#also I think it would be remiss to say that this was absolutely a continuation of blushy mechs and I am determined to draw all of them

[zenkohoney]

I could not stop thinking about @meshonax ‘s post with Bee, Optimus, and Megatron in their fluffy scarfs!!!! Look at him!!!

[dalishious]

(I can’t believe I finished this so fast… I basically blacked out and then it was done lol… Anyway, please remember that this is all just my personal opinion, and if you feel differently, that’s fine!)

Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review

Objectively speaking, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a fun game that the average player is going to enjoy, especially if that average player is coming in without any prior knowledge to the Dragon Age franchise. I believe this is a good jumping-in spot for people who are curious about the world of Thedas. But in contrast, I have seen a lot of criticism from other hard-core fans that I largely agree with. However, it just so happens that most of the criticism I have is not enough to prevent me from overall enjoying the game. That is to say, for pretty much everything I did not like, there was also something I thought was great… Unfortunately, that makes it a little difficult to give a review. So, I’m going to do my best to keep things as clear and concise as possible by splitting up the “good” and the “bad” aspects of DATV.

The Positive

The best thing to come out of DATV is the new cast of characters that make up your companions and supporting associates. While I do think that some of them could have benefitted from more development time to flesh things out further, just judging what we ended up with, is mostly great. I especially found Emmrich and Bellara to be stand-out examples of strong personalities to grasp onto, whose personal stories really touched me in an emotional way.

DATV also has fun with some returning characters. For example, now that Solas is no longer hiding his identity, we get to see a character that both believably honours his part in Inquisition, while also providing a new, refreshing side to him. There are also a number of characters introduced in Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights that appear in the game, like my personal favourites Teia and Viago, who are an absolute delight to interact with!

I think the three act structure is good, albeit with act three being quite short. There are a few sequences that are an absolutely phenomenal mixture of storytelling and engaging gameplay, like all of Weisshaupt! I also really enjoyed stepping out of the main story every once and a while, and into Solas’s backstory through the Crossroads memories – what ended up being extra special about these is how they mirror Rook’s struggle so well, by the end. They are a nice touch.

The locations are beautifully constructed with smooth interactions of climbing, zip-lining, and essentially parkouring your way around, making them fun to explore! They also came with such distinct flavours and character in themselves that influenced a sense of truly experiencing different parts of Thedas, with different cultures.

The mechanic of building up strength with the different factions, and that actually having a huge impact with the ultimate showdown in the end of the game, makes side quests feel far less inconsequential than in Dragon Age: Inquisition by comparison. That, and they number far less.

I like that the story mode actually feels like a story mode; there were only a couple instances where I really had to worry about death, and even then, I was able to just toggle off the death with the customizable gameplay mechanics and continue on.

Finally, it would be remiss not to say that the character creator for DATV is the best BioWare has ever put out. I’d go as far as saying it’s one of the best in any RPG I’ve ever personally experienced. From the flexibility in morphing a character’s head and body between custom shapes, to the little details like sclera colour, vitiligo, and top surgery scars, makes it a shining example of what RPG’s should strive for. (My only critique here is that it would have been nice to have more skin colours.)

The Neutral

I hated the combat for pretty much the entire first act of the game. I found it too hard to keep up with, and too much like Mass Effect bullshit. I can’t say that it’s completely grown on me yet, but I don’t hate it anymore. It’s fine. So, I’m giving this a special little spot before I get into what I didn’t like all the way to the end.

The Negative

As mentioned above, I do think that there is more that could be done with some of the characters to really achieve their full potential. Davrin and Lucanis—while to be clear I still really enjoy as they are—come to mind first, in terms of those who would have benefited from more development time. Most of Davrin’s screen time just revolves around Assan rather than Davrin himself, and Lucanis is so restrained that it takes a while to really crack him open. Both of these characters have intentional personalities that make them harder to get to know, I understand that, but I feel that it would have been all the more rewarding to have more time dedicated to their company after earning their trust and possibly endearment. Instead, it feels like their romance and friendship with Rook are only half-complete, and then rushed to finish.

There are some companion interactions that are just… cringe. There is no other word for it. Now, this is nothing new for BioWare games, but I feel like the “pulling a Bharv” scene for example, was hitting an entirely new low. (If someone misgendered me and then just started doing push-ups instead of just saying “hey sorry about that, I’ll try to do better” I’d be annoyed, not satisfied.) I also felt like most of the temporary rivalries between companions were artificial in nature, rather than organically part of their characters that actually served a purpose. We already knew Emmrich likes books and Harding likes nature; we did not need a whole cutscene with them bickering about camping. (The exception to this is Davrin and Lucanis, who genuinely had room to grow as people out of their multiple confrontations, not just a one-off scene.)

The music in DATV is, for the most part, forgettable and bland. There is one piece that really stands out, and that’s “Where the Dead Must Go”, which is a real banger. I am not a fan of Hans Zimmer’s OST otherwise; I think it is phoned in, just like most of his work. I deeply wish BioWare would have just stuck with Trevor Morris. The best parts musically in this game are just Morris’s work re-used from Dragon Age: Inquisition.

There are certain parts of disjointedness that separates DATV from the past games that are just… bizarre. This is especially the case when it comes to elven lore. For example, Bellara saying she is afraid that elves will be harshly judged for the Evanrus, or Harding saying that elves are “thriving”… as if modern elves are not deeply persecuted across most of Thedas. It made me question more than once if there just was not time in development to do a proper canon-compliancy check with everything, perhaps?

I want finish this part by bringing up again that the biggest flaw in DATV is that it feels very corporate. To repeat what I said in this post: It is as if a computer ran through the game’s script and got rid of anything with “too much” political substance, in an overcorrection to be “safe”. But now that the edges have been so smoothed down to make a block into a ball, it can no longer support anything.

Conclusion

It’s easy to see a lot of creativity went into the creation of this game… but it is also easy to make assumptions on how that creativity was constrained by development hell and corporate oversight. In the end though, Dragon Age: The Veilguard succeeded in being an overall good time, one that I will no doubt be putting just as many countless hours into as the previous installments in the franchise. 7/10.

[paceywittters]

What do you make of Tim's behavior in the last few episodes? I feel like he's a totally different person and it's making me sad to see him disrespecting Lucy so much.

just up front: it feels v clear to me that we do not share an opinion on this storyline from the tone of this ask, and so i am going to discuss this but would just like to preface that this is only my opinion and i respect that you/anyone else engaging with this post may have a different one. i am allowed to feel the way i feel, as are you. i am not trying to change or discredit anyone's opinions just because they're different than mine.

that being said - i will be honest with you, i don't really see where he's disrespected lucy. before you (and whoever else is reading this) jump me, let me explain myself.

tim went through something very difficult and traumatic with the resurgence of his wartime trauma and he made the decision not to involve lucy as he navigated said trauma. while it may not have been the best choice for their relationship, tim made the choice he felt was right in the moment. though we may not agree with it as viewers and lucy may not agree with it as tim's partner, he had the right to do that, and he explained to the best of his ability in the moment that he was keeping her out of the situation to ensure she didn't get hurt/her career wasn't impacted.

to me, that didn't feel disrespectful - it felt like tim relying on his tried and true methods of keeping the people he loves safe from him/the potential danger surrounding him. he was working with the tools he had available, even if they may not be the "right" tools for the job.

like, was it fucked that he ignored her for 36 hours? absolutely! that was disrespectful in some ways - but i think if you zoom out a little, it's not right, but it's understandable.

in the end of 5x07, lucy stops tim in the hallway at the station and asks him to talk to her - and i have seen a bunch of people who are really angry about the way tim handled that convo, so i wonder if that's what you mean by disrespect. generally, a few thoughts about that scene:

lucy approached tim hot - which, let me be clear: she had every right to. she was in her feels all day, she had something she wanted to say to him, and she was already a bit revved up coming to him. but she came into that conversation already looking for something specific, where tim was just...guard down, a little goofily happy to see her, probably a little nervous to talk to her at all.

tim wasn't given the opportunity to say much of anything. lucy asked if they could have "an adult conversation" (patronizing, but i don't blame her for it - he deserved that) and when tim explained he "couldn't give her what she wanted", lucy snapped. i understand the snap - i would've done the same - but tim had no space to continue talking there. that wasn't a conversation. lucy got her opportunity to unload on him a bit, which i think she needed. think about the breakup - lucy didn't get the chance to argue a side there, and tim didn't get the chance to argue a side here. they're equal on that kind of convo now, which i find fascinating.

so, is tim being honest with her and saying he can't give her what she needs right now disrespectful? i don't really think so. i think lucy is looking for something that tim can't give her right now - himself. tim has to sort through all his shit before he can be the best version of himself for lucy - in his tim brain, he doesn't think he can support her fully without working on himself first...and honestly? i think that's noble. lucy is far too close to the picture to see that tim has some really big issues he needs to work on outside of the scope of their relationship. i don't blame her for that, but it's just...true.

she can't be the person to help tim find himself at this point in his life. that's not fair to her or their relationship - so i think he's made the right choice here, as much as it hurts both of them.

i would also be remiss if i didn't mention that i think there's a huge part of this situation that lucy still needs to realize is on her. she has problems of her own, too! girl knows she's not perfect - but she has yet to address her own problems, and i think that's such an issue. tim is taking initiative to resolve his problems, even if it's not in a way that she agrees with. lucy isn't. just like their relationship already had issues, lucy has her own set. this wasn't the defining problem - this was just the straw that broke the camel's back in a lot of ways.

i hope this answers your question tbh bc i feel like i just rambled a bunch - but i'm always up to chat about this kind of stuff, so feel free to come back to me with more if i haven't annoyed you too much 😂

[gnashingwailing]

GIRL (gender neutral) HELP NOT THE PEER REVIEWED HOMOPHOBIA

@fireflywritesgt sending u my ch 24/25 thoughts <3

⬆️How Harry looks processing how upset he is that Joe nearly died in a lake while lovingly making him tea for his hangover

Meanwhile, Joe: I hope sober Joe knows how to deal with this Sober Joe:

First off. this is primarily a reflection on Joe & Harry throughout these last two chapters but I would be remiss not to mention how EXTREMELY fed I am by the Gutters lore ... was HE a pet or was it someone he cared for... either way... woof. Plus Calloway coming to Joe's rescue once again... even though there are now rumors and Gutters saw something. In parallel with the marking scene ... this story does such a great job of balancing the horror with the levity. maybe it's for the best Joe isn't telling Harry the particulars of his visiting Calloway's bcuz Harry might just have a heart attack if he stops and thinks through the implications of all this. Wonder if he realizes how much danger he might have put Joe in... he seems to kinda forgor everything else where saving/supporting Joe is concerned (as seen in ch21 when he wanted to bring Joe to see O'Grady...)

(Btw I love the way (sober) Joe will NEVER admit anything re: Harry saving his life lol. “You just threw me into a curtain 🙄“ “I don’t even remember the turtle 🙄”)

“He knew what the medical journals had to say about homosexuals; hell, he had read them! He had to give himself some credit, however. The little bastard had been drunk as a skunk, lying helplessly in his hand, and the worst Harry had done was march him straight upstairs to tuck him into bed. Whatever pathology Harry himself had, it had not gotten the best of him yet.”

GIRL (gn) HELP NOT THE PEER-REVIEWED INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA… The Harry chapters always hit soooo hard for me when you read between the lines of what he’s thinking. He is SUCH a poor little guy… We can see pretty clearly that Harry thinks of his affections as something poisonous but Also apparently as something predatory? “his pathology” “getting the best of him” being like… what? That he’d take advantage of him because he’s attracted to him ? Is that the kind of thing the research said? UGH IT BREAKS MY HEART. I hope he’ll reject his coping mechanism of rationalizing and dissecting everything and just let go and trust Joe to know what he wants! It would be really tragic if Harry tried rejecting Joe much the same way Georgie rejected him :’(

“Harry, though he hated to admit it, was afraid – not of Joe himself, but what Joe represented.” - OUUUUUGHHH THE PARALLELS… the way Joe thought the exact same thing after the night of the thunderstorm… ouuuuughhhhh save meeee...

And the parallels continue in their tendency to self-harm… Joe may be more overt about it (lol if Harry ever learns that Joe has purposefully eaten poisoned chocolate three. times. and fully thought he was doing it a 4th with Harry’s own offering … #girl…) but Harry’s absolute repression of any self-expression or vulnerability is equally a form of self-harm… questioning Joe’s ability to make his own decisions is such a sad expression of how Harry (maybe unconsciously?) views things — safety and staying alive is worth more than authenticity. Maybe he won’t stick Joe in a cage anymore but he still wants to exert control over him — in the relatable way many of us do when we feel like our loved ones are making bad decisions. And Joe is making some of those! But so does everyone! And in Joe’s case the worst of them are likely driven from years of internalized self-loathing and self-neglect !! He would probably chill out if he just had a good man waiting for him at home……. Taking Harry by the shoulders and shaking him. U are both two sides of the same coin

Except

“Unseasoned. The word crept back into Joe’s mind. Calloway had a point, he realized; Harry wasn’t acting all that different from some of the lesser-experienced boys of Joe’s own size that he had toyed with. Surely, though, Harry didn’t find Joe attractive. That would be absurd!” Holy shit this whole chapter is so good but this part is hysterical. 1. TOYED WITH⁉️ 2. Watching Harry’s brain overheat in real time while 3. Joe getting to enjoy flirting shamelessly (clapping and hollering that he got to do that AND got to be sober to remember it) WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY BEING LIKE 🤨 there’s no way he finds me attractive tho. How do they both manage to be such conniving little bastards and also so innocent. So clever and yet soooo dumb. 💕

But even tho he’s somewhat in disbelief about how Harry feels about him, Joe knows himself so very well lmao. At first I thought he was lying about not remembering their conversation but. I don’t think so. Harry telling him he said “something very nice” to him and Joe being like. Was it that you had a nice ass. LIKE HE WAS THIS 🤏 CLOSE TO THE MARK BDDJSHHD but ALSO even just calling Harry handsome made him a blushing mess!! It fascinates me that Harry is so terrified of receiving affection but he felt much more at ease when he was giving it. I mean, he was calling Joe handsome two chapters ago‼️ I think Joe can be forgiven for his romance-novel-brain idealizing Harry as a seductor. It says something interesting about Harry’s character that he’s been so comfortable complimenting Joe until it might lead somewhere … Is that open, easygoing kindness, the sort that compliments other men readily, the ‘real’ Harry? Was Joe seeing his unvarnished personality before it got hidden under the internalized homophobia that has come out in force since ch22? I get the sense Harry is just the sort of guy whose true feelings sometimes spill out of him in a way he is barely cognizant of. We know that’s true for his anger, but I could see that being true for his affection, too. I’m guessing that is why his internal monologue goes “wow! He’s like a movie star :) and he’s so brave and cool and I respect him so much. He looks like a dancer. And his clothes look so good on him. And I notice his haircut and whether he’s getting enough sleep and every scratch and scrape and other intricacy of his appearance immediately. Yeah, I can’t help but love him - you know - like a brother or a friend!!” 👈 UNSEASONED

"“So you admit it. I’m up here because I manipulated you, and not because you manipulated me.” Joe said." — omfg. On the one hand, I love that these two are so good at unhanding each other, and it’s very cute to me that they’ve both at different points felt proud for “catching” one another. On the other hand, Harry & Joe when they are tasked with cultivating a mutually nurturing and vulnerable relationship:

WHAT IF NEITHER OF YOU ARE MANIPULATING THE OTHER AND DOING THIS BECAUSE YOU LIKE ONE ANOTHER AND YOU’RE BOTH CHOOSING THE UNKNOWN. WHAT IF THAT WASNT BEYOND BOTH UR KEN RN. What then. One day they will quit playing Tom and Jerry-esque mind games with each other but not today. I know the rituals are intricate. I know. I know they’re intricate 😔😔😔

On a lighter note so glad to see Joe’s other go-to behavior is back. If he doesn’t wanna Just Walk Out then he wants to Fuck Around & Find Out <3 I luv how compatible the two of them are… Joe is not only moving in he's turning Harry into the u-haul service and Harry is just enamored with him for it. Faithful hunting dog retrieving game indeed. Submissive in the way a livestock guardian dog is submissive to its sheep. 10/10 Joe got his ass so good.

"“I’m sure you[‘ll listen to me]. You have to. If I’m gonna be the tiny, then it means you have to be the giant and do everything I say all the time.” He said." — Hmm. Joe and I have the same g/t fics bookmarked I think 👍 I sort of get the same sense that Harry got when Joe was talking about “luck” — that maybe the idea of “being the tiny” vs “being the giant” has some cultural connotations for him we don’t quite grasp.

OH this reminds me of the question I meant to ask you and promptly forgot about. If miniatures have a taboo against taking things without giving something in return… what does it feel like for Joe when Harry just keeps giving him stuff? Does “paying me in sleep” really work in borrower cultural norms? Hazarding a guess, I’m assuming romantic partners don’t necessarily operate on the same principle of equivalent exchange… given “Joe’s got a rich boyfriend that’s spoiling him” being something Calloway reads as normal/expected … That is to say. Hmm. Is Harry giving Joe all these things something that a romantic suitor would do? 🤔 Harry the unknowing seductor…

Parting thoughts… Miss Wilkins’ dad suddenly came down with tuberculosis, huh. Gang, do we know how Harry’s mom died, other than that it was sudden and traumatic? How do we think Harry is doing re: pushing all his feelings & unprocessed trauma down at this time. 👍/👎?

[thestarsfightagainstusmyfriend]

Excerpts from letters between Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens that make me cry

[5 December 1778, From Laurens to Hamilton] “Adieu, my dear boy. I shall set out for camp tomorrow.”

This letter is the first correspondence between just Hamilton and Laurens, as opposed to a letter written jointly to or jointly by them, that I could find in the archives. The letter itself is rather unemotional, just a brief letter about Charles Lee’s “Vindication to the Public” but these last two sentences are so gentle compared to the rest of the letter and the phrase “my dear boy” always makes me melt.

[April 1779, From Hamilton to Laurens] “Cold in my professions, warm in ⟨my⟩ friendships, I wish, my Dear Laurens, it m⟨ight⟩ be in my power, by action rather than words, ⟨to⟩ convince you that I love you. I shall only tell you that ’till you bade us Adieu, I hardly knew the value you had taught my heart to set upon you. Indeed, my friend, it was not well done. You know the opinion I entertain of mankind, and how much it is my desire to preserve myself free from particular attachments, and to keep my happiness independent on the caprice of others. You sh⟨ould⟩ not have taken advantage of my sensibility to ste⟨al⟩ into my affections without my consent. But as you have done it and as we are generally indulgent to those we love, I shall not scruple to pardon the fraud you have committed, on condition that for my sake, if not for your own, you will always continue to merit the partiality, which you have so artfully instilled into ⟨me⟩.”

I would be absolutely remiss if I did not include this paragraph, arguably the most famous of any correspondence between the two. I can recite this paragraph from memory but I’m still never going to be able to be normal about this. “by action rather than words, to convince you that I love you” always gets me because it refers both to the physical distance between the two men, but also Hamilton’s inability to love Laurens openly and freely like he wishes he could, even when they are physically together. And how he says he wishes he could CONVINCE Laurens that he loves him, like Laurens has a hard time believing he could be loved omfg. And the teasing way that he goes about blaming Laurens for tricking him into falling in love with him like it’s so adorable??? I could talk about this letter for ages, and I might delve further into it in its own post because I have So Many Thoughts.

[14 July 1779, From Laurens to Hamilton] “Ternant will relate to you how many violent struggles I have had between duty and inclination—how much my heart was with you, while I appeared to be most actively employed here—”

It’s so funny to me that Hamilton’s way of expressing his affection while physically separated from Laurens is to pledge his undying love and tease him relentlessly while Laurens is just like “I tried to pretend I wasn’t thinking about you but apparently I’m too obvious 🙄🙄🙄” like it’s too cute.

[11 September 1779, From Hamilton to Laurens] I acknowlege but one letter from you, since you left us, of the 14th of July which just arrived in time to appease a violent conflict between my friendship and my pride. I have written you five or six letters since you left Philadelphia and I should have written you more had you made proper return. But like a jealous lover, when I thought you slighted my caresses, my affection was alarmed and my vanity piqued. I had almost resolved to lavish no more of them upon you and to reject you as an inconstant and an ungrateful ——. But you have now disarmed my resentment and by a single mark of attention made up the quarrel. You must at least allow me a large stock of good nature.”

I find this so fucking funny like Hamilton literally admits that he wrote FIVE OR SIX LETTERS and got all mad that Laurens wasn’t writing him back but forgave him literally immediately. The way he compares himself to a “jealous lover” and his letters “caresses” like?? Something about this letter is just too fucking funny to me.

[8 January 1780, From Hamilton to Laurens] “I have strongly sollicited leave to go to the Southward. It could not be refused; but arguments have been used to dissuade me from it, which however little weight they may have had in my judgment gave law to my feelings. I am chagrined and unhappy but I submit. In short Laurens I am disgusted with every thing in this world but yourself…”

This quote is from a pretty depressing letter where Hamilton says he doesn’t believe that he should be nominated for a commission which Laurens was favored for, rejected, and then suggested Hamilton for. He says he believes he is the least qualified, he tells Laurens that he made an effort to go Southward (where Laurens is) but was dissuaded from it, and then goes on to make a rather depressing remark that he hates everything but Laurens and a few other honest men and that he wishes to “make a brilliant exit” from life, and that he doesn’t feel “fit for this terrestreal Country.” 

[30 March 1780, From Hamilton to Laurens] “Adieu my Dear; I am sure you will exert yourself to save your country; but do not unnecessarily risk one of its most valuable sons. Take as much care of yourself as you ought for the public sake and for the sake of Yr. affectionate A. Hamilton”

I find this quote so sweet. Mind you, Laurens injured himself in EVERY battle he ever fought in, and Hamilton had to witness a lot of it firsthand. The way he gently asks Laurens to Please Please Please Don’t Be An Idiot And Die Please I’m Serious is so sweet. It reminds me of “That Would Be Enough” when Eliza says “The fact that you’re alive is a miracle / Just stay alive, that would be enough”

[30 July 1780] The archive reads: “[Laurens] Has executed Hamilton’s commission by arranging for a tailor to make a hat for him”

I don’t even know why I find this so cute.

[12 September 1780, From Hamilton to Laurens] “I hate Congress—I hate the army—I hate the world—I hate myself. The whole is a mass of fools and knaves; I could almost except you and Meade. Adieu”

Very reminiscent of  “In short Laurens I am disgusted with every thing in this world but yourself…” The first sentence of this letter kills me too. He apologizes that the two have not written each other much recently, and assumes that one of his letters to Laurens must have not been delivered but I feel like it’s so obvious that Laurens is ignoring him after Hamilton told him that he was getting married… like Laurens is literally on house arrest, it’s not like he’s too busy to write…

[16 September 1780, From Hamilton to Laurens] “In spite of Schuylers black eyes, I have still a part for the public and another for you; so your impatience to have me married is misplaced; a strange cure by the way, as if after matrimony I was to be less devoted than I am now. Let me tell you, that I intend to restore the empire of Hymen and that Cupid is to be his prime Minister. I wish you were at liberty to transgress the bounds of Pensylvania. I would invite you after the fall to Albany to be witness to the final consummation. My Mistress is a good girl, and already loves you because I have told her you are a clever fellow and my friend; but mind, she loves you a l’americaine not a la françoise. Adieu, be happy, and let friendship between us be more than a name.”

THIS FUCKING LETTER OMFG so much to unpack. He reassures Laurens that while he loves Eliza publicly, he is still devoted to him, and he implies that Laurens has been encouraging him to find a wife to CURE HIM OF HIS AFFECTIONS FOR LAURENS??? And I can’t even… Hamilton straight up invites him to watch him deflower his wife on his wedding night I can’t even get into that. This whole fucking letter…

[11 October 1780, From Hamilton to Laurens] “In one of the visits I made to [John André] (and I saw him several times during his confinement) he begged me to be the bearer of a request to the General for permission, to send an open letter to Sir Henry Clinton. “I foresee my fate (said he) and though I pretend not to play the hero, or to be indifferent about life; yet I am reconciled to whatever may happen, conscious that misfortune, not guilt, has brought it upon me. There is only one thing that disturbs my tranquillity—Sir Henry Clinton has been too good to me; he has been lavish of his kindness. I am bound to him by too many obligations and love him too well to bear the thought, that he should reproach himself, or that others should reproach him, on the supposition of my having conceived myself obliged by his instructions to run the risk I did. I would not for the world leave a sting in his mind, that should embitter his future days.” He could scarce finish the sentence, bursting into tears, in spite of his efforts to suppress them; and with difficulty collected himself enough afterwards to add, “I wish to be permitted to assure him, I did not act under this impression, but submitted to a necessity imposed upon me as contrary to my own inclination as to his orders.” His request was readily complied with, and he wrote the letter annexed, and with which I dare say, you will ⟨be as⟩ much pleased as I am both for the dic⟨tion⟩ and sentiment.”

This literally isn’t even everything he told Laurens about André. He is absolutely enamored with André and I find it so funny he thought it necessary to write this all to Laurens.

[4 February 1781, From Hamilton to Laurens] “Adieu ⟨my⟩ beloved friend. Do justice to my ⟨regard⟩ for you. Assure yourself that ⟨it is⟩ impossible more a[r]dently to wis⟨h for your⟩ health safety pleasure and success ⟨than⟩ I do.”

Just one of a thousand examples of Hamilton trying desperately to convince Laurens that he cares about him.

[This is the final sentence in Laurens’ final letter to Hamilton, written a month or so before his death, J. C. Hamilton didn’t give an exact date when publishing] “Adieu, my dear friend; while circumstances place so great a distance between us, I entreat you not to withdraw the consolation of your letters. You know the unalterable sentiments of your affectionate Laurens.”

YOUR AFFECTIONATE LAURENS that always makes me teary-eyed because Laurens is nowhere near as affectionate as Hamilton in any of his letters but the last thing he tells Hamilton is that he will always be Hamilton’s “affectionate Laurens” like it makes me so emotional.

[This is from the end of Hamilton’s final letter to Laurens, written about two weeks before Laurens died] “Quit your sword my friend, put on the toga, come to Congress. We know each others sentiments, our views are the same: we have fought side by side to make America free, let us hand in hand struggle to make her happy… Yrs for ever, A Hamilton”

SO MUCH ABOUT THIS JUST GUTS ME like the way Hamilton implores Laurens to stop fighting and join him when less than two weeks later Laurens would die in battle and the YRS FOR EVER LIKE I can’t handle this I had to go take a little break to cry.

[npdmonoma]

Can "narcissistic abuse" be something we consider outside of people with NPD? I don't believe in PDs at all as someone who's been diagnosed with one, and I'm very anti psychiatry. However mechanisms of what's described as "narcissistic abuse" are real phenomena and I'm wondering if we can address these situations without linking it to a diagnosis or condemning people as permanently and irreparably broken because they're making those choices in one context

Actually read some more posts on your blog and I think I found an answer that satisfies me in this topic ... I think the move forward would be to unlink certain constellations of behavior (gaslighting, DARVO, etc.) From having a PD. Honestly recognizing that someone who abused me was likely struggling with NPD made it easier to find empathy for them but I still had questions in my mind about how to address this specific pattern

I added your second ask here so I can address them both at the same time. Starting with your statement about not believing in personality disorders due to being anti-psychiatry, this is a statement I both do and don't agree with. All mental health diagnoses are created by psychiatrists by observing patterns of behavior that they label as aberrant and give a name to. So in that sense, they're "not real" because NPD isn't some objective observable thing. However, as long as anyone finds value in using that framework to understand themselves and hopefully begin healing, it should continue to exist as a concept. I personally find incredible value in the diagnosis, and have made significant strides toward healing and becoming a better person since I started applying that concept to myself.

That being said, I do believe in psychiatric abolition. What you said about not labeling people as inherently broken is part of my dissatisfaction with the state of mental healthcare. People with personality disorders can heal, even if our disorders never fully leave us. There's also reason to believe that the idea that personality disorders almost never go into full remission is either partially or fully false. Either way, we aren't broken. Or at least, we aren't required to view ourselves as such.

Second, you're absolutely correct that the things that get labeled as "narcissistic abuse" are real phenomena. I have never, and will never, deny that people who call themselves narcissistic abuse survivors have experienced abuse. I honestly believe that they did. However, those phenomena aren't inherently linked to NPD. I have yet to see an example of "narcissistic abuse" that wasn't just a textbook example of (usually emotional) abuse. There is no need to call it narcissistic, you can just call it abuse. That's what it is.

And yes, you're very correct that we need to disconnect patterns of abuse from personality disorders. We shouldn't be linking any mental illness/neurodivergence to abusive behavior. All that does is cause stigma that leads to people being hated for something they can't really control, and something that oftentimes was done to them. I don't deserve to be hated for what my abusers turned me into. No one does.

I'm glad you were able to find understanding and empathy for your abuser, as that seems to have been healing for you. I'm genuinely happy for you. However, the fact that in your case you learned something about your abuser that gave you context for what happened doesn't mean that thing is inherently linked to abuse in general. My father was likely autistic, and I can see how this played into his abuse of me. And yet, I would never say he abused me autistically, because he didn't. He just abused me. There are abusers in every demographic that exists, but that doesn't mean that the entire demographic gets discarded. People who have never abused anyone don't deserve to be called abusers, especially when they're abuse victims themselves.

Thank you for your curiosity and for having an open mind about this. I appreciate you taking the time to think this through, and I'm glad I was able to help in some way. My apologies if I went over something you already figured out for yourself, but I figured it was best to be thorough.

[bsd-cherish-official]

So, it’s October 20th — a date that as far as this blog and especially Cherish’s author and first artist is concerned, is practically some sort of international holiday.

I wanted to have something much more substantial than these two tiny rough sketches out by the time the date rolled around, but as you all know, I’ve been quite busy with all the Cherish content I’ve been wanting to release for this month, so this is the best I can do for the moment, until I have the time to more properly clean them up and color them.

There’s a whole lot that I could say on a day like this — a lot of thoughts in my head just itching to find their way out onto the post, but I think that saying some of it would be a bit premature without first lining up all my proverbial ducks in a row, and I want to keep this post mostly lighthearted, anyway.

So…for now let me say this.

In the past I’ve made posts talking about how just precious and irreplaceable of a character BSD Arthur is, of his sweetness, of his kindness, of his gentleness and selflessness, and how dearly I love him and am glad he came to exist through the series.

All of this could not be more true, and I think that my intense interest and love and respect for him as a character still — all these five years and seven plus months later from the day I learned of him — should speak volumes about just how unique and incredible of character he is, despite his confinement to mostly only two light novels in official canon.

He is a wellspring from which my blog was primarily born and on which it still runs today, with no sign of drying up — a topic I could continue to talk of for ages.

…And yet, I would also be remiss not to mention the real life 19th Century poet of the same name upon which he was heavily and inseparably based, and to which we owe the entirety of his existence.

I had said once in passing that I wished a happy birthday to the tragic disaster of a human being that was him, but in hindsight, I don’t think that such words carry even half the weight that I wish to evoke when I say that I want to celebrate his birthday, too.

I know that a lot of people when they talk about BSD will wish the irl namesakes of their favorite characters a happy birthday, and I feel like my well wishes in the past also came off in this same way as many of them mean it: “Here’s an obligatory celebration of your existence because without you, this character couldn’t have been”…but the thing is, that in no way sums up how I feel about the situation at all.

Maybe, in the early days of my research into the author, it might have been like that, but it is not anymore. And it is not just as a poet, but most especially as a human being, that I wish to see and partake in Arthur’s birthday celebrated.

My lengthy and dedicated research over the years has taught me that at heart and in truth he was actually not this heartless, needlessly cold, absurdly cruel and gratuitously offensive, irredeemable little shit “everyone would hate if we met him today” that we see sensationalized in the various forms of media and clickbait articles, but rather, just a deeply troubled teenager who from a very young age continuously suffered through some of the worst shit imaginable, surrounded by terrible people and circumstances in a time where he quite frankly didn’t belong and in which the odds of his chances at finding genuine happiness and peace were almost nil from birth. Yes, he made many mistakes and sometimes did things that were definitely not quite right — he was absolutely as flawed a human being as you or I, but not more flawed, not evil. Once he broke free from the people who made his life hell, he became a perfectly decent and average — though withdrawn, emotionally devastated, and creatively burnt out and defeated — adult.

And it is to him — the tortured soul who yearned for more than the unlucky cards he was dealt, who dared to dream but whose dreams burnt up in the atmosphere and left him just a shadow quietly navigating the world he didn’t want to live in until his premature death — that I reach out to today, and on every day and every time that I write Cherish.

If I could reach out to the past and just give him a hug, tell him that he and his works are loved and heard and remembered by people that will not be born for decades — even centuries — after he has passed, and that he is not alone, then I would in a heartbeat. But since I cannot, all of this will just have to be enough.

Happy Birthday, Arthur Rimbaud. Both you and your BSD self. I’m so far beyond glad that you were born.

[bakerstreetbabble]

Review: Enola Holmes 2 (Netflix)

Several weeks ago, my family sat down to watch Netflix's Enola Holmes 2. For those who may not have heard of the Enola Holmes franchise, the films are based on a series of young adult novels by Nancy Springer, which feature a young protagonist named Enola Holmes, the younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes. Enola's name, as the reader may already suspect, is the word "alone" spelled backwards. In the films, Enola is played by the excellent British actress, Millie Bobby Brown, who became famous due to her role as Eleven in the very popular Netflix series, Stranger Things. We had all watched the first Enola Holmes film, and we had all thoroughly enjoyed it, so our expectations for the second film were quite high. I am pleased to report that our expectations were absolutely met!

First of all, Millie Bobby Brown continues to be a delight in her role as the title character. She's an intelligent, feisty young woman, with deductive capabilities that rival those of her big brother, Sherlock (played in the films by British actor Henry Cavill). One fun little convention in the films is Enola's penchant for "breaking the fourth wall" and addressing the camera (and thus, the viewer) directly from time to time. As the father of two daughters, both of whom are loving this series of films, I am especially pleased to see a young female character being portrayed as strong and intelligent. Enola displays those qualities in spades.

Although the films tend to play a bit fast and loose with the historical period surrounding the plot, I don't think they are much different from Arthur Conan Doyle's stories in that respect. Viewers will almost certainly be aware of more multiculturalism (particularly in the casting), but from my point of view, this enhances the world of the film, even if it's not strictly historically accurate. One prominent plot thread in Enola Holmes 2 deals with feminism and union organization among workers in a match factory, which I'm fairly certain was more or less unknown during the Victorian period. (However, if anyone knows of any feminist or unionist movements in the period of which I'm unaware, I'd love to hear from you!)

I should say a word about Henry Cavill's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. If you watch the films, you will see a Holmes who is supposed to be a bit younger than he is when Conan Doyle introduces him in A Study in Scarlet. Thus, Cavill plays Holmes as a bit more "human" than we often see him in other adaptations. He is not overly emotional, but he is also not quite the calculating deductive machine who is often presented. Moreover, keeping in mind that Enola is the main character, and Sherlock is a supporting role, I found Cavill's portrayal to be quite effective. Some Sherlockian "purists" may find the revision of Sherlock's back story disappointing, especially at the end of this film (which I will not spoil here). I found it entertaining.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention the performance of Helena Bonham Carter as Eudoria Holmes, mother to  Sherlock and Enola (Mycroft does not appear in this film, although he did appear in the first one, as a rather unpleasant character). As in the first film, she turned in what I found to be a wonderful performance. I had read shortly after the first film came out that some significantly more conservative viewers were outraged by Eudoria Holmes shirking what they saw as her duties and responsibilities as a mother. (One Roman Catholic priest apparently found the first Enola Holmes film to be one of the most "evil" films he'd seen.) I, personally, do not share that outrage. Indeed, Eudoria Holmes's strengths (and weaknesses) as a mother contribute to her progeny's unique talents in the deductive arena.

Finally, as the second Enola Holmes film did not have to concern itself with quite as much exposition as the first film did, I feel like the main plot, and the mystery contained therein, was a bit better than the first film. Indeed, when the film was over, we all felt that we had enjoyed this installment even more than its predecessor! I would certainly recommend the movie to all fans of Sherlock Holmes, as well as anyone who enjoys a good, entertaining action/mystery story.

[silenceforetold]

Why was Killmonger so relatable?

With the social climate being as it is, I feel the need to share a small analysis that I had written in 2018 regarding the Marvel superhero movie Black Panther, it’s villain Killmonger, and why it seemed that numerous Black Americans held sympathy and even relatability towards the character. I have slightly edited it for the sake of better clarification, but have not added anything additional to my original message.

If you have not seen Black Panther, I highly recommend the watch, and also would like to warn you that the post below contains mild plot spoilers.

As you read, I ask that you keep in mind the fundamental truth that it is possible to sympathize with and even agree with some points made by a villain while also simultaneously holding them accountable and objecting to their methods. By no means do I wish to glorify or romanticize Killmonger (nor was the intent of Marvel or Disney when they characterized him), but I would be remiss to deny the very real place in which the character was built from. The foundation in which Killmonger was based on is a very real issue within the United States that social justice and civil rights activists continue to diligently combat.

Please, do not use the character Killmonger and some people’s ability to sympathize with him as justification for anti-Blackness or to vilify important social movements like Black Lives Matter.

The thing you need to understand about people liking the character Erik “Killmonger” Stevens, despite the fact he’s the villain, is this: His character is relatable to a lot of Blacks in a lot of generations. Sadly, people getting shot is all too common in poorer Black enclaves (also commonly referred to as “hoods” or “ghettos”), and I think it’s not too far fetched to say that many Blacks in America have directly or indirectly known someone who’s been a victim to some type of violence in the hood. More importantly, all Blacks have been victims to systemic, systematic, and general racism in some way or another; not to mention the events of Ferguson and so many Blacks having been shot down by police. As such, the general situation in America with Blacks is highly tense and oppressive with Blacks still feeling shooed aside. Like Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “a riot is the language of the unheard.” Dr. King did not agree with rioting, but he made sure to state that he would not condemn it because he comprehended why riots occurred in the first place. In comes Killmonger, a direct product of all that tension, frustration, and exasperation as well as of the inaction of others - their only justification for not reaching out to help being a blatant “well, it wasn’t affecting us, it’s not our fight”. Killmonger was faced with violence at a young age, and he continued to grow up in violence due to location (Oakland) as well as the color of his skin. At a certain point, people become numb to violence like it’s second nature. You can get so numb that everything except for your desire to survive, even your morals and integrity, get tossed out the window. Preservation becomes your only goal for life, and as such you’re willing to sacrifice absolutely everything for it. Killmonger’s story is close to home for a lot of Blacks because he symbolizes that hopelessness, bitterness, and defeated feeling that many Blacks are faced with. His intention was not from a place of evil, he wanted Blacks to be able to rise up like a phoenix from the ashes. However, his methods are what damned him and even more damning was the fact that he had been so numbed from violence that he became just like his own oppressors. Violence is a circle like that. Despite Killmonger being the villain, it is imperative to recognize that T’Challa, to some degrees, came to a place of agreeing with some of his message. He recognized the validity in Killmonger’s mission, which is what led to his internal conflict and to him questioning the tradition of Wakanda. It is a vital part of Black Panther that the characters and audience recognize exactly what Killmonger was, and what T’Challa ultimately realized: We create our own monsters. Think about that the next time you criticize events like Ferguson or the Black Lives Matter movement - in which it should be noted that those were not violent, but some violent individuals took advantage of and used the movement to claim legitimacy. That, however, is a conversation for another time. Think about that the next time you try to justify inaction and disinterest with ‘it doesn’t affect me’. “In the End, we will remember not the words of our Enemies, but the silence of our Friends.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

In rereading my own analysis, I would like to revisit the complexity of villainy presented within Black Panther to point out that, while it is understood by viewers that Wakanda is the heroic and shining example, the film places both Wakanda (particularly the Wakandan nobles in power) and Killmonger in a grey area. Returning to the point within my original analysis, T’Challa recognized the harm of Wakanda’s and his father’s inaction with the problems that African and Black diaspora face. It is this realization that Killmonger has valid arguments and valid anger that leads into T’Challa’s understanding that Wakanda must undergo social and political change.

T’Challa actively expresses his disappointment in his father and in the Wakandan government, acknowledging the pain and suffering that his country contributed to with the decision to remain passive and “neutral”, at best, or toxically self-preserving, at worst.

All in all, I would go so far as to claim that Black Panther is an exceptional example of the complexity of humanity as well as serves an important reminder that sometimes villainy and heroism are not clear-cut black and white.

[martian-martian-martian]

🍰💖 do both this time /lh

💖What do you like best about your own writing?

This is a bit silly but -- that it makes me laugh.

I usually include jokes and situations in my work because they? genuinely amuse me! And reading back, when I can stomach it, I get a lot of joy out of feeling like a joke landed, or that I got timing right or described something in a really amusing way.

I also really like that I think I care about character a lot. I love to show who a person is in little things; what they like to eat and drink, how they spend their free time, what they choose to wear and how they wear it. I love describing the spaces people inhabit-- bedrooms, offices-- what do they surround themselves with. I believe that soul is encapsulated in a bunch of small aspects.

Lastly I would say I'm proud of the research I do, specifically regarding past eras. Historical accuracy mean a lot to me, but I also cherish nostalgia as a central part of my work. If a character is watching TV or eating cereal, I'm going to make sure that show or brand is true to the world I've put my story in.

🍰What are some comfort fics of yours?

I got a few classics. A lot of what makes a 'comfort' fic of mine comes down to things I actually enjoy reading and often admire, and use as goalposts for my own work. When you can enjoy a fic like literature, and it lets you see characters in a new light, you keep coming back.

This is sort of an honorable mention but I read a lot of NorriBeth fics back in the day on fanfiction.net. It's a favorite ship I always treasured, and I still stand by it, even if learning that Keira Knightly's age was much younger than her character's was a bit of a 'woof' moment (17 vs 19, I know it's not a lot but geez, UK age of consent, cmon now...). So many of my favorite fics are literally lost either to time or to the deteriorating watery grave of the FFN platform, but they forever have my heart.

Of the ones that survived Davy Jones' Locker, I adored Bound in her bones by snowbryneich.

A 27 chapter masterpiece of romantic tension, featuring a realistic take on arranged marriage of convenience to lovers with an empowered and relatable Elizabeth, a Darcyesque Norrington, an perfect historical accuracy to the nines. I was fucking riveted, and the same author did a couple other great ones, such as 'Fresh As A BrideGroom'. Other than that, I would be remiss to answer this without touching on one of my all time favorite fics, In A Strange Land by @mrs-evadne-cake, a phenominal writer who I'm sure is tired of both the Stranger Things fandom at large and also me, this specific fanfic author greenhorn, continually singing her praises. It almost embarasses me to gush MORE about it, especially since the author is an honest to god professional. I've written on it before, it's well paced, well crafted, terrifying, and exceptional use of every character. The kids are well written and adorable, the teens are nuanced and REAL in a way the show never grasped. There's enough Steve to sate my voracious need to watch his character development, and I even got a bit of Murray who is probably my weirdest blorbo of all time. If a fic is a weapon, this fic is a mythic one-of-a-kind sword, OP is a legendary dwarven blacksmith, and i am an awestruck lil hobbit apprentice hastily scribbling notes. If I had to rate my favorite Stranger Things seasons it would go like this: 1. Season 3

2. In A Strange Land

3. Season 2

4. Season 1

5. Season 4

That's all I have to say about that.

Third space I would say is a tie between : Praise You by HeartlessMemo, which is a master class on erotica and plus size bodies, but speaks to me personally as a bulimic and will likely touch anyone with body issues. It's hot, it's passionate, it's kinky as hell. Nandermo from WWDITS at its absolute best.

And the other one is A Bastard's Carol by scumbaganarchy @scumbaganarchy, who I have been honored to get to know as of late! What the hell do you want me to say. It's 'A Christmas Carol' with the entire Rik Mayall cinematic universe. Not only is funny, but it's also touching, genuinely heartwarming, treats all these bizarre characters like real, breathing people. I cozy up to it every holiday when I can with a hot drink, it's a true classic and just goes to show that passion and creative understanding of any fandom no matter how niche can produce something really meaningful. This fic is the pride of the 1980s Bitish Anarchocomedy Fandom of the modern era, and any Young Ones (or Bottom) fan should give it a look.

[lattehearted]

OTPs + nOTPs + byleth!

send  "OTPs  +  nOTPs  +  [a  muse  name]"  for  me  to  list  out  my  favourite  pairings,  and  the  pairings  i  am  not  interested  in,  for  that  muse.

whoo boy.

okay so the thing is with fire emblem protags especially, there's a very thin line between genuinely thinking they should be with a person and me, christina, liking that character and wanting to court them.

that being said, I'm generally pretty open with byleth? i think they're so curious and amiable once given the space to open up that i can make a lot of ships make sense. But some of my favorites:

OTPs:

out of the house leaders/lords? sorry not sorry, claudeleth supremacy. they just?? god I could go on and on about claude going from 'how can i use their power to aid me' to 'what i wanted was to see that new world with you by my side.' i think they help each other, lean on each other, and grow to be better people together in a way that feels much more organic over the course of the game. they make me absolutely feral and always will.

BUT as anyone who follows my personal blog knows, i love me some huleth. if there's one thing i love more than liege x retainer, it's suspicious retainer x character who wins them over with their continued loyalty to the cause. hubert's a support rewrote my brain chemistry and his s support is one of the only ones i can quote verbatim, in its entirety. i have such strong feelings that for my first 4 CF runs, i kept to a very strict quad - byleth, edelgard, hubert, and dorothea could Only marry each other for a while because that particular quad is so so good. i think there's really great chemistry with all four of them in all combos and it felt weird the first time i had to split them up for completionist reasons.

unexpectedly? i have SUCH a soft spot for byleth and balthus. i think there's something really sweet in their supports, in balthus being one of the first people to challenge byleth's complacency in the path laid before them, long before they had to worry about running an entire nation / religious institution. AND one of the first things byleth does after the war is secure the safety of kupala. like we don't know how soon after the final battle their s support takes place but still, clearly it was a matter of priority for byleth to do that for him. they're just? they're fun, they're a lot of fun.

NOTPs:

i'm not gonna elaborate because of The Disk Horse™ but those who know me know my feelings on the subject so i'm simply gonna say: byleth and r.hea.

also not something i see a lot because i'm sure people feel similarly but because he's technically an option, i'm just gonna mention our boy cyril. i appreciate his time skip design because i've played plenty of games where the younger eligibles look about 12 and he looks believably of age. BUT he does look 12 in part one and that's...weird. nope, not for me, gonna shove him at lysie or petra or ashe and call it a day.

and not a notp by any stretch, i'm always open to trying it, but i'd be remiss if i didn't mention that the fandom at large has kind of soured me on d.imileth. i follow some GREAT dimas and would love to explore things with them, please make me see the light, i used to like them! but uh...yeah, i strongly dislike a lot of the popular takes on them oops

[kamikanlupanari]

Hey, I saw your post about Li-Fraumeni syndrome. I just learned about it today bc my grandmother was diagnosed with it and my mom is absolutely horrified that she might have it and is scheduled to get tested soon. The genealogist isn't actually certain if it's genetic in my grandma's case but doesn't have any other leads, hence my mother getting tested.

If my mother has it, then there's a 50% chance that I could have it. I can't lie, I am devastated and scared shitless. I don't want to die young or continuously battle cancer throughout my life. I'm also scared of the changes I'll have to make to my body in order to survive—like getting a double mastectomy, for instance. (Not that there's anything wrong with people who get or want them btw!! I'm just feminine and genuinely enjoy this part of my body.)

I am so scared and have no idea what to do. I'm sorry for dumping this on you, but do you happen to have any advice for me?

I'm really sorry to hear about that. If I could give you a hug, I would. Cancer is always scary, whether it's a family member or yourself. My mom was already in remission for Lymphoma and Breast Cancer before they discovered the genetic aspect that prompted testing for my siblings and I, and then had a brain tumor removed last year. And even then, my sister was diagnosed with Breast Cancer shortly after coming up negative for Li-Fraumeni, so even that's never a guarantee, I'm afraid.

For my case, I was always afraid regardless that I would get some kind of cancer just because I've had several family members on both sides die from cancer - if I did get it, it'd be caught too late kind of fears. Being diagnosed with Li-Fraumeni just meant that my doctor and I had a genuine reason to get frequent screenings ordered for scheduling. So instead of the every 5 years or as needed that would've been before, I get some form of preventative screening every year (usually an MRI with contrast), along with the surgeries I personally had always wanted regardless without having to argue and find a justification for them. (In that way, I'm in the opposite boat as you; I wanted the surgeries, but am certainly not gonna judge anyone for NOT wanting them.)

And, honestly, that's really the best advice I have for you. If you and your mother do come up positive, though I certainly hope not, then don't treat it as a guarantee that you'll get cancer and die from it, but as a reason for you and your doctor to work together to get those frequent early screenings scheduled to catch anything that does start to grow before it goes out of control. And if your doctor isn't willing to help you with that, then you find a different doctor who will. Even if you come up negative for the genetic test, if you one day feel something is wrong with your body, you fight for yourself to get whatever tests are needed to find the reason why. My mom's Lymphoma almost didn't get caught in time because her old doctor kept saying it was her diabetes or her weight that was keeping her from keeping any food down for weeks, if not months. Getting that second opinion and the tests saved her life. I hate to think of that happening to anyone else, but unfortunately it does happen pretty frequently for some people.

I rambled a bit here, but that's truly the best I can offer. Regardless of whether the tests come up positive or negative, just listen to your body if something starts to feel wrong, and find a doctor who will then listen to you and work with you to keep you healthy, in whatever way that means to you.

My best to you and your family. I really do hope you get good news, and have a wonderful year.

[storiesforallfandoms]

inspirational ~ corpse husband

word count: 1589

request?: yes!

“Hi! I was wondering if you could do a corpse husband imagine where the reader has a feeding tube? If you can’t that’s perfectly fine, I just haven’t been able to find one yet.”

description: in which the group plays with a popular streamer that has a feeding tube and corpse tells her how much she inspires him

pairing: corpse x female!reader

warnings: swearing, mentions of chronic pain and cancer, also i only know a little bit about feedings tubes, i tried to do research in order to make myself more familiar but if there’s a lot of inaccuracies or anything i am very sorry i’m gonna try my best

masterlist (one, two)

Corpse listened to his friends shouting at one another to accuse each other of being sus. As usual, there was no use in trying to get a word in. Corpse spoke so softly that no one would even hear him unless they wanted to hear what he was saying.

“(Y/N)!” Toast suddenly exclaimed. “You’re being very quiet right now.”

“Because my damn tube is mixed up in my headphone wires!” (Y/N) exclaimed, sounding like she was far away from her mic. The group chuckled and continued with their conversation about who they thought the imposter was.

(Y/N) was a known Twitch streamer and YouTuber that rose to popularity when she started a series on her YouTube channel to show her journey through cancer treatments. Long before his own sudden boom in popularity, Corpse had watched all of her videos and became invested in her Twitch streams as well. Being someone who also struggled with chronic illness and pain, Corpse felt a sense of hope watching (Y/N) go through her treatment and still seem to optimistic in life and so productive in her YouTube and Twitch channels.

When Toast messaged the Amigops group to ask if anyone wanted to join his Among Us lobby with (Y/N), Corpse jumped at the chance. He hadn’t had much time to speak with her alone, but he was hoping to be able to tell her how much watching her content lifted him up during his worst times.

The meeting ended with no one being voted and brought them back to the office of the Polus map. Since they were playing with proximity chat, the argument from the meeting immediately continued with Rae and Toast warning everyone to stay away from Sean, who they were susing at the second imposter after already voting out Charlie.

Corpse watched (Y/N)’s pink astronaut run out of the office, silent amongst the chaos. He waited a moment before deciding to follow her, hoping he could meet her somewhere alone so he could talk to her.

He ran into O2 and noticed a pink bean in the boiler room stood by the water wheels. He ran in and stood in the doorway a moment before speaking.

“Hello (Y/N).”

“Ah fuck!” (Y/N) exclaimed. “Corpse! Don’t scare me like that!”

Corpse chuckled. “Sorry, I’ll warn you next time.”

“Are you here to kill me?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m okay with that. I feel like being killed by Corpse Husband in Among Us is like a rite of passage at this point.”

Corpse slowly approached (Y/N) to which she quickly ran away from him to the other water wheel. He laughed again before assuring her, “I’m not an imposter, you can trust me.”

“I don’t think I can, but I will choose to trust,” she told him.

“I actually came looking for you because I wanted to talk to you.”

“What did you want to talk about?”

There were so many things running through Corpse’s mind. He just wanted to blurt out everything he had thought about (Y/N) and her story, to thank her for giving him hope, to tell her what an inspiration she was. But his words caught in his throat and he struggled to get anything out.

Finally, he said, “What’s it like trying to be a streamer with your...with the um...”

“The feeding tube?” (Y/N) finished for him. “You can say it, Corpse. It’s not exactly a secret.”

He sighed, glad that she had a joking tone about it. “Yeah, with the feeding tube.”

“It’s annoying,” (Y/N) admitted. “Like...I’m assuming you’ve seen my streams or my videos but for the sake of anyone watching your stream who hasn’t: I have a nasogastric feeding tube, or an NG-tube, which is a feeding tube that goes in through the nose. As cliché as it is, just picture Hazel Grace from the Fault in our Stars. Additional cliché, I have it because I had cancer and the treatments left me so malnourished that I need a feeding tube even after I’ve gone into remission. So, because it’s tubes that are connected in my nose, I keep getting my headphone wires tangled in my tube or, very rarely, my mic wires, and it’s fucking annoying. It hurts like a bitch when I go to stand up and I yank the wires  by accident or something.”

“Does...does anything else hurt? Because of the cancer or the treatment or anything?”

“Not as much as it used to. I went into remission like nearly a year ago, so I’m doing better. It’s a process, but it’s had an amazing outcome in the end so I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“I find you really inspirational,” Corpse finally blurted.

He felt his face heat up with slight embarrassment as (Y/N) giggled. “You do?”

“Yeah. I followed your series about your recovery and I’ve watched some of your livestreams every now and then. What always stood out to me was when you talked about the negative side effects of your treatment, and eventually having to put the feeding tube in and how you’ve found that effects you, too. Being someone with chronic illness and constant pain, I’ve also had those days where it feels like even getting out of bed is too much work and I don’t feel like I can stream or make a video, but then my anxiety tells me that everyone is going to forget about me if I don’t make some type of content, so it’s just an internal struggle when really I should be resting.”

“Being a content creator and having an illness is tough,” (Y/N) agreed. “It feels like you can’t take a day off. I sometimes regret making that series because on days that I felt absolutely awful, I didn’t want to film or edit anything, but I felt like I had to because so many people were watching. Ironically enough, that became the topic of one of those videos; I just sat in front of my camera looking the worst I think I’ve ever looked on camera and talked about how exhausted I felt just from being alive, but felt like I couldn’t rest because of my channel. That’s when I started taking longer breaks between videos and streaming. Your fans won’t leave you, not the true fans anyways. They’ll always be by your side even if you decide to disappear from the Internet forever.”

Corpse half smiled to himself. “I’ve thought about doing that sometimes.”

“It’ll be easy for you to do that where you’re faceless. No one would bother you even after you left the Internet cause they’d have no idea it was you unless you spoke.”

A brief pause in their conversation caused them to hear Sean yelling as he ran past the room. (Y/N) giggled and walked out of the room. Corpse followed, hoping to continue the conversation somewhere else.

“It means a lot to me that you think that about me, though,” (Y/N) continued as she ran into the storage room. “I find you pretty inspirational too.”

This took Corpse by surprise. He didn’t know how to respond. Sure, he heard that all the time from his fans, and it always meant the world to him to know that people found him to be an inspiration, but it felt different to hear that from someone he had looked up to for so long.

“I wish I could’ve been a faceless creator like you,” she said when Corpse didn’t respond. “One of my biggest regrets is probably showing my face online. Although, it wouldn’t make sense for me not to show my face when I’m making a series about cancer treatment, but people can be mean. Even when someone is struggling with illness or a disease, the Internet doesn’t care. Whatever makes them feel better over someone else feeling like shit.”

“I still get a lot of hateful messages even though I’m faceless, though.”

“You do, but you’re so unbothered by it. Publicly anyways. When I get messages about how sickly I look I get so overwhelmed with sadness and I just wanna delete my channel forever. I can’t even fake not caring because it really does effect me.”

“Stick with me, I’ll teach you my ways. My favorite is trolling the troll.”

(Y/N) chuckled. “I’d like that a lot.”

Corpse watched (Y/N)’s pink bean approach his black one. “I’m glad we had this chat, Corpse. It made me really happy, but now it also makes doing this a lot harder.”

Corpse gasped as a kill animation popped up on the screen and (Y/N)’s astronaut quickly disappeared into the nearby vent. He was stunned into silence for a long time, just watching his ghost floating above his dead body. To make matters worse, (Y/N) had closed the door to storage so no one would find his body unless they had to go in there.

Charlie’s ghost floated through the walls and came to float next to Corpse’s. “Figured out Jack wasn’t the other imposter, huh?”

“Yeah,” Corpse said, laughing. “She really had me fooled. Buttered me up with compliments then killed me.”

“I taught her well,” Charlie comments before floating away again.

Corpse couldn’t help but laugh about the situation. He wasn’t mad, more impressed than anything. And he was a little happy; he got to talk to someone that had always been an inspiration to him and he made a new friend.

[tiredassmage]

I continue to love Tyr SO MUCH every time I read more about him. Just think he deserves some appreciation in ~the ask box~ and maybe a break. He sounds like he needs a break.

(Tbh he and my cipher agent Five sound like they’re in a very similar boat of “can we catch a fucking breather please?” “No” “okay thanks”) and love that for them

;_; I HAVE NO WORDS. MY ENDLESS APPRECIATION BACK TO YOU. Jkahdjdjfufjfkf. This literally means the world to me and let me also just say, you in my asks is always an absolute treat, I cannot thank you enough.

I really, really do love him, so like... unfortunately for him, he's suffering from my infamous main obsession syndrome and that means I also spend lots of time on his problems jsjdjdkfkf. He really could absolutely use a break. WHY isn't this man retired, honestly? Get out of the game, Nine. You lived. You literally evicted the Sith Emperor. Find a nice, remote planet and just fuck off, dude, take your husband with you. You deserve it, bestie!! (I give him maybe two weeks, tops, before he'd lose his patience. Someone tell him how to turn off all those spy instincts and that nasty sense of responsibility to see the conflict to its end because he can't help but feel he has to do something, knowing what he does of the Empire. Seriously. Tell him to stop. He worries me sometimes. Don’t you dare self-destruct like that, you dumb bastard. I’m watching you, Tyr.)

Imperial Agent support club tbh. They've done enough, damn it. 😔🤣 I probably owe them drinks, if Five would also like. xD

Okay, Tyr appreciation without me babbling off about him because while we’re here. I love playing pixel dress up with this man, so like, favorite ‘fits time!!!!

This is still my favorite look for him, I think. He’d never confess, but ‘the Red Blade’ is still probably one of his favorite covers and returning to a level of that persona on Rishi was way more fun than it had any right being.

It’d also be remiss of me to not mention his absolute classic(tm) - this eventually served primarily as a cold weather ‘fit, but was one of the earliest sets I acquired for him, so it’s one of the default outfits/color schemes I imagine him in.

I would say he has the most outfit slots unlocked of all my toons so far, but I think Lensan’s starting to give him a run for his credits, if he hasn’t already won. Tyr was really like... my descent into outfitter madness. The beginning. The first time I finally grasped the absolute potential of giving them different outfits for different occasions. It’s all been downhill from there, man. What do I play games for - and especially their money markets - if not to play pixel dress up, tbh? (Lensan has an absolutely outrageous amount of blasters I keep in his inventory for the sole purpose of stamping them to outfitter slots, it’s kinda hilarious.)

Also kudos to him for being the only character I have that hasn’t snatched a 2nd combat style bc I may have no idea if I’m doing half of it right, but you can pry Operative out of my cold, dead hands. Superior solo experience. It has stealth. It has a combat roll (that I miss when I play literally every other game, ngl, I’ve been corrupted). Solid single target output for my purposes of story content. I picked it up as a second for Len simply to make Section X dailies less a pain in the ass and I haven’t swapped back to Merc for him in ages, oops. >.>

I also need to go off about him and Shara one day because this bitch STILL probably hasn’t processed his feelings about how all of that went down and, honestly, Tyr, please. C’mon. I’m still judging him for how he tried to convince himself Nathema and Umbara and all of that was just like. Not an issue he needed to talk about. He was fine. Obviously. Theron was back!!! Alive!!! End of story, right???!!!! No!!! Absolutely not!!!! Shakes him by the shoulders, stop repressing your own feelings, you know you can talk to Theron!!!

Idiot. I love him. I love this man so much. I want to spin him around like a Rubix Cube.

[adultswim2021]

Space Ghost Week

They’ve invented the telephone?

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #35: “Gallagher” | July 25, 1997 | S04E02

Who knew that by the time we got to this episode, Gallagher would be dead, and that these guys would be famous, and that BOB is MORE FAMOUS than DAVID? WHAAA??? It’s important to note that this episode being titled Gallagher is probably a jab at comedian Gallagher, perhaps based on a discarded idea or just the mere connection of them all being comedians. It’s a subtle jab and it’s rooted in irony, but in 1997 it still probably qualified as “punching up”. Bob and David probably weren’t getting THAT rich off of Mr. Show, and Gallagher’s popularity was an unwelcome blight on anyone with a taste in comedy.

There may have been a time when this was one of my favorite episodes of the show, and it was ONLY because it featured Bob and David of “Bob and David” fame. Now I can confidently say that this actually is a better-than-average episode of Space Ghost. Bob and David are effortlessly funny, and carry the episode to a certain extent, but there are so many pure, sublime Space Ghost moments. Like, for example, when Space Ghost asks Bob or David a question and Zorak thinks Space Ghost is posing it to him. When Space Ghost corrects Zorak that he’s asking his guests the question, Zorak angrily demands “Well, quit lookin' at me!”. While Bob and David answer the question, Space Ghost continues glaring at Zorak. That’s just like, the perfect Space Ghost joke, right there. So simple, so dumb, so funny. 

The thing that Bob and David bring to the table is not just being hilarious improvisers, but also they genuinely want to play along with the episode, shaping it significantly. Bob pretends to get addicted to Space Ghost’s laser, and really sells the action of being hit with it. I recall on the commentary that the writers really loved when the guests would take the initiative to do stuff like that.

I would be remiss if I didn’t tell this story, for some reason. I remember a fellow forum poster absolutely got under my skin once because they posted a thread titled something like “does anyone else here think David Cross isn’t very funny?” and the examples that he cited were his two appearances in the Men in Black movies and this episode of Space Ghost. It infuriated me that this guy judged David Cross on such a meager sampling of his work without viewing what I felt were his “main” works: any of his stand-up or Mr. Show. 

I was also incensed that anyone could find David unfunny, which… look, I ran a little hot back then. I still love the guy, for some reason, but can get why he’s not for everyone. I was probably extremely pompous about the fact that I liked him and was supposedly right about liking him. But when I challenged this guy on whether or not he’d seen Mr. Show he shot back with “I don’t watch puppet shows”. This retort, which I THINK was meant to be funny? It baffled me and my friends so much that we, to this day, will reference that guy’s screen name if we are all watching something together and a puppet appears. 

One time we found him on twitter and I think we referenced his anti-puppet take to him and he was completely confused by it. Just one dumb dashed-off post has come to define his entire being for us. I guess the only comparable feeling I have to being on the other end of that is there was one guy in high school who would constantly reference the fact that I used to dub porns for people, and that was his only reference point for who I was. I was so much more than that. I also dubbed South Park episodes.

[uesp]

This is why I can't play Morrowind rip

I don’t blame you. There’s a lot of games I can’t play, even some I used to, for reasons like Morrowind’s navigation issues. A thought that enters my mind a lot for games with those issues is “this game does not respect my time”. Whenever I think that, I’m just done with it now. I tend to find I’m happier for it.

To be clear I don’t dislike Morrowind, I do in fact like it quite a bit. I also understand that it is a product of its time, popular concepts in game design evolve with time, with a lot of what I would consider bad ideas falling to the wayside with time (along with some game design ideas that should really be given more tries, although that’s super tangential).

At the same time I’m willing to admit to things I dislike about the game. Morrowind is not sacred, it can be criticized. I don’t like running into unjustified difficulty walls (without taking advantage of exploits). If a game encourages you to explore, and exploring the world is arguably what Morrowind MOST encourages you to do, getting cut off by enemies who are arbitrarily too powerful is terrible design. That’s not to say I dislike a game expecting you to get more powerful to expand what areas you can explore, far from it. But it should be a fairly natural process of discovery. It should be clear that I’m heading into danger.

One good example of this is Red Mountain. Red Mountain in its entirety is gated off by a giant glowing and ominous wall with only one easy entrance. As you approach it the weather becomes increasingly grim, before the entire world turns a sinister shade of red. That sets the tone. It tells me, without necessarily saying anything (although NPCs also warn you), that what’s in there is going to be much more dangerous, and that I shouldn’t go that way unless I’m sure I’m ready.

A random human living in a cave being considerably more powerful than a different random human living in a similar cave is comparatively bad. Sadly, I feel that this is much more common than the warnings with Red Mountain.

To change topics, the Dark Brotherhood NPCs constantly attacking you whenever you rest if you have the Tribunal expansion (which most people will have at this point, as most copies of the game you can easily acquire come with it by default now) is absolutely awful design of the highest level. If you aren’t familiar, when you start a new game or load a save after enabling the Tribunal expansion, there will be persistent, respawning enemies that attack you when you rest until you go to a higher level area to put a stop to their attacks. They start spawning immediately, and they become increasingly dangerous if you just try to put up with the attacks.

What were they thinking? In my opinion, the implementation of these Dark Brotherhood assassins to get you to start Tribunal is a solid contender for the single worst developer decision in any Elder Scrolls game. I’m sure there have been worst design choices in games overall, but I think it might be an honorable mention on a list of all-time worst game design decisions. I have actually tested this with a group of people who have never played Morrowind before, and the DB attacks were consistently a wall they couldn’t get past. I don’t think a person can pick up Morrowind today without either having a game guide (like the UESP), using mods to fix this, or just dropping the difficulty down (a feature hidden in the menu). That’s really, really bad.

I know we’ve been talking about this in other posts, but while talking about things from Morrowind that make it harder for me to get into now, I would be remiss to not go more in-depth with my problems with it (especially since that was the anonymous message’s primary gripe). As Morrowind does not have quest markers, you are reliant on directions NPCs give you. Directions like this...

"The burial caverns lie to the south-southeast of the camp, a north-facing door in a little hill halfway between us and the slopes of Red Mountain. Go north from the camp to the water, then turn east. At a rock cairn on the beach, turn and head straight south until you find the door. The spirits of our ancestors guard the caverns. They will attack, and will kill you if they can. Force your way past them, or evade them, get the bow, and return to prove your worthiness."

Those are actual directions you get during part of the main quest.

Honestly, I can often remember where to go or just instinctively pull up our interactive map if I need it, but if I didn’t have foreknowledge of Morrowind locations, this would bother me immensely. I don’t have unlimited free time, I would like to do the parts of the game that are fun and rewarding, not search mindlessly through Morrowind’s ash and fog-covered countryside for a gray door on the side of a gray rock. When a game doesn’t respect that, I have a hard time playing it. TES has a special place in my life, but I can absolutely understand how things like this are deal breakers for people.

But to change tracks, and to end this post, I would like to leave you with something I absolutely love about Morrowind. A lot of games play with the trope of you having to prove you are “worthy”. Morrowind absolutely does, you interact with a ton of characters who outright despise you, and barely tolerate you enough to send you to complete some task to prove your worth, before sending you off on a dozen more missions to continue to prove yourself, before sending you to other groups who you then have to prove yourself to. However, Morrowind lets you throw up your hands at their demands and snide comments and go “You are all garbage people, and I dislike you all immensely. I don’t need you or your perfunctory approval or your stupid artifacts. Now I’m going to go kill the monsters none of you could because I am AMAZING and HARDCORE and YOU ARE NOT. And I’m going to do it all while FLYING because I am too good to walk on the same dirt you all are confined to.”

And honestly, every game should let you do that.