#don't ask guys it just happened

[writingsbymo-mo]

"Uh Ran, why are you getting in my face?"

"So I can get a good look at you," he coos.

You take a step back, moving your head further from his when you notice him squinting his eyes. "Wait...are you being serious?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" He smirks, hand on his hip.

"Because it's you, Ran."

"Hah, can't argue that."

"But seriously, if your vision is that bad, you should see about getting glasses. It'll help your sleepy headaches."

"Hmmm...still don't want to look like a nerd."

"Contacts are a thing too silly." You counter. "But always have glasses as a spare."

"Alright, alright. I'll go, but only if my knight in shining armor comes too," he winks.

You roll your eyes and shake your head with a smile, "ok, your majesty. Let's find you an optometrist."

[lover-of-mine]

[leejihoonownsmyheart]

What Feels Right (M)

Summary: You meet a mysterious man at a party who you just can't get out of your head.

Warnings: slight touch of horror if you squint, a bit of blood (okay.), slight pain kink, public!play, biting, creampie, do i dare say softdom!shua?, either way shua is not human. fingering, and lots of neck kissing (can you guess what joshua is?? leave your answer in the comments!!! [i say satorically]), strangers so dub con

I suppose you could say I make dreams come true

-

It was unbelievably impolite to stare.  

Unfortunately, that awareness wasn’t transmuting from your brain to your body.  

Your eyes just stayed trained on him, your heart beating, your face burning because you had seen that man before. You knew you had.  

His face was pale, his cheeks a little flushed as he spoke. His eyes were dark and serious, but his lips were full, and his face was soft. He was too pretty to be dangerous, and yet you still got a weird feeling in your throat when you saw him. 

You raised a hand to your neck, nervously spreading your fingers across it. Your thumb brushed your collarbone and your index finger rubbed under your chin until you felt it burning under your touch. As your fingers irritated your own skin, the man you were staring at’s eyes flitted your way, those golden blonde strands of hair brushing his forehead. His eyes met yours. 

A frown spread over his face, his eyes flickering up and down your body. 

He mouthed something to you, and you frowned. You had never been good at reading lips. He sighed, as if he realized your lapse. He gestured to your neck. 

Oh. 

You pulled your hand away from your neck, your face burning. How the fuck did you know this guy? 

You tried to pay attention to the party, you tried not to stare but how could you not? 

Even when you were deep in conversation, your thoughts were on him. He was so fucking attractive it was driving you insane. 

You felt someone brush your elbow, and you just knew it was him. You turned over your shoulder and he flashed you a smile. It wasn’t joyful. In fact, it was somehow…. Menacing? You squinted at him, but in just a second that smile was gone. 

“You are driving me a little crazy,” he said with a small laugh. You frowned a little at his tone of voice. 

“I’m driving you crazy?” You blurted. He leaned in close in response to your words and you forgot how to breathe for a second. You should have cursed at him. You should have pushed at his chest and told him to fuck off because why was he so close to you? He had no fucking right. 

You felt the tip of his nose brush the arch of your neck and you tilted your chin up a little bit, your breath hitching as the man's hands found your waist. He held you steady against him, and his lips brushed your neck. You quickly raised your hands to his shoulders, fingers squeezing him nervously as he backed you up against a wall, his teeth grazing over your skin. 

You shivered at the sharpness. 

“You are driving me crazy,” the man finally continued. “Your eyes have been on me all night.” 

He withdrew from you a little bit, his eyes darting up to yours. It was then that you realized how easily he was affecting you. You were actually panting, and he had barely touched you. 

“It’s not your fault, you were made for me,” he said, and he dipped his head again, his nose brushing your neck so that you would bare it for him. Your heart thumped in your chest as you tilted your chin up obediently. 

His lips found your neck, and he placed a chaste kiss there. 

“So fucking beautiful,” he mumbled. His hands slipped up under the hem of your already too short dress. His fingers spread over your stomach. “So warm...” 

His fingers were so cold against your skin, you shivered and slipped your hands up his neck into those beautiful blonde strands of hair. 

“You’re... Crazy...” You mumbled, but the whimper that bubbled up from your throat couldn’t be denied by anyone in a ten-mile radius. 

“For you?” The man mumbled back. “I absolutely am...” 

He started to pull back, his warm breath damp on your neck but as he did you tightened your grip in his hair and held him in place: “N-No,” you stammered. “D-don’t stop.” 

The man hummed, staying still for a moment so long that you were sure that he was going to pull away, but then he was leaning back forward, his lips pressing to your neck, and you trembled as a small moan left your lips. 

“Pl-Please...” You mumbled. Your body was on fire, you felt unnaturally hot, and his lips felt so good. He continued to kiss at your neck, his teeth darting out every now and then to graze your skin- 

Your fingers tugged at his hair. “Fuck, I-I need you to bite me,” you blurted out. The statement made the man’s fingers still on your hip, where they had previously been drawing small circles. 

“You need me to bite you...?” He pondered. He tried to pull away from you, but you couldn’t look at him after blurting out such an insane request. You kept your grip as tight in his hair as you could. It made his fingers dig into your hips. “You don’t know what you are asking for darling.” 

The way that his lips curled up and down against your neck had goosebumps shooting down your arms. 

“Please, please, please,” you begged stupidly. “I want it, I really do.” 

The man was silent for a few seconds. 

“I won’t stop if I do...” He mumbled softly. You were confused by what he meant but then his fingers slid under the band of your panties and your face burned. You looked around the small party because yes you two were still in the main room. 

Sure, no one was paying attention to you two pushed up in this dark corner- thank goodness considering the fact that his arms had your dress bunched up in a way that left very little to the imagination but still. 

“I...” You trailed off, unsure of what was wrong with you. You should stop and think this through, but your core was burning so hot you couldn’t think straight. “I don’t want you to stop...” 

At the same time as the man’s fingers slid through your soaked folds, his teeth bit down on your skin. You let out a shaky moan as the small pinch of pain ran through your body and straight down to your stupid, traitorous pussy. Your walls clenched around nothing, and it made the man slid his fingers inside of you so that you had something to clench around. 

As he kept his teeth buried into your neck, you felt him sucking at your skin, slowly, lazily, and the feeling sent something akin to lightheadedness right up into your brain. Your eyes fluttered shut as he pushed his fingers deep into you. 

Your thighs shook because his fingers were so much longer than yours. They were pushed so deeply inside of you that it took everything in you not to come from that alone. His fingering pace matched the way that he sucked on your neck, making your brain a dizzy mess of horny desperation. Your hips rolled down into the palm of his hand, your breathing quickening as you felt yourself starting to grow closer to an orgasm. 

The man pulled back a bit, his teeth leaving your neck. You could feel his saliva dripping down your collarbone, but he licked it back up, his tongue soothing over where he had bitten you. 

“Calm down,” he mumbled. He hiked your thigh up higher with the hand that wasn’t actively fingering you, but it just made you whimper louder. 

“I-I’m so close,” you whispered back, shaking under his grip. He laughed breathlessly into the crook of your neck. 

“Trust me... I can tell...” He mumbled. He picked up the pace. “You’re so beautiful for me. Your pussy feels so good around my fingers. Squeezing me every time my teeth-” He pricked his teeth over your skin teasingly. “-mark your perfect skin.” 

You moaned, because apparently that was what did it for you nowadays. 

“A-Ah fuck.” 

You were completely intelligible. He pressed a kiss to the base of your throat. 

“Be a good girl and come for me, won’t you?” 

Just as he spoke his teeth bit back down into your neck. You moaned and as he began to suck again- Harder now, you started to come on his fingers. His fingers dragged your orgasm out of you, each thrust long and deep, his other hand rubbing soothing circles into your hip as your body shook under him. 

As soon as your breathing had returned to normal, his fingers slipped out of your soaked pussy and pressed against your thigh. He pulled away from your neck, his breaths coming in small pants as well. You looked down as he finally looked up at you, your brain fuzzy from the orgasm. 

He grinned at you his plump lips covered in red liquid that dripped down his chin. His tongue dragged over his lips and then flitted over his pointy teeth. He rose one of his hands to the corner of his lips and he gathered some of the liquid there with his thumb, popping it into his mouth. He moaned and pulled back from you a bit, his freehand fumbling with the buttons on his pants. 

“Fuck you taste delicious,” he moaned, and then the head of his cock was poking at your soaking wet entrance, and you completely forgot how to think reasonably. 

“Please,” you begged, your fingers tugging at the strands of his hair, not caring as you realized that it was your blood that you could feel dripping down your neck. “I need to feel you.” 

He pushed himself deep into you with one slow thrust and you two let out similar moans of relief. Something about having his cock pushed so deep inside of you just felt right. You finally felt like some missing piece of you had fallen into place and that piece was his dick spreading your pussy further open then it had ever been pressed before. 

“Oh y/n, you’re so perfect and you don’t even get it yet,” he mumbled softly. “So beautiful and warm just for me...” 

His thrusts were slow and drove you even crazier. You panted and tugged at his hair, quietly begging him to fuck you harder but his thumb pressed into the dip of your neck as he started to place open-mouthed kisses along your cheek, and it just had you clenching around him even harder. 

“You don’t get it yet,” he repeated, and his sharp teeth teased your bottom lip. You gasped and arched your back as his cock hit you deep, making shockwaves of pleasure rush through your body. You didn’t even realize that you were coming until this man was coming deep inside of you. You moaned as you felt his cum spurting deep inside your pussy, and you knew you shouldn’t want it or like it but you absolutely did. 

Your fingers pulled at this man's hair even harder as the orgasm shook your body. He came inside of you for an impossibly long time, so long that just when you thought you couldn’t handle it anymore and you were going to explode, he was pulling his cock out of you. There was a loud obscene pop, and his cum started to gush out over your thighs. As it soaked you, he secured your panties back into place, and slowly lowered your leg back down to the ground. 

Your whole body was being wrecked with how hard you were breathing, and you couldn’t help but lean forward, your head on his shoulder as he rearranged your clothes back on you as if he hadn’t just pumped you full of his cum. 

After a few moments of this, his thumb found its way under your chin, and he forced your eyes up to his. He gave you a small smile, one that didn’t expose his teeth. His eyes flickered over your face. 

“You are so perfect for me, did so well, didn’t you?” He praised lightly and then, later than it should have been said: “I’m Joshua.” 

You stared up at him, and quietly, shakily, started to say your name back. Part way through however, his thumb pressed to your lips. 

“Oh, I know,” he promised. “And soon enough you’ll understand.” 

He leaned forward, replacing his thumb with his lips to yours. The kiss was brief. 

“Let me take you away now,” he whispered softly against your lips. “Now you are all mine.” 

His hand brushed against the small of your back. 

“And I’m all yours my love.” 

You were a bit too tired to argue with him- Not that you would. Because as crazy as it was something about this and him just felt right... Your brain flashed images of this Joshua smiling up at you with sharp teeth and blood dripping down his chin, and you reminded yourself to bring that up with him later. 

[front-facing-pokemon]

[invinciblerodent]

Okay I feel like my experience of DAI might be a bit.... I guess I could say unique? because my main Inquisitor is a human who is a devout Andrastian, AND pro-mage/pro-elf (it's a long story, he goes through some Character Development), but since last night's post, i've been mentally pacing up and down, thinking about how the "truth vs. lies" narrative throughline applies to Vivienne and her personal quest.

Because... well, hers is the only one (iirc) where you can choose to lie to her. Not tell her to keep up a lie (Blackwall), or lie because she's asking you to lie (Sera), or to conceal what she's discovered (Cassandra), but just straight up lie to her face when she's expecting the truth, and whether she's lying to you or not in general is not even the focal point at that juncture: she just comes to you requesting help, and you can either give it, or deny her.

And regardless of what you do, the facts, the events, don't change, which is what gets me. Nothing tangible happens if you decide to screw her over: whether you give her the heart of a snowy wyvern or just a regular gurgut, her formula will always fail, and Bastien dies. The only difference your lie makes is in her feelings about you, and in her knowing that you're not above stabbing her in the back.

Because if you do choose to accept her request (even though you can just turn it down, and nothing happens besides some approval loss), agree to help her, and then betray her, Vivienne knows. I don't think the game says when she finds out (be it while preparing the potion and she just forges on, hoping that it'll work anyway, or upon looking into it after it fails to see why it failed), but she tells you that much: that she is well aware of your deception, and she doesn't mince her words in voicing her contempt for you.

And man, Vivienne in general is just so fascinating to me.

I mean, she's simultaneously one of the most honest and caring companions, and also one of the ones with the clearest ulterior motives. She, like Bull, basically comes right out the gate and tells you the moment you meet her that she is in this for the power and the opportunity that you present, essentially admitting to you that you are little more than a stepping stone, and early on, her approval can swing wildly: maybe more than for any other companion. And what I keep noticing about that is that these swings are most affected by conversations, where you can lie, far more than your actions, which kind of leads me to believe that she either values your agreeing with her, or in other kinds of setups, you having the good sense to tell her what she wants to hear even if it's not true.

And like, I don't have the brain power at the moment to dissect her deep-seated fears and caution, how her general disapproval tends to boil down to risks and danger, and her whole Deal with why she, as a mage, is so opposed to mage freedom, I'd have to replay the game again to be able to articulate all my thoughts and feelings on that, but it just..... It generally fascinates me how her approval can be maxed out through pretty much conversation alone, while making all the "good" but risky choices that she disapproves of (mage alliance with full freedom, allied wardens, etc.), and before you'd even talk about Bastien's family with her.

And, if she sees an ally in you, man, she's so kind. If she likes you, she's one of the only people to ask you if you're alright after Haven, she offers advice and tries to help the best way she can, and she approves of helping the people of Haven, and of you "yes, and"-ing her, and not wallowing in empty platitudes but letting her have her space to mourn how she wants to, and I just......

Gaaah, I love Vivienne and I keep thinking about her. She makes a terrible fucking Divine, but I just... I'm just looking at her with stars in my eyes, ready to agree with whatever she says and then fuck off to do the exact opposite, knowing that I got a good grade in agreeing with her anyway.

[silverwhittlingknife]

hi Silver! o/ because that fanart made me wonder - would you happen to know when/where Dick's stuffed elephant plush Zitka turns up in the comics?

GREETINGS CAM <3333 THAT ART WAS SO CUTE

Yeah, I think your instincts are right - it's a truly adorable bit of transformative fandom, but I'm 95% percent sure it's not comics canon. Barbara has canon plushies, but I don't think anyone else does.

I got kinda invested in the investigation (it's hard to prove a negative!) and I ended up typing out an entire History of Elinore/Zitka, so, uh, if you're curious, meet me below the cut for:

Where does Elinore / Zitka - the animal - appear in comics?

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

Where does Elinore / Zitka appear in comics?

We're gonna go in chronological order!

Dick's circus elephant friend was first created for practical reasons: in Batman 436, Marv Wolfman does a big expanded flashback to Dick's circus backstory as a way to subtly show us Tim before officially introducing him (so that we can have a technically-solvable mystery-of-Tim's-identity in LPoD). In this comic, there's an elephant named Elinore who loves Dick:

Aww. Such a cute elephant!

Batman 436 comes out in August 1989. New Titans 60 comes out a few months later, in November, and guess what? When Dick visits the circus, he is suddenly surprised by an unexpected blast from the past! It turns out that even though it's been years, Elinore still remembers him!

Here's the part where Elinore remembers Dick:

SUCH a cute elephant. I love her.

(Guess who else still remembers Dick even though it was so long ago. Guess which other character is about to be an unexpected blast from the past. Guess which character Elinore is directly paralleling guess guess guess sorry everything is about Dick and Tim in my mind but I can focus I swear)

Four years later, in 1993, Batman: The Animated Series retells Dick's origin story. They like and keep Wolfman's elephant, but they change her name to Zitka:

Wolfman doesn't return to the elephant beyond those two appearances, and a few years down the line, New Titans gets cancelled and Wolfman's not writing Dick anymore anyway. So the animal gets abandoned for a while, until Devin Grayson, a fan of both Wolfman and B:tAS, revives the Wolfman-era Titans team in JLA/Titans and then the ongoing series Titans 1999.

Grayson then brings back the elephant in a flashback to Dick's past in Titans 16 (Jun 2000), where she imports the B:tAS name. Sometimes I'm skeptical of TV-to-comics imports, but honestly, I endorse this one. You lose the alliteration, which is a shame, but IMO Zitka is a better elephant name than Elinore.

Here's Dick with the newly-christened Zitka in Titans 16:

Grayson also briefly references the elephant in Gotham Knights 20 and - in a final angsty callback - in Nightwing 88 (Feb 2004), where Zitka tries futilely to comfort Dick in the midst of his trauma conga line:

... And... honestly, I think that's it for comic appearances? The two Wolfman comics plus the three Grayson comics.

Both Wolfman and Grayson are writing multiple titles - Batman, New Titans, Titans, Gotham Knights, and Nightwing between the two of them, spanning a big chunk of Dick's post-Crisis canon - and both writers use the elephant for heartwarming moments of nostalgia, which means if you're doing a post-Crisis readthrough for Dick, Elinore/Zitka feels memorable. But I don't think she actually shows up that much.

For post-2011, I am not as well-informed - throwing this out to the dash? anyone know? - but I feel like Zitka the heartwarming symbol of Dick's heartwarming circus past is, uh, thematically very at odds with the Court of Owls evil!circus vibes, so my instinct is that this story element was almost certainly dropped in the reboot.

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

In WFA, yes; in main comics continuity, no. Technically, I have not read every comic ever published, so I could be wrong!! But I don't think so.

Below, find my rambling reasoning on the tonal vibes of pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, and post-2011, and why this particular story element doesn't seem right to me for the first two.

Pre-Crisis (...okay, mostly the Silver Age): stuffed animal, yes or no?

tl;dr no, requires too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, plus the elephant wasn't a thing until later

Elinore doesn't get created until post-Crisis, but also just generally, pre-Crisis callbacks are more along the lines of this reference in Batman 129 (published in 1960), where, wow, Batman and Robin are hunting jewel thieves - and it turns out Robin recognized this strongman! BUT HOW?!

The comic goes on to recap Dick's entire origin story in flashback, on the assumption that you may not know it.

(BTW, if you'd like to know more about Haly's Circus throughout the years, nightwingology has a great post here summarizing a lot of fun plotlines and characters!)

Basically: Silver Age comics are very self-consciously episodic and kid-friendly; they're not generally gonna do overly-elaborate callbacks because they don't know what comics their kid readers may have randomly picked up or remember.

By the time of post-Crisis, comic books were being written for an adult audience buying from the direct market, i.e. readers who are collecting whole runs & don't need or want Dick's origin story to be recapped to us in full every time it's referenced. That's why in post-Crisis, we get stuff like "hey, neat, this particular soda brand is getting mentioned in several different books!!" or "in order to understand this story arc, buy SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COMICS in FIVE DIFFERENT RUNS and read them ALL ACCORDING TO A NUMBERED ORDER and also you better be following the individual plotlines and recognize these five minor characters who we don't bother to introduce!! Good luck!!" But the elaborate post-Crisis plotlines - and subtler worldbuilding like a stuffed animal callback to Dick's backstory - don't make a lot of story sense UNLESS you're imagining your readers as completionist adult fans.

So IMO a stuffed animal wouldn't be a pre-Crisis thing unless it was The Episodic Story Of the Week, and I don't think a stuffed animal is action-adventure-y enough for the fast-paced storytelling of the Silver Age. (Unless it, like, came to life and tried to eat you or something.)

Post-Crisis: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr: no, Dick's a manly tough guy, he's not gonna have a stuffed animal, that'd be lame, like something Tim might do

Part of the edgy grimdark adult vibes in 80s/90s comics is that some characters who used to be kinda silly & goofy & lighthearted - like Batman and Robin - get reimagined as Serious and Angsty and Edgy in a Tough Cool Manly Brooding Way. This massively affects characterization for Bruce, Dick, and Bruce and Dick's relationship.

(I obviously love this change & love the tense Bruce-and-Dick interactions, but plenty of fans of the earlier fluffy comics really disliked the edgy retcons of Miller / Wolfman / Starlin / et al.)

The upshot is that post-Crisis is a period when you could have a recurring reference like a stuffed elephant, but you wouldn't have a stuffed elephant, not for Dick. I think a toy like that would be too cutesy / childish / effeminate to give a male character in post-Crisis, unless you were poking fun at him.

Now, you could probably let Tim have a stuffed animal, because Tim is sometimes cool but also sometimes a tryhard loser who is faking being cool and not entirely pulling it off (see e.g. the Robin comic where he practices tough-guy faces in the mirror, or the Teen Titans comic where Conner discovers his cringy Enya CD, or when he's fanboying over Connor and it's awkward, etc etc.). A stuffed animal would be deeply embarrassing, and you'd have to be careful to compensate by having Tim do something cool afterward - but Tim's character concept allows for "he's kind of a loser sometimes."

But Dick isn't!! In post-Crisis, Dick's a tough / impressive / "cool guy" character, the kind of guy anyone would want to be, even in the flashbacks where he's Robin, and even in the stories where he's more lighthearted than angsty. It'd be kinda lame for Dick to have a stuffed elephant, so he wouldn't. I feel like Dick would be more likely to poke fun at it if someone had one, like when he's making fun of Wally for liking the Hardy Boys. Dick could have a Batman action figure, at most, and if he had one he would have it ironically.

Basically: in post-Crisis, a male character hugging a stuffed elephant feels more likely to be a punchline to me, not something poignant. (Even with Tim, Tim could have an embarrassing stuffed animal, but he couldn't hug it when sad - that's too far. Maybe Booster Gold might do this. Probably he wouldn't, but spiritually, he would. Sorry Booster ilu! <3)

Instead, Dick instinctively deals with his inner turmoil like the TORTURED ACTION HERO he is: by punching things and brooding and yelling and joining the mob and sleeping on rooftops and going on obsessive secret missions and acquiring Angsty Stubble!! Just like Batman!

(Technically I don't know if Bruce ever joined the mob but you know he would.)

Anyway as you know this is my favorite continuity and I am poking fun affectionately, but uh, yeah sdfsfdsfs. No stuffed animals.

Post-2011 / Infinite Frontier / Wayne Family Adventures: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr it's in WFA! Probably not anywhere else, but it could be.

Post-2011 stuff tends to be cutesier overall, most of all in the current Infinite Frontier era. So I don't feel like this would be tonally out-of-line with IF comics. Taylor tends to go for more meme-y references rather than fanfic references, though.

So the obvious best fit is WFA, which is aiming for a rough approximation of Silver Age family-friendly vibes - wholesome, episodic plots, Teaching Good Moral Lessons For The Youth, etc. - plus lots of Easter eggs for fanfic readers and some comic references.

And look, here we are:

Aww.

Whew - that's everything I could find!

Anyway as you can probably tell, I LOVE the elephant, so this was a very entertaining rabbit hole to go down, thank you <3

[lowpolyshadow]

i have to do everything my damn self around here

[insomnya777]

do you guys know that youtube dating show called the button. because i was watching it with my friend the other day bc we were bored and we were like this seems funny and i somehow got a boat boys fic idea based off of it. so if i make a fic about the button dating show will people underdtand or is it too niche

[teddybeartoji]

o wait before i start posting any pics.. i was thinking that maybe.. you guys could help me liquify this gender some more by switching up what you call me.... DON'T GET ME WRONG I LOVE . LOVE LOVE LOVE WHEN YOU USE HE/HIM AND JUST OVERALL LIKE MORE MASC STUFF THAT'S SOOO MMMMMMMMMSO FUCKING GOOD like i don't get to feel that irl at all so it really does make me so happy but i've just been thinking abt TRYING to switch it up more yk? does this even make sense...... . hhhh anyway i might won't even like it and i'll want to just go back to hehim but i wanna try... JUST TO SWITCH IT UP.

[tealvenetianmask]

Thank you so much for defending Striker. His character was not ruined in the slightest and I honestly believe a lot of the “he was ruined” takes stem from media illiteracy. Because how can you genuinely expect Striker to act towards Stolas the same way he acted towards Blitz in HMF when it’s highly implied by him that royals ruined his life? He had EVERY right to get angry at Stolas when Stolas is part of a group of demons who took everything from him. Viv has liked tweets from people theorising that his hatred stems from grief, so someone he loved was definitely killed. Personally, I believe he had a partner and child who he lost. It fits in with HB’s two themes of romantic relationships and parental relationships. He’s also meant to be a parallel to Moxxie and Blitz (Moxxie has a wife and Blitz has a daughter). There’s also this narrative floating around on here that Viv hates Striker and that’s why she turned him “into a joke” or made him “more evil” and both of these tales are utter bs. Viv has literally liked tweets saying that Striker isn’t a bigot, and tweets DEFENDING HIM. Blitz’s supremacist comment probably stemmed from his idiocy and lack of understanding of Striker as a person. If the two made amends in the future and Blitz found out about Striker’s past, he’d probably learn that he was wrong. Striker going insane is a HUGE part of his character arc because it’s the start of them unravelling him so that we can reveal his past, why he hates royals and also why he became an assassin. I believe that he’ll probably be redeemed in the future and if they want to do that, they can’t keep him the same stereotypical evil cowboy like in HMF because a redemption wouldn’t feel warranted. You need to unravel his layers beforehand.

Hi- thanks for the ask! Honestly, I agree with some of your points here and disagree with others. I'm assuming you sent me this so I'd respond with my takes on my blog, and I hope that's what you want me to do, because it's happening.

"Thank you so much for defending Striker."

Did I? I guess I defended his Season 2 character development. Okay- you're welcome.

"His character was not ruined in the slightest and I honestly believe a lot of the “he was ruined” takes stem from media illiteracy."

100% with you on this.

"Because how can you genuinely expect Striker to act towards Stolas the same way he acted towards Blitz in HMF when it’s highly implied by him that royals ruined his life?"

Correct- we can't expect multidimensional characters to act the same in every situation. That would be boring and flat. And yes, Striker suggested that his beef with royals is personal.

"He had EVERY right to get angry at Stolas when Stolas is part of a group of demons who took everything from him."

Woah. No. Stolas didn't take a single thing from him. It would be like saying that each individual POC has the right to directly hurt every individual white person if they've been personally harmed by a white person. I cannot state this strongly enough. This take is wild.

"Personally, I believe he had a partner and child who he lost. It fits in with HB’s two themes of romantic relationships and parental relationships. He’s also meant to be a parallel to Moxxie and Blitz (Moxxie has a wife and Blitz has a daughter)."

It's possible. I don't personally have any sort of headcanon about Striker's past, but I don't mind this one.

"There’s also this narrative floating around on here that Viv hates Striker and that’s why she turned him “into a joke” or made him “more evil” and both of these tales are utter bs. Viv has literally liked tweets saying that Striker isn’t a bigot, and tweets DEFENDING HIM."

Yeah, he's no more evil in Season 2 than he is in Season 1. Could you show me which tweets? Because I think he IS a bigot.

"Blitz’s supremacist comment probably stemmed from his idiocy and lack of understanding of Striker as a person. If the two made amends in the future and Blitz found out about Striker’s past, he’d probably learn that he was wrong."

Okay, you just called my favorite character an idiot. *deep breath* No, I don't think Blitz is wrong. Striker treats other imps as inferior to himself. He calls them things like "vermin" (you know, like racists do). He IS a supremacist. Striker might believe that he's not, but he's shown us otherwise. More on that here. TBH I don't think a sad backstory would change this, for me or for Blitz. Striker would have to change his worldview and stop being a supremacist for us to stop seeing him as one. -_-

"Striker going insane is a HUGE part of his character arc because it’s the start of them unravelling him so that we can reveal his past, why he hates royals and also why he became an assassin. I believe that he’ll probably be redeemed in the future and if they want to do that, they can’t keep him the same stereotypical evil cowboy like in HMF because a redemption wouldn’t feel warranted. You need to unravel his layers beforehand."

Okay, so . . . I don't hate this, because I do think unraveling him is interesting character development, but I honestly don't think he's headed for a redemption arc. Why? Well because in my view, Striker serves two narrative purposes- the first is to be a formidable and interesting villain, and making him increasingly insane will ADD to this. And the second is to hold up a mirror to Blitz so that we can see Blitz (who has a lot of similar pain and biases) choosing a different path. As Striker gets unraveled, he's actually descending deeper into hate, while Blitz is learning to be open to love.

[halflifebutawesome]

you used to be such a baby.

[arthursfuckinghat]

so what is your opinion on mary then? you said previously that you didn't like her but you're happy to defend her?

Sure, Mary isn't my favourite person, but I don't hate her - honestly I don't <3

I'm always going to defend characters who are victims to mischaracterisation, especially the women. It's a frequent double standard, people fail to be as understanding of female characters compared to male characters.

Mary and Arthur both suffered to difficult home lives and dysfunctional families, just to different extents.

Mary hated that Arthur was an outlaw, she understandably didn't like that he kills people and steals, but she knew how good of a person Arthur could be. Arthur hated Mary's family and how they treated her, they were very judgemental and abusive, especially when Mary was with Arthur. He knew how much she cared about her family regardless of how they treated her, Arthur knew how good of a woman she was.

What pains me is how Mary failed to understand how living as an outlaw wasn't a choice for Arthur. He was raised in an environment that showed how harsh the world could be if he wasn't tough enough or willing to kill for his safety, Mary was raised in a similarly harsh environment that exposed her to how being a woman meant being treated as a lesser person in the society they lived in.

Given how Mary and Arthur initially parted ways, her needing Arthur's help in chapter two proved difficult for both of them - same in chapter four but it ended on a better note if you chose to.

Mary's main takeaway from meeting Arthur was seeing how he didn't, or couldn't change. Even though we don't see as much of her life compared to Arthur, it didn't seem like she changed either.

It always came across to me that they both wanted eachother to change (i.e Mary wanting Arthur leaving the outlaw life and Arthur wanting Mary to be more understanding of his circumstances) but because they both had family ties, they just couldn't.

Mary couldn't be understanding of Arthur's life because he still continued to live that way, proving that he couldn't change. Arthur couldn't leave his outlaw ways behind because he had the gang to provide for, proving that Mary wouldn't be understanding despite them both knowing that they couldn't abandon family.

To which we come full circle, they split initially because they weren't compatible and that still remained to be the case.

Mary was fully prepared to drop everything to run away with Arthur, but she expected him to do the same. Even after his explanation about the gang and needing money, she knows she's heard it all before and decided to just leave it. They both wanted to run away so badly and I can imagine that even if they did, their lives would catch up with them eventually.

Nothing gets forgotten.

Arthur knows that, he just ran out of time, and Mary didn't know at the time how precious those moments with Arthur really were.

[lunamond]

In Episode 22, anime watchers get finally introduced to the new ship dynamic between Thorfinn and Canute.

Instead of innocent naive prince/feral murderchild, we get the in my objectively correct opinion superior version of:

Canute: I really wanna do some violence

Thorfinn: Don’t do violence 😜

Canute: But politics...

Thorfinn: 🥺

Canute: Ok

[front-facing-pokemon]

[starleska]

hey guys, listen. it means the world that you like my stuff and are eager to see more of it, but i literally posted a wip just two weeks ago and have so many people asking when it's going to be done. the answer is: i don't know. this month has been tremendously difficult for me, and i'm really, really exhausted.

i've been posting art, vids, text posts, writing articles, etc. all for the sake of fandom while trying to keep on top of the huge amount of asks and messages that have come my way. i was supporting a loved one in the hospital, my laptop is broken, and i experienced a really horrifying situation earlier this month that left me sick, that i'm still recovering from. please do remember that i'm not a content factory, and neither are any other fandom artists you like. i know some of you are just reaching out because you are excited, but a lot of the time it's coming across as a demand, and it's making me just want to log off and not work on anything at all. this isn't my job - i'm just a person who gets excited about stuff and likes to write/draw/talk about it, that's all. i recognise some of this response is just burnout from a really terrible month, and i probably wouldn't be reacting this way if i was less at the end of my tether, but this is something i've always been vocal about. as a prolific fandom creator i've had my fair share of 'WHEN'S THE NEXT CHAPTER???' comments on fics, and 'OMG YOU SHOULD DRAW THIS!!!' replies on art that's just been posted. zero acknowledgement of artistic merit, of what they liked about what was made...just an insatiable hunger for more. i don't know if it's because i'm in so many fandoms, or because i make such a wide variety of fan content and make a lot of posts that seem to draw strangers in. but none of my fanworks come with a release date. i make them because they make me happy, and i release them when they're ready, and if i want to. i shouldn't be logging onto Tumblr and feeling dread looking at my askbox, messages and replies because i know there'll be more demand. for real guys...my stuff isn't that good? it's just silly self-indulgent nonsense and autistic overthinking. this is the place where i go to release the fixation energy, not to come to another workplace 😓 my apologies if this seems ridiculous or overblown. it's a feeling i've been sitting on for a few months now, and it's one i've had following strong/frequent/demanding interactions in larger fandoms before. i don't think there's a fix for this, because people are always going to be crossing boundaries and treating fanworks creators this way. but i think i need to stay firm and say that i don't owe anyone a schedule of the art i make for fun. thanks for reading 💖

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

Both my parents actually suffer from HORRID emotional dysregulation and are prone to snapping and going into rages. My sister is the same way tbh. I am now realizing this is why they are constantly baffled by the question of whether or not I am mad at them.

I don't have external meltdowns.

I could. I don't let it happen.

I keep my rage on the inside and stay pretty quiet about it. It's just as strong as theirs [physically shaking nose bleed from high blood pressure kind of bad], but like as a kid I saw how terrifying it was to be around [dad breaking dishes, mom putting our lawn chairs into walls] and I just internalized that I wasn't going to wear that anger on the outside.

So my mother genuinely cannot tell if I am just being quiet or if I am silently hearing the dial-up noises of pure rage. This has lead her to both making strong and confident statements like "You are a pacifist who would never hurt a fly U.U" but also acting like I am secretly dangerous maybe... It's because she has never seen me snap.

She knows what her temper is like [throwing chairs through walls], she knows what my father's temper is like [pick up child and toss out door], and she can tell I am being tested, but she doesn't know what happens when I snap or where that breaking point is.

Her -perhaps unhinged- solution to this, my whole life, has been to do things that should obviously enrage me or shut me down completely, like ignoring important boundaries, repeatedly, punishing me for expressing emotions or needs at all, etc... And then to constantly ask me if I am angry with her when I get too quiet [right after near directly telling me to shut up].

It has occurred to me now, they have never once seen me lose my temper, so they literally just can't tell if I am angry at them. My sister is easy, my mother fights and screams with my sister constantly, my mother understands this. My mother doesn't have any grasp of feelings or boundaries that are not screamed at her [apparently, and I fear my sister is the same way]. Her and my sister are close despite constant fucking fighting because they understand each other.

They are trying to get me to engage the same way and it is not working. I realize now that this has been hard for them.

I was so successfully taught to suppress my emotions, by being punished for any outburst, that rage quiet looks the same as any other kind of quiet from the outside. To them anyway.

I did tell her. For the record. I used my words. I did tell her very calmly that my response to rage, in order to avoid doing the things that terrified me as a child, was to simply leave [the autistic urge to GTFO]. When a situation or person causes too much of the dial-up rage noise, I simply extract myself from that situation, up to and including never speaking to a person again. I explained this calmly. I explained it calmly 100 times and I explained that I explain myself calmly as my rage response 1-5 [also pretty much every other negative emotion tbh], and I told her that what came next was me simply opting out and fucking off. I told her this. I couldn't understand why she never took me seriously, or why she never fucking understood.

I couldn't understand what made her like this.

But it's the same problem I have with everyone else multiplied by a factor of 10.

If I am explaining myself calmly, they can't understand that it's actually serious or that I am actually upset. ESPECIALLY because they read me as "female" and women "aren't that rational" so if I am not screaming and crying about something, which I never do, people assume I can't be upset and it isn't serious.

And then after having my boundaries ignored too many times despite having calmly explained how and why it's a problem [shaking inside or not]... I leave. I leave and everyone gets upset like this is unexpected behaviour, even though I told them 50 times that is how I would respond if they kept doing *the thing.*

And for neurotypical people especially, they are expecting there to be a disconnect between what someone says they need or feel and what their actually boundaries and feelings are, and they expect the latter to be demonstrated with emotions. Telling them bluntly you do not function that way somehow never helps?

My mother isn't just looking for normal yelling or a few tears to know I am serious, whether or not I do those either [I don't], she's looking for an explosion to know there's a problem at all.

Fucked if I know how she proceeds through life this way in general or if this is just her expectation of her own kids???

And I couldn't get why my mother couldn't read my emotions and didn't seem to think I have any. It's because she's testing for the rage limit to see where my 'actual' limit is instead of taking my word for it. Never the fuck mind that she could simply *not* test at my boundaries instead of letting me have them. Separate issue.

I couldn't figure out what made her *like this*

She's expecting me to throw a giant meltdown violent tantrum at people when I have 'actually' had enough. Maybe she got away with those being like 5'4" in another time, but I am the size of the average man, I do not get to have giant screaming rages, whether or not people perceive me consciously as a woman, and least of all because a lot of people -at least unconsciously- read me as 'masculine' or at least always "they guy" of the situation compared to all other women and some men [bigger stronger and more rational, more able to just absorb the damage and let it go so the less rational screaming/crying one doesn't have to be dealt with]. Even if it was in me to be willing to terrify people [usually never], there are such limited instances where it wouldn't just blow back on me. Potentially very dangerously.

I am going to be the quiet calm one. You are going to have to let me use my words, bitch.

So she kept ignoring my boundaries until I had to cut her out of my life, and she probably doesn't understand and probably thinks it feels sudden -after 36 long years of bullshit- abrupt and unfair.

But I told her hundreds of times.

I probably should have just screamed at her.