#and I think I succeeded for the most part

[doberbutts]

My would-be rapist died earlier this week and I have been having a lot of Complicated Feelings about it since being told. Long story short he died because he was once again being a creep and someone intervened and ended up cracking open his skull and he died from a brain bleed two days later. And I'm just thinking about how 18 years ago this guy was actively attempting to groom me in the middle of church and bible study and only stopped because my parents believed me when they pried the truth out of me. And how that stopped him from pursuing me but not from just switching to Someone Else until it became multiple Someone Else's and the above situation happened.

Truthfully I don't really know what to feel, or think. I am not sad that he is dead. I'm not really happy either. I think he is an excellent example of the multiple failures we have as a society to protect our most vulnerable populations. He is who I think of when I ask what we do with repeat offenders who do not seem to be getting the message that they are making bad choices, and how we're supposed to protect vulnerable people from predators like him.

I do think, for the most part, that prison reform and prison abolition is a good thing. I do think that the death penalty sets a dangerous precedent.

But what do we do with a man who has hurt person after person after person, who even when confined to a facility for the rest of his life (ie, effectively a prison) continues to prey upon patients and staff alike, until he is sent to an all-male facility and even then tries it with a female CNA before another male patient witnesses it and does something about it?

I don't even know if the other guy realizes what a service he's done to this dude's victims, or the collective sigh of relief his victims took upon the news of his demise.

I will not light a candle for you, Joel. Not even your own family is attending your funeral, or pressing charges against the facility or the man who killed you. But it does make me think about how this could have been better resolved, if it could have been, if a better outcome than a long string of sexual assaults and rapes ultimately ending in a violent death could have been had.

He never did manage to get me. But he would have, if my parents hadn't stepped in on my behalf. He was bold enough to try it while they were just downstairs, reading and discussing from religious texts. Bold enough to put his hands on me in the middle of church as the pastor spoke and everyone could see. To my knowledge, I was his first- or was I? Was he bold because he was inexperienced in doing this, or because he was riding the high of having gotten away with it before? Clearly getting caught just taught him to be more subtle, rather than that he shouldn't have been doing it in the first place.

I think if he had succeeded with me, I would currently be very glad to hear about his death.

But he didn't, so now I am thinking about these things. And feeling a little, play stupid games win stupid prizes.

[sentience-if]

Stats in Sentience

I've had a few people now asking about how the stat system works in Sentience, so here's a quick breakdown. I'll put it under the cut for the same reason there's not a stat page in the game anymore - I honestly think the game is better if you aren't making choices based on making a number go up or down. (That's not my opinion on stat-based games in general, it's just this specific game.)

Implied spoilers for something I'm pretty sure most of you have figured out by now. But anyway -

There are only two main stats in Sentience: Divinity/Sanity ($Sanity) and Humanity/Artifice ($Human). Both start at 50 and can be raised or lowered by 1, 2, or 3 points at a time. $Sanity lower than 50 is the divinity side, and $Human lower than 50 is the artifice side.

Most stat checks are based on whether $Sanity or $Human are above or below 50. Later on I'd like to add text for characters who have very balanced stats, but for now, which side 50 is included in is just based on the situation.

For the most part, $Human is just flavor text and doesn't affect your available choices. For example, which dream you get at the end of Ch 2 is based on your $Human level. This stat controls how much Io feels like they're succeeding at being 'a person' and whether or not they want to.

Things that affect $Human:

+Emotional responses -Being calculating/stoic +Wanting to fit in (esp. with Val) -Rejecting nuance and preferring absolutes

$Sanity affects things a little more, most notably in Ch 5, where even if you choose to not go back into the Divine Theatre, you can still be forced into it. $Sanity is mostly how susceptible Io is to Magic and the esoteric

Things that affect $Sanity:

+Remaining wary of the Religious -Embracing magic and angels/demons +Pushing back against Io's instincts -Being impulsive

The other stats are mostly your affinity with the other characters, which is pretty self-explanatory. The first few chapters also use personality stats, but I abandoned them pretty early on and will remove them entirely at some point.

[vidavalor]

I think that they've actually already done most of the work to stop it-- they just don't know it yet.

In S1, they did a little bit more than we all (myself included) jokingly give them credit for but the more central one who needed to stop his own personal Armageddon to stop global Armageddon was Adam. In S2 and into The Finale, it's Aziraphale. He is vital but it's rolling out so far in a mirrored way to Adam-- some parts the same, some parts the direct opposite.

While Adam succeeded by successfully rejecting Satan in S1, Aziraphale is going to succeed in the long term of The Finale by first having failed in the short term of S2. The end of S2 is his temptation and him basically going in the opposite direction of "you're not my dad" and now being on the verge of falling, which I think is the kickoff to the story in the present in The Finale. It's that action, though, that is going to stop Armageddon and save the world because it's what's going to break Heaven/Hell.

It's going to be what causes the other characters to come together to challenge the whole system for Aziraphale and, in doing so, they're going to overthrow it. In that way, Aziraphale does stop Armageddon-- by having been Aziraphale for all these thousands of years. 😇

Good Omens season 3/finale thought of the day:

What are the chances that Crowley and Aziraphale will actually have any kind of impact on stopping the Second Coming? Like in season 1 they didn’t really do much in the end to stop the apocalypse. It basically came down to Adam rejecting Satan and Newt fucking up the computers. Obviously their little pep talk with Adam in the show did help things a little, but in the book they don’t even get that far.

So do you think Crowley and Aziraphale’s actions will actively prevent the second coming, or will the action just kind of happen around them again? Love to hear everyone’s theories on this one!

[quietwingsinthesky]

@notfredj I need you to know that you are picking up the clues exactly right about that fic. I wrote it on purpose to be ambiguously either “actual Midam daughter who Michael named after his brother because he has so many issues” and also “Lucifer got her grace torn out and is being raised by Midam as their daughter and this is Not Going Well”

[lovesickeros]

☆ de fontaine

{☆} characters furina {☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader {☆} warnings angst, suicidal thoughts, hurt / no comfort {☆} word count 1.4k

This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair!

She thought, for one moment, she could put the mask down and breathe – for one moment of daydreaming, she thought she could just be Furina. She thought she would finally get to live the live she should've had in the first place, the life she threw away to play God to an audience who saw her as nothing but a circus animal, dancing to their whims. Furina just wanted to be selfish for one brief and fleeting moment..and it was gone before she could even grasp it in her hand. A comet soaring past far out of her reach.

She can barely keep her hands from violently shaking as she looks down at them – broken and bloody and more a corpse then a person – and she feels so numb she can't even feel the rain pelting against her back. None of this is fair, she wants to scream, why is it always me? But her voice is silent beneath the torrent of rain. She wonders if the ocean would take her if she sank into it's depths – just for a moment, she wonders how it would feel to finally be able to sleep at ease.

Furina is tired.

But Furina is nothing if not useful, isn't she?

So she forces her feet to move, dragging against the stone beneath her heels, and drags their bloodied body into the nearest empty building, letting the rain do the work of washing away the smeared blood following her path. The smell makes her feel sick, the feeling of it sticking to her hands and gloves makes her lightheaded, but she persists. Because Furina is useful, because Furina won't let them die out in the rain, because Furina won't stand by and just let them rot on the streets like some..pest.

Furina wants to go home. She wants to sleep and she isn't she if she wants to wake up, this time. But she keeps going anyway.

Because it's all she's ever done, and the habit sticks.

An Archon she may not be, not anymore, but the expectations of five hundred years still linger like eyes on the inside of her skull. They watch her, pry and prod at her thoughts, mocking laughter and judging eyes following her as she forces herself to dance to the song they weave with glee. Furina never stepped off that stage – she's still there, she thinks, watching the crowd stare at her in disdain as the curtain call looms above her like a guillotine. She still hears Neuvillette deliver her damnation and salvation with a trembling voice, still feels her hair stand on end when electro crackled like the crack of the whip, Clorinde's blade aimed at her like a loaded gun.

She's trapped on that stage and she never left, not really.

She hates it. She thinks she hates them, but it's not their fault. They didn't ask for this, didn't ask for everyone to turn against them, didn't ask for her to save them. Neither did she..yet here they are, she thinks.

She tries to tell herself she's in control this time, though. She can stop performing her part in this horrible, bloody play any time she wants. It makes her feel better, just for a little while, if she convinces herself she's still Furina, painfully human.

And Furina has always been good at lying.

It's the believing that's the hard part.

There isn't time for her to wallow in her own self pity, though. They're still bleeding out onto the dusty, creaky floorboards of some random, broken down house and she's just standing there as the blood stains the wood. She can fix it – she's good at fixing things. She's done nothing but fix things – try to, anyway – for five hundred years. She can fix a little wound, how hard could it be? Her hands are clenched so tight they ache as she kneels down, wincing at the creak of the floorboards beneath her heels– she hesitates just long enough to wonder if she's making a mistake before she peels away just enough of the outer layer of their clothes to see the deep, bloody gash across their chest. She tries not to think about it – it's deep, too deep, and she feels dizzy just looking at it, but she's handled worse, right?

Furina can fix it. That's what she's good at.

She doesn't feel so confident when she tries to wrack her brain for..something. Five hundred years, and a little wound stumps her? No, she had to have learned something, right? She's decidedly not trying to buy time because she's panicking, parsing through hundreds of years of memories like flipping through a book. Furina isn't made for this, not really – she's running on nothing but adrenaline and she's really not sure what she's doing, but she's trying. And just like before, it won't be enough, will it?

She'll fall short again – she'll be too late to fix it before she's alone again.

Furina was an Archon..used to be. What use would she have for that sort of knowledge? Which makes her predicament all the more harrowing and bleak. What was she supposed to do?

Furina had heard it first hand, that vitriol in Neuvillette's voice. She isn't sure she's ever heard him that..angry before. She's not sure he would listen to her if she tried, either. And that scares her more then anything. All of Fontaine was up in arms about this..imposter, yet here she was, staring down at them bleeding out in front of her, and she was trying to save them.

Why? Why is she throwing away her only chance at normalcy for a fraud? Why didn't she just turn them in?

They were dying – that should've been a good thing, shouldn't it? So why didn't it feel like it?

"Why you?" Her voice breaks as she speaks in harsh tones, grabbing the front of their shirt in trembling, bloodied hands. "Why now?" She wants to scream, to demand answers they can't give, to claw back the reprieve she was promised after five hundred years of agony..and all she can do is sob into their chest, pleading for an answer that will not come. "Why me?"

Silence is their answer, and it hangs heavy on her trembling shoulders as she cries.

Of course they don't, she thinks bitterly, no one has ever answered her pleas spoken in hushed sobs. Not her other self and certainly not them.

Furina has always been alone. Furina will always be alone.

Because Furina never left that stage, never left that moment when she looked at herself in the mirror and took up a mantle too heavy for her to bear. She always finds her way back eventually. There's no one on the other side anymore – she stands alone on a stage, waiting for an inevitable end she isn't sure will come.

"Please," She pleads through tears and choked sobs, clinging to them like they are all that keeps her from sinking. "Please don't leave me, too." The words burn on her tongue – how pathetic is she that she craves companionship from the bloodied body of the imposter? Perhaps she's truly lost her mind after all these years..perhaps she's finally gone mad. She must have.

But their presence is like the first feeling of gentle warmth upon her skin as the sun crests the horizon, like the gentle lap of tides along her heels, the sway of branches and leaves as the wind blows through them like an instrument all it's own. They are the soothing sound of rain against the window as she watches the dreary skies in fond longing, the first bloom of spring as color blooms upon the landscape like paint had been spilled across the hills and valleys.

They are like the faint spark she carefully nurtures and stokes, so fragile even the smallest wind could blow it out like a candle. She cradles it within her palms, pleads with whoever will listen – prays that someone finally listens, because if not for her, then for them.

She's failed to protect too much already, let too many people with so much trust in her fall between the cracks of her fingers like grains of sand. She won't let them go – she can't.

If nothing else, if she couldn't be saved when she begged for salvation from that five hundred year long agony, even if she never got that chance..

Furina will make sure they do.

[emotinalsupportturtle]

I can’t stop thinking of how despite it baffling most non-brits, and most of the Hollywood a-list audience, David Tennant decided to do a skit on his little lockdown rpf show, make a bunch of puns that only people familiar with British culture would get, wear a kilt and be his usual manic self when hosting an internationally prestigious award show

fucking power move

[bayetea]

also I'm a percy jackson stan until I die of course but it would be nice if we could not exclusively talk about other members of the main cast (the non-white ones especially) only in furtherance of percy and his character/personal acclaim/strength as a demigod

like every time I see a high-note text post about the percy/frank/hazel dynamic it's about "WOW frank and hazel think percy is so cool hazel literally thought he was a god he is so powerful." like yeah. did you guys know that they're also friends and they love each other!!!! did you know that percy admires frank and frequently praises him and encourages him to build up his self-worth and confidence! did you know that hazel comforted percy when he was emotional and scared at the neptune altar in camp jupiter and he gets angry when phineas insults and degrades hazel for being undead! did you know that frank and hazel saved him when he was so frightened and disturbed by evil centaurs and cyclopes that he was paralyzed and couldn't move!

did you know that frank and hazel also just have their own things going on divorced from percy because they're heroes of olympus too! did you know that they aren't just decorations for percy's character they are their own people! idk something to keep in mind (I'm a SON stan if u can't tell)

[mohntilyet]

To be fair to "illario is bad at lying" I don't think he had a contingency plan for "my cousin who I tried to have murdered came back after a whole year of being tortured in an underwater prison by the lady I've been sleeping with and he's an abomination now, also I have to pretend my grandma got murdered." His plan got monumentally fucked up

THAT’S WHAT I’M SAYIINNGGG. no matter how good or bad you are, i do not seriously think there’s a way to prepare for all that and then execute a follow up plan that’s not just “oh fuck i gotta do something” i think. of course this could have been avoided if he just killed lucanis himself but i like to think he has a heart in there

[wonder-worker]

"It is too easy to dismiss [Leonor of Navarre] as an overambitious schemer who would do anything to obtain a crown, shedding the blood of her own siblings and her subjects in order to attain the throne. However, a deeper investigation of her long lieutenancy and ephemeral reign shows a woman who fought tenaciously to preserve her place but also worked tirelessly to administer a realm which was crippled by internal conflict and the center of the political schemes of France, Aragon, and Castile. She tried to broker peace, fight off those who opposed her, repair the wounds caused by conflict, protect the sovereignty of the realm, and keep the wheels of governance turning. Leonor was not always successful in achieving all of these aims but given the background of conflict and the lack of cooperation she received from all of her family members, bar her loyal husband, it is a huge achievement that she survived to wear the crown at all. Many writers have argued that Leonor deserved the troubled lieutenancy, personal tragedies, an ephemeral reign, and a blackened reputation, basing their assumption that she committed a crime that cannot be [conclusively] proven. However, a more fitting description of her would be that of a resolute ruler who successfully overcame a multitude of challenges in order to survive in a difficult political landscape and gain a hard-fought throne.”

-Elena Woodacre, "Leonor of Navarre: The Price of Ambition", Queenship, Gender and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600 (Edited by Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz)

[jichanxo]

oc art again! (pt 1 here)

[waitingforsecretsouls]

Guys, idk about anyone else but I'm starting to suspect the reason why Zahard was angry at Arlene and his motivations as a character might be a bit more layered than simply having his proposal rejected...🤔 Almost like his choices might be based on his ideals and not simply love triangle drama and the greatest war in the history of the Tower, kickstarted by V and Arlene, might have tarnished his proudest accomplishment and goal.

[musicalmoritz]

I want so badly to write more short, slice-of-life TBHK fics but unfortunately I am a yapper so I end up overwriting (?) them and a fic that was meant to be 2k max turns into 5k. I am incapable of writing anything without a little bit of introspection

[kateis-cakeis]

"I never knew how there was a way out of this ending. Because I think if you you told a story of a happy ending, people would somehow feel cheated, having set up Mordred and all those things. I don't know how you do that. And this is a fairly straight version of the end with one twist in the last two minutes. But- 'Cause I read Malory again, and it's not miles away. I mean there's loads of Christain bits in Malory but, and obviously they take him to the Isle and there's the barge and all that, but this is sort of a simple version of that." - Julian Murphy (Series 5 Episode 13 Commentary 40:39)

I've got to say listening to the commentary and really catching this in full is like, mannnn they misplayed what people would feel cheated by, but I respect it

[astral-catastrophe]

Every once in a while I just ignore the trauma and laugh about all the shit the ex bestie pulled

[seoafin]

when it comes to shiv i’m like in between thinking what happened was a better outcome for her or the shittiest one for her. sorry this is random. but like shiv didn’t intend to free kendall n roman she just did the younger sibiling thing (at least how i interpreted) and realized she couldn’t stand the idea of kendall getting it. when she rlly fucking wanted it. like she wanted it to be her or no one. especially as the only girl in a family full of boys you are never not competing like i so get her. so i think she’d rather tom have it cause it would mean by association she’d have it too. something how the only times she allowed power is through the men in her proximity idk. and i do think this in some sense is better for her cause kendall would’ve been a lose fucking cannon we constantly see him promise his sibilings stuff then rip it away from them. at least when tom is talking to hugo n asking for karolina we get a sense that they’re somehow aligned. especially knowing that hugo is kendalls dog and even tho if she just asked kendall to get rid of hugo he wouldn’t done so in a heartbeat. but that’s the thing she didn’t wanna ask. it just fucjing sucks that it HAD to be tom like i hate his ass. it sucks that the dynamic in her relationship ultimately changed like someone said she’s always gonna have an angry man in her house now. idk if tom yet is this amalgamation of her father that the general public has saddled her with cause he still has to answer to lukas n lukas told her point blank he wanted to fuck shiv n my mans just said sure dude whatver u want no it doesn’t bother me at all!! like i still tom is a pussy but i also know that money corrupts n chnages u so that very well could chnage. which is smt i think succesion banks a lot on the idea of giving u the now and letting u guess what happens in the future. i know i just sent a whole essay so i definitely care about shiv but i am to my core a roman girlie so it is kinda nice not to have a dog in this fight idk!!

SORRY THIS IS LATE I JUST SAW THIS

i actually disagree! i think shiv DID want to free kendall and also roman from the cycle of abuse and she did exactly that. i think the phrase that really sticks to mind is the i love you but i cannot stomach you quote from shiv to kendall. i think the saddest thing about it all is the fact that shiv is in the exact position she spent the entire show trying to avoid: being the wife and giving birth to a baby that will probably continue the cycle of abuse (and i think what hints at this is when roman says that shiv is the TRUE bloodline not kendall because kendall's kids aren't his). i honestly think it's a mix of the fact that she didn't want to give the position up to anyone AND she saw what it had done to the three of them. like i'm not going to say she was being entirely selfless but also i do think she loves kendall and roman. and in the ending you could say she's in a position in closest proximity to power in contrast to kendall and roman but it's not an enviable position. she's a mother and wife and that's all she'll ever be. tom is the man she wanted him to be. the man she tried to shape into. i think in a way it's a self fulfilling prophecy in regards to her and tom. also she was never going to escape unfortunately.

and YEAH i don't like tom i might even hate him but i can't even fault him every single person in this show absolutely sucks balls. Except Gerri. I forgive her crimes. She's so hot. like i can't even blame him for doing everything he could do rise to power. he's no different from kendall shiv or roman. he just didn't have nepo baby power. but yeah i think he and greg are two spineless pussies but so is everyone else LMAO

[myfriendgoo94]

Can we all just give Capcom some love for being one of the least evil game companies? Those guys are great.