#except the usual you know tumblr making lives and stuff

[mrsbakashi]

so tumblr live is finally available for me.

[vague-magnus-archives]

This is like… the Flesh, but silly- “They’re Made Out Of Meat” by Terry Bisson. He was an author who wrote a lot of really cool stuff and just died recently- while I can’t currently find the link to the original story, here’s the version I copied to tumblr-

"They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"Meat. They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

  "That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"

"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."

"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."

"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."

  "That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat." "Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."

"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"

"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."

"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."

"No brain?"

"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"So ... what does the thinking?"

"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you.  The brain does the thinking. The meat."

"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"

"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat.   The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"

"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."

"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."

"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"

"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."

"We're supposed to talk to meat."

"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello.  Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."

"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?" "Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."

"I thought you just told me they used radio."

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other.   They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"

"Officially or unofficially?"

"Both."

"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."

"I was hoping you would say that."

"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"

"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat.   How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"

"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space.  Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."

"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."

"That's it."  

"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"

"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."

"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."

"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."

"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"

"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."

"They always come around."

"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..."

[killerlookz]

Bloody Kisses | Joost Klein

Description: joost klein x f! reader-(reupload) after joining the moshpit at his own show Joost winds up with a bloody nose, which reader is tasked with cleaning up. (not a blood kink fic, this is a very common moshing injury, no need to clutch your pearls)

Content: 18+ (mdni), suggestive content (no smut), prestablished relationship, making out, hickies, some "over the pants" touching, nosebleeds/blood- THIS FIC CONTAINS RPF AND HAS BEEN TAGGED AS SUCH, IF THAT MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, DO NOT INTERACT. this has also only been tagged under joost fanfic tags so like if you’re here it means you searched for it! (like seriously, its really not that hard lmao just keep scrolling and stop looking for shit to be mad at), I ask you KINDLY, DO NOT SHARE MY WORK EITHER AS SCREEN SHOTS OR IN ITS ENTIRETY ON OTHER SOCIAL MEDIAS, keep tumblr stuff on tumblr and i swear everyone will be so much happier <3

Joost couldn't help himself, not as the crowd of hundreds of festival goers buzzed with excitement. Not as a larger chunk of the crowd than he expected screams every word he sings back to him. He had to get in on the action, live entirely in the moment.

Joost was no stranger to joining the crowd at his shows, often times asking the crowd to clear a space around him so on his count he could start a mosh pit around him. And tonight was no different, except the crowd had been rowdier than usual, not that he really minded, having long gotten over any fear of being hurt in the pit. The fear had so long left his mind that, he had forgotten he could get hurt. An elbow to the face was a swift reminder of that fact, an intense force colliding skin with skin.

Joost was quick to hurry out of the pit once he noticed the bitter liquid that dripped down his mouth. While an injury, much less a simple nosebleed, wasn't going to slow him down, bleeding on your fans, Joost felt, wasn't a particularly smart course of action.

Luckily for him he was finishing off his final song- making him able to get out of the crowd, thank everyone for a good show, and get off the stage before the metallic taste on his tongue became too much to bear.

"What happened?" You furrow your eyebrows, watching Joost step off the stage, a dark crimson running down his face, dripping off his chin.

"Fucking hit in the face," He says, in more of a disbelief than any actual upset of having gotten hurt. He places his fingers against his upper lip, swiping upward towards his nose. The blood smears on his face and coats his fingers as he attempts to wipe it away. He looks down at the liquid that covers his hands, eyes widening.

"Is it bad?" His gaze flicks back towards you. You nod reluctantly, it's pretty bad. Gushing, even.

"C'mon," You pout, grabbing his non-blood stained hand, "I'll clean you up."

Luckily for Joost his trailer wasn't far from the stage, allowing for the two of you to move quickly so you could get him cleaned up.

"Go stand by the sink in the bathroom and tilt your head back." You motion to Joost as you enter the trailer, leaving him alone for a moment to sift through your things, knowing you had a small pack of tissues somewhere, heading back to the small trailer bathroom after retrieving it.

Joost leans against the sink with his head tilted backward, the position putting his face's bone structure on full display. The way his neck stretches upward perfectly highlights the angles of his jawline, his cheekbones hollowed out as he clenches his jaw, attempting to keep any blood out of his mouth. The rest of his body glistens with sweat, his hair perfectly messy, and his chest still rapidly rising and falling in an attempt to catch his breath from all the excitement of the show,

For a moment you forget what you're meant to be doing, all too caught up in the way he looks.

"Some help?" Joost asks, clocking how long you had been standing motionless.

"Oh-yeah, sure." You smile, walking a few steps closer to the sink. You place the tissue package on the rim of the sink, taking a couple out. "Keep your head back," You say, placing one hand on Joost's hip, and using the others to pinch his nose with the tissues to try and stop the bleeding. "Does that hurt?"

He doesn't really need to answer, not with the way he groans under your touch. The sharp noise sends shivers down your spine.

"I'm alright," He sighs, his eyes screwing shut.

"Doesn't sound like it." You can't help but giggle at his feigned assurance.

"Just a nosebleed." With his hands snake around your waist, attempting to pull you closer to him.

You don't budge as you unclamp your fingers from around his nose, the tissues already soaked in his blood. You toss the dirtied tissues in the garbage, not far from where you're standing before grabbing a couple more. You pinch his nose once more, forcing him to suck in a sharp inhale, his chest rising as he winces.

"Sorry," You mumble, but as you force his head back a little farther, you can't help but to be slightly enticed by how almost pathetic he seems now. His small gasps and groans take your mind to a place far from the current moment.

Joost's fingers dig into your lower back as you pinch a little higher on his nose, hoping for the pressure to stop the bleeding soon. His strong grip finally forces you closer to him, your chest nearly pressed to his. You try not to lose sight at the task at hand, fighting the urge to press just a little bit harder to earn another gasp out of him.

Slowly, you remove the tissues from his nose, realizing they don't seem to be getting any bloodier.

"I think the bleeding stopped," You remove your hand from his waist, instead placing it on his jaw to pull his head from its tipped back position. His face is still obviously bloodied, lips and chin smeared with streaks of red. You pat the area around his nose with a clean part of the tissue, attempting to dry it up, throwing the tissue away once it had become too bloodied.

With your hand still on his jaw, you place your thumb to his lips, swiping away the blood that remained. He looked a little cleaner now, some blood still dried around his nose, and his lips stained red.

Not exactly thinking you remove your hand from his face, sticking your thumb in your mouth to clean off the blood. Your eyes widen a little as the metallic taste hits your tongue. Joost is caught off guard, rightfully shocked that you just licked his blood off of your hand. You hadn't even meant to, the action was almost involuntary. But things suddenly feel much more intimate as you stared up at him through your lashes, your thumb hanging half-way out of your mouth, forcing your lips into a pout. You linger for a moment before Joost raises an eyebrow,

"What was that?"

"Nothing," You let your hand fall from your face, and attempt to play off the action "A little blood isn't going to kill me."

He smiles, revealing his teeth, lightly stained with blood. A chuckle falls from his lips,

"Guess you're my little vampire now,"

"I suppose I wouldn't mind sinking my teeth into your neck," You laugh, shrugging innocently.

"Oh," Joost's eyes widen, "By all means then." He tilts his head to the side, putting his neck on full display for you. You eye up the Lola Bunny tattoo that sits at the side of his neck, and admire the way his muscles strain as he stretches his neck.

You slide one hand up Joost's torso, letting your touch linger on the length of his body before finally resting your palm on his shoulder. You push yourself up on your toes a little, and let your body fall closer to Joost's, your chests fully pressed together.

You tilt your head, leaning forward so your lips press against his neck, slowly beginning to kiss at his flesh. As your lips connect with his neck a small gasp leaves his mouth, sounding much sweeter now that it was out of pleasure instead of purely pain.

You kiss up his neck before slipping your tongue from your mouth, searching for where his pulse pounds the strongest. You trail your tongue up, finding his pulse right below his jaw. You return your lips to his skin, sucking against the throbbing artery. Joost's fingers once again dig into your back, his fingernails surely leaving small crescent moon shaped imprints in your flesh. Ever-so-lightly you nip as his neck, before quickly flattening your tongue over the area to soothe the bite. The simple action resulting in a groan leaving Joost's mouth. The small sound sends vibrations down his throat, meeting your lips, eliciting a hum back from you.

Using his grip on your hips, Joost pulls you flesh against him, his belt buckle pressing into your abdomen. You smirk against his neck upon the realization that the buckle of his belt is not the only thing pressing into you. The full extent to which he had been enjoying the way you kissed at his neck on display as you push your hips forward, letting the bulge in his jeans graze your crotch. Your stomach tightens at the feeling, and you're suddenly not in as much control as you thought you had been, feeling weak in the knees at realizing how bad you need him.

You continue your pattern of biting and sucking at Joost's neck then soothing the marks with your tongue. You knew as soon as you lifted his head his neck would be littered with splotches of purple and red. Slowly, you pull your hips from his, allowing you to slot your hand between your bodies, pressing into where he strains against his jeans. The pressure you apply against Joost has him groaning above you, his hips following your hands, chasing the friction. Your kisses become quicker, no longer lingering on his skin with each movement, instead you peck up his neck, to his jaw before slowly pulling away.

Joost smirks down at you, your body set ablaze as your eyes meet his. His gaze quickly becomes to much to bare, and you avert your eyes, instead trailing your vision down his torso.

"Oh, no," You force a pout, realizing the white tank top he wears had been stained with blood, not only that but you realize how poor of a job you had honestly done cleaning him up, blood dried on his chin and down his neck. "Your shirt." You lift your hand from where it presses against his crotch, letting your fingers crawl up to the hem of his tank top.

"What?" He asks, quickly turning his head down to look.

"It's all bloody," You sigh, purposefully poorly acting out being disappointed, "I guess you have to take it off." You shrug.

Joost hums, shaking his head, trying to desperately to hide the smirk that was threatening his lips, "I guess so."

"I've got it," You respond confidently when you notice his hands beginning to slip from your waist. "Arms up," You smile.

Joost obliges, raising his arms as you play with the hem of his shirt with one hand before grabbing it on both sides, lifting it over his head, careful to not hit into where his nose is injured. You quickly toss the shirt on the floor, eager to get your hands on him.

You place both of your palms flat against his chest, his skin is soft, sticky, still covered in a fine layer of sweat. You push into him, sliding your hands upward until they rest on his shoulders. Joost slips a hand to the back of your head, the other returning to your waist. With the vantage point of having a hand behind your head, Joost is able to guide your lips to his, him bending down slightly so he can engage you in a passionate kiss.

You moan lightly at the taste of the blood that lingers on his lips, unable to entirely understand just what about your boyfriend having been bloodied was getting you so worked up. You apply more pressure onto his lips with your own, your mouth parting slightly so you can slip your tongue into his. Joost eagerly accepts, allowing you to deepen the kiss.

You slide your hands back down the length of Joost's body, your fingers once again finding themselves at his waist. You swipe a finger across the waistband of his underwear, which stick out from the jeans that hang low on his hips. Slowly, you let that singular finger slip into the waistband, dragging it back and forth, teasingly.

After letting your fingers tease the waist band of Joost's boxers for too long apparently, Joost finally speaks up, briefly parting from the kiss.

"You wanna move those hands a little lower?"

You mumble into his lips as he returns to you, "Mhm," Your fingers fall from the tight elastic to his belt. You're a bit uncoordinated due, trembling fingers making awkward movements against the thick buckle. Eventually you get it, the cool metal unhooking with a jangly sound as you let the belt open.

"Joost!" A sudden voice somewhere else in the trailer calls, causing your blood to run cold as both of your heads perk up, forcing you out of the kiss, "Are you here buddy? Everyone's been looking everywhere for you, you kind of just ran off."

"Ja-Ja," Joost stutters, trying his best to call out, "Just getting cleaned up!"

[whiteboi-inferiority]

Some of you been trying to get in touch lately. That's cool.

If you're just swinging by to say hi and thanks, then what follows doesn't apply to you. If you were hoping to strike up conversation however you should know some things:

I'm not looking for new girls, gurls, bois or boys right now. You are not the exception.

I'm not directory enquiries or at all interested in finding you a mommy or daddy, so don't ask.

If you have an empty blog, don't bother contacting me. Enjoy tumblr content however you wish but I'm not interested in getting to know lurkers.

If you're just some random looking for a signal boost, don't bother. 'Please don't expose me' types, same.

If your blog is just reposts of the usual stuff I've seen 100 times before, don't bother.

If you're just going to initiate contact with 'hey...', don't bother.

If you're just looking for someone, anyone, to Dom you for the 2 minutes it takes for you to jerk off, don't bother. I'm not a jack off service.

If your blog is full of explicit hard core porn, don't bother - your account will be deactivated soon and you'll probably be disappeared before we start chatting away from here anyway. You don't represent a good ROI of my time. Of the 4 or 5 of you that make contact today, 2 of you will be gone tomorrow, and at least 1 more within the month. Even duvluvv and bangmybully my previous mainstays and inspo on this blog have managed to fuck that up and get themselves banned.

Unless your wife/gf/mom/daughter is hot, living near me and interested in hooking up, I don't care that you wish you could see them suck a cock like a Blacked girl right in front of you. If I can't see it, smell it, hear it, taste it or feel it - if its not actually going to happen on my cock - I don't care.

Outright headcanon fantasists and part-timers who 'don't need to dress up because they can imagine it so well...', hard pass.

Those of you who confuse sissy with trans, hard pass. Trans women are women. You are not a woman just because you fantasise about being sexually submissive and effeminate around a black man. You're a sissy, a toy, a whiteboi fuckdoll. That's all. If you can't or don't accept that, don't bother. Trans and sissy = OK. Thinking sissy makes you trans = not OK.

FLR, ABDL, Gooners: kittens I adore seeing you relinquish your masculinity and pride to roll around in your own shame and filth. But to be clear: these kinks are your weaknesses, not my interests. I cater to you because my mission is to enable every single last one of you whiteboi fucks to become codependent emasculated bottom-feeders of one kind or another, willingly, done by yourselves to yourselves, stripped of the convenient deniability of coercion. I'm fixing to cook and push good quality junk so you can fuck yourselves up, not share the needle. Definitely not looking to change your fucking diapers.

If you clearly haven't read this pinned note, don't bother.

Stay sticky, losers

D

[grison-in-space]

I'm honestly very confused why people on Tumblr seem to think that abstaining from voting and allowing Trump to win is better for some instead of worse for everyone except billionaires. Like ok, the dude literally says that he's going to accelerate the ongoing genocide, repeal LGBTQ+ rights, and basically set the US under a dictatorship among other atrocities. How is voting for the average democrat not harm reduction in comparison. I'm just scrolling through the comments and replies on that post trying to wrap my head around it. People are acting like a revolution is the only way of achieving harm reduction and its like no, a revolution is the goal and in the meantime we still have to deal with the current presidential campaign because we literally have a month and unless you can overthrow the government in that time frame, Trump will win if users don't vote. I don't even think that they're bots or astroturfing or anything because I recognize a lot of usernames, I'm just trying to understand their perspective. A larger chance of less genocide over the course of four years is not better than no genocide, no, but it's better than a guarantee of more genocide. Especially when the other option is a tiny, minuscule chance of no genocide in the future (and given that we can still vote, Trump will make sure that Palestinians no longer exist at the end of his term).

I'm honestly just fucking done with seeking understanding right now. It's very funny, because the whining about shaming over not voting is actually making me a lot more inclined to lose respect for people who deliberately choose not to vote than just letting it go would be.

I get that the focus on voting leading up to (particularly presidential) elections can be obnoxious. I also get that it can be discouraging when your slate of realistic political candidates is...limited, to say the least, and when you are playing with one hell of a stacked deck. I spent eight years in Texas, okay? And I am also mildly irritated and impatient about the level of "heeeeeey, have you made a plan to vote yet?" stuff going around, because of fucking course I have, can we think about anything else for a second?

And yet.

Voting is a hassle and it's annoying and sometimes I have a hard time finding candidates I respect. And it's my fucking civic duty to show up and pick the best person available for the job anyway. Sometimes I cuss as I try to find the polling place. Sometimes I make a plan and sometimes I go "oh shit oh shit" and I scramble. I am a human person. I also think it is very important to focus on other things, too, which is why I do those when I am not focusing on voting.

But get out the vote efforts have to be pervasive and loud and hard to ignore. They're trying to reach the most flaky, mercurial, forgetful ADHD motherfuckers on the ground and get those folks to the polls on time. They're trying to reach people whose lives are exploding around them and get them to the polls, where their vote might let someone who actually wants to help do something about it. They're trying to change the system that exists in front of us using the most tractable levers currently existing on the ground.

So frankly? When the GOTV shit annoys me and I can't deal with it for a second? I remind myself it's not about me, and I go curl up with a book. If it's not about me, it's not about me. I always make a voting plan, I find my station and I usually go early on a time when I have some space to wait, and I thank my poll workers and smile at them and then I feel good about myself for twenty minutes before I go about the rest of my day. So I can say that to the GOTV people and they go away and find someone else to hassle. It's fine! It's fine. The world doesn't have to be about me.

I feel like that is not that goddamn hard to do, but you'd never know it from the way some people complain.

[thedogeveryonehates]

I just had my first ever adult-y 'im sorry but we can't be friends anymore' conversation and it really sucked and it really hurt and I'm writing it down here bcus i feel awful🫠

Long story

So we met on the dating apps years ago and we've kept in contact ever since cause he's genuinely a sweet & cool guy. Also, he was hard of hearing and would teach me cool indo sign language stuff

He lives in another city and only visits occasionally for work reasons but whenever he stopped by we would hang out

Back then it would be hanging out and hooking up but ever since i met my bf he wanted to make it clear that the latter was off the table since he wasnt comfortable with it

The next time we met I had to explain to him that I was no longer in the market for a partner, but I really valued his friendship - trying my best to show that I didn't wanna lead him on if that was the case

Even though he said he understood, it really didn't seem that way over the next few months

We would be having normal conversations and catching up on whatsapp and he'd randomly say "so you don't have feelings for me?" or "what did i do wrong?" - and it really made it awkward like we were literally discussing our spotify albums 2 minutes ago what happened

The worst part is, he would ask these questions very genuinely and sometimes follow up on these questions. So then I would match the tone as best i can - only to get the response "haha yeah i was joking i already know haha". Whenever it happened i would laugh it off and look stupid

But the final straw happened a few hours ago. He was feeling flirty but i was tired so i said to try and find a casual hookup on the dating app. He's genuinely really handsome and he's always been popular on the apps so i said it shouldn't be hard for him and that he'd find someone within the hour

He then straight up LIES to me and says that he deleted the apps a few weeks ago, following that up by writing "you are more than enough"

Afraid that he thought i was leading him on or sending him signals, i tried to shoot that down as fast as possible. Basically going through the motions of rejecting someones advances as respectfully as i possibly could to a good friend i cared about

After a few grueling minutes of silence, he hits me with the "damn i wasnt being serious" and sends me a screenshot of the app still on his phone (full of unread notifications - remember: popular)

Fast forward an hour later and ive blocked him everywhere except instagram dms, where i told him that i needed some space

Yes he apologized profusely and yes i accepted his apology but i just got so stressed and humiliated that I couldn't take it anymore

I still feel awful

This is usually something i would vent to my boyfriend but he's asleep rn so ill just let my [tumblr] mutuals know and probably delete it when i wake up

Writing kinda makes me feel better it turns out

[3liza]

do my fellow Americans know about the post office online store?

in most places in the USA you do not need to go to the post office to mail a package from home. the USPS webstore will mail you, for free, you don't even pay shipping, Priority Mail class boxes and envelopes. you can also request that a mail carrier pick up your Priority Mail class or above packages for delivery, for free (not available everywhere but yes in most places with standard mail service).

you can sell something on ebay without leaving your house or spending money on packing materials. you can buy prepaid boxes if you don't have a printer, but usually ebay and Etsy etc have better shipping prices so it's cheaper in the long run to just get a printer (people sell them cheap or give them away a lot on craigslist, fb, nextdoor etc if you live somewhere with enough population density).

the post office will also send you stickers for free, this is how graffiti artists get the stickers for their slapups. some of them are funny

someone is going to scold me and say "don't abuse this system to get boxes for moving or stickers for just fucking around with" but the post office deals in such enormous volume i kind of doubt it would make a dent in their operations even if a few hundred people on Tumblr did order cremains labels for fun.

anyway my point is that in many/most areas of the United States you do not actually need to physically go to the post office anymore to mail things. changes in shipping prices and mail classes over the past decade have made it so almost everything above a letter or postcard size, except media mail, is going to cost almost the same whether it's Priority or First Class anyway. you can also check mailing prices on the USPS website.

I've run into a lot of people who are experienced with selling stuff and mailing stuff and haven't heard about priority mail pickup, free boxes, or prepaid boxes. hopefully this can help someone

[softhairedhotch]

this one to me feels much more oc-like than a reader-insert (bc of all the details i added) but a few of yous said to keep it as a reader fic so i hope this is okay!! don't hate me if you can't relate to it please n thanks <3 also sorry for the weird formatting of my fics/the random bold or italics or small text idk tumblr hates me and keeps doing it!!! comfortember day five: treehouse (+day eight: grief/mourning) aaron hotchner x gender neutral reader aaron is there for you, just like he always is, after you lose your mother. word count: 2.1k warnings/content: parent loss, death of reader's mother, hurt/comfort, some emotional conversations and sad topics, mentions of crying, pet names, kissing, hugging, established relationship. lyrics that inspired this: "do not enter" is written on the doorway / why can't everyone just go away / except you / you can stay / what do you think of my treehouse? / it's where i sit and talk really loud / usually / i'm all by myself

comfortember masterlist here!

also on ao3!

the treehouse

You step out into the back garden and take a deep breath, closing your eyes as you allow the crisp air to wash over you. Aaron steps out moments after and closes the door quietly before his hand finds your lower back. 

"You okay?" He asks, his voice just above a whisper. It's almost drowned out by the sound of mourning doves overheard.

You shrug, your shoulders feeling as though they’re being weighed down by the heavy armour you’re trying–and failing–to shield yourself with. “I will be.”

“Yeah.” He looks around the garden and lets out a short, flat hum. “But no one is expecting you to be okay, you know that, right? There’s no time limit; you’re allowed to grieve.”

“I know.”

“I know you do, sweetheart. But I just wanted to remind you.” You turn to look at him and, at the sight of his genuine concern, your brave face crumbles. He wraps his arms around you immediately, pulling you close and enveloping you in his warmth. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay, I’ve got you. I’ve got you, yeah?” 

“Yeah,” you whisper as you cling to him, trying your hardest to hold back your tears but failing miserably. “I know.”

“Good.”

“I just don’t know what to do.” 

Aaron presses a kiss to your forehead. “You don’t have to do anything.”

You pull back and look up at him, confused. “Yes, I do. I have to… to get rid of everything and sell the, the house. And do all the paperwork and figure out what to do with her antiques and, and, and–”

“Hey, hey,” he interrupts you gently, pulling you back into a tight hug. “Don’t worry about any of that right now. I’ll do that.”

“What, no–”

“Let’s not talk about this now, okay? We’ll sort it out later or tomorrow. Give yourself some time to think about it.”

“But what do I do in the meantime? I can’t just… sit around.”

He thinks for a moment. “Show me around.”

“What?”

“Show me around the house. Tell me everything you can, anything you can remember, and I’ll listen. I wanna know what life was like for you.”

You almost burst into tears at his words. “Really? You wanna know about my childhood?”

“Sweetheart, I wanna know everything about you.”

***

You take Aaron inside the house, taking him to the living room. The room hasn’t been touched in a few days, save for a few files on the coffee table you checked earlier, and you feel sick at the thought of leaving the house behind once everything’s packed away. Then the thought of having to pack everything away makes you feel even worse and you sway on the spot. Aaron notices you falter and reaches out to squeeze your arm gently, standing beside you patiently. 

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do when all this is gone.”

“It doesn’t have to be gone,” he replies. “You can take it all.”

“And keep it where?”

“In our house, in a storage container… there’s many places.”

You think for a moment, holding back tears, before shaking your head. “No. I need to… to let it go. Not all of it, but I can’t keep everything. She wouldn’t wanna weigh me down with all her stuff.”

“Alright,” Aaron says, squeezing your arm again and leaning to press a soft kiss to your cheek. “Take anything you need. I promise we’ll find a place for it. That sound good?” 

You nod and lean into him for a moment before slowly making your way through the living room, grabbing the objects with the most significance to you and telling Aaron about them before sorting them into a box to take back to the house. You pack a few of your favourite DVDs, ones you’re sure won’t even play anymore with how scratched they’ve become, as you tell Aaron vague memories of watching them as a kid. What happened when you watched them, who you watched them with, how you felt–anything that comes to mind because you know he’s listening.

A few family photos are displayed on the TV stand, as well as a cabinet in the corner, and you relive the memories of when they were taken as you tell him all about them. He asks to look at one closer and you give it to him, watching as he smiles down at a photo of you with your old dog. “You looked happy.”

“I was,” you reply, nodding. “Some of the time, anyway.”

He gives you a small smile and hands you the picture. “I know what you mean.”

You continue to walk him around the house, showing him dents in the wall from where you hurt yourself and little drawings you hid behind drawers and peeling wallpaper. He listens intently, smiling at your happy anecdotes and comforting you when tears well up in your eyes as the worst memories cloud your mind. You show him your childhood bedroom, telling him about friends that used to come over for sleepovers and the first time you kissed someone behind the open door so no one would see. 

“My first kiss was with Haley,” he replies. “In the theatre room at our school.”

“Isn’t that where you first met her?”

“Yeah. I kissed her in the same spot I first saw her.”

“Aw,” you smile as you grab an old diary and throw it into your bag. You’ll read that later when you’re alone so you don’t embarrass or upset yourself anymore in front of Aaron. “You’ve always been a romantic, how cute.”

He blushes and presses a kiss to your cheek as he passes by, making his way to your desk and flicking through a few papers you left there when you were last over. “You think you’d want these?”

“Probably not, doubt they’re important.”

Aaron nods and begins to open the drawers, pulling out miscellaneous items and silently dividing them into piles of things you might want to keep and things you’d throw away. You watch him with a sombre smile, feeling your chest ache at the realisation that he knows you so well and that his love for you is endless. When he catches you watching him, he pauses and raises an eyebrow. “You okay?”

“I love you, you know that, right?” 

“Of course I do,” he replies, closing the drawer and walking back over to you, wrapping his arms around your waist to tug you close. “I love you, too. More than you’ll ever know.”

“Hm, I don’t know. I think I have a pretty good idea.”

“I don’t want to doubt you, sweetheart, but I really don’t think you do.” He presses a sweet kiss to your lips, channelling all his love into it. “I can’t even begin to express how much I love you. I just… do.”

You press another kiss to his lips to hide the tears welling up in your eyes. The love you feel for him is so strong it feels like you might burst. He kisses back, letting you take the lead. Pulling back, you look deep into his eyes and smile the first genuine smile you’ve been able to manage since you first heard the news. “I love you more.”

Aaron chuckles. “Sure you do.” He presses a chaste kiss to your lips with a hum. “Ready to carry on?” 

“Yeah,” you mutter, going to pull away before a thought strikes you and you let out a sharp breath. Aaron pulls you back into his arms immediately, looking down at you in concern but keeping silent to give you a moment to think. “Sorry, I just… realised that that was gonna be my last kiss in this room.”

“Is that a good thing? Or bad?”

“I don’t know,” you reply honestly, feeling out of it. “I don’t like the thought of everything we do in this moment being the last of anything, but… the fact that it’s you that I’m doing all this with… yeah, I think that’s a good thing.”

He smiles sweetly at you, love shining so clearly in his eyes, and presses a kiss to your forehead. “Then let's stay here for a little longer.”

“We should get it over with, I don’t wanna waste all your free time off work. You deserve to get some time to yourself.”

“Oh, honey,” he sighs, wrapping his arms around your shoulders and resting his head against yours. “This isn’t a waste of my time. Trust me. I want to be here, with you, for you, and that’s all that matters. Don’t think like that, okay? I’m here because I want to be, not because I feel like I have to. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” you whisper. “It does.”

***

“I guess that leaves the treehouse,” you shrug, feeling drained as you step back outside with Aaron following you. You stare up at the treehouse, wondering if it's necessary to go up there. “You don’t have to come up. It’s pretty small.”

“I’ll go wherever you go.”

“You’re so cheesy,” you say with a small smile, even when his words mean the world to you.

He smiles at you. “You love it.”

“I really do.” Making your way to the treehouse, you glance at Aaron and allow a small smirk to dance over your lips. “Don’t stare at my ass as I go up.”

Aaron laughs. “No promises.” 

You roll your eyes and begin climbing, risking a glance back to find Aaron’s eyes firmly on the ground and being as respectful as ever. It makes your heart skip a beat. Reaching the top of the ladder, you look at the treehouse's entrance and cringe at the big ‘DO NOT ENTER’ sign hanging beside the doorway. It was a sign you carved yourself when you were younger. When you look inside the treehouse, your heart aches as memories flood through you. It takes you a few seconds to force yourself inside but once you clamber in, you call down to Aaron to let him know he can join you.

The sound of him climbing up surrounds you as you push yourself into your favourite corner, one filled with soft padding and blankets. A few of your favourite books are scattered across the floor and pictures of you and your childhood friends cover the walls. The nostalgia hits you hard and you bite your lip to stifle a sob. 

Aaron joins you, crawling inside and looking around with interest. As he gets comfortable in the small space, his long legs curling against himself to fit, you realise it’s the first time anyone’s ever been in the treehouse with you. Or at all. 

He remains silent, waiting for you to be the first to talk. You appreciate that. 

“I used to come up here a lot,” you say after a few minutes. “To read, to think, to talk to myself out loud… everything.”

“And did it help?”

“Yeah,” you nod, reaching over to grab one of the books beside you. It’s one you’re sure you’ve read a million times over, the pages worn and yellowing and a small layer of dust covering the outside. “It was nice. Peaceful. Somewhere I was never bothered.”

“I had a place like that,” Aaron muses, smiling at you. “Not as personal as this, though. It was a bench a few blocks from where I grew up, hidden by a few overgrown trees. I liked it.”

“Did you go there a lot?”

“Whenever I could. Couldn’t go much in the winter because of the cold, though.”

You huffed out a laugh. “Same here. Still came here even if I meant I almost froze to death.”

His smile becomes sad but there's clear understanding in his expression. “Yeah.”

The two of you sit inside the treehouse for almost an hour, talking about whatever comes to mind. Aaron listens intently to every word you say, his comforting hand drawing patterns over your thigh and eventually over your side when you move to curl up against him. You feel yourself drifting off at one point when the exhaustion settles deep in your bones, feeling so safe and warm and loved and comforted beside him, but you force awake to finish back up in the house. 

Aaron follows you inside, as he always has and always will, and comforts you through everything that comes after that. He helps you pack up the house, assuring you over and over that you can take however many boxes you want back to the house you share with him. He sits with you for days after, mostly in silence when the grief catches up to you and you can hardly think, never once looking as if he’d rather be elsewhere. He holds your hand throughout the funeral, never once leaving your side or once letting you think for a moment that you’re ever alone. And even after it’s been weeks, months, years, since that moment, he’s there for you whenever you need a shoulder to cry on. Just like he always has been. 

[yuukei-yikes]

Hey vinnie! Really love your comics! I was wondering, what's your process when it comes to drawing them? Do you come up with dialogue first or draw the figures and piece together the dialogue, and how do you go about doing layouts?

this ask reminded me i have a whole ass "process vid" of THIS COMIC from over a year ago where u can see exactly what i do to plan that comic lol this is embarrassing i never thought id share it so do NOT be mean

i was curious myself how it looked which is why i made it heh this is 50 min of footage in almost 2 mins and idk why my superhero movie is the song of choice this is from a while ago OK... u can see i literally have no idea what im doing i just DOODLE i just go for it

i talk some more under the cut i <3 art but i am a serial doodler

i use the power of imagination a whole lot bc i have a pretty busy life so when i get an idea im like working it out in my mind as i live my normal ass life. when i actually do sit down to make it, first i sketch it all and will usually write certain bits in each "page"

its pretty similar. but as u can see i tend to skip some dialogues that im like. meh ill figure it out later. i just write what i know i wanted to add. and then i figure out the rest when i get to it, or i even change up what i already got, which results in it not being super planned. for example here i made ayano repeat "this is something..." in both her dialogues and i didnt realize until i finished and read the whole thing over but i was lazy to change it heh... but that was bc i write as i go and u can tell in mistakes like that.

as for layouts... erm i barely make actual layouts. this is kind of the same process for everything LOL except sometimes i feel like making actual boxes to put the characters in, but otherwise u can see that the majority of my comics are just all over the place like this. during the sketch i do separate it but then i try to divide it with only the speach bubbles. the layout where i put little boxes is when i dont mind making many pages, bc it fits less stuff.

otherwose i tend to do stuff like this:

which looks a lot more crowded. the reason is, i post here and on twitter (more amphibia on twitter) and since u have a limited amount of pics u can post (here in tumblr it used to be 10 pics), i wanted to fit as much as possible in only 1 page so it wouldnt be too many pics, and it morphed into this sort of layout that i became used to.

im a Go For It kinda guy when it comes to drawing. i like doodling and sketching and going with whatever i got first. the only reason i dont start the comic right away and even do the sketching first is bc i want to figure out where ill put everything, not so much bc im worried abt the art looking better in one or the other. as u can see the art is very similar in both cases

[artist-issues]

Hello, brother/sister (sorry I found out you existed today lol) in Christ! I just started my own blog yesterday, and I wanted to ask you two questions!

how did you come to Christ? (I am a sucker for testimonies, lol)

how can I preach the gospel on Tumblr with gentleness and grace and love for others? (and how do I not get involved in a keyboard smashing session, haha)

thanks for your time, God bless and have a great day! :)

I came to Christ when I was 15. I’m a Pastor’s kid. So the truth in the Bible was about as impactful to me as reciting my ABCs. But when I turned 9 I started to tune in to the parts about Hell and eternal damnation and freak out about it. So I believed God was real, and Hell and heaven were, too, even though I was living for myself. I started asking questions and praying for my salvation around that time, but it was only to “get out of going to Hell.” I had zero interest in the things of God, or submitting to Him. My top priorities were getting everyone to think well of me, especially my family. So I was super good at saying all the right things and doing all the right things, then behind closed doors I did whatever sinful stuff I felt like doing without a shred of thought for God.

Whenever I panicked about verses like “depart from Me, I never knew you,” I’d pray and ask the adults around me how to tell if I was “really saved,” (again, making zero connection between “saved” and anything except “get out of Hell,” in my heart) and they’d try to explain. But I always just latched on to phrases like “it’s not some sparkly feeling,” and quit panicking and went back to living for myself. But that really is what I was missing—a feeling. Specifically, passion about God, and what He loves, and what He wants, and who He is. That, and submission & repentance 😅

So that pattern went on till I was fifteen and old enough to go to this summer camp. And I was finally away from my usual circles, where I only thought about God in the context of “what does everyone here need to see me doing to think well of me?”

At this camp, the counselors and the teachers cut through all that in like 24 hours. They were like, “yeah, you don't have to give me the correct answer; I know what the teacher just said, but what about you? What do you do, in your life, on your own? What is it like when it’s just you and God?” And between that, and the crazy “I don’t care what anyone thinks of me except God” culture of the whole staff and everyone at that summer camp, God started getting ahold of me.

He started making me think about how everyone else wasn’t just “living for God” as part of their social bubble. They actually felt something genuine about Him. And I didn’t feel that. I didn’t feel anything, and I couldn’t *think* or *reason* or *force* myself to feel what they all seemed to be feeling.   They did this skit, and it was all about how broken sin makes us, and feeling the weight of that, and how Christ is the only salvation, and then that was followed up with this no-nonsense authoritative preaching from God’s Word, about how being “saved” isn’t just from your sin. It’s from yourself. It’s from your *lack* of caring about what is good, of caring about God.

I actually finally realized that when everyone else was out of the picture and it’s just me and God, I don’t care about Him. Even though I know what He did for me. And that felt like the most crushing vile sin of all of them, of my whole double-life. And I couldn’t get out from under it. But then it was super clear: He said He’d give me a “new heart.”

So I asked Him to save me and make me care about Him, and I’d live the rest of my life doing what He tells me to do.    He has done that! Not all at once, but gradually. I care more about doing what He wants, even if nobody in my favorite circles comes with me, than I ever thought I would. And there’s no explanation for it, because I had all of the circumstantial and situational reasons to have that kind of motivation for the first 14 years of my life—and I still didn’t. The only explanation for the change is Him. 

As far as how to talk about it here on tumblr...I've never really started a conversation specifically to lead someone to Christ online. I don't think online is the place to try that—but sometimes the topic comes up naturally because it's relevant to what I'm talking about in a post, like values in movies or if an important truth comes to mind and I feel like posting about it.

If you don't want to get into arguments, the best thing to do is not reply. People here tend to intentionally re-phrase everything you say into something they can buck and kick at, even if you choose your words super carefully. It's because they don't want to have a discussion. They either want to be right, or they want to make you look like a fool. It's impossible for them to do either of those things if what they're arguing against is truth—but they tend to just keep trying if you reply.

I only reply if I feel strongly that others might read the interaction and get the wrong idea about God, or truth, because of the word-twisting of my opposition. However, it's up to your personal conviction! 

My main advice is, don't ever stoop to returning insults. If someone calls you stupid, don't call them stupid back. If someone says something that's just a personal attack on you and has nothing to do with what you're arguing about, you can call it out--"what does that have to do with anything?"--and move on, or you can totally ignore it. And if someone just keeps on re-phrasing everything you say, like this:

Me: There's always more to learn, you don't know everything about what all Christians believe.

Them: I can't believe you're telling me you know more than me, lol, I've got forty years of experience

Then just block 'em. They either don't have good reading comprehension, or they don't want to actually debate in order to highlight truth. They want to debate to hear themselves talk, to convince themselves that they're right, to look like they're right in front of their followers, or to make a fool out of you. None of those are good reasons to debate.

They're looking to discredit you by any means necessary—including twisting your words. See how I said nothing about how much more *I* know than the other person? But somehow they took the point of my phrase and twisted it into a personal attack. That sort of thing isn't worth wasting your time on.

My dad likes to say, "nobody wins people to Christ by arguing them into it." I don't know if that's true, but it has been based on my experience. That said, I think truth is worth defending, and I think we're commanded to stand up against what is wrong. However, there comes a point when it's really just falling on deaf ears and continuing is a point of pride instead of humility.

For your questions, I'd see what the Bible says! 

[midwinterwings]

Discord server for spiritual divinekins

As usual, a very heterosexual hello to you all. Here to announce...I made a server! It's for spiritual divines. I've noticed there aren't many spaces for us in the otherkin community, and everyone's kind of spread out and screaming into the void, hoping someone else who understands them stumbles upon them. So, why not just have a place where we can talk directly?

WHY JOIN?

This server is private, and every member who joins will be me-approved. Passing the vibe check, basically, to sieve out less cool people. It will be kept small and close-knit, and making closer connections and friendships is highly encouraged!

All members are spiritual divinekin and as a result you won't need to watch your words and be concerned about getting cancelled if other nonhumans mistake you for a non-spiritual divinekin. We tend to have a very different experience to non-spirituals and therefore require a space for ourselves rather than being in the general 'otherkin' or 'divinekin' label. It is also a space for spiritual talk as well as divinekin stuff.

The server encourages deep discussions, debates, conversations, about spiritual divinity. Safe to say it won't be a boring time there. It also encourages deeper connection in general - being FOR divines as well as ABOUT divines.

'A server where you can talk about spirituality AND chocolate cake? Sign me up baby' -you, probably

Additionally, I've got a lot planned for it. Clubs - channels hosted by one member and focused on an interest or craft - are something I'm experimenting with, a place where you can teach or share about your craft, special interests, skills, etc! We can even hold club-specific events where the host of the club organises live 'meetings' just like a real club, except with virtual biscuits.

We can add channels if needed, and learn together, whether that be in terms of divinity or other things!

I even have an idea of a tumblr blog for weekly posts, where members can post about new findings regarding their interests, discussions that we think would be good putting on tumblr, and funny shit that happened there.

Lots of fun ideas to think about!

INTERESTED?

Dm me. I'll ask some questions about you and if you pass the vibe check, you'll be given an invite. This server is for people who like deep discussions, learning, and are open-minded and willing to make close friends with others. It is not a place to stagnate your views in or try to invite people into your cult of Mushrooms - if you know you know. If all of the above sounds like something you'd be interested in, go for it!

Additionally, this server is only for spiritual divines. So. Dont dm me if you're not one, instead there are many many many spaces for non-spiritual divines to enjoy. Maybe - maybe go there. *holds you by the scruff of the collar and carries you outside*

Hope to see you at the North Star Lounge soon!

-🪽

[sweetmariihs2]

Cedric Masterlist update - and the search for the STF magazines 💫🎂

I have like. A whole notes file full of links I've been collecting to add to the Cedric masterlist, and at the same time I've bought and scanned around what, 7 stf magazines? That I own.

That's a part of the notes file that I have, there are more links (some of the links are from some of you guy's blogs, it's an honor to have them in my masterlist)

I want to add these links to my masterlist BUT I need to add the links to the magazines first, since we can't know for sure how many links a Tumblr post can support

That's A LIE since my masterlist has more than 100 links counted and they all still work

So since I'm prioritizing the links to the magazines I'm still going to put on Google drive (and the (money to buy) and hours I spent scanning each one of them), I can't add the links that I have collected my notes app because I don't know what's the link limit

Since not all the magazines that I bought has Cedric in them, some of them logically would be cut out of the masterlist, which would make things really messy cuz the most organized option would be to have all of them in the same place

So I'm thinking about making them a separate post and add a link to it in the Cedric masterlist instead.

BUT I CAN'T DO THAT YET

All of the magazines in brazillian portuguese that I found to buy on Google... I... already bought them... (they were three) and they're already scanned and in my hands muahaha

So the best places to search for the rest are, obviously, on the internet, and SHOCKINGLY, in person.

Because I live in a small brazillian town, I go to magazine stands since I was a little girl. In my town there were some, and you could find those official and unofficial magazines quarterly made, themed around characters such as Monster High, Strawberry Shortcake, Disney Princesses and of course Sofia The First

In that small town that I live in, unfortunately all the magazine stands changed a lot and they don't sell that stuff like they did some time ago. Now many are just street vendors. There were like, three of them in my town? When I tell you it's small, IT'S BECAUSE IT IS

And because it is small, when we (me and people from my town) want to go to better hospitals, consult with doctors, even shopping with a major variety of shops, we go to the neighboring town that's a little bit bigger than ours

AND SURPRISINGLY THE MAGAZINE STANDS THERE ARE STILL ALIVE AND SELLING REAL MAGAZINES

I guess a huge reason behind it is the interest that people are having in buying japanese mangas, and I'm seeing a lot of manga there, and because that town has a little more movement than mine, people are constantly passing through and buying, keeping those sellers' shops and the culture of reading on paper still alive

Whenever I go there, it's because I need to see a doctor, dentist, or rent dresses for a party or wedding, I never go just "to go". I'm autistic so I don't usually leave my town without one of my parents, I'm a little scared actually (help, I can't get used to my age) but I'm thinking about taking courage and trying at least once to being able to shop, without having to follow my parents everywhere they go or hearing complaints about them wanting to go home already. Because when I go with my parents to do something specific there, we can never go to places that I want to visit, like stores for example, except when they are on the way to the place we're going to, and it needs to be fast or else they're gonna start to rush me

The last time I went there, for an eye exam, there was a magazine stand near the doctor I went and I managed to find two STF magazines in the short 10 minutes I was there, with my eyes dilated with eye drops, that is, without seeing almost anything. There are five magazine stands there (I just looked through google maps) that I've never visited, even the one I went to and I couldn't look for the magazines properly because of my parents rushing me and my blurred vision. I actually made a post about my visit there and the magazines that I bought.

Furthermore, a friend of mine visited some stationery stores there and brought me as a gift a card of STF stickers, which I use in my sketchbook, and told me that she went to 5 stores and all of them had STF stuff, including more cards of stickers. I got a card that had some Sofias and a Fauna sticker on it, my friend told me that there are other cards with Flora and Merryweather that complete the set, the same with Amber, but she only brought me one as a gift she knew I would like. I really want to look at these stationery stores too, and find her other sisters to add them to my sketchbook 🥺

But yeah, going back to the subject, I still belive I didn't found all the available STF magazines in my region yet. As shocking as it may be, it's easier for me to find them in person than on the Internet, I'm lucky enough that my region has things like this, magazine stands that sell some really old stuff simply because no one bought them in 2015, and they are still there waiting to be bought.

As soon as I go there and FINALLY look everywhere I can (I'm 100% sure I'll find more magazine issues), and finally scan them, to finally make a post listing them, then I'll be able to add the link to the blog in my Cedric masterlist.

But I can't because I have to wait for a day when one of my parents has to go there, OR MAYBE, have a conversation with them and prepare myself to leave the city alone for the first time, and it would have to be on a day when I don't have classes to go to, plus I want to call a friend so I won't have to go completely alone. WAIT THIS WEEK I HAVE IT, IT'S TOMORROW, SHOULD I?

I think it's very close and I won't be able to prepare properly, plus I would have to talk to my parents first and schedule everything with my friend. I don't think it will happen tomorrow. I think the best thing to do is wait for my parents to have something or work to do there, and take a few minutes out of their visit to go to some magazine stands and stationery stores. I can go alone but I never did this before HELP it's one hour away 😭

I'll ask if my mother if she would like to go there just to do some shopping and spend some time together, she sometimes likes to go and buy some things there, we'll see

Telling you all this may make this masterlist and magazine thing seem like a lot of work, but I actually love doing it, it's therapeutic

live laugh love hyperfocus ❤️

Edit: I forgot to add something to this post so I made a part two.

[dearweirdme]

“Jk is a reason to not believe in Jkk.. and I can understand how Jk biased Jkkrs see that more often.”

Hmmm, based on what I’ve seen Jikookers say, Jk is actually the reason why many of them didn’t stop shipping Jikook during the solo era because he was the one doing all the Jimin mentioning, lives dedicated to Jimin, watching his content and wanting to go over to Jimin’s for a shower and Live while Jimin seemed more interested in Yoongi and Hobi. Even now, I see some Jk biased jikookers (let me know if you need their handles lol) say that if there was any distance with Jikook in chapter two it was most likely Jimin who distanced himself from Jk because Jk asked him to come over for chicken and beer, invited him to box and was even ready to go over to his place to do a Live together but Jimin refused all these times.

I do sort of agree with the first part because it did seem like most of the “moments” that Jikookers could talk about of their ship in chapter two were from Jk because I don’t remember Jimin doing anything to get them crazy (not that Jk did but we all know how they twist the guys actions and words and make nothings into somethings) I actually saw a Jk biased Jikooker complaining about Jimin seemingly giving people the impression that he wasn’t close to Jungkook because Jimin kept debunking everything. Jimin said he hadn’t gone over to Jk’s place, said he hadn’t eaten Jk’s noddles yet and kept talking about Yoongi while according to her Jungkook was doing everything in his power to show how much he loved Jimin by always talking about him, supporting his releases more than he did any other person’s, asking Jimin to do stuff with him and dedicating almost an entire Live to him(all these from a Jk biased Jikooker) and many other jikookers blacklisted her because she was being shady towards Jimin and blaming him for not caring about Jk as much as Jk cared for him. She seemed so pissed at Jimin because she felt like Jungkook was being very forthcoming and very open about how much Jimin meant to him while Jimin acted like Jungkook didn’t mean much to him at all because Jimin apparently was present physically to support every other member except Jk while Jk was physically present to support only Jimin in the solo era. So I don’t know about that take. I stumbled upon a few Jk biased jikookers on tumblr and never really seen them doubt Jikook because of Jungkook the only thing they seem to have a problem with is how some jimin biased Jkkrs sometimes get mad at Jk when he doesn’t act a “right” with Jimin and strangely enough most of them also thought Jimin was the one being distant. I must say though, while I don’t agree with these takes, I actually found it a little strange that jimin was physically there to support every other member and even made time to visit Jin in the military but never once showed up for Jungkook, especially because he usually shows up for everyone. He even showed up for Tae multiple times and hyped Tae’s work way more than he did for Jungkook. I did find that part a little weird tbh.

Hi anon!

Oh, that sounds very accurate to me! I wish they could see how typically friendshippy Jk and Jm are and how their interactions from last year just fit that perfectly.. that way neither Jm or Jk would have to take the blame for Jkkrs idea of there having been an issue.

I don’t really pay particular attention to jkkrs ‘s biases. In general I feel they paint Jm as the more stable one and Jk’s live basically evolves around Jm. It’s like Jm’s attention is a gift Jk strives for or something. I’ve not seen Jkkrs say Jm goes out of his way for Jk? Like.. we know which things they take as giant gestures from Jk (GCF, Rosebowl, the live he ‘dedicated’ to Jm) but do they have that from Jm’s side? I tend to think they place extra value on things Jk does, because to them that simultaneously debunks Taekook.

I really think Jk and Jm’s schedules were very much at odds last year. Like Jk said.. when he was free Jm was busy and vice versa.. and I think when Jk was busy Jm himself was actually also still very busy. Jk was abroad a lot! So i think Jm not going to support him (unless you count NY… but then again he went there because of the travel show) was a scheduling issue.

I’m kinda mindblown at the moment because of how Jkkrs now apparently seem to think the difference between Tkk and Jkk in Ays is in their favor? Like.. it’s not? How? We’ve seen some cute Jkk stuff.. but definitely not on a level that Jkkrs themselves were satisfied with when they just saw the episodes. They were screaming mad after the first episode even. I suspect this is all in preparation for the Sapporo episodes, which I am already cringing about because of how they all talk about it. They just learned nothing from the NY episodes at all 😂

[atlantis-just-drowned]

Sfw alphabet with Duke lover/partner edition?? Like how he would treat his s/o and stuff

SFW alphabet with Duke (Nevermore)

Please consider reblogging this post to spread it and show your support. Likes don't boost posts on Tumblr!

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

Duke is far from being the most affectionate person you've ever met. However, if he starts to get attached to you, he’ll be a little more considerate. Not that he’s gonna upfront about it – he won’t. But he’ll make sure to check on you a little more often, he’ll care more about your feelings… Generally, he’ll just be less annoyed by your mere existence. And it will be visible, because he won't act the same around you, but don't expect him to be all lovey-dovey.

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

Spike his curiosity. The man is just like a very tall gremlin: he likes shiny things that attracts attention. Do something unexpected. Stand out of the crowd. Be the one who make people laugh. Just, be remarkable. And maybe then he'll start wanting to participate in your fun schemes and ideas. That's his definition of how friendship works.

C = Cuddles��(Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

Although he doesn't mind physical contact, Duke is usually not the one to initiate it. You want to cuddle with him? Well, that's fine, go ahead. He'll let you wrap your arms around him and rest your head against his chest. For his part, he prefers giving light or friendly touches, like putting an arm around your shoulders, taking your hand to sketch a couple of dance steps, or simply brushing your back or your arm. If you're not the type to ask for cuddles a lot, he'll simply make those light touches from time to time, but not a lot more than that. However if you truly need a hug, you can be sure that he'll know, and he'll make sure you'll receive the biggest, warmest hug you ever had.

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

Duke is not exactly the domestic type. As an artist in the beginning of the XXth century, he grew used to rely on himself, and on himself only. The idea of living in a home that would belong to the both of you would make him uneasy at first, and he'll avoid the subject for a long time. So at first, for him "settling down" would look more like him spending all of his time at your place and doing the chores. And as time passes, he always seems to be staying longer. But it isn't really like he lives here right? I mean of course he washes his clothes with yours, he cleans and cooks sometimes, and you both eat and sleep together, but it isn't really like you're sharing a house right? He's not even paying the rent or anything, he's just visiting you for a few days! Expect him to think about it for a long time. He won't share his thoughts with you, but he will think about it a lot, until he'll finally connect the dots and ask you if he can just... Move in your house? And honestly you'll probably deadpan at him, considering he was already living almost h24 at your place anyway.

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

Duke is pretty independent. He doesn't feel like he needs a partner to be complete. Most of the time, he'll ask people out because they sparked his interest briefly, but once the dopamine disappeared and he starts getting bored, he really struggles to maintain a meaningful connection. So he'll look pretty detached, almost cold, while breaking up with an ex. They either bored him, or frantically annoyed him by not going along with his little mischievous plans. He doesn't like being held back and feel restricted.

F = Fiance(e) (How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

Once he finally accepted to officially lives with you, committing is not that much of a problem. To Duke, it's practically the same thing anyway, except you'll both have some more jewelry, and he'll get a new occasion to blow your mind with some impressive demonstration of love. But he will do his best to make sure you feel loved and appreciated for who you are. What can I say? He's a bit of a romantic at heart.

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

Duke is not fundamentally mean, it's just that he can be... A bit insensitive at times. He doesn't mean it of course, but it can happens for him to do a joke that he intended to be fun for you, but might hurt your feelings a bit. It's really not bad intentioned tho, and obviously he will immediately say sorry if you tell him it was hurtful. But yeah, emotionally, he can be pretty challenging from time to time. Same physically: he can hugs you or wraps his arms around you a little too tight if he gets carried away, but it's never too harsh and if anything, it's definitely a proof that he cares about you.

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

As I said before, Duke is not the most touchy-feely in the whole crew. But he can have his moments, when he's feeling particularly joyful. Sometimes he'll simply get carried away and lift you up in a tight hug, making you turn around until you can't help but giggle at his behavior. Other than that, he will definitely tease you when he feels flirty, by wrapping his arms around your waist from behind and whispering some joke to make you blush.

I = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

It's pretty easy to catch Duke's attention. The most challenging part is to keep it. And I think he knows that himself, so of course he'll take his time to say the L-word. He just wants to know if you'll last longer than the others before making any statement about his own feelings. After all, maybe you're just some kind of new shiny trinket that he'll get bored of ? But once he realized that you were sticking in his mind longer than usual, he'll panic first, than he'll accept it, and only after that, he'll say it.

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?)

Duke is not really upfront about his jealousy: he trusts you and he knows that he's definitely taking all of the place you have in your heart, because you can be sure that he's constantly making sure to occupy your mind. He'll just get more judgmental, cold and defensive toward the person he's jealous of, if they take too much of your time or try to flirt with you. If anything, he'll probably make some very sarcastic comments toward this person. He really wants them to understand that he is the boyfriend, and nobody else will.

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

The man definitely enjoys kissing your cheeks, your forehead and your chin. He keeps more romantic kisses for when you two are alone together and he can really get the time to be with you, without being constantly distracted. The way he kisses you also depends of his mood. Sometimes he'll give you endeared, affectionate kisses. And sometimes, he'll tease you by giving very light, yet very flirty little kisses everywhere on your face, just to see you blushing and smiling like an idiot. He likes to see the way you react to his teasing.

L = Little ones (How are they around children?)

When you two first started to know each others, you were honestly terrified to the idea of every leaving Duke alone with a kid. But life never really goes as planned, and you ended up discovering that he was surprisingly a good caretaker. Not the best in the whole world, but he was better than what you had pictured: he's able to distract kids and keep them entertained with jests and magic tricks, and his mischief seems to really please them. They like his fun and light demeanor, and he likes being the attention's center.

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

Duke has a very well-oiled morning routine. He likes to take care of himself when he wakes up, I mean he's a magician, an escape artist, he needs to stay healthy for his tricks, doesn't he? It was kinda unexpected for you to see him doing warm-ups just after going out of bed, but eventually, you ended up getting used to it. You eventually get absolutely unbothered about it, going out of bed and preparing breakfast while you wait for him to join you after his exercises.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?)

The more energy Duke spends through the day, the faster he'll stop teasing you in the night before going to bed. Because no: you are not safe from his teasing, even after a whole day of activities. If his day was boring, prepare. You'll have to deal with all energy remaining that he didn't use. He'll tease you, tickle you, flirt with you to an indecent amount. You just won't get rid of him until he finally decides to sleep. On the contrary, if his day was exhausting, you'll ultimately experience peace, because he'll straight up fall onto his mattress and fall asleep faster than anyone else.

O = Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

Duke is not particularly focused on the past. He'll make efforts to talk about it more once you get to know each others and start getting more intimate, but really, he doesn't see the importance of talking about his past life. That is, unless you talk about his stage performances. It's pretty much the part he talks about the most, he loves to tell the tales of his incredible success, probably exaggerating it a bit in the process, but it's really light-hearted. So he's pretty opened, you just have to ask questions because he won't bring the topic on the table. The only thing he will never share about himself is how he does his tricks. A good magician never reveals his secrets!

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?)

Surprisingly, Duke is not as hot-tempered as he can look from the outside. Sure, he can be quite intense to deal with, but he also knows very well how to keep his own emotions in check, and stay calm and collected no matter what. If someone try to anger him, the best reaction they will get out of him will probably be light annoyance. He'll only express his anger if he trusts you: he doesn't want anyone and everyone to know when and how he feels impacted by something.

Q = Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

Duke doesn't exactly have the biggest attention span you've ever seen. Expect him to forget stuffs, even stuffs about you. He doesn't do it on purpose, it's just... sometimes you say something about you, and the second after, the information have disappeared from his brain. He'll definitely try his best to take note of the most important things (and despite some fails, he successes for the biggest part!), but when it comes to tiny, little details, you'll have to repeat about them a few times before he registers the information.

R = Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)

Schemes. Mischievous plans. Wrongdoings flawlessly executed. You probably stole food from the kitchens. Or broke in some students' bedrooms. Yeah, the longer this relationship goes, the more the two of you achieve unharmful, yet still prohibited deeds. Duke can't help but love this feeling of having you by his side in his fun schemes. If his plan makes you smile or laugh, he'll straight up ascend. Once you started to get involved in his life, making you glad with his adventures became a new sort of goal for him to achieve. A success is never really a success if you didn't find the trip fun. He can't help but love the rush of adrenaline he gets when committing his little deeds with you, and seeing you entertained by them make his heart ache with affection. If you looked very, very closely, you could even see him blush a tiny bit from it. He loves having you as his partner... in crime.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

Oh wow now. Are we seriously talking about this? Duke can't even keep up with his own safety. This man has very little to no self-preservation. Of course the idea of seeing you in pain or seriously injured concerns him. But also... He's very bad at stopping it from happening. He does his best by staying by your side, and occasionally stopping you from doing something extremely stupid, but most of the time his definition of protection is to keep bad people away from you by giving them death stares whenever he gets the occasion. He doesn't want to limit your freedom, even if sometimes your ideas can be a bit risky. But without stakes, where is the fun, right ? That's also because he deeply cares about his own freedom, and can't stand people trying to rip it away from him. Don't try to protect him by stopping him from doing what he wants: he'll absolutely hate it. Instead, try to expose logical arguments on Why This Is A Bad Idea. And stay by his side, support him when he needs it. Make him feel like he can rely on you. That's all he needs.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

Duke is the walking definition of "living for the cameras". He loves making his tiniest move extra-dramatic, just to entertain himself and his friends. So you can be absolutely certain that he will try to impress you every chance he gets. There were occurrences of him over-doing it, even. Dates dusted with so much sparkles that it almost hurt your eyes. But it's always well-intentioned: he really wants to let you know how madly he's in love with you. In the same time, if Duke puts a lot of efforts in special occasions, he tends to forget a lot about everyday tasks, and gets distracted easily. So, you have to remind him about those a good couple of times. But he really tries his best.

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

It is not a secret to anyone that Duke likes to try new experiences. Some of them are funny. Some of them are dumb. Some of them are... weird. Really weird. They can involve tasting terrible food, going to odd places, touching ominous things... Basically, anything that looks uncanny and a bit mysterious. In the best cases, it often turns out gross. The food is probably the worst part.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

When you're a performer, the way you present yourself is a key point. This also applies to Duke. This man can't stand the idea of not looking eye-catching at all time of the day and night. If he appreciates you and you show him that he can trust you on being honest about his looks, he'll ask for your opinion absolutely every morning, to know if the way he's presenting is great. Please compliment him. Tell him he's shining bright like a star. His heart will probably skip a beat if you tell him that.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

Once again, Duke is extremely independent. He doesn't feel like he needs anyone to feel complete. It does bring something more to his life, something he loves to experience everyday with you, but he wouldn't feel incomplete. More like bored, probably. You're so much fun to be around, and you always make his heart beat a little faster, it's entertaining. Without you, things aren't missing, but they definitely seem more flat.

X = Xtra (A random headcanon for them.)

If someone introduced you to the Misfits, it would probably be Duke. He saw you going around and you caught his attention? He'll straight up come to you the first chance he gets, and then present you to his friends. He can't help it: he just wants to show them the cool new human being he found in the wild.

Y = Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?)

As I said before, Duke doesn't like anyone (or anything) that restricts his freedom. If a rule sounds dumb to him, he'll disobey. If someone tries to stop him from doing something without an explicit and logical reason, he'll try to do it even harder. More generally, people who seem boring or "don't know how to have fun" (comprehend: aren't getting themselves in trouble all the time just for the sake of attention) are annoying to him.

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habits of theirs?)

Duke. Can't. Sleep. If he doesn't pass out from exhaustion. The amount of energy in his body on a daily basis should be illegal. He won't stop annoying you and running around until all of his energy have be spent somewhere. Expect him to keep you awake at night. You can try to force him to sleep: it won't work.

[redspacegirl]

Okay okay okay. I actually got out my laptop because there’s no way I’m typing all this out with my fingers. I will be using mostly correct punctuation, which is like,,, insane for me (except the comma ellipsis you can pry that out of my cold dead hands).

IT IS OC TIME LET’S GOOOOOOOOOO (cool art at the end if you stick around :>>>)

So, I’m gonna start with Flow and Michael, who are kinda the main characters in one of my oc “universes”. One of my big dreams is to make a webcomic, and I have a whole plan for it, and this is supposed to be the main duo. I may add another to make it a trio (both of the potential additions I’ll talk about later), but for right now this is the 100% main duo.

I’ll start with Michael. Michael Mintz is 16, somewhere between 5’7” and 5’10”, and a total dumbass /aff. He is incredibly anxious all the time, a people pleaser, usually pretty quiet, and totally awkward to most people if he doesn’t know them well (im not projecting im not-). He and Flow live in this backwater town in Oregon called Dewsbury (sorry to my dnd group, I came up with the name a while ago it’s just my go-to town name ¯_(ツ)_/¯). It was one of those towns that was pretty populated a long time ago, but people just kept moving out, so now there’s a bunch of creepy old buildings. Michael is (and has always been) really interested in the paranormal. Obviously, this is the perfect place for a kid to be interested in the supernatural. Despite really liking ghosts, this dude is easily scared, and probably wouldn’t have ever gone in a single creepy building were it not for:

Flow Rios!!! They’re pretty much Michael’s opposite in many ways. They’re loud, pretty energetic all the time, and-seemingly-don’t worry about what others think of them. They also like exploring old creepy buildings with Michael, but less for the freaky ghost stuff and more for the cool old abandoned building stuff. They moved to Dewsbury somewhere around 5th grade, after the accident, where they met Michael (he’d lived there his whole life). They were the one who originally convinced Michael to go screw around in those old buildings. Flow is also pretty competent when it comes to feeling stuff, which leads to them acting as Michael’s free therapist friend.

I think this can (and will most certainly) lead to problems, because Michael can be pretty ignorant of other people’s feelings, and Flow is good at covering things up.

Something else I didn’t mention (though is pretty implied with Flow), Flow’s nonbinary, and Michael is trans! This will be important to both of their characters, actually.

Rapid fire stuff rq, Michael is nosy as hell, Flow lives with their aunt, their mom works overseas, Michael’s parents can be pretty helicopter-y at times, Michael’s a really bad liar usually, and I don’t think either of these two should be allowed in the kitchen (I think combined it would either end up okay or REALLY bad).

THAT’S THE MAIN DUO AND A LOT OF WRITING, I WILL YAP ABOUT THESE TWO THE MOST BUT I WILL MAKE MORE BIGASS POSTS ABOUT THE OTHERS AT SOME POINT!!!

for art, heres some doodles ive made:

the first three pages of the comic (v rough draft):

and their semi-old designs:

i would add more of the art i made of them but tumblr will not let me atm so this is all for now!!! :D

[viola-ophelia]

in defense of thranduil

hello! so you know how i occasionally do “in defense of” meta posts about unpopular characters ( X X X ) ? well, i’ve been thinking for a while about doing one for thranduil, but i wasn’t quite sure how to go about it since tbh, i don’t think anyone could call thranduil unpopular. his ao3 tag is very well-populated, and, ahem, a good portion of it is smut lol. he even has a ton of “x reader” stuff about him on tumblr, which to me is usually the hallmark of a popular character. but i’ve felt the urge to defend him anyway, and i think it’s because... well. i do think a character can be both popular and misunderstood, and for all the thranduil enthusiasm i’ve seen, i’ve seen just as much thranduil hate and criticism, so clearly something about him has people at odds. specifically, a lot of people seem to think he’s a bad dad, and/or that the peter jackson movies totally butchered his character, which is really interesting to me because i actually believe neither. so i’m going to try to illustrate why! i’ll be primarily discussing movie-verse thranduil in this post, with a few references to the books as a secondary source. so without further ado, here is why i think thranduil is A Good Dad Actually, and the movies are not a “butchering” of but a compelling darker/grittier spin on a character who - since he exists in tolkien’s written works only in a book for children and in the margins of a sprawling and very bloody history - only really works if you reconcile those two things. 

under a cut because as always, this is LONG!

let’s first talk about what seems to be people’s main grievance with movie-verse thranduil: the fact that he’s “turned into this greedy character whose only motive is getting back those gems” when that’s not what he’s like in the book. while it’s definitely true that there are a few key differences between book thranduil and movie thranduil, i actually don’t think that the two versions are so incongruous with each other. the areas where they differ, i think, flesh out movie thranduil into a character who compels beyond his simplified, kid-friendly presentation in the hobbit book and who makes sense within the larger historical context of his world. it’s true that the elvenking in the hobbit isn’t explicitly interested in material gain. he mainly seems to get involved in the battle of the five armies to help out bard, since mirkwood is allied with laketown. and there’s also no mention in the book of the elvenking having lost his wife, even though that’s a key part of his backstory in the hobbit movies. in the movies, those gems that he’s so interested in getting back from the dwarves are actually a necklace that belonged to his wife before she died. he’s still motivated by wanting to help laketown - which is why he shows up before the battle with wagons of food and supplies for the starving people - but he’s also motivated by grief - something deeply personal that none of the other characters (except gandalf, because gandalf knows everything lol) are even aware of, and this, i feel, gives depth to his character. 

the thing is, thranduil seems greedy because none of the other characters know of, and thus inherently cannot understand, his real reason for pursuing the gems. and it’s true - at face value, it doesn’t make sense why he’d seemingly put his people at risk for a random necklace. a pretty harsh reading of thranduil’s motives could even align him with thorin’s dragon-sickness. but remember how the battle of the five armies started? thranduil and bard pulled up with their forces thinking it was gonna be all of them against twelve dwarves and a hobbit lol. they probably thought there’d be no casualties and it’d be over in twenty minutes! they had no way of knowing how many other forces were going to get involved. and when thranduil does see the first elves laying dead on the ground, he tries to draw out. he never wanted to spend his people’s lives like that. he realizes he had been blinded by his grief for his wife and had acted selfishly - and personally, i like this a lot better than the book’s sort of handwave-y explanation for why the elvenking is even bothering to involve himself and his kingdom in the (petty, by his standards) affairs of dwarves and men. because... movie thranduil is not just Like That for no reason. he has a whole history, going wayyy beyond his wife’s death even, that makes him the way he is - and that is what is so satisfying about his portrayal in the movies, because it actually attempts to acknowledge that deeper context. 

we have to remember that thranduil, at least in comparison to pretty much every other character in the hobbit, is old as hell. he reminds us of this multiple times in the movies: “a hundred years is a mere blink in the life of an elf. i can wait.” for a character who presumably shouldn’t need to worry or think about death, he’s unusually fixated on his own immortality in the movies, a trait that is missing from the books. and while i do get why some readers are charmed by the idea of an elf who doesn’t seem to perceive himself very differently than the men and dwarves he’s surrounded by, i’m a lot more drawn in by the idea of an elf who just can’t forget about how different he is. because if you actually think about where thranduil fits into the bigger history of middle-earth, it’s sort of hard to turn the page back from this darker, more scarred side to him - because yeah, he might live forever if he avoids conflict, but he also knows death in a way that someone like bilbo baggins would not even be able to conceptualize. thranduil was born in doriath in the first age, making him old enough to likely have been involved in not one but two kinslayings against his people. we know nothing about his mother, making it likelier than not that she was lost in one of them when he was still a child. his father, oropher, the original elvenking of the greenwood, was killed in the battle of dagorlad in the second age - the “last stand” of elves against sauron. thranduil, fighting alongside him and the silvan elves, had to watch his father die and then be crowned as the new king right then and there. (also, oropher died in the very first charge of the battle, which then continued on for months. imagine how hard it’d have been to stave off that creeping hopelessness.) and finally, thranduil’s wife was killed in battle at some point not long after their son was born. thranduil’s dragon fire scar on his face is an invention of the movies, and it’s unclear when exactly it happened - at the same battle where he lost his wife? some time earlier? but anyways. i’ve been going on and on about his life for a reason, and that reason is Thranduil Has Seen A Lot Of Shit. it’s easy to look at him in the movies and critique him - why is he so cold? why is he an isolationist ruler when in the books he’s more welcoming (after initially chucking the dwarves in jail, lol)? but the hobbit isn’t really thranduil’s story, so exposing all of this context in the movies wouldn’t have made much sense, would it. and i actually like that there are some gaps, because that’s what makes him so interesting. no one knows his history, and why should they? when it comes down to it, thranduil is just a side character in someone else’s adventure. 

the last thing that i really want to address is thranduil’s relationship with legolas, his son - partly to refute the idea that he’s a bad dad, but also partly to talk about how despite all the griping that i’ve seen about how stupid it was to “randomly” insert legolas into the hobbit movies, it actually made so much sense for both of their characters. obviously, while it’s confirmed elsewhere that thranduil/the elvenking is legolas’s dad, legolas is not actually in the hobbit book. but this, i think, is more so to do with the fact that tolkien wrote the lord of the rings (and invented legolas’s character) after he wrote the hobbit, and less so to do with the idea that legolas is inherently “irrelevant” to the story of the hobbit. because if legolas is irrelevant to the hobbit, then is he irrelevant to thranduil? i really don’t think so, because even though tolkien gave us no clues as to what their relationship might’ve been like, even the fact that they’re father and son is really important. for thranduil, the fact that he has a son adds dimension not just to who he is in the movies - and yes, we see a fraught side of his dynamic with legolas as he has to reconcile with legolas growing up and wanting a freedom that thranduil with his too-deep understanding of the world’s dangers doesn’t want to give - but also to the concept of his character. thranduil has lost so many people he loved in horrible ways that now legolas is all he has left, and consequentially there’s so much talk about him as an oppressive parent, so paranoid of losing him that he keeps him imprisoned inside the always-closed kingdom gates. but at the end of the hobbit movies, thranduil also gives legolas his blessing to go on the quest to destroy the one ring. when it comes down to it, he is willing to let legolas do what's best for him, even knowing that this could be how he loses him. i know thranduil isn’t a perfect parent, that’s pretty obvious lol. but i don’t see how people watch these movies and their takeaway isn’t that he’s at least trying his best and that he does genuinely love his son. also, look at legolas! legolas is clearly proud of his identity as a wood elf. and he’s happy, he’s caring, he’s adventurous, he’s even pretty wise despite being one of the youngest elves. i don’t exactly see a traumatized victim of horrible parenting in him (and believe me, there is no shortage of victims of terrible parenting in the silmarillion/elsewhere in tolkien’s works) - i see a strong and well-adjusted young adult who wouldn’t hesitate to threaten anyone who spoke ill of his father’s kingdom with his bow lol. 

anyway, if you’ve made it this far through my rambling, i hope you can understand at least part of what i’m trying to say lol. it’s hard, because i have so many things i’m kind of trying to say all at once, but: tl;dr i actually think the hobbit movies did thranduil’s character right, not wrong, and that they do the opposite of proving that he’s a bad dad. :3