#don't be a wombat

[wild-karrde]

I'm gonna say something, and it's not targeted at any one user in particular because I've seen this ramping up A LOT across the fandom, especially with the premiere coming this week.

People are allowed to have different expectations/hopes/opinions than you, and that's not a personal attack on anyone. They are allowed to do that.

You can hope a character comes back from the dead. In a franchise that has practically written the joke that only Qui-Gon Jinn can't survive a lightsaber to the chest, I think it's more than fair to hope Tech re-emerges (I have my own EXCEPTIONALLY dark theories on how that may go, but we'll see). It's also ok for you to want him to stay dead. You are completely allowed to think that his arc hard run its course and his death served a purpose.

You can like the clones' physique as it's portrayed. You can prefer them thicker. And having one of these opinions is not an attack on the other.

You can want a happy ending for the Bad Batch and can be sad if it doesn't happen. That's allowed. You can also expect them to all die and to have our souls crushed. And wanting one of those doesn't make you "naive" or "too dark" or whatever adjective for not expecting the other.

I could go on and on with examples, but all to say there's this weird passive aggressive atmosphere going on right now where people post one thing, and others in the same circles/community feel the need to post the exact opposite like it's some kind of weird debate. There's posts circulating that feel borderline shaming for people that have particular hopes for the season. This is Tumblr. People just post stuff that makes them happy. Posting something you enjoy or have a theory about on a show isn't an attack on someone else or their opinions. And if you don't like someone's opinions THAT MUCH, then just unfollow them. It's really that simple. I've done it without saying a word to the person I disagreed with.

It's just really strange to me that a community that thrives off of theories and possibilities and different character interpretations and twisting threads of canon into complex stories based on a single line of dialogue or passing glance would be getting chippy with one another for having the same types of theories and hopes for undetermined canon. This is media we all love, so can we please let each other have our individual thoughts and opinions about it? I have had PLENTY of differing opinions with my friends on here about things I did/didn't like in a show. They're still my friends though.

In addition, can we all remember that just because something doesn't turn out the way you wanted, that doesn't mean it's bad; sometimes, sure, it's bad, but what I've found is that most likely means it just wasn't for you. And that's fine. Not everything can/should be for you. So go write a fic about it. Seriously. We all live for AUs. Go do it.

Let's all just be kind to one another, yeah? Because lately it feels like we're stepping on one another's excitement, and I'm not here for that.

[apnourry]

was this before or after spilling an entire unsipped diet coke

[augustheart]

now that green arrow has become fascist it's time for hal to do the funniest thing possible

[thepurplewombat]

Friendly reminder that Jin Guangyao killed Nie Mingjue in self-defense

[thechromebucket]

The Walking Honored Dead

Tribute to my favorite character from "Casablanca" (1942), Signor Ugarte, played by Peter Lorre.

While Ugarte is not a noble guy, I find it ludicrous that he's so frequently written off as a "villain," when he was helping the heroes from the start (if for selfish reasons) and his only confirmed kills are both Nazis.

The scenario here is based on Michonne from "The Walking Dead," who apparently keeps two zombies on leashes.

Having cheated death in more ways that one, Ugarte has found that dead Nazis have many uses. Naming his new friends Hans and Franz, he parades them through the criminal underworld, and uses them to contribute to the fight against Hitler (for a price no doubt). Rick, of course, is completely unimpressed as usual.

Update: I fixed Ugarte's head and nose, which looked slanted before, and toned down the color contrast.

[dalesramblingsblog]

Babe what's the matter you haven't even posted anything for International Wombat Day...

[jibanyans-chocobar]

i'd love to see some dashi and ryla drawings plz and thank you 🙏

Here ‼️

Sum Dyla for your soul 😼🫵✨‼️ (Dyla shippers pspspspsps come get your food)

I hc that Dashi dyed her ends pink to match Ryla hahahahhaaha anybody else??? No???

Btw Ryla's design is. SO COOL thx for inspiring me to draw her

Some talking blahblahblah + individual drawings below the cut!!! Requests are still open btw!

Fun fact: while I was drawing this, I showed the drawing to my mom when i was in the middle of drawing Ryla and asked her: "Who do u think this is" and she went "Oh uh I think Dashi's friend...? What's her name again? It's Ryla isn't it? She's really cool!" Even tho we haven't watched ABAB too much and she has seen the Caves of Sac Actun movie with me just once. I love her very much she pays so much attention to my interests hahahsjhajs-

[direwombat]

listen. i'm always happy whenever someone leaves a comment because they enjoy my writing. whether it's a quick "love it!" or a longer dissection of whatever they've read, it warms my heart that they took the time out of their day, however brief, to let me know that they liked my work. i don't consider myself entitled to receive comments for posting my work, which makes every single one i get a gift!

but comments like these (particularly ones that come from profiles that haven't posted fic and are aggregates of bookmarks*) really do leave a bad taste in my mouth:

so, let me spell some things out for anyone who may be unaware:

I don't write for you.

I write for myself.

I am writing fic for free in the little spare time i have.

You are not entitled to my (or anyone else's) work

i haven't posted fic to ao3 since literally january of this year. i also wish i were posting fic more frequently, trust me. the only thing worse than writing is not writing. but asking "where's the rest????" and "part 2????" only activates my spite response to not post. you'll get updates to fics when you get updates. writing fanfiction is a hobby for me. i do it for fun. but i also take my craft (writing) very seriously. i want to write a good, compelling story and i take great care in the writing process. it's laborious to begin with, and on top of that, i am a meticulous planner. it takes me much longer to write a fic than it does for you to read it -- yes, even for the short ones and smutfics!

it's the famous "pick two: high quality, cheap, and fast", and unfortunately for all of us, if you want my "not bad"-writing and have it also remain free, then you're gonna have to be patient.

*i'm not saying that this is an incorrect way to use ao3. if you're using ao3 as a place to keep track of the fics you like, that's a valid way to use the site, and not what i'm mad about. it's the entitlement.

[69constellationsinatrenchcoat]

totally got tagged to do this (no, I didn't)

Shuffle your On Repeat playlist and list the first twelve songs in a poll, then have your followers choose their favourite.

I was expecting this to be a lot more obscure, seems we've just had movie and show soundtracks on loop lol

[theflyingfeeling]

no longer am I going to just sit around doing nothing; I am going to start a support group for people who love Joel Hokka in which we cry about the baby daily at 6 PM and then again at 9

[theultimatekamehamehavoc]

decided to draw Byakuya with my left hand yesterday forgor to send cus i got tired T-T this is the result tho

[apnourry]

midweek crisis😍🥰😍

[starlene]

straight up not having a good time with my reorganisation project right now

[thepurplewombat]

Three years after the last time he saw Jiang Cheng, Wei Wuxian received a summons to Lotus Pier. The note found him and Lan Wangji out in the wilds of Qinghe where they have been hunting some form of beast. It had been terrorizing the local commoners and the Nie had not been doing enough, so Wei Wuxian had packed up Little Apple and dragged Lan Wangji on another wild adventure.

So far the wild adventure had consisted mostly of rain, mud, and sleeping in the dirt, with no sign of the beast and a number of surprisingly un-terrified villagers, so Wei Wuxian was about ready to put it down to wild rumor and head back to the Cloud Recesses. At which point he received the note from Jiang Cheng, and decided that he might as well see what his once-shidi wanted.

It wasn't that he didn't want to go back to Lotus Pier. For all that had happened after, it was still the first home Wei Wuxian had ever known and, when he let himself, he missed it with a fierceness that left him hollow. He just didn't let himself miss it often, because all that was in the past, and Wei Wuxian was focused on the present.

It took them several days to reach Lotus Pier, and when they got there, Jiang Cheng came storming out of his office like a thundercloud, glaring all the time. He looked thinner than the last time they had spoken, his cheekbones even more pronounced.

"Good," he snapped. "You're here. This way."

He led them through a rambling maze of corridors and open walkways that Wei Wuxian didn't remember - except he did remember, and it all smelled like home and loss and came to rest in a heavy weight in his belly where his nascent golden core spun and sparked merrily to itself. Jiang Cheng led them to the infirmary, where a young woman was lying on a bed.

"Is she alive?" Jiang Cheng asked.

Wei Wuxian looked at the woman, then at Jiang Cheng, his eyebrows climbing.

"Jiang Cheng, I'm not a -"

"You're the foremost expert on ghosts in the world, Wei Wuxian," Jiang Cheng interrupted him. "She was gored by a Soul Devouring Demon two weeks ago."

Wei Wuxian looked back at the girl, then took a careful step closer. The way she lay so still, her breath perfectly even...he reached out to touch her arm and feel for any traces of life.

"She eats, right?"

"She will swallow if someone feeds her, walk if someone leads her. If you leave her to herself she does nothing that a fierce corpse couldn't do, but I don't sense any resentful energy in her. I need to know if her soul is still...here...and if it can be restored."

"Well," Wei Wuxian said. "I can check, there are a few talismans I can look into...It's going to take a few hours."

"Good." Jiang Cheng turned to leave, then paused. "Thank you."

And then he was gone.

***

Jiang Cheng was doing paperwork when a runner came panting into his office, saying that Wei Wuxian wanted him. Jiang Cheng didn't run, because when sect leaders run sect members get uneasy, but he did walk slightly faster than was his wont.

When he got to the infirmary, he found Wei Wuxian looking tired, and Lan Wangji looking blank.

"Her soul's gone," Wei Wuxian reported quietly. "I've tried everything, Lan Wangji played Inquiry...there's nothing there. I'm sorry, Jiang Cheng."

Jiang Cheng nodded.

"Thank you, Wei Wuxian," he said again. "And...thank you for coming. I thought you would avoid Lotus Pier forever. It's good that you came home."

Wei Wuxian's eyes went wide and his mouth opened, but thank all the gods and ancestors for Lan Wangji, because he swept Wei Wuxian off to get some breakfast before Wei Wuxian could get emotions all over Jiang Cheng.

Once he was along, Jiang Cheng sighed and pressed his fingertips to the bridge of his nose. The little fool, what had she been thinking? Of course he knew what she was thinking - she was thinking that she owed a debt despite all they'd done to assure her otherwise, she was thinking that she had found a solution to the problem they'd been working on for three years, and she was thinking that it required a soulless body that yet lived.

And wouldn't you know it, there was a Soul Devouring Demon wandering the countryside, and wasn't it the Head Disciple''s duty to go after it.

"This is the last thing he would have wanted," he snapped at the slow-breathing corpse on the infirmary bed. "The last thing."

He could still remember when she had come to the Jiang, brought by Jin Guangyao under cover of night. One of his father's other bastards, Jin Guangyao had whispered once they had been private. It had been a year or more before Jin Guangshan had died, and nobody wanted to hand him a daughter to use and abuse the way he was already using Jin Guangyao. But her mother had died, and Jin Guangyao had had nowhere else to go. They'd been something close to friends by then, and Jin Guangyao knew that the Jiang were always ready to open their arms to a new disciple.

Nearly twenty years, Jiang Bao had been a member of his sect. In the last few years, as she'd grown into adulthood, she'd even become a friend.

And she loved her brother beyond reason. She'd told Jiang Cheng herself, how the small and smiling dark-eyed man had threatened the madame into giving her up when her mother had died with her contract unfulfilled, and brought her that same night to the door of the Jiang Clan of Yunmeng, where she was treated just like any of the other orphans Jiang Cheng had brought into his sect. Jiang Bao had believed that she owed Jin Guangyao her life, and now she had decided to pay the debt.

Jiang Cheng sighed again, and picked up the feather-light body to carry it away. Like all of Jin Guangshan's bastards, she was slim and short and lighter than she should have been - he wondered if Wei Wuxian's new body ran on nerves the same way Jin Guangyao and Jiang Bao did.

***

In the end the ritual was stupidly easy. The most complicated part was procuring a body - healthy with no wounds, yet soulless. Jiang Bao had so kindly provided, and left Jiang Cheng to either make use of her unwanted gift or squander it.

Jiang Cheng was no fool. He hadn't lived through the Sunshot Campaign and the lean years after the war by squandering opportunities. Wei Wuxian had checked for her soul and it was gone - but Jiang Cheng had known it was the moment the juniors brought her back, but he burned incense for her anyway. And he would carve her a tablet, not for the memorial hall because if all went well nobody would know that she was dead, but for his private shrine, where he kept the tablets for those the world would rather he not mourn. Wei Wuxian's tablet had stood there once. Jin Guangyao's stood there now.

Casting the ritual was a matter of scrawling some talismans, sacrificing some blood, and naturally having a soul handy to stuff into the body. That was the least of his problems, if he was being honest. Since he already had the soul and all - he wasn't about to let a man who had become family be tormented for a century, and it turned out that Nie Mingjue generated enough resentful energy to mast a quick and careful soul-syphoning spell.

He placed the softly glowing crystal over Jiang Bao's heart, and started channeling spiritual energy through it.

The crystal became bright, then brighter, until Jiang Cheng started to worry that the ritual was going to cost him his eyes as well as his head disciple, and then with a final flash like Zidian's power, the crystal cracked.

And Jiang Bao breathed deep, and screamed.

***

It took some time to get the newly reborn Jin Guangyao calmed down enough to have a conversation. The man was understandably distraught, and he'd been having a bad week even before he died, but he did eventually calm down.

Enough to glare at Jiang Cheng anyway.

"How could you let her do this?" he demanded, sitting on the edge of the altar table and gripping his knees as though holding on to them was the only thing stopping him from going for Jiang Cheng's throat. "I trusted you with her, Jiang Wanyin! My sister!"

Jiang Cheng could do nothing.

"I'd forbidden her from even considering it," he said. "She offered, repeatedly, and I said no, I said that you would rather stay dead than have your resurrection cost her life. So she went out and fed herself to a Soul Devouring Demon because she thought she owed you her life. Because, and I don't know if you've noticed this, you Jin are a bunch of stubborn assholes!"

Jin Guangyao sighed.

"Why did you even bring me back? I was supposed to be dead, Wanyin."

"Because you didn't deserve to die like that, and because I'm tired of letting go of people I care about."

Jin Guangyao looked up, just a flash of bright dark eyes under long lashes - it was truly amazing that nobody had ever seen the resemblance, but then again the Chief Cultivator and the Head Disciple of the Jiang had never had much cause to interact in public.

"I...Thank you, Jiang Cheng," he whispered. Then he took a deep breath. "How...how is Lan Xichen?"

"Still in seclusion," Jiang Cheng said gruffly. He'd thought they had been friends, at least. Over the years they had bonded over their friendship with Jin Guangyao, and he had to admit that it stung that Lan Xichen had refused to see him and sent his letters back unopened. "He's been refusing my messages. You know how he gets."

Jin Guangyao nodded. If there was anyone in the world who knew how the great Zewu-Jun got, it was the man who loved him more than anything.

"I'll send him a butterfly," he said. "You will have to put up with us cluttering up your sect for a while, I'm afraid."

"Don't be ridiculous," Jiang Cheng snapped before he could think. "You're staying, of course. I mean...if you want to - but I-"

"If you want me to stay," Jin Guangyao said, and smiled, "I will stay. And if Lan Xichen wishes to see me, he will come to see me here. Now let me get that butterfly sent. Did you know it's his birthday today?"

[thelassoway]

Do you ever think about the origin of the name Theodore? No. "From the Ancient Greek name Θεόδωρος (Theódoros), meaning "gift of God(s)" (from the Ancient Greek words θεός, (theós) "God/Gods" and δῶρον (dṓron) "gift.""

[felteverywhere]

closed starter for @talk2much​

“i feel like i never get to stop thinking about you. doesn’t matter how much space i put between us. doesn’t matter the reckless shit i throw myself into, you’re always just... there.”