#and let me be clear

[ohtobeleah]

glen was absolutely the “hey mom look” *holds out a lizard* kid growing up. that is a child who brought home stray animals if i have ever seen one.

Surely. He gives off major reptile kid vibes.

[rarilight]

the good thing about my supporter server is I could walk into any channel and talk about raritwi and no one can do anything about it

I WONT!!! but i COULD!!!!

[holybatgirlz]

Me knowing full well I’m about to be a massive bitch to a good friend of mine because her new boy toy is a sloppy drunk

[do-angels-dream-of-starry-seas]

EXTREMELY fun tags in that last poll that suggests Ten groomed Rose

I mean they're wrong but that made me gasp and instantly intrigued

[dykebilbo]

last post reminds me of being a kid and saying i wanted to be an artist when i grow up and an older cousin told me i would end up like her friends with art degrees: miserable and working at a BAR (which obvs id never been in a bar but must be pretty bad from the way she said it!)

or when the same cousin asked me what my favorite color was and when i told her yellow she was like "yellow's such a gross color!!!!"

wait, you know what? fuck that cousin in particular

[twothirdsgenius]

AHHHHHHH

[lesbiancocksucker]

who let me have free will all I've done for the past two hours is renovate the landgrabb's house in the sims

[ohgoddamnit]

Not me ready to dive into my car to grab the rolling pin I keep in there bc a neighbor (?) approached me in a weird way

[hillerska-official]

I never wanted to go to a target so bad in my life

[allyourfearsarecomingtrue]

this site has a coterie of bloggers who put "being against child porn on ao3" and "being a panphobe" into the same moral bracket in a way which tells me that the Christian urge to correlate bad behaviour with sexual degeneracy can be translated into any community

[nialltlynch]

so matthew lynch and elsa of arendelle have the same birthday which just furthers my frozen / lynch fam theory

[forlornmelody]

So yesterday I realized my quarantine venting posts weren’t really doing me any favors. Today I decided that I’ll try doing the opposite and see if it helps. 

Today’s list of nice things:

1. My friend just finished their maternity leave right before all this started and was really anxious about being way from their baby. Because of working from home, they don’t have to be separated anymore. 

2. I saw a rainbow the moment I walked in my front door after work (I’m a caregiver, don’t @ me) As a queer Christian, this symbol has a lot of positive connotations for me. 

3) My new short shorts fit me perfectly! I won’t have to return them! (seriously why do you buy clothes online by choice?? It’s so stressful!!!)

4) I only died once getting to the reactor in the Omega DLC. Technically, it was Aria and Nyreen that died, oops. Oh! And this was in hardcore mode. That DLC is really technically challenging so I’m pretty proud of myself. 

5) Batwoman this week was dope. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I like Alice’s story arc here better than the comics. Also, they handled Kate’s trauma really well. 

[theherocomplex]

I was moderately delighted by the first 90% of The Thief, but the moment everything flipped and The Reveal occurred I was cackling in bed so loudly Orpheus got annoyed and left the room. 

How did I manage to sleep on this series so long?! 

[likeaustralianotcrosby]

Honestly, my opinion is that, if Mon-El truly is ashamed by his past and has changed, he should go and do right by his people. All of them lost their planet. He has the power to go and make sure they are okay. 

Not that I think he should go be a prince again or anything. But he should use whatever power he has to make sure that his people are safe and happy and that they’re not being oppressed anymore. He should definitely go do that. 

BUT NO, he likes being a “hero” so he can stay with Kara (not a legit reason to be a hero imo) instead of doing what’s right. He knows what his parents are like and he’s just like “lol not my problem anymore. I’ve changed haha” and like, dude, obviously you haven’t. You’re just doing everything in your power to get your way like you always have.

[madamebadger]

An interesting thing:

If you bring Iron Bull and Varric around with you, you may notice that their banter is sort of... hard-edged. Surly. Even snarly. Which is kind of funny because both Bull and Varric mostly can get along with almost anyone. Varric is also edgy with Cassandra, but then, he has reason--the woman did kidnap, threaten, and interrogate him, and then later attempt to clobber him for lying about Hawke--but even there they seem to warm up to each other eventually.

And yet Varric and Bull remain sort of twitchy around each other, for all that by rights they ought to have the same sort of ethics. 

Why?

I think: they’re both liars. And they both know it.

There’s a proverb: you should set a thief to catch a thief. And I think the same is true of liars. It’s sometimes said that you can’t fool an honest man, but that’s clearly deeply untrue (an untruth that is, admittedly, very self-serving for the dishonest to spread): it’s actually quite easy to con an honest but sensitive or generous individual. But in my experience, liars sniff each other out.

Varric and Iron Bull lie for very different reasons and in very different ways. 

Varric lies partly because it’s entertaining and makes the stories better--an impulse that, I think, all storytellers have--but also to protect his friends. We know he lied to protect Hawke, but it would also not shock me if he covered the tracks of his other criminal friends: Merrill the apostate blood mage, Isabela the pirate thief, Fenris the escaped slave with his stolen house, Anders the terrorist apostate. Even Aveline would need some protecting from appearing to be complicit in any of their crimes. Varric lies for the twin and yet conflicting goals of glory and safety. He wants the great deeds of his friends to be written in fire across the sky--and yet he doesn’t want any of them to be found.

Bull lies because it is his nature; he lies because that is what Hissrad does. But where Varric lies about his friends, Bull lies mostly about himself. He tells the truth and yet at the same time, he lies. He freely tells you all about the Qun--while at the same time admitting that he is an agent on their behalf, a spy and a  mole. He tells you he’s going to lie--and you believe him--

“The funny thing is, Mister Lipwig, that I find myself trusting you all the more when you tell me how untrustworthy you are,” said Miss Dearheart.

Moist sighed. “Yes, I know, Spike. Wretched, isn’t it. It’s a people thing.”

-- Going Postal, Terry Pratchett

--you believe him because he seems so straightforward, even though what he’s being straightforward about is being a liar. You believe him because even while telling you that he is lying to you, he seems so honest.

But then, Varric does the same thing. “Also prone to extravagant lies,” he admits, almost immediately when you meet him, with a glint in his eye that very nearly matches the glint in Bull’s eye. And they both will smile, tell stories, buy you a drink. They both are expansive in their personas. They both tell you that they are liars--and oh, you believe them. 

Don’t you?

Set a thief to catch a thief. Set a Ben-Hassrath to catch a storyteller. Set a rogue to catch a Hissrad. It’s all the same in the end.

We trust both of them--but they don’t trust each other.

It might could be that they’re both, in the end, correct about that.