#and also assert them!

[strangefable]

lmao i used to agonize and be so scared to block someone, but now, i'm just:

it's so freeing to just wave goodbye and forget them

[corpusdiem-seizethedead]

Husk: This is my boyfriend Angel, he's so smart and handsome and I'm so proud of him

Vaggie: This is my beautiful girlfriend Charlie, she's my angel and I love her so much

Alastor: this is Niffty she has rabies

[divineandmajesticinone]

KISS X KISS X KISS: Love ii Shower (2023) "Sensei, you're so mean. I only want to be happy, but... It's hurting me. I got it."

[baejax-the-great]

The storytelling just doesn't care. It doesn't care! It doesn't care why the venatori would have fallen in line under Elvhen gods--something that must have involved a power struggle of some sort and a complete realignment of their beliefs. Or why the Antaam would be okay with this particular brand of magic, or how they would feel about allying with the venatori. For that, they'd have to show the antaam being people at all--which they don't in an overtly racist way.

The enemies are faceless and they are bad simply because they are bad. It's easy to do that with demons or the new "mechs" that now exist for no reason. But then every "bad" person just falls in line and says, sure, yeah, I'll align myself with the blight, a monstrosity that everyone in Thedas has been brought up to fear and revile.

Even Isseya, whose (terrible) storyline is that she became corrupted by her obsessive need to "protect" the griffons has a random line about how Ghilanain is good actually. This one could have made sense! She was an elf. She cares about creatures. She could have been manipulated into believing that Ghilannain would bring back the griffons. But they didn't develop it that far. They didn't do anything. Her story was just "evil woman bad" stab stab. Isseya and those wardens being alive brought up a million questions about the calling and the blight, and not a single person thought to ask them. Just, whelp, glad that's over with.

A compelling villain makes a compelling story. It's not the only way to make a compelling story, but it is one of the dozens of strategies they didn't use in this game because it would have required in engaging with their own setting in a way they absolutely refused to do.

[v7n5]

What if you were my boss and mentor and lowkey nemesis and we're both girls?

[breha]

claudia’s birth allows louis to believe that he and lestat have become The Parents (equal status) and so the teacher-student power dynamic has gone away, but really it’s just been repressed and it comes up again like wack-a-mole

[spitblaze]

Casual ableist language is absolutely an issue worth addressing but maybe instead of focusing on people saying 'stupid' and 'idiot' we could look at how (non-psychotic) people throw around 'delulu' and then are shocked when people who have delusions talk about them, and people on YouTube and tiktok and really just in real life consistently using 'psychopath' and 'narcissist' as shorthand for 'evil person'

[odiousidiot]

some low quality doodles for party talks i found interesting :D

also if anyone wants to send in some termina requests u can! >B)

[pilferingapples]

the real tragedy of the Amis chapters is that Marius is clearly terrified of asking questions about any of the genuinely baffling multitiered punbased conversations the Amis are having, when they would all VERY DEFINITELY be beyond delighted to get a new audience to infodump on

[littencloud9]

‘omg they are so father son coded’ THEY ARE TWO YEARS APART

[ranticore]

snooping through rbs on canons stbh art and cackling at the one that's like "i read the sample.. it's maybe about a polycule?? these guys are all in love but they just keep calling each other friends"... nothing but normal bestie activity here lads

[ovcrtime]

//happy pride month to them

[hellogoodbyeitsme]

Damian, still fresh to the family, but actually starting to warm up to the idea of them actually being his family, looks up online 'how to be a good little brother.'

He finds all sorts of things like, "using cuteness to get what you want from your elder siblings" (lame, no way that works) "fake extra tears when they punch you so your parents buy you icecream and whatever else you want" (why on EARTH would he want anyone think he could be so weak?) etc, but he also sees stuff about Pranks, sibling fights (in the sense of "you know they're real siblings because they'll throw hands one minute, then 5 minutes later be laughing watching tv together like nothing happened"), and concepts like Sibling Code (like, absolute secrecy between siblings toward their parents, threatening potential heartbreakers, etc).

Cue him pulling pranks, like leaving lego everywhere and waiting for his shoeless family to step on them, hiding things that the others need (like, right now), sneaking things into the batcave that shouldn't be in the batcave, throwing himself at his siblings to brawl without any reason and then promptly stopping also with no reason (and wondering why they won't spend time with him to bond afterward), planning out how to threaten a literal magic space princess (Kori, who would probably find it very cute if he actually made it that far), hiding Literally Very Important information about his siblings from Bruce and Alfred because he's not a snitch, and he is a great little brother. (he's going to get an A in Little Brother which is something totally normal to want and achieve)

He eventually gets BIG scolded for his constant misbehaviour, though. Bruce and Dick are asking why he's going off the rails so much when he doesn't even seem particularly angry anymore - in fact, sometimes he even seems fairly content! Is there an issue they're unaware of? Something he's not expressing to the family? They're not mad if there's a problem, they just want to help!

So, of course, he then has to embarrassingly explain that he was just following little brother protocol, according to.. the internet. He gets bullied about it for weeks by his elders (to different degrees), since the internet is not going to help anyone be a better sibling, but they also each try to explain (in their own ways) (their own waynes) why he was so, so very wrong about the way he approached being a good sibling, so he can hopefully improve at it (and stop terrorising the household).

(I saw a meme post about Damian putting legos all over the floor + hiding Tim's shoes to harm him and it made me think of the concept)

(Also once he learns that acting extra cute really can get him what he wants, he tries to use it now and then to his advantage, but is hilariously bad at doing it, since he doesn't really have a grasp on what makes a younger sibling cute (which is.... literally just existing,, according to me, a middle child). Lucky for him the others eat up every attempt because it's so obvious what he's doing that it becomes cute to them, so he doesn't need to get real practice with it until he tries to use it on a non-bat who laughs at him for far too long about it and thusly brews fire in him to go back to the pranks he tried at the start of the little brother training montage and show them real sibling pain for making a fool of him.)

[statementlou]

Maya went on The Internet Is Dead podcast to be interviewed about her relationship with Liam and it's interesting; I recommend it for people who were curious about untangling the details in her book from real life (they talk about this in a number of different places with some detail), people who think she's making everything up, and anyone else sending hostile asks about her- we know she is following the fandom talk and responding to it but I have to say it's very satisfying to listen to her rattle through the exact arguments anons on here are sending around and answer every one of them.

some detail below the cut:

The experience was kind of grating at times; maybe it's just me but I never find it enjoyable to listen to people outside of fandom or casual 1D fans talk about us, and I cringe and bristle literally every time someone says "these people" or "they think", plus the hosts are not super useful; they refer to her tiktoks and book repeatedly without actually giving context for the discussion, like I could do with the occasional "in the book you say…" rather than just chatting about it and leaving us to figure out what they are talking about (they don't even say the name of the book), but whatever. There's interesting stuff in there so it was worth it for me and if you prefer you can just get my highlights, here ya go-

-Her making the point that the media training all of the 1D guys have done from such a young age not only impacts how they talk to the press but also how they talk to people in their lives, the tools it gives them for communicating with (and in this case, manipulating) people was fascinating to me, I hadn't thought about that but I will be in the future with regard to all of them, it's just very interesting to have in mind

-she says she had the book read by lawyers before publishing because it was about someone real and real events, and provided proof for things they asked about

-she points out that she has nothing to gain from making this up, and that as someone who works in a law office and is planning to go to legal school, that the fact that bringing false accusations against someone is illegal would be a huge deterrent to lying

-she says that one of the reasons she initially soft pedaled in terms of outright saying that the book was about Liam was that podcasts and such she went on didn't want her to say it, didn't want the liability, and that when she did say it that part would not get printed or would be edited out (hey speaking of this what are all these interviews she did about the book why am I just now hearing about it... when you guys see stuff like this let me know! I am interested and will maybe recap for you even!)

-she mentions Liam's silence on the whole thing more than once; "if someone wrote that about me and it wasn't true I would not just say nothing!"

-she says that her and Liam went to see After not knowing it was a 1D fanfic and then, after finding that out, he joked that she should write a book about them, and that it was where the seed of the idea came from

[edoro]

wrt the last post i just reblogged (Halsin cnc meta), i personally tend to imagine him as fairly aware of and comfortable with his kinks, including the ones based on his trauma

in fact i like to think that one of the reasons why he has such trouble accepting that his years of sex slavery were in fact deeply traumatic and abusive is because his response is to heavily sexualize his own trauma - not only was that part of how he discovered that he takes great pleasure in servicing others sexually, but ever since he's sought out situations where he can recreate aspects of the experience

because he's so large and strong and people tend to make assumptions about what kind of sex he wants or what kind of role he plays (or just project their own ideas of what kind of role they want him to play or think he should play onto him), he doesn't get to bottom or sub nearly as often as he likes

although his tendency towards acts of service is imo his own way of taking that control - even if someone wants him to be aggressive and fuck them, if he's doing it as an act of service, then he's still submitting himself to them and making himself their pet or toy and giving himself that satisfaction

this is something that i really like the idea of him and Astarion having in common, actually. i like to think of them both responding to their trauma by sexualizing it, but essentially in opposite directions

Astarion wants to be the one in control, the one doing rather than the one done to, and in contrast to Halsin, i think he would 100% think that makes him a bad person, basically as bad as Cazador

he doesn't really understand kink as something negotiated, as play between willing partners. his only experience is being tortured and exploited, and now that he finds himself with all of these desires to control, dominate, and hurt someone else, to force himself on someone else the way he was forced so many times, he's sure that it must mean he's irredeemably broken by his experiences

meanwhile, Halsin knows that both of their desires are normal and nothing to be ashamed of, but he's got this fun little cognitive dissonance going on where even though he would never think this of someone else, he feels like the fact that he found his experience of sex slavery powerfully erotic means it wasn't really that bad and that he can't really call himself a victim - maybe sort of a victim, but not entirely one, not the way someone like Astarion was

(even though their situations are very similar in certain respects. Astarion says most of his partners didn't even "grant me temporary bliss," but that doesn't mean he never found any of it sexually satisfying or erotically compelling, or never had any complicated feelings about Cazador that included love, a desire for attention/regard, or a sense of comforting familiarity)

i'm just very fond of the idea of Halsin being pretty comfortable in his own enjoyment of submission, including things like masochism, cnc, pet play, various types of power exchange, and just generally a lot of things that are quite specifically aspects of his own past abuse, and getting to walk Astarion through the idea that it's fine and okay to like that sort of thing whether you want to be on the giving or receiving end of it

and MEANWHILE being forced to confront his own internal double standard where he holds himself responsible for things that he would never hold someone else responsible for, due to his direct engagement with Astarion's trauma, and having to slowly come to the realization that he was a captive, he was a victim, it was abusive, and he is in fact Kind Of Fucked Up About It

[possamble]

AHA thank u i was mostly just. frantically pulling the "no hetero" card bc farcille is super super always endgame for me and the "marcille has two hands" thing is absolutely not for me and my personal characterization of marcille

i like. can't find it anymore for some reason but there was a farcille fic set just after the shuro confrontation where laios reaches over to hold marcille's hand and ask her if she likes him or if she's just tolerating him too and it was so. the vulnerability. the puppyness.

that safety and security he must feel in knowing that she wears her heart on her sleeve and he will always know when she's unhappy with him because she will absolutely let it be known. the way that falin's first revival was the turning point for the way he felt about her because, for the first time in his life, protecting falin wasn't something he had to shoulder alone. there was finally someone else who cared about her as much as he did (in his eyes, resenting his parents for failing to protect her) and would stop at nothing to save her. the way it must have been proof for him that, not only was falin not alone anymore, he wasn't alone anymore.

idk why i like rather than dislike the fact that his only framework for parsing how he feels about "the first girl other than his sister that he's ever cared this much about" is a comphet romantic lens. like he would have the autism moment of fully assuming that he's in love with her for a while and just like. not? doing anything about it? because he doesn't feel the urge to, nor is he sad that he knows marcille would mostly likely never "feel the same way" about him?

like. he "figures out" that he's "in love with marcille" with all the passion of printing out a label and sticking it onto a favourite scrapbook for organizational purposes. he's equally happy to be her husband or brother-in-law so long as it means she stays close and is part of his family.

i know logically i should hate it but it's sooo crunchy to me. my comphet besties ever. designated plus one and dance partner to all fancy and formal occasions. having actual real chemistry but the "romantic" part of it is some weird shapeshifter smokescreen. augh