#I'm not close to feel sorry about this

[velvetwilde]

please don't pin my wrists above my head and prevent me from moving while you kiss my neck and whisper all the fucked up things you want to do to me while I'm rubbing myself with your thigh

[lazylittledragon]

ok i swear i'm not going to talk about my breakup forever but the thing that just keeps bothering me:

i know that not getting what you need in a relationship is a COMPLETELY valid reason to end it but also. i feel like having a very vulnerable moment where i opened up about my struggles with intimacy and being relieved that i didn't have to keep doing things i wasn't comfortable with, then being dumped a YEAR later because of my lack of intimacy. is something i should be allowed to be very hurt by???

[tangents-within-tangents]

Thinking about the song "Ship in Port" by Radical Face and clones

Thinking about the line "Farewell to the chains we were born into" and what that can mean for the clones

Thinking about how "But I have always stayed in place/Under that old illusion that it's safe" could equally describe Hunter, Echo, and (s1+2) Crosshair's complete opposite approaches to the Empire and post-war life.

The way Crosshair clings to his identity as a soldier of the Empire

And Echo as a soldier of the Republic

But Hunter puts his identity as a soldier behind him

Crosshair fights for the Empire to gain purpose

Echo fights against the Empire to save his brothers

And Hunter decides the Empire is too strong to even try to oppose

"A ship in port is a safer one"

"but it's not the reason it was made"

"So forgive me if I wander off"

"And forgive me more if I just stay"

Thinking about what The Bad Batch could have been if it had more fully explored the differences between those ideologies

(Thinking about what The Bad Batch could have been if it had dedicated more screen time to the 'reg' clones within the Empire and the underground network's fight to free them , instead of just sidelining Echo and Rex for a hypothetical clone rebellion show we might never get)

[corpsephrog]

i really cannot do cryland srsly and not even cus i'm a payneland shipper like when i was watching the show all the flirting just felt so unnatural and uncomfy i was like "this feels weird is this supposed to be weird"

[meownotgood]

i think we as a society don't acknowledge boxer!aki from ch. 46 enough

when he gets animated..... huuu...... uuuuu... godddddd I can't muster a single coherent thought like JUST LOOK AT HIM......

and the way aki fought this guy who looks way more buff than him but aki didn't even break a sweat!!! aki doesn't even look tired!!!!!! he's so lean and tall and pretty in that one panel like what if I just died fyfucikkkk

[anothermonikan]

I see a lot of sentiment within techum spaces about not understanding how tech actually works and considering tech divine or whatever and like. I really do get it's pretty intimidating, but you can learn how your machines work. In fact I think a lot of you would appreciate your objects even more than you do by learning about how they actually function. Demystify tech in your minds NOW!!!

[lloydfrontera]

my biggest gripe with the manhwa rn is that they made javier more of an asshole than he is in the novel and then took away most of the scenes where we see him being kind and soft with others.

javier can be an ass, he is a brat and he's especially annoying when he's with lloyd, but above anything else he is kind and loyal and selfless and good. i cannot emphasize enough how good javier is. he's the kind of person who cannot see someone in trouble or danger and do nothing about it. he's the kind of person who would sacrifice his life for total strangers and no hope of any reward. he's the kind of person who can't even enjoy a lavish party without feeling guilty because he'd much rather help people in need with that money.

he's so fucking good, lloyd is a little annoyed by it because he keeps getting dragged into life-threatening situations because javier just won't stop helping people they don't even know. mind you, lloyd is also endeared by this and would not want him to change but god can it be frustrating in his endeavor to keep them both alive.

there's this particular scene that i just. i'm so sad it was cut. where javier is helping around the refugee camp, going without sleeping and eating so he can focus on helping as many people as possible and then he spots a little kid that got lost on his way back. so he decides to help him.

and he's so gentle with this kid.

Javier walked over to the kid and called him. The flustered boy looked up. Javier strove to put on a warm smile on his face. "Are you lost?" “...” The boy nodded, his eyes all wet. Javier carefully stroked the boy's head. "I think I can help you with that. Why don't you let me help find your tent?" suggested Javier. “...” The boy nodded again. "But why didn't you eat the food? It's going to get cold. Are you not hungry?" "I am… hungry," the boy finally said. But what he said next caught Javier by surprise. "But I won't eat it," said the boy. "Why not?" "My mother is hungrier." "Is that so?" "Yes." “...” Javier wondered why this kid came out to take the food when he had a mother. There must be a reason, he thought to himself. He held out his hand. "I will hold the tray for you." "..." "I won't spill it. I promise." "Okay..." Javier took the tray and wrapped the boy’s hand with his own.

like. god. javier is not a naturally warm person. he's very reserved and stoic and sometimes outright cold, but he still tries so hard with this kid. because he knows what it's like to be him. he knows what it's like to be a child and be scared and hungry and without a home. and he remembers how much it meant for a kind adult to reach out a hand to him and help. and he wants to be that to others too.

everything he does, he does because he genuinely believes it's the right thing to do and therefore his obligation. and even when it doesn't come naturally to him, like being warm and gentle to a child, he still tries his best to do so.

and like that wasn't enough, when they finally find the kid's mom, javier finds out she's blind. recently blinded actually. that she used all her strength to get her child to safety and now she has to depend on him to take care of them because she can't do it anymore. her blouse is smudged with porridge.

so javier kneels down and explains who he is, why he's there and that he wants to help. he lifts up a spoonful of food and slowly and carefully starts to feed her himself. she's a complete stranger and javier doesn't hesitate one second to do this for her.

this is who javier is!! this is who he is at his core!! he's kind and he's selfless and he's above all else good!!

if your audience can't imagine javier comforting a child, then you failed your audience. you missed the point of his character.

[lesbianwyllravengard]

Wyll breaking up with the player character if Ulder dies so Wyll must become the Duke makes me wanna throw up sobbing because he actually thinks that just because his father's first duty being to Baldur's Gate made him a Bad Father that Wyll himself will inevitably be a Bad Lover because surely no one could match love with duty if his father couldn't, unknowing he has more love in one hand than his father had in his entire body. fuck

[problems-exe]

Guess who made another shipkid variant

This is Salem! My version of Sombra, an incredibly underrated shipkid made by @/pepper-mint.

If you want to find out more about the original, I recommend checking out @bluepr1ntyy posts about her, as a lot of her information can be found on there!

As for Salem, she's my silly little, carefree punk lesbian who does whatever she wants.

She's also a vampire!

Like the original Sombra, Salem's eyelights are very sensitive to light, which is why she wears cloth over her eyes to cover them!

She also has a major crush on Lu, something that might be reciprocated in certain timelines. Who knows :3

Original Sombra belongs to @/pepper-mint

Salem belongs to me :)

[sonofatoasterwaffle]

Timber Timbre

The firework that sets him off is probably a Roman candle, and way closer than all the other ones have been, by Hen’s estimate. Eddie is on the ground before she can say anything and Hen’s blood runs a little cold at the realization of what’s happening. 

“Eddie,” she says gently. “It’s still fireworks, it’s okay.” 

Eddie is squatting low behind the kitchen island, head down, and he’s visibly shaking. He nods jerkily, but his breathing doesn’t slow at all. Hen’s heart hurts, but she’s careful not to get too close. She’s well versed in many a mental health crisis, but what to do when your friend is having combat flashbacks feels a little out of her depth. She gets low with him, keeps her tone soft and even. “How can I help, Eddie?” 

His eyes are wild when they meet hers, his hands clenching around nothing like he’s physically clinging to the present. “Can you-“ he stutters. “Where is-? I need Buck.” 

Hen is on her feet as quickly as she can without startling him. “I’ll find him, okay? You stay right here.” 

Downstairs, Buck’s holding the heavy bag for Chim, saying something that was probably meant to be encouraging but comes out more antagonistic. Their shift into being brothers has obviously been going well. They both stop in their tracks when they see the look on Hen’s face. 

“Eddie needs you.” It feels important to say it the way he did.

Another firework goes off then and Buck pales. “Oh, shit.” 

Then he’s taking the stairs two at a time with Hen and Chim not far behind. “Kitchen.” She calls after him. 

Eddie is where she left him, but now his hands are pressed against his ears. Buck squats down in front of him slowly, ducking his head so he can catch Eddie’s eye. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s me, I’m here.” He says, like it’s definitely not the first time.

He looks back and Hen and Chimney, whispers, “Can you guys sit with us a second?” 

They nod, taking their places off to the left across from them, backs against the kitchen counter. Close enough if they need help, far enough away to keep their bubble intact. Hen’s grateful for the direction, and when Bobby comes out of his office, she waves him over, finger to her lips. He doesn’t question it, just squats down on Hen’s other side. 

Eddie shudders, breathes hard out of his nose. Says, “Buck.” Real soft. 

Buck nods, scoots closer at the recognition, reaches out to run his fingertips feather-light over Eddie’s forearms. “You’re in LA, Eddie. At the 118.”

Eddie gasps like he’s just reached the surface of water. “Doesn’t- doesn’t feel like it.” 

Buck grimaces. “I know. I know, let’s go through it, okay?” 

Eddie nods, once, lets Buck take his hands and keep going. “I feel,” Buck prompts. 

Eddie closes his eyes. “Panicked.” 

Buck nods, soft look on his face like pride. It makes Hen’s eyes water. Their boy has grown up so much. 

“Because the fireworks made me think about,” 

“The chopper going down. Getting shot at while the fire was burning. Greggs.” Eddie grits out through bared teeth. 

Buck rubs his thumbs over the backs of Eddie’s hands. “But if I look around I can see,” 

Eddie forces his eyes open with what looks like immense effort, trains them on Buck for a solid ten seconds before he looks around the rest of the room. “You. The 118. Bobby. Hen. Chimney.” 

He looks at each of them in turn. Hen nods encouragingly, waves a little, which seems to increase the recognition on his face. 

Buck smiles at him. “Yeah, that’s good, real good.” 

Some of the tension seeps slowly from Eddie’s shoulders, and Buck rewards it with a squeeze of their joined hands. “Tell me what day it is.” 

Another firework goes off in the distance and Hen wants to murder someone. Bobby looks like he’d help her without a second thought. The fucking audacity to set off explosives when you live by a firehouse is astounding. 

Eddie winces but Buck stays firm with him, tapping his fingers rhythmically against Eddie’s knuckles. “What’s the date, Eds?” 

“Fourth of July.” 

“Exactly. Which means,” 

“Morons.” Eddie answers, rote, like he’s been trained. The way Buck’s handling him right now, Hen supposes he has been. 

“You got it.” He praises, pressing forward until his forehead rests against Eddie’s. “Chris was excited, though, remember?” 

“Poke cake.” Eddie responds and Bobby smiles. 

Midwestern traditions often mystify Hen, but Christopher was so excited to make that weird jello cake with Bobby and Buck that she couldn’t help but decide she loved that one. They spent all evening in Bobby and Athena’s kitchen last night, making gratuitously American dishes that should be objectively gross but that Denny and Chris were wild for. Poke cakes with red and blue jello, things being called “salad” that have never and will never be salad, and burgers that were always a welcome staple in Grant-Nash cookouts. 

Buck is tapping his fingers on Eddie’s knees now, alternating as he prods Eddie to talk him through Christopher’s latest science project. Bilateral brain stimulation, her brain provides. Works for most long-term trauma treatment but can also be helpful during flashbacks. Evan “Internet Research Extraordinaire” Buckley certainly hasn’t been a slouch in this endeavor. 

As he talks through Buck’s prompts, Eddie is slowly relaxing, sitting up on his own a bit more but shifting closer to Buck, tension slowly bleeding out of him as he points out the things he knows, the things he can see, what Bobby made for dinner, what Chimney’s favorite show is right now, what class he helped Hen run flashcards for. It makes Hen’s heart grow too big in her chest. To know that they’re a part of Eddie’s recovery, of him feeling safe. 

“Where are you, Eddie?” Buck asks again after a few minutes of this. They’re side by side now, shoulders brushing as they lean back against the island cabinets. 

Eddie takes a deep breath, sags a little against Buck. “I’m in LA. I’m at the 118 firehouse. You’re all here with me. Everyone’s safe.” 

Hen smiles encouragingly at him, Chim says, “We’re here for you, man.” 

Eddie looks away, mutters, “Esto es tan vergonzoso,” color staining his cheeks. 

“Nuh uh.” Buck answers, firm. “None of that. No tienes nada de que avergonzarte.” 

Hen knows Buck spent a while in Peru. Bartending, she thinks. She’s heard him speak Spanish to people on calls before, but his accent has historically been horrendous. It sounds like being in the Diaz orbit has been helpful for that. Hen doesn’t speak Spanish well, but she’s been in LA long enough to get the gist most of the time. 

“Sorry you guys had to see that.” Eddie apologizes anyway, ignoring Buck.

Bobby shuts that down immediately. “Everybody’s got their demons, Eddie. We’re just happy we can help with yours.” 

He tells Eddie he should take the rest of the night, even as Eddie protests that he’s fine and he doesn’t want to leave them hanging. “It’s just a few hours, Eddie. Take him home, Buck?” 

Buck nods, looking relieved that he didn’t have to ask permission. Eddie still looks a little mortified, but it’s tempered by Bobby’s careful hand on his shoulder. “Get some rest, and I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

“When do you think they’ll give in and just get married?” Chim asks after Buck bundles Eddie into his Jeep. 

Bobby snorts. “I’ve had the paperwork ready to go for years.”

Also on AO3

[skibasyndrome]

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[fluffypotatey]

Macaque would be happy if his final death was due to wukong turning around.

Macaque main motive is that he wants to be important to wukong, friend or foe, he wants to matter to him. I truly feel that in canon, macaque is less mad about his death, and more mad that in the end he was nothing to wukong. Season 5 he hears indirectly wukong trusts him, he matters to him, and he jumps to the rescue. So yeah, having evidence in the end that he matters, would comfort him.

yes, it would comfort him, but Macky is also way too aware of the other relationships Wukong has compared to their own. he would be comforted by the fact that he is still someone Wukong would fight for and turn back to, but by s5, Macky recognizes and respects Wukong's relationship with MK

[poetrysmackdown]

some informal thoughts

hello! hope the holiday season has been kind to all of you. and i hope all my jewish followers had a lovely hanukkah! anyways, since i said a few months ago that i’d pick poetry smackdown back up sometime around this time of year, i thought i should make a post. the gist of it is that i’m still quite busy, i have a break that’s about three weeks shorter than I was planning on, and i don’t currently have the mental bandwidth required to read, contemplate, and sort through poem submissions in a way that does justice to them, even if i were to recruit some friends to help out. since running a tournament format requires at least five weeks of continued engagement once it’s underway, and since i’m not at capacity to offer that right now due to the change in my schedule, i’m gonna have to bow out for now. sad bc i was looking forward to it!

my hope is that i’ll have some more time over the summer to hunker down with it, in which case you’ll be hearing from me. it’ll frankly depend on the kind of job i land in for the summer, but i find that my unemployed spirit can typically keep me doing stupid shit regardless of workload...to a point. i don’t want to make any promises because i don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up just to let them down again LOL. i do admit the amount of exposure the first tournament got has made me feel like more of a perfectionist this time around, doubly because i don’t feel that i’m very suited to being a public online presence (even a relatively quite small one)—i’m bad enough at responding to emails for my own real life responsibilities, let alone tumblr asks for the silly responsibilities i invent for myself lol. that’s not to say i no longer want to do it, or i don’t enjoy it, or even that i don’t feel capable of making a really interesting bracket—just that if i am working to put something new together, and if people are taking the time to submit poems they care about, then i don’t want to half-ass it.

my second admission is something like this. I made the original bracket as a celebration of poetry and our relationships to it. yes it was silly and competitive, and the poems were very tumblr, but still, celebration was the intention—I wanted to have conversations about poetry. I stand by the bracket format as a fun and valuable way to foster conversations about poetry, but truthfully, the poems i’m wanting to have conversations about right now—the poems that we should be talking about right now—are ones that i'm not comfortable putting in a bracket. I reblogged The Baffler’s Poems from Palestine collection on here earlier, and Najwan Darwish’s “Who Remembers The Armenians?”, which I still often find repeating through my head when I'm traveling from one place to another, walking home or riding the bus. I came across this beautiful thread recently where people have been translating Dr. Refaat Alareer’s “If I Must Die” into their own languages (this just makes my translator's heart sing!!!!!!). @havingapoemwithyou has been posting some great poems from and for Palestine as well—check out their tag here.

There's always more to add, and I'll be posting more on here as I come across it, but that's what I feel anyone should be focusing on right now when it comes to poetry. i think poetry can be an escape but it should never be a distraction. does that make sense? i wouldn't be against doing a one-off poll here or there, but it feels weird to be making a tournament for poetry right now, or anytime soon. i feel like what free time i have right now is still best utilized helping my friends with organizing in the real world. and god, a bit off-topic but while I'm talking, fuck poetry foundation—I have so much respect for all the poets keeping up the boycott, because while i think it's a simple decision, it's not always an easy one (Aurielle Lucier discussed that here).

anyways, if you read all of this, thank you for your time!! I could go on and on, but really this was just meant to be a message telling y'all that there won't be another tournament for a while lol. even so i'll be trying to use this small silly platform as best i can until palestine is free because that's the absolute least i can do.

[galactic-rhea]

Thoughts on Padmé x Anakin x Rex?

Padmé and Anakin are so mutually obssesed they would first have to check into that before trying to bring another person to their carefully-balanced-kind-of-damage or something it's going to explode.

Honestly it's a fun ship! But I don't have too many thoughts about them because when I consider them is usually in very low-stakes-fun-AU-scenarios.

And I'm actually a bit of a fan of Rexwalker myself! Athough I tend to like them more as very good buddies, the covering-for-you-dynamic it's so funny for them, lol It's also angsty and complicated because, y'know, the power-imbalance and unchecked trauma? Is funny that the clone that's actually a slave for the republic is the most normal if you bring him into the anidala romance circus.

Also shout out to @phoenixyfriend , she has a lot of rexanidala fics and recs for anyone interested reading this!

[unopenablebox]

i admit that i find it a little bit frustrating how Wildly Astonished other antizionist jews act when i tell them my israeli jewish family have lived in the region since [some unknown length of time before 1800 when there start being records about it]

[thresholdbb]

Me: Why is there a weird light in my room?