#No you don't get tags

[z-h-i-e]

Just in time for Halloween.

Werewelves: Extended Edition

A Choose Your Own Elfventure story

There's even more twisted shit in this version.

The year is 465 FA, and your realm is in trouble. Your cousins have been guests for longer than you would like, and they are gaining favor in your court. Your adventure begins as you return from a hunt with Celegorm and Curufin, home to Nargothrond, where your valet listens to your concerns…but soon, there will be other perils for you to overcome. The decisions are yours to make, for you are…

​Finrod Felagund, King of Nargothrond.

The original version had 144 parts that equaled to 1002 possible combinations for a story. This version has more, and has some options I didn't have time to write for the original version. it took about four months to write the original; it took over two years to revamp it so that I didn't break vectors for the paths.

It splits off after the first few choices, and you can pick either the PG-13 version, or the so explicit we didn't have a rating for it version.

Enjoy. And, actually, what I mean is, don't enjoy, because this shit is creepy as fuck.

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[lgbtlunaverse]

The world exists in such a baffling state of simultaneous sex-aversion and sex-hegemony. Every social platform on the internet is trying to banish sex workers to the shadow realm but I can't post a tweet without at least two bots replying P U S S Y I N B I O. People are self-censoring sex to seggs and $3× but every other ad you see is still filled with half-naked women. Rightwingers want queer people arrested for so much as existing in the same postal code as a child and are also drumming up a moral panic about how teenage boys aren't getting laid enough. I feel like I'm losing my mind.

[sabertoothwalrus]

does science experiments on you (homoerotically)

[artist-rat]

some epilogue vibes (an excuse to draw some hugs. and my durge so many times)

[brainrotcharacters]

the easy grip on the knife. the leg over the seat. the hand over the other seat. the sassy "come get it" move. you know the bitch is smiling behind that mask even as he said the line.

[andiv3r]

"If you could have any superpower, what w-"

Shapeshifting. Shapeshifting shapeshifting shapeshifting. I'm a transgender therian, what the fuck did you think I would pick.

[coddda]

I wish we could have met in some other way.

Lawlight Week Day 2: Soulmates

If you saw me repost and re-edit this several times uh No you didn't </3

Still frames/Individual gifs:

If you know what every frame is from you get a free cookie. by the way

[shichidikai]

had a dream where i logged in to ao3 and saw this

so i'm manifesting it for every author who sees this

likes charge reblogs cast, rb to wish kudos and comments upon your favorite fics

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I'm back in the Tigers cage again.

(You too can join in on throwing a Rat Of A Man into a Tiger cage by reading Tiger Tiger)

[solroskajan]

:D

[writeouswriter]

People sorting ao3 solely by stats and only clicking on fics with a certain amount of kudos or comments, you will not survive the winter, nor the summer, nor at all, *brings out knife,* run

[retributory]

if a bingqiu hater puts the blame on any weirdness in their relationship solely on binghe you KNOW they can't read. this is a freak4freak relationship okay. sqq is the guy that got offended and sulky because binghe DIDN'T hen-peck him into cuddling. he openly admits to loving the tearful lamb act. he likes having a clingy needy girlfriend he has to reassure constantly. he got so horny watching his husband pour qi into his dead body that he woke up and immediately pounced on him and fucked him straight into a qi deviation. when he heard the rumor that binghe raped him his internal argument was that this could never happen because if binghe wanted to have sex with you, you would just let him, so it's not rape. he's literally insane. they're perfect for each other in the sense that they're both bugfuck crazy.

[muppetfreak]

Mr. Riordan, it is truly a pleasure getting to experience your second draft.

[umblrspectrum]

happy solvermas

[larkinna]

He's the King of Antiva to me

Inspired by this post by @vigilskeep because they opened my third eye with it.