#but then she just stood there as well

[fingertipsmp3]

Feeling very much like one of those white women you see on nextdoor panicking that they & their kids are going to be kidnapped because they got ‘followed’ around a grocery store, but seriously I just got followed around the grocery store

[inkskinned]

actually sometimes being neurodivergent is great bc you have a particular kind of Silly Mode that just . manifests glory. harmless fun is my precious side quest & i have a high score in whimsy. like okay if i gotta be the first dork in the dance pit it's gonna be me and this random toddler and we're gonna avril-style rock ouuuuttt

[hildegardladyofbones]

One of the best things about Disco Elysium by far is that it does not fear ugly women. The world is full of ugly men, but ugly women are so hard to come by.

[feroluce]

Belobog was my fave main quest but a lot of it is so. Contradictory. It's like they had multiple groups doing different shit and none of them checked in with each other for consistency. And you see this so much in Gepard's profile.

So in the main quest, they made him unfailingly, unquestionably loyal to Cocolia. Gepard's character arc is him learning to question authority etc etc. And this isn't even a bad thing; that's a story worth telling! It makes good conflict between him and Serval! And I love that we got Gepard as a boss battle and I get to see him all the time in SU!

But then you look at his character stories and it's like. The complete opposite.

According to his profile, Gepard has already HAD this awakening, long before the Astral Express, and he'd already decided Cocolia sucks. Even outside of his stories, there's a pretty damning readable between him and Pela.

He even disobeyed direct orders right in front of her- he has been disobeying orders for a while now!

So I've decided I'm marrying the two different sides of this into a 1.5k fic-ish thingy, because I think there's some fun potential there with Gepard not trusting Cocolia, but still having to pretend to be a good obedient little soldier.

Anyway. I love to think of it as like. Gepard knows Cocolia has sunk into her apathy. He can see it in her eyes every time he looks at her. She doesn't care. Not about him, not about Pela, not about all his soldiers on the frontlines giving their lives to protect the citizens. And that's... It makes him bristle a bit, but ok. Gepard can deal with this. Even if Cocolia no longer cares, as long as she does her job then it's fine. Having compassion behind an action doesn't matter as much as the action itself. If Cocolia's heart is no longer swayed, then he'll just have to care twice as hard to pick up the slack. He considers it part of his duty as a captain of the guard anyway. It's fine. Gepard can deal with it.

And then, Cocolia starts coming down to the restricted zone. Issuing direct orders.

And Gepard realizes he is in way over his head.

Because Cocolia orders him to stay back and issue commands from the ramparts, away from all his comrades, away from where he can protect them.

Gepard had thought nothing could be as bad as watching a fellow guard die right next to him. But the first time he watches someone struck by a killing blow, so far away, it hurts. Every defensive scar across his arms itches, his fingers curl in want of a weapon, the cold cannot numb his hands enough as they desperately ache for his shield. It hurts.

Gepard tries to find any reason to stay. Because surely... He knows Cocolia has lost her love for her people, but surely... She wouldn't...

One day, Cocolia orders for their gunners to advance 20 yards. There are no survivors. She almost looks like she smiles.

Gepard doesn't sleep that night.

Pela brings him the report at the end of the first month; and then the month after that, and the month after that. A significant uptick in losses, and all of it started on that first day Cocolia started overriding his authority and issuing her own orders. The ends of Gepard's pens have all been nearly chewed off. Pela outright calls Cocolia an idiot, and Gepard corrects her. Cocolia isn't an idiot. Gepard had known her through Serval, knew her through all her college years and then some, and he knows how intelligent she is. It's not that she's stupid, and it's not that she's inexperienced, it's nothing of the sort.

Cocolia knows exactly what she's doing.

She must, there's no way she could make such a horrible mess of things so badly by accident. And Pela, quick as a whip, sharp as a tack, always too smart for her own good, catches onto the meaning behind Gepard's correction without any further prompting. The tent goes deathly quiet, nothing but the wind howling outside.

"...She's trying to kill us," Pela whispers, her voice swiftly suffocated by the silence.

Gepard swallows. He can't bring himself to correct her this time. There is nothing he could say that he would actually mean.

His gaze drops, back down to his desk and the reports on it. The names aren't listed, just the numbers, but Gepard knows them, knew them, and there must be something wrong, something he's missing, because why, why would she-? What could this possibly accomplish-?

“Gepard! Focus!” Something snaps right under his nose, and Gepard startles, eyes instantly honing in on Pela's irritated face as she leans over his desk. She holds his gaze for a moment before she huffs and begins to pace, wedges a knuckle between her teeth and bites like Gepard hasn't seen her do since cadet school.

Pela angrily strides from one end of his tent to the other, words hissed between her grit teeth. “What are we going to do?” In the dim lighting, Gepard can just barely see the damp spot of blood weeping under her gloves. “We need a plan.”

“A plan?”

“Wh- Yes, a plan! Unless you want more people to die!” Pela rounds on him then, all the wrath of a blizzard, winds roaring and snow sharp enough to cut.

“We don't even know-”

“What does it matter?! She killed-!!” Pela cuts off with a garbled noise when Gepard leaps up from his desk, hastily shoves his hand over her mouth. The prosthetic, not the flesh one, because he knows better than to assume Pela won't seize the opportunity to leave teeth marks in his skin.

“You're right. I'm sorry, I'm sorry; you're right. But you need to keep quiet.” Pela quirks an eyebrow at him and Gepard can read the question in her face. “Because we both saw what she did to Serval,” he hisses.

It's amazing the snow plains haven't thawed out yet, the amount of heat Pela can put behind a glare. The mere mention of Serval, and the smoking ruins Cocolia had made of her life and career, have her bristling up like a riled cat. The sudden hot breath she takes fans fog across his metal skin, and Gepard wisely keeps it in place until Pela finally sighs and reaches up, taps her fingertips against the back of his hand.

The second she's free, Pela bats him away and then her knuckle is right back between her teeth again, Gepard leaning back against his desk with his arms crossed to watch her resume her pacing. “If we spread the word, she'll have us discharged and make sure we can't even touch the frontlines,” Pela's voice seethes like an open sore. Gepard nods but keeps his silence. He knows better than to get in her way.

“And if you and I are both out of the picture, Belobog is fucked.” A little harsher than how he would have put it, but there's no denying that they're both important to the city's survival. Pela has the restricted zone running as efficiently as ever, and Gepard had become the youngest captain on record for a reason. “We need to keep this tight under wraps, at least for now… It can't leak to anyone higher up the chain.” Another nod. “Serval might know other discontents…” Another n-

Gepard's head snaps up. “No.”

“No what?”

“No. We're not involving Serval in this.”

Somehow, even the same tone that leaves entire squadrons shaking in their boots has never worked on her. “You're not deciding that for her, Gepard.”

Pela hadn't seen the worst of it, though, back when his sister had just been banned from the Architects. Serval's pride hadn't allowed it. Pela wasn't the one to find her passed out bottle still in hand, hadn't been the one to wash the sick out of her hair or carry her to bed. 

Serval still has trouble thinking clearly when it comes to Cocolia, still can't quite bring herself to be objective. And Gepard maybe doesn't want her to be purely objective- but he would worry a lot less if she thought twice before she acted more often.

“At least let me be the one to bring it up to her.”

“Whatever, fine,” Pela gestures affirmatively at him as she paces past, and Gepard sighs. Good, at least that's one thing he can help.

From there, it's a lot of hemming and hawing and frustration. Cocolia has them under her boot, and Gepard and Pela both know it. Even with the way she's been cracking down on freedoms lately, Cocolia is still, overall, liked by the people. It's unlikely anyone would believe them. They don't even have solid proof, because most people don't know Cocolia as well as they do and won't see the clues in the same light. 

The Fragmentum has been ramping up in recent years, too. Everyone is struggling just to survive as is, they can't afford a fight on two fronts. Gepard is a damn good captain, one of the best for that matter. But they're at a massive disadvantage, his experience is narrowed to fighting a defensive battle against monsters, that's all he's ever done. That's all anyone there has ever done. He has no way of finding first-hand knowledge for taking the offensive against a human opponent, and if he goes at this blind, there's no way he'll get everyone out unscathed. He's going to lose people. He's going to lose a lot of people.

He'd never thought before that Cocolia would have it in her to have someone killed. And with this new knowledge, he has no guarantee she won't go after Serval or Lynx if she decides to retaliate.

Gepard has to remind himself to breathe when he realizes this.

Pela writes down every name the two of them can come up with. Lists and lists of names and groups and anyone they can think of who might be an ally in all of this. They memorize every bit of it, make their plans of who to talk to and when. Gepard watches the sparks reflect off Pela's glasses as they burn the evidence together.

Pela finally leaves, far too late to make it home, but says she wants to stay in the restricted zone anyway to investigate. Gepard watches her make her way in the direction of Dunn's tent, watches her back until she's out of his sight and squashes down the urge to follow and keep an eye on her. His tent feels empty.

In the morning, Gepard is up before the wake up bells. He drags himself out of bed, leads his soldiers through their morning training. The same people gravitate to each other everyday. Friend groups and training partners. There's an ongoing rivalry between a few squadrons that everyone bets on. Some of them have lockets around their necks, keepsakes, mementos. Some of them wear wedding rings.

Gepard is suddenly, painfully aware of something acidic clawing at the inside of his throat, of a heavy weight low in his chest that blooms, takes up room until it threatens to spread his ribs. His mouth tastes of bile and blood.

He rearranges the schedules. Puts himself down for every open patrol into the Fragmentum, makes sure he'll be on the frontlines every single time Cocolia visits.

He only hopes that it's enough.

[romionarry]

hello. the passion on this page………… the palpable pain and heartbreak underneath this fight….. ron starting that sentence about wondering where harry was but cutting himself off before finishing it. harry zeroing in on ron’s bare ankles…. harry HOPING ron will punch him…….. wtf the longing is radiating off the page guys this is my heartstopper

[itlearns]

ok here's a theory for you

Rituals were never meant to create an entrance for fears, they were for creating exits.

We have our crack in reality in a house where fears were present for a long time. During Prentiss attack worms started to form some sort of a door - it might be that it was the begining of the same thing.

And now our dear [ERROR] might be emerging from a portal alike, created during the meat ritual in another timeline.

[the-red-hoodlum]

killing people who don’t get an animals consent before touching them &/or ignore when animals are visibly uncomfortable with being touched.

[wilsonsmcgillsweatshirt]

I think Amber was genuinely so good for Wilson. She understood him more than most people, and she encouraged his independence. She genuinely wanted him to put himself first and do things he wanted instead of just doing things he thought others wanted. And a lot of that was able to happen because she herself was incredibly independent. She wasn't the stereotypically "needy" person Wilson had been drawn to before, so she wouldn't stand for his attempts at being a martyr. She stood up to House, too, but she also cared about him in her own way because Wilson cared about him. She appreciated their relationship and went out of her way to work things out with House for Wilsons sake. I have a lot to say about why I think all of Wilson's female relationships failed and why I think that was caused by his internalized struggle with his sexuality, but I stand by the fact that I think Amber was actually good for him and one of, if not the most, healthy relationship he had in the show.

[wonder-worker]

"[Elizabeth Woodville's] piety as queen seems to have been broadly conventional for a fifteenth-century royal, encompassing pilgrimages, membership of various fraternities, a particular devotion to her name saint, notable generosity to the Carthusians, and the foundation of a chantry at Westminster after her son was born there. ['On other occasions she supported planned religious foundations in London, […] made generous gifts to Eton College, and petitioned the pope to extend the circumstances in which indulgences could be acquired by observing the feast of the Visitation']. One possible indicator of a more personal, and more sophisticated, thread in her piety is a book of Hours of the Guardian Angel which Sutton and Visser-Fuchs have argued was commissioned for her, very possibly at her request."

-J.L. Laynesmith, "Elizabeth Woodville: The Knight's Widow", Later Plantagenet and Wars of the Roses Consorts: Power, Influence, Dynasty

[sonknuxadow]

i think its interesting that in the scenes of amy getting other hedgehogs mixed up she only ever starts to go "hey wait youre not sonic!!" AFTER she gets up really close to them and touches them and stuff. like in those scenes with shadow silver and werehog sonic she sees them and then runs up to them and hugs them and THEN she realizes somethings up and pulls away and takes a closer look. and its pretty obvious especially with silver and werehog that it was hearing their voice or feeling the physical differences rather than seeing them that threw her off. like she just couldnt see the difference until they were like right in front of her. anyway where im going with this is that i definitely think amy has vision problems to some degree

[anghraine]

I honestly feel a lot better about having posted anything at AO3, even things I won't finish, and there's something that warms my heart about posting fic for The Borgias in 2024.

I was actually deciding between two different WIPs to represent that "phase" between my undergrad years and grad school. The other one was the prologue to a Legend of Korra/Star Wars fusion in which Noatak/Amon is Korra's father and this is revealed in S1 (I think it was going to be Tarrlok who figures it out first, lol) and it actually affects the plot and it isn't just the LOK canon plot with minor adjustments—the fusion with SW was meant to be more than vague I-am-your-father inspiration. In any case, I only ever wrote the prologue about the Noatak/Senna quasi-romance that led to Korra's existence and never even got to the sheer comedy of Korra as Tarrlok's niece :(

But the Juan and Lucrezia as dysfunctional twins one-shot is closer to being a whole fic (in a side-story way) and I did like being able to add one more to my Borgias oeuvre—and getting at least some part of that AU on AO3 after all the time I spent on it!

[bunnyboy-juice]

im shaky, im nauseous, but it is done

[waugh-bao]

“I always believed that he had OCD. It was really entertaining. We would mess with him. I can remember getting home and going down to the dressing room and moving one pair of socks and swapping it over with another pair. They'd be colour-coded. You'd time how long before you heard ‘Who's touched my stuff!!’ from down the stairs. ‘Oh no, it wasn't me.’ I broke the espresso machine once and wrote a note in bad handwriting saying sorry from my step-dad. ‘Sorry I broke the coffee machine, from Barry.’ So much fun.”

Charlotte Watts, 2022

[kindlythevoid]

On Abigail and Shawn's Relationship (Psych)

~By someone who's only halfway through Psych~

I actually really liked Abigail and her place in Psych. She's obviously a tie to Shawn's past, but I think she plays an important part beyond just being an obstacle for Shules. For one thing, she feels like a fleshed out character. She has a personality, and while it feels like it's meant to bounce off Shawn's, very similar humor-wise imo, it still very much feels like her own; she has her own ambitions and her own life outside of Shawn and Psych. She likes people, she believes in education, she's a teacher, these are all aspects of her that come out in her time on the show (trying to fix Henry and Shawn's relationship (which I address a lil in the tags), otherwise respecting Shawn's distance, going to her teacher conference instead of the skiing trip, leaving for Uganda for an opportunity she's wanted for six years). She's also still clearly affected by the fact that Shawn had stood her up way back in high school, and this connection is what makes her such an important character for Shawn's development, imo.

Abigail is her own person, but she also serves as a waypoint for Shawn. He gets to fix his mistake of standing her up, and he also learns how to function in a long-term relationship. While admittedly having the relationship start with a "Gus, I can totally do it, watch this" isn't the best, it's reasonable for his character and serves as a wonderful beginning point for his maturation arc. Throughout the relationship, Gus (and company) helps Shawn navigate the differences between a fling and a long-term relationship. He starts to mature and understand that he has to check in with Abigail, he has to make dates and stick with them, he has to have mature conversations with her, he has to respect her time, etc.

Furthermore, it also helps Abigail get over said past mistake. She gets to take her relationship with Shawn one step further, feel it out, see how it would have gone, as Shawn progresses from child-like understanding of relationships to a more mature, grown-up perspective. His repeated showing up, starting from the moment he turned down Juliet in the drive-in because he had a standing date with Abigail (even though he was in love with Juliet at the time; honestly one of the biggest bullets dodged in the show; I have never seen a situation handled so neatly. There was no two-timing, no lying (well, minor lying to Abigail, ig), and they really tried to reinforce their platonic relationship instead of ignoring a possible wedge between them. It was so... refreshing.) I would bargain actually heals something in Abigail, showing her that Shawn is willing to step up as well as that Abigail is someone worth showing up for. It isn't as clear an arc for her, but I'd wager it's there, at least in the background, which is what makes their relationship so interesting.

In the end, the relationship works as a waypoint for the both of them. Shawn learns what it means to be in a long-term relationship, preparing him for a future with Juliet. In return, Abigail has a chapter of her life closed on a high note and is able to move on with her life without the what-ifs and emotional burdens of her past.

[stargayzrr]

I love my husband's malewif

Kosert really said "🙂😡"

[sheathnknife]

the vampire diaries 8.16 // louise gluck, crossroads

“and damon, like the voiceover tell us, he was worried he would never see stefan again. it was just elena assuring him that there would be peace. that we’ve dealt with this other side of darkness for several seasons, but there’s also light out there and there’s peace, and damon will find it. if you search for it, you will find it. and we wanted to get that last moment to see that [...] damon found it too, and it looked just like his brother.” — kevin williamson