#for a little clarity

[niqaboy]

why the fuck are you raising our rent. you wont even do basic repairs. we havent had a kitchen light for SIX MONTHS because you wont fix the fixture. its coming up on summer again and you havent fixed our ac THATS BEEN BROKEN SINCE LAST JUNE. no actually im not gonna pay you any fucking more rent until you DO THE REST OF YOUR STUPID WORTHLESS JOB

[wizzard890]

So there’s a trend that I absolutely hate in online discussions of (non-satirical) genre, particularly genre that’s influenced by the gothic. This trend makes my eyes roll back in my head until I can see through my own skull. It makes me want to bite a car in half. It makes me want to step into the jellyfish tank at the New York Aquarium and beg for the sweet sweet annihilation of a thousand stings. 

I call this trend: Oh Just Be Sensible, and it goes like this:

“Why do vampires always end up covered in blood when they feed, I don’t spill soup all down the front of my shirt when I eat dinner. Real toddler energy.”

“Why do people always cut their hands to swear oaths, everyone knows it would hurt way less on the [insert body part with fewer nerve endings]”

“Vampires shouldn’t be feeding from people’s wrists, it damages the tendons, if doctors don’t take your blood from your wrist, vampires shouldn’t either! No one will be able to flex their fingers the next day.”

(This comes up a lot with vampires, I mention, as I stride purposefully into the glistening mass of jellyfish.)

There are direct answers for some of these when it comes to the practical visual language of a particular medium (for example, you cut your hand on stage / on set because you can hold a blood pack in there, and even if you don’t have an effect, the gesture and its purpose can be discerned from the nosebleeds) but what really gets me is how thematically boneheaded this sort of observation is. 

Like, let’s go down the list here. 

Why do vampires end up covered in their victims’ blood? Well Scoob, do you think it could maybe have something to do with their bestial, inhuman nature? Or with the erotic and sensual abandon with which they can approach violence, now that they’re untethered from human morals? 

Why do people cut their hands to swear oaths? Aside from what I mentioned above, do you think maybe it’s because it adds a layer of gravity to see two people swearing an oath to one another with blood dripping from their clasped hands? Do you think it’s maybe to evoke a unity of body, something greater and more primal than a unity of word? Or maybe to remind us of the dire consequences of breaking a blood oath?

Why are authors having vampires feed from people’s wrists if it damages their tendons? Damn, maybe that’s because it’s where the pulse is. You know, the pulse? The heartblood, the thing that races when you’re scared or turned on or both? The thing that stutters when you’re close to death and could, should the author choose, ring in the vampire’s ears like a chime or a great pounding thunderclap. Maybe in a story about undead beings who drink blood, we can sacrifice a bit of sensible reality in order to enforce the emotion and thematic heft of a scene? 

Images like these communicate what is happening between two characters, not just the events that are transpiring! No one making stories forgot to consider ~sensible~ little observations, because it would be absolutely inane to consider an observation with the creative value of a wet paper towel. This stuff is part of our visual language for a reason! Themes also need to be communicated! 

God, like, okay, I’m exhausted and the aquarium staff keeps yelling at me when they find me here, but let me just wrap up by saying that relationships, character and meaning are expressed in so many ways beyond dialogue or internal monologue, and those expressions are so rarely sensible. 

(Also all this shit looks cool as hell, do you really want your protagonists swearing to die for one another by dabbing their slightly bleeding elbows together, grow up.)

[kangaruthi]

harrowhark height reveal

[finalskies]

Happy 14th anniversary, friendship is magic. The target demographic is finishing college about now. Give it one more year and I think it'll be old enough for Hasbro to just reboot it instead of making a gen 6 lol

[canisalbus]

I'm sure you've already answered this but is Machete styled after a silken windhound? He is so very shaped

His breed is fictional, but it closely resembles modern day Ibizan hound. Both Silkens and Ibizans are sighthounds though, so you're not far off.

[improbable-outset]

Btw.🔞

You come home to find your dad, Couch Shimura, rewatch the press conference of Ken Sato. He was clearly vexed, annoyed by his blasé and cocky attitude with the interview questions

You glanced at the TV but you couldn’t look at your dad in the eye, now fully aware that you still had Ken’s 💦 inside of you after you just coming back from another night out

[thekorcariwilds]

[soupdweller]

day 15: Life and Death

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Jingles a little bell in front of you to convince you to do tasks.

[First] Prev <--> Next

[salty-an-disco]

Always fucking breaks me T^T

And he says it so flatly too, like “Why are we even doing this? Why are you making us go through all this hell? Is it even worth it?”

He’s so tired and worn out. If the Tower is us giving up on Hero—our agency—then The Moment of Clarity is us wearing him so thin that there’s simply no more choices to make anymore.

Wait, actually–

This might just literally be Hero blocking our choices. After all–

[clarityroses]

Hello queer people of the internet.

I know you enjoy…

✨huskerdust✨

From my page a lot in recent times past.

But may I introduce you to…

❤️chaggie❤️?

I love gay people *smile*

(This is actually way better than I thought originally :3)

[carlyraejepsans]

What’s your opinion on mettaton x burgerpants? i personally ship it because i think it’s really funny

i think they just hate eachorer not even in a sexy way.. sorry..... mtt SHOULD crack burgerpants' egg tho i think that would be even funnier can you imagine how mad bp would be

[wigglebox]

Uncensored 💡❕

[legionofpotatoes]

star wars outlaws

[luobingmeis]

my jgy thoughts have been expanding and adapting and roiling and toiling etc etc etc and all of it is coming down to me affectionately marveling at this character. he’s cut-throat. he’s cunning. his kindness leaves lasting impressions. his mercy is what predates his demise. he’s one of the few cultivators who helps those in need. he will sacrifice them if it benefits him. he loved. it didn’t last. it killed him. it orchestrated his downfall. he’s a genius. he’s paranoid. he compartmentalizes. he splits the world into who he would sacrifice and who he would not. people he loves and people he would sacrifice are not mutually exclusive. he’s filial to a fault. it was all for his mother. he is a study in assimilating to survive. the results vary. he manipulates the herd mentality to his benefit. it is turned against him. he is killed for the one thing he didn’t do by the one person he wouldn’t sacrifice. it is still somehow better than what the hive-mind cultivation world would have done. i love this tragic kaleidoscope of a character.

[itsalmostavengers]

“I still hate you,” Tony mutters, voice shaky and entirely unconvinced while his hand expertly unbuckles the clasps of the uniform he designed so carefully, months and months and months ago.

“I know,” Steve responds gruffly. His beard scratches Tony’s jaw as those perfect teeth run down the thin skin of his neck, trace his jugular. His hands are rough iron clamps against each side of Tony’s beautifully tailored Versace two-piece. The fabric will be ruined beyond repair in less than ten minutes - Tony could bet his fortune on it.

They’ve played this stupid game before. Every time, Tony swears it’ll be the last.

Steve hitches him up onto the kitchen counter of the ridiculous New Jersey safehouse, and Tony goes willingly, yanking Steve into the open spread of his legs. This is the closest Steve’s gotten to New York since he first read those damned accords. The closest he can get to home is some 1965-styled kitchenette with pictures of old-timey adverts lining the walls and a microwave that’d probably irradiate you if you went near it.

It’s wrong- all of it. But there’s no changing it. Steve made his choice long ago, and Tony hates him for it. He should remember that. He should tell Steve that again.

“Fuck, God, Steve,” is what comes out instead, breathed against the other man’s mouth. Tony’s whole body is hot, taught, desperate, and he tugs the top half of Steve’s uniform off his torso. Steve spray painted over the colours- the whole thing is dark now, void of any trace of what it used to be. Tony hates that too.

“Tony,” Steve says, like there’s more to it- a name at the beginning of a sentence which never comes out. He clasps his teeth over Tony’s bottom lip, pushes his hands under Tony’s rapidly-wrinkling shirt and brushes his thumbs over each nipple, rubbing quick circles. The movement pulls another noise from Tony’s throat.

Fuck- the man knows him.

Steve steadies himself for a moment to catch his breath, nose brushing against Tony’s. Tony tries not to look into his eyes, whenever they do this. He’s never been good at seeing Steve’s soul - the one he never tries to hide, to mask. He’s not like Tony, you see. Everything he does, he does earnestly and from the heart.

The decision he made to leave with Bucky - to keep the culprit of Tony’s parents’ deaths a secret from him - they’d both come from that same heart. Hence, no eye contact. Tony has no desire to see how truly insignificant the space he takes up in Steve’s soul was.

Except now.

He does it without meaning to- just catching sight of those infuriating baby blues as he leans in for another messy kiss. Error number 1.

Error number 2 is not shutting his damn eyes and grabbing Steve’s dick like he normally does.

And error number 3 is the worst. Error number 3 is when he catches sight of Steve’s suddenly agonised expression, doesn’t ignore it, and instead asks “what?” Thus inviting conversation. They don’t come here for that. They come here to fuck eachother’s brains out for a night and then keep playing their cat-and-mouse chase across the globe as if anyone in a position of authority actually fucking believes it.

Steve goes perfectly still for a moment. Then he swallows. “This… this really makes you miserable, doesn’t it.”

He doesn’t frame it like a question.

Tony looks up at him, breathing hard. “Oh, I’m sorry I’m not looking ecstatic while getting groped by my ex boyfriend in a place that’s decked out like a prop house in a nuclear testing site. Would you prefer for me to giggle jovially while you fuck me amongst the dust and cobwebs?”

They’d used to have sex that was so full of love. This is how Tony always talks to Steve, now.

Steve shakes his head, a minute, grieving little thing. Tony feels the man’s breath skating across his face- feels the warmth of his bare chest, his shoulders, pressing against Tony.

“I thought…” he begins, then trails off for a moment as Tony skirts his hands down his chest, unlatches his belt. “I thought this made you happy. At least a little bit, even if you didn’t admit it. But it doesn’t. ”

Of course it doesn’t. But it’s all I have left of you.

“You think I’m coming here to find happiness? Jesus Steve. I’m coming here for tension relief,” Tony says, because he just can’t be truthful- he did his best when they were together, he really did, and it all failed anyway. Besides: Steve was never as truthful as Tony had always so fervently believed him to be either. “How about we both just stop talking and get down to that part.”

He gets his hands all the way to Steve’s boxers before Steve stops him- a gentle yet utterly unmoving grip. When Tony looks up at him again, Steve shakes his head. He’s grey in the face- if Tony didn’t know better now, he’d even say heartbroken.

“Tony, I…” Steve’s struggling for the words and he looks so beautiful, so so beautiful, just the same as the very first time Tony laid eyes on his photograph in the SHIELD folder he’d hacked his way into. “I didn’t realise you felt that way. Or maybe I did, but just didn’t want to acknowledge it because I was selfish.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I can’t do this with you. To you.” Steve steps away jerkily, half his body lagging while the other half pulls, as if warring with his own system. His pale skin is patchy, covered in faint marks where Tony has grabbed him. “I thought we were both doing this for enjoyment, but you’re not, and so I can’t. It’s cruel.”

Tony realises what Steve is implying here. His heart - what’s left of the poor thing anyway - convulses in panic, and he stumbles off the counter. “I’m not a fucking dog,” he snaps, “I make my own choices.”

“You don’t even look at me,” Steve’s voice breaks then. “I wished more than anything that you’d look at me. But I just saw it, then, when you did.”

“Saw what?”

They’re facing off against one another now - it’s like they can’t stop themselves. They have to be on either side of the argument, they can never just agree, no matter how hard they both want to. Tony hates and hates and hates.

“Your eyes don’t lie to me, Tony.” Steve’s voice is soft, and he says it like that alone is enough. “Your mouth does. And you don’t want this.”

“See, do you see what you’re doing here, again?” Tony steps forward, smashes his finger against the place where the star used to sit proudly on Steve’s chest. “You’re making an executive decision about how I feel, as to what I need, when you don’t have that right. You don’t get to decide what’s best for me!”

“But you never do what’s best for you!” Steve’s hands flail helplessly. “You do what’s best for everyone else, or what you think you deserve, and you never think about how it’s going to hurt—“

“I DESERVED TO KNOW MY PARENTS WERE MURDERED, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!”

Tony was supposed to be making his way to an orgasm right about now - instead he suddenly feels so angry he can hardly breathe. Fucking typical. He just had to go and open his mouth, didn’t he?

He glares at the man who tore his heart out over a year ago. Steve looks back, his expression shattered. Tony feels angrier still when he realises that he’s never going to be able to see this person in front of him and not love him. He’s trying so hard, right now, and he can’t. Even after all this. He can’t find it in him.

“Just fuck me,” Tony says, and it comes out more exhausted than demanding.

Steve shakes his head. “I can’t.”

Right. Steve’s made up his mind about what’s best for tony. Again. Was it ever going to go any other way?

Sometimes, the tiredness goes so deep that Tony starts to feel it in his bones. His therapist says it’s psychosomatic- that bones don’t actually creak and groan like wooden doors in abandoned houses. Tony begs to differ.

“If we stop now, this is the last time you’ll ever see me,” he says, hoping, even now, that maybe something will change. That maybe for once, Steve will just put him first.

It’s a pipe dream. Tony comes to that realisation as soon as Steve shakes his head. Stupid.

“Maybe that’s for the best.” Steve’s voice is hoarse. Like each word is painful. Tony wishes that were true - in reality, he doesn’t doubt Steve is just wary of the fight his words will bring - the argument that’ll erupt out of Tony’s mouth in response.

But Tony’s done fighting. It’s a losing battle. Always has been.

He looks at Steve. Nods.

He walks out of the door without another word.