#I need to physically restrain myself

[whyamihereat4am]

there's something so deeply enjoyable about shipping characters you know would loathe being shipped. Like, whether they have genuine hate for each other or are just offended anyone else would think they tolerate each other, they would definitely rip my head off for giggling maniacally while I draw them smooching in MS Paint like I'm pressing my Barbies' heads together- and not just because that's a generally uncomfortable thing to find, but because it's that person specifically. the knowledge that there is a wealth of erotica that involves them having biologically impossible children would inspire them to destroy the world. but they can't, because they're fictional. the fools. *cackles evilly and posts about who i think would be the bottom when they have hate sex*

[louthestarspeaker]

it's almost 1am here's my essay about Dal and captainhood <333

I hath promised a Dal essay and I hath delivered… 

I've had this in the drafts for so long, but I just rewatched season two and it really allowed me to solidify a lot of my thoughts.

One of things that really strikes me about Dal's character and his relationship to command is that being in charge is a place of safety for him. He's had to be self-reliant and self-sufficient pretty much his whole life until the Protostar. It's something that was engraved into him since he was small, that the only person Dal could really depend on was himself.

And because he was never around anyone who actually cared about him until the Protostar, that was the right thing to do. This need to be in charge, to be in control really, is a learned survival skill. "I can tell you from experience, people in authority lie."

But in season two, his circumstances have changed (for the better!), and that's not the right thing to do anymore. Ultimately, to me, Dal's season two character arc is about vulnerability and trust. He's been in survival mode for so, so long, and now we watch him learn to heal.

You start with this boy who's spent the grand majority of his life alone or with people who are exploiting him, and the story takes him by the hand and tells him "now that you're safe, now that you have people who care about you, you can't live like that anymore."

All throughout season one he learns trust. Trust in his crew, in Hologram Janeway, in the Federation and in Starfleet as institutions that can and will help him and his newfound family. But as a captain,when he was guiding his crew through active crisis after crisis, trust looked like open doors. It looked like laying out all the variables and problems on a table so they could figure a way out together. 

Trust looks very different on the Voyager-A. It asks him to have faith in what he's not seeing, what he's not being told. He has to believe that they have his best interests at heart, that he's not trusting his family to something that will try to hurt them. 

Captainhood isn't just bossing people around for Dal. It's the responsibility of holding the lives of the people he loves in his hands. He trusts his own hands. He has the best interest of his crew at heart. 

To ask Dal to relinquish control, is to ask him to place the lives of himself and his family into someone else's hands. Which, historically, has not gone great for them. It prods directly at his trauma, asks him to take undo and ignore the survival instincts that kept them alive for so long. Is it any wonder he has trouble with that?

Dal's not going around crawling through Jeffries Tubes because he's a brat or because he thinks he's entitled to know everything. He's a traumatized kid whose self-sufficiency, independence, and ability to make his own decisions were once, for a very long time, the literal line between life and death for him and his crew.

And even if he trusts Starfleet and Janeway in his head on a logical level (which I absolutely believe he does), there's still this instinct that's written into him. It's a process to learn how and when to turn that off, and that's what we see especially throughout the first half of season two. 

This really culminates in the cafeteria scene after they return with the Protostar and Chakotay, when Dal advocates for the Starfleet temporal management guys to figure out a way to get the Protostar back to Tars Lamora. Dal was able to see that his hands weren't the best ones for the job, and trust Gwyn's life to someone else. That's huge for him. He trusts not just a person, but a branch of an institution he's never interacted with before, with one of the people that mean the very most to him. And Dal's able to give up that control, to place himself and his crew in that position of potential vulnerability, because he's finally started to feel it in his bones that he's safe here.

[redo-rewind-if]

This week's snippet! Who's speaking here? And to whom? I'll never tell. 🤫

[wednesdaythunder]

Curate my blog?

Listen, I won't curate FUCK, like ma'am, this is a Tumblr. If I can't spam my latest obsession then what's even the point

[sparro48]

so i said i was going to make a luo binghe cosplay.

and now i have spent the past 2 days doing nothing but that and i’m over halfway done

i made my xie lian cosplay in 3 days and i think im gonna do the same with this one

but my hands are shaking from use and i’ve been in a state of constant anxiety the past two days so maybe that’s what’s keeping me going—

[val-the-protoss-simp]

The Alien: Romulus poster only it's one of my OCs because I am very normal about this movie. It totally didn't ignite an old obsession I had with this series when I was like fifteen and I am not brainstorming ideas for a stroy that involves my OCs. No, sir

Anyway. Something something having type 1 narcolepsy makes Michael an ideal target for xenomorphs something something he also has earrings now. If this isn't character development then I don't know what is

[monards]

im banned from ao3 comments until further notice because Why Am I Like This

[belovedstill]

.

[iamunabletothinkofablogname]

Stay safe!!!!!!

Silly is optional.

I'll try!!! Thanks /gen

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

had quite the Experience reading a fic tonight. i felt like i stepped into an episode of the twilight zone

[chessb0r3d]

I love reading dirkjohn fan fiction, but the thing that makes me SO MAD is that they are the most beautifully well written, in character dialogues I've ever read and then they are DISCONTINUED, ABANDONED OR ORPHAN ACCOUNTS. And boy ARE THEY SO MANY.

It's like walking in the most majestic garden you've ever seen in your life then out of fuck nowhere you are falling off a cliff with no bottom that you wish your body make contact with the rich soils of the earth for the sweet release of death you so truly crave, but it will never fucking happen, and you are still falling for who knows how long.

[snzunii]

istg, if my pc isnt broken rn or if its my academic vacation i will fucking play sims and make haru again idfc we will make babies

[shorlinesorrows]

🌻

Ok, so I'm going to college in less than a month, which is going to throw a wrench in my writing schedule while I adjust, but I have started the QPR Jean & Neil project!!! At this point I'm just writing everything so I'm not sure if it will be divided into a series of shorter stories/novellas or one giant behemoth spanning multiple years, but I'm working on it!!! they mean everything to me and i can feel aftg settling into a long-term fixation rather than a short term one. It is currently on par with rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles and warformed: stormweaver (high praise)

I posted a snippet of my dragon perfect court au forever ago and then proceeded to rework the entire idea so i have no clue if that's going to hold as canon, but I had fun writing it, sooooo

Also, I'm working on my story for the aftg supernatural fest, and I don't know if I'm really supposed to talk about it(????) a lot, but the working title is "My Platonic Husband is an Eldritch Abomination" and I'm having fun building almost all of Elodie's character from scratch lol. It features qpr jeaneil because i have No Self Control alongside found family elements and fun magic that I'm still playing around with!! There are also some very suspicious townspeople, but maybe not in the way you'd first expect

On another note!!!

I really like nectarines and caesar salad right now. I've been sustaining myself almost entirely on nectarines and salad for the past four days. The safe food grind is unstoppable. i almost cried when i realized we ran out of nectarines the other day and then my mom very kindly offered to get a couple more at the store

[damnation-if]

If the LIs were deities what would be there domains, favored animal, & weapon? Suchebh & Twilit, sweetcheeks (sweetcheeki?) you’ve been evicted, gotta get new ones, sorry :(

oh, this an interesting thing to consider... i wasn't quite sure whether you meant deities within the world of the game, or more something related to real-world deities, so i might try and give an example of both? i will admit that weapons is a bit hard, though, i'm not sure all of them would use specific weapons haha (adding a cut here for Length)

Arianis

Arianis would be extremely Put Out to suddenly be made a deity, but not particularly Surprised... within the game's universe i think the most likely thing they would be made a deity of would be quite unflattering, something like... Parasites. or Decay. there isn't a terrific real-world equivalent but i assume they would be perceived in a way similar to Pestilence from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, more or less. somewhere between Pestilence and Nergal, anyway - not as Purposefully Destructive as Nergal, that is to say XD

the animal used to symbolise them would probably be a wasp. if pressed to assign them some kind of weapon it'd probably be something like a gnarled and twisted staff of rotting wood.

Heluur

what he would be worshipped for in the game's world kind of depends on the context of... whether or not there's any growth in understanding of the demons and who/what they are. the most positive light i think he could be painted in would give him something like New Beginnings, while negative portrayals would view him more as Corruption. in both versions he'd be strongly associated with time, and viewed as a catalyst of great change. Kronos is probably the closest real-world equivalent, or somewhere in an admixture of Kronos and Aion.

Heluur's animal symbolism will always be a serpent; he generally is not a weapon guy, but i could see something like the Asclepian rod or caduceus being associated with him.

Lithiana

there's probably not a lot of ambiguity in what people would worship Lithiana for - Lust and Sexuality, probably with Sex Work thrown in. unfavourable portrayals of her might add Temptation or Control or something as well. there are a lot of real-world deities that are sort of similar but also a weird amount of them include things like war (Ishtar and Freya for example) so i guess the closest equivalents would be like. Aphrodite or the Mesopotamian Nanaya.

like Heluur, Lithiana's animal symbolism is fairly set - it will always be a shark. the particular type of shark i have in mind when i think about her colouring is a mottled grey kind of wobbegong. and i think for various symbolism-related reasons i'd have to give her a whip or a flail as a weapon.

Malkorath

like Heluur, Malkorath's domains would depend heavily on perception of them and demons in general; in the best light, they'd probably be regarded as representing Individuality and Freedom, and in the worst, something probably more like Death and Calamity. both versions would have overtones of boldness, victory and the hunt. as far as real world equivalents go, probably the most applicable is The Morrígan, though that aligns more closely with the negative aspects than the positive... you could maybe weave in someone like Artemis in that regard.

animal symbolism for Malkorath is kind of tough since they're made up of a bunch of different types already... a falcon, maybe, or a panther. some kind of swift predator. i do think there's not much chance of anyone associating a weapon with Malkorath other than their own natural weapons though lmfao

Suchebh

Suchebh would be fairly universally considered as a deity of Hedonism, Revelry and Excess - negative depictions might add a few things like Madness and maybe Pain, but i think they'd fare more or less the same otherwise. as such, the real-world equivalent is probably quite obviously Dionysus, with a pinch of Pan thrown in for good measure. maybe if you could combine those two with Zeus/Hera at the same time you'd get the best approximation.

as for what kind of animal symbolism people would use for Suchebh, that's a bit rough... peacocks are kind of obvious. birds of paradise, maybe? something flashy like that. for a weapon, they would want something like Zeus's lightning bolts. for the Drama of it all XD

Twilit

most probably Twilit would be worshipped as a deity of Transformation and Metamorphosis. certain people might associate them with Chaos, but they'd personally be offended by the notion that they bring it anywhere themself, so i guess that'd be an argument for priests to have lmfao. it's much tougher to find a real-world equivalent for them... there's Proteus, an ancient Greek god who constantly changed forms and apparently refused to answer questions honestly, but there's also primordial beings of chaos like Abzu and Tiamat, whose forms were too nebulous to be described and represent anarchy and upheaval, which are probably about the best available.

Twilit will always stay as a moth as far as symbolism is concerned. they also almost certainly wouldn't use any weapons, but i can imagine art depicting them holding bones in the way that someone else might hold a weapon.

thank you for your ask! i sure hope this manages to answer your question XD

[ruvviks]

ever since i remembered my ocd diagnosis (it got offhandedly mentioned in my psych eval at the hrt office and i have memory issues) my life has made so much more sense

[puff-poff]

I would love hearing your ojiro headcanons!! He is my son I love him sm

so here's the thing

I have...a lot of Ojiro headcanons so I'll just pick a few random ones to talk about for now

Edgeshot is one of Ojiro's favorite pro heroes because of his ability to stay calm and collected during battle (and totally not just because he thinks Edgeshot looks cool)

he's pescatarian but also anxious as hell so he would rather not eat than have to ask for a special meal

during the dorm room competition there's something on Ojiro's desk that I'm now sure is a pencil pouch but when I first saw it I thought it was a glasses case. so yeah he has glasses but wears contacts most of the time

Ojiro is for sure one of those people who get eerily calm and quiet when they're really pissed. like you can tell he's planning your murder and there's nothing you can do about it

his ears stick out a lil bit :)

don't know how to explain it but this: