#i think a lot about them.

[gristlegrinder]

Hm... For the OC asks: how about Fear, Ghost, and Mistake for the GW2 OC you most recently played in-game?

not-so-nice oc ask meme

hello anon! unfortunately the answer to that question is almost always siya. i play them too much.

content warnings for discussions of trauma, near death experiences, and death. this one got heavy in my drafts. sorry, it’s a long one!

GHOST: Who or what haunts your OC? What happened? How do they live with their ghosts?

there’s a joke here about siya having a shitty ex-boyfriend literally named ghost. anyways.

siya ran to lion’s arch to get away from the grove, and quickly adopted it as their home with a sense of pride. i really cannot emphasize enough how much of their early sense of identity hinged on belonging to a city of pirates and scoundrels. they fell in with all the other misfits that had called it home, and reveled in late nights, bad decisions, and having the future laid out in front of them, as unending as the ocean.

scarlet briar destroyed it without warning.

they never said goodbye. their tenement was burning rubble before they even woke up among the survivors. there are friends and neighbors and regulars at their bars that they never heard from again, that they’re reasonably sure are still alive but don’t have the means (or true desire) to get back in touch with. when they close their eyes, they can retrace footpaths in alleyways that don’t exist anymore. gendarran apples dipped in dark chocolate, notches in their usual booth’s tabletop made with sif’s pocketknife, the stench of fish being unloaded at the docks at four in the morning, their face against the cool tile of moldy bathroom floors.

it aches. and they never went back— they still haven’t. they’ve been avoiding it for years, taking the long ways around travel routes to avoid the asura gate hub and the ports. too much has changed, in really painful ways, and they don’t want the memories they have of the place to be “spoiled” by plaster-and-stained-glass pavilions sponsored by the captain’s council. they want the shadows, and the shiplap, and the sense of self-discovery that sent them there in the first place. even if those memories aren’t particularly good, anything else feels wrong, and bad.

whether or not that preservation would actually make a difference (they can’t go back to that version of lion’s arch either way) doesn’t matter; there’s a finality to accepting that things are gone that they’ve been putting off for the last decade of their life, mostly in the form of never thinking about it ever and avoiding all reminders of it forever, reinventing themself as who they are today in the process.

FEAR: What is your OC's greatest fear? What do they do when confronted with it? Are they open with their fear, or do they hide it away?

okay, so i think there are two ways i could take this question— first is a very tangible fear, in the sense that they very clearly have PTSD from what happened in lion’s arch. siya was there when the first bombs dropped and the miasma had a coin-flip chance of killing you. their actual memories of what happened are spotty, on account of the blast, but their unconscious body was pulled from the wreckage after the initial chaos, and it was deemed a miracle that they had survived.

for a long while, that lingering panic manifests as a twitch in their hands when the air gets too thick; tensing up at sudden loud noises and drawing exit strategies for any enclosed space and fighting any situation where medical personnel want to put their hands on them.

(siya finds refuge in the canopies of the maguuma jungle for a time, living in the wyvern cliffs with a friend. mordremoth sends the pact fleet crashing down into the trees and it startles them more than the dragon’s call itself ever could. afterwards, they flinch at the slightest provocation and spit that they’re going to personally shoot the killing bullet into mordremoth’s skull, when they remember how to feel anything at all. that’s the first time they realize there might be a problem.)

it’s hard not to be honest about it all when it’s visible on them (the hacking cough, the scarring on their face, the bad knee) so they don’t bother trying to hide that something’s fucked them up. if anything, it doesn’t matter that you know— they just don’t want you to stop taking them seriously. they can hold their own in a fight, they can handle themself.

and while that fear hasn’t ever gone away, it’s stabilized; helped by years of distance, self-soothing rituals, and lithium salts. the love of their life is a volcanic eruption, and they’ve grown to find comfort in heavy, warm pressure blanketing them.

what they’re really afraid of, underneath that, is death. the lights being snuffed out for good. rolling bad dice, finally, and getting unlucky. not knowing what’s gonna happen afterwards (do they get the gold chariot? do they float through the ceiling?). not wanting to lose the few good things they’ve got. braham’s prophecy starts unfurling and they spend months picking their wounds and watching him like a hawk when they can’t sleep at night, in case he’s the one that doesn’t make it.

that one, they don’t talk about. they can’t.

MISTAKE: What's the worst mistake your OC ever made? What led to them making it? Have they been able to fix it? How have they moved on?

siya has never made any mistakes in their life, ever.

okay, that’s a lie— but most of their mistakes feel petty in the grand scheme of the world. shooting themself in the foot (metaphorically) by reading situations wrong, talking a bit too much and slighting somebody, fumbling a good thing by being a little too much or pushing somebody away before anything can start. that’s just being neurodivergent. none of those are life-ruining on their own.

likewise, there are things they would consider to be significant mistakes of theirs that i don’t personally agree with their judgment on. lying in the grass underneath a friend they’ve already lost to the nightmare court. locking eyes with ghost across the room in a dive bar that was never up to code. staying home with garm and a migraine when braham gets invited to the all-legions rally.

(okay, that last one hurts more, but they can’t get too caught up in it for the same reasons they don’t let braham get caught up in his own what-ifs.)

not taking the lionguard suggestion to re-enter the city when able to do so, in order to retrieve the rest of their belongings, probably ranks up there. they took whatever they were rescued with, shoved away every worried medic trying to stabilize them, and followed their gut instinct to get as far away from the burning wreckage as possible. it was an irrational, anxious impulse, and they do really regret not getting to say goodbye before that became insurmountable.

[ekko-idk]

My take on Farcille <3

(experimenting with my style too)

[starbuck]

i say i like tragedies and everyone’s all like ‘why do you like sad stories? are you depressed?’ and never ‘how was the catharsis? was the catharsis fun?’

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

Physically? I am sitting in my bedroom. Mentally? Spiritually? I AM DEAD ON THE FLOOR!!!!! THESE TWO HAVE KILLED ME!!!!

(Another drawing! This was originally attempt #1 at drawing stan, and then fiddleford just showed up. Kinda feels like them five minutes after the above acting like nothing happened though, so it works sdjkgkjfshj)

[strategypillar]

Teen hood

Another bundle of ocs drawings without context, but now medieval edition :)

[morganbritton132]

17 year old, CEO Tim Drake canceling a press conference and then putting out a statement like, “Sorry for canceling last min, Alfred said that he was going to run my laptop through the dishwasher if I didn’t clean my room. I think he’d do it :/. Also, wasn’t really in the mood. Cya -Tim.”

[s-ccaam-era-crepe]

i think everyone who's ever had migraines should be financially compensated forever btw

[wanologic]

yo danny fenton he was just 19

[inkskinned]

the thing is that they're so fascinated by sex, they love sex, they can't imagine a world without sex - they need sex to sell things, they need sex to be part of their personality, they need sex to prove their power - but they hate sex. they are disgusted by it.

sex is the only thing that holds their attention, and it is also the thing that can never be discussed directly.

you can't tell a child the normal names for parts of their body, that's sexual in nature, because the body isn't a body, it's a vessel of sex. it doesn't matter that it's been proven in studies (over and over) that kids need to know the names of their genitals; that they internalize sexual shame at a very young age and know it's 'dirty' to have a body; that it overwhelmingly protects children for them to have the correct words to communicate with. what matters is that they're sexual organs. what matters is that it freaks them out to think about kids having body parts - which only exist in the context of sex.

it's gross to talk about a period or how to check for cancer in a testicle or breast. that is nasty, illicit. there will be no pain meds for harsh medical procedures, just because they feature a cervix.

but they will put out an ad of you scantily-clad. you will sell their cars for them, because you have abs, a body. you will drip sex. you will ooze it, like a goo. like you were put on this planet to secrete wealth into their open palms.

they will hit you with that same palm. it will be disgusting that you like leather or leashes, but they will put their movie characters in leather and latex. it will be wrong of you to want sexual freedom, but they will mark their success in the number of people they bed.

they will crow that it's inappropriate for children so there will be no lessons on how to properly apply a condom, even to teens. it's teaching them the wrong things. no lessons on the diversity of sexual organ growth, none on how to obtain consent properly, none on how to recognize when you feel unsafe in your body. if you are a teenager, you have probably already been sexualized at some point in your life. you will have seen someone also-your-age who is splashed across a tv screen or a magazine or married to someone three times your age. you will watch people pull their hair into pigtails so they look like you. so that they can be sexy because of youth. one of the most common pornography searches involves newly-18 young women. girls. the words "barely legal," a hiss of glass sand over your skin.

barely legal. there are bills in place that will not allow people to feel safe in their own bodies. there are people working so hard to punish any person for having sex in a way that isn't god-fearing and submissive. heteronormative. the sex has to be at their feet, on your knees, your eyes wet. when was the first time you saw another person crying in pornography and thought - okay but for real. she looks super unhappy. later, when you are unhappy, you will close your eyes and ignore the feeling and act the role you have been taught to keep playing. they will punish the sex workers, remove the places they can practice their trade safely. they will then make casual jokes about how they sexually harass their nanny.

and they love sex but they hate that you're having sex. you need to have their ornamental, perfunctory, dispassionate sex. so you can't kiss your girlfriend in the bible belt because it is gross to have sex with someone of the same gender. so you can't get your tubes tied in new england because you might change your mind. so you can't admit you were sexually assaulted because real men don't get hurt, you should be grateful. you cannot handle your own body, you cannot handle the risks involved, let other people decide that for you. you aren't ready yet.

but they need you to have sex because you need to have kids. at 15, you are old enough to parent. you are not old enough to hear the word fuck too many times on television.

they are horrified by sex and they never stop talking about it, thinking about it, making everything unnecessarily preverted. the saying - a thief thinks everyone steals. they stand up at their podiums and they look out at the crowd and they sign a bill into place that makes sexwork even more unsafe and they stand up and smile and sign a bill that makes gender-affirming care illegal and they get up and they shrug their shoulders and write don't say gay and they get up, and they make the world about sex, but this horrible, plastic vision of it that they have. this wretched, emotionless thing that holds so much weight it's staggering. they put their whole spine behind it and they push and they say it's normal!

this horrible world they live in. disgusted and also obsessed.

[paintedcrows]

Holiday Classics

Been thinking about Ford watching the 70s Animated Lord of the Rings Movies... (companion comic to this post!)

[rissaito]

free at last 🦋

[gerrykeay]

im not putting this post into words. beams into your mind The Parallels

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[hinamie]

"I'll show you every day that choosing to live was worth it"

some of my favourite scenes from @hijinks-n-lowjinks' fic things i would miss from the other side . this fic tore my heart out fr but like in a good way and i wanted to pay it homage the only way i know how <3

[fighto-art]

Dysfunctional marriage representation from crimson peak save me...

It's spooky season again so I made a post with some crimson peak fanarts I've worked on this year

[separatist-apologist]

Genuinely, and I mean this kindly, but learning to recognize bait and not engaging with it will change your fandom experience.

[sualne]

he's fiiiiine.