#idk i don't care at this point because that was literally five years ago. i will say i thought i'd just understand when i'm older--

[rosesradio]

+

[jnnul]

five questions

a/n: and here is the first of the wips! i know this was supposed to come out on friday and now it's almost wednesday but it's out and that's worth something, right? i hope you love this little fluff piece + mark as much as i do!

word count: 5.1k

tags: finance bro mark and y/n, slice of life, mostly fluff, kinda your typical suburban modern day couple, idk they’re just good ppl who experience a slow and sweet romance, oh! and mark sucks at beer pong

sorry, is this seat taken?

you pride yourself on not being a very superficial person. you always look deeper into a person of interest and in the past, your friends have made fun of you because you never seemed to find the people they thought were attractive very hot at all.

he seems like he swears at his mom. they give off the impression that they are rude to waitstaff. i don’t care how hot she is, she’s literally fighting with a customer service worker for no reason.

did it mean that your ability to look past superficial identity led to you giving some pretty sketchy people second chances? maybe. but usually, it did more good than harm.

but for all of your in depth thinking, you realize that you’re just as superficial as every last one of your friends when the man of your dreams asks you to marry him.

what he really says is, “is this seat taken?” but it all sounds the same when you’re half in love.

with dark eyes that are bright and shine with innocent curiosity, slender lips with a slight pout, and tousled black hair that falls into his eyes, you realize this man looks like nothing short of an angel.

you stutter out a squeaky, "no, go ahead!" before moving your laptop a little closer to you so that the hot stranger could have space to put his things down. he offers you a sweet smile before sliding into the seat next to you.

"my name is mark, by the way," he says once he's settled into his seat. he's about to ask your name but he nods to the keychain that's attached to your lanyard. "i'm guessing your name is y/n? that's a cute keychain."

"yeah," you say, flipping the keychain so that mark could see it properly. "one of the kids i teach made me it a couple years ago and i've carried it around ever since."

mark's eyebrows furrow at that as he checks his calendar to make sure that he's in the right class. "you're an education major? what's an education major doing in a business statistics class? this class is an upper level business class i thought?"

you nod and close your laptop so that mark could see the sticker on the backside of your laptop. you point out the biggest one that has 'ucla - anderson school of management' written in bright yellow letters. mark's eyebrows knit as he reads it and you can't help but laugh softly at how utterly confused he looks.

"i'm a finance major. i just really like kids so i spent last summer juggling between an internship at apple and volunteering at a learning summer camp for kids who are underprivileged in education," you explain, watching as mark's confusion turns to awe, his dark eyes glinting as you explain.

"damn. that's so cool of you, y/n. i'm sorry i assumed you were an education major. turns out you're just an angel instead," mark says, almost offhandedly. you freeze at the last sentence and immediately, mark's ears turn bright red as he realizes what he had said.

you to turn to face forward as mark rubs the back of his neck awkwardly and if you weren't so damn flustered, you would take a picture of how incredibly cute he looks.

mark had pretty privilege, as far as you were concerned. if any other person said that, you would probably just laugh it off and thank them but a single comment from mark had you blushing and internally combusting. the worst part? you didn't even mind it.

the two of you are silent for another couple minutes before you turn to him once more, a corner of your lips tilted upwards, a teasing look in your eyes.

"you know i definitely don't mind being called angel by a pretty boy," you say casually. you try not to let your voice give away how nervous mark actually makes you but there's still a little shake when you say the word 'pretty'. because really, mark was so pretty. just...too pretty to be good for your heart.

it doesn't really matter though because mark looks at you like you've personally put the stars in the sky.

"you think i'm pretty?" mark says, his voice soft and tentative. you look at him strangely. surely he had heard that many times over the course of his life? why did he sound so surprised?

"i think you're very pretty, mark," you say matter-of-factly. mark wants to say something else but everyone has filed in and it seems as though the professor is starting the lecture soon as the lights begin to dim in the hall.

mark has heard that he was attractive many times before. in fact, he'd probably become synonymous with the word handsome, as his superlative in high school was 'most likely to become a famous singer' and 'most likely to win prom king'.

so why did his heart flutter so much when you called him pretty?

can you help me with this one?

turns out, mark is shit at statistics. he's great at the business part, as you have learned over the past three weeks of sitting next to each other and working on the practice problems together. but the actual statistics? you might as well be working with a victorian child.

"i still don't understand why you can't just assume that this condition applies in all scenarios," mark says as he reads through the question once more. the two of you had grown pretty close over the past month or so, and often, you would go to the library after class to work on the assigned homework or projects together.

mark was a good study buddy (he always brought good snacks) and he had a great work ethic that made you feel guilty about not studying when he was. not to mention that he was gorgeous eye candy to look at whenever you needed to take a break from your work.

which was pretty much all the time if it meant looking at mark lee a little while longer.

your friends had teased you when you described your encounters with mark thus far. although they never really crossed the line between platonic and romantic relationships, just the fact that you were practically dying of anticipation was enough to rile your friends up.

you had had a few partners in the past but most of them ended at the situationship stage - very few of them become actual relationships. so, you had put a pause on dating for good (much to the dismay of your gossip mongering best friends) and had been happily single for the past year or so. unfortunately, that was when you met mark lee and your heart decided to rebel against all sense of logic.

besides his pretty face (your friends were very surprised to hear that you had developed a crush on a good looking man for once; you had a seriously incriminating track record), mark lee had a pretty heart. he was so incredibly humble and kind to everyone he knew - which was a lot of people, as you came to learn. he was super friendly and great at remembering little details about people that made them feel as though he truly cared about them.

which he really did. it seemed like mark truly cared a lot about every single one of his seemingly thousands of friends and went out of his way to make them feel loved. for you, however, it seemed like he went above and beyond.

it seemed as though after mark (and you, really) had gotten over the initial shyness and awkwardness, the two of you were rarely seen apart. you weren't sure if the two of you were toeing the line of romantic relationship yet, but it just felt like you guys were having fun. even without a label or anything, you and mark tended to gravitate towards each other in social situations and even made consistent efforts to see each other outside of your respective friend groups.

for example, you really didn't belong in the frat scene. you had expended all of the energy and patience you had for frat house parties during your freshman year and quite frankly, as a junior in college, it felt kind of embarrassing to go to them without having any real connections to brothers themselves.

but mark was a brother in nu chi theta so within the first month of your friendship, you found yourself at the NCT house with a red solo cup and an uncomfortable top on.

"hey y/n! i'm losing over here! can you help me with this one?" mark calls out from behind you. you turn around to see him extending a ping-pong ball (that smelled like it was coated in beer, vodka, and...laundry detergent?) in your direction. you look to see if your friends, who you had dragged along to the party, were going to save you from death by beer pong but you're on your own when you see two of your friends making out with the same boy.

you would stop them but the image was far too gruesome and downright hilarious. and in their drunken state, you doubted you could really separate the lovebirds (?) anyway.

"alright, but it's gonna cost you, lee," you sigh dramatically, setting your cup down on the counter before accepting the ping-pong ball, your fingers brushing over mark's.

"name your price," mark says confidently as you line up your shot, ignoring the heat that radiates off of mark's body as you realize that mark was a lot closer than you had previously anticipated. his words sink into your skin and you involuntarily shiver when you feel his breath on your neck.

"hmm...i'll have to think about it..." you trail off, finally throwing the little ping-pong ball into the cup. you turn so that your chest was pressed against mark's front and all your thoughts have been replaced by the look of his eyes in the dim lighting. the words tumble out of your mouth before you even realize what you're saying.

"go on a date with me?"

your heart drops as you see mark's face turn from confusion to shock and then back to confusion. he rubs his neck awkwardly (a habit, you had noticed, that tended to present himself when he felt particularly confused) as he licks his lips nervously.

"was...was us hanging out everyday not...dating? i kinda thought we were already going on dates," mark mumbles, his cheeks flushed. you stare at him and a strange gurgling laughter rips out of your mouth before you clamp your hand over your mouth, your eyes wide in horror at the sound that came out of your mouth.

"does this mean you like me?" you ask, and once again, you're graced with the sight of mark lee looking just all too angelic under the strobe lighting as he nods before tentatively making eye contact with you.

"uh...if you asked me on a date, am i safe to assume that you like me too?" mark proposes and the way that he says it, almost like he was presenting a business pitch to a potential investor, makes you laugh once more as you lean a little closer to mark, your lips barely brushing against his.

"more than you realize, mark."

can i come inside?

the first time mark came with you to help out with the kids at the school, it was completely unexpected. another one of the student teachers had suddenly fallen ill (you found out a few months later that at his girlfriend's baby shower that he was not, in fact, sick) and no one else was available to help out.

your supervisor was a sweet old lady who was dedicated to helping as much as she could before 'her joints gave up on her' - which meant that oftentimes, she tried to take on more responsibility than she really could. and then that meant that she often didn't hire enough staff to keep the place running, hoping that she could do all of the administrative things herself so that all of the people who did come in could focus on working with the kids. needless to say, as one of the only volunteers who had been with the organization for more than four years, you knew more than well that the sweet old lady needed more people to help her out.

so, you forced your boyfriend of three years to help you out. well, not really forced. mark had the day off from work because it was the day before july 4th and really didn't have any plans for the day. so when mrs. varghese calls you frantically at nine o'clock the previous night, mark offered to come with you.

"we've been together for the past three years and we've been living together for the past one and a half. i lose my girlfriend every monday and thursday evening to kids. i gotta meet the little suckers who've been monopolizing my girlfriend." which was mark's stupid way of saying i love you. let me help you out a little bit. let me be part of your world. maybe in the disney princess way.

and you're a sucker for kids and your boyfriend, even after dating for three years, so you agree and the next day, you're piling into the passenger seat at seven in the morning to teach young children addition and subtraction.

not really how the two of you (mostly mark) were planning on spending on of your rare days off but you could never deny mrs. varghese of anything. especially if it meant more time with the kids.

mark always joked about how you should've become a teacher but as much as you loved the children and the interactions with them, you were not a fan of the underpaying salaries. so you made it a point to become successful in your career and dedicate a percentage of your paycheck to donate to the school you volunteered at instead.

which had caused some struggles when you first moved in with mark, given that it was only the two of you rather than you living with three of your friends and your share of the rent went higher. but you figured it out and mark definitely wasn't the type of person to hold it over your head that you weren't able to pay your full share of rent for the first two months.

because that's just who he was. he would cover for you, covering up all of the little parts of yourself that you didn't like. and you would help him see that those blemishes he thought he had were just things that made him more lovable to you.

so when mark steps into the little school and immediately, kids are swarming to the two of you, trying to find out who the attractive boyfriend was, you're not even surprised. mark had a natural, comforting air about him (not to mention the fact that the kids were overly invested in your personal life) that made people want to draw to him like moths to a flame.

in fact, he's so overwhelmed by the love that the kids are showing him, he's still hovering around the door awkwardly, semi-bowing to mrs. varghese, who's watching him with amusement.

"can i come inside?" mark asks, trying to take a step forward while not hurting any little kids. you snort at his awkward shuffle before clapping your hands together, taking it upon yourself to relieve your poor boyfriend from the possibility of death by enthusiastic children.

"can you or may you?" mrs. varghese says with a humorous smile and mark's eyebrows furrow as he contemplates the question. the kids are slowly making their way over to you, where you're starting to distribute fruit pouches as a morning snack and mark finally feels as though he's only carrying his own body weight - as opposed to ten other children's.

"it was 'can i' at first but now i think it's more of a 'may i'. mrs. varghese, i presume?" mark says, extending his hand for the old lady to shake. she just looks at it strangely before gathering mark in a tight, bone-crushing hug.

for such a frail old lady, she had a lot of strength.

"get out of here with those manners. y/n's told me a lot about. and anyone in y/n's corner is family here, alright?" mrs. varghese says, and mark has to blink furiously to push back the tears, although he can't really tell why her words are hitting him so hard.

"thanks."

you mean that?

mark was really easy to love. that's just the type of person he was. in everyone else's eyes, he was a good guy who just always tried to be better at the things he was already incredibly good at. he was always polite with strangers, babies cooed at him, and was the type to be the person to start a 'pay-it-forward' queue whenever he could afford to do so.

and for all of his perfectness, mark was a very flawed man. he was a little bit of a miser - he hated to spend money on himself, even if he would splurge a little more on you. he was a little bit on the insecure side, and no matter how many times you told him that you loved him all the more for his quirks, he still got down about it. mark was also really bad at communication when things made him upset. he was just so easy-going that he would let the smaller things accumulate and build until he's practically bursting.

and mark was kinda mean when he got angry.

he would never hurt you, of course. mark didn't think he could ever live with himself if he knew that he had laid a hand on anyone - but you in particular. and he really, really was trying to work on his communication skills so that he wouldn't let it build and then get so angry.

but when mark got angry, he seemed to just turn into a different person. it had only happened once in your relationship before, almost right after you had moved in together

it was about something incredibly stupid but the tension had been building for a while prior to that. technically, before you moved in, the apartment had been mark and one of his friend's, johnny seo from school, before johnny had moved out to move in with his own girlfriend. and mark and johnny weren't exactly...the cleanest people. you didn't really mind the mess but soon it turned into an unhealthy balance of mark leaving things around the house and you having to clean up after him.

not to mention that a lot changes when a couple moves in together. naturally, tensions were running a little high. for all your cleanliness, you had a really bad habit of leaving unfinished meals in the fridge until they went bad and started to smell, which made mark upset because that was a waste of a valuable meal. and so on and so forth.

one day, the tensions just burst and the two of you ended up in a screaming match going back and forth and back and forth about cleanliness and not eating properly and soon, it escalated from a conversation about living together to being together in the first place.

mark regretted it almost immediately, cursing himself out when he saw you just completely shut down in front of his eyes. he knew his anger got the best of him sometimes, and when he was in the moment, all he could think about was winning the argument, no matter what he needed to say to win.

that had been the worst fight you've ever had. after that fight, you got a lot better about portioning your food to eliminate leftovers and mark made a more conscious effort to clean up. you also started talking more to each other about what things did or didn't make you happy.

but even as mark was getting better at communicating with you, he still didn't know how to raise up issues with you. usually, you would tell mark what you were up to and then you would naturally ask him yourself if he was comfortable with what you were doing. he would then reply with a simple yes or no with an explanation and that would be the end of that. he always hesitated to raise up an issue with you though. he didn't want you to think that he was trying to control your life or be one of those possessive boyfriends.

one day, though, you were out clubbing with your friends (your friend had recently broken up with her fiancé and she really needed her girlfriends) and you had come home pretty late. mark had stayed up, watching a movie (barely), worried about you making it home safely because he knew that your friends were prone to trying to get you as wasted as possible.

mark never told you explicitly but you had a feeling that's how he felt. it frustrated you though that he never said anything to you and wait for you to bring it up to him instead. so that night, you decided to drink a little more than usual (but not as much as they tried to make you drink) so that you could finally, finally get mark to talk to you about his issues.

really, for your behavior, you were expecting to have a round two of what had happened when you first moved in with him. you were imagining a screaming match like no other but instead, mark just looks at you, sighs, and pulls you into a hug when you come stumbling through the door. confused, you begin to pull away, but mark just continues to hold you tight.

"i was so worried that you might not get home safe. and i promise we'll have a proper conversation about this when you're sober in the morning but i love you so much and...let's just talk about this in the morning, okay?" mark mumbles into your hair. you let mark just rock you gently side to side as he clings onto you, completely opposite from the reaction you were expecting.

"mark, i'm not drunk. i just...i'm tired of always being the one to bring up issues. i know that you don't like it when i get drunk outside because you're worried for me but i'd rather you tell me that than me having to guess that by myself. i can make my own decisions and i'm a big independent girl but you're the singular most important person in my life. i would never consciously do something to make you uncomfortable but i make mistakes sometimes. i need you to be open and honest with me when something makes you uncomfortable - because i know it takes a lot to get that far in the first place."

mark steps back to look you in the eyes, his eyes glittering in the shitty lighting of the apartment. "you really mean that?"

"i mean it with my whole heart."

do you promise to love me for the rest of our lives?

mark tries not to trip. he tries really hard to hold in his sneezes, tears, and any other bodily fluids that are inappropriate for the situation. but the nearly fifteen feet from the entrance to the where the officiant is standing is enough to make mark want to puke all over the very expensive carpet you bought for the wedding.

when you first proposed having a backyard wedding, mark was extremely opposed.

a wedding was a once in a lifetime day where you could celebrate your union together with your partner and start the journey to the rest of your lives together. in fact, it was mark, not you, who had the pinterest board (although, to be fair, it wasn't actually a pinterest board and was rather just a folder on his phone of screenshots from pretty tiktoks). he had a vision for the wedding - one that included all members of your friend circle, your families, and your family friends as well.

and well, that wasn't really in the budget. rather than spend 100k on a one day event, you proposed having a backyard wedding that would be significantly more economical and using that 100k to buy a starter home.

"you still get your expensive venue and we have a place to move into. a real home that we can start a family in, mark," you had argued as mark paced back and forth in the small, almost cramped apartment the two of you shared. mark stops when he realizes that it only takes fourteen steps to make it from one side of the room to the other side and back.

and that was the biggest room.

so mark agrees on one condition: there are no lacking traditional elements of the wedding. the both of you worked together on the pain-staking process of planning a wedding that included portions of your culture and his culture to put on the wedding of a lifetime. hopefully the only wedding of your lifetimes.

well, the only wedding for you and mark, at least. but that was about the future and in the present, mark can barely keep from keeling over right there at the beautifully decorated altar that you and your mother had spent hours on.

after so long of being together, mark can't help but feel just so incredibly lucky and overwhelmed to be finally marrying you. you. the person of his dreams. the person who taught him that love isn't always fireworks and euphoric thrills; that love can be huddling together when gas bills were too high to pay and wanting nothing more than to see your significant other when it's been a long day.

love was you and mark really, really can't wait to finally show the world how much he truly loved you.

unsurprisingly, mark almost cries when you finally enter, the picture of the stunning bride as you clutch your father's arm for the last time as y/n l/n instead of y/n lee. mark isn't sure the last time he saw you this nervous but when you meet his eyes, he can feel the rest of the world melt away.

just normal people with enough love to fill the world, is what you say in your vows. just a guy and a girl in the same business class who never travel business class because the two of you are such money minders - something that my soon to be husband has rubbed off on me.

"i will never forget the moment that i knew i was so irrevocably love with mark. it was two days after we fought for the first time. i remember that i was so incredibly angry and scared that that fight would be the end of y/n and mark. that i would have to move out and redownload tinder and just be miserable again for losing one of the best things in my life over a little sock in the wrong place and leftover pizza."

"but two days after we fought, mark came up to me, hugged me and just said, 'we're gonna get through this. i love you too much to not get through this.' and even though everything just seemed so uncertain, the moment mark said that, i knew instantly that we really were going to get through it. because mark had faith in us. and i have faith in us. i love you, mark lee. from the moment you sat down in that ucla business class. i have loved you for so long and i will continue to love you forever."

there isn't a single dry eye in the house (quite literally) after your vow. mark has to clear his throat four or five times before he can start his vows, too afraid that his voice would give out on him in the middle due to how much emotion he was feeling.

"y/n, you asked me one day when we were binging american horror story and pigging out with a family sized bag of chips when i started falling in love with you. and i couldn't answer then so i just said that for as long as i can remember. and that's true - i still don't know when i fell in love with you. i just remember that one day i woke up alone in bed (don't worry mr. l/n, i have never slept in a ten mile radius of your daughter...please don't make her divorce me) and thinking that i would rather wake up next to you instead for the rest of my life."

"but i do know when i realized you were my soulmate. five moments when i knew i found the one. when i asked you if i could sit down next to you in business class. when i asked you to help me with statistics because for being a business major, i'm horrible at math - go figure. when i volunteered with you for the first time with mrs. varghese. mrs. varghese! - where are you - mrs. varghese! may i marry y/n? then i'll be real family."

mrs. varghese blows into a handkerchief unceremoniously, waving mark off through her tears, making the crowd and you laugh a little. mark's smile grows when he sees you laugh and continues on nervously.

"and the fourth moment was the time when you gave me a reality check. when you reminded me that love doesn't work without communication. you've changed me so much for the better, y/n, and i truly could not thank you enough for it. so, i have one last question for you. one last moment for me to know that we're soulmates."

mark takes a deep breath, holding one of your hands in both of his as he looks at you with soft eyes, so filled with love that your breath catches in your throat. "i promise to love you and stand by you for as long as i breathe. can you - can you promise...do you promise to love me for the rest of our lives?"

it seems as though everyone in the venue is holding their breath before you press a sweet kiss to mark's cheek and say the words that everyone has been waiting for.

"i do."

and with those five questions, mark lee had found his soulmate.

[starberry-cupcake]

After a weekend that exhausted me, I am finally able to come back to this book. My reacts proved useful to remind me where I left of, who would have thought.

previously, on harrowberry the ninth:

this happened

also, harrowberry is courtesy of @lady-harrowhark

after which I suggested the following album cover as a representation of her

currently, chapters 14-16:

"The Mithraeum, the seat of the First Reborn! The Sanctuary of the Emperor of the Nine Houses, the bolthole of God"

I don't want to sound like gideon

I really don't

but I have to be entirely honest here

I read that sentence twice, at separate times

and neither of those times did I read "bolthole"

MOVING ON

harrowberry is settled in a room which was made for a lyctor that never was

I don't know if this is at all important but it caught my eye

I wonder what happened there

and I am, as we have established, fixating on very particular things

the emperor johnny bravo has a room that's described as a locked tomb, but harrow says that, unlike the other locked tomb, she's not interested to see what's in this one

on the one hand, I want to know what this guy's actually doing but, on the other, I don't care about what's going on in his intimacy

harrow is also surprised that he gets embarrassed

which I don't, because he should be embarrassed and ashamed about all of the stuff that is going on in general

I don't know specifics and I don't know details, but I know he's at fault

like we say over here, I've got no evidence but I've got no doubt

he tells harrowbean about the BOE

he says they hate the nine houses and that they have agents who turn planets against them

they got themselves a leader about 25 years before harrow was born, who made things more difficult for johnny man

let's bring back the timeline I'm constantly discarding and bringing back

we've been told now that: this leader showed up 25 years before harrow was born, they disappeared nearly 20 years ago and gideon was born 18 years ago in space to a mom who was brain dead upon arriving at ninth

there's also the whole eggs thing that idk if it has something to do with this or not but we're not totally throwing anything away here

we've moved from a cork board to a 3d model at this point

emperor johnny boo is blaming these people for not!dulcinea going ballistic

idk johnny man, you kind of fucked that up on your own I think, but go off, I guess

he also says that the BOE folks hate necromancers and necromancy

I don't wanna be making assumptions with little to no info (literally all I've been doing) but all I've seen so far is these people teaching harrow to kill planets

that's not what miss frizzle told me I should be doing when she wore the most iconic looks in television history

maybe if the emperor dressed like this I'd be trusting him more

emperor johnny also clocked harrow being a ninth kid smoothie

because harrow was doing theorems in the river and only one other person ever did that before

the person who founded the sixth

we're ok with the sixth because camilla came from there

when harrow starts telling him the smoothie story, the emperor says "This was...all so different...before we discovered the scientific principles" and proceeds to tell her that her parents basically did a mini resurrection

he says "I have committed the same act, and I know the price I had to pay" and calls her "a walking miracle"

to which harrow responds "I have just told you that I am the product of my parents' genocide"

emperor, my man

he says "nobody has to know" about the kid smoothie

there sure are a lot of things people aren't supposed to know or ask about over here in the emperor's bolthole

*me, high fiving gideon's force ghost*

he says the initials of BOE mean "blood of eden" and that Eden is "someone they left to die"

then he quotes shakespeare??? I think king lear???

“How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child”, that quote

I'm not super knowledgeable when it comes to shakespeare tbh but...ominous

he also says "once you turn your back on something, you have no more right to act as though you own it"

and harrow thinks "at the time, that had made perfect sense to you"

that's pinned under the "hope for later" category

NEXT CHAPTER

harrow talks to ice cube barbie in her dreams

ice cube barbie says she's died twice

THEN, AND THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT

harrow asks her if she has ortus's eyes or if her eyes are hers and what her eyes are like

and ice cube barbie says "she asked me not to tell you"

this is me, adding another thing to the "hopeful hints for gideon" shrine I am building

chapter 16

harrow asks yandere twin about her diary and she says it has been burned on her own orders

more hints for my theory of past!harrow knowing a lot and planning ahead

harrowcita calls lyctortus (name suggested by the reply gang, thank you reply gang) "the other one"

which could be "other" as in "other lyctor" or as in "other ortus", so it's fine either way

harrow is worried about not!dulcinea still being a threat

AREN'T WE ALL

AREN'T WE ALL

I SURE AM, ALWAYS

she should have been flushed into space

harrow thinks not!dulcinea is moving and yandere twin calls her "crazycakes"

then we start going a bit more in depth about augustine

I have come to understand that he isn't called "saint of patience" because he's patient

he's called "saint of patience" because that's what you have to practice when you're around him

good god, this man

he has the charisma of the fifth but the disagreeable nature of the eighth

here I am, making judgment on these people I only know like 2 representatives of, but anyway

he's like if magnus hadn't discovered a passion for baking and had instead decided his hobby was to be passive aggressive and thinking too highly of himself

his cav was his brother, apparently

harrow thinks he's hollow inside

he is absolutely horrendous to mercygirl

BUT, MOST IMPORTANTLY

he also alludes to not!dulcinea moving and thinks mercygirl is doing it

I don't know about this, you guys

two mulders in one recap is what you get when I have been forced to not read for a couple days

I think fox mulder represents my energy in these recaps

Augustine The Unpleasant mentions that johnny j has "spent the last 10 thousand years on a perpetual search-and-destroy mission out of, as far as I can tell, purely symbolic retribution"

great, that sounds fantastic for god to do

and that "I wouldn't set myself up as his replacement A.L. He doesn't need another bodyguard, and even she was significantly more lucid than you are" (you being mercygirl)

I had mentioned the possibility of ice cube barbie being this AL person, we still don't know, but this AL is "she"

let's put that in the 3D model

augustine calls chad a "nice boy", which tracks for him being a Senior Chad

he treats harrow badly, which we absolutely don't stan over here in the harrow respect corner

harrow obliterates him with a comeback and he calls her Anastasia (You were born in a palace by the sea / A palace by the sea? Could it be?) like the previous ninth

these people love comparing their old pals to everyone they meet, even if they supposedly didn't get along much

harrow also makes fun of yandere twin for being what gideon would call "a weenie" over augustine

then we get the augustine and johnny explanation of how to kill the beast

I am all for information but this whole thing gives me the worst vibes

basically he says the beasts (disrespectful name) eat planets like oysters and then keep the thanergy as armor

the beast can inhabit anything it's thanergetically connected to it via their death

like that which they kill

they travel as river projections

they have agents, which he describes like the borg in star trek

individual forms connected to its hive

the whole lyctor thing, having a necromancer's ability with a cav's training to take over the body, seems to be a key to fighting these things

because the necro part goes down into the river to do the thing and the cav can take over the defense of the body

this, I think, could be what we saw harrow doing in the prologue, the projection thing

but harrow's body isn't protected, because she's "lyctor lite"

because there's hope for gideon or so help me john

which might be why yandere twin was telling her she would not be guarded if she did what she was about to do

I am very intrigued as to what harrow will come to know to push her to do what she did

also, she got stabbed, so I'd like to know if she's fine

but we have 0 guarantees of anything over here in the mithrandir or whatever

the emperor's bolthole

god, what has gideon done to me

they say the point of the combat is to throw the beast's soul into the abyss and hope it doesn't come back

that's what I've been trying to do with not!dulcinea all this time

ALSO still no camilla

see you next time and thank you for not hating the length of these things ♥

[vandalizingyourschool]

just had the most amazing conversation with my mother

Warning - probably gonna be a bigass post and also mentions of sh and su!cide

Yesterday I had a pretty big relapse after my dad freaked me out about how he probably was gonna influence my future as much as he can (long story) I contacted my cousin bcuz i had blacked out after trying to choke myself and i was too scared to even unlock my room. She listened to my rant and was really sweet and supportive and told me yet again, that there's no point in hoping my father will understand. She then said that enough was enough and that she was going to tell my mom that I need a psychologist asap. And I guess I was opposed to that idea because I just wanna repress all those feelings and pretend they don't exist so I don't burden anyone else. But yeah she convinced me that this was probably the best thing I could do for myself at this point bcuz i can't transition to make a large portion of my problems go away. So yeah I wrote her a 9 page essay at 12 in the night explaining every single thing. Every. Single. Thing. And then five minutes after I sent it there was banging at my door and my mom was outside and she looked like she'd been crying and she told me to give her the keys to my room (which she's been wanting me to do for a long time) and bcuz it was 12 in the night and i was exhausted I agreed and she went back to sleep. The next morning I found out that my lovely mom had been up till 4 yesterday panicking about how she was gonna help me bcuz yeah very serious. I was still too scared to unlock my room door so i was just lying in my bed motionless for 4 hours and then at about 1 in the afternoon she gently opened the door and lied on the bed next to me and hugged me. She told me that everything was gonna be okay and that I could talk to her and she'd help me get professional help. And yeah I thought she was mad at me but idk. Then she finally coaxed me to eat something and then she went back to catch all the sleep she lost last night. I was supposed to study today but obviously i couldn't bcuz of how stressed and distracted I was so now I just feel like I've wasted the day.... But that's fine who cares. An hour ago I just went to my mom's room bcuz i was feeling lonely and she tried to make small talk for sometime but then it obviously deviated back to all of this and she was holding my hand and saying that it's okay, and that unaliving myself has no impact on the people who want me like that. And staying alive is telling them to go to hell (she literally said that) and she said that i shouldn't try to label evrything bcuz it would just feel overwhelming. Feeling are feelings in the end. Also apparently she was diagnosed with adhd at some point but it wasn't that socially accepted before so she hasn't done anything major about it yet?? So apparently everyone in my family except my brother is neurodivergent 😭

My mom's probably adhd, depressed and has anxiety, my dad has narcissistic personality disorder, and I have bpd and possibly ocd. Ok whatever bunch of unnecessary details

She also said that I'd only earn the respect of majority of people by being powerful and being self sustaining. Which is true honestly. And then she said that being gay or trans is perfectly fine and that I shouldn't worry too much about other people validating who I am bcuz i know who I am and that's all that matters. And she said that if anyone tries to hurt me for being who I am she'd murder them. And i literally started crying out of joy here bcuz she's come such a long way since I came out to her as bisexual 3 years ago. Shes become so open minded and I love that for her

Then she hugged me and reassured me that evrything would be okay and that If I wanted she'd take me to a psychologist

I love her so so much

[fitgothgirl]

So my dad texted me a thorough apology the day after that dinner/yesterday morning, saying he was embarrassed and hoping I could forgive him and just totally owned up to everything. It meant a lot coming from him and we texted for a sec and things are better now. My emotions were still all frazzled yesterday and I did still cry again, because it was still a stressful and sad situation to go through regardless of forgiveness and wanting to move past it. Feeling better today though.

In other news, I'm getting back to Doordashing tonight (or even possibly Lyfting) because I don't have enough money to pay my credit card bill that's due Monday. I'm at a really bad point money-wise. I'm finally hitting my credit limit and I can't keep falling back on my credit card (nor should I; and despite the stress, I'm partially grateful to be hitting my limit). I'm 34 and I have no savings, just a couple grand in retirement, every month I spend more money than I make, I'm in a huge amount of credit card debt, and I don't even have a budget. I've dug a deep hole for myself. My bf doesn't know the extent because I'm so embarrassed... I even had almost everything paid off for a hot second a few years ago with help from family, and now I'm worse off than I was before that; all that help, just undone and wasted.

I need to make a budget, I need to stop going to concerts, I need to make extra money, I need to go to the cheapest grocery stores and use coupons. I literally don't have a choice anymore, there is no more credit.

I love my job and want to stay in it, and I think the pay would almost be an adequate amount to live on if I didn't have the credit card bills that I have... But even without the bills, I don't think I could really do things like save for retirement and travel/do fun stuff and have an emergency fund, etc. And as a childfree person, I want/need long-term care insurance when I'm older, which is expensive. I also need to face the fact that it's probably five years or so until my position is completely replaced by AI anyway. Plus there's no growth with this job anyway, I'm not going to get many more raises (if any?). I need to plan ahead for which direction I'm going to go, and I need it to be more lucrative so I can live like a fucking adult. And to also not hold my bf back in things like travelling; he makes enough money but we don't do all these things we want to do because I just can't get the savings together. The times we do travel are were often largely put on my credit card...

I passively wonder about going back to school. I don't know if it'd be worth the time or the money though. That'd almost certainly mean more debt too. But getting my MPH might be a good boost to my job/salary options - or not, knowing the current state of society lmao. I also entertain the thought of getting a second Bachelor's in something else like biology or neuroscience or even math and going to a completely different industry. I don't know how feasible any of this even is though lol. My head's just often in the clouds like this.

My current job is in the medico-legal field and I could go more into the law side of things doing admin stuff or something; I feel like that'd be a more lucrative field. Unless AI takes over that stuff too lol.

Idk. I'm just feeling a strong mixture of both anxiety and shame.

[slanax]

so the podcast playlist ran out at work earlier today and left me with just music and my thoughts while I continued packaging products on autopilot. Now over the last month or so I've done a lot in my day to day life to stop stagnating and settling for 'good enough' as far as like household and stuff is concerned, I finally upgraded my phone and phone plan after like five and ten years respectively, I bought new clothes that actually fit me instead of the holdovers from back in the day that I was still wearing, my kitchen now has an actual workspace bc I've rearranged my furniture and added some more - shoutouts to my mom who wanted the doors off of my ikea cupboards so she'd have a matching set for the ones I left at home (the kind I had wasn't in store anymore) bc her offering to drive me to Ikea to get replacements triggered a bit of a binge in rearranging my whole apartment and let me transport the new stuff home too. Visiting my brother made me cook more and eat healthier bc he showed me the burgers he's cooking up when he needs something fast but like, with standards.

anyways. rambling. point is that the whole thing got me thinking about other things in my life that I'm kinda 'eh good enough' on, and the big one there is my identity and my body. Me being cis is, at least at this point, a conscious choice born from indifference, the factory settings work well enough and it'd be effort to even start looking into what I'd have to do to change them. But at the same time, it doesn't feel super cis for my position to be "yeah I'd prolly trans my gender if given the chance but that sounds like I'd have to file shit and call people and bureaucracy would be involved. But I would. But the effort." like I'm remembering Ranma 1/2 from my childhood and think that'd be neat to be able to do, just switch genders at the drop of a literal bucket, I feel that's not a very cis thought.

so then about two weeks ago my workplace gave us access to some health benefits, because they're feeling bad about keeping the warehouse people a bit out of the loop and removed from the office people, and also they're having trouble finding new people and really don't want any of us to quit, or something along those lines. Point is I have better health insurance now, based on a calender year budget, so I basically have an above average budget for the second half of this year now and I wanna make use of that, because it's a use-it-or-lose-it kinda deal. Now I don't know if I can use that for any gender affirming stuff, but I might.

The problem that remains is that I still couldn't care less for going through the whole rigamaroll of a social transition, but like. staying on-paper cis and continuing to use my given name to avoid all those complications, legally still being the same person and just looking different (might need a new ID if I go that far lol) doing whatever the fuck I want with my body in the meantime without it ever affecting my legal identity because it's not a deadname if I'm still just using it, it doesn't actually give me dysphoria, and they can't force me to change my name just because I have boobs, might be what I want? And then maybe I can consider a legal gender and/or name change from there?

idk on one hand it sounds like something I'd want to do but on the other hand I also feel it's not like, committed enough? like both on a practical level where I need a doctor to help me transition physically while still using the same (male) name, and on an ideological level where it feels like appropriation in a way to just want the body and the appearance but skipping over the whole paperwork thing because I can't be arsed while for a lot of people changing name and officially recognized identity is a just as if not more important aspect of transitioning.

genuinely can't tell on my own if that standpoint is a valid one, if I'm right to be hesitant for that reason or if that's an exclusionist brainworm take, would appreciate feedback and second opinions on that part especially

either way I am going to look into using my newfound health benefits for getting my facial hair lasered first and foremost because even if I stay physically 100% male that shit is annoying, I don't care for how it looks on me, I feel messy when it's there and can't be assed to shave it regularily. Avoiding effort is a key part of my identity either way whether I'm Cis+ or Legally Cis For Tax Reasons

[galaxythreads]

Is there anything specific to figuring out what to write for the start of a story? People say like “start while the characters are doing something” and it’s good advice but idk how to figure out *what* they’d be doing. I loveee your writing and clearly you know how to get past this so..

Great question! Thanks for reaching out :)

What people mean when they give that advice isn't have the characters be making a sandwich (although that is a great option) it just means have your character already immersed in the world. Don't wait to give them a thumbs up that they can go.

For example, using my own writing, lets look at what I consider to be one of the worst openings and one of the best:

So in If Lost, Please Return To Peter (which I have actually edited out the worst of this like 2 years ago, when it was posted and was the bare bones it was awful), here's the opening paragraph:

"Peter is pretty terrible at making friends."

and like this part is good! It asks a question. Why is peter terrible at making friends? Why are we thinking about this? How is this relevant to what's going on?

and then it immediately gets bogged down by the following paragraph:

"Okay, understatement: Peter and making friends crosses over that line of "beyond horrible" that hits that stage where other people are embarrassed for him. It's wondrous. Honestly, he doesn't even know how to approach people; Ned accidentally dumped his jug of water on Peter's painting when they were in second grade and, feeling guilty, Ned had followed him around apologizing (though Peter had long forgiven him) and it sort of moved on beyond that to actual friendship. Michelle just started showing up wherever he and Ned were towards the beginning of the school year and acted like it was a coincidence."

Why do we care about this? We don't. It drags the story. It's not relevant to what's going on. And what is going on in this scene that is the point/task I want the characters to do? Loki is on top of a roof about to jump and Peter is going to talk him out of it. It's a really heavy scene. Opening with something light-hearted wasn't a bad choice, but the problem comes here:

it takes me 5 paragraphs to have Peter do anything, which is yawn. This paragraph that I'm pointing to should have been the opening sentence because PETER IS DOING SOMETHING. We are ENGAGED in the story. I could have put the following five paragraphs literally anywhere else in this scene and it would have worked so much better. He literally just thinks for paragraphs and paragraphs at a time.

Like to be clear this isn't unreadable. People will and do make it past terrible openings. Clearly. I wouldn't have nearly the ao3 following I do if they didn't, lol.

Okay, so we have that.

then there's FOUR MORE PARAGRAPHS OF THOUGHT BEFORE WE HAVE ANOTHER ACTION

so we are now like 8-9 paragraphs into the story (this would be page 3-4) and Peter has done this:

Thought and thought and thought (which is bad because he's not distressed and has no reason to be caught up in his head)

Yawned

fired a web

and said a single line of dialog.

It takes until almost page 5 before Peter and Loki interact. Which was the task of the scene. the Point. I know when I was younger and more inexperienced, a writer I knew told me that the story couldn't start until page 3 cause you needed to know the character, so I felt an obligation to just ramble and ramble until I got there before finally feeling relief that the story could pick up. Like if you go read the rest of the one-shot, the pacing is much better. Because that's what the problem of this opening is: the pacing. That's why it's important to have your character start with doing something because it helps with the pacing. Usually that something the character is doing is a task they need to complete and once that task is over, the opening scene is also over.

so compare that scene in the one-shot to this one from Scar Tissue, with is an Avatar the last airbender fic I'm working on right now. Chapter 1 is one of my favorite openings I've ever done.

"Despite Aang’s frustrated insistence ten minutes earlier, Sokka is not beach moping. He’s sitting, calmly, thinking very hard about how miserable he is. There’s a difference. And it’s not even a beach. Agna Qel’a doesn’t have anything that really passes for a beach anyway, just what feels like an endless amount of docks and ice, so there."

So this is the opening paragraph. The character didn't start doing something. Sokka is not making a sandwich. But what I HAVE done to pull the reader in is two things

a) I've made it funny. People are automatically drawn into something that's a little funny. And it also answers the question of whether or not our senses of humor are going to match like immediately. I have a really dark sense of humor in writing that not everyone enjoys and this subconsciously answers that question right away.

b) I've made you ask a question. Why is Sokka beach moping? What is beach moping?

c) Sokka is already tethered down. He mentions that he's been talking to Aang, which implies that this scene has not existed inside of a void. Something happened right before the scene started. In my acting class, my teacher refers to this as the "before moment." What happened BEFORE the scene started? This is a great question to ask yourself when you start an opening scene. Because the before moment lets you know why you are starting it at that exact moment.

Okay, good first paragraph, then it continues:

"Not beach moping. 

Impossible to be beach moping, technically. 

“Are you still beach moping?” Katara, behind him, already sounds exhausted. More than that, she sounds pre-done with Sokka’s feelings, and they’ve barely spoken today. This is just some task she needs to check off before she can go to sleep, and the idea of being that much of an annoyance makes something desperate curl in Sokka’s stomach with panic.""

^ What did I do here that was different than the Peter one? Read that, then read this:

Okay, understatement: Peter and making friends crosses over that line of "beyond horrible" that hits that stage where other people are embarrassed for him. It's wondrous. Honestly, he doesn't even know how to approach people; Ned accidentally dumped his jug of water on Peter's painting when they were in second grade and, feeling guilty, Ned had followed him around apologizing (though Peter had long forgiven him) and it sort of moved on beyond that to actual friendship. Michelle just started showing up wherever he and Ned were towards the beginning of the school year and acted like it was a coincidence."

Peter rambles on something that is not relevant. Does painting ever come up in that one-shot? No. It does not. In the Avatar fic, Sokka beach moping is the point of the scene and is the inciting incident of hte story. The task I've just assigned Sokka is a conversation, which is the EXACT SAME TASK i gave Peter in the one-shot, but unlike the peter oneshot, it takes Sokka like one and a half paragraphs to do something:

and Sokka's is relevant to what's going on. The conversation has started. Peter still has like 4 more pages to go with rambling and doing nothing. The reason I chose these two scenes to compare and contrast specifically is because they both have the same thing: they're really really thought heavy. But the difference is how relevant those thoughts are to the story I'm trying to tell. For Sokka, it's that he's depressed about anxious about the aftermath of a battle and losing his girlfriend. For Peter, it's...not that. HE thinks about paintings with his friends, he thinks about May, he thinks about ANYTHING EXCEPT THE POINT OF THE SCENE.

If you've ever heard someone complain that it's taking forever to get to the point, this is what they mean. It's not so much that the scene is long or rambly, it's how relevant it is to your story. Sokka is beach moping. When Sokka's conversation about WHY he has been beach moping is over (whether or not he reveals that to Katara isn't really relevant), that scene is over. The point of that scene is that Sokka is moping and BECAUSE he is moping, he finds Iroh and Zuko floating in the water. It sets up Sokka as a character FIRST. Then the inciting incident of the story. PEter's current mental state wasn't set up, which is what those rambly thoughts should have done instead of tell us childhood stories.

Here's another opening that I really like from Not One For Chocolate Anymore, I See: (why does this title have I see, has it always had I see?? lol)

anyway, so this communicates the same thing: Setting, character, TASK.

They're in a walmart parking lot on Christmas morning, very early, it's cold, the character is Tony, Tony is looking for Peter. When Tony finds Peter, the opening scene is over.

Same thing in Scar Tissue:

Setting, character, task:

Setting: Agna Qel'a, the dock, it's cold.

Character: Sokka

Task: Beach mope, talk to Katara, deal with panic attack.

Ideally, the first couple of paragraphs (within the first page or so) should provide those three things ^

which is why this opening didn't work

setting: ??????????????????

character: Peter

Task: ??????????????????????????????

I don't love the opening of You Screamed For So Long We Forgot To Care Anymore and it's kind of because it takes a second for the story to roll forward:

Setting: ?????????

Character: Clint

Task: Calling Jane, see where Thor is

---

TL:DR

Give your character something to do that immediately engages them in the story. Don't wait around to get to the point bogged down with useless details. Give us the setting - even if the setting is that the character doesn't know where they are - who the story is about, and the task the character is trying to do. Even if that's making a sandwich.

But also bare in mind that people will and do read through some of the worst openings on the planet and then later find those same terrible openings deeply comforting. (If anyone changed the terrible opening on my beloved fics that I have the sentence structure memorized on, I would be devastated.) Most people make it at least half-way through chapter 1 of fics before giving up, so as long as you can engage them by that point, you're good. I don't love all my openings and it IS something I am still learning to do better because it's definitely a skill you need to develop. But guess what! You CAN develop it. What really helped me was when I started paying attention to the openings of my favorite fics and figuring out what they were doing and then mimicking it.

A huge part of becoming a better writer is deconstructing writing and then regurgitating it in your own style. Did that answer your question? You can say no, absolutely, but I just want to make sure I was actually helpful. XD

---

ON FIGURING OUT WHAT THEY'D BE DOING: setting up your character's current place, then the inciting incident. Remember, the first chapter of a multi-chapter fic (first scene-ish of a one-shot) is setting up WHY the story happens. So what they'd be doing should be relevant to why the story happens. That's why I had Sokka on the beach, so he could find Iroh and Zuko. THat's why I had Peter out fighting crime so he could find Loki and they'd talk. And Tony was in the parking lot to find Peter, and etc, etc. The task they're trying to accomplish is the reason that scene exists at all, if that makes sense?

[elliethesuperfruitlover]

mega mega fumin'

ok yall so ive been in college for a week and two days (everybody clap) its been fun, most of the ppl here are queer and ppl are very nice, my classes are going well so far :))))))))

and ive been watching tua s4 as a part of my nightly routine while i redo my hair for bed.

and um

i combed my hair for the week today while finishing the season and i have some thoughts on the matter.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY SEASON 4 UNDER THE CUT

what in the everloving fuck was that

i already want to rewrite the lorax in a very dark manner after listening to biggering but that??? THAT?????? WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT??????

HE NEEDS TO COUNT HIS FUCKING DAYS WHO WAS IN THE GODDAMN WRITING ROOM IM THROWING CHAIRS AND TABLES, FUCK A HAND

the romance plotline was ass and wasnt in character AT ALL, i dont see it as a part of reality that exists, both for five and also lila.

lila is not that shallow of a woman or a mother to just do that, i think we all know that she cares a hell of a lot about her marriage with diego AS WELL AS HER FUCKING CHILDREN than to do something like that. even with her entire chaos personality and potentially using people, she would NOT go that far because her love for her family does not outweigh 7 years of no dick.

and five is quite literally one of the most intelligent characters in the series (it shouldve been him and dolores). nothing could ever convince me that he would fall in love with his BROTHER'S WIFE and feel no immediate remorse towards it, once again, 7 years or 7 fucking decades, please leave your complaints in my vacuum of "i dont give a fuck".

i actually liked ben and jennifer as characters interacting. if we take out the marigold and durango wimey shit, i wouldve loved to see them be in love and interact with each other as is. i think he deserves nice things. also since its literally been two years since i watched season 3 bc i watched it one, during a really shitty ongoing OCD episode and two, because i thought it was an "ok" season. (almost said bad, but we now know our standards were much much too low). there was also a point in which i thought that ben and jennifer were connected bc she came out of a giant squid (in which wtf), and ben has tentacle powers??? idk its odd to me too, don't worry.

reggie i hope you choke asshat, as well as you and your wife. at first i thought homegirl was a bootlicker but no i cant really call her that. she was fr like "well it was my death, you chose to bring me back fuck u hubby" erm yeah that was definitely something, viktor you shouldve killed him when you had the chance honey. also i blame reginald for that shit, he was the goddamn anomaly, not the entire umbrella academy???? at first i thought five blinking into the apocalypse all those years ago was the anomaly, but nooo we're gonna blame the abuse victims. *rolls eyes*

more about him um his entire "im gonna bring her back" shit was giving gendo ikari (for those of you who don't know, gendo ikari is an antagonist and key character in the anime neon genesis evangelion, in which he was a miserable fuck and loved his wife so much he killed the entire world to see her again, then that didnt even happen). him taking the shot on the ben and jennifer amalgamation which in the end triggered the cleanse???? that was weird to me. like him being an asshole wasn't weird, that's already been established, but their death and recombination just triggering an event that severe???? wild, still kinda confused.

the only way i could see raymond walking out on allison is if she really, and i mean REALLY fucked up. but given everything that she has done in the past, i think she learned her lesson. raymond would never, i wouldve preferred him to have died off-screen than to have walked out bc???? anyway moving tf on.

i enjoyed klaus a lot this season bc hes my favorite but also because a part of me enjoyed seeing a different, more "real" anxious side of him. (that i could relate to a bit more). after reading a few opinions and watching the deleted scene where he went to an AA meeting and finally actually admitted he was an alcoholic to himself......steve blackman wtf. was this the bad ending, did we all fuck up that bad in our choices that we got HERE????? im kissing him on the forehead, i cant believe the last time i saw klaus hargreeves on tv there were actual tears coming down his face im....im so sick y'all.

whoever decided to put all that vomit in the episode please dont do that again. i know you cant put warnings for literal barf on a tv show but as someone who suffered through the roaches of season 3, then had to take breaks watching the sick episode of this season bc emetophobia......ew. (the baby shark shit was funny as hell to me oopsie)

i actually kinda enjoyed jean and gene as characters, their dynamic was entertaining to me, but i wish i got to see more of their history, i especially found it a little weird how jean was holding gene's face in the episode that five and lila were in the meeting together.....i wanna know more.

erm i think the concept of the keepers was also interesting. like a little group of people who know they see some weird shit and find other folks, kinda neat.

the casual drop that one of the fives made the commission???? we're just gonna brush past that???? like it makes a fuck ton of sense bc its a collection of fives we're talking about but i just.....that was a shock to me, one in which i felt i had little time to recover from given it was the last fucking episode and everything that happened after that....happened.

i liked luther the most in this season methinks. i think i had to realize him being shitty in season 1 specifically was partially a trauma response, and he felt he still had to act how he was expected to. once again, fuck you reginald hargreeves, please kiss the darkest part of my black ass.

yeah lets all just ignore all the shit that happened and either let season 3 be the end where they all go their separate ways or even better, season 2 bc that shit was peak highkey.

[chronicallylatetotheparty]

Literally everyone in the main cast (except maybe Charlie) has killed someone. Idk how the sex worker is more murder-y than everyone else.

Good because if a former Overlord who owned souls thought he could say anything about it I'd call him out as a hypocrite.

It's almost like Angel Dust's behavior stems from self-destructive tendencies/unhealthy coping mechanisms. And telling someone who believes they're a piece of shit that they're right will just cause them to double down instead of magically deciding to stop doing that.

Then why were you complaining about him.

... This show is about the CHRISTIAN afterlife.

The premise is a critique of Christian morality. Of how the Church has historically been arbitrary in deciding who goes to Heaven or Hell. Their "explicit purpose" is being a vehicle to criticize the black and white morality of Xtian fundamentalists. It doesn't matter that you don't care about it because the show has to.

Did you pay any attention at all to the Heavenly court scene? No, scratch that, did you pay any attention at all to any time Adam the First Misogynist was onscreen? Adam, literally the worst person in the show. (great character, I love to hate him)

"If angels can do whatever and remain in the sky." Isn't just a catchy line. It's literally calling out Heaven's hypocrisy. "The rules are shades of grey when you don't do what you say." The exterminations are considered so morally reprehensible they've been hidden in a conspiracy by the government.

What exactly about that screams "good person"!?

(and that's not even going into how the idea of "good people" and "bad people" has been used to justify queerphobia, racism and the exploitation of other marginalized people)

You are making a lot of assumptions about Vaggie's age.

Also: Wow, it's almost like it IS the first time she's seen a demon child. That sounds like an Inciting Incident in Vaggie's story. It's almost like asking why the story didn't happen thousands of years ago, is nitpicking, and therefore not particularly relevant.

It's like people respond to propaganda differently and being told they're the "good guys" as part of their conditioning results in cognitive dissonance.

Again. Vaggie just had her limbs chopped off. I feel like you're glossing over Vaggie getting her limbs chopped off.

Ah yes, why would seeing a character change their worldview in real time be written any differently to a character who had at least a one year time skip. It's not like one of them is ashamed of their role in the genocidal endeavor while the other one is gleefully supportive of it. Surely these two characters with completely different personalities would react in the exact same way.

Yes? That's exactly my point? That's why he's a minor antagonist? That's why I said they argued about it? You're not supposed to agree with him.

Do you? Were you saying you liked the idea of Alastor getting a redemption arc or were you implying that it's bad writing that he didn't start on one in the first season?

Oh Zuko! The character famous for starting his redemption arc after two seasons of twenty-five episodes each! The character who rejected his uncle in the season two finale so he could gain the approval of his abusive, genocidal father!

Why would Alastor question anything? The only thing being on Charlie's side has gotten him is almost killed by an angel with cheat codes. The only reason he's there is to get back his soul contract. The only character who knows him on more than a superficial level is Husk and Alastor literally owns him.

Alastor is literally a serial killer who traps souls inside his radio. Why does Angel need to be called out on his off screen murders but Alastor doesn't?

The consequences of their actions are that they died and ended up in Hell.

The consequences of their actions are that Angel Dust is constantly SA'd, physically abused and verbally degraded by Valentino. The consequences are that Husk is Alastor's pet who can be summoned on a whim so he can't even run away from him. Are Alastor being forced into the hotel against his will. Vaggie losing an eye and her wings.

I feel like you're not grasping this whole afterlife thing.

Also there is no active murder because those sharks were about to roofie Angel Dust. That's just self defense.

I don't care about Bojack Horseman.

But there is a character in this universe who goes around to the people he killed and "apologizes" to them. It's Blitzo and the apologies are meaningless because he doesn't care about any of them and they don't care about him. Plus the apologies don't do anything. His victims are still dead.

(or heartbroken, they're admittedly mostly exes)

But since you brought up Zuko.

The Gaang don't forgive him. They immediately attack him and tell him to get lost. If Zuko didn't have a plot mandated reason to be there him asking for their trust would be INCREDIBLY selfish.

Redemption is not about being forgiven. Victims should not have to bear the weight/guilt of whether or not the people who wronged them receive damnation or salvation. You shouldn't need to expect forgiveness before trying to become a better person.

Are you actually paying attention to the story or are you looking for excuses to be mad because the creator compares herself sometimes to a show you like better?

Hazbin has such black and white writing for a show about redemption. Like can you name a single instance in which the story ever wanted you to take Angels behavior seriously, and care about something he’s done?

Or a moment where a character tried to make amends for past actions, or improve as people. Sir pentius didn’t learn anything he just stopped being a cartoon baddie, there was no need to confront past behavior or mature or anything.

And Vaggie, she does not learn anything, she just sees a child and becomes good. Why does this child belong in hell? Why has Vaggie never seen one before? Why does Vaggie suddenly respect adult demons after seeing this child when she was fine killing adult demons before this?

Why is Lucifer portrayed as basically a good person who never has to commit to redemption when he was literally okay with the exterminations? Because he has depression?

Why doesn’t Alastor make anything resembling a step towards redemption after all of season one as a main character in a show about redemption?

[jimlingss]

It's B from @bang-tan-bitches and I would like to request a yandere fic. It can be BTS OT7 x reader or BTS member of your choice x reader. Similar to your amazing isekai story i would like something similar(a long one shot or a multi-chapter, your choice). Whether YN transmigrates to a game or a novel (not as a villain but maybe as a cannon fodder side character that has little importance to the story and just wants to lay low) but YN captures the attention of the love interest(s) and shit starts getting weird, intense, uncomfortable. Maybe it causes the supposed female lead to turn into the villain, maybe it causes the love interest(s) to turn into the villain(s). Maybe YN realizes that something is wrong with the story/game but can't figure it out. Idk. Time period doesn't matter. Modern. Ancient. Fairytale. Fantasy. Whatever.

If you can do this great! If you can't or don't want to, that's okay too. You're an amazing writer with so much talent and I'm really appreciative of all your work. Thank you for taking requests from your fans, I'm sure you've received a lot.

Take care! 😘💜💜💜

at the start of the pandemic, I was getting back into manga and manhwa and then after a few months, I dawdled off but recently, I’ve been getting back into it again haha so this request came at a pretty good time. Hopefully you won’t mind that I’ve taken some creative liberties with this request lol I think it’s more fun if I keep readers on their toes, including the requester.

On another note, I really shouldn’t be writing all my isekai’s with Taehyung as the main lead but he’s just so fitting asdfghjkl

↳ The Fox Bride

2.6k || 99% Light Fluff, 1% Angst || Kim Taehyung || Isekai!AU, Slight Yandere!AU, Nine-Tailed Fox!Taehyung

You are a tutorial character.

But you weren’t always. You still remember being a career woman in the twenty-first century, struggling with overtime and paying bills while trying to keep yourself fed. The success of that ranged from month to month. But more importantly, you still remember that night too.

It was rainy. Your car blew a flat tire. You pulled to the side of the highway and got out.

The last thing that registered was the deafening honk of the semi-truck. 

Then you felt yourself flying upwards.

But when you landed, instead of colliding with the concrete and dying upon impact, you fell back onto your ass in the middle of a market on a dirt road. Transported back a thousand years ago.

Your purpose was fulfilled in the next two minutes. 

“Are you alright?”

The male protagonist had stretched out his hand and helped you up. The hero. The main character. It was obvious with his bright red hair, shining eyes and bronze armour. He was so starkly different from the rest who were gray and drab, including you who was suddenly in a brown shapeless dress. He was practically a neon billboard in the middle of a graveyard.

“Are you Y/N?”

You looked at him, befuddled that he knew your name. But before you could even respond or provide a line of dialogue, he said, “This is a delivery from Baker Jeon. He gives you his thanks.”

The protagonists handed you a loaf of bread. Undoubtedly his first ever quest. 

You looked down, not sure what to do with it.

“Do you know where the blacksmith is?”

You had absolutely no clue. But there was the deafening noise of hammering steel literally ten steps away. You would have to be blind not to see the gruff man shaping a sword at an anvil right on the road and deaf not to hear it. As if that wasn’t enough, the literal sign of the shop read: ‘the blacksmith’.

So you pointed.

“Thanks.” And he trudged off.

You were utterly confused until a background character who said they knew you waved you over. You shared your bread with her, brushed aside when she asked you what was wrong, and you followed her as she walked up to your supposed cottage.

All the while, you saw yourself in the background of the hero’s main quest as he ran through the town.

And that was that.

It wasn’t so hard to figure out where you were or what the hell this was when you put your mind to it. Without much of a job or a family, and no technology but the candle that you had to conserve when night fell, there was ample time.

So you spent it thinking and you eventually solved the mystery.

You were in Beast Boys Harem: A Forbidden Embrace. AKA. a dumb yaoi otome game app that you downloaded on your phone when you were sixteen and bored. You remember because you were too cheap to buy the routes, so you played the tutorial, prologue and read the summaries of the routes online. Now you regret that you didn’t just fork over the goddamn five dollars. 

Even more than that, you regret that you even downloaded the game in the first place.

But at least you’re just a tutorial character. You’re free from the storyline and the plot—

That’s what you thought.

Turns out living a thousand years in the past in a fantasy realm as a woman didn’t bode well. It was probably no different from how it would’ve been like in the medieval ages. You had no trade skills. No one was willing to accept you as an apprentice when you were a woman. You found that you were essentially illiterate with a reading level of a preschooler, no one was willing to teach you, and you had no power or wealth when you were without a father or a husband.

And you’re certain what the landlord and tax-collectors are doing is illegal.

But in this world, in this unjust realm, there is no such thing as the law.

“We know you’re in there!”

You jolt from the heavy pounding on the frail wooden door.

“It’s time to pay up!”

Your hands tremble as you set the candle down that’s still billowing of smoke, the flame smothered out mere seconds ago. As much as you want to hide and pull the blanket over your head, you know that door won’t last. They’ll find you if you’re trapped in here.

“If you can’t, spread those legs of yours!” a low voice spits and there’s chortling from the men.

Someone adds, “Sell your body already!” 

“Open up! Damn whore!”

Without a single possession but the white nightgown clad on your body, you open the latch of the back window. You cringe at the squeak, trying to keep your movements quiet before the door gives way.

You hoist yourself up onto the window ledge. The door bends with the strength of multiple clenched fists against it. Your feet touch the soft grass outside your cottage. The men shout.

And the door finally slams against the wall, hinges broken. 

But by then, you’ve slipped into the shadows.

“Where is she?!”

The blanket is ripped off the bed, curtains are whipped back, every drawer dumped onto the ground and cupboards yanked open. The floor shakes with the weight of their boots and you press your palm to your mouth to silence your panting breaths, slowly stepping away.

“That damn whore slipped through us—!”

But as your shitty luck would have it, a sudden crack has the whole world coming to a standstill.

Shit. You look down at your feet, realizing that the snapping noise came from you stepping on a twig. And it’s exposed your hiding place.

“There she is!” — “Out the back window!”

You grab fistfuls of your dress and bolt. 

“Get her!”

With your cottage on the edge of town, there’s nowhere to run but through the dense woods. It’s shrouded in the darkness, no doubt filled with wild beasts creeping through the thicket. The rustling canopy of the trees doesn’t allow the dim, waning moonlight to illuminate your path.

So you’re left blind. Struggling up the high incline of the forest, feet slipping on dirt and mud. But you keep sprinting with all your might, even when the pointed, coiling branches scrape at your calves until blood sheds and the hem of your dress tears in the underbrush.

“Run, little rabbit!” one of them mocks, “Run!”

The four men continue to give chase, gripping onto their roaring torches, shrieking and howling after you. One of them is manically laughing as if your efforts to flee only adds to the thrill. Their greased hands reach out to snatch you, but the tips of their fingers graze the ends of your hair.

Your teeth are sunk into the bottom of your lip, sobs breaking through your aching chest. Your lungs burn, dying for a break or moment of relief. But you don’t relent and luckily, you manage to build distance between you and the men. Only, that luck comes crashing down by a fucking hole.

A hole in the forest floor that you don’t see. That has your footing all wrong. That makes you scream and fall.

You twist your ankle in a direction it’s definitely not supposed to be in and cry from pain. 

A second later, you force yourself to get up and keep running with tears flooding your eyes and dripping down your cheeks. But it’s more like limping than running, akin to hobbling on one leg and every movement has pain shooting from your swelling ankle.

The effort becomes futile. They surround you within minutes.

“All finished?” The tax-collector’s head cocks with a spreading grin. “You’re not going to keep running?”

Why couldn’t you just fucking die the first time?! Even if it was an awful death where you didn’t have time to prepare yourself or say goodbye to anyone, at least it would’ve been the end. At least you wouldn’t have to suffer.

But there’s no time to grieve. Or hate the new life you’ve been given. This is it. You have to keep going. You have to survive. By any means. You’re about to pick up a branch and uselessly wave it around at them, shout at them to stand back. Anything that you could do to save yourself—

“Who dares come onto my mountain?!”

There’s a deep timbre behind you. A husky voice that quivers the very core of the forest.

As if the wind has swept through, the trees and thicket rustle and it goes silent.

The men fall back onto their asses, some torches clattering to the ground. Their eyes have grown double in size, nearly falling from their sockets and their jaws have dropped to the dirt.

“I-It’s the nine-tailed fox!”

The man scrambles back.

“Demon!” 

Another barely manages to get onto his feet. He turns around and lurches away while shrieking.

They all run. Scattering away as frantically as cockroaches when the light is flickered on.

From your spot on the ground, you turn around with wide eyes. 

Amber irises meet your gawking and they practically glow in the darkness of the forest. He is dressed in a loose, white robe that’s draped over his frame, open to the middle of his chest. And over his honey hair, on the top of his head, his pointed golden ears twitch. By the torch fire still yet to die out, he is illuminated and his shadow is casted on the ground. The blazing flame warms his cold, sharp features. 

He is the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen. In both worlds you’ve lived in.

And you know who he is.

Taehyung. One of the love interests of the hero. A seductive, sly creature that eventually coaxes the hero into selling him his soul to grant one of his wishes. But Taehyung grows to become an obsessed character that wants to do nothing but monopolize and possess the hero for himself.

That same Taehyung approaches you with his lip curled as you teeter to your feet.

“Run away, girl.” He leans close. “Before I eat you.”

“Stop!” 

On sheer instinct and adrenaline, you push him back. Your palm shoves against his firm chest.

Taehyung stumbles back with his eyes becoming rounded. He looks down to where you had made contact against his body. “Did...you just touch me?”

“What?”

Taehyung’s head darts upwards and he captures your wrist in his hand, squeezing tightly. He tugs you in and on your swollen ankle, you stumble into him. Bodies flush against one another. Your face pressed to his warm chest. His arm coming around your waist to break your fall.

He is aghast. 

“You’re not from this world.” Taehyung’s yellow eyes swirl as they gaze into you. “Where did you come from?”

…

It’s been three days.

“Wed me,” he begs for the seventy sixth time. 

You don’t know why you’re keeping a count.

“No.”

You’re hugging your knees for warmth. The rice paper-paneled doors are slid open and letting in the chilly air. He doesn’t seem to be affected by the cold, but you don’t look at him for long. 

You turn into the corner of his home while sitting on the tatami floors as if you’re putting yourself into time out. But you’d like to say it’s your privacy corner. It’s as private as this abode, which was basically one room, could get. 

Taehyung sighs in frustration, placing his hand on his forehead. His teeth grit. “You’re only making this harder for yourself.” Your silence angers him more. “You can never leave.”

You turn over your shoulder to glare. “Even if I married you, you’d never let me leave anyway.”

Taehyung narrows his eyes on you and then smirks. “You’re right. Wed or unwed, I won’t let you out of my sight. You should feel grateful, girl. You’re the best human I’ve ever treated.”

You quietly scoff.

Maybe you should feel scared. Maybe you should tread more lightly. After all, he’s not a character to be trifled with.

But you know he needs you. That alone gives you power. 

As a beast, Taehyung’s been trapped on this mountain by priests for centuries. The only way he can be free is by feeding off of sexual energy and breaking the barrier. But of course, they also cursed him to be unable to touch any woman in this universe. 

You aren’t from this universe.

You jolt when you realize that while you were lost in thought, Taehyung’s crawled closer. He has a foxy smile, amber eyes searching your expression. “Maybe….maybe I’ll grant you a bit of freedom if you would just give into the temptation and let me have a taste of you.”

As cold as he looks, he is beautiful. He is mischievous when he smirks and sly when he speaks. You are utterly spellbound as you look into his irises. And the temptation he speaks of flickers in the warmth of your belly.

But you turn away.

“I already said we only do that kind of thing after marriage. And I will only marry someone I love.”

Taehyung draws back with an unamused scoff. “What a prudish world you’re from.”

He wanted you the moment you were brought to this house. With the intensity of his stare and your captivated state, you had let him pin you to his floor and you liked it. But then clarity came and you blurted that such an act only happens after marriage. A lie just to buy time.

You didn’t expect for the hero to arrive at Taehyung’s house the next day. With his red hair and bronze armour, he had gotten lost in the forest and knocked on the door. Before you could limp over and answer it, Taehyung jumped off the roof and confronted him.

The guy was thrown off the mountain within five minutes.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They were supposed to have a steamy rendezvous. Taehyung was supposed to get the sexual energy from him! 

The story was going off the rails. And you’re not sure what you’re even buying time for anymore.

The both of you know it’s only a matter of time before you break and succumb to his mesmerizing seduction.

Taehyung is cruel, ruthless, obsessive.

But what’s the most bewitching thing about him is the jarring contrast of when he’s clumsy and nurturing. It’s what he regards as his own weakness. What he hides from others. But you felt your heart waver two nights ago when you were shaken awake in the middle of twilight. When you peeked open your eye to see him gingerly wrapping your swollen ankle with bandages.

He looked beautiful in the pale moonlight, ears, tails, sharp features softened—

“Ow!” You wince as he squeezes your ankle, right on your injury.

“You think too much in your head,” he says and looks at you. “What’s wrong?”

“It hurts.”

A sadistic smile tugs on Taehyung’s lips. He lets go, but only to lift your chin with his fingers. His plush lips are inches away, his breath warm on your skin and he gazes deep into you. “I won’t let you return to your world. I won’t let you run away. I won’t let anyone harm you.”

“You’re mine now.” Taehyung swears, “You’ll fall in love with me eventually.”

You gulp and he smirks.

The two of you know it’s only a matter of time.

[skeletorific]

man i just wanna throw this out there and i think you'll catch it, how do you think some of the ancestors would take an invite to a human thing like a party or a ceremony? like if it was prefaced with 'compared to troll events there's a strict no one dies policy and a be human-style nice to people you don't particularly like or care for rule as well' idk if even the first ship crew would come along, and tbh i wouldn't really fault them because it's new and spoopy and they're dead after all

Ok, so you have thrown it, and I have caught it. I am unsure if I caught it in the direction you threw it, but I have caught SOMETHING and it is something I love dearly.

So, this question: I had to think for a moment. What scenario results in every single ancestor being in the same locale, in such a capacity that they are forced to interact, not only with each other, but with humans, to the point that not only can they not kill anyone but there is literally no point in killing each other?

....

....OH WAIT EARTH C-

So yeah, everyone say thank you paradox space. There had to be at least one dream bubble out there from a timeline where the alphas got yoinked into sburb as their Alternian selves by mistake right?

So, let’s assume they’ve had a few months to settle in, adjust to modern life. Troll kingdom has issued an ultimatum to the more....chaotic Ancestors in terms of the rearranged hemospectrum. They will, to quote Karkat, “FUCKING DEAL WITH IT”. Not an easy pill to swallow for a few of them, but then, a few millenia in the dream bubbles has forcibly mellowed them quite a bit and eventually its just more trouble than its worth.

I have a lot of thoughts on this timeline (ancestors get apartments are you kidding me, the potential), but let’s return to the question at hand.

The invitation makes the rounds through a lot of ghost communities, but a particularly bold human approaches the Ancestors themselves with an invite to one of the bigger ragers being thrown in the human kingdom. The celebration of the return of the gods is always a blowout, and this year promises to be especially so, with something between a gala and a block party planned to be pitched.

So here’s why they all show up, and here’s what they do:

The Handmaid is an odd duck. Sure, there’s a certain morose pleasure in watching the cosmic plans of the man who abused her from childhood fall apart because of a handful of chump kids, but that doesn’t mean she’s happy to be back here with these assholes, and it doesn’t mean she’s looking to build a social life. She’s perfectly happy to spend the rest of her days haunting the abandoned house she found on the outskirts of the carapace kingdom and terrorize any local teens that stick their noses where they aren’t wanted. When the uni student turns up with a flyer she cusses them out but good and sends them on their way with a couple of threats to life and limb.

And then shows up anyways.

Not to socialize, mind, just to watch. From the rafters probably. Snickering at all the drama going down, dropping spiders in Makara’s drink and stealing Dualscar’s watch when he’s not looking. And maybe see if Condy gets drunk enough to want a rematch. Laws be damned. Now THIS is a party.

The Signless’s entire crew is a bit of a chain pull. The Disciple wants to go extremely badly, so of course she manages to purrsuade The Signless to come with her. The Psiionic doesn’t want to go period but he’ll be damned if he’s letting Vantas out of his sight into an unguarded area. The Dolorosa wanted to go this whole time and is the one who got Leijon all riled up about it in the first place, but pretends she’s just doing it to keep an eye on Vantas and Captor.

Once there, they’re not exactly social butterflies, but compared to the others they’re practically savants. Leijon prowls on the edges of crowds, listening for snatches of information, and enjoys constructing narratives in her own mind about the relationships between all of them. Vantas finds himself pulled into a lot of conversations just to explain his life’s work (and, to his chagrin, to destabilize a few myths he’s accrued over the centuries). He tries to keep a level head but after a few beers though he’s hotly debating politics with three or four Kankri ghosts and has to be dragged away by Captor, who’s been following him and Leijon like a kid following their parent at a family reunion. Maryam disappeared hours ago and doesn’t get back home late, looking a little bit smug but tight-lipped about her evening. All four of them avoid the other Ancestors like the plague.

Neophyte Redglare of all of them has probably adjusted the best to this new life. Unlike the others, she’s actually gotten some friends that weren’t a part of the dream bubbles, and would happily spend most of the evening chattering with them. Still, for reasons we’ll get into it later, she spends most of it babysitting Makara and doing a bit of pitch-flirting with everyone’s favorite pir8.

Speaking of the Marquise Mindfang Spineret, like the Handmaid she protested loudly she was too cool for this party and then showed up anyways. Still, its not like she’s there to socialize. Most of what she does is spot the people who look like they might be heading off to bigger and more illegal things outside the party and without a word installing herself as part of their social circle. She invites Nitram, but her matesprit is a little occupied with an old enemy. That’s fine, she appreciates a score to settle, but its not fun if someone isn’t paying attention to her antics. Fortunately, Pyrope is happy to oblige her, and Dualscar is a delightful enough lackey while he’s still sober enough to handle it (so, for about five minutes). All told, an entert8ning evening indeed ;;;)

Executor Darkleer shows up for roughly ten minutes, near the very end, and does what he’s done at most social gatherings since they left the dream bubbles: stand awkwardly in the corner, stare at Leijon, and wonder if they’re still cool. Are they still cool? Probably? Right? But who’s to say. He absconds early to go work on his personal projects and probably punch something.

The Summoner is in peak form. Like Vantas, he has plenty of questions coming his way, and while no Nitram has ever been arrogant, he’s at least a little indulgent about some, shall we say, popular headcanons that have popped up since then. He’s slamming beers to cover up the usual low level of social anxiety (a battlefield he can handle, but a soiree is another matter altogether), and its working. He’s flirting a storm through the ballroom, something Serket is probably going to give him repercussions for. Its also making him a little, uh....confrontational, shall we say. So when he spot an old, clowny foe, well...

Oh, The Grand Highblood. 

He didn’t want to come. Full stop. Picked the wriggler with the flyer up by the back of their shirt and turned them around. Damn lucky he didn’t just throw them out. He wasn’t going to show up at this meaningless little heretical shindig, bump shoulders with strangers and be bored out of his motherfucking skull to boot. The only reason he got dragged in is Peixes didn’t give him a lot of other options. So here he is. Standing like a grim spectre of everyone’s demise, sullenly scowling at anyone who approaches and snarling at anyone who opens their protein chute in his direction.

For about five minutes.

What can I say, clowns love parties.  A couple of faygos later (if you think Condy didn’t come prepared you’re crazy) and this brawny ass goat is getting turnt out of his mind on the dancefloor. Nobody knows exactly what the fuck he’s doing with his body but its definitely deeply explicit and more than a little alarming. Still, it suits the environment, and there’s this unaccountable field of manic energy that just sort of erupts around him, escalating the party wherever he goes. Redglare has to babysit him (because Peixes, Serket and Ampora sure won’t, and who the fuck knows where Zahhak is), and even still he ends up with a busted keg dangling from one of his horns. He is feeding off of this motherfucking rhapsody tonight, fellas, and the grisly bastard has more than a few sick bars in him.

Orphaner Dualscar is decidedly less enthused. Nothing quite like being a failed romantic footnote in the only surviving account of your life to kill your rep as an intimidating pirate. He’s not adjusting well to modern life, and mostly spends the night in the corner with a solo cup, scowling at any and all. For a while he joins Serket in her activities but eventually is too soused to really participate, and she ditches him. Which is starting to become a recurring trend. He spends the rest of the night trying to seduce someone, literally, anyone, just get him out of this fucking stupid party, he’s so FUCKIN LONELY GOG-

up to you if it actually works or not.

Meanwhile, Her (Formerly) Imperial Condescension.....look, Peixes can’t stay away from a party. Even a lame-ass one for guppies 3>8(. I mean, the no killing thing is REALLY fucking cramping her style, but to be frank its more trouble than its worth. Most of them just come back as ghosts and try to bonk you back. Annoying is what it is. So, fine, she agrees, no culling. 

Doesn’t mean the party can’t at least be interesting, and that’s damn well what she brought Makara to do for her. Works like a charm, too, Makara might be a grumpy basshole but he knows how to cut loose when he wants to. She’s chanting him through chugging an entire keg on his own with a small crowd of people when she spots a familiar pair of impossibly wide horns. Ohhh shit, get the grubcorn-.....wait, is that Megido in the rafters?!

No trolls or humans were (fatally) harmed in the making of this evening’s closing act, but suffice to say the building wasn’t so lucky. Two reenactments of the more legendary battles in Alternian history (which is saying something) was more than the palace could handle. In the end they were separated and sent to dry out in separate cells, Dave using his time powers to keep a handle on the The Handmaid. 

Suffice to say it’ll be a while before any of them get another invitation.

[mieczyhale]

mace im sorry i don't have coherent thoughts but i'm so just like,,, what was klaus this season. what was ben. the cult was pointless to klaus' character. the things that matter to klaus' character were ignored. the dave stuff was a lot of nothing. i felt like the possession thing shouldve been huge for ben and klaus' relationship but we're supposed to think klaus feeling violated is funny and inconsequential? ben going to the light was just shoved in at the end? i just---what???? who??

i’m on the same page as you, anony, especially in coherency lmfao

klaus this season was.. not totally bad, but i think most of that can be put on robert for his acting and how well he knows his own character bc the writers clearly didn’t know what was up (or maybe they did and playing him off this season as comedic relief, having him tossed to the side and mistreated, is going to play into s3 somehow. idk. i’m not writing off any possibility because overall the writers have done really really well with everything else so in my soul i feel like there has to be a reason they did what they did to him this season yknow??) for all the jokes they had him making and stuff, i think robert definitely played klaus the way we as fans know him - suffering constantly but unwilling to let anyone actually see that and if they do he’s gonna make it sound like a joke. he’s not gonna act serious because that leads to pain and he’s had more than enough of that. HOWEVER. i am genuinely so so pissed that he didn’t get to fight or really use his powers this season. and the part before ben sacrifices himself where klaus finally got up the courage to try and help, the fact that he didn’t succeed - that it wasn’t klaus who saved the day - is just... sldflksd GOD I HATE IT. oh and the scene towards the end where everyone gets shot and the one remaining swede kills the handler?? THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN KLAUS. he should have come back to life as he does, as is PART OF HIS POWERS, grabbed a gun that he knows how to use well - thank you vietnam - and he should have shot the bitch. but no. we didn’t even get that. vanya got klaus’s levitation and diego got klaus’s telekinesis and klaus got ??? a cowboy hat. which i mean looks good on him and he deserves it but it doesnt make up for *gestures at everything* and tbh even that was tainted because one of the siblings says “50$ if we leave him here” when klaus runs to grab the hat. seriously??!! SERIOUSLY??! it’s not funny, it’s just more of people not caring about klaus and thinking abandoning him is a fun joke to make ANYWAY. onto things you actually mentioned sdlkdsjf;ls i think the cult wasn’t pointless to his character necessarily, i think it did provide something, but it wasn’t used to its fullest extent. we got little things like klaus talking about it making him claustrophobic and making him feel like his skin is on fire, and his followers become something he cant escape even though he desperately wants too - it’s like having the ghosts all over again except he’s sober and these are live people who can touch him. but the show never actually out loud makes that comparison when they should have. i think it would have helped the cult thing seem less random. as for the dave thing.. i don’t think it was a lot of ‘nothing’ but again i think they could have definitely done more with it. it lets klaus see dave again, in a way, and it shows us more about both of them and the relationship they had. we learn more about dave, who he is, the kind of people he had around him and the environment he grew up in. it shows us that klaus and dave talked about all kinds of things, nothing was too mundane or unimportant. it shows us that three years after dave’s death klaus is still grieving and is still 100% in love. and it shows us that klaus isn’t always as selfish as people assume right alongside another hit to the face (oof unintentional wording) of just how much he loved dave. he wanted to save dave’s life so badly he made a fool of himself, put up with homophobia, took a hit to the face, and still kept trying to stop him from enlisting even though, per the last timeline, it would mean they’d never meet. klaus is willing to have dave never know him, is willing to handle that pain and heartbreak pretty much forever, as long as dave lives. my heart literally cannot handle it the possession thing. i haven’t stopped being angry and uncomfortable and disgusted by it since i saw it like 2 days ago now. that plot the writers really fucked up on it was a big thing for their relationship but not in any way that lead to growth or understanding or power control or ANYTHING. i love ben but i have so many fucking problems with him after watching s2 that i almost wanna take my love back tbh. the writers tried to make it seem like what ben was doing was okay - because he was angry and frustrated with klaus, because klaus wasn’t doing what he wanted, because klaus couldn’t stay sober, etc. like any of that makes possessing someone without their consent okay... or threatening to possess someone the moment their guard is down (leaving klaus paranoid and afraid to sleep).. or getting permission to possess someone and then refusing to leave (and its double garbage when diego encourages ben to continue possessing klaus. diego’s reason was gross and even if he hadnt given a reason he was still encouraging ben to not give klaus’s body back to him. which like.. im sure klaus can see and hear what’s going on. so he now is aware that his brother would rather have ben-wearing-klaus than actual klaus. the amount that would fucking hurt. a nyway) klaus never really got to talk about how it made him feel, not in any situation where anyone was listening. he never got to go off on ben for what he did, and what he was about to do, even though he had every right to. ben kind of knew how klaus felt about it but he showed very clearly that he didnt care. ben just did not fucking care about klaus this season. and it wasnt a ‘tough love’ thing like they tried to do in s1. it was just horrible and it hurt to watch. and i feel like s2 ben wouldnt have apologized to klaus even if he had been seriously confronted. we now know that klaus has this power. and we know that it can easily be abused by someone else. and i feel like that could tie into his ability to make the ghosts corporeal and such. it could definitely work as an interesting lead into exploring more of his many powers. and it could have worked as a way to bring ben and klaus closer without anyone getting hurt or violated. but.. for s2.. it wasnt used that way. it was used as a way to degrade and humiliate klaus. and they clearly wanted us to find it funny. it was one of the least funny things to happen all season. actually probably THE least funny thing. right along with nobody giving a shit when they thought klaus was having a seizure or OD-ing (both during their meeting with reginald and in the alley when they were supposed to meet up to use the briefcase five got from the handler), AND OF COURSE  nobody taking klaus seriously, paying attention to him, or caring about him (except for allison at some points) and ben finally going into the light at the end..  was kind of shoved in?? but i think what made it feel that way, for me at least, wasn’t so much the placement or timing of it but that it wasn’t really acknowledged afterwards?? it just.. happened, and we were all heartbroken, and on screen... nothing. it felt like a very sudden end to his storyline and yeah they could have done a little more to make it feel like a natural end for him thanks for the ask and sharing your thoughts on s2 with me~!! <3

[honeybee-babe]

How can you excuse all of the abusive things Luther has done to his siblings (especially Klaus) throughout the series? And don't pull the "he was drunk" card. And without implying that Luther locking up Vanya isn't intentionally cruel or intended to hurt her? He has the ability to think logically, unlike Vanya he isn't experiencing a literal psychotic break down.... Please, explain this to me logically. Thanks.

~ wowowowowowow i clenched my jaw all night thinking about this ask~~

Yikes. You’re not asking me why I “excuse his actions” (I don’t), you’re asking why I see him as a human being with flaws and trauma which need to be addressed rather than the literal devil. And why I don’t think he is irredeemable based on a few terrible choices (when he has also made some great ones and showed affection for his siblings in the past). I honestly think people hate Luther because it’s easier to have clearly good characters and clearly bad characters, even in a show that actively and artfully avoids that dichotomy.

Why do you care that I like Luther? I’m not bashing your faves or causing any harm to you? I am not trying to tell you to like him or convince you he is a great character. I know he has flaws. 

But if you really want to know how I “excuse all his actions” (which…. I don’t?), I’ll humor you, but I’m answering the question you’re really asking:

Why Do You Not Despise Luther?:

This response is really longwinded but THIS QUESTION IS REALLY OVER-SIMPLIFYING(!!!) so I feel it’s warranted.

First, I’m gonna address the “abusive things Luther has done to his siblings throughout the series:”

I am not excusing any of the things Luther “does to his siblings,” I’m just saying we should extend the same amount of courtesy to him in sympathizing with him and understanding the motive behind his actions (just like we all do with Vanya). And also consider the fact that he is deeply traumatized and has literally been gaslit his entire life into thinking he has to follow a specific model that was set out for him as “leader.” Literally he has been taught that he is nothing without the UA and being a leader, and I don’t think people release how damaging that is to a person?

But also hot take: I don’t think Luther is abusive towards his siblings at all? Not until the last two episodes for sure. I think he is insensitive towards others’ emotions at times, but he is never cruel just for the sake of being cruel. I honestly think Luther is incapable of picking up on emotional cues to some extent.

I’m re-watching right now, I just finished episode 7 and I have yet to see any signs of him being abusive towards the others, and not Klaus specifically? The choking scene was vile and physically violent but I don’t think it’s abusive because it was a one time thing and abuse is a cycle. Luther isn’t particularly awful to Klaus, he is just dismissive? The only person he ever is really verbally mean to is Diego when they get into fights and Diego is just as bad if not worse, and also intentionally tries to get an emotional rise out of Luther (which is…. just as awful and cruel?).

But yeah I finished episode 7 and no abuse so far… maybe my dumb ass who was abused for my whole life just doesn’t understand what abuse looks like? Okay that’s kind of a joke but I’m actually being serious, my abuse is pretty similar to Luther’s and my body dysmorphia/eating issues are similar to his too which is a lot of why I resonate with him, so I could be missing signs because I’ve probably acted the same way. So please point out to me where specifically he committed an act of abuse, and not a one time act of violence or simply being dismissive of/not picking up on someone’s emotional needs.

Also I honestly think Luther is just in denial of others’ emotional needs because he is in denial of his own emotional needs. He has been taught to push everything down, including the needs of others, with the only goal being completing the mission, and protecting everyone/leading everyone to safety. Also I mean, he hasn’t been around human beings for 4 years (so of course he struggles to relate to them/communicate healthily), and he was always taught not to engage with his siblings but just to lead them because that was his role.

Also Klaus and Diego (especially Diego) are just as dismissive of Luther’s trauma? And like yeah Luther covers it up but it’s pretty freaking obvious…pointing out how big he is specifically.

Diego literally sees Luther shirtless after the chandelier falls on him, sees how self-conscious he clearly is, and then never asks about it or checks on him (yet continues to joke about it – also Klaus makes fun of his muscles when he first sees him which is just insensitive). And in the first episode the way Klaus jokes around during the family meeting about cucumber sandwiches when Luther is trying to plan a memorial service; it’s obvious that Luther is grieving and paranoid (and also that he has been manipulated enough to love Reginald!!!) and Klaus is just making jokes and not addressing this? And then they both just ignore his obvious paranoia over Reginald’s death and just call him crazy and walk away? And don’t use the “he was high” excuse for Klaus being a prick (just like I can’t use the ‘he was drunk’ excuse for Luther, which I never did once btw, y’all just want more justification 2 hate on him).

Also: Yes, Luther tells Diego to stop talking shit about Reginald at the memorial service but like, from his perspective, that is someone bashing the person he was closest to AT HIS FUNERAL!!! He starts the fight with Diego but only after Diego provoked him, clearly intentionally, and Diego continues to fight him and throws a fucking knife at his arm (but physical violence is only not okay when Luther uses it right?).

Also HUGE THING Y'ALL ARE IGNORING: Klaus finds out Luther had nonconsensual sex while drugged out of his mind and congratulates him………. uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh idk about you but I think Klaus has been around the block when it comes to drugs and sex (and consent) and should realize that someone on drugs for the first time losing their virginity is nonconsensual, or even if considered consensual still pretty icky? Like Luther is clearly ashamed and upset and doesn’t want to talk about it and Klaus just laughs abt it. That is so not cool.

And another thing:

Luther is very, very protective of Five which is so so sweet, yet people just completely overlook it because they only want to see the bad things he’s done. When he and Allison run into him in the hallway at the end of Run Boy Run and see him looking distressed Luther asks him in a soft voice, “Are you okay? Can we help?” and reaches out to touch Five’s face. Five grabs his hand to stop him but this was very sweet? Like it’s clear Luther has a soft spot for him because he’s small.

But Diego? After he finds out about Patch he bursts into his apartment and goes to attack Five; Luther has to pick him up to restrain him from beating up their brother who has the body of a 13 year old. All because he blames him for the death of the love of his life (just like Luther is afraid of Vanya after she killed Allison). But in Diego’s case, Patch is already dead; Diego only wants to hurt Five out of vengeance, not because he’s trying to protect Patch. And he doesn’t apologize or anything after????? It’s just never brought up again!

SO IN TERMS OF LUTHER BEING AWFUL TO KLAUS THE WHOLE SEASON: is he? is he really? is he really abusive? and is he really that much worse than his other siblings?

And now I’ll address this nonsense:

“And without implying that Luther locking up Vanya isn’t intentionally cruel or intended to hurt her? He has the ability to think logically, unlike Vanya he isn’t experiencing a literal psychotic break down…. Please, explain this to me logically. Thanks.“

…….sigh.

Luther is absolutely not being intentionally cruel or doing this to “punish” Vanya, he’s doing this because he’s freaking the fuck out and doesn’t have any idea what she might do. Yes it’s a bad idea but we need to keep in mind that he’s not thinking logically, he is emotionally distressed. Yes he could talk to her but Allison had just tried to do that…. and look where the fuck that got her?

Do you seriously believe Luther was mentally stable and thinking logically in this moment? Do you not realize he was literally going through a breakdown and identity crisis of his own?

He just found out maybe two days ago that his entire life was a lie and the person whose approval he sought the most didn’t give a shit about him, found out he was isolated from humanity for no reason (which….. as if being isolated in itself wasn’t traumatic enough), after he was mutilated against his will, and now he has just witnessed the person he loves most almost die and he couldn’t do anything about it. Luther is experiencing a breakdown and I think a big part of it is control: he realizes he’s had no agency his whole life/has never had control, he just lost control/agency over his body on drugs even more and had nonconsensual sex while intoxicated, and then after this he sees Allison dying and he can’t do anything to help her (he can’t even give his blood)!!!! His superstrength and locking up Vanya is the only thing he has control over, he feels it’s all he can do to prevent the apocalypse/protect everyone. 

Not only that but the idea of control as contol over powers: Luther has super strength, he has to be super careful and controlled all the time so he doesn’t accidentally hurt the people he loves… the thought of someone’s powers being out of control is probably the scariest thing in the world to him. And yes, he gets in fights with Diego but he doesnt use his full strength (just like Diego doesn’t either) because if they did then they would actually hurt each other, they have a lot of control over their powers. But Diego can control his powers by just… not throwing things and having temper tantrums. Luther doesn’t need to be angry to fuck up with his powers, we see that in the very first episode when he punches the model airplane. Luther can never escape his powers and has to constantly control them, and the idea of uncontrolled powers is his worst fucking nightmare.

So Vanya tells him, “we got in an argument and things got out of control” … like just imagine what must be racing through Luther’s mind when he hears that!

Yes what he does in this scene is awful but you can’t convince me he is doing it with the intention of hurting her. Literally you can see in his eyes as he is choking her how pained he is by this. And he apologizes to her: why would he apologize to her if he was trying to hurt her? And if that was intention… why wouldn’t he just fucking kill her?

I absolutely don’t agree with his decision here but like…. he absolutely is going through a mental breakdown and it doesn’t just stop during The Day that Was/Wasn’t and to act like he is completely stable and in his right mind when he locks Vanya up is just grossly oversimplifying everything! 

Y’all demonizes him over this but completely overlook some of the awful things his siblings have done (Diego going to beat up Five because he blames him for Patch’s death, Vanya killing a ton of random people because she was locked up)…. Like yes: Luther is insensitive, dismissive, and cruel in this scene but it is not his intention to be cruel, it’s obviously his intention to control Vanya’s out-of-control powers, protect his siblings (esp. Allison), and prevent her from causing the apocalypse. It is awful and yes it is cruel but to act like he just doesn’t give a shit about Vanya and/or is doing it just to hurt her is just….. so beyond what the show is portraying.

And I get that you guys really despise him for this, and if you’re going to hate him, fine: but you completely overlook the terrible things all the other siblings do throughout the whole series and write Luther off as evil, which is not cool. Seriously, y’all portray Luther as the literal devil just so that your faves seem like infallible angels and your headcanons and fanfictions seem nicer and more simple………. and honestly I just can’t reason with you. I think some people just hate on Luther and love everyone else because his abuse situation is more complex and they’re just… literally too lazy to do the mental math, so they stick with stanning everyone else whose trauma is more obvious? Even though Luther covering up his trauma (literally) and refusing to talk about/deal with it is a huge plot point in the show, y’all perceive this as him just not having any trauma, or just overook how his trauma affects his actions.

This show isn’t supposed to be “everyone in the family are wonderful, perfect victims and deals with their trauma like angels EXCEPT LUTHER HE IS STOOPID AND EVIL AND ALSO HIS TRAUMA ISN’T DEEP ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!”…… and if you think this then I think you need to do some soul searching? Or actually do some research into abuse and learn that it comes in many different forms and has many different effects?

Again: I don’t dislike any of the siblings. I used them as examples but I love Diego, Klaus and Vanya!!! I respect and understand them all and view them all as troubled souls who are trying.

This show is complex and it’s designed to be uncomfy, and if you simply write it off as having clear victims and villains (except Reginald, he a dick) then you are not respecting the writing or giving the show justice. 

Gerard Way says he wrote Luther based on his own experience of body dysmorphia, isolation….. the show designers say he has self-harmed before, and Tom Hopper has said Luther has been suicidal in the past…. but you know what, go on portraying his trauma as “having it easy” and using violence/cruelty just for fun, even though the show clearly portrays him as a broken man.

~

[mischievouspoltergeist]

When my mother got sick last year, someone asked me why I had such an issue with taking care of her (as I'd expressed I really didn't feel like I 'had' to or owed her that much as she had never taken care of us ever, let alone when we were sick, but that I intended to try anyway) since I called her my best friend (supposedly, at some point, I believe I probably did, it was something she made me say at family gatherings a lot).

It's taken almost a year and a whole lot of shit for me to answer that question: I was stuck in an abusive relationship with my mother and the only way to survive was to make myself believe we really were friends. Because if I let myself realise she really didn't care about me, I could never have sorted in my head why I did everything she wanted, why I went along with so much and why I stuck around.

In many ways, the pattern of abuse was identical to my relationship with a man who had narcissistic personality disorder (diagnosed, aware of it and chose not to engage in help). Except, I left him after four months, but for at least three of those I was kept on a string of believing I was the problem whilst he screamed in my face, bullied me and physically abused me.

My relationship with my mother lasted 23 years. For many of those years I was still a child. I was so easy to indoctrinate with ideas and beliefs that I was the root of all the problems in her world. I went with it. I've spent years feeling like I ruined my mother's life because that's what she told me. I've spent YEARS trying to make up for what I did by being born because that's what she told me to do.

It's led to me growing up to become a vulnerable adult. When I think someone loves me, I think their opinion about me must just be right. Because surely someone who loves you wouldn't tell you were a fat whore unless it was true, right?

It was so easy to dodge questions like 'why do you put up with her if she literally is so rude to you all the time?' with a 'idk. She's my best friend' because don't best friends speak every day? Don't best friends do things together constantly? Don't best friends scream at their best friend when they haven't spoken to them in 5 hours? Don't best friends kick and shout and scream when you say you're busy and can't do anything that day?

My friends witnessed many incidents with my mum and would ask, incredously, why the fuck I hang around her when she spoke to me that way, and it would just be a shrug. It was easier to go along with it than fight it. Fighting back meant being screamed at and frightening displays of controlling behaviour. It was as simple as if I hung around my mum daily, the abuse was at around 30-70% severity dependent on her mood. If I ignored her for a few days, then the abuse was at 80-100% severe. Imagine going to spend the day with someone who is going to yell at you every time you speak, put you down at every chance, find an insecurity and dig and dig and dig. So you avoid that by letting her abuse you just a bit less daily.

I was dependant on my mum for much of life's little things and she made sure of that. It's been hard and relying on my friends to help me is difficult and scary because I'm so used to it coming with a cupful of abuse. I'm always on edge, waiting for it to blow up in my face.

I also just don't know where to draw lines thanks to my mums abuse. How much abuse is too much? My chart is way off. I will keep trying cos god, the size of the cup of abuse my mum fed me daily was absolutely huge compared to the abuse I've ever had from others. Someone could say one nice thing about me and abuse me the rest of the day and that would still be less abuse than my mother dealt me.

I made so many excuses for her. She admitted fully she never wanted me from the start - my dad wanted me but when I was born, he changed his mind and got a job so she had to put her life on hold and so I ruined everything. I was a problem from the start because I was female, and that meant I was going to be abused in her eyes, so she detached herself (was she ever attached?) rather than even attempt to protect me. I excused her for that. I first shouldered the blame for why she hated me when I was 6/7 years old and she told me about her own past. The grand irony is that had she been watching, had she cared to pay attention, I would likely not have been abused. The grandest irony of all was that my biggest abuser was her.

I still catch myself excusing her. 'Oh I always went silent after she screamed at me for daring to ask her not to be nasty towards me. Maybe I could have spoken up more.' even though I know logically that only made things worse. I remember once asking her if I could remove the furniture from my bedroom when she was away (so I could store it in her room) so that I could remove the black mould growing all up my windows, my walls and (as I later discovered), all up the sides of my actual bed and mattress. I was so ill all of the time and my breathing was a mess. I could smell it all the time, it was so overwhelming and although I cleaned what I could, due to my bedroom being a closet, I couldn't get behind anything without removing everything. She said no. No reason, no explanation, just no. Like most things that benefitted me. I was incredibly frustrated and begged that I could barely breathe for mould, she screamed at me that I deserved it and it was my fault. Black mould had been a persistent problem in that room long before I moved into it, as she had lived there before and seen it. I finally raised my voice and told her I wasn't going to accept this blatant disregard for my health and I was going to do it next time she was away anyway. I was paying rent at that point but it did not stop her getting up and getting in my face and telling me to get the fuck out her house. The third or so time she had kicked me out. There was no reasoning with her. She liked it when I suffered.

She is a narcissist through and through and I have been suffocated by narcissistic abuse for 23 years. Even now, she attempts to abuse me via my brother and father and even the government. She has lost her victim - the last person willing to take her shit. Most her family and friends are not willing to help her for more than five minutes as she treats them unkindly when she realises they will take it and stick around. I've watched her do it, and it just gets worse and worse for those people like it did for me. But they leave, because it has not been 23 years for them.

I don't even know where I'm going with this. I'm just... Through. My dad accepted my ultimatum and chose me. It's a weird feeling and a promise I hope he can keep. I know she asks him for information and I have told him to stop giving it to her repeatedly.

To those who think a mother deserves for their child to revere them permanently just because they birthed them... You're wrong. It is our actions and choices that shape our relationship and at every choice, my mother chose to act in her own interests with no care for anyone else. This is a woman who let a man beat her children whilst bragging to them he'd never hit her cos he knew she'd leave. I gave both my parents chances to mend our relationships and believe me, my dad was an appalling parent growing up. He was atrocious. But he decided he wanted to mend that relationship and he wanted to be a dad. Yes, it's sad he didn't realise it sooner but I'm happy for the relationship I have with him now, even if it's not perfect and he really doesn't know how to dad sometimes. My mum? My mum will still tell you it's my fault she finished her degree a year later than she wanted because I was born and I ruined everything 23 years ago. I dared to be born female and put that stress on her. She holds it over my head like it is my responsibility to fix. It has broken me. I've spent 23 years trying to make up to her the faults of my being born and nothing will ever, EVER be good enough to do that. I have given all I have to give. I literally have nothing left to give.

[lowkeyorloki]

hi phoebe anon again! hahahah okay i have so many opinions on the lorde thing you have no idea but most of them end up boiling down to some form of “shut the hell up none of you know what ur talking about!!!!!!!” or “keep my wife’s name out ur fucking mouth”. LMAO

like 1) why are you guys just now circulating these videos as if the melodrama tour didn’t happen 3 years ago, 2) the people being like “imagine paying to go to a concert just to have the singer shush you” ...guys it was literally for 30 seconds at the end of a very dramatic song. you guys the album is called Melodrama i need you to understand this. please. this is not like a routine thing that she does. she is so sweet at her concerts and is very appreciative. and 3) the people that aren’t her fans being so offended by it (the ones making the most jokes about it) are making me so 😭😭😭😭 like we all know she’s a little bit weird!!! and that maybe it was a bit over the top!! and that’s okay!! like i think famous people are a little weird sometimes! i love you for saying that the crowds singing at concerts are annoying though that’s SO valid lmao

sorry i am totally rambling but this just reminds me of this one tweet that was like “Phoebe Bridgers is allowed to be annoying on twitter because she wrote motion sickness. the same cannot be said for the rest of you.” and like. yeah when you (not you, you know what i mean lol) make albums as good as Pure Heroine and Melodrama then maybe you’ll be permitted to make fun of her.

long story short these people need to leave my wife alone i had like five people ask me “omg did she shush you🤪” when i told them i went to see her and it just makes me really sad that that’s all people think of her now😭😭😭 idk how it got so out of hand lmao

also i actually haven’t seen Juno! but it’s been on my watchlist forever and i’ve heard it’s really great so i will definitely be watching it when i get the chance❤️ anyway goodbye i’m sorry that was such a long response that im sure you did not want lol

Yes to all of this! Also not to harp on my prev. point but "imagine paying to go to a concert just to have the singer shush you” okay imagine going to a concert only to not be able to hear the person you paid a gross amount of money to see only to be unable to hear them because of a tone deaf and flat audience???

i've also seen a bunch of viral tiktoks of people saying they don't care she shushed the crowd they just care that lorde 'sounds bad.' it gave me flashbacks to when i was a theatre kid in high school (gross) and everyone in the plays with me would judge broadway performers for not being perfect all the time.... like.... we were 16 and the people who were so vocal about criticizing the actors weren't getting more than ensemble in a high school production and i always just wondered where they thought they got the credibility to shit on people's careers. i have such a vivid memory of this one girl saying she hated the "good for you" number from dear evan hansen because dierctors "would force whatever actress playing evan's mom to try to sound like alanis morissette". girl what. they're just sounding angry lmao emoting anger can only be so unique. i know that gets into iffy territory of "if you don't have (x) you can't have an opinion of (x)" but i feel like with something like talent and voices it's fine to look at a bunch of 16-23 year olds who have decided they can hit whistle notes and tell them they might not have a single clue what they're talking about, lmao. lorde puts on a performance much more than she just... sings her hits. her "'''bad''''' singing is part of that. like you alluded to... lorde wrote pure heroine/melodrama and she has a record deal and we don't, so... :)

lmao i bet we sound crazy to everyone reading this but this is exactly why i left acting and singing it's just not enjoyable and even if you find someone who isn't balls to the wall judgmental they're obnoxious. in my shakespeares studies course in COLLEGE i was the only non theatre major and all the girls said that hamlet is shakespeare's most misogynistic character. HAMLET. like. miss ma'am every single male character in titus andronicus and taming of the shrew are right there...

ANYWAY ty for talking i was just SO curious what your opinion was haha! and you should totally watch Juno, i think it's on hulu right now. It's an early 2000s movie with Eliott Page and Michael Cera and tbh that should be the only incentive you need, lmao

[rpbetter]

Do you think the psa would be watered down or lose impact if it just said "most rpers" don't like being a meme resource? It's so easy to tweak the language so it works better, idk.

I don't think it would have changed anything at all, as it's the same statement and reads the same.

I'm not trying to be hateful here to you, Anon, by the way, the issue with this PSA is just a really good example of the severe issue tumblr has (everywhere on tumblr, like holy shit, please reference the "color theory" vs blood trails in the children's hospital post for a hilarious yet perfect demonstration) with reading comprehension and presumption - especially when something either irritates the other party or they feel it gives them an opportunity to be educational with a heavy side helping of superiority.

It's unnecessary to say "most rpers" instead of the added statement that "most DON'T" with the reminder to check rules. It's literally the same statement.

Most what? Giant squid? Tea-drinkers?

What is the PSA in reference to? Not giant squid who are tea afficianatos, it's a roleplay PSA about roleplay written by a roleplay help blog.

Ergo, the answer to "most what" is: most roleplayers.

I know there is a term for this in reading comprehension, but my brain is twenty kinds of fried right now, to the point that I just cannot spend time on Google trying out search phrases to find it, I'm sorry. In any case, it's assumptive logic and works a lot like how your brain fills in other obvious factors. Not just in this way! We automate entire words correctly after we've been reading for a while. You know those stupid posts that were popular several years ago where the sentence is missing many letters and some words abruptly, but you read it correctly? That. It's like that.

Before anyone wants to start with the ableism shit again, you know who tends to be exceptionally good at this? People on the ADHD and autism spectrums. So, we'll not be having any of that today, thanks.

This is also not an issue of not understanding tone that makes the sentence what it is. The tone of the post (which I would say is frustration turned informative) has nothing to do with the obvious flow of "most --> what --> rph blog with an rp psa --> roleplayers."

The issue with the tone is that it exists, like the PSAs that get negative commentary here and...everywhere.

Salty didn't say, "uh maybe 👉👈 🥺 if it's not too much trouble could we be careful about not using other muns as meme and aesthetic resources 🥺🥺 it makes them feel bad about themselves and I don't want to make anyone feel bad but it's a bit rude kthx angels."

That's the issue.

Tumblr has shitty reading comprehension and basic deductive reasoning, with an inability to refrain from correcting everyone anyway, but when it's something disagreeable to a tumblr user it's so much worse. Like, you wouldn't pass second grade in my grade school that was actually the worst in a state that is also one of the top five worst for education in the country kind of worse.

The only thing that I think people would have felt worked better was giving them permission to keep doing it in some way. They shouldn't need to put on there that if it's not a problem for the mutual you are reblogging these things from, then, this isn't about you in clearer terms than they did either. If this isn't a problem, it isn't a problem, this isn't your PSA, guys! It's for people who just keep running into this problem, who have it in their rules, have had to speak to multiple mutuals about in the past, or who have mutuals who deal with this problem very often, and they want to put out a reminder that it isn't acceptable.

Like, for the record? Personally, I have it in my RP blogs' rules that I don't want to be used as a resource if we don't interact in any way, but if we're friendly non-writing mutuals or writing partners, I'd rather you reblog it from me because I love to see mutuals interacting with things and do not have a ton of mutuals on any of my blogs to have notifications go missing in the pile. So, I don't even entirely fit into the PSA myself. I have plenty of mutuals who don't want anything reblogged from them except for a thread reply, however, and I don't have to feel the same way they do in order to empathize with their frustration at feeling used.

For me, this PSA is like many PSAs I reblog that I might not have any personal investment in - it comes down to the issue we all face of having our rules, boundaries, preferences, and direct requests ignored because the RPC is total shit at treating others respectfully.

Someone was going to have an issue with that PSA, as absolutely ridiculous as it is to have a problem with that one on a non-controversial and established issue, because it aggressively told them to stop following gratification over reasonably respecting other muns. It would not have mattered how many words one shuffled, omitted, or added. The message is the same, and in the case of adding "rpers" in between "most" and "don't," it's literally the same.

So, no, I don't think it would lose anything or gain anything. I don't think it would clarify or be an improvement. And I don't think it would have mattered to anyone who got upset enough to nitpick it using far too serious for the situation buzz phrases. I was genuinely surprised no one tried to say it was "gaslighting" to be perfectly honest lmao

Anyway, I think you might feel like it would have been a significant difference, though? Maybe you can tell me why you feel that way? If it had said that instead, is there something else about the PSA you still would have taken issue with? Absolutely genuine questions!