#guiding your hand

[dragonroilz]

May the muses sing forever, the well remain filled, and the music stay electric...

[finisnihil]

“They finally made this theme more blatant-" Why does it need to be blatant. What's wrong with subtlety? Concepts can be underused but subtlety is not neglect.

Blaring all your concepts and themes is not good writing. It's so disruptive to a story's flow when the characters look off the screen to be like "See? This is the concept. The idea. The theme."

If you can feel the hand of the author becoming too heavy that's bad.

For example: I see people saying Azula's abuse in ATLA is more blatant in the live action and it's good because "it's being discussed more". It already was discussed at length. The show made it clear she was a victim at every turn, every behavior, every reaction, it came from a place of trauma. It was made clear that she was scared of ending up like Zuko because Zuko was an example of what would happen to her if she failed. When she says she's better than Zuko it wasn't just because she was raised to think hersef superior to him but because Zuko failed and failures get mutilated and exiled, failures are abandoned. In that final Agni Kai the music is morose and somber because this isnt some epic battle its a fucking tragedy, the burning out of "Ozai's brightest light" and Azula finally succumbing to her terror and trauma she was repressing now that her worst fears are realized. How can you see a fourteen year old girl chained to a sewer grate wailing and writhing and breathing fire desperately as unsympathetic? Even Katara and Zuko are horrified as to what has become of her.

The writers weren't looking us in the eye and saying "See? She's a victim too" when they wrote this, they weaved it in. They weaved it into her obsesison with symmetry, her extreme perfectionism, the way she talks about Ozai, the ways she calls herself a monster, her isolation from those with healthy home lives, all the ways she held herself together and ultimately all the cracks and seams that she shattered down when she fell apart. It did not need to be blatant to be clear.

[konigsblog]

mutual masturbation with simon riley...

simon's dick hardens at the sight of you getting off, that fucked-out stupid look in your eyes, with tears brimming in your waterline—he's obsessed.

it's addictive. simon's thick fingers prod against your tight hole while you wrap your hand around his veiny shaft. your strokes are slow, biting your lip and gazing into his eyes while attempting to calm your breathing. you pant like a filthy mutt in heat, your grip on his lengthy, slick cock tightening at the wet, throbbing sensation between your soft, supple thighs.

simon's dick pulses and aches at the pleasure, the softness of your hand in comparison to his rough, calloused, and scarred skin feeling heavenly. simon begins to push another digit inside your entrance, watching your jaw fall slack and your eyes glisten with delirium. he pumps two fingers into your swollen, soft folds while cooing at you for being so pent up, so sexually frustrated. you look perfect like this; legs spread wide open for him, gazing up at him needily, and jerking him off messily.

“that’s it, there we go. attagirl, you’re doin’ so well, ain’t‘cha? strokin’ my dick, that greedy cunt swallowin’ my fingers, yeah?” simon cocks his head to the side teasingly with a cruel grin plastered on his stupid mug. the effect he has on you leaving him feeling playful, sliding another finger into you unexpectedly, your moans only getting louder.

god, simon adores stuffing your pretty holes full, finger fucking you into stupidity until you're begging for permission to come all over his scarred fingers.

you watch as simon's tip begins to weep, oozing out strings of his creamy arousal. pearly orbs of his stickiness flow from the head of his lengthy, fat cock and run down his stuff shaft, acting as lube as you jerk him off rapidly and eagerly, tears beginning to roll down your cheeks from overstimulation and desperation, with pleas flowing from your lips.

[lotus-pear]

soukoku shippers can NEVER come after kunizai now with the excuse of them having no angst i think they honestly win tragic yaoi of the year award WAIT UNTIL DAZAI HEARS HIS PARTNER GOT TURNED INTO A 7/11 $2.50 FROST GLACIER SLUSHIE 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[somegrumpynerd]

Assorted Horror and Killer doodles since there aren't enough of them c:

Killer by Rahafwabas Horror by Sour-apple-studios

[raycatzdraws]

ribbonwood

[sforzesco]

I got. thoughts. about valens and voices in imperial roman history. but I also got a lot of thoughts about uhhhhhh choosing your brother for co ruling the Fratricide Foundation Story Empire. many thoughts about themistius' oration too

Brotherly Love, Themistius (trans. Peter Heather & David Moncur)

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / insta

[canisalbus]

Machete and Vasco are so pomegranate-and-the-hand-that-slices coded. To me.

Pomegranates are seen as messy, bloody, inconvenient fruits. You slice or tear or bite and in return for your effort you come away underwhelmed, disgusted, and stained too deep to wash. The consumption of a pomegranate is a violent act of defilement, for both the fruit and the eater.

But that is because most do not understand how to open a pomegranate. They have little patience for the precise carving. They see no point in coreing the fruit gently, no reason to be reverent as they pull the quarters apart. When done correctly, opening a pomegranate leaves little mess. Your fingers will still stain, your knife will still slick, but there will be no pool of crimson drowning both you and the fruit.

The seeds are only sweet to those who understand the merit of a light hand and intricate slicing. Why put in so much effort for a food so bitter and clearly armored against consumption? Surely it must not yearn to be eaten.

(^insane about silly catholic dogs)

.

[essektheylyss]

One thing that I feel is really interesting and often forgotten about Essek is that fundamentally, his characterization has been from the start based upon his desperation for external perspectives and connection, which, along with much of his narrative and mechanical positioning, means that he actually has an extraordinary and almost (but not actually, as I'll show) counterintuitive capacity for both growth and trust.

(Buckle in. This is a long one.)

In particular, I would argue, knowing now that many places where the plot touches Ludinus have long been marked for connecting back into the current plot, that he was quite possibly built as a prime candidate for radicalization by the Ruby Vanguard. He felt isolated from his culture, he was desperate for other connection, and he was certainly of the type to believe he was too smart to be drawn into such a thing, given his initial belief that he could control the situation and the fallout. If things had gone any other way, he easily could've been on the other side by now.

As such, he has been hallmarked by being fairly open to suggestion, perhaps for this reason, but the thing about that kind of trait is that it is both how people are radicalized and deradicalized. This is certainly true of Essek, who experienced genuine kindness and quite frankly strangeness from the Nein and was able to move from the isolation the Assembly had engendered to meaningful and genuine connection, largely propelled by his own internal reflection. By the time Nein are aware of his crimes, he's already begun to express regret to an extent and, furthermore, doubt in the Assembly, including explicitly drawing a line against Ludinus, even in a position where he was on his own and probably quite vulnerable.

Similarly, when the Nein reach the Vurmas Outpost some weeks later, he has moved from regret for the position he's ended up carrying a heavy remorse. This makes sense! He's fairly introspective, seems used to spending a lot of time in his own head, and was left with plenty to mull over. It's not some kind of retcon for him to have progressed well past where the Nein left him; it just means he's an active participant in the world who has done his own work in the meantime.

This is another interesting aspect to him. I've talked about this a bit before but I cannot find the post so I'll recap here: antagonists in D&D have significantly more agency than allied NPCs. Antagonists are active forces, against which the party is meant to struggle; allies are meant to support the PCs, which means they tend to be more passive in both their actions and their character growth. Essek was both built as an antagonist, in a position that gives him significant agency, and also was then given significant opportunity to grow specifically to act as a narrative mirror for Caleb's arc. Even when he becomes a more traditional D&D ally, he still retains much of that, though he occupies a supporting role.

I believe that this is especially true because of the nature of Caleb's arc, which I've already written on; the tl;dr of this post is that Caleb is both convinced that he is permanently ruined and also desperate to prove that change is possible. Essek is that proof, because he is simply the character in a position to do so. But this also means that his propensity for introspection and openness is accentuated! He has to do the legwork on his own, for the most part, because that's where he is in the meantime.

But he still ends the campaign necessarily constricted; he is under significant scrutiny, he's at risk from the Assembly, and he goes on the run fairly soon after the story ends. He spends most of the final arc anxious and paranoid, which is valid given the crushing reality of his situation. It would be very easy to extrapolate that seven years into this reality, he would be insular, closed off, and suspicious of strangers, even in spite of the lessons he's learned from the Nein and their long term exposure.

So seeing his openness and lightness now is surprising, but at the same time, given this combination of factors in his position in the narrative over time and his defining traits, it's not by any means unreasonable.

But one thing that I found so delightful is how much trust he exhibits, which is obviously a wild thing to say about Essek in particular, given much of what he learns is both earning and offering trust, which was something he says explicitly in 2x124 that he's never really experienced: "I've never really been trusted and so I did not trust." It makes up much of the progression of his relationship with Caleb, and the trust that he is offered by the Nein in walking off the ship is the impetus he needs to grow.

But I think it's easy to talk about trust when it comes to people who have proven themselves to you or to whom you've ingratiated yourself, and that's really the most we can say about Essek by the time he leaves the Blooming Grove. There is this sense in a lot of discussion of trust (not solely in this fandom) that it is only related to either naivete or love, but there's far more to it. Trust at its best is deliberate—cultivating an openness to the world at large is a great way to combat cynicism and beget connection instead. It allows a person to maintain curiosity and be open to experience, but it can be incredibly difficult to hold onto.

It is clear that the Essek we meet now is a very pointedly and intentionally trusting individual. He trusts Caleb and by extension Caleb's trust in Keyleth, as he shows up and picks up a group of strangers from a foreign military encampment and walks in without issue. He trusts the Hells to follow his lead moving through Zadash and to exhibit enough discretion so as to avoid bringing suspicion upon all of them. He trusts that Astrid will respond well to his entrance, but he also trusts himself and the Hells enough to execute a back-up plan in the case that she doesn't. In the end, he even trusts them enough to give them his name and identity.

He doesn't scan as someone who has spent half a dozen years living like a prey animal, afraid of any shadow he runs across in an alley, withdrawn into himself and an insular family, which would've been an easy route for him to take. He scans as someone who has learned the kind of trust borne of learned confidence and a trained eye for good will and kindness, which are crucial weapons one would need for staving off cynicism in his circumstances—as if he has survived thanks more to connection and kindness than paranoia and isolation. (If we want to be saccharine about it, he scans quite poignantly as a member of the Mighty Nein.)

So it is easy to imagine this trust and openness as a natural progression of his initial search for perspectives external to his own cultural knowledge. Though he makes those first connections with the Assembly to try to vindicate his personal hypotheses, he finds in them exposure to the deepest corruption among Exandrian mortals, which could've—and did, for a time—turned him further down that same dark path.

But it's also this same openness to exposure from the wider world that allows the Nein to influence him for the better, and in spite of the challenges he's certainly faced simply surviving over the past seven years, he seems to have held onto this openness enough to move through the world with self-assurance and a willingness to extend the kinds of trust and good will that he has been shown.

(I would be remiss not to mention that I was reminded about my thoughts on this by this lovely post from sky-scribbles and their use in the tags of 'light' to describe Essek's demeanor this episode, which is really such an apt word for it.)

[merakiui]

me trying to explain to you why crewel fucking me Infront of his class would help the students improve in said classes 🥺

They have to learn female anatomy somehow, and the textbooks' diagrams are all so old and outdated. Besides, with such a diverse student body (all male), the female human body is such a strange concept. And who better to act as a hands-on learning tool than the only girl in the school!!!! <3 maybe doing this will help raise your grade so you and Grim won't have to struggle to get by, or it's yet another scummy tactic employed by Crowley. ^^;;; since you both share grades, you're working so hard to stay afloat every time Grim manages to fail an exam. T_T your desperation is a boon for the entire class during the anatomy/sex education units.

Also,,, anatomy and sex education class with you as live demonstration is one of the few times everyone's paying attention. Attendance is 100%! No one wants to miss the opportunity to see this.

[vaguely-concerned]

you know it is hard to not feel for caterina a little in my worldstate. she loses sight of lucanis for a couple of months while her other grandson has her in jail for grandmother time-out, and by the time she sees him again he is in full undying devotion mode for the guy she sent to get him back. her grandson finally brought someone home, and it's a fairly low-level elven mortalitasi whose family background is 'idk we found this baby in a crypt and liked their vibes' who will not be giving her any biological grandchildren. not even one of the politically well-connected scheming mortalitasi, which could at least have been useful (nevarra is a bustling market for the crows! twenty contracts on the king alone and still going strong! still a payday baby let the good times roll!), but one of the dutybound earnest little freaks they keep down in the necropolis to wrangle skeletons and write esoteric papers and who frankly don't care that much about murder b/c death comes to us all in its own time anyway trust us on this one. lucanis looks at him like he hung the moon, the sun, every celestial object and glittering star in the sky, like he's the only real thing in the world. and in caterina vision she sees this weird little slip of a goth mage guy wearing too much kohl who cracks jokes at strange times and is so hard to read but also gives her the unmistakable flinty 'I'll try to keep this civil if you do the same. If.' eye contact over lucanis' shoulder sometimes, with the utter grave calm that only someone who's a speaker to the dead (and the dead are savage) and who has killed several gods and wouldn't back down from second deicide if necessary could bring to bear. she sucks and deserves this and more but she also does have a whole Situation on her hands here

(I love that rye's relationship to lucanis' family is basically 'I met some of the most insufferable people. but, they also met me'. he tangoed with the god of lies and betrayal so he could waltz his way through a dellamorte family dinner relatively unscathed)

[whaliiwatching]

sparks fly

cleared the smoke for you

[zeros-stimblog]

Is it really a complex, or just lacking context? Why would someone go so far to be a walking lie?

A Beginners Guide to Faking Your Death stimboard with stims I recorded myself of my vinyl of the album, crow stims, blood stims and coin stims!

🩸 | 🪶 | 🫀

🪶 | 🫀 | 🪙

🫀 | 🪙 | 🩸

(Credit if you use any of the Jhariah specific stims!)

[ouaw-facts-i-just-made-up]

Kremy and Gideon tried the whole kissing thing but Kremy couldn't really kiss back and Gideon didn't like how he had to lean back a lot if he wanted to also hold Kremy, and it was just a whole disaster. They both agreed that they'd keep that for quick little pecks at most, to the relief of everyone in the party who had to witness The Worst Kiss Ever™️

[puppetstringed]

[ratatatastic]

SASHA LUNDY CLUTCHING ONTO EACH OTHER FOR DEAR LIFE HELLO

THE INHERENT ROMANTICISM THAT IS IN BURYING YOUR FACE INTO EACH OTHER AND CRADLING ONE ANOTHER'S HEADS

CAN YOU HEAR MY WAILS?????? CAN YOU HEAR THEM AT HOW LUNDY IS SQUEEZING SASHAS WAIST??? HELLO?????