#at least not consciously

[dilf-in-peril]

Watching that SES Punk match when it aired on the WWE yt channel with the live chat was truly a surreal experience. He'll be twirling his hair, giggling, and crawling around on all fours like a stripper with his pretty pierced tongue out, just acting like a total fucking minx and no one fucking says anything about it?? They aren't even calling him a faggot? Rashid from Mumbai just thinks he's the best in the world and Dave from New York thinks he should acknowledge the tribal chief.

Starting to think the gay part of gay evil jesus was not for the heat because the straight man just does not pick up on it.

[softquietsteadylove]

Let’s do some soft moment between them?

Thena sees how stressed Gil is and decides to do some things for him, like ordering dinner, sorting and taking care of little stuff and more!

"Hey hon," Gil calls as he drags himself through the door. He sets his bag down heavily but tries to pull himself together. Thena got off her shift six hours ago, and he doesn't want to ruin her evening with his shit day.

It's all part of the job, right?

"Hey!"

He grunts faintly as Thena comes running down the front hall and throws herself into his arms. He's not complaining, though, happily burying his nose in her hair and holding her against his chest.

She pulls away, only to hold his cheeks in her hands and kiss him properly. "I missed you."

Obviously she knows he's had a hard shift, but it still makes him all warm and fuzzy inside for her to kiss him like that and lavish him with attention and sweet words. "I missed you too."

Thena walks them further into her apartment, trading little kisses with him as they walk, like they're lovesick teenagers, which she always said she found obnoxious. "You go sit, I'll bring dinner over."

"You cooked?" he chuckles, but obeys her instruction.

"I'm trying to help you relax, not poison you."

He lets out a long laugh on his way to her nice comfy sectional. He doesn't lie down, though. If he does that, he's just going to fall asleep in an instant.

"I ordered your favourites," she calls from the kitchen in the same happy tone.

Gil raises a brow at it, lounging back on the couch. "What's got you so giddy?"

"Just," he heard some clinking of cuttlery and plates and stuff. "Happy you're back!"

Gil sits up a little straighter as she comes over with two dishes for them. He cooks for them as often as he can, but she's ordered Chinese--something he's unlikely to make for them at home anyway. She sits next to him with a smile. "Honey, really."

Thena sighs, having been seen through. She wilts into the couch as well, "okay, okay. I tried, didn't I?"

He chuckles, pulling her into him and leaving the food for now. "Not that I don't appreciate it, but like I asked, what's the occasion?"

Thena tilts her head at him, hair down for once in the comfort of her own home. "You seemed more than a little bummed when I headed out, and that was before you had the last few hours to go. I thought, maybe, you'd want the treatment when you got home."

He grins, and not just because her apartment is 'home' for both of them. He wraps his arms around her waist, reclining so she can sit between his legs on the couch. "I already get the treatment, coming home to you."

Thena laughs off his sweet talk, as she always does. Because she doesn't know just how much he means it. Coming home to her beautiful smile and dry tone and reluctance to laugh at his dumb jokes?--that's all he needs.

"Well," she sighs, tracing along the lines of his sweater. "I know you had a long day, and I know you like getting all cuddly, so..."

He could cry. She was doing this for him? Even though she always says that she hates acting like young kids in puppy love. He kisses her forehead, combing his fingers through her hair leisurely. "No complaints from me, baby. But I gotta say, touchy-feely isn't exactly your love language."

"But it is yours," she insists, still on this thing about easing the stresses of his day. "And I know you like, uh, boyfriend-y stuff like this."

She's always been reluctant to really use that word. And he's never pushed her, happy to be her work-husband, even with their relationship rather private from their coworkers. He doesn't have to be her boyfriend to know that she's his. And he is most definitely hers, mind-body-and-soul.

Gil touches the tip of his nose to hers before kissing her. It's soft, in the way they don't have time for in the middle of the work day. "You know you're the best, right?"

It appeals to the ego in her - the Doctor ego - and she grins, pleased with herself. "Well, it never hurts to hear it again."

"You're," another kiss, "the", another, "best."

Thena practically purrs in his arms, getting nice and comfy in his lap as he lavishes her with attention. She can act tough and independent all she likes, he knows she's not above a nice cuddle every now and then. And he wasn't the only one who had a long day at work.

"So, is this really all because you thought I had a rough day?"

"Well," Thena pauses.

He nudges her, pressing his lips to her temple.

She snuggles a little more into his chest. "I saw you watching that couple in the waiting room being all gross together. You seemed a little - I don't know - envious."

He chuckles again. She wouldn't have said anything on her own, but she is the type who would notice him noticing something like that and think about what to do about it on her own. "So, you're letting me feel like a real boyfriend, tonight?"

Her sheepishness returns and even a little colour in her perfect cheeks. "You're already my husband. But if you want to be my boyfriend, too-"

He gets impatient and kisses her in the middle of her sweet little declaration. He can't resist, he just loves this woman so much. It really helps drown out the long work day, the relentless pace of it, the merciless nature of both their jobs.

"See?" she laughs between kisses. "You love this sappy stuff!"

"Guilty," he admits completely. "Good thing I have such a sappy girlfriend."

"Sappy?!"

He pouts his lips and makes his best puppy eyes at her, "just for me?"

His girlfriend is a real sucker for this face, and it doesn't take her long to crumble before it, "fine. Just for you, and just here, and just sometimes."

"Okay fine," he smiles, burying his nose in her hair. They honestly might not get to the food until it's a little cold, at this rate, but he's fine with that. He inhales, feeling the slight weight of her against his chest and stomach and the curve of her ribs against arm.

"So," Thena also sighs, relishing his warmth, "you wanna eat this dinner I ordered, or what?"

"In a minute, hon," he mumbles. He's not really lying down, but he might just fall asleep like this anyway.

[jordankennedy]

sick freaks who suck are compelling to me what can i say

[manidottir]

WHICH COLOR AESTHETIC™ ARE YOU?

Your color: Forest Green

You're in your own world, spinning fictions and building realities and finding the poetry in ordinary things. The people around you can tell there's something special to you, and you're well-loved by a some very good people. But even to your closest friends, you're a bit of a mystery. This always surprises you to hear, because you don't mean to put walls up-- you just get so caught up in things nobody else sees that you forget to let yourself be seen. You're complicated, and sometimes you get tangled in it. Don't worry, though, it's not off-putting; despite your accidental air of mystery, your warmth can be seen like a campfire through distant trees.

Tagged by: @alldaddy Tagging: @soldottiir @musamulta @hauntedreality @bladedwoe, and whoever else wants to do it!

[babyspacebatclone]

I use this in one of my original settings!

Well, technically the opposite, but very much the “translating tears apart basically cultural understanding.”

The fairies that appear in the story both use a highly poetic way of speaking, and a spell to both understand and be understood by other races. In fact, one fairy taking time to learn the common language as a second tongue is seen as exceptionally weird on their part.

The problem is, the translation spell is exceptionally literal, not taking into account any of the bizarre speech practices of the fairies.

One character is told something she hears as “You have a darkness in your mind, a cloud that is making you act against your wishes, harming those you care for the most.”

She’s going through a lot at the time, including just learning that she’s a shapeshifter and can’t control that beyond active repression yet.

So she assumes they’re commenting on her stress and depression.

No, it turns out one of her best friends has had a curse woven over her, designed to keep her from forming a romantic attachment with anyone but the guy who ordered the curse in order to facilitate his plan for a political marriage.

And for plot related reasons this curse has latched itself onto character 1, specifically using her to break apart any cute moments between her two best friends.

Often by triggering that uncontrolled shapeshifting.

When they manage to finally confirm with the one would-be ambassador fairy that the fairies had actually been trying to explain that, the non-fairies are not very amused.

Random fantasy/worldbuilding thing:

Everyone from a different culture seems strangely poetic and profoundly deep in their observations, but only because they speak whatever the common tongue is as a second language, and whatever they are saying is actually mostly just clumsily translated common sayings/figures of speech that flow much better in their own tongue, and make perfect sense to the people who understand the cultural context.

Someone who comes from a place where geodes are common will describe another person: "He is like a stone that seems to hold a treasure inside of it - you learn to know such stones by their shape and their weight - but once you split it open, there is no quartz, no amethyst, no sparkling and brilliant crystal you expected. Just solid rock, through and through. He is like one of those rocks." Which vaguely makes sense, but they're clearly frustrated about not being quite able to express what they're trying to say.

The thing is, in their own first language, there's a specific word for this kind of rock - one that outwardly seems to be a geode but it isn't one after all. This word is also commonly used as an insult, to describe a person who is charismatic, convincing and outwardly seems brilliantly smart, but is actually dumb as shit.

[heartorbit]

revstar emu save me

[patsmassivekeychain]

Ok more coherent thoughts now. I can already see how this ending is probably going to be divisive and to an extent I understand why. Before it aired, I wasn't keen on the idea of the show ending like this. People don't like endings where the found family go their separate ways, except that isn't really what's happening here. And I think the way they did it was perfect.

Alison has come in and completely turned these ghosts' unlives around. She's given them purpose, connections with the outside world and each other, and above all a lack of boredom. Boredom is one of the main existential challenges the ghosts face. Alison isn't abandoning them to what they had before she came - she's leaving them with the tools to actually live rather than just exist after her.

And she's not gone forever! Families don't have to live together to be family. She comes back and visit them regularly! Maybe it's just because I moved out from my parents' in the last few years and I'm back for Christmas, but her being a regular at the hotel, coming back and visiting them at least every Christmas (maybe more) was very moving to me. Just because she's moved out doesn't mean they're not still family.

Having it become a hotel is a nice bookend and I bet it's improved the ghosts' quality of unlife a lot. As I said, their biggest challenge has always been boredom. A hotel/golf course probably isn't at all boring. How many affairs do you think Julian has watched? It's perfect for them, with all the people coming and going. I bet they even stage the odd haunting for fun. A constant, varied existence is a great fate for them.

Ending the episode with the plague ghosts was PERFECT. Obviously, it was great to see them again and it was hilarious as they always are. But it struck me just how much this decision has improved their situation - they've gone from dingy cellar to sauna. And that's the analogy of how much things have improved for all the ghosts.

Change is scary. It's sad when things come to an end. But sometimes it's for the best. And an end doesn't always mean a closed door.

[noe-clara69]

Can you imagine how fucking angry Neil was when he heard Jean say “So Drake’s not a biter then.”

Because I can.

In that one sentence Neil learned 2 things.

1) That Jean was sexually assaulted

2) What he (Jean) went through was something akin to what Andrew went through with Drake.

I also think that reminded him of everything (that he knows) Drake did to Andrew. I think it reminded him of the time when Drake ambushed him and was paid by Riko to do so. I think it reminded Neil that both of those bastards got of way too fucking easily.

I think Neil put a hit on Grayson not only for Jean, but also for Andrew, Kevin, himself and anyone else who was hurt by Riko, Grayson and Drake (that last one might be a stretch but you get my point).

I think Neil felt so angry and helpless at that point and when he was presented with an opportunity to properly get rid of someone’s abuser, he took it.

[queenoftheimps]

I will say: it is a testament to Delainey Hayles, the show writers, the other actors, and even the original book itself, that Claudia's death was THIS gutwrenching for us all, despite having originally being written & published almost 50 years ago.

Like, I knew this was coming. I first the read the book twenty years ago. I've seen the film adaptation. Lots of people who watch the show have. And yet it feels like we're all still in collective mourning all the same, and that's powerful.

[its-rat-time-babey]

“The Artificer’s campaign has little impact on the overall story” bitch I cannot stress how much of an impact the Artificer had on the entire world. You just need to pay attention to some things.

By the time of the Artificer, Scavengers are basically in the middle of a massive golden age. They have a Chieftain (with a mark of communication (maybe Five Pebbles gave them the mark and citizen ID drone and tried to use them for something but they rebelled and found Metropolis)) with armour made from Red Centipede Scales, they have a permanent home in metropolis above the rain, they figured out how to harvest electrical scrap and broken down Rarefaction Cells from the ruins of Looks To The Moon and pieces of Five Pebbles to make electric spears and Singularity Bombs, they even have specially trained Elite Scavengers, which did exist before in the time of the Spearmaster but it’s still worth bringing them up.

Overall, Scavengers are at a golden age of invention and life in general.

And then they anger the Artificer, who slaughters countless Scavengers, kills their Chieftain and drives them out of Metropolis, locking the gate behind them.

After that, a new Chieftain is never made, armour like the chieftain once wore is never made again, Scavengers suffer a massive population loss, they can’t enter Metropolis without a Citizen ID Drone and Elite Scavengers slowly disappear as the methods used to teach them and the knowledge of how to scavenge and create electric spears and singularity bombs is lost, with the last Elite Scavengers being seen in the Hunter’s campaign, which happens next in the timeline. In other words, the Artificer literally sent Scavengers into a dark age.

It takes until the time of the SAINT for Scavengers to show real signs of recovery, now appearing in larger numbers than before. And even THEN Scavengers never do anything like they did during the time of the Artificer. The Artificer plunged Scavengers into a dark age for countless years, and they STILL haven’t recovered.

And that’s not all. According to the wiki, Scavengers are afraid of Slugpups, most likely because they remember how the last time they killed one they were hit by the full force of an angry explosive lobbing goddess of destruction that slaughtered countless members of their kind. They are afraid of Slugpups in all campaigns, even the Saint’s. So even by the time of the Saint Scavengers know not to mess with Slugpups, presumably because the last time they did so is a legend among Scavengers by that point in time.

Hell, the Artificer’s existence even explains something about the Hunter. The reason that the Hunter starts with a negative reputation among Scavengers is because they look like the fucking Artificer. Scavengers look at the Hunter and see the goddess of vengeance and destruction that they’ve only ever heard of from stories.

Both of them have red fur and a scar on one eye, and will the time gap between campaigns, there’s a good chance that only a few Scavengers that saw the Artificer in person are even alive by that point in time (without even taking into account how the Artificer murdered so many Scavengers that it’s probably rare that a Scavenger saw them and lived to tell the tale), meaning that the Artificer is probably told about in Scavenger stories and her appearance would therefore differ, leaving the most obvious details like the scar on one eye and red fur.

[vaguely-concerned]

just had the thought 'in the end the most important thing varric taught rook was how to make a home for, with, and in other people' and then I had to go lie down on the floor and clutch at my head in unceasing agony for a few hours, as you may well imagine. hawke and the kirkwall crew........ in the end you kind of saved the world a bit in the most characteristically indirect and chaotic of ways. not by anything in particular that you did or achieved or accomplished (lmao imagine!), but just by -- having existed, and by the love that was always there, despite it all, in all its imperfections, even when no one was saved by it in the end. you're not here right now and you're not quite haunting the narrative but I hear your voices bickering and arguing and laughing from the other room. (and so, I think, does varric. all the time.)

'did you think you mattered, hawke? did you think anything you ever did mattered?' yeah actually, varric says with da2 and keeps saying through the series. you were here. and I loved you. and as it turns out that mattered more than almost anything in the world, no matter how long it lasted or how fucked up it was at the time or what else happens, because varric manages to pass that feeling, that intangible... home, that echo of you all as you were together, that love, hopefully the best parts of it, on to someone else for them to bring with them on their journey, with their family. and maybe the world will be kinder this time. you never know. merrill's line of 'Everything affects everything. We were born, a bunch of things happened, and now we're in a mess with our friends.' varric's greatest fear of becoming his parents. even through the wreck and the ruin of the world, ghosts upon ghosts upon ghosts of love -- malcolm hawke, who we never even see, but his life touched hawke's and hawke's touched varric's and varric's touched rook's and rook is passing it on to the family they're creating. the unbroken legacy of love shines through in ways that are stronger and stranger than any magic. help

[qqueenofhades]

Sure, every single one of Trump's announced cabinet picks so far is (as expected) spectacularly terrible, but fear not, everyone. Susan Collins is here and she is Very Concerned.

[droodlebug]

i'm constantly getting myself worked up about what the qunari in dragon age could be if the writers weren't racist as shit. in a perfect world that we don't live in, the veilguard comes out and it reveals that everything heard about qunari and the qun were wrong and people are just there living their lives and to stop treating their religion, that is inescapably a parody of islam, like it's a form of control. stop treating them like they're inheritly violent or murderous when like. the grey warden kills a bunch of desperate refugees that attack them at the start of the game. not incapcitate, kill. hawke is constantly killing people like All the Time. it is a joke between the da2 characters in the game. but when the qunari do it it's suddenly wrong? suddenly murder is bad in the context of the world?

when the religion of the maker and the elves gets treated with respect and nooo andrastians aren't forcing their religion on anyone they're just making people see the Truth. but when anyone willingly converts to the qun that means they? are bad people now? when the qunari have a spy that's invasive and scary but when you have your own spymaster that tortures people well that's fine it's just what's necessary. when the circles literally take someone's spirit away by making them tranquil that's horrific but it is what it is, but when the qunari restrict their mages in a very similar way, the only difference being that you can See from the outside what it feels like, then it's an even worse unspeakable horror? even when the mages of the qun are giving to that willingly for the percieved safety of others vs nearly every account of tranquility being forced, somehow the qun version of the same thing is still worse???

that is the way the games themselves through story and mechanics frame it and it's shit because the qunari is very obviously based on a real life religion and real life people that are heavily demonized in real life and it is not fair

[sunflowers-and-scales]

HI I LOVE YOUR ART STYLE

transfem fitz? :>

transition could save her/hj

(styled by the lovely biana vacker)

[toytle]

ART INSPIRATIONS

DC ARTISTS:

Greg Capullo:

- insp. even before i got into dc comics

- strong, intentional linework

- mature faces/wrinkles + masculine features + soft, expressive eyes

Carmine di Giandomenico + Ivan Plascencia:

- barryisms (#1 influence besides FPP)

- bruceisms (esp from The Knight)

- hair wispies + geometric clothing folds

- use of gradients + “hard edge” shading

Alejandro Sanchez:

- idek if there’s anything specific abt his coloring that gets me, all ik is that i’ve watched every single one of his process vids on youtube like coco melon

Other: Jorge Jimenez, Dan Mora, Gleb Melnikov

ONLINE ARTISTS:

jadenvargen - concepts/composition, colors, expressiveness, rendering

fozzie - toony style, expressions/body language, character interactions

twinkiesdraws - simplifying/tooning characters, combating same-face syndrome

hamsterdancen - lines, doll/toy vibes, facial proportions

soreeeeyu - anime/doll proportions, cutesy girly vibes

_velow - animals/furries

NON-ARTIST INSPO:

General Media: Littlest Pet Shop (toys), Adventure Time, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (the reason i can draw men now lmao)

Other: vintage lovecore, dolls/customs, good ol’ people-watching

[segretecose]

people who date taylor swift or others like her at this stage are so brave it's not even about the songs it's just the ticking clock before you get Commercialized that would make me run for the hills