#don't bother asking if i ship it

[swindlefingrs]

Karlach and Wyll taking Halsin out on the town to show him some of the great things about Baldur's Gate - show him where the warmth and kindness and compassion can be found.

not that the city is perfect, but balance isn't perfect, people aren't perfect but there are plenty out there trying!

i think he'd enjoy that

[hrokkall]

HOW TO PIN YOUR INSECTS:

Position limbs into desired arrangement and pin in place

Maintain eye contact

Pin should pass through the center of the thorax

Move slowly; lest the divine light leak out along with the ichor

Wait for the embers to die.

Wait for the embers to reignite.

[wikiangela]

just a reminder that people don't need to explain why they ship or don't ship a ship or why they write or don't write for a ship, no one owes anyone any explanations and seeing people send asks about it is just so weird and ridiculous and confusing tbh

have you never been in a fandom before? don't like something, block and unfollow buttons are right there - and the opposite too: looking for fics/gifs/art for your ship, well, the search function is there too, its so easy to find blogs that share your ships, and you can ask for recs or whatever

just, stop asking people to explain themselves out of ships of all things, this is literally fiction, who the fuck cares about the why and why nots jfc

[hailsatanacab]

@the-ghost-trader - ooooh, i love this! it has the potential to be so incredibly sad, too, like poor Damian just trying to carve out something normal for himself only for it blow up in his face

BUT, shockingly, i'm not about the angst today! not yet anyway 😇

---

“So, how was your day?”

Despite his answering groan, Damian likes this. This. This whole… thing he has with Danielle. With Ellie. 

And, yeah, he’s not exactly told any of the others yet, but can you blame him? For wanting to keep something, anything, to himself. Wanting to keep this small little slice of goodness he’s managed to carve out, untouched and unmarred by his family, by their other lives, by the rogues, the vigilantes, the assassins, everyone.

“That bad, huh?”

Being with Ellie is freeing. That’s the best way to describe it.

She knows. Damian surprised even himself when he told her—not about the others, mind, but he supposes it’s not hard to put two and two together and Dani has always been smarter than most—but it’s the best decision he’s ever made, and no matter what the niggling little voice in the back of his head says (the one that sounds suspiciously like Father), he can’t bring himself to regret it.

He won’t. Because having Ellie know gives him freedom.

She’s a safe place, a hand to hold, a warm, welcoming presence when things inevitably turn ugly. It’s the freedom to just be normal when everything else in his life spirals into stranger and more stressful missions.

“Richard is being insufferable again. I do not understand his incessant need to know everything about my life.”

“Oh? What’s he done now?” 

“I was subjected to an hour long interrogation about my love life, like it’s any of his business. It’s infuriating!”

“Ugh, tell me about it. I get the same thing from Jazz, constantly. It can be suffocating.” Ellie says as she curls herself tighter into his side. “But it’s just how they show they care.”

“Yes, well, sometimes I wish he wouldn’t—”

“Hey!” Ellie pushes herself up to glare at him, punctuating her shout with a soft whack to his arm for good measure. “What have I said about using that word?”

“Yes, yes,” he placates with a roll of his eyes, “‘Be careful what you wish for.’ I apologise, it won't happen again.”

“Damn straight it won't.”

She maintains eye contact with him for a second longer before tucking herself back into his side, squirming around with a long, contented hum that Damian can feel rumble through him. He smiles and doesn’t complain even when he has to shift to give her more room after a particularly strong elbow jabs him in the ribs. It means leaving the warm patch on the couch, but he’s rewarded with another long, happy moan as she settles and Damian can’t bring himself to mind.

Ellie constantly makes noises. Little mews and hums and laughs and songs known only to her. It reminds him of a cat, sometimes. He likes it. It calms him down; it means she’s happy, so he's happy.

They settle back into the cushions and Damian lets the subject drop, not wanting to spoil the moment. Outside, the wind changes direction and from where he’s laying he can watch as the snow starts to come down thick and heavy. Hopefully it’ll mean a quiet night's patrol.

“Is that why you haven’t introduced me yet?”

“What?” He can't help it, he stiffens at the thought of losing his secret, of the scrutiny he'll be inviting if he lets anyone know.

“Are you worried I’ll embarrass you?”

Damian’s eyes snap down quick to reassure her, only to see her light, teasing grin. He lets out a breath of relief. It figures she wouldn't worry about that.

“Of course not, don’t be absurd. You could never embarrass me.”

“I don’t know,” she muses, her voice taking on a dangerous lilt, “that sounds like a challenge.”

“Believe me, having been subjected to Father’s Brucie persona at every gala I’ve been to, it would take a lot to embarrass me.”

“Alright, bet. I’ll get you, just you wait.”

“You’ve already got me.”

She flicks him on the nose. “You’re such a sap.”

He hums his agreement, enjoying the tinkling sound of her laughter. And then, before he can think otherwise, he asks, “Is that why you haven’t introduced me?”

“That’s different,” she scowls. “You know how hard it is to get there, there’s no signal, and Danny only gets a break like—oh, Ancients!”

Damian gets another elbow to the ribs as she bolts upright, a manic grin on her face that has him laughing.

“What is it?”

“It’s the holidays! It’s nearly Truce Day! You know I said I had a family thing around Christmas?”

“Yes?” 

“Well, do you want to come to it? I can introduce you then! I mean, it’s going to be a bit formal and you’ll have to meet everyone, not just family. There’s going to be some banquets, you’ll have to sit through some long speeches and you have to be on your best behaviour at all times, okay? Absolutely no fighting, it’s called Truce Day for a reason!”

“What?”

“Yeah, it’ll be perfect! I think Jazz is going in a couple days earlier to help with the preparations, so I’ll get her to let Danny know—and fair warning, he will try to give you the shovel talk, but this is great! It’s Truce Day, so he can’t actually do anything about it!”

“I’m sorry, but you're going to have to explain a bit.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s a bit much—but that’s family, right? Danny can get pretty protective over me, which is why going on Truce Day is the best time to do it! He can’t even command the Fright Knight to stab you! It’s genius!”

“Ellie, what?”

“Like, yeah, sure, he’s the king, but even he has to obey the rules of Truce Day—and then once you’ve spent all day with him, he’ll see that you’re a fantastic, wonderful, kind, brilliant, smart, strong, capable person and he’ll get over himself and everything will be good!"

Damian collapses down onto the couch, the wind knocked out of him. This is… He had not expected anything like this at all. For all that Ellie talked about her family, she had never mentioned this.

“Did you… did you say your brother is a king?”

“Yeah! High King Phantom, have I…” The manic grin slips off her face as she turns round and notices Damian. “Have I not mentioned that before?”

“No. No, you have not.”

“Ah. Sorry. Probably should clarify that I’m also a princess.”

“Right. Yes, that follows.”

“And I’m not really his sister, I’m his clone.”

“What?”

Damian blinks and tries to say more, but he has no idea what he’s meant to do with… any of this information. 

Normal. He thought she was meant to be his normal. Nothing could have prepared him for this.

Not that it changed anything, of course, of that he was certain. It’s just… a lot to take in. Overwhelming. But it's okay! He takes a deep breath, and another, and a sense of calm washes over him. Ellie makes one of her little hums as she cocks her head to the side to consider him and he can't help but relax at the normalcy of the sound. It'll be okay, he's dealt with stranger and he can deal with this.

“I’ve, uh… I’ve told you that we’re half ghosts, though, right?”

“What?”

[ispridestillasin]

So I decided to watch a bit of Bridgerton with my mother, which I'm not really interested in (I don't really like period pieces unless it's a fanfic for a ship I like) but it's a show she enjoys so I sometimes catch her watching it and join her, and literally the only takeaway from the stuff I've seen with her is that Colin, Lord Debling, and Penelope should have all been poly

[n-odious-tropy]

May I have your attention!

War is fast approaching and the time for preparation is at hand. This is a call to all who have chosen to ally yourself with me to fend off the scourge of piracy and stick it to Cortex. Should anyone else wish to join my roster, I'll send my coordinates and we will convene at the war table.

A reminder to all that this is a fight. We are not here to chase skirts and coattails! Leave the spectators out of the fray and show some bloody decency. If you're not going to take this conflict seriously, then stay out of my way.

[necrotic-nephilim]

i love your fics and the ideas you describe for the ask games. i'm especially fond of your takes on the rarer pairings and i always smile when i see your posts in the ship tags <3

and don't stress too much about not posting anything, real life is important and participating in fandom should be fun, not something you have to force yourself to do. god knows fandom burnout is real, especially if you feel like people are expecting something from you. just keep doing what makes you happy :)

ghgfhgjhkjhjhg this was so sweet, thank you so much! i *love* talking about rarer rarepairs, especially if it gets other people to ship them too. the popular ships are fun and all, but i truly love spreading rarepair propaganda.

that's very reassuring, thank you <3 i've loved everything i posted here so far and have not felt pushed to post anything i haven't enjoyed, but sometimes i forget i can like. use this blog for whatever i want and not *just* headcanons/fics/mets/etc lol. and i also forget i don't have to rush myself. it's annoying to want to write and either not have time or not have the words work. i used to run a fandom blog in my teens that got very large and felt like a chore and i was so stressed about the need to perform and the numbers and all of that. like if a fic didn't do well i saw it as a personal failing and forced myself to write popular headcanons just for the numbers game. was not fun or sustainable in the long run and i think it contributed to me no longer having any taste for the ship i primarily wrote for. so for too long i treated existing in fandom like a job lol. i've mostly gotten it through to myself that this is a space for me, but i occasionally forget when i'm so caught up in all the things i want to get to for this blog. my to-write list is a mile long and i need to be bonked with a paper towel roll, i think. so it's very kind of you to say this bc the reminder is nice <3

[msnihilist]

It's crazy how every anti post is wrong.

There's this one person in the proship tag who is dying on the hill that proship = problematic ship and it's lowkey driving me crazy. There's no point in saying anything because they've already decided that proshippers are subhuman, but oh my goodddddddd they're so wrong about everything they post.

[darklight-owl]

I am "misandry anon".

Misandry is not "I hate 50% of humanity for no reason". Have you tried to understand what it is? Have you tried to get my point?

Misandry is "I hate cis-men (as a group)". Misandric people are friends with cis-men, individually. I can tell, because I am a cis man. Misandric people hate men as a group, and for rationnal reasons.

Sorry I don't even care about how blatantly wrong you are anymore I'm laughing at the fact you took offense to someone saying "misandry is wrong", doubled down instead of taking 5 seconds to google "misandry definition", then went out of your way to go on the blog of someone dogging on you in a comment section and defend your Anon's Honor.

[sunset-sunbun]

And what especially sucks is that Viv says she's fine with people shipping Alastor with other people. Like...

Why do people treat AroAce people do different???

Like, when I got into my first and last relationship {before I realized I was aromantic}, my family would make jokes of me and the person not being allowed in the same room with the door closed, make kissing jokes {even though I would literally try to flee from CHEEK KISSES} and so many things

And like. I can't help but project onto AroAce characters????

Also, a bit unrelated because my brain is all over the place, but I saw a comment on TikTok that was like "in the episode, Alastor used the AroAce version of 'your daughter calls me daddy too'" and then I scrolled and the rest of the comments were people fighting

Like

If you wanna ship Alastor with someone... QUEER PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS EXIST- {I think that's the right term????? Idk I just woke up again.} Like. None of the romance. None of the sex. Just two people that are in a platonic relationship. {But then there would be people that see it and then go "oh they're just besties! Time to ship the AroAce character with people"}

{also I saw like this argument somewhere on this app between two people over queer platonic relationships, one person saying they're not real and the other person pointing out that they are and stuff.}

Anyway, I've never understood why people just. Keep shipping AroAce characters with people. It's like they took the words of AroAce people {the "some of us can still date and sex" words when someone goes "uhm you can't be AroAce because [insert sex or relationship]"} because it's like. They're using things that would be like "we're also AroAce" just to EXCLUDE SEX AND ROMANCE REPULSED AROACE PEOPLE FROM EXISTING IN FICTION

Like. It just. Never makes sense to me. People talk about erasing identities of other queer characters but the moment that they're AroAce they begin going "oh it's fine" like. What's the different between shipping an AroAce character with someone and shipping a gay character with the opposite gender????

Hold on my brain just tried to go to a different topic with genders {specifically "if heterosexual is 'attraction to the opposite gender' would that make agenders only attracted to Omnigender/Pangender?" And I have no idea why. Probably because I JSUT woke up from a nap}

Back to the rant, it just... Why can't AroAce characters in media exist in peace??? It's like people see canonical AroAce characters and make it a CHALLENGE to ship them with as many people as possible.

YES!

say it with me now: Aroace people are a part of the community and deserve equal representation in media too! aroace people should not be excluded or have their representation have leeway and wiggle room to fit the conformities of society aroace people deserve to be seen!

[satisaranea]

OKAY THANK YOU aksjfhdkf i was worried you genuinely liked them even though my instincts told me you wouldn't. yeah once a year or so ago i read a fic tagged haymitch/katniss out of morbid curiosity and it wasn't romantic so i think the author just didn't know what the slash meant but literally he is too old for her and it is gross and creepy and bad!!

like i love an older guy trope but when it's like a 1-3 year age difference not THREE OR MORE DECADES?????

yeah trust your instincts because i have never insinuated that i ever had or would like them LMAOOOO??????????? trust me man i'm the one mutual who's actually fought with certain people in the fandom over certain ships/have condemned anything weird like that. it's literally fucking creepy and gross and it's like. of all people why would you put them together like that's not... .. it's DECADES apart when it comes to them. like i said, you might as well kill yourself if you're a proshipper because i promise you the only place pedophiles go is death row, jail and likely hell if it even exists. again, i'm the first person to point out creepy ships/weird behavior in this fandom

[edgelessvoid]

would you believe me if i said i started shipping these two just because they appeared together in a banner once and it all went downhill from there

[mysticdeath]

skipping the pleasantries, while i consider myself highly critical of the tvdu, i am still very cautious about the things i say and do in front of other people. i would never belittle a character or ship someone writes to their face, nor would i tear apart the things they choose to hold as canon simply because it does not align with my own thoughts. i would never allow my personal feelings of certain characters to bleed into my writing and affect how my muses act to those characters. and unless prompted, i will never share my personal thoughts and feelings on specific subjects. i would appreciate if this could be a sentiment that is returned.

[autisticrosewilson]

here to ask about Spencer and Mae

pls may I have some knowledge on them 👀

YES!!! Okay so Mae'rot is my character, she's a part of a team of characters that came from me thinking about if there was a Lantern team that was full of magical girls! Spencer was made by @andi-dromeda and he's technically a part of the flash fam, but he spends most of his time with the Lanterns.

CW for Death, bugs, body horror, ect. My characters are freaks guys

Mae is a part of a made up species of fungus people and she's the black lantern! I did rewrite the lantern lore a little because I thought what they did with the Pink and Black Lantern's specifically were stupid and boring.

The Pulchra Putredo are a people that worship death, although they themselves cannot die in the traditional sense. See they inhabit the land of Pulput, a floating island that was all that's left of an older, long forgotten planet, home to a piece of the Black Lantern's reactor core. No one knows where the Pulchra originated from but the first recorded records were of them turning the dry barren soil into a bustling hub of foliage, this is because though their bodies breakdown they become a part of the land. Which makes Pulput a living planet crawling with the overgrown bodies of everything that's ever died there.

It's easy to see why they grew to revere the concept of death, as this beautiful unattainable thing that they all reach for with open arms. Despite how much they all love death because they have no true concept of mortality none of them can wield it.

Until Mae. See she was originally Kryptonian but when the Pulchra came to collect what was left of the planet, they found a lone baby girl. And this was exciting, because she was born from death, and while she would live a long time she could die. She WOULD die, eventually. They take her to their planet, very far from any sun at all, and make her one of them. They do this basically allowing their roots and mold and whatnot to spread to her, inside and out she is overtaken by moss and spores. She's raised by a family of Ink Caps, which are the first mushrooms to begin growing from her skin which is weakened by the lack of sunlight.

The Pulchra are also a hive mind species! They all have something of a mental link to each other and Mae is included in this, although she's born only linked to her family instead of the entire species. She has to manually collect the others by becoming infected by their spores, and she can give this link to others by giving them hers!

Because she's so far from any kind of sun she's very sickly and weak with almost none of her Kryptonian powers and very little connection to her roots, and she has no desire to explore it. Because she's always on death's door with her health the lantern core reacts to her but she can't control it, mostly it just overwhelms her with the voices of the dead when she's near it. She's almost like a prophet to the Pulchra as the spirits come from past, present, and future and they can give her messages that she passes on.

It's only when she's older that she gets her ring, she dies on an excavation into a planet's ruins and is reanimated by the ring after rot and decay has had time to set in. She's stronger now ironically, no longer shambling about half unconscious, although now she's being consumed by multiple insects from her planet (a great honor, if death is their holy spirit, the land is their father, and the insects are the son) and she needs to feed on dead things to survive.

Her hobbies include gardening, rock collecting, learning dead languages, and grave robbing! She's close with my Yellow and Pink lanterns, she has a crush on the Indigo, and she's got a homoerotic rivalry with the White lantern (of which I also changed the lore for because these are magical girls and I have a theme here).

She now has a lesser version of the core's powers, so while she can control ghosts it's only ones that have died recently. She can reanimate things but they'd just be mindless puppets, not truly alive. She can cause people to age/decay rapidly (usually this acts like a bad sickness) and she can manipulate shadows instead of light. Along with the flight, strength, and durability the rings give all their users. While near gamma radiation she can access her Kryptonian powers but doesn't really like them so she uses Kryptonite to weaken herself.

Is she a horrific mass of maggots and rot? Yes. Does this exclude her from a magical girl transformation or sparkly outfit? Of course not!! I'm actually so mad that all the lantern suits are so boring like you can literally make them look however you want and you all look the same. I know the meta reason is because who wants to draw that many different suits but I don't care, all my girls are slaying.

All of the girls have three core motifs and a mix of different aesthetics that I'd draw from if I had artistic skill. Mae's are plague doctors, ink, and fungus and she prefers looser baggier clothes to make room for all of the creatures and plants growing out of her skin. She would prefer not wearing shoes at all, but because she's one big contaminant she has to wear very thick gloves and boots when interacting with people of Earth, and she usually wears her mask too because her appearance is generally pretty off-putting.

The other Kryptonians...well let's just say they're not super fond of her, and she really doesn't like them. They're insistent that she's an abomination, something that needs to be fixed, mostly they just feel bad for her, for her whole existence. Mae doesn't take kindly to their pity, this is everything she's ever aspired to be. She feels equally bad for them! It must be terribly lonely, isolated within their own flesh and mind, islands onto themselves, unfathomable even to each other. It's her worst nightmare and she tries to avoid them where possible.

Her people are pacifists so she only uses her abilities defensively and honestly isn't much for combat anyway, she believes that death is a gift that should come to people through natural means only, but this changes the longer she's on the team. As her character progresses she gradually decides some people should have to earn their death, and she's the person who should make them. This is the only time she uses her rapid decay powers. She rarely uses the ghost powers as she doesn't like disturbing their rest but she can be convinced by people she's close to, so she usually relies on shadow manipulation during battles.

Growing up with a species that only communicates through a mental link means she never learned how to talk! Her ring usually speaks for her, although she eventually learns some ASL the longer she's on earth. It has the default AI voice at first but when she learns how to change it I think she'd sound like Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer!

I won't say too much about Spencer but he's one of the people she's closest to, and the only person on earth who shares the link with her and her family. They have an obsessive kind of queer platonic relationship, where although they love each other it's not explicitly romantic and there's definitely nothing sexual about it. Not in human terms at least, the Pulchra have sex and relationship dynamics the likes of which we couldn't comprehend. They're the definition of soulmates and unfortunately I am obsessed with them.

[bluespring864]

i don’t know how to word this so it doesn’t sound mean but i would deactivate too if the player half my blog is dedicated to called me out on my delusional behaviour

i really don't quite know what this is supposed to be about. i can only guess you mean that rafa talking in a negative way about nole should influence people shipping them/being interested in their dynamic? if so, newsflash, but shipping doesn't mean you want a real relationship between the people or characters involved (this is a very strange idea that some fans have brought in in recent years but by no means what fandom is about! no one should ever seriously wish for their ship to be canon in a 'i hope/know they're secretly together' way, that leads to all sorts of unpleasant behaviour). and besides that, relationships (of whatever nature) don't have to be harmonious to be interesting :)

[thegreatyin]

What is the Scoundrel thinking about as they go through in this ship? Did they get down to the lowest level yet.

...did they find the thing that is in the deck. Admist the wax?

it isn't thinking anything, really. it's just- moving. quickly. no it's not breathing frantically that's just how its chest works. no its hands aren't trembling they just happen to feel a bit chilly today. if they pick on the (now thoroughly blood-soaked) bandages on their arms, well, that's their business!! it doesn't mean they're scared. they're perfectly calm. look at them!!! they're smiling!!!!! they're having a Delightful time!!!!!!!!

now where was that pesky-

oh.

oh, they need to get the hell out of here.