#I don't know what triggers to use

[frighteneddraz]

Anthology of Arik 1

Arik sat staring at the empty bottle of liquor, the strongest his money could buy: a dwarven drink called “Dragonfire”, so named because it tasted of pure fire and because it had a habit of blowing up when exposed to even the slightest open flame. He could no longer even get drunk anymore, at least not on alcohol. Anger though? That he could still lose himself in, so he did what any miserable asshole in his position would do: He got in a fight. Sighing, he dragged himself to his feet and scanned the bar, in the city of adventurers, there was bound to be someone he could fight without having to worry about killing them, and to that end he was quite right.

His target stood at 5’2”, and probably just as wide, with more muscle than Arik had assumed was possible for a mortal man. Given his bald head and the sheer mass of his beard, Arik assumed the man was of dwarven blood, the fact he seemed to also be drinking Dragonfire made that assumption a near certainty, seeing as most other races would find their livers shutting down after only a few shots of the stuff. Striding up to him, Arik stood looming over the man. He was ugly, with a misshapen face and a nose that had been broken more times than Arik could probably count, his dark beard hung to his waist and his thick brows were out of line with one another, giving his face a strange slant effect. As though it were meant to be viewed horizontally, something Arik would realize almost immediately was rather apt. 

Arik’s approach was straightforward and rather rude, striding up to the half-dwarf, Arik’s hand formed a fist and crashed into the man’s table, the force of the blow knocking it over and spilling Dragonfire all over the floor. It was effective, without even so much as a word, the stranger stood up, downed what remained in his cup, and hit Arik harder than Arik had ever been hit before. There was a crunching sound, Oh, that’s my teeth and jaw, Arik thought rather nonchalantly. He was unconscious before he hit the ground. The blow may even have snapped Arik’s neck, Arik wasn’t sure, if it did, the bone had repaired itself well enough by the time Arik came to again, sitting with the half-dwarf on the street, though as Arik ran his tongue around inside his mouth, he was unsurprised to find all of his teeth were in pieces.

“Shit” were the first words out of Arik’s mouth as he sat up, though the first thing was a not insignificant amount of blood

“Aye, I’m rather surprised you’re alive, haven’t hit a man that hard in a while,” the dwarven man responded, continuing: “course, no one has been dumb enough to spill my drink in a while.” He took a long draught from what appeared to be a new bottle of Dragonfire. “The fuck is wrong with you anyways? Your brain scrambled or something? Speaking of, how many fingers am I holding up?” the dwarven man asked, holding up 3 fingers while continuing to drink.

Arik didn’t respond, simply pulling out a dagger and getting to work removing the tooth shards that were preventing his powers from regrowing his teeth and repairing his jaw. The dwarven man looked on rather indifferently, as though the whole thing were just another Tuesday afternoon for him. They sat in silence for a while, the only sound was the sickening noises of Arik’s amateur dental surgery. Finally, Arik finished, the ground in front of him covered in tiny tooth and bone shards as well as an impressive pool of blood. Arik’s tongue felt around in his mouth as his new teeth grew in, and his jaw repaired itself.

Finally Arik regarded the dwarven man and said, simply, “I couldn’t get drunk.”

Tordek regarded the stranger who had just spent 20 minutes doing unholy things to his own face. The moron, or perhaps, lunatic would be more apt, who dared spill the drink of Tordek the Strong because he couldn’t get drunk. Tall and dark haired, with green eyes and a face that belied years of battle, despite the fact the lad couldn’t be older than 22.

Tordek simply grunted “Name’s Tordek. Don’t do that again, most aren’t as pleasant as yours truly.” Arik sighed, his battle frenzy and the pain in his mouth both now gone, he simply stood up and left the strange dwarven man without so much as another word. Maybe the adventurer’s guild will give me something I can kill, Arik thought numbly. If I have something to kill… I at least have something else to focus on. Arik looked up at the massive tree that made up the center of town and inside which the Adventurer’s Guild sat. And maybe I’ll get lucky, and this next job will kill me, Arik concluded darkly.

[unclewaynemunson]

Thinking thoughts about Nancy Wheeler again. About how she was the most Teenage Girl ever, gossiping with her bestie while twirling her phone cord around her fingers and kicking her legs in the air. About how she lost everything that embodied her Teenage Girl self in one night: her virginity, her best friend, her carefree smiles and giggles. How she turned into a soldier, got consumed by guilt, and could never return to the youth that she lost.

[lgbtlunaverse]

Everytime I see discourse about kink or nudity at pride I get reminded of the time I went to pride a few years ago with my mother and my sibling- who was 17 at the time and is somewhere on the ace spectrum- and about halfway through, the march went under a gatehouse. Some inhabitants were sitting in their open windows watching the parade. Right before we crossed under them, one of them decided to just... take her shirt off. She wasn't wearing a bra. And you know what happened? People whooped and cheered, and then kept walking. That's it. And there were kids around!! They didn't care. My sibling didn't care. My mother, a cisgender heterosexual woman in her 50s, did not care.

This stuff stops being such a big deal when you go offline. It was basically the same amount of boob you'd see in any perfume ad. No one was like 'what about the children?' And if you didn't wanna see it and looked down, no one would've called you a puritanical prude for that. And it helps to remind myself of that everytime I see kink at pride discourse getting rehashed because at actual pride, people don't care.

[biblically-accurate-dca]

KILL!!!!!!!!!

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Thinking thoughts about Abuela being back and with this backstory about her being taken in by charlatans and Eddies whole catholic guilt thing and how the two things kind of play into one another as an exploration of faith and being taken in by something.

Abuela giving all her money to the tarot card readers etc because she was searching for something - for connection (with Abuelo) - trying to recapture what she had lost, and How Eddie has spoken about trying to re-find the magic he had with Shannon - how Eddie hasn't actually fully reconciled the Shannon of it all when it comes to relationships and how his Catholic guilt connects into that.

How Marisol as a physical representation of Catholicism is part of that narrative - how Eddie is entering a place where he has to chose his path - in order to move on from Shannon he needs to fully square the hole - catholic or non catholic. And how that needs to happen first - before he can begin his queer journey!

[ilovedthestars]

here's the thing. yes, some pieces of art are "better" than others. there are many criteria you can measure that with--technical skill, creativity, clarity, conceptual depth, successful execution of the artist's intentions, etc., and i do think it's useful to clarify which ones you're using as a measuring stick. but like, of course you can evaluate art. of course you can be critical (in the "art critic" sense) of art. (among other things, that's one of the most important ways to get better at making art yourself.)

however. when it comes down to evaluating what gets to count as art. what art even gets to have a seat at the table. i will go to bat for the thing that isn't as "good" every single time.

you can say you think a piece of art is bad. you can say you think it lacked technical skill, or clarity, or conceptual depth, and you consider those important elements of a successful work. i might even agree with you. but if you think that means it doesn't matter, someone is going to die on this hill and it isn't going to be me

[sideblogforweirdshit]

Whump Reference Post for Fingernail Removal Torture

 Hi whump writers of Tumblr! I recently made a little introduction post in which I said I’d be making reference posts. This is one I already had typed up, because for some reason this was the first thing I thought of.

There are no images attached, but I’m putting the rest of the post under a readmore since the majority of the content is semi-graphic written description of the how-to’s and wherefore’s and such of fingernail removal torture.

To be clear: I will be going into as much depth as I possibly can without using images. The content of this post will be purely academic. There will be no artistic liberties taken. This post is meant to be as accurate to (and descriptive of) a real-life situation as possible.

I hope some part of this post eventually winds up being a helpful resource for someone!

1) Not as painful as it’s made out to be

-It's painful, but definitely not to the extent it’s shown in movies or whatnot. A lot of the "pain" comes from the shock factor of seeing your body without something it’s always had, as well as the inherent "wrongness" that comes with experiencing a part of your body being removed.

2) There is very very thin film of skin between the fingernail and the finger.

-If one is careful in removing the fingernail by peeling it back slowly, one can preserve this thin piece of skin. -If one pulls the fingernail back quickly and without taking care, this thin film will rip, and the nail will pull away with bits of flesh attached.

3) The flesh under the nail will be vertically striated.

-If one uses the peel-back method, and is careful to not let the thin film of skin between the nail and the flesh rip, the skin/flesh underneath the nail will be as visibly striated as the fingernail itself. If you look closely at your fingernail right now, you’ll see that there are many tiny grooves from the tip of your nail to the base. This is true for all human fingernails. If the nail is peeled back with sufficient care, those striations will be echoed on the skin underneath the nail.

4) The  “peel entirely off” method versus the  "peel back and then stop" method versus the "pull out entirely" method.

-The “peel entirely off” method is how I will refer to the method of grasping firmly the tip of the fingernail in some sort of vice (usually pliers) and then peeling it backwards, moving the pliers from the nail at the tip of the finger towards the hand itself. Using this method, the nail will remain firmly grasped in the pliers the entire time. The movement of the pliers only stops when the base of the nail is ripped entirely out of the finger. This will necessarily result in ripping out a fair bit of skin past the cuticles, as the technical base of the nail (aka “nail matrix”) is generally around half a centimeter hand-wards past the cuticles (and follows the curve of the nail, so is deeper than the cuticles as well). Due to the nature of skin, I would expect a tear reminiscent of an extremely deep hangnail that goes from the base of the cuticles to at least halfway between the first and second knuckle (and at most goes to the second knuckle). In this case, it is not guaranteed that the nail will grow back. There is a chance it’ll come back, but there is also a chance that the nail matrix is permanently damaged and will not be able to grow a new nail. Since every human is different, there’s not an exact science to determining where a person’s nail matrix is before it’s ripped out. A (very) general rule of thumb is to follow the curve of the existing fingernail, and draw a point on that curve before it hits bone. Obviously, this is extremely subjective.

-The “peel back and then stop” method is how I will refer to what is essentially the previous method, but one stops before the nail-ripping goes past the cuticle and snips off the peeled part, leaving a milimeter or so of fingernail existing on the nailbed. In this case, it is assured that the nail matrix is undisturbed, and the fingernail will grow back. This is the method I will assume is taken for the future steps

-The “pull out entirely” method is how I will refer to the situation where one grasps the protruding part of the nail firmly, and applies force away from the hand and in the direction the finger points. In this case, there’s a large chance that the nail will rip. This depends largely on the care taken with the pulling object (pliers, usually) to grab the nail exactly parallel with the sides of the pliers. If any part of the pliers digs into the nail at a singular location, this will create a point at which pressure will build up, and the nail will likely rip at this location. The strength of the individual’s nails also affects the ripping. The individual’s nail strength can vary based on nourishment as well as on a general person-to-person basis. Personally, I do not recommend this method.

-If one wants to make the removal definitely permanent, there’s the possibility of peeling it back all the way down and out, and then chemically burning where one assumes the nail matrix is. (Some serious irl hikers do this to their toenails on purpose, to reduce the chances of getting ingrown toenails from being laced into hiking boots for days on end.) Removing the nail permanently will obviously reduce the opportunity to peel it off again, but will give a permanent Horrific Aspect to the victim.

5) For the first three days, the exposed flesh will be painful.

-The entire tip of the finger will be a constant deep and throbbing pain. Any deviation from this norm will be an increase in pain, never a decrease (save medication or an ice-bath-for-full-minutes immersion to the point of numbness).

-Any contact with the exposed nailbed will increase the pain. Knocking the exposed flesh against anything, even extremely gently, will result in a visible bright red welt under the thin layer of skin (bright red on light skin only! on darker skin, the welt will still be visible, but will show as a dark red-brown). It is a visual similar to an extremely tiny, non-protruding blood blister. Knocking the nailbed against something less gently will result in fully scraping off that delicate outer layer of skin.

-Using the finger for anything will be painful (though not unbearably so), and it may even be painful to bend the finger at all.

-Any moisture on the exposed flesh (including anything from regular water to antibiotic ointment) will hurt a lot. This will intensify the throbbing at least twofold across the entire nailbed, and will also result in an amount of stinging as if one had just realized one had been stung by a bee.

6) For treatment and healing thereof (if quick healing is desired)

For those first three days, any bandaid application is inadvisable -The exposed flesh will be so tender and vulnerable that any bandaid (even the non-stick kind) will stick to the exposed flesh and rip it upon removal. I can only assume this is in part due to the curvature of the finger, which means that any wrapping-around type bandaid will inherently put pressure on the nailbed, resulting in sticking.

-To promote healing, the first three days should be without any sort of covering on the wound.

After the first three days, a scab will form. -At this point, the pain will be much less. it might be uncomfortable to bump the nailbed into objects, but it will not be the same pain as in the first three days.

-The wound will also be much less sensitive to moisture.

-When the scab starts to crack (usually a vertical crack), one should apply antibiotic ointment and a bandaid. At this point in the proess, it is desired for the scab to remain as consistently moist as possibly. This will help the scab fall off when it is ready to do so.

-At this point, the finger can be used normally (within reason) without much (if any) pain.

After two or three days with the bandaid covering, the scab will start to fall off.

-One may expedite this process if one is careful.

-At this point, the skin on the nailbed is sensitive to the touch, but not to the point of pain.

-There will be some dry, loose skin around the edges of the nailbed.

-The previously visible striation will no longer be there.

-Pressure on the exposed nailbed will not be necessarily painful, but it will feel decidedly Odd. Though not painful, It will be an extremely sensitive area.

-The nailbed will be a delicate pinkish color.

Around a week after the initial scab falls off, there will appear to be another scab. It will be a relatively thin layer of dry, dead skin.

-If the nail is allowed to grow normally, it is likely that it will cover this second scab before it has the chance to fall off.

-If the stub of the fingernail is trimmed routinely, it is possible for the scab to fall off, leaving only relatively smooth unblemished skin where the nailbed is. This skin will be roughly the same color and texture as the skin on the tip of the finger. 

7) The rate at which fingernails grow back is extremely slow

-The average growth rate is about 3.5 milimeters per month. There are several factors that can cause this to vary:

-Fingernails on the dominant hand grow back faster than the nails on the non-dominant hand.

-Fingernails grow back faster than toenails.

-Nails grow back faster in warm weather than in cold weather.

-Depending on the nail and the aforementioned conditions, one can expect a total regrowth time of anywhere from three to six months (or more).

8) Life Without Fingernails

-Fingernails affect a large part of our everyday lives. We mostly use them when we’re manipulating objects with our hands, and we use them to scratch. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it’s a lot. It’s hard to explain just how weird it is to not have fingernails to someone who’s never experienced it, but here goes:

-Fingernails are the Hard Backs used to brace our fingers against a hard shell when we manipulate something with our hands. If you pinch your fingers together right now, you’ll see a white band along the top of your fingernail. This is where the pressure from the pinching goes; it’s braced against your nail.

-Picking something up without fingernails feels extremely odd the first few hundred times you do it. It takes a long time to get used to it.

-Writing is even worse. Without the hard shell backing your fingers, the pencil tends to slip out of your grip more often. If you usually have long enough fingernails that you balance your pen/pencil on them, you’re extremely likely to have the pencil completely slip out of your grip multiple times a sentence.

-You don’t realize how much you unconsciously scratch itchy parts of your body until you no longer have the ability to do so. If you’re only missing a few nails, you have to consciously adjust your hand so that you can scratch with the existing ones. If you’re missing all of them, you have to actively find an external object to alleviate the itch.

Some places on the body one can scratch with their teeth, but for most places, one needs to either find an “itch stick,” or rub that part of their body on something scratchy. A lot of clothing is scratchy enough to work for this. One needs to learn how to vary the pressure so that one can alleviate the itch without tearing through the skin or scratching themselves.

Pros:

-Body horror

Fingernail removal is a more mentally significant mutilation than cuts or burns, if only because it draws on the "that was there and now it's not" aspect of body horror.

-Can be inflicted more than once

Since fingernails grow back, they can be removed again and again and again. Though it may take some time for the nails to regrow, it isn't even close to the type of permanent that’s chopping off a finger or a toe.

-Helplessness

Since it takes a few days for the nailbeds to heal enough to be able to use one's fingers, a complete removal of all fingernails will take away one's ability to use their hands. Even after this initial period of extreme sensitivity, the lack of fingernails is something most people aren’t prepared for. The previous section explaining how fingernails affect daily life is significant here.

 Cons:

-Can’t repeat often.

Once a fingernail is off, it's not coming back for at least three months (likely longer). It doesn't have the relatively quick reset time that burns or cuts do.

-Relatively short amount of time in pain

All of the pain is in the first few days. It is inconvenient afterwards, but there is little to no pain at this time.

-Amount of care needed

One needs to be relatively careful inflicting this. Fingernails are not as resilient as you'd think, and the likelihood of them ripping before you can finish ripping them off is fairly large if you're not being careful.

If you have a short-tempered or impatient whumper, this might not be their particular wheelhouse.

 Conclusion

Overall, I’d say that the effectiveness depends entirely on the desired result. The time it takes for the fingernails to regrow versus the amount of time in which the subject is in pain is not a very productive ratio, so if you’d want your whumper doing a particular torture regularly, I wouldn’t recommend this.

However, if the whumper’s goal is to appeal to the body horror aspect without permanent damage, this is a great option. The fact that it takes nails so long to regrow gives the victim a sense of horrified freakishness. It also has the added benefit of reducing the victim’s maneuverability far after the fact.

The semi-visible nature of this method of torture can be effective if one wishes to horrify characters outside the whumper/whumpee relationship. You don’t immediately look at other people’s hands when you meet them, and as such it might take a while for outside characters to notice the lack of fingernails (especially if they’re past the three day mark). But once they notice, it will be hard to look away.

[eevachu]

Please stop sending me 🅰️sks about d🅾️nating to anything. I don’t want to keep flagging you as sp🅰️m and blocking you, if you are in fact legitimate.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the energy levels to verify any of these, especially because I don’t have the f👁️nancial means to support any of them at this time. It sucks. I’m sorry.

Please stop.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

anorexia is bar you should try based

[paranormaljones]

In the same boat with ghoulcy, the "ehh I could see it" camp. What was the fic that sold you on it?

Exactly, I find their current dynamic absolutely fascinating, regardless of what it turns into in the future. If they started to tend towards the romantic or if they just kept up whatever it is they have now, I honestly wouldn't be upset either way.

The fic that got me was An Equal Partnership by Emily_F6 on AO3. It's so incredibly well written and the characterizations are spot on. There are some graphically violent/sexual moments (which are denoted in the content warnings) and for personal reasons I scroll past those (mostly the sexual content, violence I can usually handle), but the rest of the fic makes skipping a few bits so worth it.

[rubyredbonnetblue]

the way i wanna learn how to dance soooo badly but i would feel SO awkward going to classes without a partner as a built-in friend/moral support

[wildflowercryptid]

something that's been weighing on my mind ever since learning about the situation with ezra / toonimal is seeing how these predators will take the active hostility that is frequently directed towards minors in online spaces to their advantage and use it to prey on vulnerable children. i think that we as adults in online fandom should probably come together and maybe rethink the language / manner we go about interacting with kids bc clearly the way things are rn is causing active harm.

like obviously, if you're an adult and aren't comfortable with minors interacting with you or your content, you should be allowed to set that boundary and should be vocal about it, ( especially if the content you create isn't safe for them to consume. ) but i don't think talking to them like they're a blight on all that is good and holy is the way to go about it. maybe just saying you're an 18 plus account will suffice, you don't have to tell them to fuck off.

[dapg-otmebytheballs]

coming back the next day to my blog terrified of reactions and yea I worry this will get swept under the rug and be made into a non issue

[frankensteinmutual]

one of my housemates is so fucking sensitive it turns me into a person I do not like

[unbearable-lightness-of-ink]

so anyway I really did start compiling a kinyarwanda/english dictionary/grammar guide out of all the random resources i've been hoarding on my phone (it doesn't have to be great, it just has to be better than searching multiple different files every time I'm looking for some obscure vocab or grammar detail) and one of these resources is some PDF uploaded to the internet archive and it's... not great. from the writing and contents it's clearly

old (my guess is mid-1900s. I don't remember colonial and post-colonial Rwandan history specifically enough to guess well here, but based on some of the typos, it was done on a typewriter and then scanned with OCR)

intended for missionaries (some examples of actual sentences in the "translate this" exercises include "I praise God because He saved me and He gave me peace and joy" and, I shit u not, "The blind man cannot see the Word of God, but he can hear and he can know the love of Jesus." it's. well for one thing this is basically useless vocabulary for me, and also it's cringe af)

written by someone who was not a linguist (at one point instead of just saying "if T is preceded by an unvoiced consonant, it turns into D" they give you a list of every unvoiced consonant and then recommend that you invent a mnemonic phrase to memorise the list?! why?)

written by someone who was shit with pronunciation (legit so many places where they're like "there's no way to describe how this sounds, you just have to ask someone to make the sound for you" my good bitch the phoneme might not be in english but I could describe it just fine. skill issue.)

but the thing that's really killing me about all this is that every time they try to explain tonal vowels or phonemes that aren't in english, they tell you to "ask an African to say it for you."

an. an what now? an African? babe there are approximately 1.5 billion people in Africa. Africa accounts for about 20% of the land on earth, it's the second-biggest continent, and it has an estimated two thousand living languages spoken throughout the continent.

and kinyarwanda? it has maybe 15-25 million native speakers, depending on which source I trust. it's spoken (almost*) exclusively in rwanda, which is the 9th smallest country in Africa--and that roundup includes islands off the coast of the continent. It has the second densest population in Africa but it still only has like 13 million people in it. and it's a very unique language. its closest relatives do not have the same phonemes that kinyarwanda has, and its closest relatives are also spoken by relatively few people. I don't know enough about kirundi to say much but I do know that it doesn't have the same vowel tones in all instances and it doesn't have some of the same consonant clusters. and the more widely spoken related languages that you're more likely to stumble on someone who knows how to speak? they're even worse for a reference; ask someone who speaks kiswahili to pronounce kinyarwanda for you and they will not pronounce the difference between, say, umuceri (rice) and umucyeri (berry), or the tonal difference between words like umusambi (floor mat) and umusambi (crested crane).

so, like. it's just absolutely sending me, this random white lady who was obviously a colonialist missionary, bothering to make a whole language guide to teach me how to proselytise in kinyarwanda, but along the way she's like "just ask an african--any african--how to say this" lady less than 1% of them are going to know this language but go off i guess

*almost because there's the diaspora of rwandan expats and immigrants in other countries plus the banyamulenge which is a whole aspect of it that has so much fraught history on all sides that I won't even try to say something intelligent about it, it's totally not my place/something i'm educated enough about, but to my knowledge most of them speak dialects that are more or less dissimilar to kinyarwanda; kinyamulenge and kinyabwisha are not the same as kinyarwanda. take it from my munyamulenge coworker who could never pronounce the difference between c and cy

[naamahdarling]

Can't wait to see what the consistently uncooperative nurse who answers my GP's messages has to say, if she messages me back. I bet you twenty bucks right now her reply makes it obvious that she didn't even glance at the rest of the thread.

Lady, you have way more going on than me. I know you're busy. I also know I am annoying. I'll stop bothering you if you tell me what you need from me so I can move on to the next step because until you do, I can't. Stop wasting your own time.