#DON'T MIND ME AT ALL

[morverenmaybewrites]

Ugh. Give me this for an enemies-to-lovers Diluc back in his Fatui hunting days. Back when he was all fire and righteous fury, back when he was driven half-mad with animal grief.

Imagine being part of the Fatui, maybe even one of the researchers who ended up creating Delusions. Imagine the guilt eating away at your bones, all the way down to the marrow, as you see your creation being used for something you never intended.

Imagine the growing fear at seeing entire Fatui camps being cut down in the middle of the night: supplies turn to ash, your companions coming away with horrific burns.

Imagine thinking to yourself: finally, finally, the Archons have turned their gazes upon you. Finally, you will be punished. Finally, there will be absolution.

And then, imagine the confusion as you walk into another ruined camp, and finding not an avenging god, but a man, bleeding out in the snow. He is bleeding from a thousand cuts, feverish with wounds ill-cared for.

He is dying.

Yet, when his eyes find yours, you see no weakness in them. You see only fire. You see only hate.

His cracked lips pull into a snarl and he says Fatui as if it is a curse.

He is dying and oh, how he still burns.

And you realize, with a flash of clarity, that is the man who has razed entire camps to the ground. This is the man who has killed so many of your companions.

And you hesitate, but only for a second, before you kneel right next to him on the bloodstained snow.

And you help him, as best you can.

You are not sure why you do. Or perhaps you are, but you are not ready to speak it yet. You can only feel it in your guilt-eaten bones, in the hollow of your throat: you are still looking for absolution, for a retribution you once feared would never come. And perhaps this man is the key to it.

After all, fire destroys, it burns.

But it also purifies.

[lilmaemae]

his neck veins... vampphayu thoughts are bRR-ING RN

technically there's no benefit of phayu drinking blood from rain, because at this point of the fic he's just going to be drinking his own blood back (rain feeds from phayu rn)

but, further down the line when rain has weaned off his sire's blood? maybe? hMMMM???

[inkskinned]

i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."

[maeamian]

Part of the reason that Republicans are so desperately acting like they will never lose again is because they are deeply terrified that this is their last real chance to win. The big orange dipshit came in and gutted the party of everyone who wasn't a loyalist, which left it full of nasty little gremlins who have gaping voids where charisma and human decency is supposed to go.

They still hold a lot of power, but if we stop them this year the next presidential election may not be the Most Important One Of Your Life™, that's not a guarantee or anything, but if they don't win here and now their future looks grim, this dipshit is the only guy they have left and he's extremely diminished and has his brains leaking out of his ears at this point. We can beat him into the ground.

So that's what we're gonna fucking do. We're gonna break these fucking fash. They will crash upon us and we're gonna break their fucking necks. When they come for us they will lose because they're fucking losers and we have each other's backs which is something they fundamentally are incapable of comprehending.

[palarien]

sketched this out at jury duty actually

[chalkrub]

dinosaur in a lab coat - would you trust her with operating the centrifuge

[apollos-olives]

before october 7th this blog was a meme page btw.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

How much longer 'til your luck runs out?

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[biracy]

Actually my own post. People are soooo fixated on whether or not they can "reclaim" xyz slur that they completely fail to consider whether or not they're in a social setting wherein slinging slurs around like candy is actually appropriate. Like it doesn't actually matter if "ummmm I can reclaim" if someone is like "hey this is a public Discord server can you stop saying 'faggot' every other message" because you're still making people uncomfortable by refusing to stop being an edgelord for two seconds. You are not "owning the straights" you're making other gay people uncomfortable and acting like that's political activism

[mari-lair]

[egophiliac]

we were fucking ROBBED

[tianlavellan]

"you are the one bright light in kirkwall" says the guy who, at great risk to his own safety and freedom (and probably health), runs an illegal free clinic for the poor and refugees which people are literally told to find by "looking for the lit lantern" I'm so ill. he doesn't even see his own light.

[mayasaura]

Was thinking about this line because Harrow what the actual fuck are you talking about, and I realised something.

Not only does Harrow really for real not know that Gideon loves her—in the bullshit context of their lives, this is a reasonable misunderstanding for her to have.

What has Harrow known Gideon's life goals to be since they were children? Hint: There are at least two Harrow is fully aware of.

The first is to be wanted. As much as Gideon hates and wants to escape the Ninth, she also paradoxically craves their acceptance. They're the only community she's ever known. Harrow plays on that desire from the very beginning, mostly by kind of .... well, okay, by negging her about it. Ironically appealing to her sense of loyalty and duty to her house when they both know Gideon never even had that bridge to burn. That kind of thing.

Whether or not she's right, Harrow sincerely believes that acceptance to still be important to Gideon. First flower of my house, the greatest cavalier we have ever produced. You are our triumph. The best of all of us. When Harrow has only seconds left to make amends, she not only banks hard into praising Gideon, she frames it to unambiguously offer Gideon the acceptance she's always been conspicuously denied. Assuring her of her value not just as a person or as a cavalier, but as one of their house, one of their people.

The second thing Harrow knows is that Gideon wants to join the Cohort. Easy, everybody knows that. She's only been telling everyone with ears (and then some) since she was eight years old. It's the bait Harrow dangled to entice her into this mess. She wants to be a hero, to do great deeds like in the comic books. She wants to be a soldier.

Against the backdrop of all that context, Gideon's dying declaration "for the Ninth" starts to sound a hell of a lot more like "for Queen and country." Especially when you remember that Harrow is still the sovereign ruler of the Ninth. From Harrow's vantage point, Gideon could easily be playing the heroic underdog in a war movie. The soldier no one believed in until she threw herself on a grenade to save her squad. The knight errant who proved her chivalry by giving her life in service to her king.

From that perspective, Harrow's line to Ortus makes sense. She's following through on her promise of acceptance, defending Gideon's loyalty to the first Ninth face she sees. She's playing out Gideon's war hero fantasy, where Gideon's act of heroism proved them all wrong about her. In which case Ortus's response, "You are the most worthy heroes the Ninth House could muster. I truly believe that," flows very naturally as a reply. He understands what Harrow is trying to say, and affirms it.

It's not a hero's burial in the Anastasian, but it's the closest thing Harrow has the power to give her. And it's a fucking reasonable interpretation of Gideon's actions that doesn't touch on her feelings for Harrow at all. Fuck me.

[wilsonmybeloved]

heard we were fiddlestanning

you know the drill..

(full image under cut)

[lizardkingeliot]

A last dance before the feast.

[boltlightning]

do allow me, will you? ➢ THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965)