#and boy if that didn't hurt

[ahoyimlosingmymind]

Fitz Vacker being a lonely child is just- peak angst for me

[lotus-pear]

regret

[shijiujun]

ZIQI REMEMBERING MIAOMIAO ASKING FOR FLOWERS AND SETTING UP A FLOWER GARDEN TO CONFESS TO HER I CRI SWEET DEMON BOY DESERVES THE WORLD OF GOOD THINGS

— Love Game in Eastern Fantasy 永夜星河 (2024) | EP. 17

[frootertooter]

"The way his father looked at him, he knew... something about him was... off. And he could feel it itching."

Illustration heavily based off The Boy Wonder #1's cover by Juni Ba because I think it might be my favourite comic cover ever??? Also seriously go read The Boy Wonder (2024)!!! There's only 2 issues out right now but they're absolutely phenomenal imo

Alternate Versions:

[rabbitindemun]

Bill wearing heels I'm begging you.

i'm just letting this over here there ya' got

WATCHOUT, he has heels on.. and guns, but details-

[beatcroc]

i already wrote up a whole essaypost about the dynamic for these two but it's funnier to summarize it like this. also it's the only way youre gonna see anything resembling fp getting closure abt any of this :^) [x]

[iwasbored777]

Wade went from calling Logan "the worst Wolverine" to calling him "the best Wolverine". I'm so weak

[dirtytransmasc]

totally don't imagine little Aegon, maybe 7 or 8, playing with his toys while Sunfyre watched on, pouncing on castles carved from stone and gnaws on little wooden soldiers.

don't imagine him play-fighting with his boy. Aegon and his training sword fighting against the merciless beast that is his little golden fledgling, gently attacking playful claws and flapping wings and nipping beak, parrying when the dragon gets too close. or Sunfyre finally tackling his boy, mocking dragonfire when he screeches in his face, before nuzzling his boys cheek.

don't imagine them curling up in the sun, out in the grass or in a windowsill. Sunfyre spreading his wings over his boy to bask in the light, burying his face in the warmth of the crook of Aegon's neck.

don't imagine the hatchling perching on his bonded's shoulder. don't imagine Aegon sneaking to see him when he was sad or angry. don't imagine Sunfyre crying out in distress, restless in his den when he could feel Aegon's distress but could not get to him

don't imagine the fledgling finding his way to Aegon's window, sneaking in and curling up next to the boy as he laid drunk and miserable, coping as he wrapped around him. don't imagine him perching on the roof of Aegon's chambers, crying to him when he got too big to enter.

don't imagine his sweet little chirps and songs. don't imagine Aegon's little giggles and chuckles. don't imagine the nuzzling of white hair or the scratching. don't imagine them being happy

[mayhaps-a-blog]

Also I love that the moral of the show really kind of comes down to "hurt people hurt people. But they don't have to. They don't." Like. Esther and her husband. Maren and her boyfriend. Monty to some extent. Simon and Edwin - and Edwin, when he finds Simon. Past!Crystal. Even Charles, when he loses his temper with the Devlin father, and then with the Night Nurse.

But they don't have to

And really, what does it take? A friend. Someone to have your back, to support you, to tell you it's okay to put the walls down, to open yourself to kindness. A ghost boy you just met, laughing at your attempts to be mean. A tired goth butcher, turning back with an empty bucket of blood to ask if you're okay, even though she clearly hates it. Friends who can accept you for who you are, so that in turn, you can see others clearly - and forgive them for their mistakes.

Something about showing how hurt leads to hurt, but the cycle can be broken. It can. I promise, I promise, it can.

[leslieseveride]

i'm laughing so hard at the image of tim crouched down next to kojo with an ink pad on the floor and kojo just keeps giving him the dirtiest side eye while tim lifts his paw like, "you know, i expect this kind of behavior out of mom, but i trusted you." smh 😒😒

[ray935sworld]

Okay serious question, how do I keep a friend away who I stopped seeing as a friend due to dismiss and ignoring of my feeling and he has romantic feelings and asked me out multiple times/ made hints about a what could have been despite knowing I'm not into men?

Edit: Okay! He is blocked now and yes I had a ray that's not normal moment

[knockknockitsnickels]

Thoughts about Prison3r bc she's making me go insane

Spoilers under the cut (also minor spoilers - chapter name & brief discussion of other routes - in the tags, so don't read those lol)

I have a feeling the Cage is going to get overshadowed by Sp3ctre & Happily Ever After, but I was really surprised by the direction they took her in, and I think she makes Pris all the more tragic as a character.

IMO, the Prisoner route kind of functions as a giant trust fall. You've established in the previous chapter that you're skeptical of this whole setup (hence voice of the skeptic, lmao) and willing to help the Princess, and this route puts that to the test. Can you focus on what's important without getting caught up in questioning irrelevant details (the empty shackle)? Can you trust the Princess enough to give her your weapon? And on the other side of that, can she trust you to understand her plan?

Part of what makes the Prisoner compelling to me is the unspoken trust she has in the player (part of why I've never understood the take that she doesn't actually care about you? Maybe we've got some Autism2Autism telepathy going on though). Her lines in the Shifting Mound fight (if you free her) talks about how "shared skepticism blossomed into trust", and the Drowned Grey further implies that she put a lot of trust and hope in the player which they ended up betraying.

I was expecting Prison3r to play with that betrayal of trust - she showed we could trust her, but her trust in us was misplaced. It doesn't really matter if you leaving the head was an honest mistake or not, we still let her down. I was expecting a scenario where we'd be stuck apologizing to a Princess who couldn't bring herself to trust us again, no matter how sincere we were being. I was expecting her to be angry. I didn't expect her to just... give up.

If the Drowned Grey is meant to represent the Prisoner (metaphorically) letting go of the tight control she has of her emotions, (literally) drowning you in her (metaphorical) grief and rage, then the Cage is the opposite, locking her emotions even deeper away. Shifty describes her as (paraphrasing here, emphasis mine) "someone who wishes she could be just a set of eyes and ears." The Cage isn't angry with you for leaving her behind. Why should she be? It was her mistake, after all. She shouldn't have been so stupid to think she could break the cycle and actually be freed.

The route also plays with the contrast between the Princess and the Player (via the voices) in fun ways. While the Cage is already resigned to repeating the cycle, skeptic (and paranoid, if you get him) are panicking for the whole route, trying desperately to find a way out of it while unintentionally forcing you to into the same patterns as before (by forcing us to take the knife. Thanks guys, very cool).

It honestly feels like the perfect response to the common fan complaint of "Why is the Prisoner mad at you for leaving her head behind? It was an accident!". Well, here you go. She's not mad at you. It would honestly feel better if she was.

[tblsomedoodles]

Some Venus ideas

seriously debating on adding Venus to FW so here's some early designs. (like i'm not sure i'll keep the eyebrow marks, they look kinda funky at times). Mostly b/c them having another sister would be adorable. And it would piss Draxum off, which would be hilarious (for reasons i'll explain.)

some more about her under the cut. But it's mostly just random brainstorming i did at 3am

18 yo (3 years older than Raph)

Mutated Ornate Wood Turtle (using some of Lou's DNA.) (so no spider traits.)

Technically their Half sister since Big Mama's not her mother. (not that that will stop Mama from mothering her. She'd get her own room in the hotel and everything : ) )

Was mutated 'first' to test the mutagen.

She was 5 when the boys were mutated.

Venus got misplaced during resulting explosion. eventually found and taken in by the Library Bats. Which is exactly what pisses off Draxum b/c he knows exactly where she is but the bats refuse to give her back to him lol. And no one messes with the bats. (he's got thrown into the kiddy room several times for trying lol)

she's very quiet, shy, and very anxious about and unsure how to socialize with people in general. (✨social anxiety✨)

I don't think she's much of a fighter. like at all. Pretty sure the only way she would fight would be mystics (ie standing in the back taking magic missile esc pot shots wizard style.) she might actually be more of a pacifist than anything. I'm getting the feeling that she wants little to do with fighting or violence personally. Like she wouldn't judge her siblings on it, but she doesn't want to participate. (the only exception being that if someone/thing is hurting said siblings. b/c once she's emotionally attached to those kids, anything seriously trying to hurt her siblings do not get the luxury of her just standing by.)

that's about it.

and a meme about how thoroughly this au is going off track.

[stasyalovem]

just want to talk about that moment in episode 7 when Edwin in Despair's realm, doesn't understand where he is and he said "i do not have my books…", so these words made me think that all those books about magic and other dimensions were needed for more than just their cases and investigations. it seems that Edwin began to study Hell in detail as soon as he escaped, looking for information about all its possible levels and corners that he had not been to, so that he would be ready in case demons found him and he had to escape again. because for the first time he had to spend decades full of constant torture to finally find a way back. but what hurts the most is the realization that he started learning magic and spells so that he wouldn't let anyone drag him into hell again. he hoped that with his little magic he probably might wouldn't be able to defeat the demons, but he could probably buy some time to escape before they found him again. poor boy, he's lived all these 30+ years in constant fear of Death who can make him and Charles apart, and the creatures from Hell who could come for him at any moment. and while Charles was trying to teach Edwin how to box so he could defend himself against other ghosts and whatever they might encounter in the course of their cases, Edwin was learning to defend himself against far worse and scarier things. and it makes me so sad

[bananaede]

I still haven't figured out his hair but here's yoooji with unclekuna

[dykedvonte]

Can you talk about trans!Curly a little bit more? I'm curios if you have any headcanons and the like

-💀

It's just such a thing in my mind because it adds a truthful sadness and differing aspect to mouthwashing.

If Curly was trans it adds the horror of the horribly selfish thought he could have easily been in Anya's situation. It could've been him but it wasn't and he so conflicted on the pit it put in his stomach that brings and the shameful relief it wasn't. In this scenario he is friends with Jimmy for a long time still. Jimmy likely knew him pretransition. Maybe he gave Curly weird looks then, maybe they never stopped after, maybe they seemed meaner. They are guys now, bros, both of them are. He doesn't really have to worry what those looks mean anymore, Jimmy just has that face with him sometimes. It's recontextualizing a lot of things for him that he was in denial about or too ashamed to admit. How naive he was being and how he let that get another person hurt.

Specifically with Anya, it's he knows the dread and fear she's feeling. He can understand it because he had to live with it for a good portion of his life, he knows it cause he still does, just in a slightly different way. It makes him think of all the times he's been alone with Jimmy, all the times he's been way more drunk off his ass and not remember the night, Jimmy was always with him the next day. Makes him think of the comments he would laugh off both because that's what guys do but because that part of being a girl says to laugh so Jimmy doesn't do something. It's the selfish realization that he was never safe and he's uncertain now too. Mad at himself for forgeting that feeling, espcially since for a long time he would've been considered the only woman on a crew (with all that implies) for a long time.

He should've taken those blinders off, step back into that position for just a moment and it's so much more painful that Anya likely came to him because he should've gotten it. Those thoughts don't leave his mind after the crash when he's in an even more vulnerable position than she was...