#a lot of people who have tried to articulate this one just come off as slut-shamey

[phddyke]

Also though? Serious props to Helluva Boss for saying there’s nothing wrong with partying or being slutty—BUT it can also be used as a self-harm method if you’re drinking and making out with four people at once as a shitty coping mechanism!!

[chilschuck]

I'm not sure how to put it into words on what I exactly want outta this, but please give us a Chilchuck x Tall Woman Reader.

`✦ ˑ ִֶ 𓂃⊹ hi anon!! i hope this is okay! i kinda did a mixture of hcs with a drabble, just something put together for you! thank you so much for your request, this is so cute!! <3

— CHILCHUCK x fem tall-man!reader

꒰ warnings: ꒱ sfw + fluffy goodness with this emotionally constipated man. enjoy!

꒰ wc: ꒱ 524

✦ this was so fun…. fem tall-man is so funny to read… tall-woman?? idk anymore. holds my head in my hands. i think this turned out more gn, but i tried. :”)) please enjoy!!! feel free to submit the request again if you’d like me to do more for it!! <3

✦ Chilchuck was used to being looked down upon, something he experienced both figuratively and literally. It came with being a half-foot, and that was the cold, hard truth. Yet, for a reason he couldn’t wrap his head around, he felt warm around you.

✦ Maybe it was your smile, or the way you managed to make him feel like you were always on the same page. It didn’t help that you weren’t bad to look at, on top of being possibly one of the easiest people to talk to he’s come across. He could continue to play it off as just a perk of working together, which was something he planned to do. But things were never that easy for him.

✦ Chilchuck was stubborn. He knew what worked and what didn’t, and he surely wasn’t going to put everything on the line for some tall-man. Yet…

✦ Watching you interact with the rest of the party, the kindness you exude and that comfort you brought with you, made him start to crumble. You were wearing away at the wall he built up, faster than he had the ability to rebuild it.

✦ “I look up to you, Chilchuck... For all you’ve done for half-foots, the way you show others not to underestimate you. It’s really amazing.” You tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, looking down at your palms. You had suddenly felt the need to tell him what had been on your mind, and there wasn’t any way you’d let this stroke of courage go.

✦ You bit your tongue for a moment. The last thing you wanted was to make him think you were sucking up to him. Clearing your throat, your gaze sought out his.

✦ Surprisingly, you had managed to catch him off guard. You… look up to him? His brow furrowed, really taking in what you had said. Cheeks rosy, he opened his mouth to speak, only to grow silent again. Dammit.

✦ You… You made it so hard for him to articulate a thought. Especially when you looked at him like that. What was he supposed to say? That he truly respected you, too? That he didn’t think you were too bad? Not to mention, the way you always looked out for him didn’t make him feel inferior for once? Ah… Shit.

✦ You were used to being honest, so it didn’t strike you as how it might maybe be too much to say in the moment. Swallowing sharply, you tried to catch his attention.

✦ “Sorry… I just mean that I really, uhm, enjoy having someone like you around. Is that too much? Sorry. Let me clarify—“

✦ Mind reeling, grabbing at straws from realizing just how deep the waves of his feelings had crashed into his psyche, he waved a hand at your words. Your name left his mouth softly, stopping you in your rambling.

✦ “That means a lot… Thanks.” A beat. “And stop saying sorry so damn much.” Chilchuck mumbled, a gloved hand scratching the back of his head in bashfulness.

✦ Who thought he’d be catching feelings for a tall-man…

dividers by @/cafekitsune!

[borzoilover69]

Jake Writing Guide : 2024 Colourised!

Ok well, this isn't the prime year 2014 but I really wanted to make a concise and easy to consume guide for how to write Jake accurately since he can be quite the fussy tosspot if you dont know where to start. [ WARNING ITS A BIT LONG I INCLUDE JAKE DIALOGUE TO HELP WITH UNDERSTANDING WHAT IM SAYING. ] First off: drop the commas, and the apostrophes. He uses largely run-on sentences and has a sort of rambly sense of words. He does however use "these" every now and then and just as it strikes him tends to *Drag out the ole roleplayisms.* when it suits the situation.

Jake doesn't really tend to use old-timey slang but he does have rather antiquated ways of speaking, with a pension for more articulated language. He only REALLY breaks out the old timey words when particularly impressed or exasperated for emphasis. Usually, these words are british slang.

Note how he goes on a ramble that is slightly self-centred. He also spins stories similiar to how Dirk does, but without the ice-cold deal. Tossing in his own spin with his own words.

This one is just really fucking funny.

When hes particularly exasperated he leans into it MORE. Just really spreads it on thick. Like if he continues to say funny words you'll forget everything else and be distracted by his whimsy.

Jake is FAR more socially aware than people give him credit for but prefers to avoid tricky subjects hes not too comfortable with until he feels suitably ready for it, prefers battles he knows he can win so to speak. He also tends to think hes overthinking it and backtrack into ignorance. He overcomplicates things same as dirk does but rather than doing Dirks "yup thats a me problem. Im going to quietly stress about it now!", jake brushes it under the rug and tries not to think about it like a college student trying not to think about their outstanding academic paper and the promise of "Yeah, I'll do it later" (doesn't)

Note his more genuine understanding of why Dirk functions the way he does, well aware of the pros AND cons of having something like a combat machine hunting him.

His awareness of Janes crush and reluctance to deal with it:

Subsequent backtracking and denial of said premonitions, brushing it under the rug. Again, stating his reluctance to get into it because it's a situation he's not wellversed. Jake doesn't like being put into unpredictable situations, he prefers the easy road that won't inconvenience him much.

Also his desire to be seen as seemingly perfect and not have to dwell on others intents. Now this is something I don't see touched on as MUCH on writing guides for Jake English (then again the majority were made in 2014 so who can blame them.) But when Jake touches on what he views as MORE TABOO feelings aka ones which compromise the go-getter Adventurer image that arent BRAVE and GUSTO and GUNS, such as weakness, hesitation, he tends to pose back to the asking party as a question and reconsider his thought process. Like: Do YOU think its ok for me to feel this way? Why do you think that? Could you imagine me thinking something like that? He cares a LOT about his image and whats acceptable for him to be and to mask his difficulty in some social situations.

He doesn't like acknowledging that which might be sort of difficult for him to come to terms with, with the ye olde character trait of repression that him and John share, believing if he keeps his feelings buttoned up, they don't need to feel embarassed (aka: avoidance)

Hes also a fair bit more snarkier than fanon gives him hooks for. His subconscious takes the form of his best friend, but its commented as being “like hal, in terms of snarks”. Jake can also be the snarky customer to Dirk AND Hal, and Caliborn too. He's a gentleman to ladies (TO A DEGREE) but with guys he's not afraid to be more cutting with it. I am begging you on your hands and knees to drop the woobified jake english and make him slightly snarky and a bit offputting and weird. Jake grew up in the middle of a jungle and burned his grandmother.

Also he seems to be slightly aware of outside forces, note him calling attention to the fact he knows things he shouldn't canonically even be able to know.

Because Jake IS a little freak. He thinks corpse puppetry is funny. He punches what he thinks is fish hitler while ranting about movies. Hes funny as fuck. Hello.

However, with all of THAT out of the way, lets focus on some of the more ABRASIVE parts of his personality. While Jake is funnily charming with his old lingo and tendency to ramble, he has issues! One HUGE one is reluctance to fully FACE things he doesnt feel he has a full grasp on. He DOESNT like going out of his comfort zone, he DOESNT like talking about his emotions to people he really cares about or thinks has fallen for his manic dreamboat pixie persona, He's well aware people fall for it. He works hard to make sure people DO. But it sort of restricts him to that persona, he can't grow from it as long as he holds onto the idea that this persona hes chasing is the only way he can BE without being vulnerable.

Jake can be OVERBEARING, and not just that, painfully unaware when he's up his own ass! This critic he gives to Dirk applies to himself! The reason why he doesn't like brainghost dirk is because GOD forbid the man self-reflect juuust a little and find something that upsets him. Nope! Not going to deal with it. Just as quickly as he is to switch the thought that everyone loves him, he is just as likely to switch to think that everyone doesnt.

Anyways, I think thats all I have to say, Jakes words speak a LOT about his character, and I genuinely love him a lot. He has some words i think about a lot and hes genuinely such an awesome guy. I'll let a few choice pieces of dialogue from Jake himself close this out for me.

This was one of the last conversations we see with him. And I still think about his words a lot.

I'll probably edit this when I get the energy. But I think i covered most of it. Happy writing!

[edward-munson]

trust you - Anakin Skywalker x f! reader

Summary: You work as a tech for the Jedi Temple and end up having to fix Anakin's robotic arm, once again. He starts having trust issues when she and his son, Luke Skywalker, become close to each other.

Warning: Angst, hurt, mentions of injury, cursing | Ps: Luke is his only child in this story. Anakin doesn't become a Sith (for now hehe)

Word count: 1.7k

*

Anakin arrived in the tech room with a frown plastered over his face, as always. His cheekbone was bloody and his metal arm was loose as well as malfunctioning.

She was sitting on her table, writing down on a piece of paper when his name was announced. She turned her head around and watched as he silently sat down on a chair across from her. One of her droids excused itself, leaving them both alone.

Anakin had his blank stare at some random point in the room, not bothering to look at her, who dragged the chair closer to him. (Y/N) gently grabbed his metallic arm, looking at the prosthetic.

"What happened this time?" She asked, trailing his limb. He still didn't look at her, or even mentioned to do so. "Tough assignment today?"

He sighed, rubbing off the dripping blood from his chin as he tried to close his fake fist. The motion failed, and he pulled his fingertips as he's supposed to feel the touch.

"Got a blast shot on it" His husky voice was almost a whisper, she nodded. When (Y/N) looked at again, she noticed how tired he looked. He had bags under his eyes and his forehead seemed to have more wrinkles to it.

She nodded and got up looking for her tools. It wasn't actually strange for her to fix his arm, because this wasn't her first time doing it. Maybe it wasn't even her first time seeing him coming back from a mission all beaten up.

Sometimes, he would look less upset or mad. But it was hard to decipher how he was feeling because Anakin was a pro at hiding his emotions ever since he lost his love interest. Perhaps having Luke around him would make him seem less disturbed, but also, having a kid wasn't easy for him.

(Y/N) took a closer look and noticed the robotic articulations were almost melting. It was going to take a while and she was afraid of telling him the bad news. Most people are always feeling intimidated by him, especially by the way he looks at everyone.

She let out a quiet sigh, catching his attention anyway. Since he became a stronger Jedi, his hearing had improved a lot. "What?"

It was the first time Anakin actually looked at her, wondering just what the fuck happened now. Slowly lifting her gaze at him, she gathered all of her courage to speak up.

"Your robotic articulations are "injured". And we're going to need some time to fix it, I'm sorry". She gave him a sympathetic look, to which he scoffed and shut his eyes.

"How long?" His voice carried some sort of rage and (Y/N) saw him making a fist with his other hand.

"Uh, we don't know. But I'll make sure it won't take too long".

Anakin grunted and ran his fingers between his hair. It was quite hot to see him like that, she thought to herself. At the same time, (Y/N) scolded herself for even thinking of something like that.

He didn't look at her when he released his fingers from his curls. "I'll give you a day".

While detaching his faux limb, she tried not to roll her eyes. He was always giving orders to people, not ever caring who they were. "We'll try our best Master Skywalker", she said bluntly.

(Y/N) placed the robotic arm above another table and reached for a first aid kit. She approached the man cautiously while holding a wet cotton. Anakin, who finally looked at her after snapping out of his reverie, furrowed his eyebrows when he saw what she was doing.

(Y/N) gently placed her hand on the Jedi's cheekbone, who remained still as she wiped the almost dried blood from his face. Anakin didn't flinch, even though he felt his skin burn from the contact with the stinging product.

He closed his eyes tightly to avoid eye contact with her, he didn't want to show any fragility at that moment. He was forced to face (Y/N) in front of him anyway, when she walked away to throw the material in the trash.

"You should get some rest, Master. Take this as an excuse to cool off for a bit". (Y/N) gave him an ice pack for his wound, smiling at him.

Anakin stood up from his chair holding a serious expression on his face while nodding. "Yeah, thank you".

He left the tech room without looking back. She scoffed. It was his thing to be the least polite ever and not even look at anyone.

(Y/N) considered it a win having caught his attention twice that day. He never does that. Not ever since he lost Padmé anyway.

*

Anakin

Luke came running straight to me as soon as I got to the loft. He was doing his homework with C-3PO before I arrived.

"Daddy!" He shouted as his small arms hugged my legs. "Your arm is missing, what happened?".

Little guy never failed to actually notice things. I crouched down to stay on his level and messed up his hair. "Dad was on an assignment, and it got shot with a blast".

He frowned for a second before messing my hair back. "Hey, little one!"

Luke started laughing as he ran back to the Droid, hiding behind him. "Are you alright, Master Skywalker? Do I need to contact the medical bay?"

I shook my head and flopped down on my bed. "Thank you, 3PO. I just need some rest".

The Droid nodded and walked back to the table, so my son could finish his homework. I sighed, it was weird to have a missing limb. It has been so long, I don't even remember how it felt like. I could still feel my ghost fingers moving.

I felt a throbbing pain on my cheekbone as well as my ribs, making it harder for me to breathe properly. My single hand went straight to my hair as I ran through it nervously.

I tried to dial down the stress, but couldn't even keep my eyes shut for what felt like half an hour. Luke had left the loft with C-P30 for whatever reason, which made me feel relieved. I didn't want my kid to see me like that.

"Fuck", I muttered under my breath. I wasn't sure I had painkillers lying around, and I didn't feel like going to the medical bay for an appointment.

I only found a bottle of liquor and decided to pour some into a glass. The strong taste burned my throat, and it hit my stomach briskly. If that doesn't numb the pain, I would have to drag myself out of the house. It was enough already I didn't have my metal arm, I wouldn't want to deal with that excruciating pain.

I didn't realize I had laid my head down on the kitchen countertop. The muffled sounds coming from my door woke me up, and I quickly grabbed my lightsaber, holding it next to me.

It was already dark, and only then I noticed Luke wasn't there. He wasn't watching TV or playing with his toys. Nor was he trying to sneak on me looking for my weapons that he fancied.

My fingertips became cold as I carefully walked towards the living room, still hearing low whispers. The giggling made me drop my shoulders and put down my lightsaber when I realized it was Luke.

"Luke! What the hell were you doing out? It's dark" My voice came out louder than I intended, and it scared him. He was using both hands to hold (Y/N)'s left arm, like he was trying to drag her inside.

"I'm sorry, Master Skywalker. He went to the tech room with 3PO. He wanted to see your arm". Her voice sounds apologetic and a bit apprehensive, even.

I crossed my arms in front of my chest, watching as Luke reluctantly let go of her. "Sorry, dad. I just wanted to see how your arm was. I asked Miss (Y/N) to show me around as well, and 3PO said it was ok if she watched me".

"I didn't mean to bother, I'm really sor-" I cut her off before she could even apologize. My gaze met his and he nodded, knowing he should go to his bedroom.

"You should've brought him right away. He's not supposed to be out when I'm not with him". (Y/N) bit her lip and brought her hands together. "Don't do that again, please. Or I won't let him go near you".

She got taken aback, her eyes met the floor as she crossed her arms. "I really am sorry. I didn't know". I could barely hear her voice, it felt like she had a lump in her throat.

All I did was nod and watch as she turned her back to me and walked out of my door. I was about to make my way to Luke's room, when I found him propped up on the door stop, looking at me with fear.

"Buddy, I said you should only stay with C-3PO" The boy looked down at his feet and sniffed.

"But I wanted to look. I wanted to see how your metal arm is. It's pretty cool, by the way! Dad, don't be mad at her. She was nice to me, and she stayed with me the whole time!" He pleaded, he had his small hands holding the hem of my under tunic.

I released a drained sigh and sat close to Luke. "You can't trust everyone, Skywalker. It's a different world out there, we need to watch ourselves".

I didn't want him to trust anyone, I didn't need to see him trust every person who's nice to him. I've been there before, I know what it was like. I lost my girl. I trusted someone and I got stabbed behind my back.

I don't want Luke to be like me. I know who I became after losing Padmé. And I can't trust anyone anymore, either. I have issues trying to trust Obi-Wan again.

And more importantly, I don't want to fall for someone and lose them again. Because at some point, it always happens. 

[bruhstation]

Since we see him every now and then, what is Ryan like in Casa Tidmouth?

ryan works at the harwick branchline with daisy. in the secret of the lost treasure and misty island rescue arcs, ryan is the bystander to thomas' adventures that lead up to his fight with sailor john and skiff, eventually adding to the number of supporting characters that got dragged into both the mystery surrounding the gold dust and the mess thomas has left on sodor. after sailor john got arrested and thomas went missing, ryan helped thomas' friends look for his whereabouts while also being the key witness to sailor john's mad ramblings about "lady of the legend" and his motives for almost blowing up the island. ryan never asked for any of this but because he likes thomas and knows info that other people don't, he just HAS to step in

outside of the plot-heavy stuff, ryan's one of the kinder sudrian railway workers compared to his weirdo coworkers. he considers daisy and thomas to be his closest friends despite the former having the tendency to push her workloads onto him in the past and the latter being a bit standoffish despite ryan's attempts at hospitality.

ryan's extended family, on the other hand...

ryan is connected to the gresleys through his mother. his mother is the daughter of joseph gresley I (the gresleys’ grandfather), so he’s the cousin of gordon, scott, spencer, and mallard. he doesn’t talk to his cousins often ever since he’s a teenager because they’re nutjobs who mostly care about themselves and ryan has self-respect and values his sanity

unlike most his cousins who has the power of hater-ism coursing through their veins, ryan is a perfectly normal man who cares about his friends. he talks about his issues directly instead of letting it simmer. he sometimes have drinks with daisy and thomas after work. he used to have trouble articulating his more “negative” feelings and driving his opinion, but he’s doing better lately. he wants to maintain peace by being kind to others, which makes him prone to being dragged into any weird business his cousins have whenever they have the chance.

whenever holiday season is around the corner, ryan knows exactly what to expect. scott, his most famous cousin, the only one who still GAF about tightening what’s left of the gresleys together, will ask him to come over for dinner with his cousins (his charisma stat is maxed out). ryan can’t refuse because scott will pull excuses like “it’s just once a year” or “there's a dog” and ryan doesn’t have anything else to do. the family party will start off normal, then when mallard brings out the wine (provocateur!!!) things go south. gordon and spencer would badmouth each other about each other's secrets/fails, they get into a fight, scott tries to calm them down, ryan frowns at the disinterested mallard, sighs, goes outside to the nearest telephone booth to call daisy and ask her to pick him up. at this point it’s comical

ryan’s really the opposite of his cousins, from clothing to backstory. when designing him, I took the key components of his cousins’ designs and invert them. his cousins dress lavishly – big coats and suits, but ryan just rolls up his sleeves and dons a vest. his cousins’ haistyles are combed back, gelled, etc, while ryan’s hair goes everywhere (parted bangs show hairline). most of his cousins have horrific trauma related to death and loss from their childhood, while ryan’s just a city boy who grew up with nothing eventful in his life (except attending his cousins’ funerals). he doesn’t even inherit the gresley surname and is oblivious to most of the gossips surrounding or is inside the gresley family.

ryan is his own person who gets thrown around like a volleyball a lot, but he still has a good heart. one can consider ryan to be what any of his cousins would’ve ended up like if they had normal upbringings. who am I kidding? lol

[catbountry]

Re: your reblog: No idea why a lot of men don't want anything to do with a movement that was regularly comparing them to bowls of poisoned M&Ms. It'll forever be a mystery

Oh fuck, that fucking post.

Like, look. I understand the importance of communicating why women might be intimidated by men. But that was such a bad comparison. I remember it being circulated by the kinds of people I was hanging out with who would wind up becoming increasingly right-wing, and it felt like every single time there was some sort of poorly articulated point about the fear that gets ingrained into us, it would just push these guys further and further away. This is purely anecdotal, but I was in a discussion with some guys in a server who said that they'd talked with multiple guys who were just kind of vaguely anti-woke not because of any deeply held principles, but because someone on the left was mean to them or disparaged them. In nerd spaces especially, these are guys who were likely already ostracized in school for being weird and are looking for, well, a safe space. And when perceived outsiders (other nerds who are demographically different from them) come in and try and make a space more inclusive, make it safer, and call anybody who objects a bad person... there's a really big social element to that. Like yeah, there's probably misogyny or racism or homophobia that could be unpacked, but those are things you can unlearn. And the best way for these guys to unlearn these behaviors is just through contact with people who are different from them with whom they have positive experiences. It's not the whole process, mind, but it's a good first step. And simply telling someone off for being bad when they might not even fully understand why it is that they have objections will succeed in getting rid of those guys from your spaces, but where do they go from there? Not the diverse and inclusive spaces we would hope they'd go, that's for fuckin' sure.

I don't want to say that it's our jobs to be super nice to these guys all the time, because you know what? Yeah, some of them do suck, as many people of all walks of life do. They won't change their minds because they see no reason to do so. But if you have the energy to try and level with these guys and just say things in a way that isn't accusatory and is just matter-of-fact, it works better. They're more likely to see you as a whole-ass person if you're willing to engage with them as a whole-ass person. It's exhausting, and I'm not the best at it, but goddammit, I've tried, with varying results. Even if they come in swinging, they can be tripped up by a simple "why would you say that?" or "I don't get it." Challenging them in a way that's not accusatory so much as it is asking them to self-reflect. Why would you say that? Why is that offensive joke funny? Why do you think it's an appropriate thing to say to people you barely even know?

I'm not one of those people that denies the existence of the male loneliness epidemic, though I certainly do think loneliness is up with everybody, not just men. I think neuroatypical men are particularly vulnerable; people with autism aren't any more likely than NT people to believe conspiracy theories, but I definitely found myself taking the word of people who I was friendly with when they perpetuated misinformation to me about shit like AGP or ROGD because why would they lie to me? Looking back, there were definitely people who were racist in a more lowkey way that wasn't immediately detectable by me because I couldn't hear the dogwhistles. But just by virtue of being a enby in predominately queer social circles, I have people around me that were able to challenge these views and help pull me away from these ideas (and help me realize that my gender is more "woman?" rather than just "woman"). These friends allowed me to realize just how stupid they actually were. There's a lot of guys, particular straight guys, who just do not have that in their lives. The bigots are always recruiting and there's nothing they love more than disenfranchised young men who are full of misdirected anger and resentment, especially ones who might be psychologically or emotionally vulnerable and incredibly insecure about it. It's a really hard mindset to get out of, particularly when your views get more extreme, and it's also something you have to actually want to change. Admitting you've been played for a sucker by people with agendas and who don't actually give a shit about you is hard. Nobody wants to admit when they've been had.

There's always a lot of resistance whenever anybody floats the idea that hey, maybe we shouldn't automatically assume these guys are assholes when we encounter them; they might just be ignorant, and you can talk to people who are ignorant without coming across as condescending or sanctimonious. Some of them might be assholes but let them show themselves first before deciding that you can't deal with them. But men are like most people; they don't want to see themselves as fundamentally bad or wicked. Nor should they. I know a lot of women who have been hurt by men; shit, I was hurt by the same man over and over and over again and was in denial about it for decades, and it was only after leaving him that I realized just how absolutely fucked he was as a person, and how he'd never have any incentive to change, even when faced with the consequences of his incredibly selfish actions. I tried so fucking hard to get him to improve only to be met with the same rote excuses for why he couldn't, and I kept giving him grace he did not earn. But also I was trying for 21 years. But his problems are his own. Not every man is going to be like him. I've known men who are, deep down, decent people, but they pick up shitty ideas that linger around them like a stinkcloud. The good news about stinkclouds, though? You can take a shower and smell better. You do it regularly enough, you won't stink no more. It's not an immutable trait. But it definitely helps to not hang around other guys who cluster and form a larger stinkcloud. You gotta wash your ass, if you must, as Del the Funky Homosapien once said.

Fellas, you are not a poisoned bowl of M&Ms. You might just be kinda smelly and in need of a bath. You can't remove the poison from those M&Ms, but you can clean up and become the best version of yourself. A lot of us have the stink of a lot of cultural ideas we've been fed without question, and you're not a bad person for having thought these things one time; it's a long process trying to challenge and prune these ideas. But you might be a bad person if somebody tries to reach out to you and you go and roll around in pig shit and declare how much you love being stinky, while also being upset that girls don't want to talk to you on account of the stink... unless they are taught from a young age to ignore it, or they also want to just socially isolate themselves by diving headfirst into the Bog of Eternal Stench. Those women do certainly exist, but they're not going to bring out the best in you, you know?

It's not an easy process, and it's not easy to reach out to people and have the psychological wherewithal to be able to handle some potentially wild shit. But if you're the kind of person who believes in rehabilitation in the justice system, then you should be able to extend that to people who just have some really shitty ideas that they just internalized without question who might just need to hear a perspective that they haven't heard before. Not everybody can do it, but for those who can? Try. You might help keep somebody from quoting crime or suicide statistics to strangers online in an attempt to feel some semblance of power above those they see below them in the societal hierarchy. You can't force change, but you might be able to nudge them in the right direction.

I think that's the best anybody can do. Try to be as kind as patient as you can, but don't take any shit, either. Remain firm in your principles. Remove yourself if you have to. But at least try, even when it's hard, because like it or not, we need as many of these guys on our side as possible of we want to affect the kind of change we want to see in the world.

... And that's all I have to say about that.

[hanaybuns]

see, i have so many ideas for the type of girls that the matsus should end up with based on their strengths and weaknesses, lemme explain:

Osomatsu: osomatsu is all issues... he doesn't really know who he is outside of the group, he's objectively very selfish at times, and he's somehow both a pervert and a coward when it comes to women. but at the end of the day, he's a laid back big bro who always knows the right thing to say to diffuse a situation. the girl he ends up with has to be the complete opposite. i want her to be high strung, very type A. she should be successful, her job gives her a lot of responsibility, but she's up to the task. she's not boring exactly, but she spends so much time working that she can't enjoy herself without feeling like she could be using the time more productively. osomatsu would flirt with her and ofc she's like "someone get this bum off of me." it starts as a one off thing, but he finds himself actually interested in this big boss lady. talking to her makes him almost actually want to improve, because he really gets a look at what a real leader is like. talking to him makes her admire his freedom and humor and helps her unwind. it's slow, but over time, osomatsu actually feels the need to chase her and try to win her over. in the process, osomatsu subtly changes for the better, as he tries to emulate the traits that he admires in her. i think they'd learn a lot from each other.

Karamatsu: karamatsu's issue is that he lives in this delusion where he's convinced that he's the coolest guy in the world and that everyone around him admires him to no end. as a result, he often struggles to say what he's really thinking and feeling (or listen to others) because he's trying to keep up his cool image. kara needs to end up with someone way cooler than him. just objectively this cool, badass girl. and she needs to be kinda blunt (like karamatsu). someone that can challenge him to really say what he's thinking and open up, but not rude to the point where she actually hurts him. see, she has to be the cool one, but not break the illusion for him that he's the cool one. she'd be someone who struggles to be vulnerable, and he can make her feel loved and cared for. she almost can't really believe that someone could forgive her and care about her despite all her rough edges and the mistakes she makes. but kara is like "i have 5 brothers who torment me relentlessly and i love them with all my heart, nothing you can do will ever make me stop loving you" karamatsu can use his karamatsuisms for romance and love, but she would force him to break away from them when he needs to articulate what he wants or doesn't want. i already wrote a scenario about this made up girl a while back, so you can check that out (please don't).

Choromatsu: ohhh choro-chan... see, choros issue is that he doesn't like women, he worships them. and thats all good and dandy in theory, but would make him really toxic in a relationship because he'll put the girl on an untouchable pedestal. he also lives in this perpetual sense of delusion where he's far more important and responsible than he actually is. see, he has to end up with someone very flawed and also blunt. she needs to be someone who can snap him out of this fantasy that women are these mystical creatures. unlike kara's girl, choro's girl is actually rude. i want her to be rude, messy, funny, and kinda a slob. but the key is that she's very pretty too, which makes this a very frustrating situation for choro. he'll try to tell her that she should act more like a lady, but she'll immediately snap back with "shut up, people with jobs don't listen to girlfriendless neets." and chorochan is miserable because his bros ask him if he likes this girl and he's like "NO she's sloppy and rude and annoying and she drives me up the wall but aaaaurrgghh i can't stop THINKING about her" they'll be really frustrated with each other at first, how can he/she think that he's/she's better than me??!! she's mad because despite being a neet, he actually is more responsible than she is. he's mad because despite being a slob, she actually has a job and contributes to society. but as they open up to each other, they start to appreciate each others characteristics and flaws. oh, and they're both nyaa fans

that's enough for now, i'll do the rest of these weirdos later

[the-broken-pen]

a villain who has cat based powers and a henchman who really like cats . do as you will -🐏

The villain came in through the window, paws pattering onto the floor, and the henchman jerked their head up.

A moment later, they shifted, lounging against the desk as if they hadn’t just gone from cat to human.

The henchman had to look away, fighting a squeal as they flushed furiously.

They had loved cats as a kid—cultivated a hoard of them that amassed in their house no matter how much their parents complained. When they had moved to the city, into a tiny shoebox of an apartment, they had left them all behind. And no matter how many photos their parents sent them, it was never truly enough.

So when the henchman had taken this job, on the tiny scrap of information they were allowed to have “heightened senses, shifting, good pay” they hadn’t known what to expect.

They had not expected a cat.

Thus, the furious fight to not lose their mind.

Out of the corner of their eye, they caught the edge of the villain’s smirk and raised eyebrow.

“Every time I come in here as a cat, your heart rate sky rockets,” the villain observed, and though the henchman hadn’t thought it was possible, they flushed further.

“Umm.” They tried to articulate a response that wasn’t along the lines of senseless mumbling, and amusement settled onto the villain’s face.

The villain pushed themself onto the top of their desk, settling their head into their hands as they sat cross legged.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who loves cats as much as you do,” the villain said. They sounded mildly fascinated.

The henchman was going to die, right there.

“I grew up with um. A lot of cats,” the henchman managed. “I think they’re great.”

The villain looked like they were fighting a smile.

“Always good to find a fan.”

The henchman’s face was on fire.

“That’s not—“

“Mhm.”

“Oh god.” The henchman covered their face with their hands.

The villain laughed.

“You’re fun to mess with, you know that?”

“I’ll have to take your word for it.”

The villain grinned, all Cheshire Cat, and the henchman could imagine a tail swishing. If they looked closely, they could just barely see the diamond shape to the villain’s pupils.

“Whoever hired you is getting a pay raise.”

“I’m-I’m sorry?”

The villain shrugged. “You’re fun. I hate boring people, especially when I have to pay them. How awful is that? Paying for your own boredom. Should be illegal, really.”

“Oh,” the henchman didn’t have a response for that. “And I’m not boring?”

“No, you’re adorable,” the villain waived them off. “Hence the pay raise.”

They searched for something to say, before blurting out, “You really have nine lives?”

“Gathering intel on me, huh?”

The henchman had to sit on their hand to stop themself from slapping it over their own mouth.

“I don’t know why I said that.”

The villain laughed again.

“Enhanced hearing and vision,” they pointed to their own face. “And, of course, the shifting.”

The villain shrugged one shoulder. “As for the nine lives, I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

“Hopefully not.”

“Awww, you don’t want me to die?”

“I don’t want anyone to die,” the henchman agreed. The villains smile sharpened, all canine teeth.

“So I’m not special, then?”

“No—”the henchman stopped. “You’re messing with me.”

The villain slid off the desk in one fluid movement. “You catch on quick. Come on,” they jerked their head to the door.

The henchman stood eyeing the villain.

“What are we doing?”

“Bank robbery,” the villain said easily. They tilted their head slightly. “Or maybe knocking some construction equipment over. Crane or two, you know?”

The henchman had known about the shifting, but they hadn’t realized just how cat-like the villain was in behavior.

“….Because you’re a cat?”

“No,” the villain blinked. “Because it’s fun.”

Overall, it was the best job the henchman had ever had.

[uh-niran-really]

Reader x Lifeweaver - Talks with his bestfriend

Content: Cute, Warm and Fluffy!

Word Count: 1,000+

A/N: I think Symmetra deserves some love, a lot of people don’t seem to like her much especially where Lifeweaver is involved. I think she would make the sweetest friend and want nothing but happiness for Niran. I adore their friendship so much! Awhhh they are so cute! Also wanted to post something whilst I’m working on my next request! 🪷 Enjoy!

It was late and you found yourself cuddling with your boyfriend Niran Pruksamanee on his plush sofa. He was fast sleep with you wrapped up in his arms. You felt so comfortable around him, so natural. He was the best partner you could ask for. His breathing was shallow and he looked so peaceful like this. You couldn’t help but cup his cheeks and kiss him.

“Oh. Hello Y/N, I’m sorry I thought you left.”

Satya, Niran’s roommate, was a little awkward around you. She wasn’t great in social situations and Niran was always her support system. You often smiled at the way Niran treated her, made you fall harder for him. Satya was always kind to you, she tried her best wanting her best friend to thrive with you.

“Hi Satya. You’re up late.”

“Yes, well I have a lot to do so..”

She was carrying a bunch of books back to her room. You were surprised she had even stopped to say hello, usually she did not. She worked so hard all the time. Niran didn’t mention much about her job, he wasn’t fond of it. From what you gathered the pair used to go to school together and Niran left shortly before graduating, leaving Satya behind. A tragic story, one that broke your heart when he told you.

“Please don’t let me stop you, you work so hard.”

You wanted her to like you too, she was very kind from what you could tell, just a little more blunt and straight to the point. She was very good at articulating what she wanted from a situation, but tonight she seemed off.

“It’s not that. I am… intrigued.”

“How so?”

Satya smiled, it was rare for her to do so, not that she wasn’t happy or anything like that. She just expressed herself much differently to how you or Niran would. Still you took this as a sign that the two of you were getting closer. You watched as she took a seat on the sofa beside you and Niran, who was still very much asleep.

“You and Niran. I am intrigued by your relationship.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Does he treat you well? Am I in the way too much? Do I overstep? Should I move out?”

You smile back at her. She often had a tendency to blurt things out and hope for the best. Niran did wonders for her and she had come along way apparently. She began to stim with her hands, very nervous that she was causing you problems that just weren’t there. She only ever had good intentions with you and Niran. It was endearing to know she fully supported your love.

“Oh no, Satya! Don’t think like that. Yes Niran treats me like a Princess. He’s so kind and sweet. He’s perfect really.”

You reach out tentatively to touch her arm. She nods and you do, feeling connected in this moment, as friends.

“You don’t overstep, I know you and Niran are super close. It makes me smile to see the two of you interact in the way you do. Reminds me how sweet he is to everyone. Not a bad bone in his body. I love visiting Niran here rather than having him at my place because I get to see you too Satya.”

You really did like her. It was something Niran stressed about when looking for a partner. Satya was a main character in his life, he adored her with all that he was, just like he loved you. He made it very clear when you first started dating that Satya was a close friend. He didn’t need you to get along like best friends, but he said it would be helpful to have you both tolerate each other. He loves you both after all.

“That is.. so kind of you Y/N. I can see why Bua likes you. I want to be.. umm..”

She stimmed harder. She had an intricate way of touching her fingertips together in a certain order before shaking her wrists out and starting again. She often did this and it didn’t bother you one bit. You felt honoured that she was comfortable enough with you to do so.

“Friends?” You offer with a smile.

“Would that be alright?”

“I would love that Satya!”

The relief that washed over her was beautiful to see. She instantly relaxed and slowed her stim. You felt good making her feel more comfortable around you. You would hug her but Niran still had a tight sleepy grip around your waist, showing he loved you regardless of sleep or not.

“Niran is a lucky man huh!”

“Bua is the luckiest person I know.”

“I’m glad he has a friend like you Satya. You’re just what he needs. I’m happy to be your friend too!”

She smiles again and this time looks up at you, a rare occurrence for you two, it felt so special. You offer her another small smile just as Niran stirs awake.

“Huh… wha…Oh my two favourite people!”

“Hi sleepyhead!” You tease as Satya stands up again to return to her room. It was so nice talking with her. It felt amazing to know she supported you both, Niran wanted this so badly.

“Satya?”

“Yes Y/N?”

“Let’s go for coffee tomorrow? Just the two of us.”

“I would like that, very much.”

Niran gasps and hugs you tighter before kissing you on the cheek, delighted that the two of you were on the path to being friends.

“Oh my darling, this makes me so happy! Satya is such a delight! You’ll honestly love her as much as I do!”

“I already do Niran, I just wanted her to get used to the idea first.”

Niran smiled again resting his head on your shoulder sighing in relief. He worried so much that Satya would feel left out, so it amazing to know you wanted to include her too. She only ever wanted friends and a support system after all.

“Thank you, for accepting her.”

“I love you Niran, both of you.”

“I love you too, We both do.”

[blakeswritingimagines]

Dating Bjorn Ironside Would Include:

As a man of action, there's no downtime when you're together. You're out raiding, fighting off rivals, and exploring the world. Dating him is never boring. You can expect a lot of excitement, whether you're in bed or in battle together. He's got plenty of stamina for both.

Dating him is a memorable experience. He is both an intense and passionate lover, yet he can also be reserved at times. He would always try his best to provide you with a sense of security and comfort. He is loyal and devoted, and he would do any and everything to protect you and make you happy. But he can also be unpredictable, and he will not hesitate to take bold actions.

Dating him is like having your very own personal hero. He'll take care of the bad guys, he'll be your knight, and he'll be your companion. He's dedicated and loyal, and he will never leave your side. Plus, with him, you never have to worry about being bored or lonely--there are so many stories he can share with you, and so much life to be lived together.

Being with him isn't easy. He has a fiery temperament and a stubborn mind. If you don't agree with him, he will make sure to let you know about it. He can be unpredictable and impulsive, but at the same time, he is very protective and passionate. He wants you to feel safe and loved, but he is not one to sugarcoat things. Sometimes, he may say things that come off as inconsiderate or insensitive, but he always speaks his mind. He is a very passionate person, and he loves with his whole heart.

Dating him means never knowing what to expect. He is constantly evolving and growing, which makes him both interesting and unpredictable. He likes to keep things spontaneous and exciting, so if you're looking for something more stable and predictable, he may not be the right person for you. With him, you will always be on your toes, and I hope you are ready for that.

He loves physical affection. He enjoys cuddling, kissing, and hugging. He likes to be touched and held, and he appreciates it when you are not afraid to be intimate with him. He also likes to show affection through acts of service and gift-giving. He is not someone who is very articulate with words, so he shows his love and admiration through actions.

He may not show it outwardly, but jealousy is definitely something he experiences. He is a very protective person, and he doesn't like to share the things and people he cares about with others. He does not like when you have close relationships with other people, especially those of the opposite gender. Despite these feelings, he tries to be reasonable and trust you to maintain appropriate boundaries. Still, it is not easy for him, and it can lead to conflicts at times.

He is a person who values honesty and loyalty. He is not someone who will keep secrets from you, and he expects the same in return. He wants you to share your thoughts and feelings with him, even if it may not be something that he wants to hear. He values communication and trust in a relationship, and he tries to make you feel safe and secure. He doesn't like playing games in his relationships, and he much prefers to be upfront and direct. He respects you and your decisions and always tries to make your needs and wants a priority.

He can be quite intense at times, but it's never boring. He may be a bit rough around the edges, but he's always honest and true to himself. He has a big heart and a lot of love to give, but he doesn't hold back when voicing his opinions. If you're looking for an adventure, he's your man. He's not here to play games, and he doesn't have the patience for bullshit. He's just looking for a partner who can keep up with his intensity and match his energy.

He is a very caring person, and he loves to show his affection for those he cares about. He is not a fan of mushy sweetness, but he loves to let his loved ones know that they are important to him. Although he can sometimes be tough on the outside, he is very vulnerable on the inside. He has a lot of feelings, both good and bad, and he is not afraid to express them. However, he does not open up easily, and it takes time for him to trust someone.

In addition to being a passionate and protective lover, he is also a great listener. He is always willing to hear your thoughts and feelings, even if he doesn't agree with them. He values open communication and honesty in his relationships. Although he may be impulsive at times, he always strives to make decisions together with you. He believes that trust is the foundation of any strong relationship, and he strives to create an environment of respect and mutual understanding with you.

He can be quite stubborn and strong-willed, so he could see how some might view him as "whipped" in relationships. However, he would argue that this is simply a characteristic of his passionate and determined nature. He is not afraid to take charge and make decisions, but he is also not afraid to listen to your needs and desires. Ultimately, he is not so rigid and inflexible that he cannot compromise or see things from your perspective. However, when it comes to matters of principle, he is firm and unwavering.

Dating is a matter of the heart, not the mind. To truly fall in love with him, you must experience the rush and excitement of being with one of the greatest Vikings in history. You must feel the thrill of adventure as you sail the seas in search of treasure and glory, and the warmth of the fire as he tells tales of his conquests. And you must have the courage to join him in battle and stand by his side, even in the face of certain death.

He has an interest in rough sex where he can be as dominant and assertive as he wants without any judgment or repercussions.

He has a particular interest in public play and exhibitionism, where he wants to be seen by others while having sexual relations with you.

One of his passions is exploring various forms of power play and dynamics, such as mistress/master, Dominant/submissive, and daddy/little, and seeing how you respond to these interests him.

He also enjoys engaging in light bondage and restraints, such as using leather straps or handcuffs to bind you to a chair or bed in order to have his way with you.

He especially enjoys teasing you or letting you tease him, knowing that it is both a fun game and a way to build anticipation, leading to an even more gratifying release later on.

He enjoys the feeling of power that comes from being able to make you feel good and give you the pleasure you want. And, of course, he loves seeing your reactions as he pushes you closer and closer to an amazing orgasm.

He loves to take control and tie you up, blindfold you, and tease you until you can't take it anymore. He likes to leave you on edge, building anticipation until you're finally begging for release.

He also plays with ice during sex. He loves to freeze some toys and introduce them into your playtime, letting the ice melt on your body as he brings you ever closer to the edge.

[communistkenobi]

I'm not gonna lie Nick, I've been following you for a long time and I almost always agree with what you say so this isn't in any way meant to be polemic or hostile and you don't have to answer if you don't want to. But, as a trans person myself, I don't understand how genital preference can be transphobic? I mean, the way people declare it can be transphobic, or the reason for it - but preference itself? isn't it, for most people at least, an intrinsic thing? Again I'm not asking this to bait you into discourse or anything I just. Genuinely trust your judgment on things. that's all, love <3

If you don’t want to sleep with someone because they’re, for example, fat, or disabled, or intersex, or have some other physical characteristic that would alter a sexual encounter in a way you wouldn’t expect with a “default” or “normal” body - is that not on some level bigoted? If you tried to sleep with a cis guy but found out he had a micro penis and decided against sleeping with him, or you tried to hook up with a cis woman with large labia and got turned off, is that “just an intrinsic preference”?

Yes people have preferences and preferences do not carry inherent moral judgement. But it’s worth asking: where do my preferences come from? if you meet a trans person, and you are attracted to them, and the only reason you don’t want to sleep with them is because you don’t want to interact with their genitals, because you believe a trans person’s genitals are universally unattractive, then like, why lol? “Transphobic” is a flat descriptor for bigoted beliefs or assumptions about trans people, and in the pantheon of transphobic things to believe or say or do, that’s not like super high on the list. I don’t think you’re an irredeemably bad person or whatever. You are also not doing activism by having sex with people you’re not attracted to or don’t want to have sex with, I’m not suggesting anyone do that because that would be bad for everyone involved. But attraction is socially mediated and explored - fetishes, kinks, turn-ons and turn offs can have embedded social values in them, some of them good and some of them not - and if your only hang-up with fucking a trans person is because they have “incorrect” or “incongruous” genitals to what you normally expect, then I think that’s a shitty hang-up to have. Is it “intrinsic” to find a trans person’s body a turn off? Are we intrinsically programmed as human beings to find transgender people’s genitals unsexy? I think any appeals to intrinsic nature quickly get into essentialistic territory, because whatever is intrinsic or “human nature” is necessarily outside of the social, incapable of change, and I don’t think it does any good to insist that the domain of sexual preferences exists outside of the social and political realms.

Yes sex will be different with a trans person who hasn’t had full bottom surgery than it would be with a cis person, and yes you will need to have conversations about what feels good or look shit up online (which you would do with a cis partner anyway!), but unless you’re solely interested in like, missionary reproductive PIV cishet sex catholic style for the rest of your life, I think it’s worth interrogating why trans genitals are a hard no for someone, especially when “genital preference” is such a handy shorthand for cis people to articulate their deep seated rage, disgust, and fear of trans people in a “polite” or inoffensive way - and, often, in a violent way, and that violence is rationalised on the basis of the “common sense” belief that trans people trick cis people into having sex with us despite our “bad” genitals.

I don’t want to have sex with anybody who thinks my body is disgusting and I’m assuming most people don’t want that either lol. But a lot of cis people find my body disgusting because it’s a trans body, and a huge part of that disgust is because I don’t have a dick - worse, I have a “mutilated” “grotesque” version of “female anatomy” because of T. None of those evaluations of a tran’s guys genitals are intrinsic, nor do they exist outside of social values about what “normal” or “beautiful” bodies look like.

And again to use the fat example, it took a lot of personal work for me to properly admire fat people because of how ingrained fatphobia is, and part of that fatphobia was directed towards myself - it took years for me to find myself even remotely attractive, especially as I progressively gained weight into adulthood. And that is not for “activist” reasons, it’s not activism to find fat people hot - but I am consciously working through some of the shit society tells you is gross or bad about human bodies and it’s made my life better lol, and as a consequence I can fully allow myself to admire other fat people. I think any state of mind that allows you to find beauty in more places, find pleasure in a wider range of human forms, is generally a good thing. I once dated a guy who hated his nipples being touched because he thought it was gay to enjoy that, and like, sex with him sucked lmfao. he was incredibly homophobic and that homophobia directly impacted the amount of pleasure he was willing to engage with, both with himself and with a partner.

So yes I do think it’s transphobic. It’s not end-of-the-world transphobia, you’re not a permanently shit human being, but anyone who refuses to have sex with trans people on the basis of us having the “wrong” genitals is not worth pursuing because we deserve to sleep with people who find us hot and don’t need to “rationalise” away touching our genitals. I don’t want to have sex with those people and no trans person should either. But I’m not giving cis people an out with “oh it’s just a preference” because I think that’s a very lazy and unserious way of engaging with your own desires

[lynpheas]

please tell me about the winx and specialists dynamics 🙏 (also do you have any thoughts on the platonic pairings like bloom/timmy or tecna/riven!!)

AAAA ty for letting me ramble omg. this isn't meta so i'm not sure if there is much of a basis for these in canon (i'm planning on doing a big winx rewatch + comics reading um. sometime when i have the time lol) so this is more abt how i characterize them in fic in a way that is hopefully both true(ish) to canon while also expanding on those traits. (and ignoring the canon characterizations i don't like, like too much emphasis on jealousy bc that's bo-ring 😊)

i'm going to put this all under the cut because i started rambling a Lot, just a fair warning LOL

also. YES i do have MANY thoughts about other winx/specialist dynamics because i am a slut for platonic relationships but i CANNOT make this post any longer than it already is. so. if you're still interested just send me an ask or something afadlsfj;kasf

okay, buckle up. starting with the canon couples:

musa/riven:

okay so they have one of my fave dynamics just because i think the back and forth + all the tension is so interesting dsfjakl.

i think that a lot of the initial conflict in their relationship starts from musa not really knowing exactly what she wants and only really knowing how to react to something that, like, rubs her the wrong way? and it's harder for her to express affirmation/affection when she's happy with something riven's done bc her instinct would be to act sort of cool about it.

on riven's part, i like to think that initially he isn't super emotionally available for whatever reason -- ig in canonverse it'd be him coming down from dating darcy & her manipulating him -- but musa (in her giggly crush phase) piques his interest anyway and they tentatively get together.

i figure at some point in their relationship, riven realizes oh, i'm actually really into this girl she has a lot of qualities i respect and admire and he consequently gets a lot more open and sincere, although still awkward about his affection. like, he just tries harder. musa gets flustered by this kind of attention but she'll kind of play it off.

still, riven will sometimes make thoughtless mistakes/fuck-ups that really piss musa off and she has, like, zero idea how to communicate the what and the why. like she just knows she's upset and she will make sure riven knows she's upset, but she has difficulty explaining herself. & with riven's quick temper, he lashes out when he doesn't understand why musa's acting a certain way toward him / the act of having to communicate makes his hackles rise automatically.

i think most of musa's difficulty communicating and playing at coolness comes from her not really knowing how to act within a romantic relationship and like. not knowing what level of sharing burdens and insecurities is appropriate.

i view riven as more action-oriented when it comes to showing how he feels & musa more easily expresses herself through music and isn't as good as being outward with her affection. so when they're trying to figure out how to articulate how they feel + how they feel toward each other, there's a lot of bumps in the road. but they get there!

they both have moments where they unintentionally close themselves off from each other bc they're not super used to being vulnerable/intimate with another person & in the early stages, a lot of their communication is kinda just. frustratingly beating around the bush and getting increasingly upset that they keep misunderstanding each other. i think this is the stage of their relationship where they experience the most jealousy/insecurity.

once they're in the mature/stable part of their relationship though, i feel like they'll have learned how to be direct. & they're both more blunt people who are used to having to soften themselves in their other relationships/friendships, but they realize that they can be super straightforward w/ each other about how they feel and sidestep the social niceties.

and i think the majority of their relationship would be characterized by snarky banter that's a little mean, but eventually they learn how not to cross any lines & sprinkle in some more sincerity amongst the quips.

stella/brandon

i feel like stella and brandon perfectly complement each other in that they have a lot of traits in common to truly understand each other with enough differences to balance each other out.

they're both flirty, cheerful, loyal (to each other and to their friends), and enthusiastically supportive. stella's more prone to foot-in-her-mouth syndrome though while brandon is more.. reserved? in a way? they're equally extroverted and friendly, but stella's more in-your-face about it almost to the point of crossing boundaries (depending on the person, like when she first meets helia) while brandon kinda gauges where people are at and acts as friendly as he figures they'll be comfortable with.

i think the majority of their dynamic is characterized by stella's outgoing and dramatic personality versus brandon's more laidback and observant demeanor. like stella is quick to jump to conclusions and dramatically overthink & brandon will validate her emotions but also keep her grounded.

affection comes suuuper easy to them in like the "you're my pookie wookie boo bear" kind of way like stella would definitely ask brandon if he would still love her if she was a worm. and brandon would be like "not only would i still love you if you were a worm, i'd start a garden for you to give you a happy home" and stella would be like "AWWWW SCHNOOKUMS. u suck at keeping plants alive."

brandon would take initiative to surprise stella with sweeping romantic gestures that stella goes gaga over. stella almost never stops singing brandon's praises (like over his looks and his abilities) and tries to spoil/provide for him (bc she's a princess and has the money for it and brandon's a squire. lol)

when they have conflict & stella's more mad abt it, brandon will kind of defer to her and try to act how he thinks she would want him to act (giving her space, but still trying to explain himself and apologize when he feels he has an opening). this rarely happens, but if brandon is angry with stella, the dynamic is usually something like. stella is beating herself up and trying really really hard to explain herself, but brandon kinda needs a minute to sit on it so he'll take some space. which makes stella fairly anxious. but he'll always come back to her as soon as he's ready to hear her out & take things in when he has more patience and has more clarity.

i think some initial problems they would have are like. brandon can internalize his feelings and not be as forthcoming about how he feels (and also just outright lie like with the sky/brandon switch but let's just ignore that lol). and stella might initially get anxious and worry if he likes her as much as she likes him. but stella helps him be more easily affectionate and honest (not just toward her but toward everyone) and brandon soothes her insecurities/anxieties & lets her bejeweled encourages her to be her best self.

overall brandon's just happy to be a little planet orbiting stella's shining sun, but she'll never let him forget how important he is for the galaxy/ecosystem lol.

flora/helia

okay so for my fave couples (florelia & aibu) i'm like weirdly intimidated to come up with definitive characterization for them bc i guess i'm afraid of being wrong??? so just a disclaimer LMAO

on the whole, i view flora as someone who is fairly extroverted, socially confident, and friendly -- but she's absolutely overwhelmed by any kind of romantic interaction. like she's only ever able to pine from a distance because actually being in the thick of it is just. So Much. & contrastingly, i see helia as someone who is perfectly capable of polite/friendly interactions with strangers, but he simply does not gaf and will only pour his energy into interactions with people he really cares about/respects. so basically, romance never really interested him Until It Did and suddenly the love poems -- that he would usually skip over in favor of like. poetry about nature and the human (alien?) condition -- have become super pertinent to him and his life.

just like in canon, i think their dynamic necessitates a big dramatic love confession <3 intense pining that builds and builds and builds until it has to spill over and be made known to the world.

i think for like initial issues in their relationship, flora is just so flustered by the prospect of Romance Happening To Her that she kind of acts like. not super present? because it doesn't feel real? so she still daydreams and acts as if he's out of reach and helia's kinda takes that as her being distant? like losing interest after the relationship happens. which is obviously the exact opposite of the case. so flora eventually learns how to be comfortable in a relationship and comfortable expressing all the mushy-gushy thoughts in her brain to her partner.

i don't view helia as much of an initiator tbh. i think he's fairly passive but not out of anxiety or anything. it's the idgaf quality in him, like if you don't give him a reason to care then he's not going to. and bc of that attitude that he applies generally in life, he's kind of made a habit of waiting for an inciting incident to push him into being more active. now flora is the exact opposite. she's an active friend who will meddle because she cares, and she cares a lot about a wide breadth of things. so i think that while helia is the expert at florid poetry and love letters and paintings and conventionally romantic gestures, flora's the one who sets the stage for open lines of communication and honesty. & she's the one who will ask for things that she wants out of helia/their relationship and is always checking in on him to make sure his emotional needs are being met

i feel like flora inspires helia to GAF care more/open his heart more. and helia is kind of flora's stability and shoulder to lean on to remind her that she doesn't need to stretch herself so thin when it comes to the effort she puts into caring for others. that said, helia's vastly more impulsive in high-stress situations than flora is, so flora's the one who goes. let's stop, think, and strategize. and helia will agree for two minutes before he gets impatient and starts acting on impulse. flora's like "well. i anticipated this" & takes off after him.

in terms of communication, i feel like they're both pretty high in emotional intelligence so they're fairly easily able to pinpoint why/how they're feeling certain ways and are really good at articulating those emotions to one another.

bc i love interesting tensions: i headcanon flora as more flexible in her understandings of good-vs-evil while helia is more rigid and has more black and white thinking. so i think they don't normally argue because miscommunications are minimal, BUT if they do argue it's because of clashing values. i think that flora eventually gets helia to be more openminded on this specific issue but it takes some time & wading thru conflicts. their argument style is just like -- full of passion, but not in a yelling kind of way. more like, frustrated silences and crying and silent treatment (while still maintaining physical closeness). helia shuts down in arguments while flora tries to talk through it until she's in tears.

ermm basically they're just obsessed with each other and will write icky gushy poetry about how beautiful the other person is both inside and out. they'll use a lot of dramatic metaphors that give off the energy of "i don't know how i'd live without you" and yadda yadda. i think helia is also prone to getting teased by flora bc he tends more toward seriousness and flora's more playful and it makes helia all flustered

aisha/nabu

okay tbh i don't have a very strong nabu characterization just yet so this is in development...

aisha is just a very independent person, always trying to prove herself and show that she can stand on her own two feet. she's a princess but she's sole heir and crown princess to andros and until she went to alfea, she essentially grew up in isolation in a highly politicized environment. she's simultaneously used to having a lot of pressure/responsibility on her shoulders as a leader and also having things be decided for her because of tradition, decorum, etc. she's slow to warm, but once she's in she's all in.

nabu is just. offbeat and quirky honestly. he does things that you don't necessarily expect or view as obvious solutions. he's very patient and good-humored, almost to a fault, because he sometimes really just doesn't know or understand why people might react so strongly/negatively to things he takes in stride. he's also a very independent person, does things to the beat of his own drum, but he's very very open and doesn't hold reservations about things or people for very long. (this is the characterization i'm using for justification as to why he thought a good response to getting put into an arranged marriage with a stranger is to. suspiciously follow around his fiancé with the intention of getting to know her/help her and without realizing how he's being lowkey creepy.)

anyways i think that being in a relationship with nabu gives aisha the space to just. relax. she tries so hard to be strong (and she is!) but she's also constantly trying to position herself as reliable and independent. the friend you can always go to for help but who doesn't ever need yours because she just has it all together. (obviously her friends know better but this is the image she tries to project) and nabu is just a safe person for her. so she allows herself to be more vulnerable around him, more reliant on him, just sillier and sweeter than she normally allows herself to be. she shows her weaknesses more readily and admits to when she doesn't know what to do or how to do something -- because nabu is always very nonjudgmental and kind.

i think that initial conflicts they have is that aisha feels like nabu's sweetness just. comes with strings attached? i hc that andros is one of the few patriarchal realms in the magic dimension so aisha just doesn't super trust men, or at the very least she hates how men on andros have often undermined her and questioned her authority. and for a while it takes nabu a hot minute to understand. why. aisha would think that he has ulterior motives. because having an ulterior motive, or at least a malicious one, isn't something that ever crosses his mind. (tangent but -- he's a little naive in that he generally assumes everyone he meets has the best intentions until they prove to him otherwise, in which case it's hard to win back his trust.) so even after their feelings for each other are known, aisha kinda closes herself off to him/subconsciously rejects him until she realizes how genuine he is, after which she just fully trusts him and feels safe neough to rely on him.

arguments are far and few between after the initial roughness of their relationship and i feel like if they do have some kind of conflict, it's either petty and negligible or it's a short and sweet conversation and then they move on. they're really good at direct communication because it's just an extension of the way they already express affection toward one another.

the way they express affection isn't as cheesy as like brella or florelia, they're just very candid with each other all the time about how much they love another and how much they mean to each other.

i think nabu learns from aisha about more realities of the world because i do assume he's fairly privileged/spoiled with his position on andros (like... a nobleman or something) so he becomes a better judge of character after her & has more sympathy for others and their thought processes even when their line of thinking is baffling to him. and i think aisha learns to trust or to have more faith in others on a baseline level from him.

tecna/timmy

i really enjoy tecmy's canon progression so this won't deviate too much from what i feel they're already established to be... (ignoring s5 and after)

so obv tecna starts off not being super in touch with her emotions. she doesn't really know how to talk to timmy (and vice-versa) and also at times she resents him for not being as traditionally brave as other specialists and eggs him on in that respect, which kind of prods at timmy's insecurities. tecna eventually does realize timmy has always been brave but this friction does also push timmy out of his comfort zone into acting more heroically.

eventually, they realize even though their relationship is not conventional, the fact that they can communicate through nerd-speak is fulfilling for both of them and it conveys their care and affection for one another more than adequately

i think that timmy has always thought the world of tecna but that just speaks to how he always tends to view things/people in good faith and with lots of optimism. hence why he never lost hope that tecna was still out there after she sacrificed herself to the omega dimension, but everyone else literally believed she was dead.

they really just understand each other on levels that no one else really does while also balancing each other out. tecna tends toward negative assumptions and cynicism while timmy tends toward hope and keeping an open mind. tecna lowkey externalizes her anxieties/insecurities by lashing out (and kind of justifying it through her logic schtick) while timmy internalizes his insecurities and lets them weigh on him more in silence.

timmy's got JOKES! and tecna isn't so good at being humorous but she thinks timmy is hilarious and they have a way of communicating both positively and negatively that is very unique to them and hard for outsiders to really comprehend

i think the way that they overcome the initial issues in their relationship is just. tecna shedding her preconceptions and really seeing timmy for who he really is and just appreciating his present qualities. and while i don't really think that timmy puts tecna on a pedestal per se, i do think he learns to stop giving her more credit than she's due and stop undermining himself and feeding into his lower self-esteem. once they really just accept themselves and each other for who they are, they're able to just co-exist very harmoniously. and they figure out how to validate and support one another!

bloom/sky

okay tbh i barely have any thoughts on skoom just because. they're my least favorite winx and specialist respectively DFLJS

i play around with their dynamic depending on my mood (so sometimes i'm like Sky Bad but other times i'm like Skoom Happy) but i guess my most consistent Thing is that i firmly believe sky has been like. raised to fulfill the Prince Charming(tm) archetype. it's a little bit of a case of chicken or the egg/nature vs nurture (is sky just Like This or is he trying to fulfill expectations of what he should be and that's just who he ended up becoming?) but in my mind sky is just Prince Charming But With Flaws.

i think sky has had a lot of pressure to be a perfect young prince all his life and so he's very used to calling the shots but also not needing to think about more mundane, lower-order concerns a lot of the time. (he doesn't figure out how to dress himself until at least a year into his relationship with bloom.) i also think he's somewhat resentful of his position in life and other people of similar stations (so people like diaspro) bc he subconsciously kind of views himself as better than/more noble than the people around him. so he finds bloom to be refreshing because she's very candid and authentic and doesn't have that etiquette training beat into her head like most of the girls he knows.

bloom is just someone who has a lot of wonder for this new magical world she's been introduced to and sky's an extension of that as her prince charming come to life. as bloom comes to understand the magical dimension for all of its dangers and its dark underbelly, bloom also uncovers sky's hypocrisies and mild elitism and avoidant tendencies and other flaws. but just as bloom wholeheartedly embraces being a fairy, she embraces sky for who he is and they ultimately help each other grow and change.

i think bloom and sky both have a strong sense of duty toward the people in their lives, bloom toward the people she loves and sky toward the his family and the kingdom he inherited. this is something that both unites them but also means their interests clash at times.

their arguments would be like. interrupting each other and assuming they already know what the other person is going to say. getting frustrated at that and dealing with the fallout. then realizing that they didn't have as clear of a picture as they thought they did, and ultimately talking through it and working things out.

mmm bloom helps sky down from his high horse and makes him into a more sympathetic and humble leader while sky supports bloom in realizing her full potential as fairy of the dragon flame and princess of domino.

aaaaand that's all the rambling i can handle for now. but i can always talk more more more!!!!! i love all of these characters and their dynamics so much. (and my shipping is hardly limited to the canon relationships ;) )

[haliteatiger]

This my "Tav", Silence. I'm still sorta working out her background details, but for now it's safe to say she's had it pretty rough.

Check below the cut for a lot of rambling and pointless, self-indulgent headcanons.

Her name comes from the fact that she didn't speak for the first few years of her life, instead learning to play the violin and communicating through her art. Someone started calling her "Little Silence" and it just sort of stuck. She didn't know her parents, but was adopted by a noble who saw her as a unique "pet" given her unusual appearance - even for a tiefling - and her musical and artistic talents.

Unfortunately, the guy was bad with money, and ended up gambling away a good portion of whatever Silence earned, in the end becoming desperate enough to try and auction off her virginity when she came of age. Silence, obviously, was not going to stand for this, and managed to escape - possibly killing the man who bought her in the process, she wasn't sure and frankly doesn't care.

With only her violin and a precious few belongings in tow, Silence made her way to Baldur's Gate and was eventually found by a gang of performers and thieves (that I have yet to come up with a name for) where she learned ways on how to survive on the streets and defend herself with her art. Now in her late 20s, and poised to set out on her own due to some complications within her social circle, she was taken aboard the Nautiloid.

There are two sides to Silence - one is kind of quiet, observant, and sensitive. She has a way of simply blending into the background if she doesn't want to be observed (she's good at Stealthing, I guess), and the other is her more or less "bard persona", which is outgoing and charismatic. Contrary to her name, Silence can be quite talkative when the mood strikes her. It's usually when she becomes angry, flustered, or anxious where she seems to forget words entirely and has a hard time articulating herself, which has led into some dramatic situations when she lashes out more physically.

Overall, she's easygoing, and tries very hard not to let her emotions get in the way of her making decisions, and so often comes off as more pragmatic than anything. She's also pretty accepting of those around her even if she is, in actuality, slow to trust. I guess you could say she's highly manipulative as a defence mechanism. So it's not that she lies to people, per se, but she can come off as liking someone more than she does if only to deflect harm from herself. She is not a people-pleaser, however, and has very defined boundaries in terms of how far she's willing to concede to someone, especially a stranger. She's excellent at reading people (most of the time), acts more confident than she seems, knows a little about a lot of topics, and is always eager to learn more. She can be impulsive and rude without meaning to, and has something of a sarcastic and dry sense of humor that always seems almost prepared in advance whenever she snaps back at someone. Her charisma and wit often seem to leave others with the mistaken impression that she knows what she's doing in any given situation, and thus has often been beset with expectations she's sure she's more often than not fallen short of. Somehow, people just seem to think she's the most competent one in the room because she talks a good talk. Due to her dual upbringing, she is capable of blending in with high society as well as she does low. Silence will generally act within her own best interests or those of her friends, but it doesn't really take much to persuade her to do the right thing.

A good example would be when she and the gang arrive at the druid hold and is asked to help the tieflings. Initially she denies getting involved until mocked by Astarion for "turning her back on the needy", at which point, just to annoy him, agrees to help. (Although, when pressed she admits she mostly did it because she realized they needed some things in the area anyway and helping them could be beneficial to their cause). She can have kind of an impish sense of humor and while she doesn't like to see others get hurt, probably does take more pleasure in watching her enemies die writhing in agony than she'd care to admit.

Random fun fact: Silence is a feral tiefling, and her tail is supposed to be reminiscent of a heraldic unicorn's or lion's tail. She often carries it with a curl or S shape as she has a somewhat chronic fear of it being stepped on or pulled. She also has cat-like eyes (that I've had to mod in, but really wish Larian would include them naturally in the game because why not??? Same with more variations in tails...)

Other fun fact is that Silence has a Secret Power in which she's capable of using her tadpole to influence those around her when she plays a song infused with a particular strong emotion. Unfortunately, she cannot replicate the song later, at least not in the same way or with the same impact as when she played it. This generally acts like an empathic attack on those who can see and hear her, impressing upon them the emotion she's attempting to convey through song which can manifest in the audience's minds as how she imagines it - so a full orchestra if that's what she's hearing in her head. As one can imagine, the situations in which this is actually useful are few and far between, as it would require the proper conditions and emotional preparation for it to be effective, although I like to imagine she has used it a few times on a smaller scale to calm tensions in the group when camping some nights.

Relationships with the other NPCs:

Lae'zel - Admires her strength, but is suspicious of her motivations mostly because she seems more than capable of finding this creche by herself, but instead wants to drag the rest of them along with her. Either she's hiding an altruistic side to her or something else is going on. Silence tolerates Lae'zel's nasty attitude, but also can't help but find her and her people's culture fascinating. She often tries to overlook the Gith's biting tongue in order to inquire more about it. It's a mystery to Silence what Lae'zel truly thinks of her, but it's probably nothing good (even if she seems to get bonus points every time she shows an interest in her people.) About the only time she gets anything resembling a compliment from her is when she agrees with her about the use of their tadpole or if she does something worth being commended for in battle. Otherwise, Lae'zel doesn't seem to be terribly fond of Silence's violin playing as the high-pitched tones seem to bother her.

Gale - Gale and her get along famously, and, next to Wyll, finds him probably one of the easiest to talk to in the group. They both share a great interest in magic and, at times, a similar sense of humor (which is to say she's about as bad at puns as he is). They're both well-travelled and well-educated, and if she doesn't know or understand something magic-related, she's quick to ask Gale for guidance, and enjoys seeing him in his element. Gale seems fond of her wit, open-mindedness, and appreciation and interest she takes in the world around her and those that live in it. She seems to have a genuine interest and appreciation for everyone in the group and admires her dedication to watching their backs, even if it's obvious she doesn't entirely trust any of them. He likes that she seems to know a surprising amount about wizardry despite not being one herself - at least enough to ask advanced questions about things that he might consider to be outside the interest of most bards, as well as the fact that she isn't easily fazed by things that would turn most people's stomachs or make them balk in disbelief. As could be evidenced by her rather extensive anatomy studies on the bodies of their fallen enemies ("It's free art references!")

Admittedly, Silence was a bit shocked and uncomfortable to learn about Gale's history and his need to consume magic artifacts, but as he seems sincere in his efforts to keep it under control, chooses not to worry about it and does what she can to support him, which he greatly appreciates. There's still that little nagging voice in the back of her mind, however, even if he's friendly enough to get her to forget that at times. She has to remind herself on occasion that she doesn't really know him.

Shadowheart - Shadowheart and her also get along very well, even if they're both somewhat guarded around each other still, and Shadowheart, when not in the right mood, can be very difficult to talk to just in general. But, it's Silence who is first to lower her defenses, and speak to the Shar acolyte candidly. Silence finds the two of them have a lot in common in terms of how they approach most situations - pragmatic but always erring to self-preservation or that of the group's. Shadowheart seems to appreciate Silence's amicability, willingness to compromise, and respects that, even though she is friendly, she isn't naive about it. It also helps that Silence doesn't seem to have a problem with her being a worshipper of Shar and respects her desire for privacy even without being prompted. Silence appreciates how much of a team player Shadowheart really is, with her main interests usually centring around maintaining the group and essentially keeping everyone content enough not to turn on one another.

Astarion - Even though she enjoys picking on him from time to time, it's almost always in a way that he can also appreciate. She finds it more fun when the other person is in on the joke as well. This can and does include flirting, but thus far, she's made it pretty clear that she perceives it as simply something to laugh about (even if he might be absolutely serious about it). Unfortunately, at least initially, she also finds Astarion to be one of the hardest to read among the group, and picking on him isn't something she started doing until she knew where his boundaries lay. Up until then, she approached him delicately, allowing him to lead the conversations and learning what she could along the way, which, fortunately, he seems more than happy to do. As a result, he takes her quite a bit longer to translate than the rest, and doesn't feel entirely comfortable around him for a long time to come, really only engaging with him whenever he wishes to engage with her. As a result, the vampire tends to find Silence the most comfortable and trustworthy one of the group even if she seems careful enough not to let him get too close. He's likely the first to notice how little Silence voluntarily shares about herself, often distracting the others with reassurances, compliments, and asking questions she thinks they would enjoy answering.

Despite this he appreciates that she's easygoing and down-to-earth, while still having a good sense of humor and seems to know when to take something seriously, and, while at times seemingly easily impressed with the world around her (like he's one to talk), also seems to accept it for what it is and adapts accordingly.

In actuality, Astarion has about as much trouble reading her as she does him, as he's found it impossible to tell if she's genuine in her compliments and expressing interest in others around her. She certainly seems to have a gift for getting people to trust her. She's good at taking control of conversations and deflecting away from topics she doesn't want to talk about in the least offensive way possible, and he's made the mistake of reading her sincerity as naivety. She intrigues him as almost every time he thinks he has her figured out, she does or says something unexpected, or contrary to what he would assume about her, and he's not even sure if she's doing it on purpose. It's possibly a matter of them being out of step with one another, being of differing natures, even if he gets on better with her than he has anyone else in recent memory (insofar as we know about his story at least).

About the only things that get on his nerves at times is that she's maybe a little too soft, and a little too cautious and prone to overthinking than is good for her, mostly because it ends up involving dragging them into doing something boring or "unproductive" (not to their overall benefit). Never mind that she's encouraged him to wait in camp or go on without them if he has a problem with their decisions. It also bugs him that, even if she sees the merit in using the tadpoles, she's on board with the others that it isn't safe to do so until they know exactly what it is they're dealing with. Rather by accident, it would seem, Astarion finds himself liking her more than he realizes, especially after his condition comes to light and, lo and behold, she's not only okay with it, she wants to know everything about it and how they can use it to their benefit, even if she doesn't seem to be too terribly keen on being fed off of, as long as he can sate himself with bandits and ne'er-do-wells, she's off the hook insofar as she's concerned... for now, and has basically told him that she's his "emergency supply" if circumstances require it.

Despite all this, Silence is still vigilant, and while she trusts him with certain things, doesn't trust him completely, and knows full well the lengths to which his type is willing to go to cover their attempts at taking advantage of a situation.

[rawbin-hsr]

The previous anon articulated it so well bc I just saw what they're talking about and I'm honestly confused why they thought u were saying anything wrong like 😭😭 are we sure we have the same guy here? Aventurine while yes knows what being loved feels like, he's gone through enough things and changes in life that that little frame of reference won't serve him well, especially within a romantic context bc he doesn't have ANY reference.

I read what you wrote as him not really meaning to (even reread) and yeah, he wouldn't Purposely want to be abusive to his romantic partner, but it still borders on it. What a lot of ppl get wrong is that, emotional abuse doesn't have to always mean the perpetrator is fully aware of it themself.

Maybe bc I myself have bpd, but it's so easy to see. When someone's avoiding negative feelings they have about themself (jealousy, insecurity etc) they can easily externalize this blame (and for him, that's so much more likely, it's literally a defense mechanism) or even, projecting his own view of himself on how you view him only to end up upset. (And then, the random clinginess that comes after this pushing away, why would it happen if not for trying to convince you to stay even though what he keeps doing is generally not a good thing to do in a relationship?) He wouldn't have known healthy attachment, didn't grow up with a safety net to be comfortable with that, hell, he thinks people closest to him (in canon) are sort of "tolerating" him. Are we really surprised?

Like, you never said aventurine is doing it with intent or even awareness bc yea he isn't!! He'd realize some of his actions sure, but stuff like "pushing you away" is probably shit he genuinely considers good for you, and it's not even like completely wrong he's in a high and risky position. Doesn't mean it wouldn't hurt like a mf, and I think that's the biggest tragedy of it all, because he doesn't fully realize how bad his actions are from another pov, and it's not like a single Convo can get him to understand that.

Anyway, sorry that was a lot more incoherent than I thought and I was firmly stating a lot of things bc I can pull up stuff to back my claim but ALSO bc they pissed me off if u don't like something just scroll I've been doing that for years on this app I never felt the need to go yell at someone bc I don't agree with how they interpret a character 😒😒😒😒 I hope ur feeling better, rsd sucks ass I always get so overwhelmed whenever I experience it but ur intent came across very clearly actually dw

I’m literally in tears I’m so grateful multiple people are taking the time to reassure me thank you so much 🥹🥹🥹 I was really doubting myself and my own take on him, it makes me feel so relieved I’m not the only one who has this specific take on him haha I was lowkey worrying I was a terrible person for a moment there 😭

And yes, exactly !!!! I think you were very coherent in this, in fact I think you formulated what I meant to say better than I did 😭😭 Like there’s a lot, a LOT of nuance to it !!! He never does it out of malice. He just doesn’t know any better. He tries to do what’s right and what’s best for you, he’s just… kind of not good at that because his whole perspective is skewed.

I do still think they were right that I shouldn’t have used the word ‘abuse’. It’s a very loaded term, and I think abuse requires a power dynamic, which is something I think he would try to eliminate in a relationship. Like, yes, he is a powerful man and he sort of needs some leverage to stay in control (of both his own life and his relationship with you), but I think he fucking hates the idea of being “above you” in any way. (Though to be fair he still could unintentionally create an uneven power dynamic — he’s the one mostly in charge of when the two of you interact. I think he loathes himself even more when he realises that.) I think it would be best to stick to the word “toxic” because it feels most fitting from my pov

[whileiamdying]

At 70, Cyndi Lauper Has Nothing Left to Prove

At 70, Cyndi Lauper is charging back to action with a road show and “Let the Canary Sing,” a film that tells her life story.Credit...Thea Traff for The New York Times

She’s plotting a farewell tour. She’s starring in a documentary about her life. And she could only ever be herself.

By Amanda Hess June 4, 2024

One Friday afternoon in May, Cyndi Lauper stepped out of her Upper West Side apartment building and into the streets of New York City. She wore glitter-encrusted glasses, sneakers with rainbow soles and a stack of beaded bracelets on each arm. A rice-paper parasol swung in her hand. As she walked, she examined the crowds and remarked when glints of interest caught her eye.

“Of course, up here it’s fashion hell,” she allowed of her tony neighborhood. And yet, every few blocks she rubbernecked at another woman’s look, her famous New Yawk accent lifting and tumbling in pleasure at what she saw:

“Look at these dames, how cute are they?”

“Did you love those pants? I kind of loved those pants.”

“Look at this lady,” she said, stepping off the curb and clocking a passerby. The woman moved nimbly, tomato-red streak in her silver hair, body draped in shades of fuchsia and cherry as she pushed the gleaming metal frame of a walker. “Fabulous,” Lauper exclaimed. “Come on!”

At 70, the pop icon and social justice activist isn’t just charging back into the streets. On Monday, Lauper announced her final tour, the Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour, which will have her headlining arenas across North America from late October to early December. And “Let the Canary Sing,” a documentary about her life and career that premiered at the Tribeca Festival last year, is streaming on Paramount+.

Lauper has not staged a major tour — “a proper tour, that’s mine” — in over a decade. But now her window of opportunity is closing, so she’s leaping through it. “I don’t think I can perform the way I want to in a couple of years,” she said. “I want to be strong.”

Lauper photographed at the Scarlet Lounge on the Upper West Side, the Manhattan neighborhood where she lives with her husband and two pugs.Credit...Thea Traff for The New York Times

And until recently, when she finally agreed to sit for the director Alison Ellwood, she could not envision committing her life story to film. “I wasn’t going to do a documentary because I’m not dead,” she said. More to the point, she did not feel particularly misunderstood. From the moment she danced across the city in the 1983 video for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” she felt that she had articulated precisely what she wanted to say.

“Everything I wanted them to understand was in that video,” she said of her fans. She has a lot of people who get her: The clip has been viewed on YouTube more than one billion times. Forty years later, she holds it up as a thesis, the key to decoding her artistic perspective and understanding everything that followed. After all, “You never have to wonder where a New Yorker stands,” she said. “They’ll tell you, straight up.”

CYNDI LAUPER, BORN in Brooklyn, raised in Queens, bopped around the house to the Beatles’ songs, her older sister, Elen, singing McCartney’s parts and Lauper taking Lennon’s. It was her earliest lesson in harmony and song structure. But when she left home at 17, it was with a copy of Yoko Ono’s feminist conceptual art book “Grapefruit” in her hands.

Ono taught her that “you can create art in your head, and then you can view things differently,” Lauper told me. This attitude served her well as she tried (and often failed) to work as a painter, a shoe saleswoman, a racetrack hot walker, an IHOP waitress, a gal Friday at Simon & Schuster and the singer in a cover band.

Singing other people’s music in Long Island clubs and dive bars, Lauper struggled to find her place. She tried to channel Janis Joplin, but “I was stuck inside her body, and she didn’t like it, and I didn’t like it,” she said. She tried to sound like Gene Pitney, and “it came out sounding like Ethel Merman.” After a while, “You start to feel that you’re just not good enough.”

Lauper in 1986, the year she released “True Colors,” a song she felt drawn to in the wake of a friend’s death from AIDS.Credit...Pictorial Parade and Archive Photos/Getty Images)

But really, she was just no good at being anyone other than Cyndi Lauper. When she started writing and arranging songs for herself, “I told the stories that I knew about the women that I knew,” she said. “About my mom, my aunt, my grandmother.” They guided her back to the rhythms of her own life, even if, in the beginning, few were interested in listening. “My first concert was to 14 people,” she said, “and I did the encore, OK?”

The documentary’s title is a line ripped from a real-life courtroom drama: Early on, Lauper’s career got entangled in the ambitions of an ex-manager, who sued her to retain control of her music. She sank into bankruptcy trying to escape him. When the judge sided with Lauper, he banged the gavel and said: “Let the canary sing.”

Once freed, Lauper connected with Robert Hazard, who had written a track called “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” He’d arranged it as a rock song from a man’s perspective — the girls were the ones he imagined sleeping with — and Lauper had some edits. She recast it as a gleeful public announcement, calling out a sexist double standard (“Oh mama dear, we’re not the fortunate ones”) while claiming liberation from the workplace, the home and the patriarchy. And she rearranged the notes, pitching her voice so high that it could not be ignored. “I sang that high because I was trumpeting an idea,” she said.

And then there was the video. “That video was what you call ‘inclusive’ nowadays, and that was the most important thing,” Lauper said. In addition to the Italian American pro wrestler Lou Albano, Lauper featured her mother, her lawyer, her manager, a crop of record-company secretaries, and a racially diverse group of singers and dancers. “I was sick of the segregation” of the music industry, she said. “It’s people together that create a style.”

“Everything I wanted them to understand was in that video,” Lauper said of the clip for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

MTV was still in its infancy in 1983, and it was fortuitous that Lauper’s debut album, “She’s So Unusual,” came out just as the network was ascending. She saw her public image as a visual art form. Her makeup artist was a painter, and her stylist was a vintage buyer.

“People sometimes get the wrong idea that it was very thrown together,” Laura Wills, the founder of the vintage shop Screaming Mimi’s, said of the singer’s style. “People just didn’t look like that.” In the early ’80s, Lauper worked for Wills, often bartering her labor for clothes. When her career took off, Wills started styling her, and the pair often constructed Lauper’s outfits as if sliding chips across a poker table, as in, “I’ll see your polka-dot socks and striped capris, and I’ll raise you a plaid top,” Wills said. “I’ll see your polka-dot socks, striped capris and plaid top, and I’ll raise you a paisley hat.”

Lauper seemed to shoot to fame as a fully formed feminist icon. She refused to tell interviewers her age (“I’m not a car,” she said), and she insisted that they recognize the politics behind her aesthetic choices. “I wore the corset to undo the power of the binding of women,” she told the press. She graced the cover of Ms. Magazine and recorded the 1986 song “True Colors,” which resonated with her in the wake of a friend’s death from AIDS.

“I know that I probably lost business because I talked about AIDS a lot,” she said, but figured “I ought to stand up like any good Italian and stick up for my family, you know?” In 2008, she founded True Colors United to help combat homelessness among L.G.B.T.Q. youth. And in 2022, she created the Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights fund to support abortion access and other reproductive justice movements.

In 1985, Lauper won the best new artist Grammy after the release of “She’s So Unusual.” The album — and songs like “Time After Time” and “All Through the Night” — broke records. But something odd was happening. She looked around and saw versions of herself everywhere. “When I first became famous, I felt like the whole world just kind of went” — here Lauper made a sharp slurping noise — “and sucked everything up. The jewelry, the color, the corsets on the outside, the whole thing. And then used it. Spit it out. Next!”

“I don’t think I can perform the way I want to in a couple of years,” Lauper said. “I want to be strong.”Credit...Thea Traff for The New York Times

Lauper was accused of being a manufactured package. “No, it was me. That’s how I dressed. That’s how I looked. That was my community,” she said. “I have a brain.”

When Lauper got a call that a movie studio was adapting her big hit into a movie, she balked at its fluffy premise. “I guess it was about a couple of girls … trying to have fun,” she said. (Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt starred.) Lauper refused permission to use her song, so it featured Hazard’s version with other vocalists instead. “For me, it sucked,” she said. “You took my style. And it had nothing to do with me at all.”

In the ’80s, Lauper was compared so closely to other female musicians that it was implied there was not space for all of them. She was pitted against other women — mainly Madonna, who released her debut album the same year. On chat shows and in schoolyards (and even on the charity single “We Are the World”), celebrities and fans were asked to choose one. “It was like apples and oranges,” Lauper told me. Or as she put it in Newsweek in 1985: “She’s just doing her thing. My thing happens to be different.” It was a shame, Lauper said: “I would have liked to have a friend.”

Though she fought her battles mainly alone, Lauper has inspired generations of women. Among her acolytes are Nicki Minaj, who in April brought her onstage in Brooklyn to duet on the song that samples her, “Pink Friday Girls.” When an interviewer asked the 26-year-old singer-songwriter Chappell Roan, “How does it feel to be called the Gen-Z Cyndi Lauper?” she replied, “I think Cyndi Lauper is the Gen-Z Cyndi Lauper.”

Lauper made 11 more albums after her debut — among them a blues record, a country record and a dance record. In the early 2000s, she walked over to Broadway, starring in “The Threepenny Opera” and writing the music and lyrics to the musical “Kinky Boots” after Harvey Fierstein, who wrote the book, tapped her for the gig. “There’s a small group of people I consider my children; she’s one of my daughters,” the actor and writer, who turns 72 this week, said. Fierstein told me that he had suspected Lauper’s talents were underused in rock, and he wanted to see what it was like for her to write a song that she would never sing herself.

Lauper accepting the Tony for best score, for her work on “Kinky Boots.”Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

“My favorite was a recording she made on her phone, in the beauty parlor, with her head in the dryer,” he said. (Lauper was often multitasking.) Her autoharp competed with the salon noise. “It’s really hard to sell a $10 million production on a recording of an autoharp song with a dryer background,” he said. “But that’s what we did.” Lauper won the Tony for best score, the first woman to win alone.

In an industry that requires the rapacious pursuit of the new and the cynical extraction of identity, Lauper was never willing to abandon herself. She had forged the revolutionary style, sang the totemic song. She inspired millions, billions, of fans to be themselves. Why should she have to change who she was?

AS LAUPER AND I traversed the Upper West Side, we ducked into an exhibition about the abstract artist Sonia Delaunay, passed the original Screaming Mimi’s location (now a dry cleaners), and wound back to her apartment, where she invited me up.

Past the doorman, past a cheetah-print doormat and a cheetah-print curtain, two little pugs named Lulu and Ping awaited Lauper’s return. She disappeared to arrange a plate of ginger cookies, the same kind Jackson Browne always sent her on Christmas, while her husband, the actor David Thornton, told me about their meet-cute on the set of the 1991 film “Off and Running.” She played a fake mermaid, he played a murderer. Off the set, he was struck instantly by her winning sense of humor.

“She’s the Rodney Dangerfield of rock ’n’ roll,” he said. As in, she is so funny that she does not always receive the respect she deserves. “I don’t think anybody has any idea how hard she works,” he said.

Though Lauper was accused of being a manufactured package, she was the real deal. “That’s how I dressed. That’s how I looked. That was my community,” she said. “I have a brain.”Credit...Thea Traff for The New York Times

To prepare for the tour, she blasts the stereo in her apartment and dances and sings, vexing the pugs. She works with a vocal coach four days a week. And she trains like it’s a sport. Her weekly exercise routine includes physical therapy, weights, stretching, physical therapy, weights, yoga, more weights, yoga, aerobics, physical therapy, weights again. She’s been chomping on enormous salads that make her feel like a horse.

“But when you’re a singer, you have to be an athlete,” she said. “You can’t [expletive] around. When you’re 20, yeah. But when you get older? No.”

As the tour approaches, she’s been daydreaming about “all the crazy stuff I tried that didn’t work” in the long arc of her career. The butterfly-winged black dress that she was meant to reveal as she stepped out of a cocoon. The bit where she was supposed to change behind a backlit screen like an old cartoon character. A kind of mechanical skirt that resembled a globe, slowly spinning her around as she sang.

She’s not exactly sure what she’ll pull off this time. Whatever changes, one thing remains the same: “Who the hell I am is who the hell I am.”

Amanda Hess is a critic at large for the Culture section of The Times, covering the intersection of internet and pop culture. More about Amanda Hess

[princehendir]

Do you want to elaborate about the alice postpartum post 👉👈

Yeah actually. I kinda do!

[cw: mental health issues, emotional abuse, some gaslighting, implied reproductive coercion. Probably some other stuff.]

So. Alice spends most of Shaun's baby-hood feeling like he's Not Real, though she's not really able to articulate what exactly she means by that, as well being kind of generally aware that it's not true, despite the fact that it feels really really true. That's not a real baby, and if it is a real baby it's definitely not her baby. Which she knows isn't rational but can't quite shake.

She also off-and-on feels like she's Not Real, other people Aren't Real, the world isn't Real, etc. which she was already having a problem with during the pregnancy but it got worse after the birth. Lots of depersonalization/derealization issues. Some of it is definitely the hormones but the emotional manipulator husband who Gently Encouraged her to keep a baby she wasn't 100% sure about (among other things) definitely also contributed.

The pregnancy went very well physically though, despite her emotional/mental issues. And the fact that Nate keeps using the term "easy pregnancy" (we're so lucky!) is slowly turning her evil.

She also gets increasingly paranoid about Codsworth the longer he's in the house. Really convinced that he's Up To Something and either talking to the police about her or spying on her for Nate, who she thinks might have bought him for specifically that reason (it's unclear how plausible this actually is).

Paranoid in general also, after the birth. Like, is worried that the neighbors Know Things about her, that the police are coming any minute, that sort of thing. And unfortunately a lot of her paranoia isn't fully without basis. She & Nate are very much living under stolen identities because they have warrants out. And Nate is kind of getting too into/overselling his whole "I'm a veteran" thing (he's not, to be clear) and there's genuine reason to worry that he might get cocky and blow their cover. So this is the stuff that's hardest for her to manage while she's trying to get her stuff together enough to get out.

(If I never mentioned this, part of her whole deal is that the day the bombs dropped was also the day she was planning on leaving him and starting over on the west coast. Like she had this whole thing worked out where she was going to slip out while he was giving his little speech at the Veterans Hall (which again, insane & ill-advised thing to do given that he's not actually a veteran and living under a stolen identity, but we don't need to go into all that rn) and get in her car and just start driving. Shaun was not actually part of this plan until like two days before, when she decided that it felt morally weird to her to abandon a baby even if it still didn't really feel like Her Baby.)

(The paranoia actually ends up fucking this plan up for her. She freaks herself out and tries to leave early because she thinks Nate's onto her (he isn't) and then he catches her packing a bag and finally figures out what's going on. They're actively fighting in the nursery and he's trying to prevent her from leaving when the news alert comes on about the bombs. In a weird irony, the war starting when it did was kind of lucky for her, because we were hitting "this is about to escalate, worried neighbors are calling 911" around that point and I'm not really sure what would've happened otherwise.)

Also, on the subject of Nate, she does start to think about killing him a lot. Which, to be fair, she also thinks about when she's more lucid (normal side effect of Nate exposure imo) but for a while there it definitely falls more on the "violent intrusive thoughts/violent impulses" end of the scale than the "morally bad but rational murder fantasy" one. This is actually what spurs her into working on an exit plan, it was either leaving or murder, and one of those is slightly easier to get away with.

She's doing a lot better during the main part of fo4, which is nice. But the fact that she was unwell & not really able to bond with Shaun when he was a baby really contributes to a lot of how she handles the main plotline. She doesn't feel as strongly about what happened as she thinks* she should, and she's not really sure what to do about that. Lying about how much she misses her baby feels wrong, but being honest feels a lot worse.

*thinks that other people think?