#NEITHER WOULD HAVE EVER EXPECTED IT

[sjweminem]

Do you think at some point Hoffman like, tells Strahm How he got there? Like that the Baxter trap was before he was even an apprentice, his relationship with his sister, etc. And he just ends up fucking bawling because she was all he had and then the asshole that murdered her got out on a technicality, how it made sense, to kill him That Way, using a trap? To torture him for it. Even if he doesn't really acknowledge the appeal that John held for him then, being completely alone and being given a Purpose framed as a way to make people pay when they otherwise wouldn't, to make them face justice, he's just sobbing because it's all been misery and being alone even with John and Amanda and Strahm can't help but feel for him and just ends up holding him and hating everything that lead Hoffman to that point.

[chronologically-challenged]

I think that the party's communication issues can be summed up as "man, is it awkward to tell someone that you want to spend the rest of your life with them if you've only know them for a few months? Probably."

[necrotic-nephilim]

For the au ask game

What do you think would happen if damian got a crush on dick and a good while after he proposed to dick in front of the 'bat-fam', they weren't dating so obviously dick is surprised but do you think they'd get together, how would the rest react?

for the ask game!

oooh, this is fun, bc there are a lot of directions to take it, how i think i'd write it tho is-

Damian would wait until he's an adult. he knows that's when it becomes Permissible to court Dick publically. everyone's always sort of known that Damian had a childhood crush but hey, he can join the club, most of them have gone through it at some point. no one says anything, bc they assume Damian will grow out of it, and even assume he has, by the time he's an adult. maybe he's dated and had brief flings that never worked out. no one realizes how *planned out* this is for Damian. he's in it for the long haul, having distractions thrown up to throw everyone off his scent. silently sabotaging Dick's relationships in ways no one even realizes, especially not Dick. Damian has been waiting for this, and he plans to do it the way he's been raised: romance is a lifetime bond that cannot be severed, and thus, it includes marriage. i like the idea that no one *told* Damian this explicitly, but how his mother taught him about love and how he sees Western relationships naturally led him to this assumption.

when Damian properly proposes, i think everyone would be so baffled, Dick included, that it'd come across as a joke. Damian planned it in front of others on propose- he wanted to mark his territory clearly and put the social pressure on Dick to have to navigate the situation correctly. bc Dick never wants Damian to feel embarrassed or humiliated. so there's a long, tense silence. someone maybe laughs and tries to crack a joke, with Damian calmly saying he's deadly serious. he expected the ridicule and it's not getting to him. i think it's extra fun if Dick quietly asks Damian to talk in another room about this and they leave and everyone is trading jokes and comments about what Dick is saying and why on earth Damian would even do that, trying to decide if this is a weird version of a prank. so an hour later when Dick and Damian come back out and DIck is *wearing the ring*, everyone is baffled.

Dick intends to say no. he's going to be *kind* about it but of course he's saying no. Damian might be in his 20s now, but he's still a *kid* in Dick's eyes, and Dick could never see him that way. but Damian lays out his reasoning, because he expected a rejection. he's very clear about the logistical aspect of it. how he objectively makes a good partner for Dick, and how getting married would provide stability for the family dynamic as well as the legal aspect of Bruce's company. it's all so well laid out Dick can barely get a word in edge wise. Dick tries to bring up how they're basically family and Damian calming corrects him that no, Dick was only ever Bruce's ward. Damian even brings up instances where Dick expressed a romantic love. bc i do think it's fun if Dick briefly Noticed Damian in that way. never deep enough to develop a full crush, but he definitely noticed when Damian went from a scrappy kid to an adult with toned muscles and his father's jawline. and Damian concludes his speech by saying if Dick has no arguments, then Damian assumes they're proceeding. and well, Dick *has* no real arguments. besides the fact he doesn't want to, which given Damian knows there's attraction there, he's able to easily combat that argument, saying Dick does want it, he's just doubting himself. so, frustrated and not prepared for this argument, Dick says yes, mostly bc of how flustered he is.

Dick's intended plan is to show Damian how bad of an idea their relationship would be. which is what he tells everyone, saying he's just doing this so Damian can learn how terrible their relationship would be and Damian will get it all out of his system. it's like indulging a child trying to set their own bedtime and letting them so they learn why they need sleep. and that works well for about a month, until Dick is realizing, he kind of enjoys this relationship. Damian is a dotting lover, and he's *right*, that he well balances most of Dick's worst traits in a relationship. it has been canonically said that Dick would do best with a partner like Bruce and well, what's Damian if not a more feral clone of Bruce. he has the same intensity that Dick needs, while also respecting he can't control everything about Dick's life. he doesn't expect or demand intimacy of any kind out of Dick, but Dick somehow finds himself sleeping in Damian's arms. (i'm a fan of Damian being a brickhouse as an adult and actually slightly larger than Dick) their first kiss isn't a surprise, bc Damian calmly asks if he can kiss Dick, what's surprising is that Dick says yes before he even thinks about it. he tells himself he's just curious. and it's a *good* kiss, which is even more frustrating. it's the sort of kiss where his hands wander and he's pulling Damian into his lap before Damian pulls away and calmly says he needs consent from Dick to go further. which makes Dick go pink bc, all of this was *not* how this was supposed to go. this was supposed to be a bluff, and now he thinks he's actually dating Damian.

the reactions would take a while to settle in. everyone still sees this as a ridiculous thing that'll blow over, eventually. bc Dick promised this wasn't a *real* thing and well, it *sounds* so ridiculous it can't really sink in. Damian's at that age where he's *just* now transitioning into being seen as an adult by the family. everyone who's on the younger side of the family will know, there's when you become an adult legally, and then there's when you become an adult socially, and those are very different times. Damian's just on the cusp, where a lot of the Batfam still see him as a kid. so it's difficult to grasp that he's old enough to be dating, let alone dating Dick. the longer it lasts the more the hidden laughs become shared looks as it sinks in. i think Bruce wouldn't know *how* to react. so many emotions just cancel out to the point that if he's asked, he just walks out of a room. Tim would be on the more negative side of reactions, whereas Cass is on the more positive. it's heavily varied, with the typical concerns being brought up. but no one can really *do* anything about it. and Dick is *Dick*, he's more trusted than Bruce is by the family, so they sort of have to go along with whatever he does. and more importantly, they trust his judgment. if he's riding this out, then everyone's riding it out with them. eventually, it sort of just becomes part of the dynamic. it goes from a joke to accepted so easily no one really notices when they started taking it seriously. which is the fun of it being so normalized that they don't realize it as a Thing anymore. it's just how Damian and Dick are, which is my favorite brand of things.

[tarraxahum]

This was gonna be a reply to a reply but I thought maybe I should just make my own post. Yes this is about Vi again.

It's no secret that "Vi should've fought for Zaun" and the expectation of her being Vander's prodigy and feeling like the plot dropped the ball on her in that regard and the betrayal at the fact that she's living comfortably in Piltover now are. Frequent sentiments in the fandom. Which I get, but also I feel that this line of expectations is. Diverging from who Vi actually is by the end and what she was realistically capable of.

Vi in season 2 is basically running on fumes and because she has no other options. It is a well known thing in irl activist spaces that to participate in any kind of fight for justice you need to take care of yourself, otherwise you won't have the energy to be any kind of useful to your community. Ekko also says this - "It's not enough to give people what they need to survive, you have to give them what they need to live". Vi has been surviving and not living in any shape or form for years, she's exhausted and broken in places. That's no mental state to fight for Zaun or make any kinda change. I think it's extremely realistic and human and hardly a flaw of writing or the character if by the end the only thing she was able to do was collapse into the safety and peace she was offered for the first time in forever (aka Caitlyn). It's clear that in her last scene she's still recovering mentally - Cait seems to be excited to have any sign of life (singing) from her at all, and the "Are you still in this fight?" question is very loaded. (But it's indicated that Vi is very much still in the fight, so? It's really anyone's guess what she'll do once she's healed and remembers how to live. And don't bring up LoL's Vi brutality thing, it's clear they're different characters).

I think in wanting to see Vi stand up for Zaun or be Vander's prodigy we often deny her the flaw of being a breakable human and forget just how much she's held together by duct tape. Just because she was full of this 'fuck Piltover' fire as a kid doesn't mean she is still capable of matching that energy. Sometimes after lots of trauma humans grow up into tired adults who just want to sit down and feel safe regardless of where it happens and how questionable it might look (re: living in Piltover). Not to mention, that even as a child Vi's main reason for fuming at the Topside was wanting safety for her family and herself. Well, now she's all out of family, she's estranged from the community of Zaun thanks to being in prison for 7 years and Silco changing the place so much, and the only person who's offering her safety and not more fighting (which she's exhausted and thoroughly burnt out from!) is Caitlyn, so. How is where she ended up any kind of surprising or a failure of her writing/character?

Yes, a lot of people wanted a revolutionary, no, Vi isn't one. Dare I say, never really was one. At her lowest, when she's got no one left to protect, she's not trying to fill in that void by taking on protecting Zaun and becoming a vigilante or something, no, she spirals. That is not something on her radar, that's not something she's visibly cut out to do, she cares so so much but on a smaller scale. Even the whole shimmer factory debacle was less about Zaun and more about her desire to hurt Silco personally for what he'd done to her family. If Jinx agreed to run away with her back at the tea party Vi would ditch the entirety of Zaun (potentially leaving it to Silco forever since he's still alive at that point) in a heartbeat to keep her sister and save Cait in one move. She puts on an enforcer uniform BECAUSE she cares for Jinx (through convincing herself that at the very least she should take her out of her misery herself rather than leaving it to people who don't care, yes) and Cait both.

Perhaps a hot take, but not becoming a leader despite being good at taking hits to the head and caring about people in general and being a daughter of one does not make Vi a badly written character or a bad person. It just makes her a person. And a character whose arc culminated in choosing herself. And choosing yourself sometimes means leaving the fight to others (perhaps temporarily, considering the final dialogue). And that's okay.

Arcane is tragedy about flawed people, not a feel-good story about a successful revolution and rich people paying for their crap, and it was never going to be. Ergo one of our main character isn't an upcoming hero in shining armor who was allegedly robbed of her potential. She's just a broken young woman who barely knows how to keep her own little life together and her biggest victory by the end is allowing herself to take a breath and live for once. Yes, while her home down there is still in shambles. Yes, that sounds selfish. For some people a bit of selfishness is the greatest thing they can ever learn for themselves.

[tacagen]

dont know whether zixx is a bishop clone or not? a 100% accurate test: put a wedding in front of him and see what he does.

[inu-sunset]

inuyasha is like that knuckles comic where when kagome clocks his faggergie egg aura and asks him what his pronouns are he’s like stop cursing at me

[evilkitten3]

people on the fanon wiki will just straight up announce that they haven't actually watched the show huh

[brw]

Why is Vision in that fuckass suit.

[allright]

thinking of a royalty au with eventual poly!nanago...

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

I have this tea cup I made in highschool (it’s really cute and was designed more like those Japanese ones without a handle than it was those fancy English style with even more elements to them) but I never actually asked if the glaze we used was food safe (we all used the same glaze on those cups specifically because the teacher glazed those ones in particular and I don’t remember checking. I glazed and painted every other project but only one of them was something you would use for food and that thing broke a few years ago and was honestly more decorative) and this has haunted me ever since. It’s a super cute cup and I adore it, but I have no idea if I can use it for its intended purpose and while I could buy a lead testing kit I’m not sure how I would check for anything else that might have been in that glaze. I know the color used but not the brand, so that’s not really a help either. The teacher I had left the district after that year because our school district paid art teachers a shit wage and we rotated through them like elementary school kids needing new shoes every year. I’m not entirely sure how I would contact her, but even if I did track her down (something not entirely impossible from what I know about her life outside of teaching us for a year, I would feel slightly weird about it though, even though she was my favorite art teacher) but I highly doubt she would remember something like the glaze she used on one project her students made at a school she taught at for one year. I’m not sure what other testing kits I would need besides lead to confidently say it’s safe enough for my personal use, and it’s annoyed me for several years now.

[hiddeninthe-veil]

.

[the-tenth-arcanum]

oh?

[novaimperia]

★ asking roommate!sukuna if you can sleep with him because you’re scared

“no.”

the door slams in your face, grazing your nose ever so slightly. you don’t know what you were expecting when you knocked at 2am — maybe you weren’t thinking at all. the booming thunder outside was dizzying and your feet raced you out of your room and down the hall in record speed before you could even process the rattling of your bones. 

you knock again. the door swings open. he is not happy. 

sukuna’s sporting a scowl, piercings glinting from the hallway light, as he glares down at you. he’s shirtless and wearing boxers that hang low on his hips, revealing sharp angles and thick lines of ink. on any other occasion, you would have swooned to yourself but now’s not the time. 

“please, s’kuna. i can’t sleep on my own like this.”

his brow quirks up. “and that’s my problem because?”

fuck. 

he’s not listening. you can’t even blame him — it’s late and he’s already warned you he’s not the sweet type, that you shouldn’t treat him like a boyfriend, and he doesn’t cuddle so unless you’re up for spreading your legs, you should keep your distance. but you thought since you guys have been having dinner together, going out for errands, and even building inside jokes that he might feel inclined to do you a little favour. 

“y-yeah, you’re right. sorry.” you jolt when the next rumble sends the apartment swaying. “oh! fuck. just…sorry. night.”

scrambling back, you clutch yourself tight, resenting the shudders running through you, like the storm has wormed its way in and is eating you from the inside. 

“ah!”

two huge arms wrap around you, lifting you up, back, and tossing you onto a bed. you bounce once. twice. sukuna makes an exasperated noise and runs his hand through his hair. “you’re an annoying little shit. you better not snore or i’m kicking you out.”

then, he’s climbing in behind you, lying on his stomach, faced buried in his pillow and paying you no mind. you’re in his bed like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like you’ve been here before and will be again. it did occur to you that things might get awkward, but the way he’s not even the slightest bit tense and letting you hike up the covers over both of you even though he runs hot tells a different story. 

minutes pass by, you still can’t sleep. the storm is suffocating. just as your eyes flutter shut, a flash of lightning breaches the blanket of his curtains and a fierce roaring follows shortly after, shaking the bed frame. shit.

“quit shivering. can’t fucking sleep when you’re on vibration mode.”

“sorry.”

he opens one eye to judge you. “you scared of a little thunder? embarrassing.”

“yeah.”

grunting, he mutters something, as if scolding himself and throws an arm around you. sukuna rolls you two over so he’s on his back and you’re on his chest. he’s warm and hardened with muscles, yet you melt into him as if he’s a teddy bear. he smells nice too. 

you’re rendered confused, unable to reconcile his actions with the relevance to anything that had transpired in the last ten minutes. but…you hear it. or rather, you don’t. his body is shielding you from the sounds outside, distracting your senses with the feel of him, bare, against you. the thunders are washed away by the beating of something inside his chest.

quietly, you quip, feeling the need to cover up the heat rising to your cheeks, “i didn’t know you had a heart.”

sukuna scoffs. “yeah, neither. now shut up, don’t want to deal with your grumpy ass in the morning.”

maybe you are closer than you thought. though you won’t bring that up to him, knowing how defensive he gets. unspoken and subtle, you’re content with the way he shows his loyalty. it’s sincere and consistent and that’s all that matters.

so, you find yourself falling asleep dreaming of a fire engulfing you, drowning all else away, and laying a gentle kiss on your head. 

[frogizz]

All I wanted was to click through some cute ship art and I was hit again with the realization that I can't do the things I wanna do with someone because like, I don't have a partner. I don't wanna be romantic, I just wanna have a heavily sensual relationship with someone where our boundaries are trusted and almost matched.

Like, I'm almost always sad because I can't explore what I want when there's no one to explore with.

[radiaking]

smth about how hank and barb are both willing to burn the world down for their loved ones vs coop and lucy both foolishly hoping they can save the ppl they love and be w/them again w/o anything bad happening or hurting anyone....

[arolesbianism]

I am finally doing it... I am rotating Butter in my head. Identity bullshit for the win.