#and ignore what everyone else is doing

[lucabyte]

Olive Branch

Wrong Move

[piromina]

me writing fanfiction

[snekdood]

"if we make america worse and more of a dictatorship that will be even harder to unravel and make it the way we want the country to be, maybe then everyone will join our Glorious Revolution!" bb girl you cant even be in the same room with someone who thinks you should vote, how in tf do you think you're gonna unite people to fight in The Revolution with you? it's gonna be you and your 5 friends, i hate to break it to you.

[tei-to-tei]

December 16 - Mischievous Activities

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 16 | ...

[nonranghaes]

"hey, yo... if i make this shot... you gotta go out with me, alright?"

mark smiles at you brighter than any star in the sky as he continues to bounce the basketball. it's just the two of you now--the rest of your friends have gone their separate ways. it feels like nights always end with just you and mark nowadays. not that you're complaining: you adore the guy. you just smile at first, knowing that you'd say yes regardless of this silly deal (and the twinkle in mark's eyes tells you that he knows this, too: he just needs to show off).

"alright," you say, hands tucked into your hoodie pocket. "go for it."

he swells a little with pride before he takes the shot... and immediately misses. his smile falls into genuine, unabashed shock as he turns to you. you're already cackling, turning to run after the ball before it can get too far away.

"yo, i practiced! i literally practiced and got it--the guys can tell you! i'm good at this, i swear--"

you calm down, smiling at him as you hold the ball in your hands. "okay. so if i make this... you gotta go on a date with me."

mark smiles wide, so cutely flustered but he nods. "alright. bet."

you line up the shot, taking a deep breath. after a moment, you throw the ball through the air, watching as it just barely bounces off the rim. it sends mark into endless cackles, and you immediately rush toward him, burying your face in his jacket as you laugh.

"oh my god," he gasps out between cackles, arms wrapping around you. "i wish i got that on camera." he squeezes you tighter. "alrightalrightalright," he says too many times, blending together as he draws back from you just enough to see your face. "c'mon. i'll buy food."

(donghyuck later reports to the group chat that both of you are indeed idiots, having heard the story from mark... but at least you're idiots together now.)

[antianakin]

No Order 66 AU where Anakin leaves the Order after the war ends and he and Padme end up retiring to Naboo to try to raise the twins together, but neither of them ends up feeling particularly satisfied with life on Naboo (for Anakin it just doesn't give him any purpose the way he desperately needs and for Padme it's always been this perfect rosy dream and reality doesn't measure up), so they end up leaving the twins behind a lot so they can pursue other things and are pretty absentee parents in general. They mostly end up getting raised by Padme's parents instead, and while they're perfectly good guardians for the twins and raise them kindly and love them a lot, there's always an obvious elephant in the room regarding who ISN'T there.

This causes a bit of a rift between Luke and Leia because while Luke is trying to keep the peace and give their parents the benefit of the doubt as he moves on and figures out his own life with what he DOES have, Leia is less willing to just forgive and forget.

Luke ends up becoming a pilot working for the royal palace for a while, but Leia goes into politics (something she'd entered while younger because it's what her mother did and she'd been hoping it would get Padme's attention and bring the two of them closer; it didn't work out that way at all and now Leia's sticking with it at least partly to spite Padme) as an aide for her cousin Pooja who is now Senator of Naboo.

And it's here, once she finally makes it to Coruscant and starts working in the Senate, that Leia meets Bail Organa, still working as Senator of Alderaan. The two of them click IMMEDIATELY and Bail ends up becoming Leia's mentor in politics, as well as the person who actually introduces her to the Jedi themselves. Anakin and Padme had never really bothered to do so, both because they were so rarely around, but also because they had chosen not to give Luke and Leia to the Temple and decided at that point that it would be easier to keep the twins and the Jedi separate. Bail of course has no such compunctions and even if he knew about Anakin and Padme's feelings on the matter, I imagine he'd find ways to allow Leia to accidentally bump into some of the Jedi while she was on Coruscant. If he just so happens to double book himself for lunch with both Leia and Obi-Wan, it's hardly anything malicious and they may as well all eat together!

Leia finally feels like she has a parent who gives a damn about her, someone who acts like a parent to her, the parent she's always wanted. Her grandparents had always been incredibly kind and they obviously had to do a lot of parenting, but they'd always been very strict about making sure the twins saw them as GRANDPARENTS and not their actual parents, which just make the absence of their parents that much more obvious and painful. But with Bail, she's finally got someone who doesn't care that Anakin and Padme aren't there and doesn't feel the need to create a wall between them for Anakin and Padme's sake. Bail takes her under his wing, teaches her everything she knows, allows her to explore things she'd never been allowed to explore before, connects her to even more people who can help her understand herself better than she's ever been able to before. THIS is what a parent was supposed to do for her and she knows it, THIS is what selfless love looks like from a parent and she THRIVES under it for the first time in her life.

She eventually decides not to stay on as Pooja's aide because she has no real desire to become a senator for Naboo at any point, but she IS good at politics and desperately does want to help people any way she can, so she starts up some sort of organization of her own to help people around the galaxy (and connects it to the Jedi because deep down she KNOWS she was supposed to be one of them even though that path is now closed to her). But she doesn't go back to Naboo, she doesn't make her home on her mother's home planet.

She goes to Alderaan instead. And this time, she gets to stay there for the rest of her life.

[mewkwota]

Had a MegaMan on the mind one evening, and it's one I've never drawn before surprisingly, so there he is. I think Juno is such an interesting character, with that aura (and hair) that he has.

(He should be A Lot Bigger in that last shot, oh well.)

[torahtot]

you can always tell when someone doesn't have maga men in their life and god it makes me angry.. "if you're nice and compassionate you can be the one woman that makes them realize women aren't mean!" my mom bent over backwards for my dad for 25 fucking years he has plenty of other women kissing his ass and it never changed anything. do you really think that before being radicalized they never knew a single kind woman? they were never friends with a nice girl? alt-right men's problem with women isn't just that they've experienced too many mean women and they need to be shown that women can be nice, it's that they think women are inferior and don't deserve rights and don't understand anything so you can do what you want with them. and it takes a lot more than being nice to show someone that you aren't inferior. this isn't a case of being nice even when it's hard for the sake of deradicalization, it's about spending every fucking interaction with someone trying to get them to see you as a human being with value and a functioning intellect while they just laugh and show you that's never going to happen.

i cannot stress this enough: random women are not just going out and Being Mean to men. ur average guy interacts with plenty of women throughout his life- close women amongst their friends and family, casual interactions etc. most people don't start out being shunned by women, they start out being treated as NORMAL. & when they show their disrespect in normal society, it isn't tolerated, but when they go to alt-right spaces (which they're pushed towards online) they're told they're allowed to be as horrible as they want with no consequences because they're entitled to everything. it isn't "women aren't welcoming and the alt-right is so friendly so i'll become alt-right," it's "women don't let me disrespect them and the alt-right tells me fuck them, do whatever you want, you're entitled to it all" and why would you choose the group where you have to be a normal accountable person when there's a group that will reward you for being a shithead who gives no fucks?

the alt-right can afford to be more friendly and welcoming because they can allow bigotry. this can't work the same way for progressive spaces because we can be as kind & welcoming as possible but at the end of the day we have lines where we have to say "this behavior/speech isn't allowed in this space," and for certain people, that just can't win against a space where you can be as nasty as you want. these posts always end with a disclaimer saying "of course being kind doesnt mean you need to tolerate their bigotries" but what they don't realize and what drives me crazy is that women not tolerating bigotry IS the "women are mean" that radicalized them in the first place. they perceive you pushing back on any bigotry or bullshit as you being a meanie and treating them like they're ontologically evil. the 'kindness' they need to be deradicalized is you letting them walk all over you.

idk what the answer is to deradicalizing them and im sure relationships are part of it but you can be as kind as you want and all it will do is destroy you ime. i cant stand to see people (who have never even successfully deradicalized any man by being nice btw they always speak in hypotheticals and not from experience) double down on telling women to do things that will see no results and only hurt them, especially when any woman who has tried can tell you exactly how it went

[seaquestions]

blake lets him keep it. this is a dire lapse in judgement on his part but they're just gonna have to live with it. (ids in alts)

[arsenicflame]

i think the reason izzy can be so blasé about his relationship with ed is not because hes taken to blaming a shark instead, but because hes actually already done a lot of the processing in the previous episode.

hes mourned his leg, hes had his drunk crying rants. hes gone through the five stages of grief. and then? the crew reaches out to him, offers him their support. they make him a new leg, they nominate him their new figurehead. when he stands there on the prow of the ship, leg on, letter in hand, thats his acceptance, thats his moving on.

[slozhnos]

i think the most heartbreaking moment in childish things is winn and kara’s conversation at the docks bc like “no, you don’t really need me.” bit hurts me so much every time

[spookythesillyfella]

UUGHH I JUST HAD THE WORST DAY IM SO ANGRY AND FRUSTRATED GRRRR !!!!! goes to draw my best friend @jumjum-crafts 's guy to blow off steam

★ version without text + reference image under cut :

★ song : "STATIC ELECTRICITY HUMAN – Computer Flavor" – kairikibear

[bayetea]

seeing non-black people critique rick's portrayal of black characters is interesting sometimes. only like 30% of the critiques I see make any sense to me to be honest

[rainbowsandwhumperflies]

The Winged Servant - 13

content warnings: brainwashed whumpee, non-human (angel) whumpee, some weird angel discrimination, let me know if I missed anything!

prev chapter | masterlist

Badly, actually, was how I felt about crepes.

It wasn’t the crepes that were the problem. It wasn’t the sloppiness that required eating them, not even how unprofessional I had to be to eat them in front of someone.

No, mostly the problem was the people. And maybe the fact that I’d slept sitting up against a wall for four hours total the night before, and I was starting to feel a pinch between my eyes.

Kieran led me up a staircase, back to the ground level of the castle. I had been there the night before, when I had been too focused to look around. It felt more like a pavilion than an entire floor of the castle. There were a few walls, a few separations of rooms, but it was mainly held up by columns and pillars. There were tables all over, going past the ends of the columns and all the way outside. Two guards stood by a table together on the edges. I wondered if they were standing in the place where the royal family had killed a guard the night before.

“We hold breakfast and dinner here every day for anyone that wants it,” Kieran was saying as we walked past empty tables. “It’s not usually super popular, because there aren’t always a lot of different options of food, but it’s nice for people to have a place where they’re guaranteed a meal. Crepes are usually a hit, because they’re so customizable, but most everyone’s cleared out by now.”

It didn’t look to me like most everyone was cleared out. I counted four tables outside and two inside with people sitting at them. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see how many people attended during actual meal times.

And we walked into a kitchen, and it was so loud. I must’ve been around large groups of people at least a few times before I gave my memories to the royal family, but not since becoming a servant. And for the more recent years of it, I hadn’t even served families of nobility. The sound echoed and bounced around, getting stuck in my head like peanut butter on the roof of my mouth.

“What do you want on your crepe?” Kieran asked as we walked into the kitchen, and I swallowed. There had to be at least forty people working here.

“Whatever you see fit, sir.”

He grinned at me, looking slightly confused. “It’s a crepe for you, Onyx. Not me.”

“I don’t…” I glanced to the side. Enunciate, don’t mumble, don’t trail off in the middle of a sentence. I knew how to do this, knew how to answer questions the way that the royal family liked, even when I was tired. “I’ve never had a crepe, sir,” I admitted.

“Really? Never? Do you know what they are?”

“Yes, sir. I think- I think I might have had them before, but… not any time recently. I don’t remember. My apologies. Regardless, I will be grateful for whatever you wish to provide me with.”

“... Okay.” He stared at me for a bit. “If I tell you a few different toppings, will you tell me which ones you like the best? We could go from there.”

“Sir, I don’t- good servants don’t have likes and dislikes.” He had to know that, right? We were in the kitchen of a castle, surrounded by people that were presumably servants. He had to have been testing me, making sure I knew the rules. I did. I could be good.

“You’re not supposed to have likes and dislikes?” he repeated, and I shook my head. “That’s- um, we’re gonna talk about that later. Once you’ve got food in your stomach. Do you have certain toppings that you might be… more grateful than others about?”

This was dangerous territory. If I let myself think too hard about the toppings, I was veering into likes and dislikes and opinions. If I didn’t, I’d be ignoring direct orders.

“Usually I have Her Majesty The Queen’s leftovers for breakfast, sir,” I said quietly. “And I usually get some toast that she doesn’t always eat, and it has strawberry jam on it.”

“You like strawberries?”

I could be a good servant. No likes or dislikes, but I could be good enough to find a way around it. I didn’t like strawberries, that would’ve been opinionated. But maybe if I worded it differently? More objective? “Strawberries… taste good. Sir. I think.” I wasn’t supposed to think, or at least not like that, so the statement wasn’t quite right. But closer, because Kieran was grinning again. Like he’d discovered a cheat code in a video game.

“Yeah. Okay. Thank you for telling me that, Onyx. We’ve got strawberries. Is whip cream okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Great. That’s like, the two most important ingredients for every crepe I eat. Do you have any dietary restrictions?”

Hm.

I knew what dietary restrictions were, of course. I had plenty of restrictions, dietary and otherwise. Of course there were things I couldn’t do, things I couldn’t eat. But they were restrictions imposed by the royal family. There was fruit that made my throat itch, or things that Prince Ryan made sure not to give me, but those weren’t things that I couldn’t eat. Not if someone asked me to.

“I, um. I will eat whatever you see fit, sir. Would you like to know the things that the royal family did not allow me to eat?”

He pursed his lips. Wrong answer, then, but that didn’t make sense. That wasn’t just me trying to think of the right thing to say, that was an exact line from the script that I was always supposed to follow. That was what the royal family had trained me to say.

But Kieran was not the royal family. Of course he had different rules, different uses for his servants. Of course my old script wouldn’t cut it anymore.

“Okay,” he said eventually. “I don’t want to know what the royal family didn’t let you do. I’m going to get you a crepe with strawberries and whip cream. There are other fruits, if you’d like any?”

“... I will eat whatever you see fit, Sir.” I already knew that was wrong, but what the fuck else was I supposed to say?

“Are you at all interested in blueberries? Or mangos?” I hesitated, and he smiled thinly. “I know. Whatever I see fit. Alright, then. I’ll get the other fruit for you too. If you find a seat somewhere, I’ll bring it out in a few minutes. I like eating outside the best, but we can eat wherever you’d like.”

“Of course, sir,” I managed weakly.

Find a seat somewhere.

A daunting task, because the tables meant six tables of people that I didn’t know if I was supposed to bow to or what titles to call. But regardless, it was a task that had been asked of me.

I could manage whatever task I needed to that had been asked of me.

This task was different, though. It was a choice given to me. Choices weren’t given to me. Servants were for orders. And I supposed it wasn’t a real choice—I was picking the one that I thought Kieran would prefer the most—but it was still terrifying.

Outside, first. That’s what he’d said, that he liked the tables outside the best. Four tables with people at them. Three—one group had left in the time since I’d been out here. Three tables of people. And when I was next to a person, of course, all my attention was supposed to be focused on them. Serving them to the best of my abilities. Alone out here, with three tables of people, I was forced to notice the way they stared at me. Or rather, my wings.

This wasn’t new, exactly. Back when noble families were allowed to know about me, the queen had told me to hold still while they felt the texture of the fur on my wings. They’d never felt anything like it, they’d said. Fascinating, they’d called me. They would’ve loved to see me fly, and it was the only time I thought Her Majesty might have regretted breaking my wing.

And it was her right to display me. It was the nobility’s right to stare, to pet my wings and ask how much force it would take to rip the skin that stretched between each bone.

I just wasn’t used to the staring anymore, that was all. If Kieran planned to have me out in public more often, then perhaps I needed to get used to it again.

I eventually chose a table close to the door, so that Kieran would not have to walk far to get to me. So that he would not need to look hard to ensure that I did not run away. I wouldn’t, no matter how many privileges I was given, but it was still odd to give me so many. Outside, alone, picking a seat and waiting for breakfast to be delivered to me. It was wrong. It was not how things were supposed to be.

And yet, it was how Kieran wanted it to be. So I stared at the grain in the wood that the table was made out of and ignored the way that people were staring at me.

~

taglist: @rainydaywhump @kaleidoscope-of-thoughts @toyybox @risk606

[crownedwille]

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[mymarifae]

me: i finished the latest trailblaze mission in hsr so i can look at what other people are posting now! oh boy i hope it's discussions and theories about the story. i can't wait to see what everyone thought about firefly (what was going on with you sweetie...) and A Child's Dream - that segment in particular really left a profound impact on me. like who is mikhail? the voice we hear throughout is obviously misha's - did he have a twin? does mikhail have something to do with clockie? and from what we heard and saw, misha or... mikhail. encountered the embodiment of Death that lurks beneath the dreamscape. what's... the full story there...? i can't wait to see other people's perspectives it'll help me piece a more coherent theory together-

other hsr fans: *thirstposting about aventurine and/or dr. ratio, trying to cancel sparkle even though the entire point of her character is that yes she's a horrible person because it's high time we see how DANGEROUS and CRUEL the masked fools can be - no more reducing them to the silly wacky hijinks sampo pulled on jarilo; you should be scared of these guys; the game's story never wanted you to make sparkle your next skrunkly blorbo babygirl lol, heated discussions about whether dr. ratio displayed the same racism towards aventurine that sparkle did and if that makes aventurine/ratio a bad thing to ship (??????????), more thirstposts about aventurine, 500 billion generic yaois of aventurine and ratio that don't even maintain either of their characters*

me: