely that that part of that hurt is rooted in that very lack of private support where a person would expect it from their partner. Obviously as a Taylor fan blog I’m going to be more inclined to understand her side of a story, but tbh, it’s also because… this is sooooooo common, and something I’ve experienced in my friend group. (@taylortruther is right when she says most breakups are the same one way or another lol.)

One partner is resentful of the other’s success, or resentful that the other’s priorities begin to evolve as new experiences unlock new goals, or feels the other’s ambitions are not worthy of pursuit, and coupled with perhaps their own struggles in the same domain, it’s easy to see where that can chip away at the other partner’s morale and faith in the relationship. I know I’m just speculating here, but I also don’t think it’s totally unfounded. (Again, because a) I’m picking up what she’s putting down and b) it happens to sooooooo many women even among us dull normals.)

With all the pointed mentions about how much Taylor feels supported in her current relationship and how she in turn loves to offer the same show of support to not only her partner but other loved ones, how she’s stepped out more in the last year to a whole host of events, how she’s mentioned feeling like she locked herself away for years and she’s just proud of her partner and happy she can show up for him even if the chaos around it is unsettling, it paints a picture of what perhaps was happening before last year.

To feel like you’re all alone in carrying the weight of the relationship (or burden of it), of twisting yourself into knots to accommodate the other person’s boundaries (or insecurities) but not feeling reciprocity for your own has to be so painful. (The idea that it may have been even darker and to have a partner not only be unreceptive to your own needs but even perhaps resentful/dismissive/belittling of them is even more painful to think of. I guess we’ll find out when TTPD comes out if that was the case, too.)

At a certain point, that lack of acknowledgement will force your hand to be able to reclaim yourself. And it feels like the further removed Taylor in particular is from it, the more she moves from being sad about the life she felt she gave up by leaving, to angry at the life she felt she was giving up by staying. Especially being in a relationship now where it seems like everything comes much easier, where she can be open about the person she’s with and show up for them, all the stuff that seemed as challenging as climbing Mount Everest in her past is nothing more than a molehill at best in her current life.

TL;DR: I don’t think it’s privacy that inherently spells doom for a celebrity relationship like this; it’s the mutual support and respect that does. If Taylor had felt that in the later years of her previous relationship, I think we could be seeing a different, though not necessarily unfulfilled, person right now in 2024, who’d be happy on tour but whose personal life would look a little different. But it seems like by losing that support she lost parts of herself, and we’ve seen her reclaim that in spades in the last year, and perhaps to degrees she didn’t even realize she could from before all the Bad Stuff started happening in her young adulthood.

I know this was extremely long-winded and unnecessary, especially about total strangers we only know through scraps fed through the media, but I just always bristle at this idea that issues like these boil down to “personality differences,” as though one person wants to live in a city and the other on a remote island, or some shit like that. The whole support (and gender tbh) issue is one that’s just very close to my heart because again, I have seen it play out with so many of my friends in long term relationships and marriages and I just think people in relationships (and women in particular in some circles) deserve better than to feel like they’re being, well, tolerated.

[ask-lps-staff-au]

Hihihihi Vinnie um um um did you know you're such a scrunkly scrimblo a little. spoingle maybe even a mipy 😩

I mean, if you’re talking about me, then it must be something pretty good!! (or pretty bad, I guess)

-thx 4 asking,

Vinnie

[desultory-novice]

Noir, about you and Adeleine's old friend, Raquelle...

...!!

[We're sorry. Your call has been disconnected.]

Noir's Field Trip Masterpost]

[randaccidents]

Is the heartless au just cccc without heart /silly

Anyway explanation for the au because.

hehehe oh you gave me permission to RAMBLE you don't know what youve done (also hiii youre somehow my first ask ever on this blog XD)

SO the most basic thing that my dream laid out is one concept: What if Heart, after getting sent into Apathy, just... doesnt wake up? That whatever happened in there, he is no longer the Emotional Side, but the heart the muscle that beats the pump that pushes blood through the body. And it is entirely self-inflicted, because Mind can win alright? He'll be efficient and functional and emotionless, except emotions are what gave him life and without it hes just a pump.

(This AU also comes with a lot of guilt from Mind and Soul who made decisions and actions that pushed Heart to devolve into function, as well as eventual healing for Heart and permanent consequences)

I've written a lot of like. The Details down somewhere haha but thats the main gist idea that came from my dream. The developed version is like;

Heart gets an extended stay in the Apathy Hole, and that betrayal combined with Mind insulting him leads him to invite in apathy and essentially kill half of himself so that all he is is the muscle known as the heart. Mind and Soul eventually discover this and try to wake him up and get him back. When they do they have to deal with the consequences of what they pushed him to do, because until they do Heart will fight them to return to emptiness, where he didnt have to feel hurt and betrayed and cold. (Heart's physical condition is directly tied to his function, so until hes willing to accept being the Emotional Side again he backslides rapidly at all times, and Mind and Soul are selfish)

As a little treat, in this AU they also change their names to reflect their new roles:

Heart: Heart (changes the least, essentially frozen in time until he wakes again) 

Mind: Perseverance

Soul: Guilt (EDIT BUT I CHANGED HIS NAME TO PENITENCE)

I will say that I really enjoy making it so that, in scenarios where HMS change drastically from their established roles, its considered a loop ender. So the consequences of Heart devolving into function ends the loops permanently, and Perseverance and Guilt have to deal with the consequences forever instead of having them be erased.

It's called Heartless because Heart technically isnt there anymore, but emotions always finds a host. :)

[pianapplez]

Hello there 👋👀,

So I just found your blog and had a lot of fun scrolling through all the pjo show crit😂 I couldn't help but notice that one tag you left on a post where you said you had some beef with Annabeth's portrayal in the books 👀 Would you mind elaborating on that if you're comfortable with it🙈? Because I absolutely share that sentiment, but it's sooo veeeery rare that I see other people express anything like it... I've found that trying to be a part of the fandom can be pretty alienating most of the time, if you're not exactly the biggest most devoted Percabeth shipper...😅 And often any criticism leveled at Annabeth just gets you a smack with the "internalized-misogyny" hammer... it's even worse in the tv show now due to... obvious reasons...

Again just if you're comfortable with answering of course🙈 There is a reason I stayed on anon after all...😅😂

Really glad you asked because i finally get to ramble about this heheheh (going forward, know that i skimmed over The Last Olympian to have a clearer sense of what I meant because that's the book where Rick fumbles her character more than the others)

i'm gonna try to make as much sense as possible but short answer would be, she's underdeveloped. Long answer:

She really got on my nerves in the last two books, with the whole Rachel debacle and then the Battle of New York. I can't really remember a single moment in those books where she and Percy aren't bickering or having heated discussions, which really made me question their friendship status. Of course, it's not like friends can't fight and it obviously builds up the (romantic) tension between them, but it got unbearable at one point.

I understand she's a teenager in an incredibly stressful situation that didn't even get to have a normal upbringing- she grew up way too fast (run away at 7, head counselor at 12) while also not really maturing, which is not a problem for a character, if it is handled properly. Given the fact that I am writing this, Riordan did not.

On the surface, my biggest beef is that Annabeth is not exactly held accountable for her actions (ie. treating Rachel a bit like shit and going off on Percy for a bunch of stuff.) I know Percy is to blame a bit here: as far as we know, in TLO he basically cuts the greek world out of his life as much as he can as a coping mechanism. And while yes, he never apologizes either, he doesn't give her nearly half the hard time she gives him: always either giving him the cold shoulder (there must be at least one example of this in the entire series but i cant be bothered to look it up sorry) or starting an argument only to then storm off (see the "you're a coward, Percy Jackson!" scene, which is not the fairest example since she was confronting Percy about ignoring camp but also was a bit too harsh about it) (especially after finally reading the prophecy and being under the impression that he was absolutely going to die when he turned 16 lmao) or just straight up storming off (see, Annabeth reacting when Rachel shows up for the first time during the battle of new york). While most of these feel, at least to some degree, fairly justified given how the entire situation does an absolute number on her emotions, she comes off a bit brattish and like she's trying to rile Percy up, especially when it comes to Rachel, which in the context of a battle that could mean the destruction of the world.... Well, it reads as a bit childish to me, and i wouldn't exactly have that much of a problem with it if it was dealt with in some way (a two-way apology would be nice).

After that first impression, i realized that Annabeth is barely ever anything else other than a plot device (when relating to Luke) or a love interest (when relating to Percy). This might be because the books are on Percy's POV. Hell, on the third book he's even conflicted when Annabeth is considering joining the Hunters of Artemis, aka, when making a choice for herself would mean he loses her (which is fine and dandy but it feels like Percy is more upset about her choosing her own path rather than being sad about not seeing her as often); we really only get a few glimpses of her, as in, actually her when she's on her own.

Obviously it's impossible to talk about Annabeth without touching on percabeth, which also is, in my opinion, what hinders Annabeth's character the most. On paper they sound great. The guy whose fatal flaw is loyalty falls in love with a girl whose been let down by people over and over, and she decides to never give up on the boy whose always had people give up on him (can't find one of the million posts that talks about this right now but it always goes something like that) And yeah, the bickering is really well written! But that's literally as far as it ever goes: they don't ever seem to have fun together, because 8 times out of 10 the bickering ends up being passive aggressive, and mostly done by Annabeth. My biggest gripe about percabeth is that their friendship seems to be based off... shared trauma. Literally. Other than going on quests together we are given no examples of them hanging out, nor a reason why they would want to spend time together in the first place, not even a shared hobby. Yes, in the fourth book they had a movie "date" planned but of course they didn't even get to it, and surprise surprise, they had a minor discussion, and surprise surprise, Annabeth was passive aggressive again. It's hard to picture them having fun together when even the author doesn't write in any scenes in which they get along smoothly (and before you say anything, a scene in which they get along where neither of them is about to die, and they're not talking about previous adventures. Gets a bit hard then, doesn't it?) It's even harder to picture them as a couple when the moment she gets upset about something, she starts coming off as emotionally manipulative (see, again, literally any conversation with Rachel or about Rachel)

To be fair, the books are relatively short and don't allow many "filler" chapters, if you will; there's always something happening to keep the main plot or a minor plot point moving forward, but it's not like there is no room to develop the characters' relationships, especially when we're talking about the main char and what is essentially his endgame. As an example we have Percy and Clarisse, or Percy and Beckendorf. Their interactions are brief but still hold so much weight.

Worst of all, Annabeth could be one hell of a character; what's most interesting of all is how being a daughter of Athena she is still incredibly emotionally driven, which is displayed very clearly with her fatal flaw being pride: her telling the Sphynx that her questions were too easy was not smart nor strategic: it was completely impulsive. I seriously think she wasn't far from being the best character in the series had she been given more time.

I guess i have as much beef with Annabeth as i have with Rick for doing her dirty. I really could sum this up with: while her emotions are justified, she acts upon them quite poorly. And this is what i mean when i say she's underdeveloped, because it would've been nice to see her come to her senses a bit.

Would love to read anyone's opinions on her character though, feel free to comment, even (or especially) if you don't agree with me!

[ahappydnp]

i (young postgrad) have just started talking to a guy who plans to move to my town for school soon. he's a little younger than me and has curly hair and we won't meet for the next month or so because of distance but we text constantly and I'm very into him. what should I do about the fact that I've entered a 2009!t4t phan au?

manifest that it turns into the 2023!t4t phan endgame

[valkyurii]

when i see someone put both radahn and malenia in s tier on their boss ranking list

[aroallo-corvid]

I can't get over the aces in the notes of the aroallo polls who are answering the questions

oh fr???? i will admit i have not been doing a thorough read through of the notes but that honestly does not surprise me. par for the course for how aroallos are treated in the aspec community

it's not even like they can claim ignorance because every poll starts with "aroallos, *insert question*" . plus there's a button for "not aroallo" included on every poll 😭 although a decent number of people do seem to be clicking the correct button

[moonshynecybin]

eye em oh it marc and vale get back together and come out there would to this day be homophobia (it’s motogp) and it would once again be primarily directed to marc. and it Would be traumatic and bring up not only the homophobic stuff from last time but also the death threats and break ins. and vale Would like you said feel guilty because he absolutely did have power over the media and fans in 2015 that he refused to use but because he is now part of this he has less power anyways. and marc Would be like well i wanted to come out so i will just deal with it like i dealt with it in 2015 :)

vale about to VOMIT trying to decide if he wants to meaningfully engage with the harm wrought there (SCARY. makes him feel GUILTY) or simply take marc upstairs and blow him in silent apology. pretty sure which one wins out (it’s NOT emotional vulnerability !) and tbh marc prefers it like that anyways ✅

[kedreeva]

(Long time lurker)

Good thing: we got our boiler and heating fixed so we FINALLY have a properly warmed house this winter (the fact that we got it all done completely free is even better!)

Proud thing: I got approved for disability benefits so I don’t have as much guilt about not being able to work and can help my Dad out more with money

The BEST thing:

This guy! January will be 9 years since I brought home and he made my life better ❤️

What a guy!!!! Give him a little smooch on his head for me, I love tricolor dogs.

I give to you, some tricolor mice in return!

[transfemzedaph]

IS ETHO MORMON???

some people thimk he is its like. a theory. which im never sure if its entirely serious or not. sorry you had to find out this way anon.