#i cannot have normal blorbos apparently

[titvs-androgynous]

I decided to start writing fanfiction at the ripe age of 25 and the pros are that it's great practice for my original writing and it's really good for my mental health however the cons are I am now obsessed with Martin Septim

[nabanna]

lord help us all I've been given a reason to think about Dracula novel/Drizzt series crossover

I love following canyourfavesurvivecastledracula (I especially love seeing characters I'm not familiar with on there) and they recently got an ask about my little guy Drizzt Do'Urden but didn't know all that much about him BUT YOU SEE (unfortunately for everyone who knows me in any way) this is a crossover of the two major fandoms that have become my entire personality in the past year or so! so as someone who's eagerly awaiting the return of Dracula Daily Season AND reading multiple of the Drizzt series books as we speak (simultaneously! help..) and considers him a blorbo to tenderly and lovingly put in the microwave to watch him dodge the radiation like an ant, I'm taking a crack at it because this looks like fun :D

Making my own post because this is purely to be enrichment in my enclosure and also it's.. gotten So So Very Long.. also pouring one out for my other account where I normally would post this sort of thing that I simply cannot log into anymore for mysterious and unknown reasons. (Literally it's still like There and I can See It but trying to log in takes me to 'make a new blog' pages and... wait I'm silly I think I know why. the email died. no idea how to get back in without the email.)

ANYWAY

To the thought experiment:

Could Drizzt Do'Urden Survive Castle Dracula?

Short answer: Yes, it's not a fun time for him, he saves the baby though!

Long answer:

Using the blog's stated general criteria...

Overall approach to the supernatural:

Is an elf, knows what a vampire is, however D&D vampires work differently from Dracula vampires so he would not have all the information on that front if it came to a confrontation. (Knowing the Drizzt books, it would definitely come to at least one fight or at least a tense chase sequence.)

Also depends on how quickly he clocked that this is, in fact, a vampire, and whether Dracula could catch on to him catching on and spin things in a way that kept Drizzt relatively chill OR decide it's time to strike (which he could probably escape) (though now I'm thinking about Vampire!Drizzt....... no no I shouldn't.... unless.....)

The presence of Guenhwyvar (constellation panther BFF my beloved) would afford him some protection other than Dracula's whims, and companionship which is Very Important as he has been known to go feral without sufficient friendship.

Probably takes all the local superstitions very seriously because where he comes from if someone's like "there are ghosts that come out on certain days" and "there are monsters in these woods" they mean it very Very literally.

Dracula's general inhuman behaviors he could take in stride and adapt to pretty well I think, he's known a lot of really eccentric people and is from Fantasy Zone, so the idea that Dracula isn't human wouldn't be scary or even all that weird. Vampire, yeah that's sus, but just non-human? you walk past a hundred non-humans on a single street in most cities where he's from. Many of the eccentricities might be explainable just by going "Ah, he seems to be some kind of wizard. Yeah that checks out." Doesn't seem to be sleeping on a normal schedule or at all? Drizzt does that too! Sees too well in the dark/doesn't seem to use lights much? Darkvision and light sensitivity, same! Moves inhumanly fast? A little concerning but why not. Tells stories from centuries ago as if he was there? Elves do that all the time and it's because they were, in fact, there. (Also some human wizards do all of that too, just because.)

Now because things work differently between these two settings I'm not sure how much his general familiarity with things in the Forgotten Realms would help him here, like he's taking it all in stride but does he know how to protect himself against a Dracula-type vampire? Does he know magic is so incredibly rare and (apparently) usually evil or does he think this is just an unusually magic-less region?

Whether they would accept the crucifix from the old lady:

He is a polite young man so yes of course he would, and because the lady doesn't know what a drow (or an elf?) is, she probably wouldn't think "evil!!!" like most of the common folk in the Realms do, so much as "weird-looking (yet androgynously beautiful) young man" or depending on the local superstitions may assume he's some sort of fey being? or just like, really exceptionally foreign foreigner.

Assuming she still offers it, he would accept it despite not knowing what sort of deity it's for, because he recognizes it's a token of goodwill and he loves expressions of goodwill. Would definitely go and write about it in his little diary to both wonder what she's so afraid of/what sort of protection it affords, and also gush about the kindness and possibly whether this expands or aligns with his current understanding of morality.

This plus the other Superstitious Behaviors would clue him in that something's up so he'd be going in with that knowledge, prepared to figure out what's going on and what the villagers are so afraid of.

Whether they would go exploring after being told not to:

100% and he might even be stealthy enough to mostly get away with it!

Demonstrably does not like being restricted, only went along with this stuff when he was younger because the indoctrination ensured that he literally had no idea there was any other option (also his dad sparred with him daily to get his energy out so his zoomies were managed)

If Dracula really truly wanted to discourage him from any particular places he might just need to come up with an explanation, but he might also be entertained enough by Drizzt's sneaking and snooping to let him roam and see where it goes. Drizzt is better at stealth than Jonathan but they have different flavors of wet cat charm which Dracula may want to handle differently.

Depending on how you read the scene with the vampire ladies trying to "kiss" Jonathan, like how much of it was vampire charm making him feel kinda into it or potentially more of a paralysis situation, it could go differently just because Drizzt may or may not be able to break out and run away very fast, or just kinda endure it while feeling Really Bad And Gross about the sexual overtones. (Based on instances such as him resisting drugs and exiting the room as fast as possible when a priestess was coming onto him, and going feral to push through a paralyzing poison to prevent an assault on another person.) (I read him as incredibly demisexual and he demonstrates being sex-repulsed to everyone outside of the very short list of people he's actively very close friends with and attracted to.) (His feral side has been known to come out in these types of situations but not all of them and it wouldn't necessarily always work either.)

The girlies would not put him off of exploring for very long but he would likely be trying to avoid all possible run-ins with them from that point forward. Unfortunately for him he is a tasty little guy and I think the girlies would actively mess with him against Dracula's orders, perhaps in part because he's an elf and they find that interesting and engaging. Enrichment for their enclosure! Horrible time for Drizzt. Exactly the way the vampire squad likes it!

Verdict: He has a bad time but he's gotta run around he has the zoomies. Dracula could possibly prevent this, if he wanted to prevent it, by letting him into a training yard of some kind so he can get out his energy.

Ability to manage the whims of a Rich Jerk / hold Dracula's interest:

This one is harder and probably depends on the circumstances of him going to the castle, like what his goal there is, and around what point in the timeline he's at. I haven't gotten through all 30-something books just yet but my answer is Probably?

Just the fact of him being an elf and having some innate magic abilities could possibly be enough for Dracula to find him interesting enough to keep around. He's not a wizard and his innate spells are mostly harmless, more battlefield management than anything, so he's not magically a particularly powerful threat to Dracula, just decently interesting. He could also go on about how magic works where he's from, though going on too much about his inherent drow magic would make him uncomfortable (which Dracula would probably like) and especially like, if he got into the ins and outs of Menzoberranzan specifically.

He would definitely bring out the active listening skills for Dracula's history and war stories. Might want to get examples of any particularly interesting fighting maneuvers. I wonder if Dracula would indulge him in a spar or let him practice? The castle must have a training yard somewhere, but would he let Drizzt keep his weapons/borrow some?

Usually good enough at reading the room to determine when is or is not a good time for the scimitars and the panther (combat mode) to come out.

Not the most charismatic, but insightful and clever. (autism-ass elf. elftism.......)

Raised in a very controlling environment with a strict social hierarchy where he was simultaneously part of a high-ranking noble family but also as far down the social ladder as he could be otherwise (male, youngest child, was supposed to be assigned spell component at birth, doesn't like conforming) so, again, he wouldn't like it but he could probably manage it.

Partly depends on how much effort Dracula is willing to put in to make the Friendship believable and keep Drizzt in the dark, or if he's interesting enough to more carefully balance a web of manipulation around.

I'm gonna say this point gets a Yes

Assuming he realized the vampires are Bad but too dangerous to 2v4, he would be so uncomfortable for most of it but is also funky enough that Dracula would probably find his discomfort and weird-but-trying-to-be-so-polite mannerisms entertaining. Dracula would decide this is his blorbo now. I may be biased but this is tumblr so actually Dracula himself said all of this to me personally in DMs.

Facility for climbing without gear (free soloing):

Lizard fashion? Spider fashion...

He Is On The Walls

Multiple points in the books involve him sneaking around places by climbing on walls and I believe elves are canonically, in general, weirdly good at parkour. So yeah!

Whether they would choose to risk being eaten by vampires over the certain death of being eaten by wolves:

IF he has weapons, the wolves aren't really certain death because he is a whirling tornado of death, I am so sorry wolves. If not then he might be able to parkour out of their way? He probably wouldn't want to fight the wolves though, because he is a disney princess nature lover and would rather free them from Dracula's control if possible.

Depending on how much he could figure out about how vampires work here, he may have some ideas for how to turn a fight against them to his advantage or otherwise.

Wait, this happens after the baby incident, right? If so then he's not getting to this point plot-wise, though he might have come back to try fighting the vampires after saving the baby, and depending on how he's doing that, he might still have to contend with the wolves at some point.

Decision: Doesn't want to go against the wolves at any point, but if necessary, he can out-parkour them.

General analysis from Me:

Main counts on the original post are accurate! He accepts the cross, survives the social situations as long as necessary, and escapes with the baby to give it back to the villagers upset but otherwise intact.

As soon as he realized the vampires were menacing the locals to any extent, he would decide to figure out a way to free the area of their evil. Unfortunately the best way for him to figure out anything about the vampires is to stay in close quarters with them for a little while. He has been known to pretend to side with an enemy to gain information or an advantage in a fight, but I'm not sure how long he could keep it up.

Dracula might string him along with Friendship (Drizzt loves friendship so much if he doesn't have friendship he will explode) but he would have to get his baby-eating roommates to play along and behave or else they could easily freak the guy out too much for it to remain believable.

Either way, Drizzt is not staying in that castle beyond the point of another person (the baby) being put in danger. There's at least one point in the books where he's protecting a baby while fighting some enemies and he always puts the baby's safety first. Also Guen can respawn, so if it's absolutely necessary to, she can get taken to 0 HP distracting the vampires while Drizzt improvises some way to get out of there with the baby intact.

That's as far as "survive Castle Dracula" usually goes because well he got out of the castle alive but now I am also thinking about possible plot beyond that point...

First of all the villagers?? Assuming they saw him as Really Weird Foreigner or perhaps some sort of fair folk rather than Literal Demon Spawn the worst they'd do is probably be very tense and silent after taking the baby back and let him leave uncontested without welcoming him in. Best case scenario is some or all of them, or at least the baby's mother, being grateful enough to help him out a little. But like what's he gonna Do after that? (Also if the villagers think he's some sort of fey guy then would they think there's something up with the baby now...)

I mean he knows there's baby-eating vampires in that castle now and he's very against the idea of leaving baby-eating vampires around. Even if he can't 2v4 all of them plus their minions he'd wanna do something about that. (2v4 rather than 1v4 because Guen counts as one) Would he try to gather allies to assault the castle? If he learned that there's times when he can expect them all to be asleep in their coffins would he try to just go back in and stab them in their coffin-sleep? Would he leave the area if he knows the local people are still in danger or would he reason that he needs to find help and come back?

(Also raising to myself the question of whether this is "specifically only Drizzt has been isekai'd into the novel Dracula" or if there's perhaps a little more crossover type setting blending, or if others from the Realms are in there, is Elminster around I know he's canonically been to Real Life Earth, would Van Helsing have some kind of tangent about how this has allegedly happened before, there's an implication that vampires aren't even Van Helsing's favorite cryptid what if d&d type elves are actually higher on that list and he knows all about them, is it even possible to put something resembling the plot and characters of Dracula into a D&D setting, what if I could make a Domain of Dread out of this–)

No matter what happened, Drizzt would be writing SO many diary entries which is perhaps the true main reason why he would survive, he's got that journaling and diary-keeping swag just like my good friend Jonathan Harker

(This is all assuming he has Guen because if he didn't have Guen he would wilt away of the Miseries. Might un-wilt specifically to save the baby and then re-wilt as soon as he remembered there's no kitty.)

[andi-o-geyser]

Okay, but when Mythcarver appeared I honest-to-god screamed its name like a teenage girl at a Harry Styles concert and like. It is. A fucking sword. A literal fucking sword. It’s not even a talking sword; I feel like I cannot stress enough that it does not have a personality. It is a normal ass enchanted sword that Scanlan will use 1 (one) time and then never again, but I apparently could not care less because it’s my blorbo now

[graciehatesgracie]

im still grieving gummigoo so im gonna cope like i cope with every blorbo of mine that dies

THEORY TIME

so what if someone (someone = gummigoo) spawned into the circus like everyone else by putting on the headset, but instead of spawning into the actual circus like normal, he spawned into one of Caine's minigames? Maybe during episode one when the abstracted Kaufmo was out terrorizing everyone and Bubble + Caine were chatting in that restaurant before Caine went to go save everyone someone got teleported in. there are two possibilities why he spawned in wrong.

1. Pomni was freshly and newly accepted into the circus. There might have been a bug in the system which caused him to arrive in the wrong place since it wasn't fully able to register two people consecutively joining.

2. Abstracted Kaufmo may have caused a stir in the system so when gummigoo arrived it wasn't able to load properly.

the reason why gummigoo didn't seem to act human (sticking to the script of having a sick/dying mother who needs the syrup to stay alive) and functioned like an NPC was cause Caine might've mistook him for one (Caine gets humans and NPCS mixed up all the time). Caine cannot control the humans brains (episode one) which contradicts the theory that Caine programmed him to use a script with plot, but using the logic and theory that abstracted Kaufmo did infact cause a disturbance in the system, gummigoo may have glitched or arrived at the map in a violent way (example: falling from the sky and landing headfirst) which caused severe brain damage. Gummigoo thinks he's an NPC cause the first thing he remembered after waking up was Caine probably talking to him about the plot that he's supposed to use and the script he needs to stick to. He wouldn't be in the right mental state (or physical state if something actually got mixed up in his brain, I remember there was a case where a man was axed repeatedly to the point where he was on the verge of death but apparently the part of his brain that remembers routines like morning routines or night routines was still functioning so he did his entire morning routine with the remaining body energy he had left and then died) to register this as false and just went with it

it is currently 10:47PM right now and I'm mourning so if this doesn't make sense do not correct me I have no respect for myself

[kradogsrats]

and now for an interlude of "I can't possibly write this fic until I've designed full armor sets for the blorbos it features"

Lissa's not a soldier: most of her "combat" experience is hunting, but she's a skilled rider and an excellent shot. This may or may not help against the magma titan.

Anyway click below for my unhinged rant about bows.

Okay so, while Lissa can almost definitely shoot a normal hunting bow, she's a) not a professional hunter, and b) for that and other reasons hasn't kept up training for like ten years, so she cannot just pick up a war longbow with double the draw weight of a hunting bow like "yeah this is fine." Also women with longbows is fucking overdone, yes I'm looking at you literally every piece of YA fantasy media since The Chronicles of Narnia.

This crossbow (which technically could be called an arbalest due to the steel laths, but those terms are basically interchangeable) is modeled after the rapid-fire crossbow designed by Leonardo da Vinci, which never caught on pretty much only because firearms were already eclipsing bow weapons at that point. This is Katolis, where by all rights they should already have firearms, so fuck the artbook, you don't need a windlass or some shit and it fires way faster than 2 bolts per minute.

Da Vinci's crossbow only has a draw weight of 300 pounds, which makes it probably on the low end of longbow power. (The physics of converting draw weight of a longbow or crossbow into arrow impact energy is actually super complicated, so you could have an 800+ pound crossbow with an arrow impact about the same as a 150-180 pound longbow, but it also doesn't require so much back strength that frequent use literally deforms your skeleton.) Windlass- or cranequin-loaded crossbows used on the battlefield frequently had several times that draw weight, like 1000+ pounds. With refinement, the Da Vinci design may have been able to increase the draw weight, but that didn't happen because, again, firearms.

Side note: it's apparently still hotly debated in the historical armaments community (which is as weird as you imagine) whether or not a bow of any kind could pierce armor. Best guess is that it depends greatly on both the quality and type of arrow and the quality of the armor (which varied a lot), so I'm grudgingly giving a pass to Ethari on designing a bow-and-arrow combo that can pierce straight through Harrow's presumably extremely high-quality breastplate.

Also if you want to google Da Vinci's crossbow design, make sure you specify the rapid fire one because he also designed a giant crossbow (as one does, naturally) and that's the one that has the most search results for some reason.

[aromantic-diaries]

Do people really find fictional characters attractive? Bc I have no idea if they are just messing or serious and I'm really the ultimate aro

I can understand it when they're played by a real person but when it's like. A drawing I cannot wrap my head around it. Like I get that it's supposed to look aesthetically pleasing but It's A Drawing. Like sometimes I see people go "omg Blorbo and Smeebus are so hot aaaah" and it's two generic anime boys who are identical aside from hair and eye color. But yeah apparently people do find fictional characters attractive which I will never understand but I guess it's normal, especially when the character is charismatic and interesting. It can also be sort of an escapism thing for lonely people (also I'm pretty sure only jacking it to fictional characters that are drawn in a certain way with unrealistic proportions can fuck with your brain and affect how you view real life people like don't quote me on this but I've seen cases of guys on the internet who have lost all romantic and sexual interest in real women because their dick only responds to anime girls with tits the size of their head)

[iantimony]

a day late because yesterday i was tooooo busy! some spoilers in here for dungeon meshi and saltburn!

listening: mostly background stuff. i still haven't played more nier: automata but the boyf got me listening to the soundtrack and it whips.

reading: more tgcf at night to soothe my frenzied brain to sleep. i finished dungeon meshi yesterday!! i did cry!!! it was so, so good, i loved it. i really liked that there was no set antagonist, per se, at least not until the very end with the fight against the winged lion, it was all just a bunch of characters with different but justifiable goals that had their aims all butting up against each other. very cool. i love kabru what a little shit

a collection of some good screenshots:

watching: many things this week. my partner is visiting for the week and we like to have videos on while we're cooking n eating so we watched...essentially the entirety of weird history food channel, started with the trader joes one and spiraled from there.

we also watched the currently-released episodes of dungeon meshi. very charming. i cannot wait to see how they animate certain scenes.

on sunday night we did a friend dinner, so me and my boyfriend, roommate and hers, and one other friend; after dinner we movie night-ed it and watched saltburn and blazing saddles:

saltburn was insane! apparently there is shock and alarm at the sex scenes, which i am not very online about it so i have no idea what people are actually saying but imo it was not that crazy. there is a solo, uh, let's call it Moment towards the end of the film that is pretty out there, but besides that the sex scenes are the least of anyone's worries in this movie. it took me WAY too long to realize that the main character was the antagonist, i'm normally pretty savvy to those kinds of twists so that took me off guard. my roommate had seen it once (or even twice?? i think?? i have no wish to watch that movie again, good for her though) and i didn't start clocking it until immediately before felix tricked oliver into going home. as they were in the car i was like "there's no fucking way that he lied about his family to felix. right. right??" oops. some good cool symbolism in there, i had a bit of an xkcd "of course everyone knows this myth" moment when my roommate was like "huh i wonder if there's a symbolic reason for the bull-man statue in the maze at the end, or felix's angel wing costume" and i was like surprise pikachu. the minotaur, the labyrinth, icarus, hello? wdym you don't know the story of the minotaur??? much to think about with this movie. i searched it on tumblr and feel like a lot of people missed the point in favor of blorbo romance but like, fair, it is the blorbo romance website. 8.5/10.

blazing saddles was our palette cleanser after that doozy of a film. my friend said at the end "anyone who thinks this movie is racist needs better media literacy" and i'm inclined to agree. yes the n word is in there - but the people saying it are so unambiguously depicted as insanely stupid and wrong, and the leading man is a charismatic handsome black man, and tbh the smartest person in the movie? arguably more homophobic (the end scenes) than racist but even then the way 'f*ggot' is deployed hit me like modern tumblr humor.

idk. even though it's a comedy it is Very clear to me that a message from this movie is "Racism Bad". i thought it was fun, didn't find the blonde lady's musical number very good or funny, got a few chuckles out of it overall. classic mel brooks. 7/10.

playing: wizord101.

making: started experimenting with english paper piecing! i forgot to take a picture yesterday so ill try to remember and add that later today. or maybe for next week's post. also started a pair of fingerless gloves for my mom

eating: my boy made us all a budae-jjigae type object on sunday and it was so so so yummy - photo from before simmering for like 30 minutes, with pork belly, spam, tofu, and a bunch of mushrooms, grunions, and kimchi:

before my roommate came back from a conference we did this cabbage and thin-sliced hotpot beef thing that was. so fucking good. we had it two separate nights in a row. just layering meat and napa cabbage and then cutting into ~2in strips, laying them in a pot, filling the center with mushrooms; make a broth of soy sauce/dashi/misc soup stock powder from leftover ramen, pour it over, simmer til cooked baby. delicious. this image is a little steamy bc i tried to take it right after opening the pot, lol

misc: wough. struggling to get back into the routine a little. i need to make more spreadsheets for my agonies (apartment hunting and determining what internships/programs to apply to for this summer). and i need to start using my planner again because i keep forgetting to do shit.

[quinloki]

QUIN

I’m glad you’re doing okay!! I would jokingly scold you to take care of yourself but I’m operating on 5 hours of sleep and I ate pretzel bites and cookie cake for lunch so like

I can’t even speak on that I’m not doing much better xD

I took today off to take my niece (she’s 1.5) to a children’s museum out of town. Her and my sister are visiting from Florida for a few weeks so we’re bonding and omg it was so much easier when she wasn’t mobile kids run so friggin fast spending like 5 hours at this children’s museum has solidly confirmed my decision to not have children. She’s stupid cute but it’s like free birth control hanging out with her. We’re gonna watch the Taylor Swift concert movie later tho, I gotta do my job as auntie and properly educate her xD

Rambling now about your work but I cannot accurately count how often I read magic trick

Like I always debate commenting every time bc I’m like this is not normal

That and that uh… hot spring Marco one I sent you once are my go to when I want to have some light birb reading before bed >>

Magic trick is just so good and everytime it makes me stupid giggle just thinking about HIM

Ugh the whole fire following scratches makes me feral like fuck dude you were brilliant for that

I also may have an Ace and Izou kitty coming and another Marco figure >> I need to STOP but I’m kind of burnt out and apparently retail therapy is needed T_T it’s whatever the blorbos will make it better and ive been buying some stuffs second hand so the price really isn’t a a concern

The burnout is also making my brain a little more extra frazzled so sorry this is all over the place xD

I hope you’re doing so much better after the extra sleep and hope you have a SUPER weekend >o<

\o/ This was good. There's not much for me to say, you gave me plenty of cool new knowledge, and I got some praise <3

I think Magic Trick was my first real Marco piece. I don't know that I even had an event piece for him before hand.

and now look where we are. XD

Thank you Kaz, and yeah, we both need to make sure we get a little extra shut eye.

[witnessprotectionprogramurl]

0H0! who're these?!

OH HELL YES I GET TO TALK ABOUT EXOCOLONIST!!!!

ok so basically they're characters from a game called I was a teenage exocolonist. the game has a lot of stuff but it also has romanceable characters. this got very long so I'm putting it under the cut

the main character is sol (which is why they're in all the polyamorous relationships that exist with the romanceable characters). technically they don't have a personality of their own because the whole game is about making choices as sol so it wouldn't quite work yknow.

dys is the most perfect human being in space. sym is the most perfect alien in space. usually they kinda fall in love with each other even though dys should have been aromantic and to me he is. sometimes if you manage to interact enough with both of them, they fall in love with each other and with you (so sol bc main character). I can't remember how that ending goes tbh bc I got it a long long time ago but in my head sol, dys and sym stay in love forever and live happily ever after as trees or whatever.

now rex is also the most perfect human being in space. he's part dog also, not that that's relevant. the game never says it but he's aroallo and you cannot argue with me about it because you know I'm right. he's the best romanceable character because 1 he lets you hug him every season (technically you can hug him endlessly but like you only get friendship points for hugging him once per season) and 2 not only is he up for having a casual / open relationship, he also is fine with fucking as friends (the fucking is just implied btw like fade to black sort of thing), AND you can date him like. usual dating the same way you date everyone else in that game.

now marz is the most beautiful person in space. she is also insufferable for a while but I forgive her as long as she doesn't invent capitalism (canonically she usually invents capitalism yes). I love her she's done nothing wrong except for inventing capitalism. now the thing about her is that apparently no matter what she never ends up with a fixed partner (or so I've heard) and I think that's very aromantic of her. anyways she kind of always thinks rex is hot and gets together with him BUT if you date her first or rex first (tbh idk bc I always do the same thing and date rex and leave her alone god bless) then eventually one of them asks to make the relationship include them both. thus we have sol, marz, rex.

nomi (aka nomi nomi) is rex's best friend. they are canonically nonbinary and some flavor of aroace that is unclear to me because what the fuck is demi/ace supposed to mean like. is it demiro ace? is it demiace? what. but anyways if you keep bribing them to like you (as you do with all the characters) for all of eternity eventually they fall in love with you. I think. it's been a while I can't remember. they also fall in love with rex. so then we got sol, rex and nomi.

the reason why I hate sol, rex and nomi together is that nomi is aroace to me like non partnering aroace like they are so sex repulsed and romance repulsed throughout the whole game and then suddenly they're in love with their best friend who literally says they're like siblings earlier???? cmon.

anyways yes. thank you for asking me about my blorbos who I'm very normal about.

[rotationalsymmetry]

Btw, overview on CFS self-care:

1. People with CFS have limited spoons/spell slots/whatever, and get hit hard for overextending. (Apparently especially hard even by spoonie standards I think? Not sure.) When someone with (suspected/definite) CFS has variable symptoms, some relatively good days and some very very bad days, going from feeling relatively good to very bad (eg needing to take a nap when they don't normally) in a short period of time, etc, that's a good sign that they are frequently overextending. The way I used to figure out my spoon budget (cfs self help dot org calls this the energy envelope, this method is from them) was to track my activity for 2 week, then take the average. (Some things are hard to compare, and some things you're just not going to do the same amount of every day, so do your best. For instance, I noticed if I had multiple social events planned for one weekend, I was always canceling the third one whether I wanted to or not, so I started planning no more than two events per weekend.) (if you've got eg a job with set hours that you can't quit, well, do your best you know?)

2. If you want to try to do more, make very, very small changes and only make a change once every two weeks, and go back to your previous level if things get worse. For instance, if you walk a mile every day, increase to 1.1 miles and see how that goes. Do not do this without having done step 1 first and gotten to a point where you don't have huge good day/bad day swings, you need to be able to tell if things are getting worse! (It's also ok to not try to do more at all.)

3. When you feel like you need to rest, rest. (Again caveats around obligations you really, truly, cannot get out of. But skip things when you can. Or get someone else to do it.)

4. Rest before you feel like you need to rest on a set schedule. If this is new to you, try once a day, for at least 10 minutes, lying down. Often people have problems with this because their mind goes to stressed/scared places; if that happens, find a way to not do that? Happy music, a body scan or a sleep meditation, reading something first so your mind will be filled up with thoughts of your blorbos, whatever. If that seems to help, you can consider making it a longer period of time and/or have more frequent rests.

5. Like with everything else, stress makes CFS worse so stress relief activities are good. Deep breathing. Progressive muscular relaxation. (This can count as your rest.) Restorative yoga. (Ditto, if it's what I think of as restorative poses (restful! Lying down!) and not a random collection of sitting stretches that are getting called restorative for unclear reasons.) Whatever.

6. Do it differently: sit in the shower, sit while waiting for the light to change (folding stool ftw), use a wheelchair or scooter, order groceries online, do vacuuming in a wheelie chair, whatever. Using a grabby thing to pick up stuff on the floor. Keeping your kitchen pots and pans on the stove -- in general, stuff stored between your shoulders and your knees are easier to get to than stuff higher or lower. Relax with your feet elevated rather than on the floor. Buy the lettuce that's already been washed and cut up. (I hear some spoonies swear by baby food? Whatever works for you.)

7. Get someone else to do it or don't do it at all.

8. Emotional management: CFS can make people more emotionally reactive/mood-swing-y and strong emotions can make CFS worse. Fun! CBT (for feelings, not to keep from having CFS) helps some people. Finding out what works for you can be an ongoing project.

9. Dealing with people: I don't know what to say about this, mostly the people in my life have been pretty cool? For mostly pretty cool people, cuing them on how you expect them to act can help (like, if you don't want advice, sounding very matter of fact when talking about having cfs can help.) that website I keep mentioning has more to say on this. Part of this is FOMO (fear of missing out), I don't know what to say, that sure is A Thing.

10. If you want to go down the rabbit hole, there's a variety of supliments and alternative medicine stuff that some people will swear by. I like cfs self help because it's not selling supplements but you do you. My doc recommended a couple so at least some have some evidence behind them.

11. Exercise: complicated. Physical activity is the main thing that causes people to go outside their spoon budget, so be careful, but often people find they can do some degree of physical movement that seems to be beneficial. Stretching is usually safest, and things like rolling your shoulders or ankles, gentle movements. Strength exercises that you can do without elevating your heart rate or crashing later might be beneficial -- focus on stuff you can do sitting or lying down, or very short opportunistic bits of exercise you can do like standing on one leg while you wait for the microwave. Generally for people who can walk, small amounts of walking are very good. For people who are bedbound, there's some stretches and stuff that can be done in bed. Be very cautious about exercises (or chores, errands, etc) that increase your heart rate. I've found I can generally handle 1-2 flights of stairs per day, but not always if I'm already having a rough time and 3+ in one day is pretty much always bad for me. Be aware that walking uphill is different from walking on level ground.

12. Break it up: oh, I probably should have put this way up higher, oh well. Often people with cfs notice they can do more if they do it in smaller chunks, eg 15 minutes of checking emails, five minute break, another fifteen minutes. Or do some of the dishes, break, then some more. Or not getting dressed right after showering.

13. Time of day: I can tolerate way more in the late afternoon or evening than the morning, for other people it's the opposite.

14. Sensory sensitivities: some of us are sensitive to things like light or noise, so things like keeping the lights dim, wearing sunglasses, or wearing earplugs can help. (I find having headphones play white noise/nature sounds actually works way better than noise canceling.) Be careful of socializing in loud places, following a conversation takes energy and it takes a lot more when there's a lot of background noise. Likewise for phone conversations with a lot of static etc. unfortunately trying to understand someone with an accent can use more energy (or I assume following someone speaking a language that isn't your first language), that can't necessarily be avoided but you can plan for needing more rest around it.

Hello my fellow cripples, how do I get diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome? I am almost certain I have it but would like to know what to expect when I go trying to get diagnosed with it

[widevibratobitch]

[crimeronan]

can you talk about chronic illness themes in greywaren pretty please I’m so curious what you thought about the conclusion or lack therof

i've had this in my inbox for weeks and keep thinking about it and like. on the one hand i want to answer on the other hand i don't enjoy spending a lot of time talking about things i don't like. but i think i've nailed down the broad shape of my grievances wrt chronic illness real quick, so here's this and moving on

i think the first 2/3rds of greywaren were perfectly suited in tone to what dreamer trilogy had set up and there were Really good questions raised about matthew and jordan and declan and ronan and hennessy, i also think hennessy's arc (and the ronanessy culmination) was the only one that felt like it actually followed through on the chronic illness themes that had been set up. i was very very interested in jordan's thing about the act of creation keeping her awake, there's some good metaphors about artist survival there, tho ymmv. i know a lot of people with chronic fatigue aren't fond of it bc making art is Tiring and sometimes you Cannot Do It but tbh what i didn't get from jordan i got fine from hennessy so. that's all fine. then the last few chapters of the book take a hard transition into "now i have to wrap this whole universe up prettily to avoid rude tweets" and that apparently meant not having any messiness on the page, which is a shame because complex nuanced messiness is where stiefvater's writing most thrives.

adam and ronan's resolution was boring they didn't fix any of the things that were a problem wrt ronan's chronic illness and adam's Everything, joining souls in space is stupid, they already KNEW they loved each other, the love was not the PROBLEM, the problem was that they were on fundamentally incompatible life paths and loving each other DOES NOT MAKE THOSE COMPATIBLE.

declan and matthew's resolution was nonexistent, i'm actually Very Okay with the whole "matthew walks home" plotline but i needed his POV of that journey and i needed WAY more on the page from declan at the end there and i needed WAY more than "i can be fine relying on you guys bc bryde told me i should" when declan's treatment of matthew up til then had shown NO indication that matthew can EVER trust him.

bryde is the sickest person in the series and his end was far too ambiguous for my taste, especially when up to that point he and matthew had been interrogating the EXACT themes i'd wanted to see about what it means to be a dream and to be this kind of chronically ill. like we were almost somewhere there and then we just dropped everything about.... everything.

meanwhile adam is torn apart on the astral for days and days and days but wakes up fine and then bam, we flip forward 4 years and he's normal and there's no indication of any potential issues even tho there were themes traced all the way back to cdth about him and hennessy having similar chronic illnesses (thru lace metaphor). the epilogue firmly establishes that everyone is Better and that they all have stuff Figured Out Now and while i like knowing where people end up, i don't like a resolution that boils down to "and now we never need to struggle again."

i did not like greywaren's takes (or lack thereof) on chronic illness because it felt like we can't exist in a "joyful comfort read" because chronic illness is Bad and the author wants to avoid nasty tweets about doing Bad Things to characters.

i want to know what greywaren would have been if its main purpose had been to carry thru the series themes instead of to make trc fandom shut up and feel pleased about their blorbos and move on. stief talked about how she had to do a lot of rewriting with the dreamer trilogy up through greywaren bc she was so angry about being sick and. i want the angry book. i want the drafts that weren't pared down and rearranged and cut apart and spliced together to appease every normie person who's never felt constant pain or fatigue a day in their lives. the first two books were for me and will always have been for me, they are The Most Personal Books I Have Ever Consumed, but in order for greywaren to be for me, it would have had to Not be for certain people, and. well.

greywaren is for everyone.

so. shrug emoji. i guess.

[dreamcrow]

Character: BELLROC - or Skrael, or Nari (from skraelofthenorthwind)

(from headcanon game here; thank you @skraelofthenorthwind for the ask! also SO MANY OF YOU asked for bellroc i feel so perceived (delighted) 😂)

1: sexuality headcanon

[human before the invention of currency/sexuality voice] queer as a three-dollar bill

(aware that the term/equivalent would be applied to them. defiantly adoptive of it for this reason. my version of this character might not have ever felt [attraction for someone with their gender], but mainly bc they understand their gender as "a bellroc," i.e. their unique sense of themself. at the same time: they'd probably think anything they do—romantic or otherwise—falls under the rubric of "i think something very lgbt just happened to me," for much the same reason.

but when they look at skrael and nari, despite all their differences, they very much feel: ah. same dramatic goth magic nerd hat)

2: otp

aside from (again) the extremely obvious (the one true pairing, if you will) i'm going to give an honorable mention to @babblish's take on nari/bellroc? he's developed it so tenderly, and so carefully, i've gotten quite fond of the thought of such a well-executed take on them. 🥺

3: brotp

aside from the obligatory obvious answer (nari and skrael) + some miscellaneous ocs? (meryneith... orz)

bellroc x being right. bellroc x a nice nap. bellroc x THE HOTSPRINGS EPISODE I KEEP WANTING TO WRITE...

4: notp

b/ellgana. i understand the possible logics here, and mean no offense, i just do not want to see/be seen by, lol

5: first headcanon that pops into my head

they're NOT the obligatory ambidextrous member of the order. (that's nari.) i love their weirdness but i also like the thought that in some aspects they're actually just...very normal.

6: favorite line from this character

NO MORE HALF MEASURES.

i cannot remember the last time i was this stupid about a throwaway line. ("especially the lies," maybe? damn.)

7: one way in which i relate to this character

i know this probably isn't that deep but some of their lines don't...make perfect logical sense ("a quick and painful death" comes to mind, or their little comment about "THE SUMMONING™" in the middle of fighting douxie, lol). i too often misspeak when i'm flustered, or make leaps in logic that aren't apparent to my audience, so pretty much the instant i saw that i immediately chucked that into the hc pile.

8: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character

getting beaned by their own fireball literally seconds after skrael gets done identifying an "infinite corridor." they're so dumb, i love them so much, my heart is going to burst.

9: cinnamon roll or problematic fave?

worst bird. best beloved blorbo. joy of my life, light of my heart. they've never done anything wrong, ever, in their life.

[sundance201]

Some quickly written words about my new dear blorbo, Anthony Bridgerton. Inspired by a gif that I saw of Anthony looking at Daphne’s baby and immediately came up with a headcanon that he was obviously baby Hyacinth’s favorite person and the only one who could calm her when she fussed. I haven’t read any of the books (yet), so this is based solely on what was shown in the show.

So please enjoy some hastily written, slightly angsty, and mostly sweet little musings about Anthony and Hyacinth. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

He found he could focus better at night. When the house was quiet and dark and his siblings were fast asleep, it was easier to make sense of the sums and ledgers that his father had only started to show him…before. The quiet gave him a chance to take a moment to breathe, to think.

However, tonight, it was not so quiet. It was quieter than it was in the day, but baby Hyacinth was apparently having quite the night and wanted everyone to know about it.

He sighed, giving up his attempt with the accounts, and made his way from the study. He intended on heading to the nursery but ended up nearly colliding with the night nurse who was pacing the halls downstairs.

“Excuse me, my lord. She won’t calm and little Gregory couldn’t sleep with her crying, so I thought I could walk with her and calm her, but she’s still so agitated. She’s fed and clean but won’t stop fussing.” The woman turned her head and tried to shush the baby, but it only seemed to incense little Hyacinth more.

“It’s all right. I’m used to crying babies. May I?” Anthony held out his hands for the baby and the nurse looked at him skeptically. But she had been with their family for long enough that she knew that the Bridgertons were hardly the typical family of the ton. As the eldest, Anthony was no stranger to a fussy baby.

She handed Hyacinth over to Anthony and he started rocking gently, whispering soothingly to her. And much to everyone’s surprise, she started to quiet. Her cries were no longer ear-splitting, but sad, soft whimpers. Perhaps it was just coincidence; perhaps she had just cried herself out.

The nurse smiled at him. “You’re a miracle worker, my lord,” she whispered, reaching out for the baby again to take her back to the nursery. But at the nurse’s touch, baby Hyacinth’s face scrunched up and it looked like she was prepared to start wailing again.

Anthony held out a hand, stilling the nurse’s actions. “It’s fine. I’ll take her back to the nursery once she’s settled. Thank you.”

The woman examined him for a moment, questioning, but he simply nodded and turned back towards the study, subtly rocking and cooing at the baby in his arms. He took a seat in one of the chairs and stared down at his poor little sister, nestled firmly in his arms.

She was small, so small, but not sickly. She’d been a good baby, generally happy and easy to soothe – except for tonight. He had spent more time with her than he had with some of the other siblings when they were this small. Of course, that was because his other siblings had their parents. Even though it was only their father who had died, it seemed as if their mother had gone as well. He’d barely seen her in weeks.

“What’s wrong, little one?” he whispered to his littlest sister. She had calmed somewhat, but was still giving soft, snuffling little cries, as if letting him know that she was still not pleased. “Bad night, little Hyacinth? I understand that feeling all too well. However, I cannot go wailing about the house like you can…I suppose we will forgive you this one time.” He couldn’t help but smile down at her as he stroked a gentle finger down her soft cheek.

“Normally Mama would be the one to comfort you, but she…she hasn’t been well, Hyacinth. Not your fault, of course. Not yours…” he trailed off, gently rocking the baby in his arms.

He continued to look down at her, his sweet, innocent little sister and he felt a surge of protectiveness come over him. She deserved everything and he would have to be the one to provide. “I will protect you, Hyacinth. I will make sure that no harm comes to you…I will take care of you and all our brothers and sisters. I will do my best by you, I promise.”

Her eyes finally closed, and she sniffled softly, turning her head slightly towards him. He switched his hold, so she was cuddled against his chest, against his heart. His steady heartbeat seemed to calm her even more and slowly her breaths evened out into slumber. “I will take care of you,” he promised again quietly before gently kissing the baby’s head.

He knew that now the baby was asleep, he should take her up to the nursery. But this was the most at peace he’d felt since…since it happened. There was no one asking him questions he did not know the answer to, there were no ledgers he could barely make sense of… there was no mother hysterically crying or even worse, blankly staring at a wall, and no sad siblings to console. There was simply him and Hyacinth, who he had successfully soothed enough that she had fallen asleep on his chest.

For right now, he was enough.