#i've certainly done it

[trashycosmos]

can we talk about the funniest thing of the whole experience was someome who sb me for almost 10 months straight saying they were upset i wasn't nice/distant/cold and didn't apologize for it and when i called out their behavior there was no apology from them they just didn't want to talk anymore lol

[grandkhan221b]

I've been slowly obsessing more and more about asoiaf fashion in the past 6 month, and really developing in details how it would look in different regions, classes, etc (the North being the one I have the most complete picture on). And I wanted to put some of this to paper instead of endlessly turning it in my head before I go to sleep. Usually when I costume design it is confined to a specific character, I've never done like worldbuilding fashion design, but idk asoiaf really gets me going.

So here's the North ! I could have kept going and added more stuff, but if I try to spew all the shit that's in my head I'm never gonna finish this x) So I focused mostly on great houses/nobles fashion for this. Maybe I'll do a sheet for smallfolk or practical clothing like battle armour after I'm done with all the kindoms. I already have to continue the anti AI quest...

[navree]

Incorrect, the fact that Biden has dropped out and a candidate with history of supporting medicare for all and being more receptive to a ceasefire in the I/P conflict has made me go from "I cannot morally support the Democratic nominee" to "I am voting for the Democratic nominee despite the fact she isn't perfect in every respect." I'm really happy this played out. The Dems for the most part abandoned the old Obama platform and it feels like its possible an actual progressive agenda could come to pass in my lifetime.

Kamala 2024!

If you weren't going to vote Democratic in this election before Biden dropped out you're a dorkass loser who does not care about any of the issues you're yammering about here and also a fundamentally bad person, and I hope you get run over by a bus.

But you got one thing right in all of this gibberish, Kamala 2024.

[euphreana]

Ah, a song from Epic: The Musical, taken wildly out of context, in a Nimona AU comic! (Humor me, it's a cute song if you listen to it without the rest of the album.)

Note that I don't plan on continuing this AU, I just thought it would be fun to do this one-off. But if you must know the background I came up with…

Ambrosius grows up as a noble living by the sea. As a kid, he encounters kid merman-Ballister washed up on the rocky shore after a storm, injured. Ambrosius gets the household staff to help him bring Ballister indoors where they dress his wounds and let him stay in a bathtub while he heals up. (Amb's parents are out of town and are none the wiser.)

Bal and Amb become fast friends, and Bal sticks around after he recovers and is let back into the ocean. Much later (as young adults,) they find an orphaned child mermaid they name 'Nimona' and begin to raise together, even as Amb is called away by his noble duties for long and longer periods of time.

One day while traveling with his parents down the coast by ship, they encounter a storm that sinks the boat, Amb being the only survivor, saved by Bal. (Bal gets his arm bitten off by a shark during the rescue.) Now, traumatized by the event and terrified of open water, Amb is stuck on land, seeing Bal even less. That's where this comic happens.

I don't have many ideas further than that, aside from Nimona turning out to be a magical shape-shifter. Perhaps Nimona alternately takes human form and travels with Amb at times, then takes mermaid form and stays with Bal at different times? Perhaps Amb eventually overcomes his fear of water? Let me know what you think!

[pencap]

FINAL LAMENT OF THE HERO'S HEART

i love you. doesn't that mean anything? of course it does. it means everything, don't you know?

and you love me. you know i do. it isn't a question. not even now. not from you.

you promised me forever. was that a lie? i meant it. i still mean it. my love is yours forever. for as long as my broken heart beats, and beyond.

but you're going to leave anyway. i have to. i'm sorry. i would stay if i could. but somewhere out there lies a gravestone waiting already with my name written on it and i do not have the strength to uncarve a stone.

why you? why do we have to be the tragedy? because the gods are cruel, or at least uncaring. because the earth is parched with bloodthirst. because all the other lovers who were tragedies asked the same question and received no answers.

but i love you. and you love me. my broken heart, if love were enough to change the story there would be no tragedies left in this world.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Fishing Interlude

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[satans-knitwear]

Silly Little Creatures being Silly Little Creatures = my favourite thing to behold.

[captain-evil-bastard]

while it could be a jump, as someone who's played a good bit of DnD i know that "sorcerer" is a different class than "wizard" or "cleric" like how will is described.

to be fair, the 'sorcerer' class didn't exist in the 1981 Expert Set (an expansion of the basic set from 79) as it was only the wizard class. i still feel like the wording could mean something, the duffers wouldn't call it an alternate word without it having a double meaning..

in dnd5e lore, a sorcerer 'sources' their power from something to do magic rather than casts spells. this wording could be intentional. it could maybe allude to the "will byers has powers" theory OR possibly be describing vecna, as he "sources" his power from the upside down.

still think will is gonna be a big focus to this season, but this may not be his episode, and if it is it's gonna be in a way we don't expect

[greatwesternrailway]

I made Eras Tour bracelets of all the times Taylor Swift references trains in her songs. The colours are inspired by different trains and railway liveries. Excessive details under the cut:

"You know that my train could take you home" from Willow. Inspired by Great Western Railway's Intercity Express Trains. It's the train I catch most often, it's my train!

"I knew you, stepping on the last train" from Cardigan. Inspired by the subway cars in New York City, which I think of as having blue seats but it seems yellow/orange is just as (or more?) common. Idk I've never been to New York, my whole knowledge of the subway comes from Broad City and pictures of dogs in Ikea bags.

"I jump from the train, I ride off alone" from The Archer. Inspired by ye olde American locomotives like the Union Pacific No. 119. This lyric evokes Wild West imagery for me and this type of engine is what my British brain thinks of as a "cowboy train".

"Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train" from The Last Great American Dynasty. Inspired by the steam locomotives used in the 1940s by the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, which is what Rebekah Harkness would have rode up on. Sadly I couldn't find a good colour image of one, so I leaned into it and chose a greyscale colour palette. As it happens the engines were almost certainly black anyway so it's fine.

"Silence, the train runs off its tracks" from Sad Beautiful Tragic. Inspired by my boy Thomas the Tank Engine. There are a lot of derailments on the Island of Sodor, the Fat Controller should probably have been sacked.

"Northbound I got carried away, as you boarded your train south" from I Look in People's Windows. Inspired by the London Underground map. I didn't have any brown beads so the Bakerloo line has been reassigned orange.

"We wait for trains that just aren't coming" from New Romantics. Inspired by the British Rail Class 195 trains created for Arriva Rail North, the network so incompetent that even the Tories had to re-nationalise it. Those trains just weren't coming.

"You took the night train for a reason" from Champagne Problems. Inspired by the British Rail Mark 5 coaches used on the Caledonian Sleeper Service.

"Some trains you can't catch again, you've gotta leave it as it was" from Tim McGraw - Acoustic Demo. This is a deep cut that I expect even a lot of Swifties wouldn't necessarily know, but I've always loved this lyric. It totally recontextualises the song and ironically is a much more adult sentiment than the lyrics of the final recording. Inspired by the livery of Anglia Railways, which are the trains of my childhood. Anglia Railways has been sold and rebranded several times since then, so they are quite literally the trains I can't catch again.

I imagine that Taylor Swift has not been on a train in many years, for obvious reasons. However I appreciate her continued use of train imagery in her songs and I hope she never ever stops :)

[johnslittlespoon]

hey y'all. wtf are we meant to do with this info :)

was aware of other forms of recreation being a thing from other articles, but i've never heard about the fire pool situation! interesting (opens google doc)

[yayforocs]

I Have Once Again Been Consumed By A Fic (Redstone and Skulk by @silverskye13

[gaycrittercentral]

I realized I make a lot of spelling mistakes, damn you autism!

Anywho can we see more of the virtues? I would love to see kindness more, like him on the couch like how you described

Sfhfhshsjhd y’know what’s funny, my autism does the opposite bc I’m a nerd whose special interest is spelling and grammar 😂 but yeah I completely feel that no worries bud

Oh and HELL yeah I love my guy Kindness!! and so it is my great pleasure to reveal to you all this, my first fully colored comic in probably years because uh. welp y'all know how art block be lmao

also since this is based on a scene I sorta wrote out in a previous post, I've included that snippet under the comic! And here's a link to the original post, where I detailed everything about the virtues.

and then he immediately pops out of existence lmaoooooo

Max tells him to sit on the couch and relax while he grabs some snacks and coffee. The whole time, he has to keep insisting that Kindness stay seated instead of jumping back up to help. Eventually he grabs Kindness by the shoulders to explain that having his partner as, essentially, a self-offered indentured servant is funny and all, but it’s making him uncomfortable. They work so well together because they’ve always been equal, and as high and mighty as Max likes to act sometimes, it feels bad to just keep taking everything from his best friend and to be unable to give anything back. In a dreadfully ironic twist, preventing Max (and others, by extension) from doing anything for him is sort of unkind in and of itself. “So just keep your ass seated and let me do what I need to do, okay? You’re stressing me out. Eat your donut and calm down already.” And Kindness, maybe a little starry-eyed, finally concedes and allows Max to grab a blanket and finish making them some coffee. Once that’s done they sit on the couch together under the blanket for a minute and watch some junk TV while they eat a much-needed snack. After a few minutes of that, Max ventures, “Sooo…can I get that heart now, or…?” “Aw, buddy. You know you already have it.” And with a final little side hug, which Max finally returns with only a little grumbling about how sappy it is, he poofs out of existence.

[vanhelsingapologist]

i am BEGGING for more context on dima biting strahd back and how he reacted.

Oh, badly!

So, what happened was that Strahd took the form of one of our allies and lured Dima into the woods. He was more or less just getting information off of her (and, as I understand, was proooobably going to cast Modify Memory on her?) until something felt off, and Dima accused him of not being the ally, but someone else. He revealed himself and approached her as she backed away until she was up against the side of a rock.

She stabbed him through the heart. He kept moving along the blade until he was at the hilt of the sword and was right up in her face. I went into a fear-induced fugue state at that point, but he bit her as recompense for the stab.

This was the second time she'd been bitten by Strahd, so Dima yanked his head back and sank her teeth into him instead. The sword is still in him.

He was. Well. Surprised. And I think slightly amused, because he pulled her sword out, drained her nearly to death, and then took it with him. So, until last session, I was TWO SWORDS DOWN because he had taken both of them.

Dima told him she hated him, he told her something to the effect of "Better to occupy your mind than not at all" and fucked right off.

[oceandiagonale]

finally have. two updates and two mini updates ready to post. 😭👍

( except I just, still have to write all the alt text ;;_;; )

[expederest]

Here's something interesting I stumbled across, which almost certainly wasn't in the game yesterday. I was running around looking for NPCs you can talk to, and discovered other players hanging out! Talking to them will show you their profile picture.

[molsno]

what I've experienced and observed as an asexual trans lesbian is that engaging with certain kinks can be unhealthy and harmful, but it doesn't necessarily have to be.

by and large, most of the people who have "unhealthy" kinks are victims. that is to say, their kink originates from a place of trauma. someone who's experienced sexual abuse in the past, for example, may very well have internalized the idea that they deserved what happened to them. and because escaping that traumatic mindset is incredibly difficult, they may find themselves having sexual fantasies about being abused again long after the danger they were in ceases; to them, it can feel like being sexually abused means they're fulfilling what they believe to be their only purpose. these fantasies can be deeply damaging to a person's self worth, not just because they're blind to their own inherent value as a person, but because they're denying themself any form of sexual agency. they may very well seek out relationships in which they're abused once again. and that is unambiguously harmful! I've certainly seen several people that this has happened to, and it's an incredibly demoralizing and heartbreaking situation to observe and an even more miserable one to be in.

however, that isn't a universal experience. for some people, engaging with their kink with someone can actually be a source of empowerment. let's continue with the previous example. if, instead of seeking out a relationship in which they're sexually abused, they decide to engage in their fantasies with someone who genuinely recognizes their sexual autonomy - someone who they can honestly talk to about their experience, who respects their boundaries, and who communicates with them to establish safeguards to ensure that their consent is never violated - then they may well find a feeling of power over the situation that they didn't have before.

that isn't guaranteed to happen; for some trauma victims, their pain may be too great to replicate, even in a state of significantly reduced danger. some people may try to and discover that it is affecting them in an unhealthy way and stop. and that's okay! their sexual autonomy deserves to be respected. however, others who do engage with it may come out of the experience with a newfound recognition and acceptance of said autonomy. if they know they have the power to make the experience stop any time they feel uncomfortable, they may come to realize and truly believe that they didn't deserve what happened to them, and that they don't have to tolerate anyone who disrespects their boundaries in the future.

it's perfectly fine to not want to see someone's engagement with a particular kink. it can be upsetting for those who have been personally affected by it to witness recreations of it. luckily, in online spaces, there's an easy solution to this problem: you can avoid it by unfollowing or even blocking anyone who posts about it.

I find it troubling that so many people are averse to this idea - particularly because of the way they direct their anger toward trans women. it is a regular occurrence on this website and in fact most online spaces for someone to accuse a trans women (or multiple) of having an "inherently harmful" kink. often, these accusations are made with little to no context or even proof, if they're not simply fabricated outright (which they frequently are). accusing trans women of being sexual predators is one of the oldest forms of transmisogynistic violence you can commit, which is why I find it infuriating that this is such a common tactic in purportedly transfem-supportive communities.

perhaps you might be thinking that engaging in harmful kinks contributes to their normalization. I find this idea laughable, because sexual abuse is already normalized in society - it's baked into its very foundation, in fact. marriage, the nuclear family, christianity, police, the judicial system, and just about everything else was designed to give cishet white men absolute unchecked sexual power over women and children. and while some small advances have been made to chip away at this authority, by and large, these men are still free to perpetrate sexual abuse without facing any consequences.

minorities, on the other hand, have always been and continue to be violently punished for even being accused of sexual abuse. for example, there's a very long history of white women falsely accusing black men of rape with the express purpose of getting them lynched. still today, black people are viewed as hypersexual predators who pose a danger to white women and children for doing things as insignificant and nonsexual as wearing a revealing outfit. trans women are in a very similar position, with our mere existence being nothing more than a fetish to a significant number of tme people. it's no surprise, then, that accusations of sexual predation against us largely focus on the non-normative ways in which we often have sex.

what this inequality often looks like in practice is that cis men are free to browse the step-sister category on pornhub to their heart's content, whereas a trans woman who might, potentially, call her girlfriend her "sister" as a means of recovering from a form of sexual abuse she faced in the past is stalked online by people who believe her to be a physical danger to others, who will then publicize all of the details they can find about her private sex life with the intention of isolating her from what is likely the only community and support network she has. this should be obvious, but a trans woman without any community to accept her is significantly more likely to attempt to commit suicide, making this form of social outcasting a form of violence.

so the question then is, why does this happen? because let's be honest, it's not really about "removing predators from our communities", as much as people like to claim it is. if that were the case, then it wouldn't happen so disproportionately to trans women; the demographics of people accused would be more representative of their actual proportions. the real reason this happens is specifically because of transmisogyny. tme people, even those who are outwardly supportive, harbor internal conceptions of trans women based on stereotypes of us being sexual predators, and they react to our every action with undue scrutiny and vigilance. and because they hold the privilege of being transmisogyny-exempt, they can exert power over us in a way that they can't do to cishet white men by exiling us, knowing full well that they'll be believed by other tme people, even if they have no evidence of actual harm being done.

and that's the metric by which we should actually be judging the validity of claims of sexual predation - whether or not someone was actually harmed. if no one has genuinely been harmed, what good does it do to isolate someone from the only community they may have? that in itself is obviously harmful to the person being exiled, so the question to ask before utilizing it is: will doing so actually prevent more harm from being done unto others?

trans women as a whole are a deeply traumatized demographic. I can almost certainly list off more trans women I personally know who have been raped than who haven't. we are victims, in the vast majority of cases. despite that, we live under a veil of transmisogyny that constantly calls us dangerous degenerate freaks. as a result, some trans women develop coping methods you may find unpalatable. I'm not a very kinky person myself, and a result of me being ace is that a lot of even the most basic and common sexual acts are physically repulsive to me. because of that, I feel uncomfortable when I see people engage in certain kinds of sex and kinks, even if they're fellow trans women. you know what I do in these cases? I just don't follow them. I mind my own business and move on. it's really that easy.

arguing that nobody can engage in certain trauma-based kinks because it can harm them is short-sighted at best and actively dangerous at worst. how can you claim to be a feminist who supports bodily and sexual autonomy and be opposed to people having consensual sex you don't like? it's the same conservative rhetoric that aims to suppress women for taking control of their own sexual desires. it's one step removed from telling trans people not to get bottom surgery because they'll regret it. if you truly believe that people have the right to do what they want with their bodies, you're going to have to accept that some people will do things that personally make you uncomfortable, and you're going to have to acknowledge the fact that just because they make you uncomfortable, that doesn't mean they're harming anyone. just mind your own business. it's seriously not hard.