#i promise it isn’t a scam this time

[chickenhoops]

Sorry for double posting but APPARENTLY those commission scammers have showed up on Tumblr at least for the first time for me.

For those who don’t know what I am talking about, there were/are commission scams going on in Instagram and even places like Artstation where people would pretend to be interested in your work and try to commission a pet or portrait for the sake of trying to get your bank details. Here’s how to (somewhat) sniff them out:

1- They don’t seem to be an average customer/ person that would be involved in your fandom, or has a blank template for an account or don’t even follow you.

2- They ask you to draw a portrait or a pet picture either for themselves or their children/family.

3- They promise to overpay you (in the hundreds) and do not listen to you even if you firmly state the price is cheaper.

4- They are constantly asking for your email name, or private details regarding things like banking details or passwords or other private information others should not know.

5- They try and over reassure you they mean no harm, try to guilt you into giving them the info, or become aggressive over you not giving them what they want.

What should you do if you come across one of these guys? My best advice is to block and report. Sadly these people jump account to account so there isn’t really much to do other than spread this info to prevent artists from being scammed.

[ironunderstands]

These Aventurine, Topaz and Jade comparisons are getting out of hand…

As much as I adore both of them, I think it’s very disingenuous to compare Aventurine and Topaz’s lore and be like “but they are the same!!!! If people like Aventurine and dislike Topaz that’s just misogyny!!! and like… no?

Topaz’s whole thing is that she doesn’t know the extent of the IPC’s evil, and believes that what she’s doing is genuinely the right thing to do. Even if she never had a choice in joining the IPC, she (incorrectly) believes what they did to her and her planet is justified, logical and moral, and for those reasons she stands with them. Part of this is likely IPC brainwashing, as she was probably very young when she became an indentured servant to them, and someone living on a planet on the brink of destruction would likely view anyone who stepped up to save them as heroes (imo the IPC likely waited for the point of no return to establish contact so her people had no other choice to except).

However Topaz got best end of the proverbial stick, her planet and its people were deemed useful by the IPC, and didn’t fight back, even if in the end they were still exploited.

Unfortunately, we have seen through Boothill, Belabog and Aventurine what happens when that isn’t the case.

Boothill’s planet got bombed and people genocided because they had a resource useful to the IPC, but were unwilling to cooperate with them or hand over their home, so the IPC decided to eradicate them.

Belabog had a debt owed to the IPC that was ridiculously high and very unfair to expect them to pay back, and had Topaz not convinced the higher ups to give them some time (which she got demoted for), the IPC would have taken Belabog by force

That leaves us with Aventurine, whose story is in no way on the same level of bad as Topaz’s. Unlike her, he has witnessed and experienced firsthand the truly awful shit the IPC can do.

They took custody of Sigonia and promised to offer the Avgin aid in their fight against the Katacans, at the very least protect them from harm. (Sidenote, since the IPC held control over Sigonia, they should have stopped the fighting in the first place). However, they simply stood by and did nothing, resulting in the deaths of around 6,000 Avgin, with around 3,000 went missing (or injured, I don’t remember, either way it’s bad).

But wait! It gets worse! Aventurine when he was still known as Kakavasha referred to the IPC as “the men in black/the men in black suits”, and his first master says he bought Aventurine from “the men in black/the men in black suits”, likely mocking the way he referred to them. Therefore THE IPC TOOK PART AND LIKELY EVEN CREATED A FUCKING SLAVE TRADE IN SIGONIA

Look being made into an indentured servant isn’t fun, but idk personally I’d take that any day of the week OVER BEING ENSLAVED

That’s not even to mention how horrible of a reputation Sigonian’s have in the galaxy, one likely spread by/resulting from the IPC themselves, as at least on Aventurines planet they do not have the mobility to make a name for themselves. (Honestly it’s a mini theory of mine that Aventurines scam is what partly contributed to this reputation, and his status as a slave is something the IPC conveniently left out in their broadcast about it-)

But, you might be saying, didn’t Aventurine have a choice to join the masked fools and leave the IPC, isn’t he free now? And to that I say, it’s complicated.

Considering the amount of suicidal shit Aventurine has done while being part of the IPC, he clearly hasn’t been having a fun time as a member of one, so why does he stick around, especially with the Fools invite? Even if he was a slave, does that absolve him of the crimes he’s committing now? What could justify his actions?

Revenge, plan and simple.

This is going to delve into some spoiler territory for the end of the Penacony 2.2 quest, something which I didn’t feel like mentioning earlier because I’m sorry but everyone and their mother already knows Boothill’s lore. Now, let’s get into it.

Aventurine accepts Jades offer to join the IPC, and when he becomes a Stoneheart, the first thing he asks about is the fate of the Avgin, to which he then learns that besides him, they are all dead. You see, from birth Kakavasha was pushed onto a pedestal as the savior of the Avgin, but now that there are no more Avgin to save, his primary motivator in becoming a Stoneheart (beyond not being enslaved anymore) is gone.

So what does he do now?

Simple, try to kill the motherfuckers behind it.

That’s why he takes on such risky gambles still, and why he wagers and wants Diamond to promote him to rank p46. The higher Aventurine gets the closer he gets to his goal of taking down the IPC for good.

Which is why his meeting with Boothill is so meaningful. I think Boothill is going to “kidnap” him and together they are gonna take down the wicked bitch that is Oswaldo Schneider for his literal crimes against humanity.

Mark my words, an IPC downfall is going to happen, and I think Topaz, Aventurine, Boothill and Ratio are going to be at the forefront of it.

However, Topaz and Ratio (and by extension the rest of the galaxy) have to learn/realize the true horrors of the IPC (although I can sense Ratio doesn’t really like them, and he’s learned a lot from Aventurine, I doubt he knows the full extent of the situation or is in any way happy about it). Therefore? Topaz mental breakdown arc? Ratio lore? PLEASE??!? The IP3 compliment one another so well and god I can’t wait for that to come to fruition.

I really want to see a Topaz and Ratio centered story leading up to an IPC smackdown, and I think we are gonna learn a lot more about how shitty they are in the later half of 2.2 and in 2.3 when the interlude and Jades release arrive.

As for the aforementioned Jade, she’s gonna need a Aventurine squared amount of trauma or reasoning behind her actions to seem in any way sympathetic, because right now she just seems like an evil bitch (in a semi good way, I will always respect the commitment to the bit) who loves her job and would make Machiavelli weep over how hard her ends are trying to justify her means.

[fluentmoviequoter]

Premium Air

prank blurb! (word count unknown) fluff.

You forced Tim Bradford into physical affection before he accepted his fate and asked you out. That’s how he remembers it, at least.

Now, you sit beside him, with your fuzzy sock-clad feet pressed to the side of his leg.

“Oh, I finally took my car to the shop,” you murmur.

“Did they figure out what was making that noise?�� Tim asks.

“What noise?”

“Just because you keep your music turned up to 100 and refuse to acknowledge the noise doesn’t mean it wasn’t there,” Tim huffs.

“Fine, yeah, there was a noise. The guy said one of my tires had really low pressure and needed to be rotated. He gave me a really good deal, though.”

“How good?”

“He rotated the tires and inflated them with premium air at a huge discount.”

Tim stiffens beside you and drops his phone to his thigh, the sports article he’d been reading immediately forgotten.

“Put what in your tires?” he asks slowly.

“Premium air. He said it would keep them inflated longer and keep the noise from coming back.”

You hide your smile as Tim shifts beside you. He lays a hand on your leg and leans closer, forcing you to work harder to conceal your smile.

“Tell me you’re kidding.”

“No! It was less than half price. He did it all for $500 and promised it was a really good deal.”

“$500?!” Tim yells. “Are you kidding me?”

“I know; it’s usually $1200.”

“It’s a scam! Premium air isn’t a thing! Air is air.”

“But he said-“

“Who? What’s his name? The garage name?”

“I, uh, I don’t remember. But, Tim-“

“Give me your keys,” Tim demands as he stands.

“Tim-“

“I’m going to make sure he didn’t mess with anything to get you back in and scam you again.”

“Tim, it was a prank!” you admit quickly.

He falters beside the couch as you sit up. You look up at him with what you hope is an apologetic smile.

“I’m sorry; I didn’t think you’d get so upset.”

“You didn’t pay $500 for your tires?” Tim clarifies.

“No. The noise was just a loose hubcap, which the guy tightened free of charge.”

“Give me your phone,” Tim says, extending a hand.

You pass it over without question, and he opens your messages before nodding.

“Angela sent you the idea?” he murmurs.

“Yeah,” you admit. “We thought it would be funny. The protectiveness was really sweet though.”

“Have you ever been scammed by a mechanic? Because I have a friend-“

“Tim, just sit back down and spend time with me. I promise not to get scammed.”

“Or prank me again?” Tim asks as he sits.

You set your legs down in his lap and smile as you answer, “I said no such thing.”

[kyra45]

The Gaia Thomas situation

If you don’t use Twitter/X, here is a brief summary of what’s going on for those who use tumblr and have caught glimpses of the current events going on over there related to someone whose name is Gaia Thomas. All information explained here is publicly accessible and can be found if you search on X/Twitter.

Gaia Thomas made two gofundme fundraisers for the following people who needed help in relation to Palestine: Mai Rajab and Kareemadnan. She befriended them and promised the money would go towards them.

Unfortunately as of March 3rd, it seems Gaia had no plans to actually support them and sent Mai a text saying “I am not responsible for your travel. I wish you the best of luck.” And promptly closed the GoFundMe before reopening it. Originally both had been closed but both are open. Mai is the main one who’s posted about it, but Kareem is affected as well.

Currently there has been no updates about what Gaia Thomas has to say about the situation, but a post on Twitter/X made by cérise 🌻 says Gaia is “a disabled writer who is a self-claimed expert in cultural awareness, health and empowerment” (a direct quote from the original tweet) and Gaia does have a LinkedIn page.

The two GoFundMe’s are linked below if you’d like to report them as Gaia isn’t giving the money to the people she was going to help. This post will update if anything changes but I wanted to make a post that explained it without images. The fundraisers were still open as of posting.

Mai fundraiser (Closed now)

Kareem fundraiser (Closed now)

If you want to help Mai and Kareem, their on Twitter/X and their usernames are as follows on there: Mai _Gazan and Kareemalaklouk

—

Latest update at 3/5/2023 3pm: Following the accusations, Gaia posted this update claiming she was supposedly fell for a scam. The following text is copied from her response on the fundraisers:

Dear donors,

I was the victim of an online scam. My credit union caught the scam when I tried to wire transfer the proceeds of Mai's fundraiser. In the interests of donor safety, I blocked donations at that time. The evidence is in the hands of the Alameda Police Department. Please be aware that this could happen to you. All funds have been repaid in the form of donations to the original fundraiser as requested by the GoFundMe team. I have asked GoFundMe to return the funds to the hands of the original donors.

Sincerely, Gaia Thomas

Latest update at 3/8/2024: All the fundraisers made by Gaia have been closed and you can now find new ones made by someone else that is more reliable then Gaia was. Gaia insists that she was scammed but she wasn’t. She tried to take the money as her own and didn’t like it when she was caught out by the people she was supposed to help. The money donated has been refunded but those funds will likely never reach the three people Gaia was meant to help.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

I just saw your post about Toph being the one that brings out Katara’s inner (gremlin) child and my god you’re so right. Katara actually gets to just be a kid when it comes to Toph, she gets to be petty and actually really mean sometimes (saying the stars are beautiful and then telling Toph it’s too bad she can’t see them was CRAZY) but she also gets to pull a scam and go to a spa with her (and then wash three girls down a river after Toph dumped them in there for being mean to her). And I love that we get to see those sides of her that Toph drags out.

Contrast that with the like one time she was kind of mean to Aang in the waterbending scroll episode and had to immediately apologize to him and promise she wouldn’t try to learn from the scroll anymore. Toph brings out what Katara is really like when she gets to just be someone’s friend (and even sister figure) and when she isn’t being forced in one way or another to take on a motherly role for them. (Side note but this is also why I wish we’d gotten to see Katara and Suki interact one on one because I feel that would’ve been another relationship that just allows Katara to be a teenage girl and relate to another girl who would probably understand her pretty well)

Anyway I love your blog and I hope you have a lovely day!

YES absolutely agree w you! Katara is unhinged when it comes to Toph but in like, a not very serious way. One of my fave things about Katara and Toph is how Toph is the first person to reject Katara’s caretaking unequivocally in a way that asserts that they’re on equal ground. it’s not a babysitter situation because like you said, Katara decided to be bratty right back!

And conversely, I think it’s funny that Katara, who is super kind and compassionate and unequivocally the heart of the group, is the person who’s rudest to Toph LOL. Toph really does not want people to treat her like she’s made out of glass, and one of the ways she does that is by being brash to other people, but Katara is the only one who really meets her on that level of sheer belligerence, you know? But Katara can also be pretty thoughtful about what Toph does need, like saying exactly the right thing in Tales of Ba Sing Se. They're just so in sync, yet set each other off. It’s beautiful.

I absolutely agree with you re: Suki too. I want them to swap fighting tips and talk about makeup and other #justgirlythings. But I also want Suki to demonstrate to Katara that leadership and caretaking can happen in combination, because Suki held that joint role with the Kiyoshi Warriors. Katara has so much leadership potential and I think Suki could have been a great mentor to her in that regard. (Uh oh, now I ship Sukitara oops)

I’m honoured you like my blog and I hope you have a lovely day too!!!

[nightcolorz]

The most underrated moment of all time in interview with the vampire (the book) is when Louis meets Lestat and he’s all seductive, making all these promises about eternal life and escaping his human burdens and transcending suffering, living his ultimate hedonistic fantasy forever, and then once the transformation is complete and Louis and Lestat are living together Louis realizes that Lestat isn’t the angelic other worldly being come to sweep him off his feet that he presented himself as, but is actually just a Guy. Fucking hilarious. Suddenly Lestat is 10 years older than Louis at most, his father is still alive, and he’s responsible for caring for him in his old age. He’s bitter and immature and his dad is dying and handling him is his priority first but he hates it, he’s just got average mortal problems and concerns. And Louis’s like wtf ? I’ve been scammed. So good! Lestat is just a guy actually he’s just like Louis, he doesn’t know anything. Vampirism doesn’t make anything more special rlly and ur family and responsibilities don’t go away once u drink the magic blood. I love that, it’s hilarious as it is so interesting for their dynamic. I annoys me sm that the show made Lestat so much more older then Louis bcus a good chunk of the foundation of their dynamic is just gone. Ugh

[spitdrunken]

response to this ask: ABSOLUTELY NOT TOO MUCH!!! This ask has brought me infinite joy and I have reread it a LOT. (Also dw, I will always assume Reader is an adult through asks!! But I get why you’d wanna say that with a term such as grooming, haha) also this got REALLY LONG… HELP.

Notes: pseudocest, obsessive behaviour, codependency, unequal power dynamics, implied minor character death, infantilization… general creepiness. Perhaps this veers away from my original post a little, but I love the idea that you’re someone entirely new to Hell. You’re fresh off the boat, so to speak, entirely unfamiliar with the way things work around here— Except that everything’s fucking terrifying, and you want out! Right now. Please. You see an ad on a random TV in a store’s display, one featuring a hotel that promises ‘sinners’ (which is what you are now, apparently, even your own body now being a new and confusing factor of your existence) a possible way to ascend up to Heaven. Now new and refurbished, after the last successfully averted extermination! Whatever that means. With nowhere else to turn to, no other leads or possibilities except sleeping out on the blood-soaked streets, of course you go! Who wouldn’t? You’d be stupid not to go! …Unless this is all a big scam In which case, you can only hope that you can’t die more than once.

Maybe you arrive, and this grand, beautiful hotel, is, well… Deserted. It’s beautiful on the outside, sure, but where are any of the staff? Or the people staying there, for that matter? You’re so uncomfortable out it all, that you nearly turn tail and run back from whence you came. You would have, if where you came from wasn’t ten times worse.

You walk up to the front desk, and, before you can change your mind, ring the little bell placed on the desk. Someone appears in a flash of golden light, and you have to squint your eyes to avoid being blinded. It disappears as quickly as it came, and a man… Demon, actually, appears in its place. (You catch a quick glance of something bright yellow being quickly stuffed into his pocket, but you have no idea what it is.) His form is noticeably more humanoid than the others you’ve seen out and about. Yes, his skin is an inhuman tone, and his cheeks take apple-red to a whole new level, but he doesn’t appear monstrous. That doesn’t make him exactly inviting, however. His face is set in a neutral expression, and he openly looks you up and down, pupils narrowed into slits. You scratch at the side of your neck, only to immediately flinch. You aren’t quite used to how sharp your nails are nowadays. “Um, hello! I— Sorry to bother you, sir,” you break the silence. “I might be wrong, but is this the Hazbin Hotel…? I saw the advertisement that was put out, and I was interested. Would you happen to be the owner?”

His neutral expression fades, and a small smile takes it place, eyelids sliding half-closed. “Oh no, no— Old me isn’t the boss of this place. That would be my daughter! I’m sure you would have heard of us.” He leans on his staff, both of his hands cupped around the apple on top. His eyes roam around your expression as if searching for something. “You’re pretty new here, I’m guessing?” “…Mhm. It’s that obvious, huh?” You don’t know how he was able to tell so quickly, but you laugh in a way that can only be heard as self deprecating. You shift your weight from one foot to the other, and avert your eyes.

“It’s kind of hard to tell how much time has passed, but— Not a lot. Honestly, I have no idea what’s going on. One moment, I was alive, and the next I was here, with this weird body, surrounded by terrifying people, and I don’t know—“ Your voice cracks under the weight of the reality of your situation. An eternity in Hell. “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… Yeah. It’s just been a lot.” “I see. Yes, this realm isn’t particularly kind, least of all to newcomers. I can’t imagine what you’ve seen.” He says, quieter now. You dare a glance at his face. Something in his features has softened at your words, his slit pupils and smile wider in size. When he sees you looking, he extends a hand. You take it, and he gives you multiple firm shakes, before pulling you into a quick hug that has your knees buckle a bit and crushes the air out of your lungs. For a little guy, he really is surprisingly strong. When he lets you go, he’s still got a hand holding yours, leading you to one of the couches in the lobby, and promptly plopping down, pulling you with him. “But things are already on the rise for you from here on out!” He says, all boisterous and smiles, revealing rows of sharp teeth. “You’re new here, and already hit the jackpot! Lucifer’s the name!" And you can only imagine what kind of expression flashes over your face, because he nods rapidly and winks at you. “—Yes, that one, glad that, at least, rings a bell. And staying here places you under my family’s protection." His gaze drifts over the lobby. "My daughter and her friends are out doing trust exercises somewhere right now, but I’m certain she’ll be happy to welcome once she returns. She’s a real sweetheart, let me tell you! She didn’t get that from me, I can tell you that!” He laughs, but it quickly tapers off into a sigh. You wish you could laugh along. You have to admit you’re more than just a bit frozen up, questioning all of the decisions in your life and death that lead up to this moment. Sitting on a couch in a hotel lobby with Satan himself… Maybe you could die again, after all, and you were about to experience it. You probably have committed like fifty gross breaches of etiquette already, and, and— There’s a little rubber duck sitting on your lap.

It immediately snaps you out of your stupor, with how sudden and unexpected it is. The duck is bright yellow with chubby orange cheeks, and wearing a little black top hat. You can’t help cracking up a bit, taking it into your hand. …Maybe this guy is as silly as his outfit would suggest. Was calling himself Lucifer his idea of a joke? Things might be alright after all. “Ah..." You smile. "He’s so cute!” You relax, letting your back hit the sofa you’re sitting on. “Like a little gentleman!” This is the only adorable thing you’ve seen ever since arriving in Hell, and no one should blame you for getting a bit excited. Your days have been nothing but utter misery, after all. “You think so? I mean—“ He laughs, short and sudden. “Of course you do! Just look at the little guy! Who couldn’t love him? You can keep him, I can make another one lickety-split!” “Oh! Um, thank you! Does he have a name?” You’re full-on smiling now, and turning to look at ‘Lucifer’. At a shake of his head, you hum in thought. “A fancy guy deserves a fancy name… What about Reginald?” You turn the little toy around, inspecting it from all sides. “You’ve seen nothing yet! Just give it a little squeeze, not too much.” You do as he says. Through the little hole in its beak, a white droplet emerges. “It’s glue! He used to help me with my crafting projects. But, well, he’s yours now. Off to greener pastures, as they say.” You can’t help yourself. The whole situation is really not all that funny, but you crack up, and once you start laughing, you can’t stop. Your chest hurts, and tears are burning at the corners of your eyes. You have no idea why! Everything’s been such a mess lately. After a couple of seconds, you babble out some nonsense. “I gave— I gave Reginald such a posh name! But… Y’know, he’s a working man!” You say, still cracking up in between the words. At this, it’s Lucifer who laughs, a sound loud and sudden enough to ring in your ears. Seems you hadn’t heard a real laugh out of him before after all.

In other words, Lucifer (who you end up finding out really is the Devil himself) quickly grows fond of you, and takes you under his wings. Perhaps it’s your innocence about Hell and it’s mechanisms that pulls him towards you, combined with the fact that you’re just kind of easy to fuss over. You’re none the wiser that Lucifer was all but hopeless about sinners before helping restart the hotel, and entirely unaware that your dynamic is anything but normal. In your mind, Lucifer must befriend people rather frequently! While you’re quickly taken in by Hazbin Hotel’s other friends and staff, it really is Lucifer who helps you through your adjustment period. He makes you little covers for your claws, so you can get used to having sharp appendages, and not accidentally keep clawing open furniture or your own flesh. He requests Nifty makes some food that is at least visually similar to some Earth meal. When you wake up in the morning, there’s always a little duck sitting in front of your hotel door, making you start your day with a smile. You’ve got a shelf full of them now, and love all of them. (And when you’re curled up in your bed, late at night, crying over all that you’ve lost, smothering your sobs with a pillow, there is a gentle knock on your door. Lucifer sits on the side of your bed, wearing striped pajamas in red and white, and encourages you to pour your heart out to him.

There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Everything you’re feeling, everything you’re going through— He’s heard and seen it all before. In fact, he’s sure he’s heard much, much worse. Has he ever done you wrong? No, he hasn’t. So, talk to him. He tells you, dabbing at your face with a white handkerchief decorated with apples stitched onto it. And you do.)

Lucifer looks after you. Sure, he’s not perfect. But no one is, right? Lucifer often seems to lose track of the conversation you’re having with him, distracted by the things around him and suddenly veering off into entirely different territory. In general, his memory is spotty at best, but you’re not surprised that an immortal being such as himself wouldn’t remember every single little thing you say.

He’ll hole himself up in his workshop for days at a time, only to emerge with nothing to show for it, except for a downtrodden expression. He’ll fight with Alastor (and continuously remind you to stay far away from that piece of shit), and get fussy whenever you try to leave the hotel without him glued to your side. Though his memory seems to often be unreliable, and you believe that a lot of simple conversations you have with him are simply left forgotten, there are instances you would consider insignificant that remain fresh in his mind.

“You’re doing it again,” you tell Lucifer. He’s pacing up and down the length of his room, ranting about Alastor. He blinks, and halts his movements, tapping his staff on the floor. “Doing what?” “The thing,” you emphasize, before standing up and walking towards him, dragging the top of your finger across his bottom lip. You can feel him take a quick inhale as soon as you make contact. A golden smear is left across your skin. “You’re always chewing on your bottom lip when you get upset. Doesn’t it hurt? I know it heals within, like, ten seconds, but still!” Absentmindedly, you look at his blood. It’s a weird thought to have, but it’s strangely… Beautiful. You look back up at him, and your brow furrows. “Hey… Were your red spots always that big? I think I’m seeing things.”

But things get better, and he improves. He starts to try and take little notes of the things you’ve told him, alongside the words of other people important to him, like Charlie, like a diary of sorts. The door to his workplace starts being left unlocked, and you’ll wander in, from time to time. You’ll sit on the chair in the corner of the room, reading or otherwise occupying yourself, and telling him that no, that duck or toy is not the worst thing you’ve ever seen, and doesn’t deserve to be burnt to a crisp.

You listen as he, on bad days, talks about his wife with a forlorn expression on his face. Things get better, though. He tries not to see the worst in sinners any longer, and his moods grow better. He spends more time with Charlie. All is well. You don’t realize just how entangled your existences are until you’re in too deep. That your eyes search for him every time you enter a new room, that you’ve grown comfortable with him doing the talking for you. You try to convince yourself it’s not a bad thing, but the simple truth is that you’ve lost a chunk of your independence. And when you try to go out with the other residents, it’s so easy for him to coax you back out of it.

Are you really sure you want to go? Look, I’m not trying to keep you here— I’m really not! But Hell’s a dangerous place out there, and I can assure you there’ll be things there that you really don’t want to see. …I’ve been working on a little display case for your favourite ducks, I can show you that instead.

He only grows more protective when time goes on, and you do more exercises with the rest of the hotel, bond with the other residents. At times, he tries to convince you to forgo their shared activities entirely.

(You try to forget about what you found in a drawer of his desk, one day. A note among so many other reminders that he is known to keep. But this one is wrinkled, pen pressed so hard to the paper that it’s torn in places. All of them want to go to Heaven, all of them want to leave here. Me. I get it. Because she has left, no one can be guaranteed to stay. But I won’t let the apple of my eye be taken, even if they send down an envoy and try to escort them up themselves. …But it’s hard not to remember.) When he gives you your a warning about the ‘scary outside world’ for the umpteenth time, you can’t help but roll your eyes and counter. Alright, dad. Nothing about your tone shows sincerity. You mean it as a joke or a jab, but Lucifer doesn’t laugh. Instead, he hums out a pleased little noise, a smile settling on his face.

The way he looks at you is so utterly tender, all half-lidded eyes and pupils blown wide, that it leaves you reeling. He nestles himself at your side, under the comfort of your arm, and promises to take care of you for the rest of your eternal life spent there. You have an eternity. It’s sweet, and knocks the breath out of you.

But you would’ve been able to reconcile the image of Lucifer and ‘father figure’ more easily if he, sometimes, didn’t act so contrary to such an image. He’ll call for you from behind his workdesk as you’re sitting on your usual chest, ready to show you a ventriloquist doll he’s been working on.

As you stand next to him, an arm is wrapped around your waist, and he pulls you on his lap. It’s in no way comfortable for him. He has to stick his head underneath one of your arms to see anything at all. It would be silly otherwise, but the way he pulls you flush against him, face nuzzled into your side as he audibly inhales, one clawed hand resting on your thigh… You can’t help but have it muddle your feelings towards him. He frequently kisses your hand as a greeting, and insists you let him kiss both of your cheeks before parting. You would write it off as one of his unique quirks if he did the same thing for Charlie, but he doesn’t.

Lucifer, with an eternity of time to hone his skills behind him, has picked up all kinds of crafts, including sewing. He’ll make pieces of clothing for you in his colour scheme, sew apple-themed patches on your clothing, among other things. It’s always embarrassing when he makes something. He fusses and cooes over you like you’re a child when you first wear any piece, clapping his hands and grinning. Oh, just look at you! Aren’t you the cutest little thing? It looks lovely on you!

Anyone with more than two braincells can tell something is going on between the two of you, though no one is quite sure exactly what. Perhaps Angel is rubbed the wrong way by just how overbearing Lucifer is being, and considers you to just get out there for once with the rest of them. You’re always cooped up inside the hotel! Come on, he’s been around the block more times than he count, and he knows every trick in the book. You’ll be fine as long as you stick with him. And… You have fun! Going out, dancing and drinking, accompanied by your friends, is wonderful. But maybe you drink a little bit too much, yet entirely unfamiliar with the different types of names alcoholic beverages in Hell have. How were you supposed to know you accidentally ordered one of the strongest drinks on the menu? And, in the crowd of people, you lose the rest, wandering outside without really noticing it. You’re such an obvious target, staggering on the sidewalk, giggling and mumbling to yourself, that you wouldn’t entirely blame anyone for the poor argument that ‘you were asking for it’ in a place like this. Your world is left spinning as you’re pushed against a wall, vision momentarily blacking out as your skull bashes against brick. (Somewhere in the club, Angel is looking for you, getting more frantic by the moment.)

You never get the chance to figure out exactly what the demon’s intentions are. As soon as their fingers brush over a patch Lucifer had sewn into your clothing, an apple with a little snake head popping out, they’re blasted back by golden light.

Your addled mind is still struggling to keep up when you’re wrapped in a set of soft, beautiful wings. The back of your head is cradled by gloved hands. You catch a glimpse of blood-red eyes set within a familiar face, but, soon, a cluster of feathers covers your eyes. There are horrible cracking noises, gurgling, wheezing— Though you see none of it, your imagination more than makes up for it. You press your face up against his chest, nauseous and shaking like a leaf. Lucifer takes off without a word, the flapping of his multiple sets of wings loud enough to awaken an oncoming headache. Mid-flight, when his features have returned to the ones you know him for, he peppers your face with kisses, and makes you look at him. You mumble out apologies, sniffling, drunk and shaken, but Lucifer shushes you.

What were you doing all the way out there, on your own? You’re usually such a good listener, my dove. You always listen to all of my warnings. A gloved finger traces your cheek. Someone convinced you to go out, didn’t they? That has to be it. You can tell your dad who it is. I won't be mad at you. You’ve never been afraid of Lucifer before. Now, though, you’re filled with apprehension. You frantically shake your head. Oh, then it was your own idea? The tip of one of his nails pokes your cheek. Not nearly hard enough to hurt, but the pressure is there.

…And you really do deserve to be in Hell, because prompted with this question, you take the selfish way out, and once again shake your head. More slowly, this time. See? It wasn’t that hard to be truthful, was it? I knew it wouldn’t be your fault. Now, all you have to do is tell me who it was.

That night, you spend the night in his bed, with Lucifer arguing that you’re very drunk. Which is very much. It’d be horrible for you to go ahead and choke on your vomit, or something like that! So, you should just stay with him. As you're drifting on the verge between conscious and unconscious, his lips find the skin of your throat, placing kisses up and down. Open-mouthed and warm, barely restrained.

You wake up the next morning with a splitting headache and only vague memories of the day prior. But you wake up with Lucifer’s arms wrapped around you, his face hidden in the crook of your neck, each of his breaths tickling your skin. You wake up to one of his legs slotted in between yours. You wake up to the realization that you’ve bitten off far, far more than you can chew.

[mochiwrites]

I would also like to see you put scarian in situations:

51. Meet ugly/awkward first meetings please?

51. Meet ugly/awkward first meetings (put that guy in situations!)

reblogs do more than likes!

“You tricked me!” Grian’s voice lifts in pitch as he yells. He’s spent all day hunting for that scarred merchant who sold him that ‘wooden cutting board.’ Grian’s not the sort to get so easily scammed, but the merchant had been… very nice looking. He managed to find him after practically running through the Hypixel hub all day.

For his part, the man looks startled by Grian’s arrival, green eyes nervously flicking around their surroundings. No one bats an eye at them. He looks at Grian, “Ah! You’re the red sweater guy from a few days ago! How’s that cutting board treating you?” He smiles, all smooth and polite.

It makes Grian growl with frustration. “You said it was wooden, but the second I went to use it, the whole thing crumbled to dust!” The scarred man blinks at him, feigning some kind of concern. It makes Grian want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him around. “You scammed me out of my diamonds.”

“Why I’d never scam! Everything I have to sell,” he gestures to the large pouch at his feet, “is completely authentic! If you want another cutting board I could—”

“I want my diamonds back,” Grian interrupts him, not even giving him another chance to smooth talk his way into Grian’s wallet. Not again. He’s not letting this handsome guy have his way with him again!

The merchant winces in return, quickly covering it up with a smile, “I’m afraid it was non-refundable! I’d be happy to give you another product in exchange?” He tilts his head before his eyes light up. “How about a couple of rare magic crystals? Or an enchanted book? I have a one of a kind fishing rod with so much luck, a fisherman once found Atlantis because of it!”

Grian’s eyebrow twitches in annoyance, “How in Void’s name did I let you talk your way into making me buy anything from you, dude. It’s so obvious you’re a scam.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re so blunt it hurts?” the scarred man quips, the smile never leaving his face. “Does that scare off the ladies?”

Grian snorts, “It’s sent plenty of men running.”

He pretends not to notice how the man’s eyes light up. “You sure have a sharp wit about you. I like that.” The smile on his face softens into something a bit more real, and Grian sees the way it reaches his eyes. It makes his heart skip a beat.

“You’re not smooth talking your way out of repaying me.” He crosses his arms, squinting at the man. “I’m expecting to be repaid — I gave you ten diamonds for a piece of junk!”

The man laughs, and oh if isn’t the nicest sound Grian has ever heard. “May I interest you in a different deal instead, my good sir?” he inquires, taking a step closer.

“Depends on if it involves getting my diamonds back or not.” Grian lifts a brow.

“While I can’t make your diamonds magically reappear, I can make it up to you. If you’ll allow me too.” That stupidly soft smile is still on his face.

Grian’s nose scrunches up and he scoffs. “Thanks but no thanks. I have rent to pay so if you can’t pay me back, I have to go find a different way.” He knew it was a bad idea to begin with! What the heck did he need a cutting board for anyway?! He doesn’t even cook for crying out loud! The man really had just… charmed him with words alone. Well, his looks certainly had something to do with it. It’s not Grian’s fault he’s weak for a guy with fluffy brown hair and nice green eyes!

He frowns and steps back, turning around. He starts walking away with hurried steps.

“W-Wait!” the man cries out, hurrying after him. Grian’s pace doesn’t slow, determined. They fall into step together, walking side by side. “Just hear me out!”

“No thanks!” Grian starts walking faster, hoping to shake him.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t.

“I promise it’ll be worth your time! Your while even! I’ll knock your socks off!”

“Not interested!”

“Please! Let me take you out to dinner!”

Grian stops short, eyes going wide. His cheeks go red, and he whirls on the merchant to look at him. “What?!”

“Let me take you out to dinner!” he repeats, and Grian continues to stare at him, jaw dropping. “While I can’t give you back your diamonds, I can at least treat you to some Goodtimes.” He winks, and oh Void is he flirting right now?!

“I— you— what—” Grian stammers out, heart thundering in his chest. The man’s smile is doing terrible things to his critical thinking skills.

“You won’t have to pay for a thing! I can talk our way into the best restaurant of your choosing,” he continues on.

Now that… is a curious thing. And Grian feels like he’s about to make another bad decision.

“…if it’s a date, you should at least tell me your name.”

“It’s Scar! Scar Goodtimes,” Scar replies, green eyes bright and pleased. There’s a little smirk on his face. “And you are?”

“Grian.” Is he really doing this? “So… where and when am I meeting you, Scar?” He’s really doing this.

“Let’s say… tomorrow afternoon? Meet me here?” Scar questions, and Grian takes in a breath.

“I expect my socks to be blown off,” he teases.

(It turns out to be the best decision he’s ever made. Even if the first choice was a bad financial investment.)

[whimsyfinny]

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Summary: Charlie discovers the Winchester boys to be struggling with keeping the bunker tidy, looking after themselves and being able to do their job simultaneously. Luckily she has a friend who’s from a Hunter family that is in need of work and can help them with research. Or so she thought that’s what her job would be. When Dean sees your more domesticated side, his head won’t stop swimming with all the wrong ideas.

Slow burn, enemies to lovers, smut

Warnings: stalker/ unsuccessful kidnap, violence, depictions of blood and assault (let me know if I should add more)

Chapter Word Count: 2318

—-MDNI—-

A/N: Sooooo I’m sorry it’s not spicy like I said it would be… But I absolutely promise the next one will be! Chapters 5 and 6 were supposed to be just one chapter but it got too long so I had to split it… And again please let me know of any errors because this is only proof read by myself.

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Please Read the Below First:

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

I’m Not You’re F*cking Maid

Chapter 5

After thorough interviewing of the staff and regular patrons; long searches through copious auction records and meticulous studying of the items in the shop we narrowed our search down to one item: an old jade hairpin. The hairpin belonged to a young lady who was given the gift as a wedding present, however when she found out on her wedding night that her new husband was having an affair, she stabbed him to death with it before jumping to her own demise from their third floor balcony. That was just over a century ago, and she was still wreaking havoc on unfaithful men to this day.

“I mean I get where she’s coming from,” I shrugged as we walked back to the motel. Both brothers turned to look at me with concern smeared over their features. “OBVIOUSLY I don’t agree with all the murder,” they breathed a sigh of relief, “but you can’t hate her for being mad. I would be too.”

“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” Dean said, raising his eyebrows a little and holding his hands up. I gave him a look of bewilderment.

“What side do you think you’re on, Dean? Because this,” I gestured between us, “isn’t my good side.” He mumbled something incoherent as we got to the motel so I chose to ignore him completely.

“So what’s the plan? It’s getting late and we can’t really do anything now until that charity event taking place at the auction house tomorrow. We’re already pretty clued up on how to get rid of ghosts so there’s really not much to do except to get both your names on that guest list,” Sam patted his laptop, looking at both of us.

“Food?” Dean and I said at the same time.

“Food sounds good,” Sam nodded. The boys turned around to leave when I stopped them.

“Just whilst we’re still at the motel, I’m just going to freshen up real quick.”

Dean rolled his eyes, “really?” I flipped him the bird.

“I can just meet you there? There’s like only one diner in this town and I know the way. I won’t be long.” The brothers looked at each other for a few seconds before Sam looked at me and smiled.

“Sure ok, we’ll get a seat in the window so we can see you coming.”

“Great! I’ll see you soon,” I grinned at the younger Winchester before turning away and letting myself into my room.

I had the worlds quickest shower and threw on some clean underwear and a clean top, feeling better after getting the grime from the day off. I pulled on my jeans, socks and boots, applied a small amount of eyeliner and mascara and tidied my hair the best I could before slinging on my jacket and applying some perfume to my wrists and neck. It was one of my favourite scents: I’d bought it from some lingerie store a year or so ago and it’s apparently one of those aphrodisiac perfumes, however I have no idea if it even works or not. It’s probably a scam, nothing works that well in real life.

After I’d finished sorting myself out - which took no longer than half an hour - I grabbed my phone and keys and left the room, locking up before making my way towards the diner. Night had descended, the air turning cold against my warm skin and the usually busy streets now lay deserted and car-free. It was only about a five minute walk or so from the motel and I was now only about a minute away when I noticed that I wasn’t alone. I’d caught a glimpse of a figure dressed from head to toe in black in the reflection of several shop windows, and they were following my exact trail. I sped up, walking faster down the empty main road and hoping it was all a coincidence as worst case scenarios started to race through my mind. It wasn’t long until the diner was in sight and I breathed a sigh of relief, however the relief was short lived when those footsteps were getting closer and closer, quicker and quicker right behind me. It dawned on me that this wasn’t a coincidence at all - I was definitely being stalked. I started to run, my legs moving before my brain had kicked into gear and I was only inches from the front door when the stranger caught up, slamming me against the wall of the building and putting a knife to my throat, covering my mouth with a gloved hand.

“Don’t make a fucking noise - you’re coming with me,” he said aggressively yet quietly. I could feel the blade of the knife pressing against the soft skin of my neck and I couldn’t help but feel tears well in my eyes, my breath turning shaky as my heart hammered in my chest. I couldn’t even get any words out as his hand was too tight over my lips.

I wanted to cry out for help so badly it hurt.

I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing that this was all a bad dream. My cheek was pushed into the rough brick which grazed my skin, and I silently prayed for my attacker to just let me go or for some hero to come and save me. At that very moment I heard the door to the diner and my eyes shot open, instantly connecting with Deans. I watched as surprise turned to horror which then turned to pure feral rage on his face and before I even had a chance to blink he was gone from my line of sight - but so was the pressure keeping me pinned against the wall. I spun around and I watched Dean throw the stalker to the floor with more force that I thought he could muster and tower over him. Dean didn’t say a word, but the stranger let out a sharp cry of pain as Dean instantly brought his boot down on his ribs. There was a CRACK. He did it again.

And again.

And again.

And then he got down and pinned my attacker flush against the tarmac before he brought a closed fist down on his face over and over and over again, cracking his jaw and breaking his nose. Dean didn’t stop until the man was totally unrecognisable and unresponsive. Standing up off of his limp body, he looked over to me, his furious, almost animalistic stare softening instantly, even through all the blood that now painted his face. He took one step towards me before my feet worked on their own and carried me straight to him. I put my arms out to reach for him and he grabbed my hands and pulled me into his chest with zero hesitation, his arms circling me and his blood-soaked palms gently stroking my hair. I sobbed. I sobbed from the fear I felt, I sobbed for feeling like such a victim and I sobbed for the relief I now felt flooding my veins as Dean held me, not saying a word. Listening to his heartbeat with my ear to his chest, I felt so safe and secure that it made me want to sob even more.

*

Dean ended up taking me straight back to my room - he called Sam to tell him what had happened as he wasn’t going to be returning to the diner. I had my second shower of the day as soon as we returned, wanting to scrub everywhere that horrible man had touched. Whilst I was washing, Dean had headed back to his own room to shower off the layer of blood coating his skin. After I was satisfactorily clean, I dried myself and dressed in that old T-shirt I wore the night before, pulling on some fresh underwear and perching on the end of the bed. I picked up the remote and started mindlessly flicking through channels, hoping to find something to distract my racing brain.

I’d been sitting in the same position for around ten minutes when there was a gentle knock on the door. I held my breath as I got up and walked over, looking through the peephole. It was Dean. I released that breath as I opened the door and let him in. He’d changed from his usual gruff attire to something way more comfortable - a plain white T-shirt and a pair of plaid pyjama bottoms. He smiled at me. A kind smile, nothing like those teasing and sly ones we’d been throwing at each other since yesterday. This one was genuine, and it made my chest feel warm. He locked the door behind him as I padded back over to the bed and climbed on it, sitting right in the centre with my legs crossed. I pulled the T-shirt down to cover my dignity as Dean placed a carrier bag in front of me. I peeked inside. It was full to the brim of all different types of snacks and I grinned up at him.

“You sure do know how to treat a girl, Winchester.”

He let out a soft laugh and looked down at the floor before taking residence beside me.

“You’re the first one who thinks so”.

“Oh yeah?”

“There’s a long line of women who definitely think otherwise,” he smiled a slightly sad smile. We both paused before I continued.

“Well if it means anything, what you did for me today, I-” he held a hand up to stop me as he saw the look of fear flit across my features again, the horrid memory bubbling to the surface.

“It was the least I could do,” he said softly before his brows furrowed, “but to be honest I should never have let you out of my sight.” The almost protective tone of his voice made my heart flutter a little, but It was my turn to reassure him as I placed my hand on his shoulder delicately.

“Dean, none of us knew that would happen. I know you wouldn’t have left me alone if you genuinely thought I was in danger - after all, you DID promise to keep me safe from my own shadow,” I flashed him a grin which he quickly returned, chuckling. We sat for a few moments in a strangely comfortable silence before there was another knock at the door. I went to get up to answer it but Dean beat me to it, swinging it open to show a very concerned Sam stood in the doorway. He looked at me with those big ever-worried eyes and I shot him my best ‘please don’t worry’ grin.

“I’m fine, Sam” I called out to him as I tried to listen in on the hushed words Dean was speaking. They conversed for a while, occasionally throwing glances at me as I rustled around in the bag of goodies Dean had supplied. Growing bored of not being involved with their conversation, I scooted back on the bed to lean back on the headboard and proceeded to flick through dozens of channels until I found something decent to watch. A few more minutes had passed and I’d munched my way through almost half a bag of Doritos when I heard the door close and it was just me and Dean again. He had a paper bag that Sam must’ve passed him, which he held up and pointed to.

“The blood stains came out of my clothes, although Sam said the people in the laundromat were giving him strange looks,” he laughed slightly, those striking eyes of his looking down into mine as he took a few steps closer. I laughed slightly, only imagining Sam’s awkwardness in that situation. I broke my gaze away from Dean for a few seconds, looking down at my hands before looking back up. I could tell he was hovering now, just waiting for me to say something.

“Dean I’m fine, you don’t have to stay.”

“Are you sure? I don’t mind staying for a bit longer if you need me to” his hand ran over the stubble on his chin, his eyes not leaving me.

“Really, I’m ok. I’m probably just going to sit here and watch whatever this is-”

“It’s obviously Men in Black,” Dean scoffed. I smiled, finding comfort in the familiar snarky remark.

“Obviously - I don’t live under a rock Dean,” I rolled my eyes as I stood up, placing my hands on his chest. He was so warm to the touch that it was almost enticing me not to let go. The gentle thrum of his heartbeat was so soothing. But I did let go, and I spun him around to start ushering him to the door. As he was leaving, I grabbed my half eaten bag of chips and started munching again. He opened the door, stepping outside.

“Go back to your room Dean. I promise I’m ok. I don’t want you both hovering over me constantly making sure I’m fine; that will just make me feel worse,” I said as he spun to face me, nodding his head.

“Back to normal. Got it.”

“Great,” I said, sucking the tangy chip dust from my thumb. Dean suddenly reached out and snatched the half-eaten bag from my hand before quickly walking away.

“I’ll see you in the morning!” He shouted back at me before shovelling food into his mouth.

“You ass! I was eating those!” He shrugged in an overly animated fashion, not bothering to turn and look at me as he continued towards his room. I sighed, closing the door and locking it, sliding the chain across this time too. I padded back towards the bed and climbed in, pulling the covers up to my chin. As I started to drift off, the buzz of the movie still playing in the background, I smiled a little to myself:

Fucking Winchester.

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Up Next:

Chapter 6

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Dow promised to turn sneakers into playground surfaces, then dumped them in Indonesia

Dow Chemicals plastered Singapore with ads for its sneaker recycling program, promising to turn old shoes into playground tracks. But the shoes it collected in its “recycling” bins were illegally dumped in Indonesia. This isn’t an aberration: it’s how nearly all plastic recycling has always worked.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/26/career-criminals/#fool-me-twice-three-times-four-times-a-hundred-times

Plastic recycling’s origin story starts in 1973, when Exxon’s scientists concluded that plastic recycling would never, ever be cost-effective (#ExxonKnew about this, too). Exxon sprang into action: they popularized the recycling circular arrow logo and backed “anti-littering” campaigns that blamed the rising tide of immortal, toxic garbage on peoples’ laziness.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/14/they-knew/#doing-it-again

Remember the campaign where an Italian guy dressed like a Native American shed a single tear as he contemplated plastic litter? Funded by the plastic industry, as a way of shifting blame for plastic waste from the wealthy, powerful corporations who lied about plastics recycling to the individuals who believed their lies:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-indian-crying-environment-ads-pollution-1123-20171113-story.html

When I was a kid in Ontario, we had centralized, regulated, reusable bottle depots — beer and soda bottles came in standard sizes, differentiated by paper labels that could be pressure-washed off. When you were done with your bottle, you returned it for a deposit and it got washed and returned to bottlers to be refilled again and again and again.

After intense lobbying from soda companies, brewers and the plastic industry, that program was replaced with curbside “blue boxes” that promised to recycle our plastic waste. 90% of the plastics created has never been��— and will never be — recycled. Today, the plastic industry plans on tripling the amount of single-use plastic in use worldwide:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/26/plastic-fatalistic/#recycled-lies

You know those ads from companies like Bluetriton (formerly “Nestle Waters”) that promise that your single-use plastic bottles are “100% recyclable…and can be used for new bottles and all sorts of new, reusable things?”

Bluetriton is a private equity-backed rollup that has absorbed most of the bottled water companies you’re familiar with, including Poland Spring, Pure Life, Splash, Ozarka, and Arrowhead. When they were sued in DC for making false claims about their “recyclable” water-bottles, their defense was that these were “non-actionable puffery.” According to Bluetriton, when it described itself as “a guardian of sustainable resources” and “a company who, at its core, cares about water,” it was being “vague and hyperbolic.”

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/26/plastic-fatalistic/#recycled-lies

With this high standard for plastic recycling, Dow’s Singapore scam shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it seems to have surprised the government of Singapore. Writing for Reuters, Joe Brock, Yuddy Cahya Budiman and Joseph Campbell describe how they caught Dow red-handed:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/global-plastic-dow-shoes/

The method is actually pretty straightforward: Reuters hid tracking devices in cavities in the soles of sneakers, dropped them in one of Dow’s collection bins, and then followed them. The shoes were passed onto Dow’s subcontractor, Yok Impex Pte Ltd, who sent them hopping from island to island throughout Indonesia, until they ended up in junk-markets.

Not all the shoes, though — one pair was simply moved from Dow’s collection bin to a donation bin at a Singaporean community center. Of the 11 pairs that Reuters tracked, not one ended up at a recycling facility. So much for Dow’s slogan: “Others see an old shoe. We see the future.”

Dow blamed all this on Yok Impex, but didn’t explain why its “recycling” program involved a company whose sole trade is exporting used clothing. Dow promised to cancel its deal with Yok Impex, but Yok Impex’s accountant told Reuters that the deal would be remain in place until the end of the contract. Yok Impex, meanwhile, shifted the blame to the low-waged women who sort through the clothing donations it takes in from across Singapore.

Indonesia bans bulk imports of used clothes, on the grounds that used clothes are unhygenic, displace the local textiles industry, and shipments contain high volumes of waste that ends up in Indonesian incinerators, landfills and rivers.

In other words, Singaporeans thought they were saving the planet by putting their shoes in Dow bins, but they were really sending those shoes on a long journey to an unlicensed dump. Dow enlisted schoolchildren in used-shoe collection drives, making upbeat videos that featured students like Zhang Youjia boasting that they “contributed 15 pairs of shoes.”

Dow does this all the time. In 2021, Dow’s “breakthrough technology to turn plastic waste into clean fuel” in Idaho was revealed to be a plain old incinerator:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/environment-plastic-oil-recycling/

Also in 2021, in India, a Dow program to “use high-tech machinery to transform the [plastic from the Ganges] into clean fuel” was revealed to have ceased operations — but was still collecting plastic and promising that it was all being turned into fuel:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-plastic-insight-idUSKBN29N024

Dow operates a nearly identical “shoe recycling” program in neighboring Malaysia, and did not return Reuters’ requests for comment as to whether the shoes collected for “recycling” in the far more populous nation were also being illegally dumped offshore.

The global business lobby loves the idea of “personal responsibility” and its evil twin, “caveat emptor.” Its pet economists worship the idea of “revealed preferences,” claiming that when we use plastic, we may claim that we don’t want to have our bodies poisoned with immortal, toxic microplastics, that we don’t want our land and waters despoiled — but we actually love it, because otherwise we’d “vote with our wallets” for something else.

The obvious advantage of telling people to vote with their wallets is that the less money you have in your wallet, the fewer votes you get. Companies like Dow have used their access to the capital markets (a fancy phrase for “rich people”) to gobble up their competitors, eliminating “wasteful competition” and piling up massive profits. Those profits are laundered into policy — like replacing Ontario’s zero-waste refillable bottle system with a “recycling” system that sent plastics to the ends of the Earth to be set on fire or buried or dumped in the sea.

The ruling class’s pet economists have a name for this policy laundering: they call it “regulatory capture.” Now, when you hear “regulatory capture,” you might think about companies that get so big that they are able to boss governments around, with the obvious answer that companies need to be regulated before they get too big to jail:

https://doctorow.medium.com/small-government-fd5870a9462e

But that’s not how elite economists talk about regulatory capture: for them, capture starts with the very existence of regulators. For them, any government agency that proposes to protect the public from corporate fraud and murder inevitably becomes an agent of the corporations it is supposed to rein in, so the only answer is to eliminate regulators altogether:

https://doctorow.medium.com/regulatory-capture-59b2013e2526

This nihilism lets rich people blame the rest of us for their sins: “if you didn’t want your children to roast or freeze to death in the climate emergency, you should have sold your car and used the subway (that we bribed your city not to build).”

Nihilism is contagious. Think of the music industry: before Napster, 80% of the music ever recorded was not for sale, banished to the scrapheap of history and the vaults of record companies who paid farcically low sums to their artists.

During the File Sharing Wars, listeners were excoriated for failing to pay for music — much of which wasn’t for sale in the first place. But today, fans overwhelmingly pay for Spotify, a streaming service that notoriously pays musicians infinitesimal sums for their work.

Spotify is a creature of the Big Three labels — Sony, Universal and Warner — who own 70% of all the world’s recorded music copyrights and 65% of all the world’s music publishing. The rock-bottom per-stream prices that Spotify pays were set by the Big Three. Why would the labels want less money from Spotify?

Simple: as co-owners of Spotify, they make more money when Spotify pays less for music. Musicians have a claim on the money they take out of Spotify as royalties — but dividends, buybacks and capital gains from Spotify are the labels’ to use as they see fit. They can share that bounty with some artists, all artists, or no artists.

Not only that, but the Big Three’s deal with Spotify includes a “most favored nation” clause, which means that the independent artists who aren’t under Sony/UMG/Warner’s thumb have to take the rock-bottom rate the Big Three insisted on — likewise the small labels who compete with the Big Three. The difference is that none of these artists and small labels have massive portfolios of Spotify stock, nor do they get free advertising on Spotify, or free inclusion on hot Spotify playlists, or monthly minimum payouts from Spotify.

The idea that we shop at the wrong kind of monopolist in the wrong way is a recipe for absolute despair. It doesn’t matter whether you listen to music with the Big Tech-owned monopoly service (Youtube) or the Big Content-owned monopoly service (Spotify). The money you hand over to these giant companies goes to artists the same way that the sneakers you put in a Dow collection bin goes to a recycling plant.

Think of the billions of human labor hours we all spent washing and sorting our plastics for a recycling program that didn’t exist and will never exist — imagine if we’d spent that time and energy demanding that our politicians hold petrochemical companies to account instead.

At the end of Break ’Em Up, Zephyr Teachout’s outstanding 2020 book on monopolies, Teachout has some choice words for “consumerism” as a theory of change. She writes that if you’re on your way to a protest against a new Amazon warehouse but you never make it because you waste too much time looking for a mom-and-pop stationers to sell you a marker to write your protest sign, Amazon wins:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/break-em-up/#break-em-up

The problem isn’t that you shop the wrong way. Yes, by all means, support the creators and producers you care about in the way that they prefer, but keep your eye on the prize. Structural problems don’t have individual solutions. The problem isn’t that you have chosen single-use plastics — it’s that in our world everything for sale is packaged in single-use plastics. The problem isn’t that you’ve bought a subscription to the wrong music streaming service — it’s that labels have been allowed to buy all their competitors, creators’ unions have been smashed and degraded, and giant accounting scams by big companies generate minuscule fines.

The good news is that after 40 years of despair inducing regulatory nihilism and “vote with your wallet” talk, we’re finally paying attention to systemic problems, with a new generation of trustbusting radicals working around the world to end corporate impunity.

Dow is a repeat offender. A repeat, repeat offender. Chrissakes, they’re the linear descendants of Union Carbide, the company that poisoned Bhopal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

They shouldn’t be trusted to run a lemonade stand, let alone a “recycling” program. The same goes for Big Tech and Big Content company and the markets for creative labor. These companies have repeatedly demonstrated their unfitness, their habitual deception and immorality. These companies have captured their regulators, repeatedly, so we need better regulators — and weaker companies.

The thing I love about Teachout’s book is that it talks about what we should be demanding from our governments — it’s a manifesto for a movement against corporate power, not a movement for “responsible consumerism.” That was the template that Rebecca Giblin and I followed when we wrote Chokepoint Capitalism, our book about the brutal, corrupt creative labor market:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

We have a chapter on Spotify (multiple chapters, in fact!). For our audiobook, we made that chapter a “Spotify Exclusive” — it’s the only part of the book you can get on Spotify, and it’s free:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/12/streaming-doesnt-pay/#stunt-publishing

Next Thu (Mar 2) I’ll be in Brussels for Antitrust, Regulation and the Political Economy, along with a who’s-who of European and US trustbusters. It’s livestreamed, and both in-person and virtual attendance are free. On Fri (Mar 3), I’ll be in Graz for the Elevate Festival.

[Image ID: A woman kneeling to tie her running shoe. She stands on a background of plastic waste. In the top right corner is the logo for Dow chemicals. Below it is the Dow slogan, 'Others see an old shoe. We see the future.']

[foldingfittedsheets]

An FAQ!

Does your ask tag stand for "Folding Fitted Sheets" or "For Fuck's Sake"?

Both! I had been using the handle Foldingfittedsheets for a long time and someone shortened it to FFS and I immediately realized that it was hilarious. All ways of reading it are valid.

Before asking a bed question:

Here’s my helpful guide, I may have covered your question already. There’s also a “bed talk” tag full of info and advice!

Can you actually fold a fitted sheet?

No. I thought it was a funny handle that was easy to say and hard to do. A metaphor for life being messy and complicated. A task that you can only ever try your best at although failure in inevitable.

When I moved in with my beloved I packed the linen closet and told them that I didn't know if we'd have enough room. They spent a day refolding everything beautifully and it took up a third of the closet. So some people are just built different.

Have you seen this guide on how to fold them??? It's easy!

I am content at my current levels of adequacy and would prefer to spend my time on other pursuits. Thank you for thinking of me, but I'm good.

Will you put a read more on comics?

No. I have tried to put out comics under read more cuts and they do not get the same traction. It's also unfair to ask me to change how I present my work. No one will ever have to scroll through them as much as me and I promise it's never more than 30 seconds which does not feel unreasonable.

Tumblr has a setting that will automatically shorten long posts, and I have provided a tag "do you love the color of the comic" so that you can take initiative to reduce the space they take up. You can also block the new individual comic tag after you’ve read it to stop seeing repeats.

Comics take months of my time to produce and I reblog them a lot when they first launch because I'm excited to share something that I worked really hard on.

I won't be offended if you unfollow me, but I will if you ask me to cater to your sensibilities on how long my art should be.

Will you reblog my mutual aid post?

I’m sorry, but no. If I don’t know you I don’t have the time to check for scams and Tumblr just really isn’t the best platform to ask for help if you’re in dire straits.

Why don’t you have lesbian flags?

I prefer the rainbow and I have very negative connotations with it, which I talk about more here.

Why are all the ace flag creatures sleepy?

An ace friend loved the ace dragon in the first set and said, “It’s sleepy like my sexuality!” I thought that was very cute and when I did gryphons I made them sleepy too. I’ve since gotten a lot of really cute comments on how much people liked the sleepy ace creechurs.

When I went through and revamped the unicorns I noticed the ace unicorn wasn’t sleepy. I made a poll to ask if I should switch it to be consistent with the dragons and gryphons. It was an overwhelming yes so now all the ace creatures are sleepy.

[gothamite-rambler]

Jason and Roy being friends and using class of 09 characters (less insane):

*It sucks the creator of this game sucks, but these lines are still funny to me since I treat the game as a comedy*

Jason and Roy sat together having lunch at Burger King and discussing a charity event.

Roy: I'm pretty sure Ollie is running a charity scam.

Jason: No, I looked into the organization he's working with are the scammers. His name wasn't on the board of trustees. He's being scammed and the people running it are probably somewhere in Florida.

Roy (confused): How do you know this much about charities?

Jason (serious): My fucking piece of shit dad—who I want to kill—worked for a charity like that.

Roy (exasperated): Is there—okay, we won't explore that one. Do you really think he's not apart of it?

Jason: I doubt your father is smart enough to run a fake charity. He definitely fell for one though, the company is advertising NFTs on Tiktok. If that's not a scam I don't know what is.

Roy: They're advertising what on where?

Jason: It didn't makes any sense to me. Ollie seems like the type of fall for that though.

Roy: I... Yeah he is. Thanks.

Jason: I just find it funny he's that gullible.

---------------------------------------

Roy (agreeing to breaking into a bank): I'm cool with it.

Jason (shouting): Shut the fuck up!

Roy: I said I’m cool with it!

Jason: Nah, not you. I was hearing the voice again, telling me I'm wrong about something.

Roy: That isn’t even odd to me anymore, but have you tried listening to him?

Jason (chuckling): That’s a funny joke.

---------------------------------------

Jason: Do you know what a whip-it is?

Roy: I never did whip-its.

Jason: You look like the type who would use them.

Roy (happy): Oh, thank you!

Jason: That's strange that you took that as a compliment.

---------------------------------------

Jason: Where’s the coward arrow?

Roy: He hasn’t been around since you made him cry… and stuck to your promise about slashing his tires.

Jason: He better be afraid of me, because I’m not the one.

Roy: Oh yeah?

Jason nodded, a serious look crossing his face.

Jason: I don’t like how he talks to you. You’re really cool and smart. Handsome, I’ll admit—and you should be treated as such.

Roy raised an eyebrow, surprised.

Roy: Wow… that… um… have I really been deprived of a compliment for this long?

Jason: We’re friends. I’m going to be nice to you. Don’t worry about it.

Roy: And you're not trying to sell drugs to me?

Jason: You’re a recovering addict and my friend. No, I’m not going to sell you drugs.

Roy: Then I definitely went through it in life.

Jason: Has your dad ever complimented you?

Roy (laughing dryly): Not for a long… long time.

Jason: ‘Cause he doesn’t appreciate what he has. And seriously, Roy, if I ever see him talk to you like that again, I will rip his beating heart out and hand it to you on a silver platter!

Roy: And you’re not trying to have me relapse and then kill me?

Jason: N-no. I like you. You’re neat.

Roy: Oh… hm… the heart platter part is fucked up, but that’s so kind of you. This not being a ploy and you actually wanting to be my friend is still an adjustment.

Jason: Oh my God… you poor thing, you’re welcome. You make me dying seem like a coma. This is why I will be your friend forever! I will not let anyone hurt you, and if they do… they're gonna meet God!

Jason hugged the man, tightly. Roy patted the man’s back and then shrugged accepting this insane friendship.

Roy: Hm… All right.

---------------------------------------

Jason (paranoid): Spontaneous? Are you talking down to me?

Roy: No, it’s just a word that I read about in… um… Wuthering Heights?

Jason: Oh yeah, that’s a good book. I love you.

Roy: All right… Why did that make me feel happy?

Jason: Because you haven’t heard it in a while, and neither have I. That’s why I said it to you. I love you.

Roy: I… heart… you too.

Jason chuckled and pulled Roy into another hug. Roy smiled, confused, but not terrified. He patted Jason on the back, both appreciating the moment.

"You slashed his tires?"

[lostinthenortheast]

AYE WHAT IT DO!! ITS YA BOI!! WELCOME TO MY PAGE *cue fantasy factory intro*

PINNED INTRO:

Lmfaooo nah nah but fr my names Ian!

It’s ya favorite mutual from BASHTON (Boston)

I’m 26, I am a cis-male pronouns (he/him/they) I like to skate, I like to joke around, I like to be a consensual perv all the time ( key word in there that some still need to look up and remember). But when I’m covering that up with my personality I can be a pretty fun friend! I’m in my healing era so I be sad and I be like 🗿there is nothing but darkness🗿 but we human and I promise I’m fine. I be going to therapy and taking care of my mental health on extra now (those who know know). With that being said this isn’t my first tumblr, I’ve been eyes front this and eyes front that idek I think even indigochild something anime something, BOYS AND OUR USERNAMES 🤣.

WHAT WE DON’T CONDONE HERE:

🚫PEDOS, HOMO- + TRANS-PHOBIA, RACIST, HARDCORE DRUGS, INCEST, NO SCAMS🚫

WHAT WE DO CONDONE HERE:

Im cool with making friends not fuck buddies. Fresita’s Dom 🍓 🔐 @fresita-shortcake

Skateboarding ——> #lost sk8ing

Art and Music ——> #lost 4rt

Sometimes pictures of me under——> #lost img

Anime

Good conversations: dms and ask are open be cool.

Hilarious banter: ——> #lost my damn mind (not rlly)

Kink Wise: you gotta ask me cuz that’s not for everyone to know 🙂‍↕️ but for the basics: YES: Dom/Little, DD/LG (NO MINORS), Caretaker, Brat Tamer. HARD NO( body fluids, grape w/o the g, grooming)

Here’s my tags some might not have anything yet but soon they will!

[cellarspider]

Qunlat 2/12: Canon, and its various disagreements

⭅ Previous =⦾ Index ⦾= Next ⭆

Before I can dig into the actual sound and structure of Qunlat, I have to first dig into the structure of Dragon Age itself, because… well, the sound and structure of Qunlat changes depending on when it was set down. Whatever version you like is totally up to you–I’ll be trying to document all of them, but also begin explaining how to curate the language to your desires. 

I want to preface this: anybody who prefers what goes on here is totally valid. But I am going to get into some analysis of why, from a conlang hobbyist’s perspective, a fair chunk of later Qunlat doesn’t feel like the same language we’ve previously been presented, and why certain sources should be treated as less authoritative than others.

And I will begin with a comparison: Star Wars. No, no, come back, I promise this won’t hurt!

During the reign of George Lucas, Star Wars continuity and fandom explicitly drew distinctions between levels and eras of canon: The movies were the prime source that could ignore all others. Tie-ins could expand the setting, but due to less centralized direction, they could vary wildly in depiction of everything, including “facts” of the setting. How does the Force work? Are microbes involved? Any cosmic beings or liminal spaces? Do any of them seem suspiciously influenced by Dave Filoni’s wolf obsession? Even the movies don’t always agree!

Fans and official lorekeepers also recognized the difference between when something was made, or which publisher was involved: Tie-ins from the early years were less likely to be compatible with those from later times, and different production houses had their own internal continuities. Did Han Solo fight alongside a giant carnivorous rabbit in a red onesie? Well, he didn’t mention that when interviewed by a monk from a religious order where the enlightened masters become mecha-spiders! Did an omnipotent, insane entity once kill Princess Leia by turning her heart into a diamond? Maybe we could find out, if someone decompiled the memory banks of her assassin droid double who was sent to marry and shoot a three-eyed fake heir to Palpatine’s throne! Did a trans-dimensional scaly jello cube once run a faith healing scam? It’s been banished from the continuity of most tie-ins since then, but it was published under the official Star Wars license! I haven’t made up even one of these!

Equally, fans might also freely decide to ignore earlier or later aspects of canon, because they had their own sandbox they liked to play in. Even parts of generally beloved stories may be generally ignored (hello, Luuke). And all that was common long before you even get to the Disney takeover, when much of the creative direction changed. 

Dragon Age, as a fifteen year old franchise (ow, my bones) that has attempted to be aggressively multimedia and has not maintained a single, unified creative team, is prone to these same eccentricities and inconsistencies. Sometimes things happen for no serious reason whatsoever. Remember when baby Superman landed in Ferelden? I remember that. Doctor Seuss is a dwarven Paragon, by the way.

These are meant to be jokes in the games, sure, but the rules around magic and lyrium change with every game, and on the subject of languages, we also don't have a consistent writing system for the Common Tongue.

Throughout the series, early material conflicts with later, tie-ins conflict with games, individual games may be internally inconsistent, and a sole truth fundamentally does not exist for the canon. 

This is particularly true for ancillary material, which Qunlat can be counted as. It’s a constructed language that isn’t from the main setting. Even when lead writers have been involved in its depiction, the results have sometimes been completely incompatible with the rest of its appearances. 

I am attempting to document this language in a comprehensible fashion. You can see how this might cause problems.

So I am going to try and draw some distinctions. This should be particularly useful for anyone trying to reconstruct things from the wiki’s dictionary and phrasebook, which does cite sources, and includes everything, regardless of linguistic and stylistic incompatibility.

Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II have a relatively high level of internal consistency in their spoken Qunlat. Things Sten says seem mutually intelligible with what we hear from the Arishok. There are exceptions–a couple rogue words in DAO and Warden’s Keep that indicate some level of uncertainty about the overall shape of the language, and Mark of the Assassin has a few eccentricities, but is largely in line with the two. A large portion of our dialog in DA2 and its DLC has never had a translation provided, but the sound of the language remains consistent. Mary Kirby (formerly of BioWare) was Sten’s writer for DAO, so we can guess that she was the primary source for these games.

Grammar-wise, more complexity might exist in some of the Arishok’s untranslated lines, but my best attempts to analyze them indicate they may be on shaky ground, detail-wise. Words slide around each other in strange ways, though they all sound like the same language.

The one major exception to that unity: DA2’s Qunari armor and weapons. These include some extremely strange additions that are not reflected in the spoken language. New sounds and letters enter the language that were never there before. I’d hazard a guess that either a different writer got involved with naming these, and/or the documentation available was not well-organized or transmitted. When finally defined for certain in World of Thedas Vol. 2 some years later, many of the equipment terms have mistaken etymologies.

Dragon Age: Inquisition continues that trend. There’s more words that have spurious etymologies. Some words have inconsistent spellings. Some sentences accidentally a word. The wiki’s does not help matters, with some statements from the Iron Bull taken as definitions when it doesn’t seem like they’re supposed to be.

During this period, Mary Kirby and Trick Weekes started answering questions about the language on twitter. For our Qunari-focused purposes, Kirby started out the series as Sten’s writer, and Weekes was Iron Bull’s writer, and so we may see differences in authorship between the two. Kirby answers most of the questions about vocabulary, and the answers mostly fall in line with previous Qunlat.

The same goes for Tresspasser. While its new Qunlat vocabulary is unfortunately minimal, the contents largely have the same linguistic feel as the rest of the language, grammar is consistent, and new words make etymological sense. A convert practices their conjugation tables, much to my delight. The language does strain against the relatively limited grammar it contains, though, with Viddasala’s lines in particular feeling like they’re missing connective tissue.

Secondary material far less consistent. Web series and comics like Redemption, Those Who Speak, and the currently-releasing Vows and Vengeance podcast* all are produced with less direct oversight or restrictions of medium and resource availability, tend to be highly divergent in general, and that definitely includes their Qunlat. Tie-in books like Tevinter Nights are only slightly more consistent, but are still of variable quality.

And then there is The World of Thedas.

That's not great.

While the two volumes of WoT scratch the itch for Delicious Lore, Volume 2’s unique additions to Qunlat are contain some glaring incompatibilities with the rest of the series. Volume 1 has a bit of in-universe disclaimer near the start of it, that all sources are biased and imperfect. Volume 2 includes errata from the previous book, including a walking back of ideas like “The Antaam stages duels to the death for promotions”, replaced with “actually the Orlesians made that up during the Exalted Marches to scare their kids”. So, we can see that real-world creative decisions were changed between the two books. That’s understandable.

Unfortunately for our purposes, Volume 2 also includes the largest corpus of grammatically complex Qunlat sentences in the entire series, and they appear to be deliberately sloppy.

I now have to introduce you to my nemesis, Philliam, a Bard!.

This poxy little creature is a character credited in The World of Thedas, Volume 2 as transcribing and “loosely translating” phrases spoken by Qunari soldiers at rest. These sentences are of variable quality, featuring misspellings of pre-existing words, absolutely bizarre sentence structure, and words that previous Qunlat simply can’t support. It’s like reading English and then suddenly you appear to have stumbled into a rogue word in Sḵwx̱wú7mesh.

I focus (saltily) on this for two reasons: First, Philliam, a Bard! is treated explicitly as an unreliable source. I have seen some folks reference his vocabulary in other contexts before, and it shows up in several dictionaries, including taking cues from his pronunciation guide. Do not trust anything found exclusively in his excerpts to fit with the rest of the language: he is intended to be a foreigner who may not fully understand the language, and may, in fact, just be making shit up.

Second, and I may be reaching a little here: as a constructed language hobbyist, I know how things go sometimes. You’ve come up with some sentences you want to translate into your conlang, but you realize you’re lacking vocabulary for it, or worse, you don’t have enough grammatical complexity to even structure the concepts you want to convey. …But you’re really tired, or only have a few minutes to poke at it, so you just fling down some new words and grammar that conceivably look like a translation, though you’re not quite sure how. This is especially common for new conlangers.

These sentences feel like that kind of thing was going on there. I’ll get into the details of why much later, but for now: If something you like in Qunlat contradicts Philliam, a Bard!, don’t feel wedded to stuff from him. He is, both in and out of continuity, an unreliable source.

But if you like Philliam, a Bard!? Go for it! My grumbling is entirely immaterial, DAI and WoT2 add in a bunch of vocabulary that people may want to draw from. Hopefully this post has provided some pointers on how to tailor Qunlat to your own interests. For those who may be interested in further tweaking Qunlat, I’ll give advice later, when we dig into some changes I personally made while trying to expand the language.

The one piece of advice I’ll give now: Beware the wiki’s dictionary. It’s a heroic work to source as many words as they did, but I’ve noticed some typos in their Qunlat (ex. Aqaam written as “Aquaam”), some definitions include irrelevant and misleading information (maraas-lok is the name of a strong alcohol that literally means “no(thing)-thought(s)”, and does not seem to be a verb for “drink”. Bull is just drunk and trying to get you to drink.), some words are fully unsourced, some are missing (placenames especially), and the citations are not comprehensive and do not necessarily list the first time a word appears in canon.

So I have made my own dictionary. It’s mostly based off of theirs, and retains the wiki’s definitions for those who want those. But it also features an accounting of which words show up in which sources, as well as my own notes, which include further definitions based off of verifiable context, etymologies of compound words, corrections for wiki or canon errors, and my suffering through the works of Philliam, a Bard!. I’ve gone through all of DAO and DA2’s subtitles, and World of Thedas Volumes 1 and 2 to verify the vocabulary they include, and at some point I will probably do the same for DAI and Trespasser. Tie-ins are lower down the list, for the reasons I explained above.  

Qunlat’s phonaesthetics will be covered this time, as this is what drew me in first, and laying them out will help readers create names or new words that sound Qunlat.

⭅ Previous =⦾ Index ⦾= Next ⭆

Footnotes

* I haven’t been following Vows and Vengeance, but the only Qunlat in the transcripts is all stuff we’ve heard before, the rest is simply glossed over as stage directions of people chanting or yelling a “FOREIGN TONGUE”. Someone in the YouTube comments identified Taash's chanting as the prayer we hear Sten recite in Origins, so that's almost all of it accounted for. I may listen and see if I can make any sense of the rest of it later, but I have a questionable ear for transcribing languages, so if it's new content, my results may not be 100% accurate.

[ddejavvu]

For multiverse Monday can u do rockstar!sirius black x reader :) maybe something with spice??

today is multiverse monday! send me any au you can think of :)

combined with: stupid thought for multiverse monday - sirius trying to convince reader he's not a catfish on tinder (other dating sites are available 😂)

--

The picture that stares back at you is not what you were expecting. It's, in fact, the same picture as your home screen, famed guitarist Sirius Black peering around his phone with a smirk into the camera. Apparently, Regulus Brown had not been genuine with you in his pursuits on tinder.

nice try, you type back scathingly, that's not you. that's sirius black. what, did you look up 'ruggedly handsome man' on pinterest?

Ruggedly handsome? He replies, I'm flattered xx

I'm reporting you for catfishing, you decide, I'm not sure why you chose me to pick on, but all you're doing is wasting time.

You don't manage to hit the block button in time, and another message comes through.

Hey! I'm not catfishing, this is me. I'm Sirius Black. The guitarist. You're a fan?

You roll your eyes, though he can't see it, I am. Let me guess, you need $2000 and the numbers on the back of my credit card? Wasting. Time.

I'm not scamming you! you imagine his face as a pathetic frown, trying to pull his scheme together, but he'd really sent it with more of an incredulous guffaw, I'm really Sirius Black. You want photo proof?

You tried that already, I've seen the picture.

A new one then, he promises, wait a second.

You might as well wait for another picture of Sirius. Even if the man's catfishing you, you'll save the photo, add it to your collection of pictures of the rockstar, then block him. Although you're fairly certain you have every picture of him in existence, so he can't offer you something you don't already have.

There, a picture comes in, blocking out most of the screen, better?

It's a new picture. One you've never seen before, the man laying on his side, clearly shirtless from his bare shoulders, on grey sheets. His stubble has grown out, and his hair is ragged, tousled over his forehead as he peers at the camera with sleepy eyes.

Where did you get that picture?

My camera, he shoots back, it's me.

It can't be you, you insist, Sirius Black does not need tinder to find girls.

I needed it to find you, didn’t I?

This isn’t funny. You fume, No one is gonna be stupid enough to believe you. Leave me alone.

You close the app. You quickly reopen it, though, to save the picture he'd sent you. At least you're getting new content.

You flick on the television to try and forget about it. It works almost instantly, the dull chatter of the sitcom you've switched on drowning out your stewing anger. You forget about it so well, in fact, that ten minutes passes before you pick up your phone again. You click on the notification it displays before remembering why you shouldn't, and groan when a video auto-plays.

It's Sirius Black.

"I'm almost impressed you're this stubborn," He drawls, head still resting on his pillows, "Or I would be, if it wasn't this infuriating to get called a catfish over and over again. Y/N Y/L/N," Your stomach drops when your name falls from his lips, "It's really me. I'm not lying to you, this isn't a trick, it's me, alright? And if you still don't believe me," He scoffs, groaning as he throws his head back, "I think I'll have to write a song about the one that got away."

[soullessjack]

hey guys, this isn’t my usual post and yada yada but a very kind man from Gaza has been reaching out to me for the past month or so asking for help for his family. previously he has needed money for a surgical operation on his brother’s hand, which has thankfully been met, but now he and his family are faced with displacement from Khan Yunis.

not only will this further disrupt their lives, it also prevents them from being able to begin operating on his brother, and risks amputation if he cannot get the surgery in time. they are unable to simply walk with all of their belongings, food and water, and being able to find transportation will help immensely.

I’ve set up a GoFundMe for their evacuation. The goal is only $500 *to rent a car. Please donate as much as you can or share with as many people. Thank you

** edit:

I’m also going to include the PayPal belonging to his friend, to be more direct. I’m sorry if this appears like a scam, I’m kind of new to everything about this, but I promise it’s real.