#call of beauty

[kensatou]

what if i risked my life and put up (affectionate) with your unhinged monsterfucker brother to save you. and then revealed i was an expert in illegal black magic just so i could resurrect you from a pile of bones. and what if i later explored your body in the bath. and you laced our fingers together and offered to share your energy with me. and what if after all that… there was only one bed. what then.

update: it's been ANIMATED. gifs here

[machveil]

Roommate!Simon Riley that locks up for the night. go ahead and get ready for bed, Simon will double check that all the doors and windows are shut and locked. he wants you to feel safe in your shared apartment - he’s more than willing to protect you, but it’s still good to make sure everything is secure. if you hear something and come padding to his room all you have to do is knock, Simon’ll shove you into his room and take a look around the flat

Roommate!Simon Riley that puts your safety first - from the mundane to the unpredictable. he rests his hand on the edge of cabinets and counters when there’s a chance you could hit your head, a hand gently guiding you away from the street so he can walk closest to it. his eyes are always scanning for any danger before drifting back to you

Roommate!Simon Riley buys you pepper spray - even if you can defend yourself he’d still like for you to have a third option. what do you mean third? sure you could protect yourself, that’s a good plan b. the first option, and Simon’s favorite, is him tagging along whenever you go out. no one wants to mess with a bulky, gruff man wearing a mask, his body shielding you from any unwanted attention

Roommate!Simon Riley that has you wear his dog tags when you’re out with him. while he ignores the warmth blooming in his chest, it’s really so he can make sure you come home with him. he makes you promise that you’ll give them back to him at the end of the night - or early in the morning if it’s a really late night out. he’s not trying to ruin your chances of meeting anyone… he just wants you to come home safe and sound with him

[jonnywaistcoat]

hey jonny, i just thought you'd want to know that character.ai has an ai-generated imitation of your voice and i'm not sure what other websites might have it or where it originated :(

Yeah, it's a fucking garbage state of affairs but, as a somewhat well-known performer with a pretty distinctive voice it doesn't exactly shock me. Needless to say I think anyone who used this is a mediocre waste of skin and if they ever tell me in person they've used it then 50/50 I punch them in the teeth.

I can't wait for a couple of years when it all collapses just like every other niche-but-interesting-technology-with-limited-use-cases-sold-as-a-universal-panacea-to-gormless-CEOs grift (blockchain being the best example). Because the thing is, none of these things actually make any money and cost a vast amount, so as soon as all the dumb venture capital funding dries up and AI is required to actually start paying for itself, the bubble bursts and the whole industry is fucked.

That said, it's gonna be rough when it happens - a lot of companies have invested very heavily in AI and they're going to be hurting badly. I know of more than one media company whose idiot executives invested ridiculous amounts into NFTs and ended up laying off massive swathes of workers when that obvious fucking scam collapsed. I suspect the AI crash is gonna be even worse than that. And by then it will have drowned the Internet in slop. We'll see, I guess.

Anyway, anyone who uses AI is a soulless fucking husk of a person who cannot tell half-digested vomit from culture, and I would pity them if they weren't making the world such a measurably worse place to exist.

[beholdthemem]

I live within bus distance of the Universal picket line for the writer’s strike, so I like to go down there when I can to march with em in solidarity. They are all extremely cool people, and since many of them are older than me, I have been treated to a lot of free advice on Adult Life from more experienced adults. 10/10.

It’s also extremely funny to hear them talk shit about studios/executives that they’ve had to put up with, because they’re no longer required to pretend Oh, They’re All Such Lovely People, We’re So Lucky To Work For Them.

- “Dick Wolf insists on having an a personal office at every studio where his shows are worked on. He never goes to half of them, and when he does, he’s not usually there long. It’s just supposed to be left empty for him in case he MIGHT show up.”

“I took a bunch of coffee creamers from there just before we called the strike.”

“Honestly, that sounds fair?”

“I like to think of it as payment for all the extra work I had to do for free.”

- “Never work for Netflix if you can avoid it.”

“Oh my God, RIGHT? It’s a nightmare!”

“That is the most exploited I’ve ever been, and I’ve been doing this for a while so that says a LOT.”

- “Do they ever acknowledge how many laws the cops break during a single episode of any of those SVU spinoffs?”

“We’re not even allowed to use the phrase ‘Bad apples’ because it makes them uncomfortable.”

- “Humor does not exist in the Dick Wolf-verse, so we’re only allowed to include one joke per episode. Sometimes I like to play a little game where I see if I can get away with sneaking in a second.”

“Has that ever worked?”

“I think once we got in a subtle pun.”

[soap-ify]

thinking about laying beside simon on the bed, your head resting on his shoulder while his hands held a book that you had gifted him, his eyes fixed on the text.

your fingers absentmindedly traced over the scars on his chest, letting your soft fingertips draw over the rough sunken skin of the healed gashes — a painful story written in each of them. and you wanted to read it all, read every scar and cut, kiss all of it, absorb it so you could share it with him — a connection only you’d ever have with him.

your fingers slowly found their way to his stomach, hand caressing the muscles that had softened up ever since he had come home from deployment, your eyes noticing the stretch marks starting on the sides of his tummy that you adored so much. pale lines adorning his skin, urging you to probe them too, your hand touching him so gently — an angel soothing a wounded soldier.

simon is gorgeous, too gorgeous. he never seemingly saw it the way you did. “you’re so pretty…” you lazily whispered, pressing a soft kiss on his shoulder.

you were the warmth his cold heart sought, the fire that melted him, the sun that gave his moon the light he never thought he’d see. he needed you in the way a man needed a god, in a way a plant yearned for water. and you were happy to give it all to him, everything for your sweet simon.

“you tryin’ to tickle me, love?” his gruff voice broke you out of your trance, your eyes finding his which were no longer looking at the book, an intrigued grin playing on his lips that made you giggle heartedly and give his stomach some pats.

“maybe.”

[fanaticalthings]

Jason:

Also Jason:

when you're worried about your dad but you also have a reputation

Masterlist

[wolfythewitch]

quick animation between comms

[juiche]

My friend and I had this (we thought) hilarious idea to do a glittery stickersheet of Ghost 💀✨ You know, these really corny, old stickers with lots of roses and badly applied glitter that you could find in magazines back in the day x)

[inkskinned]

so one of the things that's so horrifying about birth control is that you have to, like, navigate this incredibly personal choice about your body and yet also face the epitome of misogyny. like, someone in the comments will say it wasn't that bad for me, and you'll be utterly silenced. like, everyone treats birth control like something that's super dirty. like, you have no fucking information or control over this thing because certain powerful people find it icky.

first it was the oral contraceptives. you went on those young, mostly for reasons unrelated to birth control - even your dermatologist suggested them to control your acne. the list of side effects was longer than your arm, and you just stared at it, horrified.

it made you so mentally ill, but you just heard that this was adulthood. that, yes, there are of course side effects, what did you expect. one day you looked up yasmin makes me depressed because surely this was far too intense, and you discovered that over 12,000 lawsuits had been successfully filed against the brand. it remains commonly prescribed on the open market. you switched brands a few times before oral contraceptives stopped being in any way effective. your doctor just, like, shrugged and said you could try a different brand again.

and the thing is that you're a feminist. you know from your own experience that birth control can be lifesaving, and that even when used for birth control - it is necessary healthcare. you have seen it save so many people from such bad situations, yourself included. it is critical that any person has access to birth control, and you would never suggest that we just get rid of all of it.

you were a little skeeved out by the implant (heard too many bad stories about it) and figured - okay, iud. it was some of the worst pain you've ever fucking experienced, and you did it with a small number of tylenol in your system (3), like you were getting your bikini line waxed instead of something practically sewn into your body.

and what's wild is that because sometimes it isn't a painful insertion process, it is vanishingly rare to find a doctor that will actually numb the area. while your doctor was talking to you about which brand to choose, you were thinking about the other ways you've been injured in your life. you thought about how you had a suspicious mole frozen off - something so small and easy - and how they'd numbed a huge area. you thought about when you broke your wrist and didn't actually notice, because you'd thought it was a sprain.

your understanding of pain is that how the human body responds to injury doesn't always relate to the actual pain tolerance of the person - it's more about how lucky that person is physically. maybe they broke it in a perfect way. maybe they happened to get hurt in a place without a lot of nerve endings. some people can handle a broken femur but crumble under a sore tooth. there's no true way to predict how "much" something actually hurts.

in no other situation would it be appropriate for doctors to ignore pain. just because someone can break their wrist and not feel it doesn't mean no one should receive pain meds for a broken wrist. it just means that particular person was lucky about it. it should not define treatment.

in the comments of videos about IUDs, literally thousands of people report agony. blinding, nauseating, soul-crushing agony. they say things like i had 2 kids and this was the worst thing i ever experienced or i literally have a tattoo on my ribs and it felt like a tickle. this thing almost killed me or would rather run into traffic than ever feel that again.

so it's either true that every single person who reports severe pain is exaggerating. or it's true that it's far more likely you will experience pain, rather than "just a pinch." and yet - there's nothing fucking been done about it. it kind of feels like a shrug is layered on top of everything - since technically it's elective, isn't it kind of your fault for agreeing to select it? stop being fearmongering. stop being defensive.

you fucking needed yours. you are almost weirdly protective of it. yours was so important for your physical and mental health. it helped you off hormonal birth control and even started helping some of your symptoms. it still fucking hurt for no fucking reason.

once while recovering from surgery, they offered you like 15 days of vicodin. you only took 2 of them. you've been offered oxy for tonsillitis. you turned down opioids while recovering from your wisdom tooth extraction. everything else has the option. you fucking drove yourself home after it, shocked and quietly weeping, feeling like something very bad had just happened. the nurse that held your hand during the experience looked down at you, tears in her eyes, and said - i know. this is cruelty in action.

and it's fucked up because the conversation is never just "hey, so the way we are doing this is fucking barbaric and doctors should be required to offer serious pain meds" - it's usually something around the lines of "well, it didn't kill you, did it?"

you just found out that removing that little bitch will hurt just as bad. a little pinch like how oral contraceptives have "some" serious symptoms. like your life and pain are expendable or not really important. like maybe we are all hysterical about it?

hysteria comes from the latin word for uterus, which is great!

you stand here at a crossroads. like - this thing is so important. did they really have to make it so fucking dangerous. and why is it that if you make a complaint, you're told - i didn't even want you to have this in the first place. we're told be careful what you wish for. we're told that it's our fault for wanting something so illict; we could simply choose not to need medication. that maybe if we don't like the scraps, we should get ready to starve.

we have been saying for so long - "i'm not asking you to remove the option, i'm asking you to reconsider the risk." this entire time we hear: well, this is what you wanted, isn't it?

[sleepyconfusedpotato]

Riley Family c.2040

Col. Simon Riley, Charlotte Riley, Andrew Thomas Riley, Grace Jael RIley, Orion Elijah Riley

---

A glimpse of the future. 'Ghost' is no more, 'Jade' is just a deary nickname, two little lives born out of love, and one stumbled upon them and lifted up along the way.

All because they shot at each other 💖👌

Hope you love it!

[bertoyana]

You've never looked more beautiful, darling.

X-Men: First Class (2011) Dir. Matthew Vaughn

[yumethefrostypanda]

How his chest and back(shoulders) are portruding through his jacket :3

[salmonentrees]

this is the Vees. to me.

[unicornpopcorn14]

Chuuya's reaction to Dazai getting hurt during the Lovecraft fight has always been so interesting to me...

Because it's the kind of worry you'd never expect from a character as gruff as Chuuya, who had displayed nothing but hostility towards Dazai so far. Usually, characters that are labelled as "angry" or "anger issues" (which Chuuya is much more complex than that but you get my point) act more as a tsundere type of way when the one they "don't care about" gets hurt. And show their care in very, very subtle ways (ex. their eyes widen, their mouth parts and closes again, etc) before putting up their front once more.

Chuuya, however, is open, and vocal about it. His worry is clear not only to us, but to Dazai himself, the one he shouldn't be displaying the concern to (as per the cliche). Shouldn't it be some sort of secret that Chuuya does care? Isn't that what skk's dynamic has been shaping up to be until now?

I'm telling you- the way my mind blanked when Chuuya just casually.... showed concern not once, but twice, was a sight to see.

Besides, the context makes it much more confusing, because Dazai isn't some rookie, and Chuuya knows that more than anybody. He was the youngest executive in Port Mafia's history, of course he can handle a hit or two. Of course he'd seen him handle a hit or two, sometimes without batting an eye.

Heck, Chuuya himself was hurling Dazai like a ragdoll in their reunion, which was their last meeting. And you could argue that he was going easy on him, but Dazai has mostly withstood the same damage (as far as I could see), and Chuuya was as bitter as ever.

So that kind of contradicts both what we knew of Chuuya so far, and how their dynamic was shaped to be. I mean, that just makes Chuuya a hypocrite, yeah? What makes him care now, all of a sudden? What makes him care at all?

Well, to me, this backasswards reaction implies one (or more) of the following:

- Dazai rarely got physically hurt during their partnership and thus this is an unexpected thing for him to see (during a mission).

- The four years of separation made Chuuya unsure of how much Dazai can withstand physically now. Also the fact that he isn't in the mafia anymore, aka fighting enemy organizations on the weekly, would naturally make Dazai lose his touch in a way, what prompts Chuuya's reaction.

- Dazai getting taken off guard took him off guard which led to panic. Especially since the situation was (momentarily) out of their depth. Seriously wtf even was Lovecraft?

- During the dungeon scene Dazai was an enemy, while in the Lovecraft fight he was as an ally. The difference might be significant to Chuuya.

- This has always been Chuuya's reaction to Dazai getting hurt regardless of the situation.

- "Only I can hurt him like that" ahh logic

- Asagiri was still experimenting with their dynamic and thus there are some inconsistencies.

This scenario didn't play out again (after their reunion) for me to exactly determine which one is more plausible, but it is 100% canon for Chuuya to shamelessly show his concern and run to Dazai to check on him before properly dealing with their opponent, which I find to be such an appealing layer to their dynamic, and a good spin on the type of character he gets stereotyped as.

Bonus: Dazai also becomes a softy when Chuuya's hurt, especially post corruption. Dead Apple alone displays that multiple times.

All in all, Skk are doing a terrible job at maintaining their 'hostile' and 'antagonistic' relationship post their reunion. Freaks.

[asoftepiloguemylove]

Mikko Harvey Wind-Related in the Wheatfield // Jonny Bolduc open question @jovialtorchlight // Cheryl Strayed Tiny Beautiful Things // @/mkpoet (instagram) // Mary Oliver Count the Roses // Phoebe Bridgers Waiting Room // Fyodor Dostoyevsky // Marie Howe Magdalene Afterwards; "Magdalene: Poems"

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Horse Meshi. Delicious, in Horse.