#hindsight is a hell of a thing

[spooky-kakashi]

im actually gonna goo insane

[serenova]

and when you grow up with a parent who also has it, a lot of stuff YOU think of as normal turns out.... are not

I got diagnosed super early at like age 10 (which was a bloody fucking miracle since it was the 1990s and Im a girl) and ever since it's been a slow realization for my mom going "wait a minute......"

(rant below the read more because I accidentally went off here sorry not sorry)

it's exhausting, and frustrating, and even with meds you're constantly fighting your own brain

it makes holding down a job hard, like, can't do a standard 9 to 5.... I work at a grocery store at 37. my husband on the other hand is a MECHANICAL ENGINEER. I had to give up on my dream of being an astrophysicist because of issues related to ADHD and my other learning disabilities

and yes it's a fucking DISABILITY

anyone who says "learning difference" hasn't actually dealt with being disabled by the way their brain works... it's a fucking DISABILITY. I take medication because my neurochemical balance is wrong. a DIFFERENCE is hair color, or eye color... a disability NEGATIVELY IMPACTS YOUR LIFE

AND GUESS WHAT ADHD HAS A FUCKING NEGATIVE IMPACT

everything is 10x more exhausting because it's CONSCIOUS, like, I have to *actively* REMEMBER to grab my keys every time I leave the house (as a singular example among MANY)

there are no such things as habits for the ADHD brain. you can make SKILLS muscle memory, like, I can knit without looking at my hands because muscle memory. I can tie my shoe laces without thinking because muscle memory. but brushing my teeth? washing my face? SHOWERING? all of those and more take conscious thought. and sometimes you don't have the mental energy to do it. and it sucks

then.... fucking then....

you do something like take the RAADS-R (a self administered version) *twice* and score a 183 and a 203, say to your cousin-in-law at Thanksgiving "oh I think I may be AuDHD" and he goes "I thought you KNEW!"

which is a hell of a mind trip, and then you talk to ANOTHER friend who is AuDHD and she goes "wait you didn't know??????"

and then a whole lot of shit starts making a hell of a lot more sense when you see both sides of it

people make fun of people with ADHD for saying that everything is a symptom of ADHD. and that's fair. it's annoying. but please understand. having ADHD is an endless conga line of realizations that some shit you thought had nothing to do with your ADHD is actually a symptom of ADHD. so eventually you're just like "probably that too, yeah, fuck it" whenever basically anything happens

[adobe-outdesign]

SV's marketing: here's a few simple teaser trailers, enjoy

SWSH's marketing: go to this page that we Missingno'd to see a heavily pixelated image of the new Pokemon that we also rotated horizontally and flipped. Also don't forget to check out this 24 hour livestream where nothing happens

[iicaru2]

thinking about how the first time i ever actually got gale killed in a fight was in my first origin gale run, which also happened to be my first time playing an origin character— so it startled me when not only was gale thrown into actual literal lava, but i was also thrown into control of the next character in my party setup (astarion) and gale was suddenly talking to me at length, after like 30-ish hours of silence, about the long and complex process to reviving him so that he didnt Fucking Nuke the entire underdark.

and you know. i did what anyone would do: panic use a regular revivify scroll to bring him back and not touch his true resurrection scroll with a ten foot pole. because i didnt understand a single fucking word he said. it worked out fine by the way, he didnt nuke a whole ecosystem, but it did scare the shit out of me for no reason.

[winepresswrath]

Darla/Angelus is also great because the show has a competing designated OTP and they exist to serve as contrast and hateful competition to THE ship. they are soulless monsters even by the standards of soulless monsters, they literally make the other soulless monsters go "yikes... your relationship seems not good maybe." but they love each other so fucking much. the writers can't help it. they are constantly trying to find their way back to each other. the way she hits him over a head with a shovel and leaves him to an angry mob while he tries to say he doesn't mind dying if it's with her AND the way they coo about it to each other afterwards. the way she takes him back against her better judgement because she missed him so so much but then kicks him out again later because he still can't be who she needs him to be. that's just how they say i love you.

[vaguely-concerned]

to begin with I think previous relationship trauma (max got real Weird and unpleasant about rye showing off too much with his magic in ways that reminded him that his prized pet mortalitasi actually wielded vast power of his own outside of what max could confer upon him through his name and money) and uh magical masking for lack of a better term (having long since realized how nevarran magic is viewed by outsiders and knowing he already has enough of the mannerisms of an extremely weirdly socialized crypt baby that he needs another social weak spot like a hole in the head) would make rye avoid doing necromancy specifically in front of lucanis for a long time whenever he could help it, especially as lucanis is quite vocally dubious about necromancy and the necropolis itself initially.

(rye watching lucanis like a hawk as he drags him along into the depths of the necropolis and to hezenkoss’ party to try to determine if this is going to be the sticking point and — with the muscle memory of trauma that has a lot less to do with lucanis in actuality and a lot more to do with rye’s unconscious dialogue with his own history — how he can maybe shape himself into something more acceptable, if so. like… DON'T BE WEIRD!! HE IS GOING TO THINK YOU'RE WEIRD AND LOSE INTEREST FOREIGNERS CAN BE WEIRD THAT WAY!!! THE SKULLS COULD BE A DEAL BREAKER WE MUST CAREFULLY DETERMINE THE LAY OF THE LAND BEFORE WE GO THERE!!! SOME TASTEFUL SUMMONING OKAY, HE’S KIND OF INURED TO SPIRITS BY NOW SURELY, BUT HOLD THE BONES UNTIL WE KNOW FOR SURE. the ‘I can deny whole parts of myself forever if it means that you will stay’ gambit (do NOT try this at home it’s an understandable siren song to be drawn towards when previously wounded but it does not in fact tend to end well this has been a PSA))

by the end of the game rye knows with his brain that lucanis would not in fact drop him like a hot coal over the bones, but what your brain thinks it knows and what your heart thinks it knows… not always the same thing, huh. Even with the proven knowledge that lucanis loves him to the god killing end of the world stage and beyond, I think some deeply buried raw part of rye would still hold on to this remembered flinch and do its best to not be known. 

The masking translates into other things than magic/necromancy as well — while Rye does feel genuinely in over his head as to the task before him in the Veilguard story (it’d be kind of wild to have any other reaction, considering lol), he habitually performs a level of haplessness that’s not truthful too, for a multitude of reasons — to make himself seem unthreatening, to convey the ‘hey I’m just a little guy (please don’t metaphorically and emotionally hit me I’m literally just a little guy max)…🥺’, to hide and sheathe the sharper edges in and not let on that he a) is actually pretty clever in a way the societies of thedas might not prefer for an an elf, even one who’s a watcher, to be seen to be and b) can be a vindictive bastard once roused… it can be an interpersonal swiss army knife to just give the gentle impression that you have no fucking idea what’s going on at all times fhdsakj. Varric didn’t buy it for even five milliseconds, but that’s part of what made Varric what he was to Rook, most people are quite willing to go along with that projected image for their own comfort (make yourself seem harmless and easy to dismiss and you will be left alone to do your own thing in the background uninterrupted quite a lot of the time hashtag rye ingellvar life hack. Wait. why am i so lonely I could cry I’ve only cut off all avenues of genuine expression in myself. This is surely completely unrelated) or because it occasionally awakens a protective impulse in people (davrin goes there sometimes), or whatever. the little black dress of social navigation that is being chronically underestimated.

rye’s relationship to his necromancy is also borderline, vulnerably religious and deeply complex in many ways independently of any of this, especially after his (perceived) exile from the necropolis. He does break the ol' dance macabre out on a couple of notable occasions over the course of the game — occasionally when he’s hanging out with emmrich, and when the Formless One tries to pull its bullshit in rye’s own damn childhood home living room (the GALL!!!). within the context of the necropolis itself he’s willing to let lucanis witness his Watcher Persona (‘don’t worry that’s my jobsona you won’t have to deal with that outside this house of many mansions if you don’t want to! :) ’). But I feel like that fearful ‘if I never put it to the test I’ll never have to find out if that is where the good thing breaks bad and everything will be safe, I’ll never have to know’ impulse is also a big part of it. Again, a largely a subconscious one, of course, I don’t think he would be aware of this consciously, but it’s a system of thinking that’s always active beneath.) 

And furthermore I think lucanis would eventually pick up on this — through such nefarious tactics as ‘actually paying attention’ and ‘genuinely wanting to deeply know rook as a person’ (*rye voice hissed out in distress while clearly sweating nervously*: ah shit… I planned for every eventuality but this one… fuck’).  and once lucanis understood why (at least to the extent that it involves ‘rook anxiously cutting himself into pieces trying to render himself palatable (to me???!! :( )’) it would probably kind of break his heart. and also make him carefully cradle rook’s face between his palms and go 'hey. hey please look at me? do you really think cutting off a whole part of yourself to make me comfortable is what I want. Have I done and said something that made you feel that way, and how can I avoid ever doing that again. do you think I love you so cowardly' (his face is doing the thing it does in the coffee scene with harding through this whole thing, needless to say. rye is toast immediately it is so over for him he’s done for pray for him), and caught completely off guard rye is like '🥺...nohoho😭😭😭' and promptly sobs into lucanis' shoulder for like half an hour while lucanis kisses his hair and rocks them back and forth (and spite is like ‘???!!?! well lucanis seems to be handling it but this is like advanced mortal shit I’m not sure I quite get this one yet’). 

Justttt… Them talking about it finally once Rye is capable of talking again and Lucanis bemusedly cradling rook’s hands in his and venturing ‘...did you think I somehow missed all the fifteen foot tall corpse statues before I married you or…?’ (‘HAH! well when you put it like that my clever ruse does lose some of its integrity you’re right’.) You know one of those precious conversations where someone is able to pick through the strange and twisted overgrown paths in your brain with you to figure out why the hell you do this thing you tend to do and maybe clear some new less troublesome paths in the process, in a way that feels safe and doesn’t make your neurons shut the whole show down nothing to see here please come back later? Yeah, it’s one of those, they get pretty good at those which is good since both of them have some uuuuh Issues to get through.

One of Lucanis’ most endearing qualities to me (they are many and diverse) is the way he seems to really enjoy listening to people he cares about talking about things they’re interested in, even if his own investment in the subject is negligible at the outset. (see him working intrepidly to understand the basic deal with necromancy and finding satisfaction in understanding the necropolis’ financial role in nevarra (lmao I love you lucanis) in emmrich banters, or quickly warming to and engaging with taash’ descriptions of how to fight dragons despite ‘*sigh of deep sincere exasperation* having had enough of dragons’.) so considering how much he canonically enjoys just listening to romanced rook speak about literally whatever and his own unique position in regards to spirit matters (and of course the helpful fact that he is completely unbothered by dead bodies as a baseline), I feel like there’s every chance that he’d actually get quite invested once rye opened up and talked more about it with him unfiltered. Being so ravenous for and open to the corners of your partner’s soul you don’t quite understand or even necessarily have instinctive ‘liking’ for on first brush but growing to understand and love them over time because it is all them (and also getting tricked into liking yourself a bit more by being seen through their eyes oh no I knew there was a catch) feels like a very central thing in their relationship. Permission to be everything you are including all the unlikeable annoying unsettling or difficult things you hide from other people not only granted, I am begging you on my knees for it share it all with me my hunger for you is endless sort of thing. The mutual ‘Please be your full weird self with me I want to study you for the rest of my life’ going on. Unspeakable. 

They both have had to exile their anger so far away from them to in their upbringings (Lucanis has had to navigate Caterina all his life, and Rye was raised to understand that raging, raging against the dying of the light is ultimately futile, young watcher, can you not skip this particular developmental stage for your own good and our convenience we've got stuff to do these corpses aren't going to bury themselves (it would be so gauche to ask them to)), I think having a space to safely explore being angry and sharp and unpalatable together is like. Revelatory there. Lucanis is the first (perhaps only) person Rook actually confides in about his deepest beliefs and duties as a Watcher eventually, and like… sex is not nothing, to be sure, I think they have some very good tender life-affirming AND room to express some rarely seen corners of the soul stuff going on that way… but THAT conversation is the final frontier of intimacy for him honestly. Once that is open he’s let himself be seen in life and death and there’s no fear left at all. 

I feel like Lucanis does make his own peace with the Necropolis in the end aside from just accepting it as an important part of Rook’s life in the way that like… you know, when you’re an abomination with all the cultural baggage that comes along with it in most andrastian nations, there must be a comfort in knowing there’s a place you can go where you are not going to be even the fiftieth weirdest thing in any given room at any given time. He wouldn’t want to stay there all the time, but it’s nice to have those normality checks sometimes. Reassuring, in a way, even with all the grinning skulls bouncing around.    

Annnd as a final note (why am I like this)... a little funny and weirdly moving that I imagine Lucanis would in fact have the exact opposite reaction from Max’ to seeing Rook be ruthlessly unapologetically competent (that is, not only entirely unthreatened but also incredibly underlyingly enduringly horny). Rook in battle already makes him resort to effusiveness otherwise reserved for descriptions of coffee, we could be in for some incredible scenes here in a post-game scenario (I’m imagining him with his eyes full of stars, grabbing davrin by the lapels and shaking him a little in sheer overwhelmed emotion as he’s like “have you ever seen rook fight???? mierda it’s like watching light moving over water” *davrin patting him on the shoulder and covertly rolling his eyes like ‘yeah yeah buddy’ as rook falls upon the enemy like a wolf upon the fold in the background*). 

[turnedpalefromlackofsun]

i wrote a fanfic

[m4gp13]

Nemesis meeting Ethan's mortal parent:

[thatneoncrisis]

not to bring negativity into your ask box but sometimes (hold on keep reading this is a generally positive statement) i think you’re too mean about certain things in tlt fandom BUT THEN i actually see how the majority of this fandom acts and interacts with tlt and other pieces of media associated with it and i get so upset i want to explode… so thank you for being someone i can reliable come to for good opinions <3 and frankly when your opinions are harsh it’s because they’re honest and the honest truth is that people are annoying and wrong

you know, this is some pretty important insight thank you. i think there is a very delicate balance between like, curating your own experience and knowing when its time to say something, and i absolutely have just started bitching unproductively before so rn im just trying to focus on ig. understanding my own emotions about certain things and why they affect me. im trying to seriously reduce the amount of shit i engage with that i know i wont like, and fandom is a space where i just have to concede because i know i will never agree with some people on certain things literally ever. its really not my intention to Be Mean, sometimes it just happens and im working on being less mean. pretending im into shit that i dont really like or care about and being surrounded by it is what gets me to that meanness in the first place if that makes sense

[jewishcissiekj]

I have so much inexplicable disdain for the white batch or whatever their name is they just irritate me

[asmodeusamaryllis]

MARIA HAS A SISTER?!??

[asubax]

just remembered a crucial part of my own lore… oh god… oh no…

[emmodii-mode]

In my defence, what was I supposed to do? Leave their corpses to rot?

[daforged]

i have committed sins against the almighty exam curve today that my fellow candidates will not thank me for >:) sorry for having such a big brain all the time. as if i could help it.

[astranauticus]

not sure if this counts as an AU but.. thinking about the Per Aspera crew as horror game bosses like.. you are wandering through a forested mountain range and you know somethings wrong because the forest shouldn't be this eerily silent, this devoid of life, and then you hear the crash of falling trees and there is a hand that is half your size glowing golden in the night and it is grabbing you and its claws are digging into your flesh and you see the spines running down the golden arm that is far too long as it lifts you over a crater in mountain, over a coiled, serpentine thing with a visage that is not of this world, and if you look closely you can see the shape of a child curled at the centre of the thing, golden hair reflecting the glow of the creature and if you listen closely you can hear her sobbing, 'Don't hurt me, I don't want to do this'. you are sailing through the astral sea when you see an ephemeral, resplendent spelljammer cutting through the starry waters and you rejoice because you have been lost on the seas for so so long, so you board the ship looking for help, supplies, anything, and you are greeted by a blue fire genasi (you wonder, do those even exist? but you can't get off the ship now because where else will you go?) and she tells you she is the captain of this ship but as far as you can tell there is no crew on board, and if she is not appearing right behind you from a trapdoor you've never noticed she is always in the engine room 'fixing the ship' even though the ship seems to be sailing perfectly fine ('Where are we going?' you ask her once and she doesn't even turn to look at you, 'Don't worry about it') and if you are ever so unlucky as to damage the ship in any way, you begin to catch flashes of red and orange out of the corner of your eye, a fire genasi wearing the woman's face who whispers at you with hollow, angry eyes 'Don't you fucking dare hurt my ship'. you are sailing through the astral sea when you see a rotting, decaying spelljammer, so badly damaged it's barely moving although you have to wonder how it's even staying afloat at all, and out of some morbid curiosity you climb on board and the deck of the ship is in no better shape than the hull, the marks of hard-fought battle - scars in the wood from sharp blades and arcane energies, stains of blood and oil splattered about - still fresh but you know time doesn't pass on the astral sea so who knows how long ago this all took place, and as you climb below decks you start to notice the writings on the walls, pieces of parchment nailed to every surface and connected with fraying, rotting threads, or words etched directly into the wood, the deep gouges barely readable, and you start to hear the creaking and clanking of rusted machinery slowly moving about and you turn a corner to see a figure standing in a room facing the wall, slowly scratching yet more of that unintelligible writing into the bones of the ship, and it turns as the rusted dented mechanite stares at you with eyes ablaze and he asks 'Who are you? Where is my crew?' as sparks of arcane lightning begins to arc through the room. you are running through a feywild forest and you know, even without the figure chasing you, that you have made a horrible mistake, you should have known better, should have been more careful, should have kept your impulses in check, and now you are being chased through an unfamiliar forest and the figure, the Hunter pursuing you knows this realm like the back of his hand, knows every tree and shrub and vine that is slithering up to grasp at your ankles, and you glance back desperately to catch any glimpse of your pursuer but there is no pursuer, he has hidden himself with some arcane trick or some innate power or just the knowledge that this realm is his home, and you hear his voice even though you cannot see him as he cries out 'You should not have hurt my family. Prepare to face the Hunter of Hundkiln'

sorry no Vhas yet maybe I'll update with one for him once we get more of his whole deal

[sarahworm]

Sorry guys now I'm just lying here reminding myself of bad ouat lore. Remember when it turned out rumplestiltskin was like that because he was the current owner of an evil spirit or something that lived in the knife and he got exorcised but then it went after Regina and Emma intercepted it and they promised us a half season of evil Emma but instead she mostly moped around in a shack with dreamcatchers while everyone else* was looking hot in Camelot for some reason. What was that about.