#i'm just. why would i trust

[darkwood-sleddog]

i think what's really irritating about situations where i'm offered random dogs is that having multiple dogs makes people think i'm some sort of charity when it's actually the opposite. my pack is heavily and carefully curated. i know what i want from a dog that is coming into my pack and don't stray from these wants for the good and wellbeing of my existing dogs. the only person i think is acceptable to offer me a dog is a breeder i've been already talking to about potentially getting a dog from already point blank and period. (and even then i've turned down a great offer recently from MY dogs breeder because it just wasn't timed correctly/dog import law bullcrap etc). just because i have made the choice for myself to have multiple dogs does not make me a charity home for dogs people cannot care for anymore. i sincerely feel for dogs in this sort of situation, but malamutes are overall better off going to experienced fosters and breed specific rescues instead of having people blind message people who own the same breed on your facebook timeline. and i don't trust a non-breed specific persons evaluation of temperament at ALL. for a malamute to have success in re-homing you must be knowledgable about the breed or else they're going to end up right back where they started.

[egophiliac]

another one that I'm not super happy with, but continuing to mess with it isn't going to help! so here he is! 🦇 there was a lot I was trying to get across in this one, so uhhhhh hopefully it reads.

we're almost out of unique magics now...just Ace (and maybe Grim?) left!

[crookedfivefingers]

3.13 | ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴀꜱᴛ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ʟᴏʀᴅꜱ

link to the post I accidentally wound up prattling endlessly about in the tags 💀

[danwhobrowses]

Okay yeah I wasn't ever gonna be contained with just one post so, Callowmoore stuff that's on rotisserie in my brain from ep.94

Long and deep looks at each other and a hug right off the bat!

When asked by Laudna if they were okay in ep. 91, Ashton deflected with 'say that again?' and 'are any of us?', but when Fearne asks they give a genuine answer and then also ask her how she's feeling, because she's been quiet and they care

Ashton, despite hurting when they're touched and exhausted so the chronic pain is as intense as the first time, still wanting to cuddle with Fearne - and feeling at ease when they do

And like, the way they were trying to articulate it implies that they've wanted to ask for quite some time, but the timing has been off or situations have gotten in the way, and they don't want to wait any longer

But also they don't ask if they can cuddle they ask if Fearne wants to; they want to, but they ask Fearne if she doesn't want to sleep alone, because her comfort is as important or more important than their own

Fearne given her past experiences with people of course thinks they mean the other kind of company, which she notes she does want (so that's not off the table) but asks if they could just cuddle - to which Ashton doesn't entirely deny either, but notes that they're tired and in a lot of pain right now so they too was asking for the same

Also the fact that Fearne, who has been in a threesome inside a corrupted haunted wood, will later flirt with a dark echo of herself, and spooned with a ghost pirate captain, got so flustered about asking Ashton that she just wants to cuddle

Despite the awkwardness they still just laugh and joke together through it, they're awkward but it's in a sweet way

All of Ashton's immediate action the second they realised Fearne was missing - similar to how they wanted to find her after the shard incident but this time in a position where they could take action - no nonsense, no pissing contest with Chetney about her scent being on their bed, "Find. Them. Now."

And then still being soft after seeing Fearne again, because all that matters right now is that she's still here. And another post I saw said it better but, Ashton never seeks to change or 'correct' parts of who Fearne is; she can still follow cute animals just next time bring a buddy along (which given how they were in bed together would imply meaning them), they love her for her, fae and all, they just want her to be safe

Not entirely ep. 94 but given how on 91 Ashton pointed out that they needed to sleep and 'figure out who they wanted to be', and then here ask Fearne to be there beside them so they could have someone to wake up to, it to me at least says a lot about what Ashton has already decided; and how despite both of them having dealt with grief and anger and helplessness by bottling it up, hiding away, and shouldering it alone, this time they both wanted to just feel at ease with each other

[ninja-knox-ur-sox-off]

Y’ALL THE MARKETING TEAM DID PIXAR’S ELEMENTAL SO DIRTY

[vegaseatsass]

Since I'm still thinking about Ming today... Let us compare Three Mings.

1. Ming when he's Scared*

*caught off guard by domesticity/affection and how much he likes and wants it

2. Ming when he's Trying*

*to fix the shit he does when he's scared, but still seem cool and controlled (of highest priority always)

3. Ming when he's Scared*

*deeply fucking terrified, scrambling, on the precipice of a complete break from sense and reason which he shan't recover from for years

And the thing is, which of these Mings do you think stays with Joe in his bones, in his gut. Which of these Mings are the Mings Joe remembers and thinks of as true?

Ming my babygirl, you have so so soooo much more Trying to try.

[faeriekit]

Health and Hybrids (IV)👽👻💚

[I can't remember the original prompt posters for the life of me but here's a mashup between a cryptid!Danny, presumed-alien!Danny, dp x dc, and whatever prompt made the one body horror meat grinder fic.]

PART ONE is here PART TWO is here PART THREE is here and this is part four 💚 Ao3 Is here for all parts

Where we last left off... Our boy is recovering from Bad Stuff in the Watchtower (involuntarily). Danny gets a bandaid for a variety of wounds that definitely are not covered by a little adhesive bandaid, but hey! Bart’s trying.

Trigger warnings for this story: body horror | gore | post-dissection fic | dehumanization (probably) | my awful attempts at following DC canon. On with the show.

💚👻👽👻💚

Batman clicks on the projector screen. Everyone in the room has access to the slides and note-taking abilities on their tablets. The assembled heroes quietly select their app of choice, sit back in their chairs, and ready themselves for the meeting.

“Good afternoon. For everyone in alternate time zones, good morning or good evening as they apply. Before I begin the approved agenda for this meeting, there are developments on the base that everyone ought to be aware of.”

Click. The slide changes to a fuzzy image of an unusually dense collection of shadows in a typical medical-wing setup. The specific location isn’t clear, but the phenomenon itself is stark against the white walls and flooring. The static on the cameras is atypical for the quality of equipment used on the base.

“There is an extraterrestrial lifeform that has made Medical Wing C their territory. Yes, we know they are there. No, they cannot be moved at this time. Please do not try to take initiative in doing so. Please do not enter the aforementioned medical wing. If you see this entity outside of the medical wing, please leave, ignore them, or otherwise make your presence known. They are generally in search of isolation and seek to remain unseen. All known attempts at self-defense by this entity have been largely non-hostile so far, but we do not know how or if that behavior will change as they heal.”

Batman…takes a breath. Not sighs. The vigilante has more control than that.

“They are severely injured. The exact nature of their injuries are still unknown, based on their—unique physiology—“

Barry squints at the screen. Nope. The cloud still looks like a cloud.

“—But the identified fluids they secrete have been recognized as at least partially composed of red blood platelets and a modified plasma. Based on their aggressive self-defense, the persistent seclusion behavior, and their general lack of responsiveness, the injuries are considered deeply severe and require rest to treat. It is imperative that non-medical staff and on-base heroes maintain as little contact with the entity as possible. We are attempting both delicate medical treatment and non-verbal communication, which have both failed thus far. We have reason to believe that the extraterrestrial is sentient and capable of communication based on—“

Click. The next slide is an image of a nearly-obliterated craft of some kind—tinted glass, wings, debris everywhere, twisted shards of metal that look like they scrape like teeth. Charred black everywhere. Barely visible is a torn–through upholstered seat ten yards away.

A hiss breaks the silence in the back of the room. That’s nasty-looking wreck.

“—This craft. It is relatively rudimentary in its design, and would not have held up to prolonged space travel, but would have required complex intelligence to start and maintain transport. Basic testing has proven that its energy readings, while not precisely contiguous with the Speed Force, show that it has been in contact with extradimensional phenomena. A non-sentient life would not have been able to pilot it successfully enough to crash it—much less to avoid the farmhouse in its path. The result is that we have an extremely wounded entity with no shared form of communication. There have been worrying observations by their medical team, however.”

Click.

This slide is blank.

“We are now pursuing the possibility that the entity has been attacked or otherwise held captive by human organizations here on Earth. There are persistent triggers of aggression brought on by medical settings, adults, and more specifically, any present medical personnel and equipment.”

Batman pauses.

“Their medical team has informed me that their persistent fear has made treatment…difficult.”

There’s a snort from somewhere in the room.

“If you discover any evidence of possible extraterrestrial captivity or torture or experimentation among your usual cast of rogues, please forward everything you are able to base for further investigation. In this time period where the Lanterns are unavailable to return to Earth, Martian Manhunter has been notified of the need of his presence on the base, and will hopefully help settle this matter. In the meantime, as a reminder: do not enter Medical Wing C, do not engage with the entity in any way. Simply make your presence known, and they will flee.

“Now. Onto our agenda. First article: whoever has been taking the toilet paper from the supply closet, stop it. The league is not here to fund your lifestyle habit of two-ply toilet paper.”

*

There’s more food available more often.

It just appears at the foot of his bed. Like magic. Or, like…like a really, really fast human child.

Some of the packaged foods Danny can’t eat without swallowing them whole, wrapper and all. They’re just too fiddly to get with his claws—the solution is to just swallow it and let the whole thing dissolve in whatever weird ecto-acid is churning in his stomach at the moment.

The rest is fresh from the bakery—or, well the base, anyway, however this moon base gets their fresh foods. Muffins and croissants and sausage rolls and other things he would expect to see on a coffee tray or something.

…Danny prods his stomach.

He’s been too sore to notice, but this half-state of being a somewhat-physical half-ghost is super, super weird. He can eat, but it’s not processed like food is in his living body. Everything he can digest just gets incorporated. Everything he can’t just gets…

He looks down at the slowly growing puddle in his bed.

…Maybe ‘spit out’ is too generous a phrase. Expelled? Excreted?

Ew. Okay that thought is kind of gross and he doesn’t want to think about that while he can’t move away maybe.

He knows, instinctually, that he’s wounded, but this half-and-half state stops him from feeling the specifics. Knowing how, exactly, he’s hurt. Experiencing the majority of the pain and distress.

He curls up on his bed.

Danny hates it here. Not because it’s bad (it is) but because he wants to be home. He selfishly, desperately wants to be home. He wants his rocket sheets. He wants his room with its glow in the dark stars.

…He wants his dad to heat up soup and sit with him, like when he was little and had nightmares. He wants Jazz to sit on the edge of his bed and read to him.

Danny wants Mom.

 …There is some other company here, though.

Sometimes, if Danny is mostly sated and kind of sleepy, the quick human buzzes in with a few of its age-mates. The two don’t get as close as the buzzing human can, because Danny can at least read the Excited!! or Nervous!! or Booored! energy on the human, which makes him more comfortable with letting it in close. Its friends seem to respect his space, though. They don’t go past his curtain, even if it’s open. They talk, but they don’t yell.

Danny thinks he’s getting the soft little bones back in one of his ears, but he can’t fully tell. He can hear that they’re chattering and he can hear which sounds they’re making, but he can’t understand any of them.

Auuuuughhhhh. He pushes the pillow more underneath himself. Does he have brain damage?? Is he…is he missing pieces of his brain??

There won’t be a concrete way to tell until he solidifies again. Gross. He doesn’t want to do that yet.

Or soon.

…Or at all, maybe.

Mom was so mad at him. Maybe he’ll be safe and he can come home if she…if he can’t be touched…?

…No. He remembers. Mom makes things for ghosts.

??Concern?Con??cern?

Danny looks up. Oh. He made the human vibrate all nervously. Danny’s fine. Well—he’s not fine but he’s not hurting more than usual or hungry.

The human is careful not to touch him when he doesn’t want to be touched, but Danny’s feeling generous. When the human puts its hands on the bed, Danny willingly brushes his knuckles up against it.

No claws. A peace offering.

The human goes suuuuper still.

…Uh. Did he break it?

And then it zoooooooms away faster than Danny can comprehend (he jolts) and sprints back with a whole lot of stuff in its hands, and a few things thumpthumpthump ono his bed. And.

Well. None of it smells like food? When he bites it, it doesn’t taste like food either. In fact the texture is…

Danny frowns. Turns over the object so he can see it better. (It doesn’t help.) Is that plastic?

Wait. Danny twists it in half. His wrists ache but the pieces rotate.

…It’s a rubric’s cube.

…Huh.

There are other puzzles too—things that taste like plastic and one that tastes like wood, which he might have dented with his teeth by accident. Whoops. Danny puts that one farthest away, in the hopes that he doesn’t accidentally damage it a second time.

…Huh. That’s. That’s nice.

Danny surprises himself and the surprised!surprised! human with a purr.

It’s not a lot. Not even monetarily is this little offering a lot.

But it’s more than Danny’s had in a long time.

[lightningidle]

Fig's line "I don't think I'm an artist, I think I'm just a good friend" has not left my head at all. Just...

You're Fig Faeth and your horns came in over the summer and you pick up the bard class as a form of adolescent rock 'n' roll rebellion, and it works! It's exactly the outlet you need! You give a guy you just met drumsticks and you start a band and it's good enough that within a year and a half you're touring. You are, in every sense, good at being a bard.

And then, finally, your junior year, you start to take it seriously. Your art goes from an outlet and a form of rebellion to a practice. A discipline. (Can rebellion exist within a discipline?) Your classmates know what they want to do with their work. They all have a thesis statement. And yeah, there's cohesion in the music you make, but you've never had to think about why you make it. You've never sat down and dissected what it is about bass that speaks to you. You've never poured over your lyrics to pick at any deeper meaning. Why should you? You don't play music for a grand design, you do it to... huh, why do you do it?

(Your art is the one form of self-expression that feels as safe as Disguise Self does, because even if you're pouring your heart onto the page and then screaming it in front of thousands of people, it's not like you're really making yourself known. You can sing I'm lonely, I'm scared, I'm furious, and your fans will sing it right back, and there will still be the distance between performer and audience to keep your heart safe.)

Now you're being asked to look inward to explain the artistic choices you're making, and you can't help but recoil at that, because you'd rather do anything than look inward. Meanwhile, your classmates have no problem with it, so you start to wonder if you're a real artist at all. Can your art be authentic if it only exists to bolster a thesis statement? Has your art been unauthentic this whole time because you've never really thought about a thesis statement before? Is that what makes it art, and not just the next track on somebody's teen angst playlist?

You can't think about yourself— acknowledging your own existence makes you want to puke. So if your music is an extension of yourself, (and it is, even if it's just because the spotlight reveals only what you want it to,) you can't think about your music. You can't. You have to. Your grade depends on it.

You're Fig Faeth, and you keep multiclassing because you'd rather be a good friend than a great artist. If introspection is what great art demands, then fuck it. You must not be a bard at all.

[rosenfey]

things that are hard to find: writing advice that isn't condescending.

[winepresswrath]

hi! i always love your MDZS/CQL takes; can i ask what are the questions you think CQL is asking, as compared to MDZS?

I haven't actually revisited either canon in ages, which is making me nervous. what questions the novel is interested in can be pretty contentious all on its own! @mikkeneko has an excellent answer in the notes here which I reccomend to everyone. My own thoughts are honestly pretty scattered- I keep on deleting things and going hm, that's not quite right.

So, for the obvious-to-me example, people reasonably zero in on the creation of innocent doctors/radish farmers who Wen Ruohan is holding hostage. In CQL it's easy to infer that Wen Qing and Wen Ning are maybe the only cultivators and almost certainly the only combatants among the Wen remnants, and their status is much more ambiguous in the novel, which I personally think is asking, essentially, "and so what? were they wrong to run, when they had a chance? Do they deserve what Jin Guangshan will do to them if they go back? Aren't they just people, actually?" Whereas the question that CQL is asking is more to the effect of "What does Wen Qing owe these people, when she is their only defence? What is she entitled to do to save them, at other people's expense? If she fucks up that moral calculus, what then? Does it matter if she's personally fond of some of the outsiders who are going to get hurt? If one of them saved her brother? Later, this question will flip to what Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, and the parallel to Jiang Cheng's situation in particular is, I think, genuinely pretty fun. You're giving up the Wen as soldiers who've laid down their arms in exchange for Wen Qing also grappling with leadership and the question of how many horrors she can stand to look the other way on to protect her own people. one reason I keep deleting so much is that a lot cql's changes were motivated at least in part by censorship, which I think we mostly share a general and justified distaste for! but I also think that within the bounds of that censorship the creative team put a lot of work into actually doing something interesting with those changes. Or, for another example- nieyao! There's a much greater emphasis on the nmj-jgy relationship, it's unambiguously very close and they are clearly extremely important to one another, and I think that's because the cql team has a lot to say about love, trust, power, and the ways those things interact, and that reflects back on all of the other relationships in play, including Wangxian. Almost every time, when CQL chooses change a relationship they make the characters in question closer- that's true for Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji, for Wen Qing and the Yunmeng contingent, for Zixuan and Mianmian, and Huaisang and Meng Yao. It's even true for Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, who have a close and trusting relationship in first life! CQL puts a much greater emphasis on "all right, so you care, what next?" How do you choose someone and then choose to be good to them? What if there's a massive power disparity between you? What if you seriously disagree about your priorities and morals? How do you trust someone who's betrayed you? When is it a stupid choice to trust at all? How do you have faith that you know someone well enough for that trust to be meaningful?

for legal reasons i would like to specify that it's not that mdzs isn't interested in these problems. i do remember wangxian's literal trust fall. cql is asking these questions all the time about everyone. also for legal purposes i'm not suggesting that cql lwj and jc love each other. but! they establish a three month wartime partnership looking for wwx and then jc immediately drops him on wwx's say-so despite apparently having a positive enough opinion of him to tell wwx he thinks they should make up twice. lan wangji will later tell wwx he thinks he should loop jc in on the second flautist! these are people trying to navigate some kind of relationship/shared interest/community, as opposed to a hateful void. cql wants to say hey, how do you go about this? while I'm here and rambling cql also puts a lot of emphasis on wwx's connection to yunmeng and changes things up so instead of feeling alienated right before he leaves our last glimpse of him there is happily picking lotuses and playing with a kid! in both stories the narrative is asking who do you protect? who do you leave behind? can you ever get it back? but the angles are very different.

[banditblvd]

notebookcast.com was an experience and a half

[leguin]

i did think about richard siken saying there's no such thing as unrequited love, just unrequited desire for probably longer than i should've, but idk. feelings are complicated. 'unrequited' is complicated. i've never felt so consistently failed by language before...

[asleepinawell]

basically do you prefer to play solo or do you prefer to get the story run with the scions and then play with others or do you hate support/trust etc etc

this occurred to me when I was making the least favorite dungeons polls and people were mentioning other players as reasons they didn't like certain dungeons which is something I didn't consider for my own choices in later dungeons since I always run them as trusts unless I'm with a friend

[painalotwww]

[travelbasscase]

me when my disability disables me:

[brown-little-robin]

I have a new favorite character but I can't introduce him to anyone without like a 10 page paper on why he's NOT a terrible person and/or even though he is by normal metrics a terrible person, I love him and believe in his capacity for growth anyway

so you can imagine the state I'm in