#as one would imagine

[jacqcrisis]

Re-playing the Cazador Palace and the end of Astarion's quest line reminded me of the bad end I had for him and Ronan.

Astarion ascends despite Ronan's protests, using one of the other companions to help him. From then on, there's a strain between him and Ronan, the affection and intimacy gone as the cleric seems to refuse to even address him and Astarion is angry he refused to help. Once the brain is defeated, Astarion, missing his love, stupidly feels brave enough to approach Ronan about becoming his spawn.

As they are alone and Astarion tries to sell his idea, something snaps in Ronan. Astarion finds himself divinely held, incapable of moving as Ronan glares him down silently in the same way he does any enemy that crosses his path, raising his mace and smoke billowing from his mouth. Astarion manages to escape the spell in time to avoid getting bashed in the head, pleading and begging Ronan see reason, what's gotten into him, what the hells happened, doesn't he love-

And he finds himself grabbed, physically this time, a fist around his arm tight enough it feels as though the bone may break. Ronan finally speaks to him, the first time in at least a week, telling him with every ounce of hatred and wrath Astarion knows the dragonborn to be capable of that the man he loved died with all the other people Astarion killed and as a cleric, it his duty to eradicate such a monster. Stunned and in disbelief, Astarion mists away at that just in time to avoid an onslaught of flames, gone into the night as his new ascended life already begins with an enemy gained.

It goes from there. Ronan is in constant pursuit of Astarion and the vampire can't rest for too long. His operation must always be moving, always secret as he never knows when his doors will be kicked in by a group of holy men and his spawn and undead and werewolves and pawns eradicated as he flees once more. If Ronan catches him or he gets to Ronan, it's a fight to the bloody end until one is forced to flee as with every ounce of power and control Astarion has scraped together as an ascended vampire, Ronan has matched him with his own vengeful devotion to his divine warpath.

And they don't give up, not even Astarion. While Ronan wants him dead, wiped from this plane of existence, Astarion wants Ronan to be his. While he found everything he thought he wanted with his completion of the black mass, all the power, all the unending worship, all the status he could feasibly attain as a vampire, what Astarion finds in this new existence is a lack of connection.

At one point, he had friends and allies that wanted to know him for him and he had love and affection without parameters, a taste of the unconditional, of devotion to his being that developed naturally, genuinely, free of a want or a need for anything more of Astarion than himself. As he is now, this doesn't exist; all the spawn and thralls who serve and fawn over him only do so due to his powers making that love exist and all the other vampires who devote themselves to him only do so to keep his favor. Astarion finds this reality barren, empty of warmth as he looks at lover after lover he charmed in the eyes and finds nothing but his own face staring back him and he hates it.

So he obsesses over what he had with Ronan. Yearns for his neck and his subservience and his love that he cut himself off from with one bloody decision. Every time they meet again, as Ronan is attempting to cut him down, Astarion is trying everything in his power to make the cleric his, to seduce him back into his arms with either his teeth or his words, desperate to see Ronan look at him like he used to.

And Ronan always denies him. Every time, he denies him, dressed horn to toe in plate and deaf to the pleas spat at him in a voice that haunts him that he'd give anything to hear come from the person he used to have. So they fight and neither ever wins.

Over. And over. And over again.

[lotus-pear]

he's so crazy we can't take him anywhere 😭🤣

[me-beef]

@strangeravatar made a great point

i was gonna focus on the spike-hotboxing-celestia aspect but i got distracted somewhere along the way and i think i forgot what joke i was trying to make

but dont you think its interesting how many guards of the exact same color/body type she's managed to accrue?? i do

ooohh you want to go look at our stickers so bad

[chloesimaginationthings]

Glamrock Freddy feels betrayed by FNAF Roxy..

[joshuamj]

Okay, but what if EoW!Zelda had to impersonate Link

[egophiliac]

WAIT when did he get FANGS

[lynxgriffin]

I did a post asking about this ages ago, but now that there's polls, I'd like to do another round for this question, since it always has me curious:

Also, I am not including stuff like "I just stay up thinking about things that make me anxious", since this is specifically about things that help you sleep, not things that keep you up!

Just curious how widespread this practice is!

[spacedouterri]

Remember kids

Drink water after crying

Because crying is dehydrating

[sscarletvenus]

"both sides are suffering" really? because one is buried under rubble without any access to food, water, sanitation products, no fuel for ambulances, no electricity to support incubators for preterm babies, no proper beds or equipment for major surgeries, using vinegar as disinfectant, relying on phone lights to operate, has run out of body bags, had their largest bakery which received humanitarian aid bombed immediately after while the other is dancing and feasting and rejoicing and making tiktoks in clean clothes and brightly-lit rooms with electricity...

[swampybogg]

[unicornpopcorn14]

So we all know by now that Dazai is comfortable enough around Chuuya to show nervousness/worry.

Enough times for Chuuya to pick up on that pattern. The pattern, may I remind you, that doesn't have evident correlation to either nervousness or worry to most people. One that can even be interpreted as misplaced given the situation.

Which means that Dazai has done this in front of Chuuya so often, that Chuuya at first was hella confused, before he finally made a connection between when and why it happens. And still remembered that connection after four years of separation. Which gets us to my point:

What if this isn't the only emotion Dazai displays weirdly?

What if he has multiple unconventional patterns he displays for sadness, frustration, content, or disgust? The times he really feels them, and they become too strong for him to just deal with normally? What if these are the only times he's actually being genuine with his emotions?

And Chuuya is the only one who is familiar with them all?

Dazai would be jumping rope and Chuuya would be like, "quit sulking, let's get icecream"

Dazai hanging upside down on the couch and Chuuya going, "It's okay, mackerel. You can cry."

Dazai actually crying, full on heart-wrenching sobs, and Chuuya unironically going, "What, good news?"

It's just... comforting, for one person in Dazai's life to read him like a book. Everyone else would look at him like he's crazy, displaying wrong emotions/behaviors at the wrong time, but Chuuya knows that it's just how he processes feeling properly, and thus he's the only one Dazai can count on to put things into context and understand, which makes him display them even more openly.

Because Chuuya never shamed him for his quirks, as much as Dazai never did his.

[starcurtain]

Teyvat's "Most Down Bad" Award Goes to Alhaitham for a Second Year Running

Seeing everyone making fun of Alhaitham for his "stalkerish" tendencies in this event is funny, because I feel like a lot of people missed that "Be literally everywhere Kaveh is" has been Alhaitham's MO from the day Kaveh appeared in the game.

From only grabbing his house keys after Kaveh returned from the desert (he couldn't have had both sets of keys at the end of the Archon Quest unless he went home and got Kaveh's copy) to ditching conversations to get back to his house only after Kaveh came home, to showing up without any warning or explanation in Kaveh's hangout with some ridiculous excuse about hearing his voice through noise-cancelling headphones... Refusing to offer any help in the Temple of Silence story quest other than staying in the library with Kaveh...

Since when does Alhaitham willingly cover anyone else's duties?

But this trend of "Be everywhere Kaveh is" didn't start when they were adults. It was already in place when they were still Akademiya students--and it's a trend that didn't end even when they had their fight.

Even when they weren't speaking, Alhaitham dogged Kaveh's every step through published responses to Kaveh's research articles in academic journals. He insisted on keeping a line of communication between himself and Kaveh open, even if the only way to do that was through very public ideological clashes. Pulling Kaveh's pigtails to get his attention lolol. It's implied that, for at least the few years between their fight and Kaveh moving in, this was the only communication between them--Alhaitham's refusal to allow their connection to entirely fade away. (And the fact that this is revealed in Kaveh's character stories--through his precious journal that records the moments of his life that had the most impact on him--shows just how deeply he values the fact that Alhaitham didn't give up.)

Another relevant side note: Alhaitham never asked Kaveh to give up his half of their house. Knowing half of it belonged to Kaveh, knowing that Kaveh may one day want to reclaim his part of it, knowing that it was listed as theirs, Alhaitham moved into the house and made zero effort to change its ownership. He was completely fine with living in "his and Kaveh's house." The stories suggest it was only months later (or even longer) that Kaveh even noticed he had the house, and he transferred away ownership of his portion without Alhaitham ever asking him (or even seemingly wanting him) to do so.

Please, let that sink in. Alhaitham actively left his grandmother's (presumably comfortable) house to move into "his and Kaveh's house," with no apparent explanation for why, and after doing so, he made no attempt to change that "his and Kaveh's" label. He moved into the house with no promise that Kaveh wouldn't show up on the doorstep the very next day and move in too. It almost feels like another deliberate provocation--I've moved into our house, are you going to come stop me? LBR, if Alhaitham had had his way, Kaveh would have been living there with him from Day 1...

There's also the fact that Kaveh literally can't write on a single message board anywhere in the entire nation of Sumeru without Alhaitham hunting his messages down and responding to them (which absolutely no one else does, by the way).

"NUH-UH!" "UH-HUH." "NUH-UH!"

Alhaitham's own character stories tell us explicitly that one of Alhaitham's defining character traits is "He is never where you need him to be," yet somehow...

Shot, and chaser:

Any time Kaveh is in the slightest bit of need or danger or just wants Alhaitham near, Alhaitham is "coincidentally" exactly where Kaveh needs him to be, whenever Kaveh needs him to be there.

Alhaitham didn't just "happen" to run into Kaveh in Port Ormos, an entirely different city from where he was supposed to be working. He didn't just "happen" to read the same terrible book as Kaveh when we know he otherwise would not waste a moment of his time on poorly-written literature...

He didn't just "happen" to appear when Kaveh was upset and needed a distraction in the House of Daena during Kaveh's hangout. He didn't just "happen" to be sitting around waiting when Kaveh needed answers after the Archon Quest. He didn't just "happen" to find Kaveh's academic publications and every single message board posting and respond to them at length and in public.

The only person for whom Alhaitham just "happens" to be available is Kaveh, over and over and over again--because he is very deliberately making himself a constant presence in Kaveh's life.

Which is exactly what Kaveh's mother told Kaveh he needed.

(Like, out of all things, I think people really underestimate the devs deliberately paralleling the romantic relationship between Kaveh's mother and father with Kaveh and Alhaitham's relationship. If you want to point to one thing that says "These two characters are intentionally queer-coded," it doesn't get any more obvious than this.)

Alhaitham, are you not embarrassed to be this transparent??? 🫣

[ministarfruit]

day 15: haunting ♡

(femslashfeb prompt list)

[chloesimaginationthings]

Vanessa's first impression on Mike in the FNAF movie

[wasabi-gumdrop]

Kabru has a secret admirer in the castle!

[thebrainrotsreal]

Drew this real quick because I fucking love these two so much ???? Especially Bee. I wish they interacted more so badly. PLEASE.

Also learning how to draw these guys.. slowly.