#has flat out said it is a problem and that they are the sole reason all of their homes are clean

[paechtea]

the way i’ve been trying to stay civil on this whole situation and not say anything that they will definitely see and be hurt by because i know they’re hurting, but then they go and say so many things about me where i feel like i can’t defend myself because i don’t want to embarrass them publicly

[ssaseaprince]

I swear anyone who says Hannibal and Will aren't canon just didn't watch the show. It's not implied, it's not hinted, it's not subtext. It's incredibly romantic and is explicitly said so. The moment and embrace they shared at the end of season 3 was so powerful to me. Just because they didn't kiss or say "hehe want to be my boyfriend?" like they're in some teen romcom doesn't mean they aren't a canonical pairing. They got together at the END of the show after it being stated several times that they love each other and can't live without each other and want each other more than anyone. Lines like wanting to run away together and hungering for each other and "is Hannibal in love with me" are, apparently, completely platonic in some people's eyes or just wishful thinking or, christ, queerbaiting (a point I hope no one has made because it's ridiculously stupid). I'm quite happy with the end of season 3, but I'd hope for a 4th season if only, so they can be a couple on screen and people can stop being dumb about the canon of their relationship

I am so sorry that I have taken forever to reply to this, I lowkey forgot that my inbox was a thing 😅

You are completely right. I want to call it a lack of media literacy, but I'm not sure that's the best phrase. As an autistic person, I completely understand struggling with subtext and needing to have things presented in a straightforward, blunt way. However, with Hannigram, you don't even need to rely solely on subtext. Like you pointed out, Will flat out says, "Is Hannibal in love with me?" And then you've got the entire cast, the showrunner, writer, producers, etc, all saying that they are canonically in love.

And because of that, I really struggle to give people the benefit of the doubt when they say that Hannigram isn't canon or that their relationship is "open to interpretation." Because if you were solely confused due to issues with understanding subtext, then you wouldn't get all up in arms about people pointing out that Hannigram IS CANON.

This honestly leads me to believe that the very vast majority of people who will fight tooth and nail to convince everyone that Hannibal and Will aren't in love is because of homophobia.

We are not used to seeing queer relationships in media. There is maybe a handful of movies and TV shows that revolve around queer relationships. So it is people's knee-jerk reaction to assume that every character is straight and that only heterosexual relationships are canon, and it's because of this bias that they will fight against all queer representation and only accept it when the characters are physically affectionate, and even then they will find reasons to claim it's not valid.

Cishet people are a lot like white people, and men, and basically every other majority, in the way that they feel the need to relate to every single main character, otherwise they can't enjoy the show/book/movie etc. Hannibal and Will have been confirmed as canon, in and out of the show. But these people will fight against it because, whether consciously or unconsciously, the second that their characters are confirmed as queer, they immediately can't relate to them and therefore can't enjoy the show.

They see queer people and queer relationships as so *other* that queer representation literally ruins it for them. Maybe this is an extreme analogy, but it's like watching a movie about humans, and then halfway through finding out that they're robots, and all of a sudden, these aren't people that you're familiar with, they are something other. The knowledge that a character is queer is genuinely so incomprehensible to them that they will do anything to deny it.

And I think that kind of thinking is the biggest problem. It's not always done with bad intention, and it's not always conscious, but it's there. You can see actors and actresses who do the same thing. They have such a visceral reaction to the idea that their character might be queer, that they immediately shut it down. Because if the character is queer, the character isn't relatable, and if the character isn't relatable somehow, the show isn't enjoyable.

By relatable, I don't just mean, "They're straight, and I'm straight." I mean that they genuinely see queer people as completely other from them, and they just cannot grasp the existence of queer relationships as actual relationships and not just vague ideas. Yes, they know that queer relationships are real, but they genuinely can not look at a queer relationship or a queer person and actually have any level of deeper empathy and understanding. They see queer relationships are something completely different then cishet relationship, so the second that a queer relationship becomes the focus, they disengage.

This all relates back to people refusing to acknowledge any kind of queer relationship as canon unless physical affection is apparent.

Obviously, not all straight people do this, but it's an issue that's a lot more prominent than what most people think. As soon as you start looking for it, you see it everywhere. I'm not saying these people hate queer people or don't want queer representation, but this kind of homophobia is just so widely accepted and normalized that it's a knee-jerk reaction, and unfortunately, it's so normalized that people don't even realize they have these biases that they need to get rid of.

Sorry this reply is so long and late coming! I appreciate the ask and love hearing your opinions ❤️

[ninja-muse]

February was a pretty good month! I read some books I really loved (and a couple that were simply meh), I got in a father-daughter visit and had really good luck at Scrabble, the weather was mostly not awful, and even if inventory at work took longer than expected, I survived it without brain mush, which has happened before. I am still the fastest scanner! My title holds.

Regular readers will be unsurprised to learn that Eve by Cat Bohannon and Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse were my top reads of the month, or that What Feasts At Night by T. Kingfisher ranks third. My T. Kingfisher problem is at least a year old, after all. (Also I read a couple delightful picture books, so be sure to click through to find them!)

I'm personally more surprised by my lowest picks, because they both sounded so up my alley but fell flat for nearly completely different reasons. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store ended up feeling disjointed and like it was trying for a theme it couldn't quite grasp, and A Market of Dreams and Desires hit all kinds of tropes I love, right down to random Dickens references and weird steampunk machines, but tied everything together a little too neatly for me. Ah well.

And right in the middle of my list is my sole physical TBR read of the month: The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. This managed to tick off "Canadian author" and "classic" at the same time, so I get triple points. (This might have had a hand in me picking it.) Duddy has aged surprisingly well, in that it's still pretty fast-paced and amusing and also in that Richler wrote it with the understanding that scam artistry, hypermaterialism, and misogyny were bad and y'know what? They still are. I would recommend if you're looking for a Canadian teen anti-hero, more than anything. Duddy is a trainwreck and you can't look away.

I managed to get through the month with only three books hauled. (We won't talk about ARCs but the book fairies were kind.) The Unfortunate Traveller and Under a Pendulum Sun were bought during the habitual father-daughter bookstore date, and both because I never thought I'd see them and figured I might never see them again. The Unfortunate Traveller is essays and travel writing by a guy who co-wrote with Shakespeare and I didn't know it even existed. Under the Pendulum Sun was recced to me somewhere (here? bookish website algorithms?) and since it's essentially a gothic novel with properly weird fairies, it's been on my list.

The third book was a total surprise. Apparently I helped crowdfund it in 2019 and they've only just managed to get it printed and also I said I wanted a physical copy? The things we learn. Anyway, it's essays on aromanticism, agender identity, and asexuality so that tracks.

And I know I said I wasn't going to talk about ARCs but I got some good ones this last month and also in January, and there's a lot of them that are out or soon to be out and I'm having that problem where I want to be reading all of them at once. March is going to be interesting and probably a little panic-inducing.

Click through to see everything I read this month, in the rough order of how glad I was to have read them.

Eve - Cat Bohannon

A history of human evolution, through the lens of the female body.

8.5/10

warning: touches on sexism, mental illness, suicide, miscarriage, and rape

reading copy

Mirrored Heavens - Rebecca Roanhorse

The fractures following the eclipse have deepened and no one can see a way back to peace that doesn’t involve bloodshed. Out in June

8/10

Indigenous cast, 🏳️‍🌈 POV characters (bisexual, third gender), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (third gender, sapphic), Black-Pueblo author

warning: war, torture, mentions of child abuse

reading copy

What Feasts At Night - T. Kingfisher

Alex Easton has returned to kar hunting lodge to relax. Unfortunately, the locals claim there's a monster on a property.

8/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (third gender), protagonist with PTSD

Library ebook

The Twilight Queen - Jeri Westerson

Will Somers, jester to Henry VIII, is caught up in another mystery, this time of a corpse in Queen Anne’s bedchamber.

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 main character (bi), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (gay)

digital reading copy

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz - Mordechai Richler

A delinquent teen grows into a hustler, against the backdrop of mid-century Jewish Montreal.

7/10

largely Jewish cast, Jewish author, 🇨🇦

warning: racial slurs, misogyny

Off my TBR shelves

The Woman With No Name - Audrey Blake

Lonely and craving war work, Yvonne signs up to be the first female spy for the Allies in occupied France. Out in March

7/10

half a 🇨🇦 author

reading copy

The Frame-Up - Gwenda Bond

Ten years ago, Dani turned her art thief mom in to the Feds. Now her mom’s mentor has given Dani an offer she can’t refuse: use her magic to pull an impossible heist, get her life back.

6.5/10

Black secondary characters, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (sapphic)

reading copy

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store - James McBride

The Black and Jewish residents of a Pennsylvania neighbourhood are (mostly) in it together, not least of when the government decides to take a local Deaf kid to an asylum.

7/10

Jewish and Black cast, major character with chronic illness and a limp, secondary Deaf character, Black author

warning: ableist characters and institutions, racist and anti-Semitic characters, sexual assault and molestation, (largely) reclaimed slurs

library book

The Market of Dreams and Destiny - Trip Galey

Deri may have a chance to buy out his indenture early when he meets a princess looking to sell her destiny. But in the goblin’s Untermarkt, nothing’s ever easy.

6.5/10

🏳️‍🌈 main character (mlm), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (mlm, genderfluid), British Indian secondary character, 🏳️‍🌈 author

warning: child abuse, enslavement

borrowed from work

Picture Books

No Cats in the Library - Lauren Emmons

Cats aren’t allowed in the library but that’s where all the books are!

🏳️‍🌈 author

Read at work

Family is Family - Melissa Marr

Chick gets a note before kindergarten, telling him to have his mom or dad walk him to school. Except that Chick has two moms.

🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters and themes

Read at work

Currently reading

Knife Skills for Beginners - Orlando Murrin

Paul Delamare is filling in at a cooking school when the resident celebrity chef has a, erm, "accident."

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (gay), Black British secondary character

Reading copy

True North - Andrew J. Graff

The Brechts move to Wisconsin to restart a rafting business. They hope it’ll save their young family, but it might do the opposite.

library book

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century - Richard Taruskin

A history of early written European music, in its social and political contexts.

The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

Victorian detective stories

disabled POV character, occasional secondary Indian secondary characters

warning: racism, colonialism

Monthly total: 9 +2 Yearly total: 20 Queer books: 4 + 2 Authors of colour: 2 Books by women: 6 Authors outside the binary: 0 Canadian authors: 1.5 Classics: 1 Off the TBR shelves: 1 Books hauled: 3 ARCs acquired: 6 ARCs unhauled: 4 DNFs: 0

January

[aquillis-main]

Not going on Anon for this one because I feel like that's just kind of cowardly when the intention is to have an actual conversation, and not harass or anything.

According to Emily, Chugga flat out didn't apologize in person, though without screenshots on either side it's just he said she said, so take it as you will.

That being said, Masae, who if you may remember was Chugga's friend for a solid decade, came out with the exact same thing.

I hate that this is happening too, but take everything into consideration. Not just Emily. If you don't believe her (which, fair, she's falsely accused people before), then Masae's record is clean on that front, and has no reason to lie. At best, Emile has some serious problems with realizing where boundaries lie, and needs to work on that. Which, Entirely possible that he is. I hope he is. But you can't really expect people to not react negatively to this. If I'm remembering correctly, Lucahjin was in the middle of some big controversy a few years ago and grew to be better. But the onus is on him to actually be better.

Will I personally stop watching him after this? Probably not. But that's only as long as this doesn't happen again.

That's great and all that you came out off of anon to express your opinion on this subject... The thing is, you're missing the entire reason why I'm mad about this whole thing. Sure, Chugga has a problem with boundaries, that's something Chugga has addressed and has stated to have gone to therapy for, and is probably still going to therapy for it. That's good on him doing that. Making him go to therapy, to get better was NOT on Lady Emily's interests, though.

Lady Emily wanted people to slander Chuggaaconroy because she had enough out of context deets for the sole purpose of dragging his name through the mud. Him being forward and pushy, him having a foot fetish, and her being a woman with a famous man were the three strikes of most Internet people's name having their fame removed and people shitting on the famous internet person. She didn't dare call people out for harassing Chugga, she lied about not accepting an apology from him (and, in fact, this whole situation was fixed privately in the past as well), and she deliberately cut context for the purpose of making it seem like Chugga was asking for sexual feet pics when he (ATM only) wanted to see Emily's feet in a non-sexual context. She also was still cool with the whole 'feet pic' bit, and actively participated in it with him. The fact that she wanted to slander Chugga more than keeping every single conversation to herself made Emily shoot herself in her own foot.

It was already handled, the situation was done, Chugga went on to go to therapy like he said. Emily only brought it out because she thought slandering Chugga would be better for whatever she wanted to do than anything 'nice' about it. She only threw everything out there for clout.

I'm not mad because chugga's name got dragged through the mud. I'm mad because all the dragging is by someone who just threw an innocent man under the bus for clout.

[cherrrysue]

Heyy any Larry fic recommendation without very sad moments and has happy endings

Thank u

i'm sure this is a very old question cause it got into the bottom of my inbox and i've been on hiatus for like almost 2 years and sat in my drafts for a few days but i'm gonna answer it anyway lol. so here it is:

comforting fics with happy endings

Escapade by dolce_piccante

M, 146k

In the grand scheme of things, finding a date for a wedding should be no problem for Louis Tomlinson. He's rich. He's handsome. He's reasonably well behaved. But when the wedding is for his lifelong best friend (and former boyfriend), and is happening in under a month, finding a date for the ceremony and accompanying festivities becomes more of an adventure than he ever could have planned for.

Tired Tired Sea by MediaWhore

M, 113k

As a B&B owner on the most remote of all the British Isles, Louis Tomlinson is used to spending the coldest half of the year in complete isolation, with his dog and the sea as sole companions. Until, one day, a mysterious stranger on a quest to rebuild himself rents a room for the winter.

Walk That Mile by purpledaisy

E, 149k

Harry stares at him, the line of his jaw standing out scarily. “I wanted to get the most out of this trip so I planned it carefully.” His voice is low and steady and somehow that’s worse than when he was yelling. “So far, you’ve put your sticky fingers on everything I’ve tried to do.”

“Sticky fingers?” Louis repeats, offended. “Are you saying it’s my fault you got stung by a bee? Had you been alone you would have gotten halfway to the Dotty Diner and ran the car off the road because of an allergic reaction, so don’t go blaming me.”

“Polk-A-Dot Drive In,” Harry spits before getting out of the car. He slams the door shut with a deafening reverb and Louis rolls his eyes. - A Route 66 AU where falling in love was never part of the plan.

we can take the long road home by pinkcords

E, 45k

Late afternoon seeps into the cab, just shy of too warm, and the breeze that crosses window to window tosses their hair in their eyes, around their faces. They ride in pleasant silence, the radio humming softly in the background as they speed down the coast, and when Louis looks over, Harry’s smiling to himself, a private happiness born from whatever’s going on in his head. Louis likes to think it has something to do with him, or at the very least, this adventure they’ve embarked on together, chosen to see through to San Diego. Or, Harry and Louis fall in love down the coast of California.

where the tide takes you, i will follow by pinkcords

E, 53k

There’s no way around his departure, their inevitable fate. Harry will leave and he will return to London and when he sits in his new flat, wherever it might be, he will think of this summer and the warmth the sun brought him and the way it felt to be loved. He will compare all his future relationships to Louis and when they fall short, he will be disappointed. Harry knows this. Or, Louis lives in Gloucester and Harry tries to find a way to stay.

Chasing Empty Spaces by Lis (domesticharry)

E, 79k

The year is 1934 and Harry Styles was to inherent the largest tobacco firm in the south. His parents have picked out the “perfect” girl for him to marry and he has the privilege of receiving the highest education possible. The problem was, Harry hadn’t realized he didn’t actually want any part of that future until he met a mechanic named, Louis Tomlinson.

Adore You by isthatyoularry

M, 66k

“We invited our new acquaintances from uptown. You’ve simply got to meet their oldest son!” said his mother with a flourish, and suddenly it became abundantly clear as to why his parents had so adamantly demanded he join them in Deansville for the entirety of the summer. Against his wishes, Harry spends the holidays at his family’s summer estate, and is reluctantly pulled into a courtship he didn’t ask for. Harry doesn’t want to get married, but Louis does. They don’t fit, but then again they really, really do. Vaguely set in the 1920��s. Headpieces, jazz, fashionable canes, and flapper dresses, and that.

Falling For Me Won't Be A Mistake by Rearviewdreamer

M, 58k

Harry is married to his job and so overworked that he doesn't know how to stop. All it takes is a forced Hawaiian get-a-away, the warm tropical breeze of the island, and the most beautiful, elusive man he's ever seen to make him remember what living is like outside of work. Well, that, and the little souvenir he accidentally takes home with him.

Sodalite & Aventurine by forreveries

E, 80k

The one where, in his travels to find Swan’s elusive treasure, Captain Louis Tomlinson of the Black Dagger discovers he has a stowaway onboard - a stowaway who is rather tall and pretty and pouty and can spout off Shakespearean poetry as though he had written it. A stowaway who is also, unfortunately, secretly Louis’ biggest threat. Captain Harry Styles.

Paint Me In A Million Dreams by green_feelings

M, 112k

Harry's one of Hollywood's biggest actors, has made a name for himself in prestigious films and lives the life of a superstar. There's just one thing missing to make it picture-perfect, but the one Harry's in love with is completely out of reach for him. Enter Louis, one of Hollywood's biggest actors himself, who just came out of the closet and taps new genres in the industry. When Louis sacks the role Harry auditioned for in Scorsese's next big film, their irrational feud starts. Who could have guessed it would get even worse when for promo season, their teams decide to present them as a couple for publicity? In short, Harry's in love with someone and doesn't care about dating anyone else, Louis never felt home in L.A., Liam writes love songs for someone he shouldn't write love songs to, and Niall makes everything better with good food.

Our Lives, Non Fiction by indiaalphawhiskey

E, 113k

Heralded as the next Neil Gaiman, Louis Tomlinson does not appreciate being told that his very serious novel is in dire need of a PR boost. Even worse, that it comes in the form of a joint book tour with the UK’s #1 online romance-writing sensation Marcel Styles. Already turbulent at best, their partnership takes a drastic turn when, overly stressed about his looming deadline, Marcel accidentally blurts out a secret: though he’s famed for his scorching hot literary love scenes, he is, actually, a virgin. Convinced that the only way to rid himself of writer’s block is to gain some experience, Marcel asks Louis, author-to-author, to sleep with him – for Science. And of course Louis agrees because, well, what on Earth could possibly go wrong? Or, a lesson in romance that proves that sometimes the best love stories aren’t always by the book.

Time Passed by coffinofachimera

E, 66k

Louis struggles with their relationship as Harry grows into his identity.

beautiful sound beautiful noise by delsicle

M, 53k

Louis is a washed-up pop star who has spent nearly a year hiding away from the world. Harry is a guardian angel who is assigned to live with him for the summer. Neither of them quite get what they’re expecting.

the impossible now by stylinsoncity

M, 64k

A wish on Christmas Eve sends Louis to an alternate dimension where Harry is a member of One Direction

please leave a like and reblog ˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚

[fallout-mountains]

I’m just gonna write the basic things I like and don’t like about each fallout 4 companion.

(These are likely based on:

Qualities that resemble myself

Qualities I want/don’t want in myself

Are they just enjoyable?)

Preston

Dislike: Have any other hobby beside Minutemen

Like: Just want to do good (and his hidden depression is relatable)

Nick

Dislike: As much as I like watching noir movies, the 1950s had problems I don’t want to be reminded of (despite that Nick doesn’t have those problems)

Like: He gets along fine despite all the bigoted hate he gets. That doesn’t stop him.

Piper

Dislike: Not a good reporter, also kind of basic

Like: Sisterly love (which I am aware she runs away from). Also, she’s hot

Cait

Dislike: Too much into fighting

Like: Doesn’t really get into your business too much

Codsworth

Dislike: Aside from him not fully understanding things and the world so it’s not helpful right after getting out of the vault (like he accidentally sent me to Raiders not knowing they weren’t friendly), he called me “mum”

Like: Once you get to know him he’s very nice. Also, good fighter companion

Strong

Dislike: Most everything

Like: He’s fairly consistent

Hancock

Dislike: giving me “totally far-out, dude” vibes, which makes me think he’s not really understanding Sole, so as just friends it’s fine, but closer seems a little unrealistic

Like: How does he function on that many chems? He’s a loved mayor, and there’s many reasons behind that

Curie

Dislike: I feel like she is in the game for a specific kind of fetish/kink (which I don’t have a problem with fetishes, but if you’re not into it, then it kind of lands flat, because her other characteristics seems to go by the wayside)

Like: Her aversion to violence despite being formidable enough. Also, her love of science

Ada

Dislike: if she had a skill perk, then maybe people would care about her more (I feel bad she’s forgotten a lot).

Like: Not really any judgement. She approves of most everything you do

Deacon

Dislike: He’s a liar

Like: Most of his one-lines are gold, and not self degrading

MacCready

Dislike: most things, especially abandoning his son

Like: He’s feels the most complex, which feels the most human. He also has his own charms. Can actually feel the struggle of living in a wasteland. His 180 change of how he treats you because he likes you is interesting, meaning he isn’t being nice just to be nice.

Danse

Dislike: sooo many things, Arrogance of BoS, his dismissal of most people, he has not tried to learn any people skills, his relation to Sole at the beginning is contradictory (he invites you to be a Knight but also said later he didn’t believe in you)

Like: He tries to uphold good. He’s a good fighter. He’s also hot

Longfellow

Dislike: That being an alcoholic is one of his biggest personality traits. His final speech would be compelling but growing attached to him is harder

Like: He’s pretty chill to just be around. Also fights well enough

Cage

Dislike: He’s a raider

Like: Smart, and proud of himself (but not in an arrogant way). His quests are not self-indulgent at all, like most others

Dogmeat

Dislike: Nothing, just give more kinds of things he can wear and let me pet him

Like: He’s the best boy

[thesungod]

remember in house of hades when annabeth somehow tricked nyx by blinding her with darkness?? the goddess of night?? I just have to shake my head and laugh this series has never been serious

i mean. true. that’s always been a criticized scene tbh.

and y’all.

no one’s denying pjo always had a thing for comedic reliefs and unserious stuff.

ToA is my comfort series and THO may be my favourite pjo book. you guys are speaking with the QUEEN of Cringe Is A Lifestyle here. i had even mostly liked the tsats preview (okay i bullied the star wars conversation and will’s outfits but-).

i’m a very deeply unserious person ❗️❗️

i KNOW that pjo has always been kind of ridiculous. did you hear me complain about the “bro” scene in tsats? no. i actually laughed out loud at that. welcome cringe <3

but you can’t deny Tartarus was overall pretty terrifying in HoH and it seemed a stroll in the park in this book. you simply can’t get me to believe Tartarus is the worst place to ever exist for 15 books and then have Will Solace survive it let’s be real here😭 nor can you solely present Nyx as a comedic relief and than have her be the Big Bad in a later book with really shaky reasons (she wants Nico because… he’s dark? ma’am that’s a minor)

pjo mixed cheeky nonsense humor with good action scenes and compelling characters, while this book’s jokes often fell flat (not always but often). it also personally just bored me and contradicted too much Nico lore for me to enjoy it. i really don’t know what else to tell you

and if you think many of these criticisms can be said about HoO too, I totally agree! one of my first posts on this hellsite was a pretty harsh criticism of HoO. the difference is that HoO had a million protagonists and a million things happening all the same time so at the very least you quite literally couldn’t get bored (and BoO still got close to that and got saved by Nico and Reyna’s part for me). tsats had HoO’s problems without its chaos.

so tdlr: i’m a silly little guy and i love silly little guy stuff!! one of the main reasons i didn’t like this book is precisely that the plot was minimal, nothing really cool happened and it didn’t replicate ToA/pjo style.

[cassiebones]

Wish

Okay, so yesterday, as per my tradition on Black Friday, I went to see Wish. I typically try to avoid spoilers or reviews before seeing the movie myself, but that was kind of difficult this time because people seem to have a lot of strong opinions about this movie.

I don't think my opinions are that strong, but I do have them.

Spoilers below

Firstly, I would like to say that my cousin took her eight-year-old to see the movie, as well. I live in New York and they live in Texas, so we couldn't see it together. My little cousin (the 8yo) loved it. She loves animals, so the part where all the animals start speaking was the best part for her. She also really liked all the characters and all the bright colors. So it gets her stamp of approval, which is - to me - probably the most important part. Because this IS a movie for kids. The kids that surrounded my friend and I in the theater also seemed to like it.

So there's that.

Secondly, I didn't hate the movie. The storyline was solid. It had the classic Disney formula of "character wants something. character encounters a problem. character tries to fix problem. everything gets worse. character calls on friends to help. antagonist finds temporary victory. character and friends come together to defeat antagonist. happily ever after" that most kids' movies have.

I honestly don't think that it was "miscast" exactly, but they could have chosen different actors and it might have been more enjoyable. I do like Ariana DeBose and Chris Pine and I believe they did a decent job. Ariana is a Broadway girl and an Oscar winner for a movie musical, so obviously she can sing. Chris Pine has a good, solid voice, BUT the music in this movie was lacking. I agree with that criticism. I am not sure where they went wrong, but I am certain that it is more the company's fault than the people who wrote the music. The composers can only do so much when Disney is bossing them around. I think there also may have been an issue at my movie theater because the voices were so low that my hearing impaired ass was STRUGGLING to make out what they were saying half the time (did anybody else experience this?), but my cousin said she could hear everything just fine. idk.

I feel like this movie was made solely to make as many references to other Disney movies as they possibly could. Like they had Peter Pan, Asha is obviously Cinderella's Fairy Godmother, the goat speaks about making Zootopia, the king becomes the Mirror on the Wall, and Asha's friends are LITERALLY the seven dwarves. There are probably a lot more references that I didn't catch (because I couldn't hear SHIT), but this felt like a money grab.

And it was short! It was the standard 90 minute Disney movie, but DAMN. There was no short before the movie, which I found odd, and there was very little action. The musical numbers seemed out of place and more like those parodies of musicals where somebody will be speaking normally and then the next person just randomly starts singing. Like in the Central Park scene in Enchanted, but without the comedy of Patrick Dempsey's WTF face.

One thing I really enjoyed, however, was Star. The star was THE BEST CHARACTER in the entire movie. It had no lines, but it had a ton of personality, and it was fucking FUNNY. All it wanted to do throughout the movie was grant wishes and/or set them free for the people who made them. It hated the king, for obvious reasons, and how he wanted to possess all the wishes and keep them for his own selfish reasons. That star was one of the redeeming factors of the movie, but it couldn't have made that much of a different in the grand scheme of things, unfortunately. The movie still just...fell flat.

The king was also an interesting character (I cannot recall his name, nor do I care about him in the very least). He, like most major Disney villains, was a narcissistic asshole. He feeds the kingdom a story about wanting to grant their wishes and make them all happy, but he will not grant wishes if there's even the remote possibility of himself getting dethroned. There's a plot line in the movie about Asha's grandfather (who is 100yo btw) wanting to finally get his wish granted and when she asks him if that can happen, he looks at the wish (gramps playing guitar to a group of people, wishing to "inspire the next generation") and says that it's too dangerous because "what does he want to inspire them to do? rise up against me?" which is the BIGGEST REACH like???? He's so paranoid about people wanting to dethrone him even though literally everybody loves him and tells him constantly how much they love him until he shows his face in the last half hour of the movie. He even has his wife fooled.

But also, he is like a caricature of a narcissistic villain. He has very few redeeming qualities, if any. We don't have enough specific history from him to know what kind of childhood trauma he's dealing with or what is really driving him. He makes a comment that he 'lost my entire family' but not how or what it has to do with the fact that he's the only one allowed to use magic. He has a dark magic book for some reason, which ultimately leads to his villain arc. He descends into madness so quickly, too. Like one day he is this loving, lovable, generous king and then LITERALLY IN LESS THAN 24HR he is evil and consuming all the wishes, like????????? It just moves so quickly. I don't understand it.

Usually, the villains we see in Disney movies are already obviously evil, even when they're trying to hide it. Hans is one of the exceptions, but this king wasn't like Hans. They show us in the previews and the promotional material for the movie that this king is going to be evil. I feel like if we got a Hans-like reveal, then it would hold a lot more punch. But I guess that's the one reference Disney was unwilling to make because then they couldn't have shown off their sub-par, catchy villain tune. It's a shame, really.

Lastly, I am not against Asha being revealed as the "Fairy Godmother" because honestly that would have been a cool reference...if that was the only reference they made. But, like I said, they just did too much with this film. The end sequence even looks like the beginning sequence of all Disney films since Cinderella (with the arch going over the castle and all the fireworks.)

I was really excited when this film was first announced because I love Ariana DeBose and I was excited for another Latina princess (even though she and Mirabel are not technically princesses) to have her own movie, but it just fell so flat.

A lot of people have blamed Lin-Manuel Miranda for the pop music, but he had no part in this film. If he had, maybe the music would have at least been more....seasoned? idk

I give this movie a 4/10 overall. Disappointing, but not entirely bad.

[blazonix]

i think, atleast for me, one of the things that pulled me into finding your wings rendition of kuina was despite everything said about her past life from before-- she still retains her empathy. empathy for the fisherman, her own goals, and her conviction to fight to the very end. ftw to me, was especially impactful in the completely unspoken loyalty between her and zoro, yet learning now about the willing isolation kuina has given herself to and her envy-distraught-desperation at wanting to be someone's sole choice while fumbling with her same relationship with zoro humanizes her in such a very specific way. she's such a complicated character than she gives herself credit for; and that's not even just when she's confusing haki as spitting fire. there's so much development and thought put into her narrative battles that the audience cannot help but see her as her own person, separate of the narrative of one piece. what pulled me in instantly was her questioning of the name of a species that was named after nothing but animals, and after a few rereads i was hooked by the story of tairona, and how with such an unflinching certainty she gave such a clear understanding and willingness, a tie in her old life and a story to tell. in that moment, and even in another life, where she is the one answering that she would find some way to help a man who has a problem; i imagine dragon's voice echoing "you have kindness. you have compassion." (in a world that rewards the opposite). in that moment, it presented a definition that resonated clear, and i would only imagine how tairona felt in that moment, coming from atleast a slight mistrust of humans to an understanding and a friend who he eagerly shoves more items with. now motivated to find a name to call his species that while differentiated them did not make them lesser. i want to see her meet jinbe, fishman island, koala, zou island, reunite with tairona once more. in a world full of fantasy and fictional elements, it is her who was able to shine a light in a real world equivalents and allegories and parallels, to show such understanding to question the smallest things that go beyond the realms of a narrative. just because she cares. she's so beautifully made. the turning of a flat character used as nothing more than a plot explanation of zoro's dream into a protagonist who shines even brighter than her original destiny. she is a shining steel that glints in different light paths. she is freedom, from fate and destiny and the chains that bind her alike. i admire that even the alternate universe version of kuina, one stronger and not bound within the whims of narrative and fate, is one that embarks on the quest of eradicating slavery, devoting herself into such a cause because she was able to find empathy despite even the strongest are preoccupied by conceptual matters far beyond them. so if there's one thing that really stood out, it would be the unconditional understanding.

thank you for writing!

Sorry for the long wait! I've been reading and re-reading this since I got it. And it means the world to me to hear how much Finding Your Wings manages to convey to its readers and the different things they get out of it. Everything you've said is completely correct. Kuina has her faults even if she can't see it - she can definitely be a hypocrite - and she's got the (dreaded) kindness that keeps her from total isolation. And Tairona! Oh, I don't want to spoil it, but we'll be seeing him soon. Such a small thing that gets overlooked is that often the names of the people being oppressed are rarely the names they chose for themselves. And while Kuina can't figure out small talk and social trends, that's one thing she knows about and helps her connect to this new world she finds herself in.

Honestly, part of the reason it takes so long to release a chapter is because of how much thought goes into her actions and reactions and what kind of story is she help telling. I'm thankful to be rewarded with readers like you!

My Friend!Kuina is subtly different, shaped by different events and people, but at heart she sees people who want to just live their lives quietly being kicked down and seethes. Thank you for sending such a thoughtful message!

[fantasyinvader]

Reading more into Romance of the Three Kingdoms...

Cao Cao was known to remove corrupt officials and promote people based on merit. People can make a case that Edelgard is meant to be like Cao Cao, as that's what she says she doing. However, one of the things the game says is that she'll allow the nobility to keep their lands and titles provided they submit to her, with those who don't being the ones she gets rid of. The thing is, Cao Cao was also known to hold his men accountable to the law, he wasn't going to make excuses for their actions if they broke it.

What Edelgard is doing is more akin to what the eunuchs and Dong Zhuo did. The eunuchs would get rid of officials who they didn't like or couldn't afford to bribe them, while Dong Zhuo got rid of anyone who spoke out against him on the grounds of being a rebel. In each case, they became the real power behind the throne rather than the Emperor and it doesn't matter how much “merit” anyone under them has since the reason for their position is corrupt.

(Not to mention, Edelgard attempts to loot the holy tomb before leaving Garreg Mach. Dong Zhuo did looted the Imperial tombs before burning down the capital and fleeing to a new location)

Which leads into the problem with meritocracy. When Cao Pi took over after Cao Cao's death, he did away with promoting people solely on merit. Cao Cao before had absolute power over Wei while using the Emperor as his puppet, and Cao Pi when he inherited that power used it to declare himself Emperor. When one person has absolute power, they can do whatever they want and not have to follow in the footsteps of their predecessor. In Cao Pi's case, he instituted a Nine Rank System that was left in effect until the Song Dynasty, helping stronger clans dominate posts in government and favored an scholar elite over the masses. The fact that the reforms Edelgard put into place in Hopes are outright said during her own route to favor the nobles with rewarding positions while keeping the commoners down, alongside the fact that Edelgard wasn't even thinking about giving a public education to the masses, it just shows how rigged her system is to the nobility. So long as they pledge to support her, they can keep their stuff, but if they refuse they meet Hubert on a moonless night.

The fact that Wei was overtaken by the Sima clan when their leaders died young and their replacements were even younger gives me even less faith in Edelgard's system. If you make a system that promotes ambition, people are going to go as high as they can using whatever means available to them. It can lead to sycophants who hide their inability with ass-kissing, or people who use and manipulate others for their own gain (just like Edelgard did).

And, you know, there's still the fact Edelgard uses the power of the state and violence to force her rule onto people. That's pretty much what hadou is all about, marking her as a non-benevolent leader that goes against Confucian thought much like Cao Cao was. Putting your ambitions or desires ahead of the well-being of others is not virtue, and Edelgard made it clear in Azure Moon she'd blame the commoners if they failed to rise up through her reforms. Yes, she can oppress the masses and favor the nobility through her reforms, but she blames it on the people she says she's doing it for. The fact that i the Japanese script of Flower it's flat out said in the open she consolidates power on herself, well, that was telling about what her true goals were and something Pat would not allow in his translation. It does fit in with old school Chinese strategy though. Of the 36 Stratagems, Deceive the heavens and cross the ocean, basically hide your real goals behind a fake one until you achieve them.

Blind loyalty is also something shown in a bad light in Kingdoms, leading to the fall of Shu. This is kinda the thing with the player, however, following Edelgard after the game constantly shows her lying or withholding information... that's not virtue, because that doesn't best serve them as a leader. Because you don't make them a good leader by doing so, you enable their bad behavior. That's we have stuff with the Mandate telling the people to oust leaders who fall into hadou, where they need to force their rule on the people rather than the people accepting their rule. The people need to keep the ruler in check.

This is something I keep running into. Three Kingdoms isn't some obscure text in Asia, even in Japan people know of it through pop culture. It's just like how The Water Margin (Suikoden) is known to them, in part because they've been writing fanfiction for it for hundreds of years. I feel like this is an element to Houses that can't be replicated in the West, as the story isn't as well known. Maybe people know a few things, but it's not part of the background radiation to their culture. Just like how Buddhism and Confucianism aren't part of our cultural foundations and instead are seen as exotic. It's like how we treat someone being ambitious as a gnood thing, whereas other cultures either view ambitions as a potential danger.

Edelgard is a mixture of various villains in Three Kingdoms. She's what the story was be speaking out against by the fact she's supposed to be the type of leader that the Mandate of Heaven would not support as she's not benevolent. She can dress up her actions as virtuous like Cao Cao does, but it doesn't make what she's doing right. After all, her betraying the player is the twist, and a quote associated with Cao Cao is “Better to betray the world than to let the world betray me.” She'll create more victims because she doesn't want to be a victim herself, even if her understanding of the world is wonky due to Agarthan influence.

[thebuckblogimo]

A jumble of thoughts on a "Monday Moanin.'"

April 3, 2023

People my age--in Michigan, at least--will remember the late Detroit Free Press columnist Bob Talbert. At the start of each week he wrote a piece called "Out of My Mind on a Monday Moanin.'" Here's my attempt at something similar:

Why is it that screw manufacturers persist in making fasteners with "star" heads and other odd shapes. Seems to me they should be "standardized," i.e., able to be turned with either a Phillips head or flat-head screwdriver.

Phrases such as "Dear Valued Customer" or "team members" (when referring to employees) don't ring true for me.

I've always been envious of people with prominent eyebrows. Wish I had them.

I've tried all sorts of body wash products. However, a good old-fashioned bar of Ivory soap still smells the cleanest to me. After all, it's "99 and 44/100 percent pure."

For some reason I still have trouble when trying to properly use the word "existential." Same for "fraught" and "co-opt."

Another tune I've never heard a bad version of is "Stranger On The Shore." Originally recorded by clarinetist Acker Bilk in 1962, my favorite interpretation is by tenor saxophonist Houston Person.

I wonder why people don't do "calisthenics" any more. They were the staples of football practice when I was in grade school and high school: trunk rotations, neck rotations, bridges, shoulder rolls, running in place, jumping jacks and sit-ups while someone holds your feet to the ground.

Back when you could hold a newspaper in your hands, I rarely spotted typos in stories and editorials. Now I see them daily in the online versions I monitor.

When I was a kid I thought it was the coolest thing when I first noticed a party invitation that said, "8:00 p.m. until ?" Loved the mischief that conjured up in my mind.

There is a whole category of words that sound cool to me. Three examples: "shiitake," "charcuterie," and "Kamchatka." (Sort of like the sounds I make when I sneeze.)

I take credit for inventing the "foot shake," as when the sole of the shoe of one person meets the sole of the shoe of another person, after one of them says, "Slip me some sole."

My favorite craft brew is Bell's Two Hearted; my favorite "water beer" is Yuengling (not the light version).

I have no problem with twisting the top off a bottle of beer, but I much prefer using a bottle opener.

When it comes to mass produced domestic beer, I generally prefer "high octane" types as opposed to "light beer." But when I do drink light beer my favorites are, in this order: LaBatt Blue Light, Busch Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite and the late, great Old Milwaukee Light. But never Bud Light. (Stay thirsty, my friends.)

When my favorite football or basketball team is playing on the tube, I prefer watching an important game alone, as opposed to with a large group of people. I see more, notice more that way.

Going all the way back to fifth grade basketball, I can't recall a single kid who wore "0" on his jersey. Maybe that's why today I still can't get used to seeing it on football and basketball uniforms.

I love the numbers 26, 84, 90 and 95 (with a special shout-out to number 59) on football jerseys. My college friends will know why.

I dislike seeing an athlete wearing number 1. I interpret it as saying, "Hey, look at me."

Whoever selects the musical interludes between stories broadcast on NPR has amazing taste. If only I were quicker on the draw to Shazam them so that I could identify the name of each song and it's artist.

I heard the Who's "Pinball Wizard" over the speakers at the gym the other day. I still think it's an ATT--"all-time-terrible."

Last year while visiting my daughter in Chicago, I purchased one chocolate covered glazed donut at Do-Rite Donuts for $3.45. Last fall, while perusing my high school's 1963 year book, I noticed an ad for Golden Boy Donuts with a sign in the background that indicated a dozen donuts cost 75 cents.

I was never one to win spelling bees in grade school, but I eventually got pretty good at spelling words. Now, I seem to be as crappy at it as I ever was.

During the years before retirement, Debbie and I owned three wonderful dogs (Angela, Erma and Wanda). Now, sometimes we walk our kids' dogs (Gadget, Rambo, Gonzo and Paya). It kills me when they try to back-kick grass onto their deposits after doing their duty.

[hpimaginesandblurbs]

PLEASEE we need a part 2 of Draco arranged marriage smut with preg readerr😩❕

mixed with this request: hey, can i request a combo of smut, angst, fluff draco x fem reader where she’s his wife, but draco’s been very busy lately and she needs him, she thinks he doesn’t find her attractive anymore because they hadn’t had sex in a long time, but draco tells her that he still loves her and make love to her? sorry if this is weird, and only if you’re comfortable. anyways have a good day

pairing: draco malfoy x reader

word count: 2.5k

warning(s): 18+, pregnant!reader, mentions of negative body image, mentions of weight gain, oral (female receiving), breast play, pregnant sex

a/n: this is actually part 3 to the arranged marriage draco series, so feel free to read the other two before this one if you haven't already! i love these ones so much. also my fbi agent probably thinks i'm a really kinky pregnant lady based on my search history while writing this but oh well.

part 1 / part 2 

It had been almost two years since your arranged marriage to Draco Malfoy and a lot had changed since then.

Firstly, you two were very much happily in love. Your engagement and the first two weeks of your marriage had been awkward and tense, leading you to find pleasure in the arms of your ex. After an impulsive move to admit your mistake to Draco on the very same day, mixed in with some aggressive sex, you two had decided to give your relationship a real shot. It was the best decision either of you had ever made. And now, two years later, you could happily and honestly say it was a real marriage filled with love.

Secondly, Draco had fully taken over as the sole leader of the Malfoy’s family business. You still weren’t entirely sure what the business entailed even after he had explained it to you a dozen times, but you were still proud of him. He worked hard and that hard work was all for you and your growing family.

Oh, right.

The biggest change in your lives has been your pregnancy. It wasn’t exactly planned but it wasn’t exactly an accident either. The two of you had simply decided to let fate decide, and fate was deciding now. You were six months in and you were really beginning to show. It wasn’t the bump that was the problem, but your husband's reaction. Or non-reaction. You understood he was busy with work and more than likely tired when he finally made it to bed, but he had barely touched you over the past few weeks other than small kisses. You knew he loved you, there was no doubting that, but you were starting to have your doubts about his attraction towards you.

Which led to the current situation unfolding in your bedroom.

“Why are you wearing that to bed? You never wear that much clothing to go to sleep,” Draco asked, his face laced with concern as he stripped from his work clothes near the bottom of the bed.

You almost wanted to roll your eyes. Or scream. Because of course he noticed. He noticed everything. You settled on giving him a non committed shrug, but of course he wasn’t having any of that either.

He quickly rounded to the bed to sit down beside you. “Are you feeling alright?” He asked, already bringing his hand up to feel your forehead.

You quickly pushed his hand away and this time you couldn’t stop yourself from rolling your eyes. “I feel fine,” you replied shortly, praying that he wouldn’t keep pestering you about it.

In truth, you were wearing a full set of pajamas to bed because you just didn’t feel attractive wearing your usual over sized shirts or skimpy, small sets anymore. You knew, rationally, that most of it was in your head, but his lack of libido for you lately wasn’t helping you feel much better about your current weight gain.

“Why all the clothing, then? Are you cold? I can turn the heat up if you’d like,” Draco continued, but he stood back up to continue changing.

“Draco, I said I was fine,” you insisted, barely keeping the annoyance out of your voice.

“Do you have a sexy set of lingerie underneath that you want me to find?” He asked, playfully now.

You scoffed. “Not that you’d fuck me if I did anyways,” you whispered under your breath.

But of course he heard you.

“What was that?” He asked, spinning back around to face you, his shirt half unbuttoned and his tie around his neck. Damn him for looking so good.

“I know you heard me. Don’t make me repeat it,” you replied coldly, rolling over so you didn’t have to face him any more.

“Y/N,” he called, trying to get your attention, trying to get you to turn back around. Once he realized that wouldn’t work, he rounded the bed so he could see your face. “Why do you think that?” He asked calmly, but you could see the desperate confusion all over his face.

“‘Why do I think that?’” You mocked, the question riling you up enough to force you to sit up. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you haven’t touched me in weeks. I know I’ve gained weight and I know I’m probably starting to look like a whale but-”

“Hey, hey, hey,” he cut you off, swiftly climbing onto the bed so he could be closer to you. “Darling, please calm down,” he pleaded softly, gently dragging you onto his lap so he could hold you. You let him move you easily, but you were still uneasy. He held you close and waited for you to calm down a bit and get settled before he started.

“First of all, you don’t look like a whale so let’s get that out of the way. You never have and you never will no matter how big this baby gets. You’re growing a child inside of you, darling. Please don’t be so hard on yourself for something you’re supposed to be doing right now,” he told you, absentmindedly stroking your growing belly. It was a new quirk he had picked up once you started showing - either of you started talking about the baby and suddenly his hand was on your stomach. The familiarity of the movement put you at ease and you leaned further into him.

“Secondly, I haven’t initiated anything because you were telling me how tired you’ve been. I didn’t want to push you into something you didn’t want or end up hurting you or the baby, so I didn’t try anything. I realize now that that was a mistake, because I hate that I made you feel this way, darling. I should have just asked. But please trust me when I tell you I’ve wanted you every day, same as it’s always been and always will be. Merlin, the past few weeks I’ve been going to bed and waking up hard enough to pound nails,” he admitted sheepishly, causing you to giggle.

Even the thought of him being hard had you clit throbbing and your body perking up. The past few weeks had left you desperate and aching despite the fatigue and other pregnancy symptoms wreaking havoc on your body. Despite the seriousness of the conversation, you wanted him now.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He finally asked, cutting off your train of thought.

You debated lying or even brushing off the question, but you knew he wouldn’t drop it unless he was certain you were being honest. Serious conversations called for honest responses.

“A couple of reasons I guess. You work hard all day and I know you’re tired by the time we get to bed, so I felt bad asking. And with the thoughts I was having it didn’t even really seem worth it to try anything because I thought you’d just shut me down,” you confessed, not even daring to look up at him.

“Darling, the day I say no to sex with you is the day my cock doesn’t work,” he said with a chuckle, but his hand came up to grab you under the chin to turn your head to face him. “I think you’re beautiful, Y/N. I have since the day I met you and everyday since. I don’t call you ‘my pretty girl’ for no reason. If you wanted me to make you feel good, you could have just asked me.”

You gave him a small smile, your first genuine one all day. But you jumped at the opportunity. “Even right now?” You asked bashfully, referencing the less-than-sexy pajamas you were wearing.

He didn’t even bother giving you an answer. On your next breath, he was pulling you into a heated kiss that you have been waiting weeks for. You both have been waiting if his enthusiasm was anything to go by.

Gently, so gently as if you might break if he was any rougher, he moved you both until you were laying flat on your back without breaking the kiss once. In mere moments he was stripping you bare, removing your layers until you were finally exposed to him. He didn’t give you a moment to be insecure, though.

“You’re fucking gorgeous,” he murmured, his dark eyes trailing over every inch of your body. You might have thought he was just feeding you compliments if you didn’t see the utter rapture in his eyes, but his look of lust was unmistakable.

You were breathless just from the way he was looking at you, equally stunned and turned on by the way he was devouring you with his eyes. But when he immediately ducked down to lick a harsh trail up your soaked slit, a moan of pleasure got ripped from your throat without hesitation. After weeks of nothing but self inflicted torture, feeling his tongue on you was an otherworldly experience.

“Fuck, I missed this,” he murmured against your aching clit before unleashing himself on you like a starving man. He started on your clit, giving it kitten licks and sucking it in between his lips until your legs were shaking. Eventually, he made his way down to your entrance to fuck you with his tongue, making you writhe against the sheets and practically scream his name.

“Cum for me, pretty girl. I can feel how close you are,” he demanded, his lips a caress against your sensitive skin as he worked you closer and closer to your release with his tongue.

He sucked your clit into his mouth one last time, and that was your undoing. You came with a scream, your back arching obscenely as wave upon wave of pleasure coursed through your body. Despite not having made you cum in weeks, your husband certainly did not disappoint. You doubted he ever would.

You could feel Draco staring at you as you came down from your high, and when you cracked your eyes open you were just as transfixed as he looked. His usually perfect hair was a mess, sticking up in odd places from the way you had mused your fingers through his locks. His lips were swollen and wet, in equal measure from the kisses you had been sharing and his exquisite ministrations on your still throbbing cunt. And his eyes were dark with lust, staring into yours like you held the answer to every question he ever had.

“Did that feel good, darling?” He cooed, his hands trailing possessively up your body as he raised himself to hover above you.

“I want more,” you told him honestly as he took your tender breasts in his hands, tweaking your nipples just to force a whine out of you.

“Keep making those pretty noises and we might be here all night,” he said with a smirk, his head ducking down to suck on the nipples he had just been playing with.

It felt so much better than it usually did, probably thanks to how sore they were. His tongue was soothing every inch of you and every movement caused another pulse of pleasure to go directly to your clit.

“Fuck, I think I can cum like this,” you gasped, pulling his head impossibly closer to your chest.

With graceful ease he doubled down on his actions, licking and sucking on your nipples with fervor as he slipped a hand down to play with your clit. Your body was in sensory overload as he worked you closer and closer to the edge, never once stopping what he was doing just to get you there.

You arched your back, suffocating him with your breasts as you reached your peak. Your cunt clenched around nothing as he worked you through it, his own moans vibrating against your sensitive nipples.

Draco wasted no time in stripping the second your breathing evened out, settling himself in the cradle of your thighs once he was back on the bed at lightning speed.

“Tell me if it’s too much. I don’t know how gentle I can be right now,” he said softly, a warning you’d probably ignore because you needed him inside of you just as badly as he did right now.

You could only nod back, your voice caught in your throat in anticipation. In one swift movement, he was buried inside you to the hilt, both of you giving strangled moans at the sensation.

He started slow, letting your body readjust to his impressive length and girth. You weren’t even sure which noises were yours and which were his, but you did know you were fighting not to roll your eyes back in your head in order to watch him work. He was clearly holding back, but his impeccable self control was shattering as he thrust inside of you.

You knew just how to break him.

“Fuck me like you mean it. Draco, please. I want to feel it in the morning,” you whined, your voice breathy from just his slow movements. You knew you’d be helpless to your own desire once he broke, but you knew it would be worth it.

He took a moment to look at you, an assessing gaze in his eyes. It was sweet that he didn’t want to hurt you, but that’s not what you needed or wanted right now. Far from it, really. He must have liked what he saw because from one breath to the next, you were screaming his name.

His next thrust was brutal, deep and hard just the way you were craving. You knew neither of you would last long like this, not with all the pent up arousal, but it was worth it to feel the powerful movements of his hips as he ruined you.

Despite his lack of control, he was still meticulous in the way he tore you apart. Slowly, he dipped his head down once more to suck a nipple into his mouth. Your back arched as you writhed under him, only pushing his cock deeper inside of you. Once you felt his fingers on your clit, you knew you were done for.

The world was a blur as your climax hit you, your vision and hearing almost nonexistent as he fucked you through it. It was only when you heard Draco let out his own ragged, breathless moan that you felt your body falling back into place underneath him while he released deep inside of you.

You both stayed like that for a time, your bodies still joined and close as you both came back down to earth. It felt almost impossible to catch your breath, but when he pulled out and wrapped you in his arms you felt your entire body settle into him. The silence that fell over the room was peaceful and content, but a stark contrast from what it had been mere minutes ago.

“Go to sleep, pretty girl. I’m staying home tomorrow and at this rate it’s doubtful we’ll ever make it out of bed,” he finally said, his promise coming with a smirk you couldn’t see from your angle but you knew was dancing across his face.

“I like the sound of that,” you conceded, slowly succumbing to the sleep you desperately needed after that, but the last thought you had before sleep took you was that you had never felt more loved, more cherished, more beautiful than right now in his arms.

[olreid]

How did you feel about the reveal that Aurora (and the New Fenian) was dreamt by Niall but with input from Mór? Less of a situation of dreaming a pliant forever loving wife. I think it adds so much to Mór's choices, and also the wider narrative of dreamers who are wracked by darkness and pain dreaming people who are more capable of lightness and joy, but I'm still very curious to see what Aurora's experience of it may be and what questions it raises of autonomy and nature/nurture and creation. Would love to hear your thoughts on whether or not it changed your opinion on the Lynch Family Dynamics.

hmm i mean yes mór contributed but it still was explicitly a case of someone dreaming a pliant, forever loving wife, just with mór's sign-off and input. while we had previously thought that niall maybe dreamt aurora without mór's knowledge, thus violating aurora and mór, we now know mór consented to that process. but that doesn't change the fact that aurora was created specifically to be obedient and subservient in certain ways, and to carry out reproductive labor that neither mór nor niall was particularly interested in taking on themselves; they created a person whose entire purpose was to be less than a person, to be void of agency and autonomy, and that is a terrible thing to do. for that reason, it doesn't really change how i feel about the dynamics of lynch family 2.0; aurora's presence in the family is still just as fucked up as ever, perhaps more so because not one but two grown adults thought it appropriate to bring her into being for the sole purpose of mothering ad infinitum. it does help us get to know mór better, but i just have to be honest in not really finding her whole deal that interesting lol sorry! she was one who i felt suffered for greywaren's disjointedness and came off as pretty flat/like mstief was using her as a (shoddy!) solution to narrative problems rather than actually trying to create a fully fleshed out person.

re: the angle of "dreamers who are wracked by darkness and pain dreaming people who are more capable of lightness and joy," it doesn't hold a lot of interest for me personally due to it feels reductive of dreams' emotional complexity... to imply that dreams are not also wracked by darkness and pain is i think false; they experience much pain and suffering stemming from the fact that those around them often don't recognize them as fully agentic beings as well as from the tension which arises between their static dreamt purposes and their mutable human desires. conversely, even dreamers who feel themselves incapable of lightness and joy are shown to be capable of those very things, just incapable of recognizing their capacities for such. so i'm not as interested in drawing such distinctions between dreams and dreamers as i am in investigating what prompts the characters to draw and maintain those false distinctions in the first place, if that makes sense.

my investment in how dreaming functions in the series stems mainly from reading dreamers as people who are imbricated in dysfunctional family systems using dreaming as a method of outsourcing labor - often emotional labor - that they are unable or unwilling to perform within the context of said family system, whether because a given dream is able to express those repressed emotions or because a dream functions as a receptacle for abuse which is its own form of emotional release. i read your ask's framing as focusing more on the dreaming as art angle, whereas i tend to read dreaming more along the axis of what it has to say about reproduction, both literally as in creating people but also in the sense of reproducing emotional patterns and ways of coping (or not coping) with repressed traumas.

but that's not to say your reading isn't textually grounded also, and that's part of the messiness that comes with the dreaming in tdt as a metaphor that is supposed to operate on several registers simultaneously. all told, we have: (1) dreaming as metaphor for artistic practice, (2) dreaming as metaphor for mental illness, (3) dreaming as metaphor for chronic illness/disability [which is of course not necessarily separate from mental illness but separated here just for broad thematic purposes], (4) dreaming as reproduction/childbearing.... probably other more minor ones i am forgetting.. ultimately i think mstief puts too much weight on this device and it can't do all of the thematic work that's set out for it, as evidenced by the tension that arises when, for example, you try to read dreaming as both artistic production and literal reproduction; i have a hard time focusing on the art reading when what's being produced is often a literal person with their own subjectivity and agency rather than an inert art object. anyway

[chil2de]

hi yes the benimaru fic i mentioned earlier— fire force fandom will you let me in please??🥺🥺 i don’t know what i’m dealing with fanbase wise mmfldjfj sometimes it feels like i’m head over heels for bens by myself so... i’ll drop this here for now.. see how it goes and i’ll continue w/ a second part if ff isn’t dead

nsfw themes throughout, so please read my disclaimer if you’re new. enjoy :)

w.c: 1.7k, characters: 9.6k (incl spaces)

-

there’s a certain sluggish quality that plagues your movements. it’s not fatigue or incompetence. or so benimaru would hope.

his mix matched gaze glosses over your unnecessary movements. that extra exhale you hiss, the additional bat of your eyelashes and the excessive perspiration that drips onto the earth below.

“stop.” he commands, tone low and stern as it pierces through the open air.

“huh? captain shinmon, i’m fine. we can keep going.” you huff through laboured breaths, pausing to gasp and drink in the plentiful oxygen around you.

“it’s one thing if you’re overworking your muscles. it’s another if you’re running a fever. go inside.”

“b-but captain-“

benimaru shoots you a dead stare, keeping his statement rooted deep where he stands.

judging by the bruises that adorn your knees, you know better than to disobey the captain.

“waka! have you seen (l/n)?” konro lingers in the doorframe of the main communal area, gaze scanning for one of his colleagues.

“she’s in her room. why?”

“her room? she has a few errands to run. is she feeling okay?”

“she’s running a fever.” benimaru exhales, shifting to get up from the table. he lightly scratches the back of his neck, adorning that usual aloof facial expression.

“in the middle of summer? how’d that happen?” konro chuckles through a small glimpse of bewilderment. of course he’d be concerned for one of his best recruits.

“hell if i know. what do we need? i’ll head out.”

if anything, benimaru is probably the sole reason why you’re running a fever. why he subjected to railing you underneath water that felt like it was nearing sub-zero was beyond you. it’s not like he’s about to admit he enjoys fucking his special little fire soldier. how he relishes and engrains the sight of your fucked out facial expression deep into his head, burning the image into his retinas. shit, you wouldn’t be surprised if the reason why he sometimes spaces out is because of you.

it’s always been blatantly obvious that you’re the captain’s favourite, no matter how much he denies it and how many glares he shoots at the people from other companies. you’re always left apologising for his behaviour, attempting to keep a straight face.

for the one time you dragged him out to patrol with you, and the amount of incessant whining, complaints and bribes you offered your captain, after a full month of lovely slow burn he decided to come along with you. he just up and left, had the audacity to turn around and ask you why you’re still standing there. benimaru always kept his distance to yours close, in fact the separation was almost minimal. you could feel his shoulders ghost over you.

every time he noticed someone staring at your figure for a little bit too long to be deemed appropriate, he hissed a scoff of distaste. at around the third or fourth person, you were already forced to deal with his short temper.

“what the hell are you gawking at? mind your damn business.”

but sure. apparently you’re not his favourite.

he can scoff and complain all he wants, but that won’t stop him even now from lazily snaking his hand around to his favourite baby girl’s waist. to him, this seems like the most normal thing.

“how else is she going to stand upright? she’s all stick and bones, the wind will knock her right over.”

okay, benimaru. you keep telling yourself that. even when his fingers feel an itch every time they’re not touching a part of your skin. he tends to get a whole lot more mouthy and irritable every time you’re not around, too.

hell, even his own townsfolk pick up on the fact that he’s out and about more. rounds that he always left to the lesser important underlings became more commonplace, especially with you by his side.

but the things that go on behind closed doors?

his peppermint red eyes that haunt your mind, infiltrating your very thoughts. you could be minding your business, going on about your day until you get an abrupt flicker of his mundane tic-tac-toe gaze staring up at you from in between your thighs.

you could be taking care of hinata and hikage, entertaining their antics when you feel the weight of benimaru’s stare burn holes into your uniform.

you could be doing your daily sparring with the captain. in the zone, breath held and blood stream steady until you remember the feel of his hot tongue trailing along the side of your neck. for someone who seems to be stuck in a perpetual state of sadness, you always catch the arrogant smirk that pulls at his lips.

“thinking of something?” he’ll cock his eyebrows, using the distraction to take a jab to your gut.

you groan, stirring around in your bed. you hate him, hate that stupid half lidded gaze of his. you hate how soft his wavy jet black locks are. the way the strands tug and bend whenever you try to yank his face away from your cunt. you run your fingers through your hair in a valiant yet futile attempt to free your thoughts from your captain. it’s only three o’clock in the afternoon, and you haven’t done anything but reminisce about your lover for the past hour and a half.

a meek and uneven sigh hisses from your lips. your eyes screw open and you flinch at the hard sunlight that pours in from the window. as you use the inner portion of your elbow to shield your gaze, you catch glimpse of a very familiar figure in the doorway.

“captain shinmon?” you inquire, propping yourself up onto your elbows. he closes the door behind him. you’re certain that you looked like a loyal dog sat panting and wagging its tail upon discovering the return of their owner.

“excited to see me?” he remarks in a flat tone, opening the grocery bag he’s carrying before setting a few things down onto your nightstand. it’s mostly medicine, though he snags a few of your favourite snacks and drinks. there’s also one of those fascinating green tea bottles that you buy at the vending machines, except they’re served piping hot.

“how’re you feeling?”

“i told you i was going to get sick if we had the water that cold.” you huff, averting your gaze in a fit.

“not my problem you can’t take a little temperature difference”

“a little? that shit was freezing! how the hell can you take water that cold?”

“how can you not?”

you chuckle a little, shifting to stare up at the ceiling.

“don’t you have paperwork to do?”

“you know i don’t do paperwork. sure as hell not gonna start doing it now.” benimaru huffs, kicking his boots off by the door. you can hear his clothes rustling and your head snaps to face him. he shoots you a glare, as though to scold you. it’s dripping on his face. ‘really? you’re so eager.’

“move up.” he cocks his head to the side, motioning for you to move over. you shift up, room spinning a little too much for your tastes. the mattress dips with his weight and his right arm (our left) reflexively hangs in the air for you to dip your head into the crook of where his shoulder and collarbone meet. he discards his navy kimono, the article of clothing hangs on one of the hooks at the back of your door. it’s probably not much comfort for him to be relaxing in a bed with half of his uniform still on.

you squish your face against his hard chest, head rising and falling in time with his breathing. the said arm relaxes and his hand rests against your shoulder. subsequently, you realise this is the first time you’ve seen him fully without his kimono on. at the very least, he’d still have the other sleeve on.

benimaru notices your blatant staring at his other arm. he can’t comprehend why you’d gawk at it now, since he’s used it plenty of times to choke you.

he hums a small ‘hm’ in question, asking you what you’re so fascinated about. you can feel his voice thrum and rock against his chest, it sends small shivers licking your body that he doesn’t miss.

“you look so funny without your kimono on. why don’t you wear it like this more often?” you drag your nails softly against his biceps. there’s a small groan that hisses from him. as you await his response, you outline a large vein that runs from his upper arm and trails down all the way to his wrist.

“i get cold easily.”

“then why did you take a shower with me?”

“are you hearing yourself?”

surely a little bit of his body temperature was enough to sacrifice. even if it meant he was sneezing a little bit and shivering afterwards.

“seriously? you can take a tranquiliser but you can’t stand a little cold?”

“you’ll make a shitty wife if you can’t even keep me warm.”

“beni!” you hiss at benimaru in appaul, craning your face up to guffaw at him. the manners on him sometimes are despicable.

you pout, shifting your upper weight to flick benimaru in between his eyebrows. he screws his face in mutiny, lips curled into a scowl.

you and him both know that if it were anyone else flicking him like that, they’d be sent crashing through six different blocks of houses down the street.

“oi.” he warns you, tutting.

“konro come by and work some voodoo magic bullshit on you? ‘cause you’re testing your luck by pissing me off. you’re such a menace when you’re sick, it’s unbelievable.”

you hum in awe, inching your face closer towards his. there’s a wave of mockery that paints your face green and you can only laugh at the unrest that swirls in benimaru’s eyes.

he won’t have his pet talking down to him like that. no, no. that just won’t do.

“oh? really? you want me to do it again?” you flash him a cocky smirk, digits curled into a flicking position. you rest the bridge of your middle finger against benimaru’s forehead, slicking some of his charcoal stained locks out the way.

his left hand flies to catch your hand in an instant. with just two of his fingers, he can wrap himself around your wrist. his touch is assertive, firm. he can drag you the fuck away from him as he pleases, but there’s no real malice or force behind him just yet.

“yeah? try me.” he barks, peering down at you through his lashes.

you just might.

[miraculouscontent]

Anonymous submitted:

All of the talk about how Adrien supposedly ‘deserves’ things falls flat because he does nothing to earn them.  Four seasons and counting, and he’s built up a far larger list of all the reasons why he cannot be trusted.  Not as a partner (whether superheroic or romantic), not as a friend, and not as a person.

To hear his defenders tell it, Adrien deserves everything he desires solely because he wants it.  Oh, they’ll desperately try making up reasons, inventing them out of whole cloth, but the fact remains that practically everything he has said and done throughout the entire run of Miraculous Ladybug has demonstrated that he refuses to be responsible or take things seriously.

“Kuro Neko” even makes this explicit – his brief stint as Catwalker illustrates that he is in fact fully capable of treating Ladybug with basic human decency, but actively chooses not to because he couldn’t be BOTHERED to do so.  Plagg quite literally tells him that he has to shape up in order to prove himself, and yet it’s all ultimately in service of restoring the status quo and letting him revert back to his usual bad behavior.

Subsequently, anyone who tries pointing to Catwalker as evidence that Adrien has 'earned’ anything is completely ignoring that it was a temporary measure on his end, with the explicit goal of deceiving Ladybug.  Adrien has no intention of making the effort necessary to gain her trust, because he is convinced that he 'deserves’ what he wants by default.  And it’s just not fAaAaAiIiIiIiIiRrRrRr that he’s not being handled everything on a silver platter, you know~?

Chat Noir, in their eyes, has “earned” everything because:

1 - he’s sad/has a sad backstory (of about one to two years since that’s how long his mother’s been gone and that’s where most of his angst lies)

2 - he sacrifices himself over and over (therefore Ladybug “owes” him I guess; have literally seen that argument before and I just cannot--)

3 - he “loves” Ladybug and the show keeps infantilizing him by pointing out how much of a “sad widdle kitty cat” he is and making his problems everyone else’s problems

And Adrien acting “mature” and “gentlemanly” as Catwalker and how sAd that is? Because of course, civilians shouldn’t be expected to act differently as heroes! Not like Marinette has been constantly suppressing herself to try to give the impression that Ladybug is this perfect individual (and feeling awful when the Marinette part does slip out) because that’s how the job is supposed to work.

[aeide-thea]

Some Small Dumb Projects Wot Yrs Truly Has Tackled Lately, all of which (it should be emphasized) involved some degree of experimentation that would probably scandalize actual experts:

experimentally felting a bit of roving onto the threadbare heel of an old smartwool sock as a patch. we will see how this goes! an obvious problem with this approach is that if yr sock becomes too much felt and too little knit you will no longer be able to get it onto yr foot. also frankly highly probable that i haven't felted the patch on *enough* and it will pull away either in the wash or in the wearing. but worth a try, i thought! shd note that bc the roving i have is vaguely cream-colored, while the sock in question is dark brown, the fibers of the patch are absolutely visible on the outside and it looks very stupid. fortunately i find that charming!

rebuilding the heels of my birks, which, yes, i DO wear with increasingly-thick socks as long into the fall as i can get away with it. glad the fashion world is coming around on this deeply gorpcore move. but anyway: i have been a heel dragger since my stroller days and continue to be, so that portion of my soles reliably wears away disproportionately quickly. Real Birkenstock Repair Places, understandably, want more money than i want to pay them to fix this, so instead i bought a bit of foam sheeting for a dollar at michaels a while back, along with some contact cement, and have been cutting out little heel pads, cementing them on, and then cutting/sanding to size. it honestly works pretty well! really the only downside is that because the foam i bought is softer than the original soling, it needs redoing more often; someone on etsy sells half-sheets of actual birk soling foam for less than ten bucks last i checked, so at some point i might try getting some and seeing how that goes. (it would alter the process slightly because in order to preserve the treading pattern, which my current foam doesn't have, i'd need to cut away the relevant portion of the preexisting sole, rather than just sanding down the patch. seems doable though! i might try it once i run out of this foam but like. even this method honestly lasts a while so. we'll see.)

changing the fucking flat i mysteriously gave myself (more on this in a bit) maybe last week sometime?? this would not be a big deal at all except that i have gatorskin tires which, while *great* for avoiding punctures, are unbelievably terrible to get on and off the wheel, because they're SO tight. i have googled about this in the past and wound up on bike forums that led me to the depressing albeit validating conclusion that no, there was nothing i was doing wrong, these tires just suck to change. in theory the upside is that you don't have to DO it that often because they prevent punctures! but if you wind up with a flat for a different reason... sadface. now the reason *i* had a flat was that the last time i went to stick a little extra air in my tires, i somehow managed to (as i thought at the time) totally fuck up the valve with my bike pump. this was extremely irritating and also extremely confusing, because i've used this bike pump many times without issue! fine, i said, i'll swap out the fucking inner tube. once i calm down. then i fucked up another inner tube pumping it up. what the fuck, i said, very furious at this point and also very mystified. fine. guess i'll go to the LBS and get ANOTHER fucking inner tube. (some people, at this point, would have explained their difficulties to the LBS employee who assisted them and asked for advice. i did not. this was partially for soc anx reasons, partially because i'm always braced for condescension from the cis men who staff every LBS i've ever been to [this is probably unfair because ALMOST every time they've actually been really lovely to me! but alas, i have a big gendery chip on my shoulder. stuff 2 work on.], and partially because i do just get more gratification out of figuring a problem out for myself! toxic masculinity, etc.) at this point (armed with, may i remind you, my *third* inner tube) i was like, okay, what the fuck. time to do a google. so i said to google, bike pump unscrews valve. talk to me. and discovered: some presta valves have removable cores! which i guess has some utility, although not for any use case i personally have, but when you've got a pump that screws on... shocker, unscrewing it can also unscrew the valve core, if it isn't absolutely thoroughly tightened. so! massively irritating but also educational. i bought a little valve core tool, which is tiny and adorable, and tightened down the valve core of, again, my third inner tube before trying to inflate it: hey presto, success. so, you know, now i have two extra inner tubes hanging around unspooled and flaccid, that there's actually nothing wrong with! which i guess is cool, because it means i still have them to use at a later date, but, you know. good luck 2 me with folding them back up into a configuration it's at all possible to carry... we'll see how that goes. but on the whole i feel like: i learned a thing and also seem to have a rideable bike again! so. choosing not to be TOO bitter. :)

and this has been today's installment of Extremely Long-Winded Anecdotes Abt Very Mundane Problem-Solving with yr friendly-if-incompetent host K! thx for spending this time with me. :)