#Just not wholly human and OK with that

[theskyexists]

.x

[bonewicca]

more 🛌

[revelboo]

The speed in which you crank out fics is concerning. Like, I appreciate it WHOLLY, but are you good? R u ok?

Rest is overrated, I run on stress and coffee. Yes, I’m good. I can write short form like this pretty quickly if I’m not at work or busy.

Humans Are Weird/Cute Headcanons

Humans elicit one of two reactions in Cybertronians. It’s not like they haven’t seen organic life before, but the fact that we look vaguely like most Cybertronians in form? Our faces, our body shapes, two legs and two arms just like them? It either creates an unconscious association that we look like tiny, organic Cybertronians or that the similarities are just unsettling. Compounding it is the way we move, the gestures we use that are so eerily like their own. To make it worse, we’re just so helpless compared to them. Fragile. There’s a tendency to react to us like we would a newborn kitten. And for that protectiveness to eventually slide into possessiveness.

TFP Knockout

• Primus. The first time he saw you in full racing leathers, boots, gloves, and that helmet, he just stopped short in surprise. Thinks of the rare times he’d seen minicons and how you look like one instead of just another squishy, little human. And while he’d initially just been invested in figuring out how an inferior, little human beat him in a race, it doesn’t take long for him to start looking forward to those almost nightly meetings. It becomes less about winning and more about the bull session between you two after. Enjoying when you stand up to him, argue with him, even though you must realize he could hurt you so easily if he wanted to.

IDW Bumblebee

• It’s honestly such a pleasant surprise how tactile humans are. You seem to have no sense of personal space and he loves it, because it’s less lonely when you’re near. You don’t mind being picked up and carried, your little frame so warm in his hands or cradled against him. Always so curious, your little hands exploring his servos, while you smile to yourself. Then holding out your own hands so he can carefully manipulate them with a single servo. It’s like a game between you, showing off your little, blunt teeth so he will bare his denta for you as you sit on his thigh.

IDW Bluestreak

• Knows he can be a bit annoying to some bots, but you never seem bothered by his chatter. Actually asking him questions, interacting and it means so much to him when you stretch out against him, laying a cheek on him to listen to the sound of his voice rumbling through you. Liking it when he talks, wanting to be near him. The big surprise, though? How protective you are of him, not even thinking twice about throwing a shoe at Sunny for making a rude comment aimed at him, your little face red as you snarl at the much bigger bot, who’s too shocked at the outburst to respond.

IDW Starscream

• Having so little to call his own, he’s extremely possessive of you. It doesn’t hurt that you’re always happy to see him, greeting him when he returns from patrol, fussing over his injuries like you’re trying to take care of him. No conniving or plotting in you and no ulterior motives for seeking out his company. Aside from leeching body heat, and he hardly minds that, enjoys the feel of you sprawled against him, the peaceful silence.

TFP Soundwave

• Even though he initially took you because of the effect your strange organic thoughts have on him to try and understand why he can’t shut you out, it’s impossible to stay impartial. Every day he tries to inoculate himself against your thoughts, strengthening that connection through touch. And when you start reaching for him in return it’s a surprise. Eventually you sing for him not because he asked you to in an effort to distract you and focus your thoughts on something so they’re less painful to him, but because you want to. Because you think it makes him happy and it does.

ES Megatron

• He’d never paid much attention to humans until he’d met Dorothy, he’d fought alongside her and suddenly humanity wasn’t just something vaguely annoying getting in his way, under ped. It’s harder to not care after getting to know humans. Harder to not be overprotective about you after making it his mission to look after you. And maybe he’s a bit overzealous about it, because you’re not Dorothy. She can stand on her own and take care of herself, but you? You need him.

IDW Optimus

• He’s so used to being bigger than most Autobots. Of being looked up to, but you’re even tinier than they are. Small enough to carry in one hand even though he’s awkward about asking you to let him carry you at first. But after the spark twisting anxiety of watching you walking where bigger Cybertronians are walking? Seeing it not even occur to you that you might get stepped on? He insists on carrying you for your own safety, though, truth be told, he enjoys the feel of you in his servos, that little bemused smile you aim at him.

IDW Thundercracker

• He feels guilty sometimes about taking you, but it’s for the best even if you’re upset now. He’s seen enough movies to know how to coax you, win you over. He became obsessed with human love stories, the drama and romance. And he wants that for himself. Needs it. So he tries different tactics, little gifts and acts meant to convince you to love him. It’s so easy in the movies.

TFP Megatron

• The game you two play has become something of a guilty pleasure of his. Watching you pretend. Pushing you to see how far you’ll allow before you snap at him. Pretending you aren’t scared of him, though he’s seen the fear in your eyes once or twice and while it had amused him at first, he prefers you snarling back at him, all attitude. Your fear twists unpleasantly through him, but that angry defiance? So lovely.

IDW Soundwave

• He never meant to get so attached to you after he’d found you in Starscream’s quarters that day. You’re just so small and you’d looked at him in fear, your wild emotions almost crippling him since he couldn’t shut it out. Even after you calmed, days later, he finds himself reaching out a thought. Finding you and monitoring you from a distance. Again and again until he’d finally had to check on you in person again. After all, what did Starscream really know about caring for anyone, let alone a human. And that hesitant, little smile had warmed him when you’d looked up at him.

IDW Jazz

• The fact that you can see through his lies and will call him out on it? It’s a surprise and a relief. Letting down his defenses, letting you in takes time. He’s worn that smiling, carefree mask for so long. But he slowly lets it fall away when it’s just the two of you, feeling the absence of that weight he’d carried for so long. Getting to know who he is under the facade.

IDW Prowl

• Has to protect you since you don’t seem to understand just how small and delicate you are. Standing up to him and any other bot with zero fear. Something about that reckless anger calls to him. Around the other Autobots, he has to be the one in control, the one with a plan no matter what. Never allowed to falter or hesitate. You spark his own temper, making it easier to drop the act. Be frustrated or angry when it’s just you two. Be real.

Next

[charlie-ver]

Hey, you, the trans man reading this - I love you. I know there's posts like this, but I got down a bad rabbit hole last night and I think there's not enough nice posts towards trans men (:

I don't care if you've finished you transition, on won't be ever able to reach the changes you would like. I don't care if you've been on T for years, or just started, or won't be for some years, or can't or don't want to be. I do not care how you dress. I don't care if you want to be pregnant and have children one day. I don't care if you want hysterectomy and don't even want to freeze your eggs (Hell knows I am not freezing anything). I do not care if you want bottom surgery or if you love what you were born with. Because it doesn't matter and doesn't take away from your identity.

Gay trans men? You aren't just confused straight girls. You are valid in your gender AND sexuality. Straight trans men? You aren't a betrayal the moment you are no longer misgendered. You're still welcome in lgbtqia+ spaces. Because you're a part of our community. One does not lose their place the moment they are perceived and cis or cishet.

Cis men have heard it before, but they won't admit it. All this "if you like x you must be a girl" really just feels like repackaged "if you like x you must be gay". Wanna hear a secret?

HOBBIES, JOBS AND FAVORITE THINGS DO NOT HAVE GENDER.

I like botanical gardens. I love plants. I like looking at clothing, room decor, fabric stores sometimes catch my eye. Because I am am artist, and I take inspiration from these and many more things. Plant care and gardening is not a "red flag" for a trans man in my humble and trans opinion, but it's a sign that you have love to give. And that's beautiful. Just like liking these things does not indicate that a man is gay, it does not mean that your internal identity is any different.

Do not let the world put rails on your patch to your own masculinity. And if you have to hide, that's okay. If you can only be yourself online, that's okay. Trans people will always be here. Trans men will always be here. The best thing you can do is to live as safely as you can. I know this can come off as condescending from a European who has nothing to fear personally, except violence for one month in the year, because my way of being trans isn't "obvious", but I try to take it that my safety means I can try to reassure the rest of you, while you can just focus on your own misery and don't have to be strong for anyone but yourself.

If you need a safe place to went, come to my asks. If you don't want me to post them and just read them, that's ok. You can be angry, you can vent, you can cry, do whatever you need, but, obviously, no transphobia or anything (: Special love goes out to trans men who are of the aroace spectrum, because honestly, the aroace discourse never seems to die, it's just dismissed. Reminds me of something. Hm (: I wonder.

Anyhow. Come to me to cry, for a virtual hug, for a distraction, if you'd like. Feel free to ask for art. Want me to draw your trans characters with flags? I can do that, for free, for you. Ask or dm is enough (: Art and listening is the best I can do, but I'll do my best to do it well.

I love you. You deserve to live, you deserve to be happy, and you also are wholly entitled to cry, to complain, to be sad, angry, loud, afraid. You are a human being with emotions, you deserve to feel them. Nobody can tell you what your internal identity, what your gender is. Because nobody else can know that. Only you can.

So let me repeat: It does not matter how you dress, whether you are on T, whether you want surgeries or love your body as is, whether you are skinny, fat, or muscular, what accessories and clothes you wear, how your voice sounds, how you act, how you carry yourself and what you like. The only thing that matters is how you feel. And while we're at it, yes, you may change your mind, but it still doesn't invalidate your identity in the moment. There was a time where I thought I was biromantic, but I dropped that because I wasn't, and nobody gave me shit for it. Because nobody should. Whatever you feel right now? Valid. Do you identify at a trans man but don't use he/him? Valid. Do you identify with more genders? Are you maybe a man only sometimes? Or are you more at the same time? All of that is valid, if you feel like a man in some aspect or on some part, you are one, if that's a label you want. If your gender makes more sense as a man, then yeah, you are one. Nothing else but how you feel matters.

I love you, and again, I'm here for you if you need that. I can only listen and draw a little something for you, but maybe that's enough for some. If it can help a bit, I can do it for you.

Anyone derailing this post will be blocked. I have no patience for derailers.

[meta-sequoia]

Rose genetics and the law of unintended consequences (or, ten rose bushes, reviewed)

I have a number of longposts in the backlog, including updates on a number of garden improvement projects I undertook over the winter, but I kept putting off posting them because there kept being Horrors. However, spring is here - in California anyway - and plants wait for no one.

Over the winter of 2025, as a coping mechanism for the aforementioned Horrors, I got really into roses. Because of who I am as a person, deciding what roses I wanted to buy also made me feel obliged to reconstruct the history of rose breeding, just to make sense of the teeming confusion of the tens of thousands of named rose varieties. Humans have been raising roses for food, medicine, and beauty for untold centuries, and so they've really grown up with us. The history of the development of roses, it turns out, is the history of the development of humanity in miniature.

This post has it all: history, some light phylogeny discussion, material analysis of English folk ballads, a conceptual framework for understanding how different kinds of roses vary and why, a #haul breakdown of what bare-root roses I got and what I thought of them, and some philosophical musings on what it means for an organism to be subjected to a long-term selective breeding process, to be remade wholly in the image of human desire. All that, and pictures of roses, under the cut.

My general region of California is considered to have a good climate for roses, much good may it do us. It never gets too hot or too cold, so they essentially never go out of season, and even though our winters are wet, the rest of the year is fairly dry. This is absolutely critical, because the main problem that makes garden roses hard to grow is fungal disease. Modern roses are incredibly susceptible to fungal diseases, which are caused, roughly, by Damp. This has typically been combated with toxic sprays (though there are now less-toxic options) and aggressive pruning regimens.

Needless to say, this is a ridiculous fucking problem for a plant to have. California natives, by comparison, hate irrigation - they have a natural life cycle involving being dry in summer and wet in winter, like California itself, so if you grow them in a climate resembling their natural range, without too much added water, they will be mostly OK. Roses, as far as I can tell, actually hate all water, including rain and humidity, which is much worse because gardeners do not control the weather. If it rains too often after, say, noon, the rose's leaves might get wet, fail to dry off, get a fungal disease, and die. If there is too much fog, or it is humid, as it is in most of the country in the summer, the rose's leaves might get wet &c. If you have a sprinkler system - you get the idea.

Fungal disease can also weaken roses and make them more prone to insect infestations. This is bad because modern garden roses are, without any help from The Weather, already incredibly prone to infestations from aphids, mites, beetles, and a mite-borne disease undescriptively called "rose rosette disease", which produces a habitus that I can only describe as "rose bush eldritch horror".

Now, this may all have you asking one question. Probably, that question is "why are you so obsessed with a plant that wants so badly to die?" I will not be answering this question today. Instead, I will be answering a different question, which is "Why do modern garden roses suck so bad?"

Now, if roses are subject to some manner of curse, then it isn't a family curse, phylogenically speaking. Roses - genus Rosa species extremely miscellaneous - are a member of the family Rosaceae, which contains a massive number of useful and delightful plants. It is possibly the most economically important family of plants next to the brassicas. The rose family brings us not just roses, but apples, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, plums, peaches, apricots, and almonds. And the wild rose, untouched by human efforts, is a lot like a raspberry, actually.

Its flowers have only five petals, in pink or white. It’s got thorny stems that form thickets, and oval (or, technically, lanceolate) leaves with lightly serrated edges. Its flowers are fragrant, which is an adaptation to their long and necessary coexistence with pollinators and other insects - fragrance serves as a chemical signal for insects to "come here" or "go away", depending. The wild rose is hardy, like all wild plants, tolerant of various environmental problems that would kill a garden rose: shade, salt, normal levels of ambient insect and fungal disease pressure, drought, being consistently rained on in the afternoon or evening. It may reproduce asexually from suckers - strong shoots from near the base of the plant - and this makes it able to withstand browsing pressure from e.g. deer. (Put a pin in that.) It also can reproduce in the normal way, by having its flowers pollinated and forming seeds, which are borne in prominent reddish-orange fruits called "hips".

This is not a rose I bought, but here’s Rosa gymnocarpa, a California native rose. It’s a wood rose, so it’s shade-tolerant, and it’s often found in redwood forests specifically, so it tolerates relatively dry soil and very acidic soil.

Honorable mention: Rosa gymnocarpa (wood rose)

Source: Calscape

A raspberry plant in flower, for comparison. Source

The wild rose has another trait, which may be surprising to those who have only ever seen garden roses: it blooms once, usually in the summer. This is typical of flowers, which almost always have a season, for the exact same reason fresh fruit has a season. Flowering plants are on a tight schedule: they need to finish up their blooming, so they can set fruit, so they can get their seeds out before winter, in case the frost kills them off. And mostly we’re used to that: tulips are for spring, so you don't expect a tulip to make a second showing in fall, or to flower continuously throughout the summer. But roses have been bred to do this, and have done it for centuries, for so long we barely remember what it was like when "roses blooming" was a time of year, an event.

It's possible that for most of human history, roses were all the more treasured for being fleeting, which simply isn't an aspect of how we moderns understand roses. I am constantly subjected to traditional ballads at home, both in English and German, so I am very aware that multiple Child ballads mention roses as a way of placing the events of the ballad at a particular time of year. In 'Lady Isobel and the Elf-Knight', a song traditionally associated with May Day, one version of the chorus references the events as occurring 'as the rose is blown'. And at the start of 'Tam Lin', the protagonist meets her fairy lover while plucking a double rose, is "laid down among... the roses red" by him, and finishes the ballad on Halloween night heavily pregnant with his child. The course of the ballad is inextricably intertwined with the course of the seasons, and the bloom of roses is synonymous with early summer. (There's so much symbolism in 'Tam Lin', but especially around roses. Can I interest you in tam-lin.org at this time?)

European religious literature even uses "a rose e'er blooming" as a purely figurative phrase, something impossible and magical enough to be a metonym for the Virgin Mary - but in the modern era, most garden roses are ever-blooming. The perpetual-blooming rose is not the natural state of the rose plant, but a kind of technology that had to be developed. And I don't know, I just think that's neat.

So what have we learned? The wild rose is: once-blooming, tough, possibly shade-tolerant depending on species, very thorny, bearing simple pink or white five-petaled flowers, that are fragrant, pollinator-friendly, and produce fruit readily enough. In short, a practical, normal sort of plant.

The garden rose is…not that. There’s no other way to put this: the modern garden rose is the wild rose, but bimboified.

Now, in case today is your first day on the Internet - well, first of all, welcome, it’s bad here - but secondly, bimboification is a niche fetish where someone is transformed into a hypersexualized version of themselves that is also very stupid. Plant domestication is obviously analogous. I didn’t originate this joke; in fact, I reblogged a joke like this just last week.

Roses are like this but even more so. Like, wheat is clearly bimboified. Its sexual parts (seeds) have been remade, swollen to ludicrous proportions, and wheat is probably worse at being a plant than wild grasses. But we created modern wheat from wild grass because it was more useful that way, and wheat could in theory survive and spread without human cultivation. Roses are Like That purely because we wanted to make them a more perfect decorative object. Centuries of intensive selection pressure for appearance have rendered roses useless as an independent plant: they are so disease-prone they need extensive intervention to even survive, and they are often physically incapable of propagating themselves - one of the basic features of plants! - without human aid. That’s plant bimboification.

Source: Heirloom Roses. This one is called 'Oranges 'n' Lemons. Hardly seems like the same plant!

Here are just a few examples, of what we've done to roses. Humans love rose petals - eating them, distilling them into perfume, smelling them, just looking at them - so the garden rose has massive flowers that are so stuffed with petals that pollinators cannot get at their centers, rendering the rose incapable of reproducing except possibly with the help of a human equipped with a paintbrush. Humans love bright colors, so modern roses come in every color their natural pigments allow. Garden roses are often - though not always - less thorny than their wild cousins, because thorns are inconvenient to humans, and so have been somewhat bred out.

And what’s just as important is what was bred out of wild roses in the process of becoming modern roses - by accident. As mentioned above, modern roses are often useless to pollinators, and, not unrelatedly, can’t reproduce without human help. They often lose their fragrance, if not specifically bred for it. They are very susceptible to disease, because gardeners can keep alive, through sheer stubbornness, plants that natural selection would have culled. Likewise, they need full sun where many wild roses can get by even in the shade of big evergreens, and they can't tolerate nearly as much cold, heat, or salt exposure as their wild relatives.

This 'use it or lose it' thing, by the way, is a general principle of selective processes like plant breeding, or like evolution. If you have two independent traits, A and B, and you select hard for A, then B is likely to gradually drop out of the population, simply because the subset of A carriers that also have B is likely to be small. It's pure statistics. (It essentially is a human-created population bottleneck.) The more intense and ruthless the selection pressure, the stronger the effect. Evolution cares a lot about seed production and hardly at all about color, so wild roses are plain but make enormous rose hips; humans like beautiful roses the color of sunsets, and are indifferent to seed production, so modern roses don’t make hips at all. The failure to select for eventually becomes an implicit selection pressure against.

(Highly-bred organisms are thus less, I guess, well-rounded genetically even before you get to issues of inbreeding, and if you assume there is no biological link between your selected-for traits and other ridealong traits, e.g. domestication syndrome. Genetics is complicated!)

One adapted wild-type trait that - I speculate - was not bred out, due to its direct usefulness to humans, was the ability of roses to grow back vigorously from having leaves or branches removed. This is, it seems to me, an adaptation to herbivore browsing - if you are a rose with minimal regrowth ability, and a deer chews on half your canes, it’s curtains for you. But humans also fully remove half of the canes of their garden roses every winter - it’s critical to controlling the fungal disease that so plagues them. Specifically, pruning improves airflow through the plant, which evaporates the water that keeps falling on the leaves from the sky. (You know. The rain, that roses both hate and need to live.) In some sense, we are acting as caretakers here, shaping the plant in inscrutable ways for its own good. But to the plant, we are basically deer: just another in a long line of animals that want to steal its leaves. Unbelievable! It needs those! Fuck you too, buddy: here’s a faceful of thorns.

Truly, a tale as old as time.

This brings me to my first actual rose review, a kind of bridge between wild roses and the world of cultivated roses.

#1: Rosa rugosa, probably "Hansa"

Source: the author's yard.

This is a sucker - a vigorous young ground-level shoot - from an unnamed rosebush from my mother's house. I say "probably 'Hansa'" because we have no idea what this actually is, only that it is a rugosa hybrid, purchased from an unknown nursery in the Midwest sometime during the Bush administration.

'Hybrid rugosas' are crosses between garden-type roses and a wild rose species called Rosa rugosa, which is native to much of Asia. This particular rose bush has many traits carried over from its wild parent: it's violently fragrant, a glorious sweet-spicy combo that smells to me like childhood and home; it has wrinkly leaves (characteristic of Rosa rugosa in particular); its stems are practically coated in prickles; and it's quite tolerant of shade, drought, and salt (Rosa rugosa is a beach rose).

The main virtue evinced by this rose, derived from its wild parent, is the same reason that it is still here in my garden: it is extremely difficult to kill. My mother, after hearing me say I wanted this specific rose bush at my house the same way it had been at my childhood home, dug up a sucker from her instance, put it in a bag with some wet dirt, carried it by hand on a multi-hour cross-country plane flight, and handed it off to me. Once I received it, I stuck it in a pot, because I was ripping up my lawn and had nowhere to plant it, and mostly forgot about it, because I was busy ripping up my entire lawn. It lost its leaves suspiciously early in the fall. ("That's not good," my mother said, over FaceTime, brow furrowed. "Are the rest of your roses doing that?")

But as the saying doesn't go, "where there's green cambium, there's hope", and I continued to take care of it throughout the winter. I eventually even remembered to put it in the ground. It is now March, and in defiance of the mockery of certain judgemental housemates, who said things like "why do you have a stick in a pot?" and "it's giving 'dead', my guy", this "stick" has now decided to become a rosebush, and has a grand total of (approximately) twenty-five leaves.

Like I said: extremely difficult to kill. It is currently planted 10-ish feet from the base of a redwood tree, a tough environment where some hardy garden-style roses have nonetheless been known to thrive. Given that its resurrection has occurred entirely while it was planted under the redwood, it doesn't seem too mad about its environment.

Review: holy shit, it’s alive???

#2: Zéphirine Drouhin, the "old garden rose"

Source: Heirloom Roses

Rosarians have conceived of many groupings of garden roses, based on known ancestry, phenotype, genetic studies, and Vibes, but one major breakpoint is those bred before 1867, the "old garden roses", and after 1867, the "modern garden roses".

The old garden roses were derived mostly from ancient European and Middle Eastern stock, which had themselves been created from wild roses centuries prior. For example, this is Rosa x alba, an ancient European rose strain; it was used as the heraldic badge of the medieval House of York during the English conflict known as the War of the Roses.

Source: not mine

Some of these roses are perpetual-blooming, a trait introduced as late as the eighteenth century, and which is entirely due to trade contact with China: as far as I can tell, the genes for strong reblooming only come from the Chinese rose-breeding tradition, which was itself centuries old by that point. So the modern Western concept of perpetual-blooming roses as the default kind of rose - like so many other aspects of modernity - is a direct result of Europeans cribbing from everybody else.

Interestingly, France was a major center for rose development during the early modern period. You can see it in the way old garden roses are named: overwhelmingly after some eminent madame or monsieur. This is probably connected to the fact that Josephine, Napoleon Bonaparte’s empress, was a rose fiend: she had two hundred and fifty new varieties of rose to be brought to her gardens at Château de Malmaison, which was probably pretty much all the named varieties of rose that existed then, and many of which were new to European cultivation at that time. Again, this represented a massive inflow of rose genes that were previously restricted to other countries or continents entirely. Inextricably, these gardens also represent the proceeds of early modern global trade, and of empire: Napoleon, on campaign abroad, himself sent her hundreds of specimens of flowering plants, and the French navy confiscated plants and seeds from ships captured and sea and sent them to her.

Anyway, Zéphirine Drouhin, created at the end of the "old garden rose" period and named for some now-forgotten madame or mademoiselle, is highly fragrant - one of the few roses said to really perfume the air - with a vibrant but old-fashioned color palette. (Apricot and yellow roses were also characteristic of the Chinese rose gene pool, and so were significantly less common in old garden roses.) Zéphirine Drouhin is also thornless, a rare trait that we nonetheless see in some old-fashioned garden roses, and a few modern garden roses as well.

Old garden roses have a variable but generally good level of disease resistance. Zéphirine Drouhin in particular, gets something of a bad rap for poor disease resistance; English rose breeder David Austin Roses says, tactfully, that it "prefers warmer climates" (versus, one must assume, rainy England) and that "controlling disease can be a problem". By this you should understand them to mean that it is a whiny little pissbaby that constantly gets blackspot, a diva that will defoliate at the drop of a hat (or the drop of, uh, water).

However, unlike certain other newer roses I will mention later, I have found Zéphirine Drouhin to be pretty healthy so far. I received this rose, like many in this post, "bare root", basically a stick, dormant in a bag of wood shavings. Upon being planted in a part-sun area, it has leafed out with only a scattering of aphids to show in terms of disease.

Review: So far, so good. Looking forward to the fragrance.

#3 and 4: 'Mister Lincoln' and 'Fragrant Cloud', the hybrid tea brothers

Remember how I mentioned that 1868 is the breakpoint between "old garden roses" and "modern garden roses"? That year marked the invention of a new type of rose, the 'hybrid tea', that is in some sense THE rose, the ARCHETYPE of a rose. If you ask someone who knows nothing about roses to draw 'a rose' - if you look up clipart of a rose - a hybrid tea rose is what you'll get.

Source: Star Nursery

This is Mister Lincoln, and although it was developed as late as the 1960s, it has the classic hybrid tea rose form. Hybrid teas have a very distinctive shape, described as "high-pointed", with a spiral of unfurling petals that curl at the edges, and they're borne singly on long stems, making them great for cutting and putting into vases and bouquets. They are not always strongly fragrant, and they are not generally very disease-resistant. They come in a very wide variety of colors, intense and subtle. They are reblooming.

Hybrid teas were developed by another East-meets-West cross, when the Chinese tea roses, freshly imported from Guangzhou in the early 19th century, were bred with the old garden roses. Tea roses have the same iconic form as the hybrid teas; they have those unique, pastel shades that were previously quite absent from European rose stocks; they smell like a fresh cup of tea. All these traits they impart to hybrid teas. Hybrid teas have been very popular ever since, and have been subject to a great deal of selective breeding for color and form.

Hybrid teas don't generally spark joy, to me. I find the 'cartoon rose' shape kind of twee, honestly. And the reputation for lack of disease tolerance puts me off. But I heard Mister Lincoln was incredibly fragrant, and that drew me in. Likewise Fragrant Cloud (1967), which also has the charming feature of being a violent neon coral that is allegedly very difficult to photograph.

Source: Heirloom Roses

“It'll be fine," I thought. "How much fungal disease can it get? It's not like it's humid here."

Never again. My trust is destroyed; fuck hybrid teas.

please, my son, he is very sick

This is my poor Mister Lincoln, planted from bare-root in mid-December. It has three different fungal diseases, and also an aphid infestation I can't seem to get it to shake. It looks like one of those diagrams of a liver in a medical textbook that has fatty liver and cirrhosis and liver cancer all at once, just so you can see what all the diseases look like. This is a rose that has every problem! No other rose in this flower bed comes close to having every problem! 'Munstead Wood' is also a modern garden rose (though from a very different lineage - see my review below) and it has no fungal diseases and not a single aphid!

Well, maybe the other hybrid tea I bought is doing better... well, nope, it rained last week and Fragrant Cloud has powdery mildew.

Review: Come on, man.

#5 Unidentified ‘sunset’ rose

I didn’t buy these roses; they came with my house. As a consequence, I have no idea what they are, but I am now intimately familiar with their traits, and I think they are very indicative of both the high and low points of modern garden roses.

On the surface level, the fact that these rose bushes are still with us is an impressive proof of their persistence under adversity. When I bought the house, these roses were being choked to death. Lily-of-the-nile had been planted way too close to them, and then permitted to grow unchecked and undivided for many years; their roots were completely infiltrated and surrounded with lily roots. The lily roots had also damaged the irrigation lines, which were dribbling uncontrolled amounts of water into the shared root zone. So when I excavated these roses, the whole area smelled strongly of rot, with visible mold throughout; the roots were fully wet even in the heat of August. The roses were also infested with blackspot, not surprisingly. I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was too little, too late.

But when they finally got some drainage, some direct sunlight, and some relief from the brutal root competition, they did start growing back, and even blooming. Come winter, I pruned hard, defoliated, and applied neem oil consistently. And they’ve made a comeback!

Source: these blooms are actually my roses.

They bloom, and they’re beautiful. They do this ombre thing, where the buds are bright yellow and as they open they go from yellow, to orange, and finally to red.

The growth is fairly vigorous, with no powdery mildew no matter how rainy it gets. But their foliage definitely suffers from blackspot, and occasional rose rust; the spores are probably ambiently present in the soil now, and they can’t quite seem to defend themselves, even with ample help from organic fungicides like neem oil.

They also have no fragrance. They smell like nothing. And that’s the standard modern garden rose in a nutshell, I think: beautiful color and form, shaky disease resistance, little fragrance. It’s a little sad, honestly.

Review: Okay, this one is really pretty, actually.

Interlude: Pesticides and the law of unintended consequences

So, yeah, you can sort of see how roses got a reputation for being picky divas. I can only imagine how bad this sort of thing must get in places that get (gasp!) rain or humidity in the summer.

Now, having created plants that are too disease-ridden to live, rose-lovers came up with practical and effective solutions to the disease problem they created. For the past century or so, the go-to fix for our increasingly disease-prone rose population has been chemicals: regular applications of synthetic insecticide and fungicide sprays, as well as plenty of fertilizer and herbicide to feed the roses and kill any competing weeds.

However, recall the theme of this post: the law of unintended consequences. In agriculture, the development of modern pesticides and fertilizers has been genuinely miraculous; the Green Revolution is estimated to have saved a billion people from starvation in the latter half of the twentieth century. Saving a billion people! Can you even begin to conceive of what it would be like to save a billion people, even grapple with the moral weight of that act? I know I can't; the number is simply too large for our moral intuitions to handle, I think. So I'm hesitant to bad-mouth pesticides and fertilizers too much.

But they do have massive downsides. Chemical fertilizers leach into the groundwater and cause algal blooms that make entire bodies of water go anoxic, rendering them uninhabitable to fish and the rest of the aquatic food chain. Insecticides are probably responsible for colony collapse, which endangers the pollinators that we rely on for our food supply.

And, well, even if you don't give a shit about the natural world - you are a part of the natural world. You are an animal, with all the frailty that implies. Our bodies use many of the same ancient metabolic pathways as insects and plants; the majority of your DNA is shared with a banana. And because you are an animal, it is very difficult indeed to create an insecticide that will poison other animals without poisoning you too, at least a little. Herbicides are somehow still worse, despite the more distant biological relationship between humans and dandelions: Roundup, for instance, is linked to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which has led to Monsanto paying out massive legal settlements to cancer patients who used their products.

So if we can't grow roses without coating them in poison, maybe we should just… not do that? Go back to growing super-hardy nearly-wild roses like rugosas, forgoing forever the elegance and sublime color of a modern rose?

Give up this? ‘Glowing Peace’, Heirloom Roses

Not so fast! Maybe this technological problem has a technological solution. If we bred roses so that they sucked, maybe we should just not do that! Make different roses! Make roses that don't suck!

#6-#8, ‘Ebb Tide', 'Eden', and 'Lavender Crush': roses that don't suck

Over the last fifty years, people have become increasingly aware of the impacts of modern lifestyles upon our health and the health of the planet and its ecosystems. So maybe this has made the public less willing to buy roses that need to be treated constantly with toxic sprays. Or maybe it's just that growing disease-prone roses is an enormous pain in the ass. Spray, prune, spray, defoliate, fertilize, spray, fertilize, spray, water - but not too much! Oops, powdery mildew. Defoliate and spray some more.

So the genetic health of the newer varieties of garden roses is greatly improved. The two hybrid teas I struggled with above were bred in the 1960s. All the named rose varieties in this section were bred since the 1990s or later: Eden in 1997, Ebb Tide in 2004, and Lavender Crush, the baby of the group, was introduced in 2016. All of them are vibrantly healthy and quite vigorous; Ebb Tide and Eden are shade-tolerant too, and Lavender Crush is allegedly very winter-hardy. After a scant two months in the ground, they've started to put out flower buds. And they keep some of the glorious color and form of older roses. Look at them!

Source: Heirloom Roses.

I don't mean to say all 20th century roses are bad and disease-ridden. I also have purchased 'New Dawn' (introduced 1930), due to it being the fifteen-dollarest rose at the Home Depot. (My toxic trait is that I am an absolute sucker for a good deal. I don't go into TJ Maxx anymore; it's too dangerous.) 'New Dawn' has all the ancestral, throwback traits I laud here: shade-tolerance, fragrance, disease resistance. It even brings in the pollinators! But it seems to me there's been a noticeable uptick in the quality of newer rose introductions, particularly when it comes to disease resistance. I'm not wired into the professional rose world to know what that is; I'm Literally Just Some Guy. But it's a good trend.

Review: I am so excited for the buds to open, you have no idea.

#9: 'Double Knockout': the 'landscape' rose

Wait, no, I take that back. These roses have too much ease of care. Put some back.

The Knockout rose has one virtue: you cannot kill it with an axe. Literally.

This rose was planted right at the foot of a redwood tree in my garden, because the previous owner of my house was an idiot. This is a terrifically bad setup for roses and redwoods: redwoods acidify the soil, and suck up water and nutrients aggressively, leaving little for surrounding plants, and of course they provide dense shade. Roses hate the acid, the dry and low-nutrient soil, and the shade; this plant never bloomed all last summer. For their part, the redwoods hate having anything planted in their inner root zone - their roots are relatively shallow for such a large tree. This is not a good situation for anyone, so I hacked this rose back to the ground, dug out as much of the root ball as I dared, and in my naivete thought that would be the end of it. Well, it has grown back. Now I am faced with the dilemma of whether to risk root injury to my redwood tree, or just let the rose be, bloomless as it is. Probably the latter is better for the redwood tree, on the whole. Maybe it’ll get choked out if I don’t water it? Anyone’s guess, really.

The category of landscape roses is a 2000s invention. The first Knockout rose was introduced in 2000 after years of intensive selective breeding for being easy-care, free-flowering, and disease-resistant; the similar Drift line was the product of an amateur rose breeder in 2006 to much the same ends. Landscape roses are so named because instead of being demanding prima donnas suited only to those who love roses enough to take on the Rose Tasks, they’re just another pretty shrub in the landscape.

And I will say this for them: in that bad, fungal spore–inundated flower bed I mentioned, my landscape roses (plus Munstead Wood, see below) are notably free of fungal disease.

Also, I think that's leaf tissue proliferating at the center of the bottom left bloom?? A rare but harmless growth disorder of flowering plants.

This comes at a cost, of course, at least if you’re a snob like me. I don’t think landscape roses are very interesting-looking - though of course they come in a wide variety of colors, the better to coordinate with the color scheme of your house! - and they are generally, tragically, without fragrance. While I can’t complain about anything that gets US gardeners to use less pesticides, they are barely roses to me. They are, in fact, the closest roses come to being an inanimate object, a decorative thing you can just plonk down in your garden wherever, like a tacky concrete statue. They’re a commodity; the enchantment is gone. I wouldn’t rip them out where they’re well-sited, but I sure wouldn’t plant more.

Now, this is incredibly mean to people who love landscape roses, but here goes. I’m reminded of a thread from r/Ceanothus, the California native gardening subreddit, that is now burned into my brain. OP asks for a native shrub recommendation, but not just any native shrub. OP wants a native shrub that will grow very tall, but also stay very narrow - 1’ wide in places. OP needs a native shrub that will grow thick and vigorous, to block out their view of the neighbors. OP needs this thing to be evergreen; OP presumably wants low water inputs. And OP needs all this, in a shrub that will grow in full shade.

In fairness, OP was polite about it, and this is a common problem for urban gardeners. The dark, untended canyon between buildings is a very common phenomenon in Californian cities. I too have a narrow, shaded side yard containing a tiny strip of crappy, gravelly dirt, that I’d love to grow something in: how do you think I found this post? Dear reader, I am very much at that devil's sacrament.

And the ceanothusheads of r/Ceanothus tried gamely. But one commenter replied with something that fully changed how I think about gardening:

Source: Reddit

Sometimes, what you need is not a living organism, with its own needs, that will change over time in ways you may not endorse, that interacts with the world around it. Sometimes what you really want is a man-made object. Sometimes what you want to grow in your tall, narrow, lightless, bone-dry side yard, for your privacy requirements, is a fence. And that’s what I think about landscape roses. In Mediterranean and desert climates, as long as there's enough sun, you can always fall back on planting a succulent. But not every location can grow succulents outdoors year-round. In temperate climates, landscape roses could probably be successfully replaced with a particularly attractive boulder. Or, if what you want is a smart-looking, easy-care hedge: consider a fence.

Review: I’d maybe rather plant a fence a succulent.

#10: 'Munstead Wood': the old English rose, reloaded

‘Munstead Wood’, my final acquisition, is a credit to another major modern rose breeding program, this time out of England: David Austin Roses. The main idea of the David Austin rose-breeding project seems to be combining the particular charms of traditional English old garden roses - their fragrance, their romantic, sophisticated forms - with the virtues of modern roses - continuous blooming, a wide range of highly Instagrammable colors - plus disease-tolerance that twenty-first century gardeners now expect. And judging by their singular impact on the contemporary rose market, they seem to have been very successful at that goal. The Reddit reviews are glowing, the forums are abuzz for their hottest new releases (Dannahue restock wen?), their most popular roses are often sold out, and other rose sellers have catalog filters for 'English shrub roses' that allegedly share the looks and fragrance of David Austin's best.

From the author's camera roll. 'I can't believe it's not Dave [sic] Austin!'

Their marketing is also very slick. Their website is very informative, with separate filters for various kinds of roses you might want to buy ('Best for fragrance', 'For a shady spot', 'Thornless or nearly so'), all the rose varieties have literary or historical names or else are named after charming British locations, and are all beautifully photographed in their idyllic show garden, and the prose is carefully engineered to incite lust in the winter-weary gardener. They even do periodic drops of new roses, like a sneaker company.

So last November, I allowed myself to buy one David Austin rose, 'Munstead Wood'.

Source: David Austin Roses

'Munstead Wood' is really gorgeous, I think, blooming in a deep burgundy color. The website claims the fragrance is "Old Rose, with fruity notes of blackberry, blueberry and damson".

An interesting fact about 'Munstead Wood' is that it is actually region-locked. David Austin Roses sells roses in both the US and UK (and maybe other places; sorry I am so American), but the climate of the UK has been changing, with more extreme weather events and even more rain. And you know how it is with roses and the rain. 'Munstead Wood' was no longer able to thrive, and has packed up its little rucksack and gone out to explore the world as a lone vagabond - specifically, America.

So how is it doing here? Great, actually. It may have been rained on every day for the past week, but at least it's not in England, I guess.

'Munstead Wood' has no fungal disease. It looks like it's never even heard of fungal disease. I'm pretty impressed! I can't actually tell you whether the roses are good, but this is a pretty good plant, which is a good start.

Review: I'm holding myself back from buying more David Austin roses right now. God help me, I have two more open full- to part-sun spots in my garden right now.

David Austin, "Lady of Shalott". Call me the Lady of Shalott the way I'm languishing in my tower, gazing only at the mere reflections of the real world (stuck inside, looking at my phone, because of the rain) and am about to throw myself in the river with longing (to be out in the garden)

[shokopan]

PROMISE ME THIS  .  L. ACKERMAN ⤷ levi x gn!reader, fluff, canon au, wc: 1.1k

“i’ve figured it out,” you suddenly cut through the silence as you turn to levi, who’s now shifted to face you completely, “i know the kind of person i’d want to be betrothed to,”

“oh?” levi raises an eyebrow, trying his hardest to conceal the sudden schoolboy nervousness bubbling in his stomach, “i guess i don’t even need to ask because you’ll tell me anyways,”

“right, right,” you roll your eyes as you continue “they’d have to be completely and utterly infatuated with me. like so wholly enamored and obsessed with me that they’d grovel at my feet. if they’re interested in basically worshipping me too, i don’t think i’d mind. maybe that’d even earn them bonus points,”

“so no physical traits or any other characteristics, beyond being crazy for you, huh? should be easy to find,” levi comments, noting what you’d just said and wondering if he should be more forthcoming about his interest in you.

“you’d think, but unfortunately i’m surrounded by people more obsessed with my comrade,” you laugh, a knowing and pointed smile on your face that levi commits to memory, “it’s fine though, a scout’s life is too fleeting and marred by the constant threat of death,”

you sigh a little dejectedly before straightening up again, too conscious of the sudden morbid turn, “i guess strength should be included in my criteria,”

“should be, yeah,” levi agrees, pausing briefly, “we have to keep going no matter all that shit we go through on a regular basis. no good in subjecting ourselves to that level of grief”

“yea, fuck you’re right,” you sigh, “guess i’ve gotta look high and low for this ideal future lover,”

levi inhales sharply, frowning at the realization that this was the golden window of opportunity he’d been searching for this whole time.

“i don’t think you’d have to go through that much to find your lover,” levi starts, voice strained and heart palpitating strangely.

“what, like i should give up?” you tease, “i’m just musing levi, don’t worry. i’ve accepted the reality of being the rare and unfortunate long surviving scouts anyways,”

“no, don’t give up and shit,” levi groans, shaking his head and glaring at your forehead, not wanting to look too directly at you (but failing still), “i mean that, fuck, ok, i mean that you don’t have to keep looking for that potential lover that you think won’t exist because,”

he trails off, voice faltering as his nerves are starting to overwhelm him. it’s an odd and strangely humiliating experience as the man built up to be humanity’s strongest soldier. it’s as if all of that superhuman strength and fighting prowess has left him, relegating levi as just a man before you, struggling to wear his heart on his sleeve after obscuring it for so long.

“because?” your voice is gentle, boldly moving to tentatively touch his arm.

“because i’m here,” levi’s courage breaks through, “because i can be all of that and more for you,”

“levi,” you breath, the secret little crush you’d been harboring for years rushing out in full force, evidenced by the impossibly wide smile bursting throughout your face.

“i’m shit at emotions but i’ll make sure you fucking feel loved. i’ll protect you even though you’re also fucking strong and don’t realistically need protection. you can trust that i won’t leave you because i’m also fucking strong. we’ll keep surviving together. you don’t need to look for someone who’s obsessed with you,” levi sputters out, “you don’t need to because i already am,”

you’re stunned, completely silent as levi calms down, the rushing tidal  wave of emotions simmering to a peaceful stream that leaves him embarrassed and suddenly anxious.

“sorry if i overstepped, i shouldn—“ levi’s pitiful backtracking is interrupted as you finally gather your bearings and crash your lips to his before he can babble further. levi’s stunned, frozen in place briefly before he finally comprehends what’s happening and hurriedly gathers your waist in his arms, pulling you closer as you wrap your arms around his neck.

and after what feels like an eternity, you break from the kiss, arms still tangled with each other and bodies close as you both refuse to separate, somehow fearing that if you two let go, the mirage will break and you and levi will have to return to the grueling reality of being soldiers constantly surviving the horrors that continuously chip away at everything and everyone you know to be home.

“hi levi,” you finally whisper, looking up at him. levi’s features are soft, the roughness built up from years of tribulations that he’s had to shoulder dissipate. he traces your jaw with a hand slowly, confirming that this is real as he quietly responds “hey,”

you and levi stare at each other for what must have been a millennia, uncovering a haven in each other’s presence now that previous boundaries have been breached. maybe it is possible to get lost in someone’s eyes, levi notes. maybe if those eyes shone the perseverance and strength of the only person that could shoulder his desperation to have someone he loves survive as long as he does. 

“so you’d grovel at my feet?” you laugh, breaking the quietness blooming between the two of you. levi rolls his eyes, turning his face away as his silence gives you the answer you’re looking for.

“don’t worry you ass, i’d consider groveling at your feet too,” you wink, kissing his cheek as you break from his arms and attempt to walk away.

“oi!” levi’s quick to grab your hand before you can escape him, capturing you back in his arms as you laugh, relenting and letting yourself sink into his chest, “we’re on the same page?”

levi cringes at how gruff the ask sounds, but when you smile and nod, he knows you understand that gravity of what he means.

“yes we are, levi. i’m planning to make sure you’re stuck with me now, sorry about that,” you respond shrugging with a humorously sympathetic shrug.

“not a bad fate if you ask me,” levi hums, glancing at you, “the two of us, we’ll survive together. we’ll make it out all of the shit this world throws at us, i promise. even if it’s fucking dumb to promise anything in our world, we're strong enough, so i can promise you that,”

levi’s eyes are pointing straight at you, wearing his resolve proudly as you match his and the two of you nod in confirmation, 

“i’ll hold you to it,”

[usoppshoneydew]

Do y'all ever think that Bucky canonically( all our romantic head cannons aside) likes Sam so much, simply because he treats him like the human he is???

Like One: he doesn't look at him and see all the way he's different from who he used to be like Steve undoubtedly had to have. Sam literally didn't know Bucky before Hydra got to him, so there's no way for him to mourn over the differences. The Bucky he is now is the one Sam knows and the one he's close to(and likes).

Another way is how he doesn't treat him like he's fragile?? And by fragile I mean despite the fact that Bucky's mental health wasn't 100%( is anybody's??) even after wakanda and his therapy sessions, Sam still interacts with and treats him like he would anybody else. He makes jokes, even some that other people would be too scared to make, and teases him. When he's upset with him, he argues with him. He doesn't hold back and holds him accountable if he feels he has to. He's honest with him, even if the truth might not be what he wants to hear. Bottom line is, he doesn't coddle, or baby Bucky like at all.

And I think the huge thing that must make Bucky fold( ahem, platonically of course, of course) is the way that Sam is not in the slightest bit, afraid of him. Despite having personal, and probably traumatic, encounters with the Winter soldier, like having his car dismantled in the middle of the highway or being tossed around by him, he never once acts as if he's scared Bucky will revert back into the Winter Soldier. So much so, that he actually approached him in the middle of a hostile bar, while Bucky was currently imitating the Winter soldier, and even put his hand on him to check to see if he was ok( in the middle of a mission too lol Sam really said fuck appearances)

And you can argue that he was worried when Bucky suggested talking to Zemo alone, but that seemed more for Bucky's sake than his own. He trusts this man so much that he was down with him staying around his family and his community with no questions asked, encouraged him to spend the NIGHT in the same space as his sister and nephews. Would a person that's scared of what he used to be or thinks he's one nightmare away from a setback let him do that? No way. Would someone who's weary of him confront him about the situation with Isaiah ,or genuinely tell him how he feels about the way Steve and Bucky gave him the shield? Sam doesn't hold back with this man at all, and the trust that takes has to be alluring to a man like Bucky who couldn't even trust himself until recently .

Sam just treats Bucky so wholly, completely, and thoroughly human. After decades of being treated anything but that? I'd fold too.

[yaekiss]

𝑭𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝑩𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒉 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒆𝒑𝒕𝒉𝒔

꩜ Room Content: GN! Top! Bathysmal Vishap! Reader x Subby! Bottom! Neuvillette, spoilers for Genshin Archon Quest 4.2, no gendered terms for reader, reader is a bathysmal vishap, Neuvillette has a dragon form, both reader and Neuvillette have hemipenes/two cocks, cloaca fucking (Neuvillette receiving), frotting, praise (Neuvillette receiving), lmk if I missed out anything ! ꩜ A/N: If you don't want to read about dragon vishap smut, don't read this one LOL. I know I said "between 800-1500 words". This one just ran away from me ok shhhh. I also made up some draconic courtship lore, don't look too hard at it (but please tell me if you think it's cute thank you <3) anyways ENJOY !!! ꩜ This was written for @coingbee as part of my Care for a Fic fundraising event for Gaza! If you would to request a fic of your own, do check out the event post above ^^

The Hydro Sovereign has returned to their full power.

From beneath the surface, your head lifts. Judging by the excited clicks and chirps made by the rest in the community, it seems as if the others have sensed it too. 

Whilst your fellow bathysmal vishaps murmur and chatter wildly with each other about whether or not to head up to the surface, you’ve already come to a decision. Without wasting another minute, you’re already hightailing it upwards towards the surface, tracking the whereabouts of your Hydro Sovereign via the trail of draconic power traces.

Following the trail takes you all the way into Fontaine. Along the way, you’ve adamantly ensured not to take routes with higher human traffic. The very thought of even crossing paths with one sends your mind twisting with a hatred and loathing so foul. 

As your journey progressed, the ebbing and flowing stream of the trail you’ve been tracking gradually grows stronger and stronger as your distance travelled increases. Until, finally, you’re sure you’re close to the end and even closer to meeting the Hydro Sovereign when the trail stops and seems to be wholly focused and condensed into a solitary being nearby.

Your head emerges from beneath the water, breaking the still surface, sending ripples outwards. Eagerness bubbles within you as you anticipate finally meeting with the Hydro Sovereign that the bathysmal vishaps have been biding their time for, restlessly awaiting the return of their Dragon Lord. The moonlight of the evening is lovely, reflecting off the flow of the ripples.

And yet, as you crane your head to look over to where the water laps gently at the shore, to where the trail you’ve been tirelessly following should end, you feel your blood chill.

All you see is a mere human who stares out into the vast sea.

A split second is all it takes for any previous semblance of anticipation to morph into disbelief and bitterness. Surely, this can’t be! After all this time, was the undying hope in seeing the return of the Hydro Sovereign wasted on some farce? A prime example of a cruel sadistic joke the high heavens would play at your expense, just to see you inevitably crumble at the grand reveal? 

Consumed by your emotions for a moment, you can’t help but regret not having forsaken your sight as your ancestors did. For perhaps if you had followed in their footsteps, you would’ve been able to bask in the exalted presence of your Sovereign leader, albeit for the price of blissful ignorance. 

However, there is still a stubborn, restless part in your mind that wishes to understand just how you could have been so misled like this, how you had managed to be fooled into tracking the trail of a human all this time. 

In a bat of an eye, you swim and make it to the shoreline, the coarse sand crunching under your claws. The disturbance causes the human to notice you, startled by the sudden appearance of a bathysmal vishap. (Although, strangely enough, no trace of fear shows on their face, and they make no move to scurry away.)

As the tension between the two of you grows, you advance slowly towards the human, low hissing sent to them as a warning. And suddenly, they try soothing you in a tongue that’s nothing but familiar to you.

Before your mind can keep up with the fact that this mere human can communicate with your kind, your head has already instinctively lowered along with your gaze pointed down towards the ground in deference to the undeniable traces of draconic authority in their tone and voice.

And when you feel a gloved hand lightly patting under your chin, trying to usher you back up to your previous position, you're struck with the dilemma of relishing in the awe of the unmistakable power of the Hydro Sovereign thrumming beneath or scorning the fact that you've allowed a human to touch you so casually.

(Does it really matter if the human in question is technically your Dragon Lord? The uncertainty leaves a sour taste in your mouth.)

Nevertheless, with enough insistence, they manage to raise your head back up before they start up the conversation.

“Greetings. I am sure you must have many questions regarding my form-” you nod, “-Very well, I suppose an explanation of events both recent and bygone is in order.” Through this, you learn briefly about the matters that have transpired, that his name is Neuvillette, that he is the both Iudex and the Hydro Dragon.

“I expect that you would take this information back to the rest of the vishaps, and that soon I might see more of you on the surface-” his tone drops to one more stern and absolute, “-With this, should any of the human Fontanians meet any unjust or unreasonable form of harm from your kind, I shall not hesitate in enacting the appropriate judgement.” 

An understanding reached, you return back to your community as a sort of newly appointed mouthpiece. However, this proves not to be your last meeting with the Sovereign. No, far from it, really.

The sun starts to dip below the horizon as you slink languidly behind Neuvillette on a stroll together at the area outside of the Opera Epiclese. A couple melusines ride atop your back, Blathine and Veleda. You’ve come to remember their names after Neuvillette encouraged you and the melusines to get along more. (And you might have a soft spot for them after realising the fondness the Hydro Sovereign extends to them.)

The sight of the Chief Justice, along with a literal vishap essentially piggybacking two melusines might seem to be an odd sight to most. However, Fontanians have simply gotten used to this after the first few instances. 

“Ah, there goes the Iudex and the melusines, and that big ol’... weird lizard he keeps around again, for the third time this week,” you hear someone in the surroundings say.

“Huh. Good for him, I guess,” someone else says in reply.

Despite all the time you’ve spent around humans while at your Sovereign’s side, you still haven’t quite managed to readily want to take up the form of one. Hence, the reason why there was a vishap right in front of the Fountain of Lucine. 

Sometimes the Fontanians comment that you’re some sort of big guard dog for Neuvillette. (Honestly, you can’t quite find it in yourself to be opposed to being seen as a protector for someone you hold dear. Plus, it made for easier piggyback rides for the melusines and you enjoy seeing the warmth on Neuvillette’s face when he sees them having fun.)

As the sky darkens and the stars above begin to twinkle, the both of you drop the melusines off at their destinations. Soon, you’ve strolled to the coastline, the soft sound of sea water crashing against the shore blending into the ambient noise in the peaceful evening. Admiring the moonlight glistening and skating across the body of water, you break the comfortable silence first.

“I shall be travelling back to the depths tomorrow, is there any message you would like me to pass on to the bathysmal vishaps?” 

Ever since your first meeting with Neuvillette, more and more of the others have been venturing out and up to the surface with the return of the Hydro Dragon. Due to your enthusiasm in meeting with the Sovereign, the responsibilities of monthly reports and announcements now fall on your back. (Sigh, is this what you get for being the first one back up? “The early bathysmal vishap meets the Hydro Sovereign,” or something of the like?)

“Ah. Has it already been a month since the last one?” He pauses to think, before continuing, “No, I don’t have any information or messages to relay.”

Another short lull in the conversation, you note that he seems to be mulling something over as he thumbs along the handle of his cane in quiet contemplation.

“I hope I am not overstepping as I say this, however, I find myself reluctant to part with you. I find that the time that we spend together is invaluable and that I oftentimes catch myself longing for your presence whenever we are apart,” he communicates this to you, the vulnerability apparent in his words.

“Perhaps, my confession would be more sincere if I were not restricted in my human form.”

As he says this, he wades into the waters, then dives under when deep enough. There’s a change in the atmosphere surrounding you, a heavier pressure forming and coalescing as a vivid bright blue starts to glimmer from the depths.

You look out expectantly, waiting with bated breath, and before long, the mirror surface of the water begins to ripple and distort from something significant moving underneath. Its streamlined movements rocket it towards where you’re standing, and as the level of the water decreases, more of its form is revealed until ultimately, the Hydro Dragon stands before you in all of his glory.

His serpentine frame towers high above you, almost double your height, with smooth iridescent azure scales covering the top of his body and claw-tipped flippers. The colour of his scales transition gradually from blue to ivory white in areas like his underside and neck. His powerful tail relaxes in the shallows, occasionally swishing, causing little waves in the water.

Casting your gaze further up, you see the familiar sight of his glowing tendrils, extending down from the two sides of the back of his head. He cranes his head downwards in one fluid motion, closing the distance between the two of you as he levels you with piercing lavender slitted pupils.

Driven by natural instinct, you bow at the display of ancient authority.

“Raise your head, after all, have you not managed to worm your way into the space next to my heart?” You hear his voice in your mind, the edges of his words pronounced with the slightest hint of a gravelly growl in this new form.

He shifts in closer, nudging his head under yours to lift your gaze back up so that it meets his own.

“As I expected. This form truly is more freeing for myself. Now, I am able to do this,” The tendrils by his head seem to glow more intensely before he can continue. The almighty Hydro Dragon is… blushing?

“Forgive me if I am too forward, however,” there’s nothing but sincerity in his gaze, “Would you allow me to entwine with you?”

Neuvillette's simple question sends your mind reeling. The act of entwining is an incredibly  personal act of intimacy and often indicates the start of courtship in draconic species, one that signals everlasting devotion and commitment.

Usually, entwining is done with tails in regular vishap species. However, species with tendrils can also choose to use them instead of their tails since many believe the gesture to be more heartfelt. It is also said that the closer the frills or spines that the tendrils wrap around are to the head, the stronger the affection that the dragon has for the receiving party.

“I ask this of you not as the Hydro Dragon but rather, as Neuvillette. The one who has seen you cherish and care for the melusines, the one who has had walks under the rain with until the stars have emerged in the clear night sky.” He tilts his head down, tone serious. “That is to say, I do not wish to have your agreement only be one made out of obligation to authority.”

A beat of silence passes as your brain scrambles to process Neuvillette pouring his heart out to you, and you realise that your lack of an answer causes him to hesitate. (His tendrils droop a little and you think you see rain clouds starting to form.)

Before he can apologise or backtrack, you shift forward, headbutting him lightly to shake him out of his crestfallen state.

“Of course, Neuvillette.”

Upon hearing your answer, he instantly brightens and he goes to nuzzle his cheek against the side of your snout. 

“Do excuse me if I execute this wrongly, I’ve never done it before after all,” he comments before gingerly manipulating his glowing tendrils so that they coil around the spines closest to your head on either side. 

Up close, you can see everything so clearly, the tenderness in his gaze that he holds specifically for you. You can’t help but playfully bump your forehead against his, making him emit a content low rumble.

When he untangles and pulls back up, you swipe your tongue briefly against one of his tendrils, something akin to a quick kiss. This elicits a shiver from Neuvillette, his eyes squeezed shut.

“Apologies, ahem, it seems that my tendrils are quite the sensitive area. This full form is still somewhat new to me, and I have not had the chance to discover and understand everything about it just yet,” he squirms lightly against you.

“So how about we find out together? No time like the present, after all,” your tone is sly, charged with a salacious intent that causes Neuvillette to stiffen, tendrils glowing even more intensely than before.

Saying nothing, he swiftly manoeuvres his lithe body until he’s lying supine on his back,.  he exposes his vulnerable underbelly to you, an act so trusting that it roots you to the spot in disbelief for a brief second. Your eyes travel down until you catch sight of his cloacal opening already growing slick.

“Teach me well, beloved.”

Using his tail, he ushers you onto his larger form, where you clamber until you've positioned your slit against his. And when you grind downwards, you can feel him tremble beneath you.

“Hah… I wasn’t aware that it would feel this good,” you hear his voice shake with arousal in your mind. Maybe it’s a side effect of telepathic draconic communication, yet, it’s almost as if you can feel everything he’s feeling, like all your sensations are linked with his, increasing the pleasure bubbling up within you twofold. 

He takes the initiative this time, pushing his bottom half upwards to rut against you. It’s not long before the both of you are reduced to grinding against each other, each moving in tandem in order to maximise the pleasure. 

Suddenly, Neuvillette halts all action, causing you to freeze and check up on him.

“I’m alright. I only stopped because it seems like your hemipenes have everted.” Bashfully, he averts his gaze elsewhere, as if he had been caught seeing something he shouldn’t have. (Which is laughable considering the fact that the both of you were just writhing on the ground, tangled up in each other.)

In your haze, you hadn’t even noticed your cocks evert. Neuvillette’s are still somewhat concealed within, only the drooling tips peeking out of his entrance. 

“Yours haven’t yet, that won’t do. How else are we supposed to help you understand your new anatomy?” you shake your head, a faux forlorn tone decorating your words. “Would you allow me to penetrate you, Neuvillette?”

He nods at your suggestion and you line up one of your tips at his opening. Aided by the copious amount of slick fluid, you’re able to slowly enter him, sandwiching one of his dicks between the one you have in him and the one rubbing against his exposed head.

The new sensation has him throwing his head back, drawing out a loud throaty groan.

“D-Don’t stop, please, beloved.”

Spurred on by how wrecked he sounds, when you’ve made sure he’s comfortable, you start to rock in and out of him, shallow unhurried motions to start then transitioning to a faster pace once he starts to meet your thrusts. Slowly but surely, as Neuvillette gets increasingly worked up, his hemipenes gradually evert until they’re fully revealed.

They’re slender, each with a pale white bulbous base that then curves and morphs into a tip that’s more flared on the bottom edge, like a blunt fishing hook.

“There we go, how are you feeling, still fine?”

“Yes, but allow me to catch my breath first before we continue. Thank you for checking with me, beloved.”

When he’s ready, he experiments and frots his cocks against yours, hissing at the heat and friction as they drag along your lengths. The slick sounds do nothing to quell the rising desire within you and you can feel yourself reaching your peak.

The dragon under you is faring no better as well, judging by how wound up he’s getting. His tail is flicking wildly to and fro in the water, churning up the sand as a desperate mix of growls, chirrups, and pitched calls leave him. Despite it all, he’s still the most gorgeous sight you’ve ever had the opportunity to witness.

“You’re nothing but beautiful, Neuvillette. Ah! I’ve grown to see the overflowing compassion you have within you,” he keens at your words and you can sense the pleasure he’s feeling melding with yours.

“How fortunate I must be to stay at your side, to call you mine, as I, yours.” And this is what does him in.

As he spills over, his tail goes to loop around yours tightly whilst his muscles lock and shake. You follow suit not long after, a sticky mess forming between the two of your bodies

A quick splash around in the water washes most of the evidence off. You rest next to where he’s curled up comfortably, the waves rhythmically lapping up against him. The atmosphere is relaxed as the both of you wind down and converse.

“I’d love to stay with you till the late morning but you have a trial scheduled and I promised to find Pahsiv first thing in the morning to catch up,” you lament.

A rumble from his chest, he’s chuckling. He tucks his head next to yours, caressing a tendril across your cheek.

“I’ll wait for you. Return safe, my beloved one.”

Thanks for reading! Consider supporting me on kofi if you enjoyed this or check out my other works hehe ♡

If you'd like to request a fic of your own, do consider checking out my event post!

[conkreetmonkey]

Splatoon community is great, it's just looking at all these rail-thin, jutting-pelvis-edges J-pop idols and saying "ok but what if they had body fat/muscle aside from that strictly needed to function at a basic level."

And it makes sense too, because most of them are canonically athletes, and a few are canonically huge foodies. Like I get the beauty standards of being an idol and all that, but they should have at least some Mass. Something something repeating the mistakes and flaws of humanity alongside the beautiful and true things.

Anyway, I just love how the community has largely decided this game takes place in a wholly body-positive society. It makes sense, really, in a world with dozens to hundreds of intelligent species. When your neighbors are a 3 inch tall non-anthro shrimp, a 6-armed crab man the size, weight and strength of a Ford F150, and a 10 foot tall, borderline emaciated, neon orange man with rail spikes for hair who eats live basketball-sized snails, you're not going to stare at your own species's fat dudes.

Cross-dressing is seemingly wholly normalized in canon, there's at least basic Non-Standard Pronouns, and Pearlina is so razor-edgedly close to being canon, so interspecies gay celebrities are also all but canon. Why WOULDN'T this society be body positive? There are 5 femboys on every street and graffiti is seemingly legal. This should be a no-brainer. This society has a doctorate in acceptiveness, and we're out here having to add in comparatively high school level stuff.

Honestly, it's an interesting case of the society a piece of media was produced in "holding back" the fictional society within it. Nintendo designs these characters for mass appeal; fittingly, since they're idols. And in Japan, idols are skinny, end of story. But we, the queerest, most hot-chip-eating fandom currently alive, say nay. My version of this character is buff. This one is fat. This one has a cane. This one is visibly trans. If you won't do it, mainstream Japanese AAA studio, then we will do it in your stead. Gimme the reins, Nogami, and say goodbye to Kyoto. We're going to headcanonland.

(christ, this post went off the rails)

[avelera]

You may have talked about this before, but what's your opinion on Arcane!Machine Herald? Because I've seen him get a lot of hate because he diverges a lot from his original self-made cyborgy lore, but I personally LOVE him to bits. I was kinda worried because Arcane S1 already had lots of mechanical bodymods and an entire race of sentient robots so I was like "ok how is he supposed to be radical compared to that?" and then he engineered himself into a worldending cosmic horror being, i love him

I have no investment in League or its lore so Arcane Machine Herald doesn't have a strong emotional attachment to me one way or the other?

To me, the design emphasizes the magical aspect of the Hexcore taking over Viktor. The one complaint I do understand from League fans and somewhat share is that Viktor's Herald villain arc is a bit muddled with his S1 scientific motivations, to me.

The thing is, to me, Viktor is a scientist, and the Machine Herald and Commune leader stuff is a bit too mystical to me for the Viktor we knew. I have trouble reconciling how he pivoted to that if it was his own choice. That's why I tend to headcanon that the Hexcore was pretty active not just in persuading Viktor to become a Cult Leader, but also for the aesthetics and tone of the cult leader choice, leaning into mage imagery like robes and a staff.

Of course, that robs some agency from the character, which is overall less interesting, but I can't help but feel a true villain arc that was totally self-directed by Viktor would have been a bit more scientific, it would have been more him willfully replacing parts of himself to stay alive.

But as you noted too, that doesn't really work within Arcane, neither does that original Machine Herald motivation. We've got Bolbok on the Council who is basically a robot, we've got Sevika and the entire undercity with tons of metal body modifications. Viktor making it some sort of cause to replace humans with machine parts to cure their imperfections doesn't really work in Arcane as something that's an ideological stand or a philosophy of any kind. It's just day to day life. So from there, I understand leaning more into mysticism as his route for making people "perfect".

Perhaps my... hmm, not point of criticism but simply a personal story squick is that I don't like cults and I don't like the hippy sort of imagery they went for with Cult Leader Viktor, for me the whole vibe was very squicky throughout (which is why I was thoroughly baffled when people ever thought the cult was a good thing, I was silently screaming with discomfort the whole time) and a part of me really struggled to reconcile how S1 Viktor would ever choose to craft a place like this. Like I said, that's why I kind of had to go with the idea, for my own sake, that Viktor on his own wouldn't craft some weird hippy monastery where everyone just works and praises him all day, that this is an element of the Hexcore. That Real Viktor if he could control his own actions and was fully present (rather than half living on the astral plane) would also be horrified.

As for how this lends to the Machine Herald design *shrug* that's also a very "mystical" look to me, it follows from the more magical take on Herald, but it is artistically cool and very alien. Personally, I see it as simply the humanoid form of the Hexcore, its choice for what it will look like, and it's basically just using Viktor as a battery at that point to power itself in turn and to give itself a voice, Viktor is all but wholly subsumed, he didn't design that look, he has been the cocoon for the Hexcore growing inside him, and Ekko + Jayce + Anomaly Future Viktor are needed to rip it off of the real Viktor, who is immediately horrified by all that occurred and, to me, had very little agency throughout while being constantly fed the belief that he did have control. Honestly, I think Viktor was contending with an ancient seed of Void power using him as a vessel and he was hilariously outclassed by something far more ancient and powerful than him using him as an incubator for itself but, again, that's just one possible interpretation.

I know this got a bit off topic but yeah, I agree on some points about how the original Herald stuff just doesn't work in Arcane and the rest is sort of my more general feelings about the Herald and the Herald look.

[onceonafullmoon]

French Fries

Itoshi Sae x GN!Reader

Comfort Angst, Reader has depression, bed rotting behaviors, desciptions of food if you're sensitive to that thing, one slightly suggestive comment but it's just banter, Reader and Sae aren't dating atp but they have chemistry

“Jeez, you’re like a human garbage disposal.” Sae remarks. “Do you talk to all your loved ones like that?” “Me talking to you in general is a miracle.”

It’s getting worse again.

You could feel it building up in these past months, that looming sense that something was going to happen, but you elected to ignore it wholly, placing belief that your meds surely wouldn’t fail you this time, right?

Wrong.

Well, you supposed you only had yourself to blame, (although blame was something you were realizing that you were all to familiar with, and if you were a bit more lucid you’d contemplate how your willingness to find fault in yourself so easily was only more of a detriment) for relying on newly prescribed medication solely instead of reaching out for a therapist like you were meaning to do.

But either way, whomever was to blame, either you or your psychiatrist, it didn’t change the fact that your apartment is a cluttered mess and you haven’t gotten out of bed for a considerable amount of time, doing nothing but staring listlessly at the wall.

It’s hard to describe exactly what getting worse feels like, but if you had to take your own stab at it you'd describe it as something like an endothermic reaction.

Something that saps away all your heat, your drive, your determination, and leaves you feeling… cold, like a sudden frost of winter almost.

Of course, cold isn’t really the way to describe it either, the most common words you’ve seen thrown around being “empty, nothingness, hollow” and those fit rather well too, but you preferred to think of it in terms of a chemical reaction.

It was fitting in a sense, because much like a chemical reaction, you weren’t ever the same as you were from the beginning, almost always just a little worse for wear after each period of despair. 

It’s around this time when you’re debating metaphors for your mental illness when you feel your phone vibrate on your bed.

Huh. That’s a first.

Well, you’re curious enough to take a peak, though it’s most likely just some dumb notification from a social media app you’ve neglected to look at even during your period of lengthy doom scrolling (fuck you Snapchat, you’re not an interesting app), but after you look at the time displayed on the screen (1:00 am, nice)  you find yourself pleasantly surprised when you realize it’s a text message.

Pookie: are you ok

Normally the stupid contact name you put him under would be enough to make you crack a smile whenever he texted, but you can’t really bring yourself to do much else but stare at your phone blankly.

Sae was never one to text first, in fact, a quick scroll through your messages would show it was usually you who would pester him with asinine questions about hypothetical scenarios, TikToks or general ramblings about your day, with him giving out one word responses (dry texter) or often ignoring you (which was fair you supposed). 

So, it was strange to see his text expressing concern for you, especially at this time of night.

Of course, Sae knew about your issues, you were never one to shy away from the truth and easily answered him about your meds when he asked about them that time he came over, but you don’t think he had any reason to suspect you of having an episode.

You think for a bit, running through your mind of any possible reasons you could have given him to worry and find that you can’t really place anything other than the fact that you’d been withdrawing a bit from texting and hanging out with him a bit more, which, to his knowledge could be for any sort of reason.

You furrow your brow a bit before turning your attention back to your phone and typing out a quick response of  “tbh, not really, but that’s life lol” before dropping your phone back on your bed and going back to stare at the wall.

He doesn’t respond, but you’re not really too surprised (though if you had the capacity for it you’d be slightly miffed), and you find yourself dozing off into a light sleep.

You probably would have actually fallen asleep if it weren’t for the sound of pounding at your front door, and you feel yourself sigh in annoyance before groggily getting up out of bed.

Damn it all, you couldn’t even sleep to escape the void.

Still you get over yourself and make your way to the door, looking through the peephole tiredly before freezing in place.

You’re not sure if you’re more surprised that Sae is at your front door or if you’re more surprised to see him with a greasy paper bag of fast food in his hands.

Blinking out of your stupor, you regain your senses and unlock the door for him, distantly remarking about how strange it must seem for a celebrity to be at your door with a bag of Mcdonalds in your mind.

You open the door to tell him how ridiculous this scenario seems, only to let out a small noise of surprise as he shoves the bag in your hands.

“You look like shit.” He says, and you can’t help but roll your eyes at his blunt assessment.

“I feel like shit.” You respond, before looking down into the bag, taking in its contents.

“You got fries?” You can’t help the smile that pulls on your lips. “But you hate fries.”

He just looks at you with that same unreadable look he always has, the one that only you seem to be able to understand. “But you don’t.”

“I don’t.” You say, a feeling of happiness blooming within you despite everything, and step aside for him to enter your messy apartment.

You should feel a sense of embarrassment at the idea of letting him see you at your worst, with your undone laundry and your unwashed dishes and your messy countertops, but you’ve never once felt the need to pretend with Sae.

“Make yourself at home wherever you can.” You say, motioning to the couch overcrowded with laundry. “I wasn’t expecting guests, you know.”

“Clearly.” He says, but his voice holds no judgment.

“You're at fault for dropping in uninvited.” You say in a relatively cheerful voice, betraying your happiness despite his seemingly uncouth behavior. 

He doesn’t respond snatches the bag from your hands, dumping its contents onto the small coffee table that currently is the only clear space available in the mess that is your apartment before gently pushing away the laundry that lies on the couch to make room for himself.

“...are you going to scold me or eat?” He eventually asks after settling in.

“There’s no reason I can’t do both.” You say in a joking tone.

You push aside your pile of laundry and sit down next to him, your stomach rumbling when the scent of fried food hits your nose. It wasn’t too surprising, after all, you had forgotten to eat in your rotting phase. 

“Have I ever told you that I love you?” You say, reaching for a wrapped sandwich.

“Only when I do things for you.” Comes his dry response, and you give him a sheepish smile before taking a bite of the sandwich, momentarily praising the salty and savory taste.

It’s like you forgot how hungry you were until you had a bite of food, and with an alarming speed the sandwich quickly disappears into nothing.

“Jeez, you’re like a human garbage disposal.” Sae remarks.

“Do you talk to all your loved ones like that?”

“Me talking to you in general is a miracle.”

You scoff and put your hand over your heart in an overexaggerated manner, feigning an imaginary wound from his callous and barbed words that were clearly much too painful to bear.

“You’re cruel.” You say, before reaching for the carton of fries and holding it up to him. “Care for a fry?”

It’s mostly said in jest, after all, you’ve been on the receiving end of a lecture of how disgustingly fatty and unhealthy those “diabetes on sticks” are, but he surprises you by taking one without a word and popping it into his mouth.

You blink, staring at him as if he’s grown a second head.

“Are you okay?” You ask, echoing his text from before.

He rolls his eyes. “Contrary to popular belief, I don’t hate how fries taste, they’re just awful for your diet.”

“So why are you breaking your sacred oath?” You ask, shoving a few fries in your mouth after you speak.

“Peer pressure.”

You furrow your brows at him, but don’t immediately respond, instead swallowing and shoving another handful of fries into your mouth (you’ve long held the belief that those like Sae who eat one fry at a time are actually sociopaths).

“I think you just like using me as a scapegoat for your bad decisions.” You say after another swallow.

“I think you should slow down so you don’t choke.”

“I can think of a few things I could choke on.” You respond reflexively to which you’re met with a blank stare.

“…sorry, it’s instinct at this point.” You say after a bit, to which he just sighs.

“You’re a moron.” He says, and you would have considered it rude in any other scenario where you didn’t know him as the guy who dropped everything to help you on a whim.

“Yeah, but I make up for it in other ways, such as my amazing personality.” You retort, stuffing another handful of fries in your mouth.

“It’s a shame that your “amazing personality” doesn’t account for basic table manners.”

You glower at him, chewing before swallowing.

“It’s a shame that your face is so pretty but your attitude is so shit.”

You can see a hint of a smile on his face at your snappish comeback, his teal eyes glinting with slight amusement and you blink, feeling slightly startled as your heart stutters in your chest.

Weird. 

You’ll unpack that later, perhaps on a day where you don’t feel like complete ass.

“Anyway, what gave you the idea to invite yourself over? Not that I mind, obviously.” You ask, partly out of curiosity and partly to distract yourself.

Sae shifts a bit in his seat, and you catch yourself admiring the sight of his forearms for a second before you snap yourself out of it.

“...you haven’t been reaching out as much, and I missed the background noise.”

You look at him, really look at him for a second, and fight the urge to either laugh at him or throw a pillow at him.

It was so stupidly cute, how he’d do anything but actually verbally admit that some part of him cared.

“You are such a loser.” You end up saying instead, with a stupidly fond smile on your face that you’d definitely be more embarrassed by if you weren’t already above shame.

“And you’re a mess.” Sae counters easily, sticking another fry into his mouth, and it somehow still takes you by surprise.

“Yeah, I’ll take that.” You say with a surprising amount of grace for someone dressed in pajamas and adorned with the world's worst bed head. “But only for today.”

He says nothing at that and proceeds to follow your lead and stuff the rest of the fries into his mouth, and at this point you wonder if you’ve managed to transfer your mental illness to him somehow through the air.

“You can’t blame that on peer pressure.” You say defensively, crossing your hands over your chest as he swallows his food.

“I’m not blaming it on peer pressure.” 

“Then what’s your excuse this time?”

“I’ll say it’s learned observation.”

“Don’t use my psychology knowledge that I’ve rambled to you about against me, it makes me want to kiss you.” You joke.

You expect him to roll his eyes at you and insult you, but what you don’t expect is for him to raise a brow at you, a half smirk on his face and respond with a smooth and low toned, “Yeah?”

“...yeah.” You say after a bit, trying not to look like you just got hit with a bus before coughing and looking away.

“Anyway, thanks for stopping by… it meant a lot. I’ll probably clean up around here now if you need to go.” You speak up after a moment of silence.

“You’re an idiot.” He responds, and you blink at him, ready to ask what he’s talking about before he speaks up again. “What you’re going to do is go to your bathroom and clean up while I deal with the mess here.”

You pause for a moment, a rush of emotions surging up in you, a dash of self-loathing, a bit of embarrassment, a touch of happiness but mostly a rush of gratitude and adoration when you look back at him.

“...right.” You say, and a small smile pulls at your lips. “Have I ever told you that I love you?”

“Like I said before, only when I do things for you” Comes his blunt response and you laugh as you turn to go to the bathroom.

Yeah, you’re not sure how exactly you lucked out with Sae, but wherever or whatever he might be in the future, he’d always be a special person to you.

[feyburner]

saw a post of yours where you were breaking down your complex feelings about Jason and violence and catharsis (great post, 10/10, also love ur jaytim fic). Anyway maybe this a weird thing to get out of that but I was wondering, since your response was so articulate and interesting, if you could tell me about your ten-book bookshelf. You know how some people have a dream ten-car garage? Well, what are the ten books -- or even five of the ten, so you have room to change things -- that you would consider as your favourite books of all time? Would love some recommendations.

Oh man this is tough. Ok let me think. Ok.

THIS IS SO HARD!!!! Im gonna think about it like “if I had to be stranded on a desert island with only 10 books for the rest of my life.” Each of these books are literary feasts which could sustain my brain for years.

1. PIRANESI by Susanna Clarke. A pandemic novel and it shows (honorary). This is a book about isolation and hope and God and science and a really weird house. It is so good. It makes you remember why you love the world. I read it for the first time in like 2 hours flat without moving or pausing and have reread it many times since.

2. REAPER MAN or NIGHT WATCH or FEET OF CLAY by Terry Pratchett. Sorry I would pick with a gun to my head but not before. I love anything Pterry but these are the ones that have stuck with me the most so far & explore themes I find most interesting. I love Death and I love Sam Vimes. I accept that the Discworld in general cannot count as one book.

3. THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy. Incredibly bleak novel that makes you feel so bad the whole time. 10/10.

4. GIOVANNI’S ROOM by James Baldwin. This book is about being a gay/bi American expat in Europe and feeling a shame that is inextricable from white American culture/masculinity. It is about being emotionally castrated by your own culture/country and briefly experiencing a taste of something real and raw and “dirty” and frightening and having to choose between deviance and conformity except you can’t even commit to that choice bc of who you are as a person bc of the culture that made you. So you’ll just be alienated and haunted and between worlds forever. 10/10.

5. THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy by Jolkien Rolkien Rolkien Tolkien. This counts as one book.

6. BELOVED by Toni Morrison. The prose in this book is without equal unless you count other Toni Morrisons. It’s one of those books that is so good and so masterful you leave it having been made anew after spending that time so wholly enmeshed in another person’s mind. I reread it a couple years ago for the first time in years and felt that same feeling all over again. It is stunning.

7. CIRCE by Madeline Miller. I know it’s cool to hate Madeline Miller on this website and everyone’s above SONG OF ACHILLES now but guess how much I give a shit. I loved this one and have reread it many times. It’s slow and internal with very little plot, mostly just a woman thinking, which is my favorite type of book.

8. THE TOMBS OF ATUAN or TEHANU or THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula K. LeGuin. If I had to pick, probably TLHOD. It hits!!!

9. A STRANGER IN OLONDRIA by Sofia Samatar. This is a recently acquired favorite, I loved it from the first page. Beautifully written, a masterclass in specific perspective and “realistic” linguistic, cultural, and religious divides in fantasy (vs. the vaguely medieval Western European setting where everyone speaks the same language).

10. THE SIRENS OF TITAN or BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS by Kurt Vonnegut. I think TSOT wins by a hair. “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

This was hard and I only managed it by not including any books in categories other than Books That Changed Me Fundamentally, subcategory That I Could Read Over and Over.

Otherwise, shoutout to nonfiction books THE OLD WAYS and UNDERLAND by Robert Macfarlane, BRAIDING SWEETGRASS by Robin Wall Kimmerer, OTHERLANDS by Thomas Halliday, ENTANGLED LIFE by Merlin Sheldrake; “read for a fucked up horny romantic time” fantasy books the CAPTIVE PRINCE trilogy by C.S. Pacat and TIAN GUAN CI FU by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu; poetry collections by Mary Oliver, Jane Kenyon, Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath, Tracy K. Smith, Zhai Yongming, Maggie Nelson, Fiona Benson, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge; short story collection LESSER KNOWN MONSTERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY by Kim Fu; and the epic graphic novel BONE by Jeff Smith.

Anyway, I am currently reading, among other things, JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL by Susanna Clarke, DEMOCRACY by Joan Didion, and GWENHWYFAR by Mercedes Lackey. I recently picked up LAND OF MILK AND HONEY by C Pam Zhang and I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN by Jacqueline Harpman.

If anyone has any recs based on this list please do give them especially if it’s a sad book where nothing much happens, I love those.

[crooked-wasteland]

I've seen your tweet which criticizes the worldbuilding in Helluva Boss and how the Goetias feel like "Hollywood with royal titles" rather than true aristocracy, and I would like you to elaborate on that, if that's OK.

Thank you so much for this ask as I never got to expand on this point at the time. For those not in the know, the user is referencing this exchange on Twitter.

As much as the elites of our world would like to disperse the truth, the reality is that all societies are constructed around power. Who has power, how and why. That is the fundamental basis of every social dynamic from children on a playground to the politicians in our governments. So the very first thing we should even approach in regards to the narrative is how does power work in this universe?

So when I responded to Elcee in the tweet being referenced, I am evaluating power and power structures. Mainly there are two wholly different constructs of power between something like the aristocracy and celebrities.

The closest thing to an aristocracy we have in our modern day are the financial oligarchs of Capitalism. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, etc. They have control everything from how our political parties engage with us to how we think based on the wealth they were born into. They curate our lives behind the scenes in ways that sound worthy of a tinfoil hat, but isn't a conspiracy. The wealthy were threatened in the 1970s by an educated proletariate. In response to our questioning the Vietnam war, the higher education that was once free or at least extremely affordable suddenly became prohibitively expensive.

So much so that only the financial aristocracy could access it. Whereas working class individuals are forced to jump through hoops and prove themselves suitably subservient to the existing power of the oligarchy in the form of scholarship applications, teacher recommendations and application letters before being granted access. This is not a mistake or how it's always been, this is by design.

Meanwhile, Celebrities are not elites. While we think of celebrities as being overpaid and living in luxury, it only takes a glance over at Chappell Roan to see the difference. When Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or any large corporate CEO walks the red carpet, they are treated as royalty. When celebrities walk the red carpet, they are commodities.

Celebrity is the modern day face of the American Dream. Gone are the days of a single family home and a white picket fence. The boom of content over art, luxury over practicality, and excess over comfort is directly the result of selling to the world the idea of capitalistic success, which just amounts to perpetuating the system of turning humans into money. And for as much money as these celebrities make, it has been proven over and over again that they are just as susceptible to poverty as any other working class individual.

Celebrities are products we buy, and when we stop buying them, they vanish.

Meanwhile the aristocracy, the financial oligarchy, thrives in obscurity.

The difference in power is about who still has it when we no longer see them. And the more invisible and pervasive it is, the more real it is. However one as an individual thinks about the celebrity class, they are simple a different type of specialized tool to the true power behind the scenes.

With that differential in mind, the Goetia function more like celebrities rather than CEOs, and while Elcee fails to see the bigger picture, that subliminally tells the audience that someone with the title of prince, with armies sworn to his allegiance and infinite cosmic power, is no different than a working class joe.

This isn't intentional propaganda, however. It's not her trying to further the agendas of Jeff Bezos intentionally. Just like my other post covering how Medrano tries to excuse cheating, not realizing the only time one can argue such a blanket concept of forgiveness for such a betrayal can only happen when the option of choice is non-existent (ie Divorce is not on the table for reasons outside of the characters’ choices), this is the danger of not engaging with media with your mind turned on. You will innately, no matter how careful someone tries to be, engage with the material through the eyes of the creator.

Celebrities and average people are the same: commodities in the face of real power. But Medrano cannot tell the difference between someone like Elon Musk and his employees. She sees the aristocracy, the ones who were born into a legacy of wealth, as “hardworking average folks”. And if you aren't thinking, you might find yourself implicitly believing that too. Deeper entrenching the power they have over you as an individual and society as a whole.

How we got to where we are in our real lives is mirrored in the media we consume. And that isn't an accident.

[certifiedsexed]

Terrified to ask in fear I'll be framed bad but here I go!!

I'm very interested in the human body and anything that can be considered medical (have been ever since I was 3-4 years old!!) and so I tend to get carried away with topics when it comes to human anatomy or procedures

One of which I've been talking about a lot is ftm HRT and the affects it'll have because not only am I incredibly excited for it I find it fascinating with how it works and what changes it provides and I'll yap about it in VCs with friends and stuff

With that context out of the way some of the people in those VCs are minors and I'm worried that what I'm talking about is harming them (because sometimes the topic turns to bottom growth or vaginal atrophy, sometimes the topic turns to mtf hrt and I'll discuss breast growth and the affects estrogen has on penises or testicles) Because I'm an adult (barely so too, I turned 18 like this year)

The minors are 15 or older never any younger and I always clarify and check in if I'm making anybody uncomfortable and if people want me to stop which everyone has said continously that they're ok with it and even ask questions about the topic (a lot of the people I hang out with are trans folks who have some kind of transition goal in mind)

But I'm worried if I'm pushing it too far and am actually harming them because I'm an adult while these people are minors. It never turns sexual its all talked about in a strictly educational manner.

I hope this makes sense sorry for the long ask :(

It's kinda interesting to read this ask for me because I'm very similar to this and have been for a long time. I also had similar worries but more about sharing with my siblings than general friends.

Look, talking about sex education (including trans specific sex education) isn't bad for kids or going to harm them.

You've been interested in this type of thing since you were very young yourself, do you think it hurt you? It doesn't sound like it, seeing as you're still wholly excited and fascinated with this type of subject.

It sounds like you're very considerate about it as well and that your friends are curious/interested in the topics you discuss. That's wonderful.

You being 18 does not make it dangerous or harmful. You're not flirting with minors or anything even similar. You're just sharing information-information that it sounds like some of these kids will need!

You being an adult doesn't immediately make it inappropriate or dangerous. In fact, I'd argue having a safe adult these kids can talk to and ask questions about topics like that generally makes them safer.

If any of them were voicing discomfort and you continued to engage them in these conversations, ignoring that, I'd say, "Definitely stop that." but so far, it sounds absolutely fine.

Hope this helps, Anon! Let me know if you have any other questions. <3

[pinkteethmarks]

GOOD AND PLENTY; K.B 

witchy tip

➤ drinking mugwort tea is good for astral projection

15. hoc non est verum (written portion)

notes; sorry guys the written portion is a little longer than i wanted, i was gonna add the car drive as well but i may make that a separate like “insider” type thing is that’s what you guys want?

m.list

as you looked around for your headphones you could feel your hands tremor, you couldn’t tell if it was from excitement, anxiety or both.

on one hand, you were oozing with zest and not even just for the trip. a sordid, more selfish part of you that ached for katsuki’s acknoledgement and love felt as though cancelling the spell was a betrayal to yourself. you edged yourself with your own desires and ripped it away just when it was getting to the good part. spending private time with katsuki would only be the plus side, if you kept him under this incantation, he would be with you for life. you would be the girl of his dreams, the only one he desires, his one true love.

but the other side of you understood how malicious that was. one cannot manipulate someone’s feelings like that, regardless of how good it would feel or now passionate one would love the other in return.

alongside the fact that you understood that soon you would have to reveal you kept him under a love spell, which knowing, katsuki would turn him into an even madder man than he already is.

“it’s not fair” you muttered to yourself, thinking back to how you denied all his advances and professions of love for the sake of morality, when you wanted nothing more then frivolously discard them and make up your own laws for humans; one that stated that not matter want means you obtained what you want, it would be ok to keep them as they were.

either way, the loss of memories was something that truly wasn’t fair to anyone, including him. plus, this isn’t the katsuki you fell in love with. his abrasive, brass, aggressive, temperamental personality was something you oddly treasured. this sappy wannabe was only a shell of the man you craved and loved wholly.

you shook your head as you attempted to push those thoughts to the back of your mind, finally spotting your headphones, next to your charger.

soon, your ID and hero license was spotted on your drawer, which you quickly swiped before placing all of them into your large duffel bag. lugging it onto your shoulder and finally leaving your room.

“you guys leaving now?” izuku said, he was holding hands with ochako whilst ejiro and ashido were walking slightly behind them, engaging in their own conversation but stopping when noticing you.

“yep, gonna be gone for what i assume is the weekend so don’t wait up late tonight” you informed.

strings of ‘ok’s’ followed afterwards, resulting in a smile. soon, everyone was diving for a hug.

“i know how hard this is gonna be yn, but you’re doing the right thing.” ejiro spoke into the group hug.

“wait, you know?” izuku asked.

“yeah, ashi updated me since aint nobody wanted to tell me shit… but whatever.” ejiro sulked jokingly.

“sorry! i felt bad plus i needed to gossip to him about this u literally couldn’t hold it in.” ashido apologised.

“its fine, im surprised that your big ass mouth could even keep it in for that long” you joked.

“yeah, you dead wrong.” ashido said before everyone erupted into laughter.

“gosh, stay strong yn, and don’t give in! be strong.” ochako motivated you, pumping a small fist into the air, causing izuku to blush.

“you’re so cute occhan.” izuku complimented, causing his blush to deepen.

“no you’re cute!” ochako giggled.

“definitely not cuter than you!” izuku rebutted.

“yes you are, my little izu” ochako giggled once more.

“non of you are cuter than yn, wrap it up before everyone starts throwing up.” katsuki scoffed, keeping his eyes on you while he spoke.

those stupid eyes of his, piercing and striking. they read through everything and reduced you down to your core. you evaded these eyes for however many weeks, ignoring his advances flat and walking away when he even appeared. but here they are, meeting you, analysing you and artificially loving you.

you really fucking hated your life right now.

“thanks i guess kat” you responded, rolling your eyes when you wanted nothing more than to hold him.

“you ready?” katsuki asked, walking up to you.

“yeah, sorry to keep you waiting.” you spoke.

“i’d wait forever for you, let me hold your things princess.” he responded quickly without missing a beat, he held his hand out so that he could grab your stuff. a blush adorned his face despite his display of confidence.

“no it’s fine, i don’t want-“

“i said ill hold your stuff so dont ever think it would be a bother.. or whatever you were gonna say.” katsuki interrupts you, snatching the bag off you with speed he didn’t even show during sparring.

as you stood there shocked, everyone else was stifling their giggles or watching intently as though you guys were a soap opera.

“if that’s what you want to do i guess.” you replied, pretending to be nonchalant when you were cheesing on the inside.

“alright, later losers. don’t fucking text me ‘cus i wanna spend some quality time with my girl so if there’s an issue, it will have to wait. let’s go baby.” katsuki held your hand and dragged you whilst the others burst into laughter.

“bye lovebirds!” ashido yelled out.

“don’t break the bed!” ochako laughed loudly.

“you guys are so annoying!” you yelled back at them, to which they responded with laughter and waves.

as you two marched down the sidewalk, you finally realised you don’t even know where he was dragging you to.

“where the hell are we even going?” you asked, pulling your wrist from his tight grasp.

“we are going to mine, need to get my car so i can drive us honey, remember?” katsuki turned back, this time grabbing your hand and interlocking them.

“right” you responded, allowing him to hold your hand. if this was going to be the last day that he would be as in love with you as he is now, might as well indulge a little.

“also, are we gonna be doing the things they were.. um… like the.. you know what, never mind.” katsuki’s face was bright red, he tried to turn his face away to hide how embarrassed he looked.

“what are you- wait.” you cut yourself off once you realised what he was asking.

“are you asking if i’m planning to fuck you?” you smirked, moving closer to his face to get him more flustered.

“no need to be so crass! i just, needed to know if i should get some… things.” katsuki’s face trailed off as he continued to get more shy, speeding away while also keeping his grip on your hands tight.

“such as?” you said, feigning innocence.

“you know what! stop trying to be a smartass and hurry up before we are late.”

“you don’t even know what time we have to be there.” you chuckled in response.

“drive yourself then.” katsuki tried to hide his smile as he let go of your hand.

“ok, ok i’m sorry!” you laughed as you went to grab his hand.

‘this isn’t right’ you thought as you laughed at his jokes on the walk to his house.

‘this isn’t real’ you told yourself as he put his arm around your waist protectively when some guys were eyeing you up.

you constantly reminded yourself that this would never be real, even if he had feelings for you prior to this, your stupid mistake will cost you what could’ve been between the two of you.

from the walk to his house, to getting in his fancy car, to the rode trip conversation that made your flustered through his kind smile and flirtatious banter, there was one phrase that kept you in check from fallling for the fantasy.

this is not real.

[cuprohastes]

Did you bring a sword?

The Zavazni pride themselves on their swordsmanship. If one of their Privateer ships pulls you over, you can duel them: Win and they’ll fuck off, nice and peaceful.

Lose and… well things might go the other way. Slavery or death for the challenger for sure.

Almost nobody duels the Zavazni. Nobody else has dropped all their points into weebing that hard about swords.

So the Freighter Mok Sipok Vuun Abta (Lit: Slow but Safe hands for Carrying) got nabbed by the Privateer ship ‘Elegant blade for which no foe may stand against’. The captain just sighed and started filling out the insurance forms, and had the Bankruptcy declaration cued up for after that.

It was wholly a surprise then, that the Cook decided to challenge the Zavazni’s Blademaster.

The cook was human, of course. She was called Sue - Probably still is.

The Blademaster - One Truun Var Odakan (Familial name Ovtin) accepted on the spot, pulled out a metre of gleaming silvered duelling sword, flourished and spun the damn thing faster than a hummingbird’s wing: Y’know, just to make a point.

Sue got a crappy spare one of the Zavazni handed to her. She waggled it, adjusted her grip, almost dropped it… Which provoked hilarity from the Privateers.

The Captain was hoping that they’d find this all funny enough not to be vindictive after they sliced Sue up. Which at this point was entirely out of his hands.

Sue did a few swishes with the blade and started to swing it, the point wobbling until she got the hang of it and then…

… and then it was moving faster, and faster as she got the measure of it, until it moved like a curtain of quicksilver. Like it was the petals of a flower picked out in the barely visible reflection of metal moving so fast it became ethereal. The tip moved so fast it sung. The damn thing looked like it was alive.

Sue moves in a way that the Captain had never seen, twisting, spinning, sliding, and weaving.

Ovtin was immediately wrong-footed, but then Sue stopped, the subliminal whine of the blade shocking in its sudden absence.

“OK big boy, let’s dance.” she said — And Ovtin, barely pausing, swept in with the terrible grace the Zavazni are known for.

Sue handed him his ass.

She wasn’t ever where he thought, she never stepped where he predicted. She moved like water around his silver blade, and she barely even took time to slap his sword out the way.

Ovtin started to slow, frustrated swings and lunges tiring him out, and Sue?

She relaxed into it. She looked loose and lazy.

The scalpel sharp point of the privateers sword whipping past her, as she bent like a willow, reaching up and just slapping the flat of Ovtin’s blade with her hand now and again.

And then when he was panting and livid, she took him apart: A flick of her sword tip here, a sweep there that dragged the cutting edge through cloth and skin: Her sword switching hands…

Some times even pointing backwards as she spun and ducked, the edge like a scythe, making him stumble out the way. And then as Ovtin staggered she spun inside his defence, elbowed him in the side, slid her hand up his arm and yanked his sword out of his hand.

Sue ducked down and whipped the tips across Ovtin’s thighs, backed up, dropped the tips, rolled her shoulders and started whirling both swords — Her shirt soaked, her hair matted and pure fury in her eyes.

The Captian nearly shit himself when he realised this creature of pure avatistic vengeance had been making his pancakes and hot tuvi of a morning.

Ovtin just couldn’t wrap his mind around what was happening. He could have surrendered, but he couldn’t conceptually accept it and kept lunging in to try to get his sword back.

Which was like reaching into a blender.

And when he finally died, Sue cried for him and told the Privateers to fuck off: And they did. They actually did.

She kept both swords. Mounted the old one over the kitchen hatch.

It took the Captain almost the entire rest of the trip to ask two questions

“Would you have challenged the Blade Master if we hadn’t been carrying aide supplies?”

…and:

“How? How could you possibly have done this?”

Unfortunately the answer to the second part, devoid of cultural context, meant nothing to him, but he wrote it in the log anyway:

“Cargo saved due to the actions of Sue Marrincourt, cook & ‘Beat Sabre Champion’.”