#i obviously have a lot of thoughts

[peachvelvets]

for that ask meme:

fandom: star trek 2

ship: kirk/spock 20 (I already know the answer but everyone else needs to hear it)

character: data 2

2) my three favorite characters and why I love them so much.

1. DATA OBVIOUSLY. He is so precious to me and I relate to him and his struggles with understanding humanity. He is such a good character and has some of the best character development in Star Trek. He deserved better than Starfleet constantly questioning his bodily autonomy, I know he would've been happier out of Starfleet. I choose to believe the future we saw in All Good Things was Data's actual ending, and that the TNG movies are not canon. He's also adorable

2. Spock for a lot of the same reasons as Data. His character development is definitely on par with Data's, and TMP is SUCH an important movie for his character development which is why I hate that it gets shit on so often. His internal struggle between his human and Vulcan sides is so compelling and interesting, I could read meta about his character all day.

3. This is so hard there's so many good ones to choose from..... But I think I have to go with Kira, even though I have issues with how blindly she follows her religion... She is so well-written and that's so rare for a female character. I love her tragic backstory and that she has such a darkness to her. Her character development is also top notch, the fact that her character arc ends with her helping the Cardassians rebel against the Dominion is just so excellent.

20) how and when they should get/should have gotten together.

OKAY so most people think that they broke up/divorced after the 5 year mission but I wholeheartedly disagree. I personally don't think there's any way Spock would be able to be in a relationship with Kirk pre-TMP, his character just wasn't there yet. He had to meld with V'ger and realize that logic alone was not the path he needed to follow to find fulfillment. What I think happened is Kirk confessed his feelings for Spock at the end of the 5 year mission, which scared Spock so much that he ran away to Gol to go through Kolinahr (which he obviously failed because he was just too gay for Kirk.) Kirk was heartbroken but had to move on. Then the events of TMP happen; the hospital scene is when they both realize how much they need each other and that is when they officially get together. They don't even need to say anything, they literally just nod at each other and know. It's a love confession. Then they elope in Space Vegas with only their closest friends present. The end!

2) how I would have chosen to change their story from canon.

I kind of already touched on this but I DEFINITELY would have loved for him to leave Starfleet. He was never treated like a real person, his bodily autonomy was constantly called into question, he was treated like property even post-MOAM, and he deserved so much better. I think the future shown in AGT was almost perfect. Out of Starfleet, living with all his cats, thriving. The only thing missing is he wasn't married to Geordi, which is the one thing I would change.

THANKS 🙏🙏🙏

[yeepof]

Local PHD student at wizard school HARRASSED!! FOR SHAME!!

[inkskinned]

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF Into the pit? More like into the daddy issues

[verflares]

(click for higher quality!) draconified link concept ive been chipping away at this past week ..... here's my funny little compendium concept for him:

"A heroic spirit has taken the form of this bestial dragon. Unlike it's kin, this creature exhibits an extremely aggressive disposition. It appears highly territorial, and will relentlessly chase down those who disturb its skywide patrols - of which it seems to be endlessly searching for either a long-time vassal or foe. Unfortunately, it seems the spirit within has long since forgotten exactly who it was looking for…"

[technically-human]

Part two of the reverse verse is here! The reverse boys meet the original boys. They're not really getting along as well as I had hoped...

Again, this was a commission for @i-am-as-normal-as-you-are and they asked for angst/funny vibes... I think it's mostly just angst though. Oh, well...

Part one

[lucabyte]

i feel like people are sleeping on the occam's razor situation of how buckwild it is to outright accuse a guy of being a clone of your friend even if you DO have a lot of circumstantial evidence. there's other options is what im saying. they could just be like. a guy. that's a sensible deduction. you should explore that deduction. ignore my shirt that reads I <3 RED HERRINGS.

i still think odile has the correct theory on lock but she's smart enough to know it needs like... a real smoking gun to be able to bring it up without sounding insane.

anyway. (mirabelle voice) i know its rude to speculate but has anyone else noticed the grieving? they seem to be grieving. does anyone have any thoughts on the grieving? i have some thoughts on the grieving.

[razormaze]

what fear a man like you brings upon a woman like me (please don’t look at me)

[crimeronan]

i've seen a couple people in the notes of this very good post about fictional polyamory by @thebibliosphere say things along the lines of "oh, i've been doing it wrong :(" or "how do i know if i did this right??" or "i should probably give up and start over, i wrote this badly :(" and. no!!!!

(i AM seeing far MORE people say "oh, this clarified and helped me so much, i think i know how to fix issues i've been having with my own story" which. YES!!!!)

listen. if you're a monogamous person who's writing a polyamorous relationship, and you've been focusing mainly on The Triad and All Three Together All The Time as the endgame, that's literally fine. that's a perfectly acceptable and strong starting point for your plotting, imo. you do not need to give up on a story that you've started like this.

but the things discussed in the post Can and Should improve your execution!

you can keep the same plot beats and overall relationship arc 100%. polyamorous relationships are infinite in their formations, every one is unique. "basically a monogamous romance but with three people" Does exist, as a relationship type. you're not hashtag Misrepresenting (TM) poly people with it

BUT i do think it will help to read up on some poly people talking about how their relationships Differ from monogamous ones.

so i have outlined some basic important concepts about polyamory.

MORE IMPORTANTLY though, i've broken down some questions that you can answer throughout the writing process to strengthen your individual dyad relationships, your individual characterization, & your characters' individual feelings/experiences. this is a writing resource have fun

future kitkat butting in to say i spent over two hours writing this and it definitely needs a readmore. it is also NOT comprehensive. but everything should be pretty simple to follow! feel free to reblog if you find it helpful yourself or just want to reward me for how gotdan long this took KSLDKFJKDL.

i've grabbed quick links for a couple of the important concepts, some have SEO pitches in them but the info largely seems to be good. (if i missed anything Egregiously Gross on these sites i should be able to update the links with better ones later, since they're under the readmore.)

sidenote: this is NOT meant to be overwhelming, despite the length. if you can't read all of this, that's Okay. you do not need to give up on your writing.

here we go:

compersion!

compersion is a BIG thing in a lot of polyamorous relationships. it's joy derived from seeing two (or more) of your partners happy together, or joy derived from seeing your partner happy with someone else.

compersion is really important as a concept because it highlights that every individual relationship within a polycule is different -- and that that's a GOOD thing. it's sort of the inverse of jealousy.

by the "inverse of jealousy," i mean that instead of feeling left out and upset and possessive, you feel happy/joyous/content.

i can use personal experience as an example: it's a Relief for me when my partners receive joy/support/sex/romance/etc that i can't (or prefer not to) give them. and i love seeing my partners make each other laugh and be silly together.

it's 100% okay for a poly triad not to be together 100% of the time, it doesn't mean that the third member is being left out or not treated equally when two people do things alone together.

(i have individual dates with my partners all the time! PLUS larger 3-and-4-person date nights.)

if the third member DOES feel jealous or left out, then the polycule can have a conversation to figure out what needs/wants aren't being met, and solve that. this happens semi-regularly in my polycule, as it will happen in any relationship (including monogamous ones)! it's just part of being an adult, sometimes you have to talk about feelings.

metamours!

a metamour is someone who is dating your partner, but ISN'T dating you. this may not be relevant for people writing closed three-person romantic sexual triads, but it's a super helpful term to know.

the linked article also lists different types of metamour relationships with some fun phrasing i hadn't heard before. the tl;dr is: sometimes you'll be domestic cohabitation friends, sometimes you'll be buddies with your own friendship, sometimes you might not interact much outside of parties, every relationship is different.

there's no one-size-fits-all requirement for metamour relationships. sometimes polyamorous people will end up dating their metamour after a while (has happened to me), sometimes polyamorous people will break up with one partner for normal life reasons, but remain friendly metamours.

the goal of polyamory is NOT for EVERYONE to fall in love. it is 100% okay if this happens in your story, it happens in real life too! but it is also 100% okay for characters to be metamours without ever becoming "more than friends."

(sidenote: try to kill any internalized "more than" that you have when it comes to friendship. friends are just as important and special and vital as partners.)

of course there are a million ways for messiness to occur with metamours within a complex polycule, exactly like with close-knit platonic friend groups. however this post is not about that! there's enough "here's how polyamory can go wrong" stuff out there already, so i'm focusing on the positives here :)

open versus closed polyamorous relationships!

i'm struggling to find an online article that reflects my experience without directly contradicting at least SOME stuff. so i'll give a quick rundown

google has a bunch of conflicting definitions of open relationships and whether open relationships are different from polyamory. the general consensus seems to be that an open relationship prioritizes one partnership (often a marriage), but that each partner can have extraneous flings or long-term commitments (most often sexual in nature).

this is not typically how i use the term wrt polyamory. the poly concept is pretty simple. a closed polyamorous relationship is one with boundaries like a monogamous one. there are multiple partners in the polycule, but they are not interested in having anybody new join said polycule.

an open polyamorous relationship tends to be more flexible -- it just means that IF someone in the polycule develops mutual feelings for a new person, it's fine for them to become part of said polycule if they want to! the relationship/person is open to newcomers.

some groups will need to negotiate this all together, others will just go "haha, you kids have fun." just depends on the individuals!

with open AND closed polyamorous relationships, the most important thing is making sure that there's respectful communication and that everyone is on the same page. but there's no one-size-fits-all way to do that.

i wish i could give you guys a prescriptive "You Must Do It This Way" guide, but that's.... basically the opposite of what polyamory is about, HAHA.

feelings for multiple people!

i was gonna tack this on to the previous section but decided it warranted its own lil bit.

a defining feature (....i'm told?) of monogamous relationships is that a monogamous person only has feelings for One individual at a time. they only want a relationship with one individual at a time. or, if they DO have feelings for multiple people simultaneously, they're still only comfortable dating one person at a time & being exclusive with that one person.

this is perfectly fine!

the poly experience is generally different from this. but once again..... polyamorous people all have different individual perspectives on this.

for me, i have never been able to draw hard boxes around romantic vs sexual vs platonic relationships, & i love many people at once. my personal polycule lacks many strict definitions beyond "these are my chosen people, i want to forge a life with them indefinitely, whatever shape that life takes"

some poly people feel explicit romantic or sexual attraction to multiple people at once, some poly people feel almost no romantic or sexual attraction at all. i'd say that MOST poly people feel different things for different partners, which is not a bad thing!

some poly people are even monogamous-leaning -- they have just chosen one romantic partner who is themselves part of a larger polycule. (so this monogamous-leaning person has at least one metamour!)

or alternatively, they might have one romantic partner AND a qpr, or other ways of defining relationships. (this is a factor in my own polycule!)

i made this its own point because if you're writing a straightforward triad, this is unlikely to come up in the story itself -- but it's worth thinking about how your characters develop/handle feelings outside of their partnerships.

like, is this sort of a soulmateship, 'these are the only ones for me' type deal? in which they won't fall in love with anyone else, and can be fairly certain of that?

that's pretty close to typical monogamous standards but you Can make it work. just be thoughtful with it

alternatively, can you see any of these characters falling in love Again after the happily-ever-after? and how would the triad approach it, if so? what would they all need to talk about beforehand, and what feelings would everybody have about the situation?

it's worth considering these questions even if the hypothetical will never feature in your actual canon, because knowing the answers to these questions will help you understand all of the individuals & their relationship(s) MUCH better.

i've been typing this for nearly two hours and there's a lot more i COULD say because... there's just a lot to say. i'll close out with some quick questions that you can ask yourself when developing the dyad dynamics within your triad

first, take a page and create a separate section for each individual dyad. then answer these questions for every pair:

how does each pair act when alone?

how do they act differently alone compared to when they're with their third partner?

are there any elements of this dyad (romantic, sexual, financial, domestic, etc) that these two people DON'T have with the third partner?

if so, what are they?

are there any boundaries or hard limits within this dyad that aren't shared with the third partner?

if so, what are they?

partner 3 goes out of town alone for a few weeks. what are the remaining two doing in their absence?

(doesn't have to be anything special, it's just to get a sense of how the two interact on a day-by-day basis without the third there)

what is something that each partner in the dyad admires about the other -- that they DON'T necessarily see in the third partner?

what problem do These Two Specifically need to solve in the story before their relationship will work?

how is that problem DIFFERENT from the problems being solved within the other two dyads?

doing this for ALL THREE dyads is VITAL imo. that way, you develop complex and nuanced and different relationships that all have unique dynamics.

those questions should be enough to get you started, i hope

then After you've charted the differences in relationships, you can start to jot down similarities in the overarching triad. what does one person admire in Both of their partners? what are activities that all three like to do together? what are boundaries or discussions that all three share?

but the main goal is to figure out how to Differentiate each relationship!

a polycule is only as strong as the individual relationships within it. if two people are struggling with their own relationship, adding a third person won't fix that.

(UNLESS the third person is the catalyst for those two to, like, Actually Communicate And Work Their Shit Out. i just mean that the old adage of "maybe if we just add a third-" works about as well to fix a miserable non-communicative marriage as, uh, "maybe if we have a baby-")

AND FINALLY.

if you're not sure whether your poly romance reads organically to poly people, you can hire a sensitivity reader with poly experience. if you can't afford that, you can read up on polyamorous resources like a glossary of terms & articles actually written by poly people. (and stories written by poly people!)

you can also just.... ask poly people questions, if they're open to it. i like talking about polyamory and my own relationships so you're welcome to send asks if u want, i just can't guarantee i'll answer bc my energy levels fluctuate a lot and i don't always have time.

polyamorous people are in an uphill battle for positive representation right now & so the LAST thing i want to see is authors giving up on their stories bc they're worried about getting things Wrong. well-meaning and positive stories that treat this kind of love as normal, healthy, & aspirational are So So So Needed. even if you guys end up with some funky-feeling details.

seriously, if you're monogamous then you probably don't have a full idea of Just How Nasty a lot of people can get about polyamory. i wish it DIDN'T mean so much for you guys to want to write nice stories about us, but it does mean a lot. and it means a lot that you want to do it WELL.

in conclusion. this is not a prescriptive guide, it's just a way to raise questions. and also, you all are doing FINE.

[sophsicle]

there is something a bit horrific about living in a world determined by algorithms. because, for all our fears about the advancements of technology, it is still fundamentally crude. it lacks empathy and tact. unable to tell the difference between trends and tragedy. so that when something happens. like a death. all it knows is that people are looking. and it doesn't care why. it doesn't care how. it just doesn't want them to stop. so it drags up every photo and every video, piecing together some Frankenstein phantom. of a person who can't take things down. can't block things from view. can't die in peace. because the algorithm sees you looking. because no one ever taught it that digging up bodies is bad manners.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

How would you redesign Headmaster Magneto? Just out pf curiousity because while he served it didn’t feel like… Erik.

i have to keep it 100 i have no idea without just. rerunning his original design but with a palette swap LOL but we try around here

[shalomniscient]

thinking modern!au feixiao thoughts again… feixiao who loves having you as her pretty passenger princess in her souped up supra. alongside her fighting skills, her car is something she’s also super proud of. she worked a lot of shifts at her uncle huaiyan’s shop to convince her guardian yueyu that she could get one, so she holds it near and dear to her heart. all of the car’s mods were done by her own hand—with some helpful assistance from moze, specifically when it came to tuning the ecu. and she certainly put it into action, sneaking off to participate in a street race here and there. it’s how she ended up making friends with an older foxian, yukong, who would also haunt these meet-ups in a downright monstrous nissan gtr that other racers could only look enviously upon. yukong’s retired now, though, very busy looking after her 2 year old daughter that feixiao adores.

in any case, feixiao’s had a bit of a history with living life in the fast lane. it’d always been a source of worry for jiaoqiu and moze, but feixiao had mostly just let their concerns go in one ear and out the other. she cares for them, she does, but how could they understand what it’s like to live life on a timer? she can’t let the world pass her by, needs to chase it down, and if that means doing nearly 200 on the freeway then so be it. but somehow, that worldview had since fractured—and she can trace it back to when she met you. now, with you in her car, she finds herself wanting to slow down. to indulge in every soft laugh, every sigh, and every breath she can draw from you. her car has gone from a place where she comes to forget, to a place where she wants to indent every moment into her memory.

she loves taking you out on long drives, maybe to go somewhere out of state for the summer. she’ll have several playlists on her phone, a mishmash of your favorite songs and her own, and you both take turns belting out the lyrics in the car. if you get some food at a drive-thru, expect to be hand feeding her fries or helping her sip her drink. she’s gotta keep both hands on the wheel, after all. and if the drive stretches on into the night, and you fall asleep in the passenger seat, she’ll slowly pull over and grab a blanket she’s started keeping in the backseat and draping it over you. when the car starts moving again it’s with an intentional, quiet gentleness, the machine purring softly as it moves down the road under feixiao’s expert hand. it’s a long journey, but there’s a warm comfort that’s wormed its way into her heart, knowing that you’re right there next to her for the entire ride.

[al-luviec]

went crazy while drawing this

[ruporas]

studies from the finale

[varilien]

as a kid i wanted soooooo badly to have a bill gijinka for my very own but i could never come up w one that didn't just feel like i was ripping off all my favorite fan designs for him at the time. and all this time later finally this one came out SO Perfect For Me that i think it's a little bit of a mistake actually like i didn't intend on becoming this obsessed with him ever again in my life but HERE WE ARE !!!

Palestine: Funds | Action | eSims | Info Sudan Resources | Congo Resources

u guys see what i mean tho. these are from like 2015(?) or smn and visibly just patterned off of what everyone else was doing at the time lol

[makiswirl]

can i just say. and this is probably a niche hill to die on. that i am so gobsmacked every time someone vaguely hints at the idea that jotaro doesn't care meaningfully for the other crusaders, usually particularly kakyoin and joseph, when those two actually tend to be the ones he reacts to being hurt the hardest

like he cares for his loved ones!!!! that literally plays into his character motives in every single part he shows up in!!! stop lying to me!!!!!!!