#So pick your poison!

[anthonyzoxide]

Underratedly silly aspect of creating a fictional story that has canonical relevance to a specific real-life historical event is how, to have this apply to your characters' stories, you have to insert Blorbo from Your Mind into, like, the Titanic. With all those real guys. That or you just make up a fake event that happened to the character, an event which is still under the label of the real-life historical event. & the viewer/reader/etc just isn't supposed to question it.

[cillyscribbles]

old deuteronomy has learned that human fathers are oftentimes "out for milk". unwilling to shirk this duty, he too sets out for the closest catvenience store to make sure none of his 467 children are left milkless.

[spkyart]

I am so normal about them

[quatregats]

This quote is so funny but also like that is literally the most efficient summary of the difference between these books sdhfjhds

[qqueenofhades]

crossing my fingers we just saw Trump's McCain/Palin '08 moment.

Lololololololol JD Vance?

[ghor-dranas]

Pick a Tearror!

Not enough people are listening to Midst imo, so I'm going to do my level best to fix that by making this poll! Please choose a tearror to be afflicted by.

All of these are canonical, and this doesn't even come close to covering the weirdness of the Fold from which tearrors originate. Please, if you think these sound fun, go listen to Midst.

[feroluce]

Belobog was my fave main quest but a lot of it is so. Contradictory. It's like they had multiple groups doing different shit and none of them checked in with each other for consistency. And you see this so much in Gepard's profile.

So in the main quest, they made him unfailingly, unquestionably loyal to Cocolia. Gepard's character arc is him learning to question authority etc etc. And this isn't even a bad thing; that's a story worth telling! It makes good conflict between him and Serval! And I love that we got Gepard as a boss battle and I get to see him all the time in SU!

But then you look at his character stories and it's like. The complete opposite.

According to his profile, Gepard has already HAD this awakening, long before the Astral Express, and he'd already decided Cocolia sucks. Even outside of his stories, there's a pretty damning readable between him and Pela.

He even disobeyed direct orders right in front of her- he has been disobeying orders for a while now!

So I've decided I'm marrying the two different sides of this into a 1.5k fic-ish thingy, because I think there's some fun potential there with Gepard not trusting Cocolia, but still having to pretend to be a good obedient little soldier.

Anyway. I love to think of it as like. Gepard knows Cocolia has sunk into her apathy. He can see it in her eyes every time he looks at her. She doesn't care. Not about him, not about Pela, not about all his soldiers on the frontlines giving their lives to protect the citizens. And that's... It makes him bristle a bit, but ok. Gepard can deal with this. Even if Cocolia no longer cares, as long as she does her job then it's fine. Having compassion behind an action doesn't matter as much as the action itself. If Cocolia's heart is no longer swayed, then he'll just have to care twice as hard to pick up the slack. He considers it part of his duty as a captain of the guard anyway. It's fine. Gepard can deal with it.

And then, Cocolia starts coming down to the restricted zone. Issuing direct orders.

And Gepard realizes he is in way over his head.

Because Cocolia orders him to stay back and issue commands from the ramparts, away from all his comrades, away from where he can protect them.

Gepard had thought nothing could be as bad as watching a fellow guard die right next to him. But the first time he watches someone struck by a killing blow, so far away, it hurts. Every defensive scar across his arms itches, his fingers curl in want of a weapon, the cold cannot numb his hands enough as they desperately ache for his shield. It hurts.

Gepard tries to find any reason to stay. Because surely... He knows Cocolia has lost her love for her people, but surely... She wouldn't...

One day, Cocolia orders for their gunners to advance 20 yards. There are no survivors. She almost looks like she smiles.

Gepard doesn't sleep that night.

Pela brings him the report at the end of the first month; and then the month after that, and the month after that. A significant uptick in losses, and all of it started on that first day Cocolia started overriding his authority and issuing her own orders. The ends of Gepard's pens have all been nearly chewed off. Pela outright calls Cocolia an idiot, and Gepard corrects her. Cocolia isn't an idiot. Gepard had known her through Serval, knew her through all her college years and then some, and he knows how intelligent she is. It's not that she's stupid, and it's not that she's inexperienced, it's nothing of the sort.

Cocolia knows exactly what she's doing.

She must, there's no way she could make such a horrible mess of things so badly by accident. And Pela, quick as a whip, sharp as a tack, always too smart for her own good, catches onto the meaning behind Gepard's correction without any further prompting. The tent goes deathly quiet, nothing but the wind howling outside.

"...She's trying to kill us," Pela whispers, her voice swiftly suffocated by the silence.

Gepard swallows. He can't bring himself to correct her this time. There is nothing he could say that he would actually mean.

His gaze drops, back down to his desk and the reports on it. The names aren't listed, just the numbers, but Gepard knows them, knew them, and there must be something wrong, something he's missing, because why, why would she-? What could this possibly accomplish-?

“Gepard! Focus!” Something snaps right under his nose, and Gepard startles, eyes instantly honing in on Pela's irritated face as she leans over his desk. She holds his gaze for a moment before she huffs and begins to pace, wedges a knuckle between her teeth and bites like Gepard hasn't seen her do since cadet school.

Pela angrily strides from one end of his tent to the other, words hissed between her grit teeth. “What are we going to do?” In the dim lighting, Gepard can just barely see the damp spot of blood weeping under her gloves. “We need a plan.”

“A plan?”

“Wh- Yes, a plan! Unless you want more people to die!” Pela rounds on him then, all the wrath of a blizzard, winds roaring and snow sharp enough to cut.

“We don't even know-”

“What does it matter?! She killed-!!” Pela cuts off with a garbled noise when Gepard leaps up from his desk, hastily shoves his hand over her mouth. The prosthetic, not the flesh one, because he knows better than to assume Pela won't seize the opportunity to leave teeth marks in his skin.

“You're right. I'm sorry, I'm sorry; you're right. But you need to keep quiet.” Pela quirks an eyebrow at him and Gepard can read the question in her face. “Because we both saw what she did to Serval,” he hisses.

It's amazing the snow plains haven't thawed out yet, the amount of heat Pela can put behind a glare. The mere mention of Serval, and the smoking ruins Cocolia had made of her life and career, have her bristling up like a riled cat. The sudden hot breath she takes fans fog across his metal skin, and Gepard wisely keeps it in place until Pela finally sighs and reaches up, taps her fingertips against the back of his hand.

The second she's free, Pela bats him away and then her knuckle is right back between her teeth again, Gepard leaning back against his desk with his arms crossed to watch her resume her pacing. “If we spread the word, she'll have us discharged and make sure we can't even touch the frontlines,” Pela's voice seethes like an open sore. Gepard nods but keeps his silence. He knows better than to get in her way.

“And if you and I are both out of the picture, Belobog is fucked.” A little harsher than how he would have put it, but there's no denying that they're both important to the city's survival. Pela has the restricted zone running as efficiently as ever, and Gepard had become the youngest captain on record for a reason. “We need to keep this tight under wraps, at least for now… It can't leak to anyone higher up the chain.” Another nod. “Serval might know other discontents…” Another n-

Gepard's head snaps up. “No.”

“No what?”

“No. We're not involving Serval in this.”

Somehow, even the same tone that leaves entire squadrons shaking in their boots has never worked on her. “You're not deciding that for her, Gepard.”

Pela hadn't seen the worst of it, though, back when his sister had just been banned from the Architects. Serval's pride hadn't allowed it. Pela wasn't the one to find her passed out bottle still in hand, hadn't been the one to wash the sick out of her hair or carry her to bed. 

Serval still has trouble thinking clearly when it comes to Cocolia, still can't quite bring herself to be objective. And Gepard maybe doesn't want her to be purely objective- but he would worry a lot less if she thought twice before she acted more often.

“At least let me be the one to bring it up to her.”

“Whatever, fine,” Pela gestures affirmatively at him as she paces past, and Gepard sighs. Good, at least that's one thing he can help.

From there, it's a lot of hemming and hawing and frustration. Cocolia has them under her boot, and Gepard and Pela both know it. Even with the way she's been cracking down on freedoms lately, Cocolia is still, overall, liked by the people. It's unlikely anyone would believe them. They don't even have solid proof, because most people don't know Cocolia as well as they do and won't see the clues in the same light. 

The Fragmentum has been ramping up in recent years, too. Everyone is struggling just to survive as is, they can't afford a fight on two fronts. Gepard is a damn good captain, one of the best for that matter. But they're at a massive disadvantage, his experience is narrowed to fighting a defensive battle against monsters, that's all he's ever done. That's all anyone there has ever done. He has no way of finding first-hand knowledge for taking the offensive against a human opponent, and if he goes at this blind, there's no way he'll get everyone out unscathed. He's going to lose people. He's going to lose a lot of people.

He'd never thought before that Cocolia would have it in her to have someone killed. And with this new knowledge, he has no guarantee she won't go after Serval or Lynx if she decides to retaliate.

Gepard has to remind himself to breathe when he realizes this.

Pela writes down every name the two of them can come up with. Lists and lists of names and groups and anyone they can think of who might be an ally in all of this. They memorize every bit of it, make their plans of who to talk to and when. Gepard watches the sparks reflect off Pela's glasses as they burn the evidence together.

Pela finally leaves, far too late to make it home, but says she wants to stay in the restricted zone anyway to investigate. Gepard watches her make her way in the direction of Dunn's tent, watches her back until she's out of his sight and squashes down the urge to follow and keep an eye on her. His tent feels empty.

In the morning, Gepard is up before the wake up bells. He drags himself out of bed, leads his soldiers through their morning training. The same people gravitate to each other everyday. Friend groups and training partners. There's an ongoing rivalry between a few squadrons that everyone bets on. Some of them have lockets around their necks, keepsakes, mementos. Some of them wear wedding rings.

Gepard is suddenly, painfully aware of something acidic clawing at the inside of his throat, of a heavy weight low in his chest that blooms, takes up room until it threatens to spread his ribs. His mouth tastes of bile and blood.

He rearranges the schedules. Puts himself down for every open patrol into the Fragmentum, makes sure he'll be on the frontlines every single time Cocolia visits.

He only hopes that it's enough.

[arthur-lesters-right-arm]

what do you think the first thing is that John would do if he’s given a body besides [REDACTED] w/ Arthur (wack ass answers only)

He's been observing Arthur's oddly homoerotic relationships with insane men for like a year now I think he has a warped perception of how normal people are supposed to act, if he got a body he'd likely do the most unhinged shit on his own

[astralspen]

Here me out

The fact that part of a person's like will or feelings if its super strong will stay with fyodor when he takes over gave me a thought

What if fyodors original goal was never rid the whole world of abilities? What if it was just to get rid of his own ability? Like if when his ability activated for the first time after being killed because of someone trying to rob him or something in ye olden days, he hated his own ability. Like it happened, he didnt know what happened, and he went back to his house, and his family just looked at him terrified. Fyodor was still fyodor, but not quite the fyodor they knew. What if originally he saw and knew how precious abilities were to others, and thought that his was the only one was the one that had to be destroyed, because it defied the very nature of life and ruined meaning for trying so hard to live well? He tried his hardest to let himself just die normally, but no matter what, he was murdered, often times in revenge. As time went on, he kept getting killed by corrupt or insane people, their intense hatred of the world around them, no doubt some had an intense hatred for abilities too, and that stuck with fyodor. Every time it got stronger, to the point where it warped his own wishes and perception of life. That's when it went from his ability to all abilities.

[bowenoke]

i'm sure i am not the only one who is very concerned about the ~4 hours between when the midjourney change was made, and I knew to go opt out of it, so; glaze does not need to be on all your works to be effective. in the same way that one artist glazing all their works will ruin a broad, multi-artist dataset, glazing your works moving forward will ruin any dataset trained on you. if out of 100 comics I've posted, 10 are glazed, a dataset trained on all of my comics will not be able to make anything similar to my style. anyways. go download glaze.

[bettyfrommars]

Masterlist

for the Pick Your Poison blurb game

18+ONLY

Eddie

drifter!Eddie/concert venue/payphone

nightmare!Eddie/drive-in theater/farrah fawcett hairspray

darkSiren!Eddie/concert venue/switchblade

drifter!Eddie/cemetery/blanket

gargoyle!Eddie/cemetery/guitar

dark!SirenEddie/motel/guitar

nightmare!Eddie/abandoned building/blanket

Steve

biker!Steve/swimming pool/photograph

hybrid!Steve/concert venue/farrah fawcett hairspray

hustler!Steve/concert venue/lucky coin

nightmare!Steve/drive-in theater/halloween mask

Both

nightmare!Steve & gargoyle!Eddie/thrift store/photograph/mixtape

more coming soon

[bumblingbabooshka]

In your opinion, do Vulcan children have teddies (stuffed animals)?

YES!!!

Stuffed animals and other security items would be good for Vulcan children...I can imagine many small children needing them when they first learn how to meditate. They can also be used as a sort of 'anchor' so they are able to stay calm in unfamiliar situations. I can also imagine they would be used to express emotions without having to attribute them to themselves Ex: "[Toy] feels sad because you ate the last cookie." and a parent could then help the child through that emotion via them both teaching 'the bear' what to do when 'it' feels sad. This way the child feels like they're also helping rather than feeling like they're being lectured. Toys are, I imagine, one of the first things that we learn to take care of and be kind towards. As a child it's probably one of the few things we feel is under 'our care' or control. I imagine how children treat toys is observed carefully...it can be a good outlet (a child may rant to a toy when they don't like something while remaining composed in the situation itself) but also if a child is consistently violent with toys it may be indicative of an emotional issue. Creativity, imagination, and play are also not things which seem to conflict with Vulcan adherence to logic. Play is very important for children and I imagine it's often used to make sense of the world around them or what they feel (Ex: Playing 'House') I imagine you can often see Vulcan children playing by mimicking violent or emotional behavior and then scolding the toy for being violent...you can't hit! You have to take deep breaths and meditate. Oh no, [toy] is crying! Don't cry, you must calm down! Or they might play by exploring new ideas and desires through the realm of fantasy with a familiar object, the toy. Toys are also useful (I imagine, I'm not a psychologist just reflecting on my own experiences) for building a sense of self in a way...during the course of play you can discover what you like and don't like, what calms you down and what intrigues you. You can also learn how to interact with others through games and play as a child. Lessons like how to share, how to work together, how to include others in your world...very important! So yes, I think that toys and play are important - especially for a species which is inherently very emotional. Vulcan Children probably have much less control than adults do and require more tangible methods of calming down, understanding/confronting their emotions etc. Now I'm imagining a 'growing up' ritual wherein children decide they're too old for their toys and ready to give them up. They then work to emotionally detach themselves from them. At the end of this process the children give the toys to someone else (a sibling, a friend, a neighbor, or just donating them)

[daysofnights]

sirius is more upset that james didnt tell him he had a crush when sirius tells him everything than that the crush was on his estranged brother

[rockingtheorange]

A lil edit for y'all, enjoy ( ◜𖥦◝ )

Song: Pick your poison - One Direction

Lyrics:

I get a little bit too close

I get a little bit too loud

I get a little bit too high

I get a little bit too proud

Can't walk away, can't walk away, can't walk away, no

I can't walk away, I can't walk away, I can't walk away, no

I will never be the one to say that something that you love is wrong

You can make the same mistake and I'd still be here no matter what

Pick your poison, drink it up and enjoy it

Pick your poison, drink it up and enjoy it

I will never be the one to say that something that you love is wrong

You can make the same mistake and I'd still be here no matter what

Pick your poison, drink it up and enjoy it

'Cause you are mine, so all that matters is

you and I go down together.

[massivementalitynut]

My Youngblood Johnny Pandora comm of Adam from @iwanttobeaseme