#if anyone has a solution..... kill me don't tell me

[redeyeyuna]

WHEN THE CAMS ARE OFF

So, Nandor and Guillermo are canonically doing some things when when they're not being filmed. With knowing this, I wanted to recap a few things from the season.

This post will mainly focus on how Nandor in particular handled himself subliminally towards the camera in certain situations. Also, that Guillermo faked to leave the vampires in E11 just for the documentary got me thinking which other things could be made up too. Giving a false view of facts just to make the audience think otherwise or to distract them from something specific... This specific thing they wanted to keep private, and didn't want it to be anyone else's business. Cause they wanted to solve and figure it out for themselves without having it exploited to the full in front of the camera. And this is the relationship development (secret affair) between Nandor and Guillermo that ran its course and has been cooked in the background during the sixth season.

[Sorry in advance for grammar mistakes and typos. English is not my first language]

The first hint is alreay in the first episode!

Nandor necessarily has to emphasize that he hasn’t seen Guillermo since he left, and Guillermo immediately throws in that he is telling the truth. But Nadja seems already to know what’s going on between these two idiots.

Also, Nandor trying to help Guillermo by searching for a flat and then suggest him to move into the VERY NEAR garden shed… A practical temporary solution if you don't want to be disturbed by the other housemates. I can well imagine that Nandor already thought of a better place for the two of them at this time. *Caugh* Secret underground lair *Caugh*

/|\ ^._.^ /|\

What about Nandor having a crush on the Guide?

... did he really ever have that, though?😏 What if Nandor’s crush on the Guide was made up by himself just for the documentary to distract the crew/viewers from himself and Guillermo, so that they don't keep following them to catch some shots? Yes, I know Nandor’s sudden crush on the Guide was at first caused by the sleep hypnosis… But for Nadja, the hypnosis seemed like a dream… Perhaps Nandor also thought he had dreamt that he suddenly had a crush on the Guide (or maybe Guillermo just told him) and Nandor was like: “You know what? That’s perfect! I use this to distract the doc crew and viewers from me and Guillermo!”

Nandor had one or more love interest in almost every season that he had a crush on. Why should it be any different now?

Due to this the film crew weren’t focussed on following them and wouldn’t wondering if Nandor could actually have something going on with Guillermo. Nandor’s crush on the Guide in general seemed very odd and just pretended for the camera/viewers. Over time, it seemed to appear more and more obviously and artificially.

In E4 "The Railroad" before Nandor said goodbye to the Guide, he looked suspiciously over his shoulder before making his flirtatious move towards her. It seemed as if he was aiming at it. Shouldn't he have been eyeing up his crush instead of making sure he was filmed flirting?

In E7 "March Mandess" Nandor looked very obviously into the camera during the scene used for the flashback, while Nandor is talking to Charmaine about the guide.

I also wonder why it was so important to Nandor that Charmaine would keep the thing of him and the guide to herself. Cause it’s made up and he just mentioned that he would has a crush on someone so that the film crew could add flashback? Generally, threatening to kill her in her sleep just because of that felt a bit too excessive, doesn’t it?

When the Guide finally rejects him perfectly in E9 “Come Out and Play” (you go, Girl!), Nandor seemed to fully ignore her destruction she has thrown at him.

He purposely ignored what she said. Even though he is normally so easily outraged. Especially after these true words that his supposedly "big love" said to him, he should’ve been at least a bit upset.  

Just remember how devastated he was, when Gail rejects him, and she had rejected him way more nicely.

And please just directly compare Nandor’s “look of love” towards the Guide with how he looked at Guillermo in E3…

And the Oscar-worthy performance, in which Nandor fell on his knees saying overdramatically that the Baron should take his life instead of the Guide seemed totally forced.

Also, Nandor knew very well that the Baron wouldn't have killed anyone…

In E11 “The Finale” Nandor and the Guide is only a short topic at the beginning of the episode, when Nadja asked him if Laszlo could use some parts of the Guide for the Monster. Nandor didn't seem to be listening anyway with his mind somewhere else.

After it was announced that the film crew wanted to end the documentary, he didn't even flirt or interact more intensely with the guide in the entire episode.  As if he no longer needed to fool anyone now that he knew the movie crew was leaving.

/|\ ^._.^ /|\

What about Nandor still saying mean things towards Guillermo?

I also want to cover up the thing of Nandor remaining to say mean things towards Guillermo and wiping his hand on him after the intense hand clasp cause it was a bit clamy.

I I have read criticism of it in some WWDITS negatively posts. And this opinion is valid, no question. But I could imagine that Nandor only continued to do this for the camera, or it is just a normal thing between them cause they are a very fucked up toxic couple anyway ;)

Look at the slightly unsettled grin on Nandor's face when he gave towards the camera. As if he was worried that this very unusually long-lasting hand clasp could lead to more while the camera is still rolling. So, he had to come up with a quick excuse to end it. This facial expression from Nandor looking directly into the camera is so different from the looks he gave to the camera while interacting with the guide. It is just a short glace towards the lens before he puts his eyes back to Guillermo.

Guillermo looked as if he was sad not to express his gratitude to Nandor the way he would like to (cause of cameras as well maybe?)

/|\ ^._.^ /|\

The Finale

Nandor was so obviously happy that the documentary crew were going to leave. He was excited to shoot B-roll footage all the time and he sassily said this when Nadja told him about Guillermo being sad about the end of the documentary:

Looks like someone was really excited to no longer be constantly followed by the camera so that they could continue to focus on "other things"... Also, this reference to the will they/won���t they dynamic of Nandermo is insane.

Colin and Nadja suspecting Guillermo of having a secret relationship with one of the crew members could be an indirectly hint of a secret relationship with Nandor as well. @barren-heart already did this post about it which has made me to create this summary (hope you don't mind me mentioning you here :3).

Nadja possibly saw Guillermo making out with someone who looks like Nandor and maybe it was actually just Nandor!

She just don’t recognised it that fast cause they might quickly disappeared somewhere OR it was just another hint from Nadja, because she knew. She had become a bit of a nandermo shipper this season ;)

In the last speech of Nandor for the documentary it was so clearly to notice that the lair is only a metaphor for Nandor’s private life with Guillermo after the film crew would be gone...

This directly glance into the camera during the speech pause... As if he explicit wanted to make clear that he wanted to say something different when the cameras would be off.

And Guillermo’s reaction during that scene is so fucking funny. He seemed to have a moment of hope that Nandor would actually reveal their affair, but no it is the superhero lair again.

/|\ ^._.^ /|\

The Final Scene

In the background, there was played the same song that was used in the pilot episode for the post-credits. I like that really much!

🎶“Tonight in the Moonlight” (Morrie Morrison Orchestra)🎶 Tonight in the moonlight When silver blends with blue We'll do the thing all lovers do Lingering on till dawn breaks through Tonight in the moonlight with you

And again that offensive look into the camera from Nandor in the middle of his speech and Guillermo trying to get something specific out of him...

If, by this time, someone still does not consider Nandermo to be canon, then I can no longer help them xD

Subtext is their thing! That's always been the case throughout all the seasons! And in such a way that it was already too subtle to be subtext.

However, even Guillermos love sick puppy eyes and his cute “What about one… one of the other reasons?" didn't caused Nandor to spit it out. He bravely continued to avoid eye contact and was trying very hard not to become weak.

When Guillermo said that he won’t be here anymore after Nandor would wake up, Nandor’s description of their secret lair feels forced, which again supports the thesis of an actual love cave: “But what about us joining forces and fighting crime in a coequal partnership? Operating out of a hidden underground lair accessible exclusively by a top-secret coffin elevator.”

Of course, Nandor believed that Guillermo wouldn't leave and was just putting on a show for the camera. He knows his Guillermo better than anyone else...

And THIS look of Nandor’s face when he wanted Guillermo to sit with him inside his coffin comparing with a confirming deep voicing “Mm-hmm”

Oh boy, as if they are going to do very spicy things in that lair...

Then finally the relevation of Nandor’s masterpiece...

During the whole season Guillermo had a problem with sexual things in front of the camera while Nandor had a problem with expressing deep and meaningful feelings while the crew was filming. And because of that they prefer do both things IN THE SHADOWS!

/|\ ^._.^ /|\

So, this my view of Season 6 and the Finale and also my special tribute to my most favorute show! 🦇♥️

It has become longer than expected. Thank’s to everyone who has taken the time to read it this far!

[calebverse]

(AIN'T NOBODY GONNA) TOUCH IT

synopsis: you get a free hands-on lesson from your jiejie.

cw: fem!caleb, guided masturbation, both characters are of age, use of jiejie/meimei, the yurification of love and deepspace, pwp, praise kink, petnames || 2.1k words

notes: this is for #ladsyuriweek on twt! i am an avid content consumer until the voices screamed at me to at least write one work. so i took the prompt for day 2 which was ‘first time.’ so here is me helping spread out the jiejie fem!caleb agenda! i used the name caley to refer to fem!caleb (i lowkey suck at giving names so uhm apologies) this ended up longer than i anticipated ERMMM

you were curious. 

you've heard about it from peers your age, scrolled past it on the internet a few times. and when there's something new, something you had no idea about, you just had to know, even if curiosity does kill the cat. there is no stopping you until you find your own answers, your satisfied conclusions. 

and what do you do when there’s something bugging you? you ask your ever dependable jiejie, caley. 

you've always thought she was the most knowledgeable person in the world, and for good reason. whether it was regarding a repair around the house, your never ending amount of homework, or an opinion in fashion and makeup, she had answers you were looking for, advice you needed to hear, solutions that actually worked. no matter how absurd or difficult the inquiry running through your mind, caley has what you need. she won't judge; she will help. 

never was there a day that passed by without you loudly exclaiming 'jiejie jiejie jiejieee!', seeking for her. you can always count on caley to drop anything she was doing to come for your aid. 

"whenever you have a question or something you don't know, always come to jiejie first." she would tell you with an affectionate poke at your nose. 

and you did just so. 

and that was how you found yourself laying your back against her chest. your shirt was bunched up above your breasts sans your bra. your legs were spread across the bed as caley's warm and smooth hands held you under your knees. your panties dangled away at the edge of the bed, the air meeting your pussy in display. your hand moved between your legs, giving yourself experimental touches. 

"thaaat’s it, pipsqueak," she whispered into your ear. "you're getting the hang of it, keep going."

you grew flustered at caley's words as she spread your legs further apart. her hands stroked the inside of your thighs, long fingers squeezing your skin in encouragement.

"vary the pressure of your touches," she instructed, planting a kiss to the crown of your hair. "find out what feels good, what makes you tick. show your pretty pussy a lot of love, yeah? give her your attention."

if you were being honest, when you came into caley's room late that night, asking her how to touch yourself, a small part of you expected to be met with rejection or maybe endless teasing and jokes. but she did none of that – she only offered a warmed smile, cupped your cheeks, and thanked you for coming to her instead of anyone else. then, instead of verbal descriptions, she offered to guide you as you do it yourself. caley claimed that was the best way to learn. 

but now you're growing frustrated. it was supposed to feel good, right? you were supposed to be moaning and sighing, just like the stories you've heard and the obscene clips you've seen. but why isn't it working? what were you doing wrong?

"jiejie," you huffed. "i don't think i'm doing it right."

"baby, there's no correct way to touch yourself." she chuckled. "you have to find out only what works for you."

"but i don't know!" you whined with a pout. you turned your head to meet caley's eyes. "can you show me? just touch me where i should. i'll follow along."

caley's eyes widened, her pupils almost taking over the color in them. her heart thumped hard against her ribcage that she was sure you could feel it. there was no way she could resist you. not when she had dreamed of this too. 

"okay." she whispered. "i'll show you. but you have to learn alright? this is for your benefit."

you nodded. "i'll pay attention. teach me, jiejie."

now, how can caley say no to that?

with a kiss to your temple, she moved her hands from your thighs, to your exposed stomach, and up to your breasts. 

"when you touch yourself," she began, leaning her cheek against your hair. "you can get yourself into a mood so it will feel better. think about something that you like, something that turns you on."

"but i don't know..."

"you'll find it out along the way, pipsqueak. only a matter of time." she smiled reassuringly. "you don't just go straight to your pussy. you can do other things. like this—"

you watched as she spread feather light touches to your chest. her finger circled around your nipple until it stood upright, reacting to the contact. and when she squeezed you, you let out an involuntary moan. taken aback, your hands went up to your mouth. 

"no, no," she tsked. "don't cover your mouth, don't hold back. it helps. lets you know what makes you feel good, what makes you wet. which is what you need, yeah? don’t be embarrassed, let it all out meimei.”

you nodded in understanding and arched your back wordlessly, encouraging caley to go back to touching you. she didn’t have to be told twice – she played with your tits until you were putty in her hands, reduced into a breathy moaning mess. a particular squeeze had you clenching your fists into the sheets of her bed.

“i like that,” you whispered to her. 

“which one, baby? this?” she asked with a small smirk as she did it again, eliciting the same reaction from you. “feels good?”

“mhm.”

“you try it too.” she said, grabbing your hands. she places them where her fingers were. and with her hands on top of yours, she fondled you again, guiding your hands to do the same squeezes and pinches she sampled to you.

“caley.”

“yes, meimei?”

“i’m wet, i can feel it.” you muttered with warmth in your cheeks. “that’s good right?”

she smiled softly. “it is, baby. you are doing so well. that means playing with your cute tits got you going. now, let me guide your hands on how to touch yourself down your pussy. will you let jiejie show you? let me guide you?”

your nod was a little more enthusiastic than she expected, which made her chuckle. caley took your hand and slid it over your wet core. 

she groaned. “oh baby, you’re so messy down here.”

“don’t look too much.” you whined embarrassingly, unable to handle her heated gaze. 

“no, no, let jiejie see. need to help you know how to make yourself feel good. i want to guide you, i want to help you learn.” she kissed your shoulder as she grasped your hands, taking both your middle and ring finger together and ran a hand through your slit. “eyes on your fingers, okay meimei? yours, not mine.”

but that proved to be difficult, as two sets of fingers dipped into the slick that settled on your sensitive skin. that was your slick on your jiejie’s pretty, long, slender fingers. the sight had you unconsciously clench around nothing. you couldn’t seem to look away. 

“now this,” caley guided you under the hood of your pussy, giving it a small rub. “is what i like to call a special little button. this is your clit, baby.”

as if on cue, the touch made you jump, every vein in your body lighting up. “w-wha–”

“feels real good, right? let’s draw circles around it, yeah? then tell me how it feels.”

you bit your bottom lip as you felt your pussy preened with the attention. a fresh gush of slick came out of you, and caley helped you gather it to the pads of your finger to help you smoothly around your swollen bud. 

“words baby.” she reminded. “how are you holding up?”

“feels good.” you replied to her with a dreamy sigh.

“oh, i bet. you look so hot, touching yourself like that baby. wanna try putting a finger in?”

you turned to her with curious eyes. “will it hurt?”

“not if you do it slowly. besides, you’re all wet and messy, it’ll slide in quite easily.” she dropped your hand and placed her palms on the inside of your thighs. “try it whenever you're ready, meimei.”

“okay,” you whispered. you covered your middle finger in your slick and hesitantly slid it inside you. it was awkward, clumsy, and full of uncertainty. it didn't feel particularly bad but it definitely wasn't good either. your finger was just… there. 

nonetheless, when your finger disappeared into your heat, caley groaned at the sight and cooed into your ear, whispering sweet praises that went straight to your cunt. “oh meimei, you’re such a good girl.” you beamed at her praises, the rush of pleasing her fills your head. yes, she was helping you out, but you might as well do perfectly to help her at least enjoy this. 

“wish it was your fingers instead, jiejie.” you mumbled as you experimented moving your finger around. you let out a pitiful cry. “i don’t know how to make myself feel good.”

she shushed you, smoothing out the hair that stuck to your face due to the sheer amount of sweat. “baby, how will you learn if i’m the one who touches you? besides, you haven’t even moved it much. probe around, and you’ll find the spots that feel good for you. try for me? give me a little show?”

you whined, and attempted as she instructed. but nothing was working, nothing felt good. 

caley shook her head at your poor attempts. she placed her hand at the back of your palm. “pathetic meimei, can’t even please herself, always needs me to do things for her.”

you took a sharp breath in when you felt her fingers slide in with the one already inside of you. your walls spasmed at the intrusion, adjusting to the foreign feeling. caley’s fingers were longer and moved with more confidence than yours. you felt so full, and the sensation making you moan. 

“focus pipsqueak.” caley said, firm but affectionate. “follow along my fingers, okay?” you nodded, simply satisfied at the feeling of her inside you. with care and precision, she started massaging your insides. “uh-uh, i said focus, don’t close your eyes.”

you moaned sweetly, moving your hips along caley’s thrusts. with the pad of your finger next to hers, she guided you to press a spongy spot around your walls. the stimulation made you clench around the fingers inside of you. you began to relax and give in to her actions. “jiejie, jiejie– ah! it feels so good. please please please.”

“i can feel you not moving your finger, honey. you can’t stop, you have to rub yourself from the inside.”

“but it feels better when you do it! can’t you just do it, please?”

“i thought you wanted to learn how to please yourself?”

“i am learning! i promise i will learn. just please, please touch me jiejie.”

“bad student.” she shook her head, but her eyes lit up in mischievousness. “you have to finish by yourself baby. now go along with my fingers inside you, okay?”

you grumbled under your breath about how mean she was being but followed along anyway. you felt her take your free hand and guide it back to your clit. with the combination of rubbing circles at your exposed hood and the fingers inside of you, even if it was mostly her doing the work, you lost yourself into the pleasure, head resting against caley’s shoulder as you tried catching your breath.

“there, caley! ah, it feels so good there.” you can feel her press down stronger, harder in a steady rhythm that makes your knees turn into jelly. the sensation reminds you of a climb of a staircase, each step heavier, louder, faster than the last. your heart was beating out of your chest, blood rushing to your ears, eyes rolling back as your hips stuttered in their movement. you mewled, feeling your chest burn with every breath you took and your legs shook in anticipation. was this it? was this the climax you kept hearing about? 

you twitched and turned, overwhelmed by the way you were reacting under caley’s touch. you became limp against her chest, chants of her name falling from your lips. 

you can practically taste it in your teeth. you were so close. just a few more pumps, a few more rubs, just one final push to finally fall into it and–

caley stopped moving. 

she withdrew her touch from you, settling them once more under your knees. 

you blinked up, confused and frustrated. “jiejie, why–”

“meimei,” she said with a grin that flipped your insides. she kissed both your cheeks and winked. “if you wanna come, you have to work for it.”

[goodolreliablejake]

Fantasy races are an uncomfortable concept, because they present a world that literally works the way racists think that it works. The attempts to mitigate this problem often fail to address the core concern, merely making the idea more palatable.

A big example is trying to correct by changing the language from "races" to "species." This attempt fails for two reasons:

1) Exactly! Racists think that people of other races are a different species. That's the foundation of "race science," phrenology, all of it.

2) Are demihumans different species, though? Like, the interactions between elves and dwarves don't resemble the interactions between different species in our world. They don't act like snakes and lemurs, or whales and krill, or even cats and dogs. More often we've got different groups of people, who may speak different languages and have different cultural practices, engaging in diplomacy or war and struggling to coexist. In practice, they are treated as nations: ethnicities. Except they're ethnicities who are biologically distinct enough to have objective differences in ability.

This is something that puts me on edge in Mass Effect, otherwise one of my favorite games. True, the game ultimately lands on condemning the genophage, and it's not subtle about that. I mean just look at the name... But it's still considered debatable, morally grey, and Mordin Solus remains one of the most charming and enduring heroes of the series. The setting has bent over backwards to make every racist stereotype and talking point as legitimate as possible. In this setting, it is objectively true, scientifically proven that it is in the DNA of Krogans to naturally be violent, warmongering killing machines whose explosively rapid breeding poses an existential threat to the galaxy. That in turn is meant to make us think that maybe forced sterilization is something worth considering. It's hard to ignore the parallels to real life racist propaganda. I don't think it's malicious, just ungrounded and thoughtless; the result of creators to whom these ideals are abstract thought experiments, rather than reflections of real history.

Another big example is Dark Elves. They try to make it okay, to mitigate the message by fleshing them out as characters, by scapegoating an abusive deity rather than an ingrained nature, by erasing the monster manual description that reads "Always Chaotic Evil," by trending skin tone away from black and towards purple, or gray, even pale white. But none of it really changes the core issue, does it? The idea of drow is to equate dark skin with evil, to fetishize that idea, and to tell a story about a subsect of people cast into darkness as a result of sin in a direct parallel to racist Christian beliefs about dark skin being a curse or punishment from God.

So, do I think we need to cancel Mass Effect and stop playing D&D or telling stories about drow? No, not really. I mean... I do all these things. Truth is, I don't have an actionable solution, for myself or anyone. But the dynamic is clearly present and worth describing. And the attempts to challenge it are often insufficient, more about making ourselves feel better about what we're already doing than enacting real change.

[alastors-antlers]

a brief take on the whole "Alastor's smile is permanent" discussion

hello all!

I've seen a lot of people theorizing lately that Alastor actually smiles all the time because his smile is magically, physically fixed onto his face. All of this seems to come from the fact that he's practically grimacing rather than smiling during the scene where he breaks down in ep8:

As well as this frame of his deal with Charlie: (lower res sorry)

I will say, I do like some of the implications of this theory. The sheer spite of his creditor forcing him to smile as an addition to their deal, almost like a sort of forced silence, is a neat concept. It's fun and dramatic. Plus, of all things, of course Alastor would claim the "smile at all times" policy and make it his own to pretend that it was his decision all along lol.

To be fair, though, I don't think we even need any magical compulsion to explain why he's smiling while he's having a mental breakdown. Actually, if we assume magical compulsion, I think we lose a bit of dimension from Alastor's character. (No judgement to anyone's take though, of course -- I just think this works in the direction of his established characterization, but obviously all personal takes <3)

Hear me out:

Alastor's persona is not just for others to see.

"A smile is a valuable tool, my dear. It inspires your friends; keeps your enemies guessing; and ensures that whatever comes your way, you're the one in control."

That makes sense given what we know about him. If he's always smiling, he seems like he has it together. You can't read him very well, especially not when he's actively trying to keep up appearances.

Now consider that when you think about ep8's fight with Heaven, we see that he's already been through so much in this one day.

He fights an army of angels, presumably not even at his own whim (if we go by his blurb about freedom in the Finale song); he loses to Adam, who he considers sloppy and mediocre; his staff, which we can assume holds some part of his power, is snapped; he comes close to being Angelic-power-killed; and to top it all off, he knows that others watched him get injured and then apparently die or flee, all of which would ruin the public image that he's trying to maintain. It wouldn't even be unreasonable for us to assume that he knows Vox was watching, given that Vox kind of has eyes everywhere.

In a moment like this, in the finale, you could say that Alastor has lost (at least on some level) everything that we know matters to him. He doesn't have access to all of his magic, and it's limiting him. He's reminded that he doesn't have freedom or control over his own destiny. He certainly has taken massive hits to his powerful, composed persona. But he's desperate, and furious, and terrified, and clinging on.

That's why he's smiling.

It's not that he can't stop because he physically can't. It's that he can't stop because to him, the smile is the last thing that is still within his power. When there are so many moving parts that he can't predict what happens to him next, he can control how he responds to it. In these last fragments of autonomy, there is solace.

He needs to keep telling himself that he has it together and that he'll eventually scheme his way free, that there's a solution, that he won't be in chains forever; because letting his pretense slip would be admitting that it's all starting to actually get to him. That maybe this time, he doesn't have an escape plan.

In addition, if you read his interactions throughout the series, we also see something else: Alastor's reputation is of paramount importance to him. At multiple points throughout the series, when others disrespect him by discounting his power or presence, he gets visibly annoyed. And in the battle, we see a glimpse of the part of his personality he seems to be trying to leave behind - a normal Alastor, who's just some guy from Louisiana. No transatlantic accent; no unflappable malice; no sharp wit waiting at the ready. Maybe even unremarkable.

Dropping his smile - arguably the most prominent part of his brand - would be admitting that in reality, he's not the Radio Demon of legend that he aspires to project. And if he doesn't have that... where would he be?

[vampireimiko]

Adam Warlock (with a vampire reader) !!

warnings, none 🧟

note, i kinda hate this one guys 🙁

┊ ➶ ｡˚ ° Adam disagrees with the plan to kill all vampires completely. Sure, the species had malevolent vampires but it also has benevolent ones, such as you! If Tony and Marc were to go through with killing the innocent undead, that would be a grave injustice in his eyes.

"Genocide is not a solution, Stark," Adam states firmly, eyes glowing with defiance. "You cannot punish an entire species for the sins of a few."

┊ ➶ ｡˚ ° Tony and Moonknight are eventually able to come to their senses and actually wrap their head around what to do. They admit that they saw the Montesi formula as the most efficient way to get rid of Dracula and his loyalists. Not once did they consider the value of individual lives, and the importance of targeted actions over broad measures.

“Alright, I get it,” Tony says with a heavy sigh, rubbing his temples. “We were looking at the Montesi formula as a one-size-fits-all solution without thinking about the bigger picture. But there’s no easy fix for this, is there?”

Marc, though still conflicted, nods in agreement. “I didn’t consider how many innocent ones would be wiped out. That’s on me.”

┊ ➶ ｡˚ °  Once Tony and Marc have come to terms with the gravity of the situation, Adam takes the opportunity to pull you aside, guiding you to a quieter, more secluded area where you can talk away from the others.

"How long has it been since you've fed?" He asked gently with his golden hand caressing your cheek.

"It doesn't- I mean it's...been a few days now," you admit, not wanting to lie, but also not wanting to worry him too much. You know how he feels about you keeping your strength in check, especially when it’s been a while since you’ve fed.

"You need to take care of yourself, love. We’ll figure this out. We’ll handle everything without resorting to unnecessary violence, okay?"

He steps closer, placing a hand gently on your shoulder. "But you can’t keep pushing yourself. It’s not just about the fight we’re facing now. You have to keep your strength up."

┊ ➶ ｡˚ ° He’s incredibly protective, even if he doesn’t always show it emotionally. If anyone so much as implies that you’re just like Dracula’s minion, Adam will shut them down immediately.

┊ ➶ ｡˚ ° In sweet private moments, he’s gentle, his concern never far from the surface. "I know you don’t want to show weakness," he tells you softly, "but you don’t have to hide it from me. I’ll always be here, especially when you need to recharge." His voice is full of warmth and care, a stark contrast to his usual cool demeanor.

┊ ➶ ｡˚ ° All in all, Adam cares for you very deeply and will do anything in his cosmic power to see that harm, in no shape or form comes to you 🫶🏽

additional note ! i tried my best to capture exactly what you meant in this anon !! 😭 i don't feel like i executed this as well as i would've liked

𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐦𝐲 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧

[unsolicited-opinions]

Why does it feel like some people are trying to gaslight you into being a trump supporter all because you said "no matter the political party, the administration has a right to revoke the visas of individuals who espouse their support for designated terrorist groups"?

Probably because some people are, Anon.

There are some MAGA folks in my inbox who are furious with me for being a Jew and despising Trump:

This gentile Trump fan knows so little about Jews that he uses the phrase "final solution" in telling Jews how they should feel.

The same Ask contains this:

"You people."

He thinks that Trump caused Jews to "have [our] holy lands back."

So, yeah. You're right.

But there's a bigger issue here, and that's US political polarization and the rejection of nuance.

Right or left, social media is mostly filled with people arguing from ignorance and treating politics like a team sport where one cheers for one's team loyally.

Let's look at this particular example you mention. Neither the mainstream liberals nor the mainstream conservatives want to acknowledge that these things can be true at the same time:

1. Trump is pushing the US towards autocracy as best he can. He and his administration do not actually care about antisemitism and are using the issue as a political wedge and to punish people they don't like. He's using Mahmoud Khalil's case to expand presidential powers.

2. Any administration can legally ban foreigners based on their support of terrorism.

Example: In February of 2024, President Biden banned anyone who committed and promoted violence in the West Bank from having a US visa for any purpose. This was legal. This was ethical. I supported it, and so did most Americans who noticed it.

That both Dems and Republicans seem to take a side on the issue exclusively based on party and utterly without nuance illustrates something important I'd like to ramble about.

That ramble is below the break, but It's longer than the line at the DMV and probably about as interesting. There's no shame in skipping it.

You're sure?

Okay, you were warned.

When Obama was elected in 2008 and the Democrats took a 70-seat lead in the House, the Republicans lost their @#&*ing minds. They were in the wilderness, out of power, and rejected by the US electorate. (And, as many have observed, there was a wildly racist backlash to the election of the first black President of the United States.)

The Republican plan to change this and get back into power was to make themselves the party of opposing anything Obama did.

They didn't just treat him like the president of the opposition party, they treated him like an assault on the American Way Of Life. This isn't an exaggeration.

If you weren't alive or politically aware at that time, here's some examples of Republicans rejecting their own policy ideas because Obama embraced them:

- The Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare")

The ACA’s individual mandate, which required individuals to obtain health insurance, was based on a policy developed by the conservative Heritage Foundation (yes, the authors of Project 2025) in the 1990s and was implemented in Massachusetts as Romneycare under Republican Governor Mitt Romney. It was a massive gift to the insurance companies.

Despite the plan’s conservative origins, Republicans labeled the ACA as “socialist” and spent years attempting to repeal or dismantle it. The individual mandate, once a free-market solution, became a target of intense criticism.

- Cap-and-Trade for carbon emissions

This was originally a Republican-supported, market-based solution to environmental regulation. It was championed by Republicans like John McCain and even used successfully in reducing acid rain under George H.W. Bush.

When Obama proposed a cap-and-trade system to address climate change, Republicans denounced it as a “job-killing” scheme and labeled it a “tax on energy.” The bill ultimately failed in the Senate due to Republican opposition.

(Guess which president got the Environmental Protection Agency into existence. Republican Richard Nixon. The environment wasn't always a partisan issue and Republicans used to care about the environment before the issue was polarized.)

- The DREAM Act

The concept of providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children had bipartisan support, with some Republican co-sponsors when first introduced in 2001.

By the time Obama advocated for the DREAM Act, Republicans opposed it, citing concerns about "amnesty," and blocked its passage through a Senate filibuster in 2010.

Then there were all the ridiculous personal attacks. This kind of nonsense, which hadn't been normal previously, became the daily norm:

The Republican philosophy became: If Obama and the Democrats are for it? We're against it!

I will abuse this moment to share the brilliant Groucho Marx singing "Whatever it is, I'm against it."

Anyway, this strategy worked for the Republicans and has been increasingly the norm for the Republican Party ever since.

That was bad enough, but a lot of left-leaning criticism of Obama focused on the idea that he was too centrist. That he kept trying to reach across the aisle to the Republicans, despite the way they slapped that hand every time he tried. They were pissed that Obama's administration bailed out the banks in 2009 (when they felt Democrats should be the party to break banks up and let them fail, Obama thought the economy wouldn't recover without a bailout and I think economically Obama was proven right, but politically, it hurt the Democrats). These left-leaning democrats thought it was time that the Democratic Party, originally a Labor party, had a leftist wing again.

(Sidebar: Yes, the internet has also contributed to polarization and the demise of nuance in a big way, but that's a topic for another time.)

I'm not suggesting that the polarization of the US electorate has been symmetrical. It hasn't. The rightward movement of the Republican Party has been much greater than the leftward movement of the Democrats - but we got reactionary far-left Democrats, too.

While the Republican Party is now run entirely by far right ideology (and that's a disaster), the Democrats helped make it happen with their own end of the Horseshoe.

The loudest democrats, the ones with good Q scores in the Democratic base are the likes of AOC/Ilhan Omar/Rashida Tlaib. They married the leftist wing of the Democrats to "global South" and Islamist causes (oversimplification, yes), which helped decrease support to Israel (which the Democrats used to support enthusiastically when it had a lefty government) and caused the Democratic party to completely ignore the rising antisemitism of the left, particularly on college campuses. How could it be wrong, they argued, to support protestors who are advocating for human rights?

This gave Republicans the opportunity to *own* those issues. Elise Stefanik didn't give a single shit about campus antisemitism, but the Republicans owned the issue in the minds of most Americans from this moment on:

Claudine Gay was very badly prepared for this hearing. She spoke like a lawyer, not like a human being. It was obvious Harvard hadn't done anything to protect the civil rights of Jews on campus in acoordance with federal law.

Americans (correctly) saw that liberal institutions, aligned with Democrats, hadn't done anything, nor had congressional Democrats who didn't want to alienate the "Pro-Palestinian" part of their base and didn't want the Republicans to have an excuse to go after colleges. This was a huge mistake. Biden should have had the Department of Education sue these institutions for their failure to protect civil rights. It is tragic that the Democrats did less than nothing, but that helped get us where we are.

So where did this get us?

Now, fighting antisemitism is a partisan issue which the GOP "supports" (for its own reasons, mostly a political wedge) and the Democrats oppose it as a symbol of Republican fascism.

This is why they lionize Mahmoud Khalil.

Now, being a liberal seems to mean believing that claims of antisemitism are wildly exaggerated and being dishonestly used to deflict criticism of Israel.

Now we have liberals saying "criticism of Israel isn't antisemitism" as if that hadn't always been the view of US Jews who love to criticize Israel.

Now we have liberals who are opposed to every sort of religious/ethnic persecution except one- because as David Baddiel said, Jews Don't Count.

Now, the support of the only liberal democracy the MENA region is a partisan issue which the Republican party "supports" (for its own reasons, mostly geopolitical advantage) and which the Democratic party base associates with Trump's autocracy and fascism.

There's seemingly no room for nuance on either side.

So if I express the belief that the law permits Trump to ban foreign nationals who promote violence, despite their support for Biden doing the same, liberals think I'm a fascist.

(Guess which President, by the way, was the biggest deporter of foreign nationals in modern history. Hint: it was Obama.)

If I support declining visas and/or residence to foreigners who promote terrorism (as Biden did in 2024, remember), Democrats see me as a fascist, aligned with Trump, and an enemy of civil liberties. The right sort of Jew, for Democrats, disowns Israel and opposes anything Trump does.

If I criticize Trump's efforts towards autocracy and fascism, I'm the wrong sort of Jew because I don't appreciate his strategic support of Israel or feigned caring about antisemtism. The right sort of Jew, for Republicans, is the Jew who still thinks of politics in the predictable framing of the "is-it-good-for-the-Jews" mindset and isn't concerned about the dismantling of the liberal democracy which made Jews (and everyone else) safer and more prosperous in the US than at any time in history.

If the Dems are for it, the GOP is against it.

If the GOP is for it, the Dems are against it.

These partisan policy positions are, for now, locked.

If you watch the news with this framing in mind, it may make more sense.

If you've actually reached the end of this ramble, I'm shocked and grateful. Have a cookie: 🍪

[batboyblog]

So…..Trump wants the US to make the rules in Gaza apparently. What are your thoughts about that at least from what we do know about it?

its really a little hard to know what the fuck is going on,

based on Trump's public comments and his fucked up repost of an AI video of Trump Gaza, it sounds like what Trump wants is the the US to... basically take over Gaza not as some kind of peace keeping mission or UN Mandate but as.... a colony effectively? and to largely if not totally depopulate it of its Arab Palestinian population to be replaced by ???? Americas maybe? Gulf Arabs? tourists for sure but who will in fact live and work in this beach front tourist hot spot with Trump branded properties? unclear.

there's a lot of debate about how real or serious this idea is. My default is not to think that Trump is playing 5D chess, so much as eating the pieces. Trump clearly has a hang on on the 19th century and wanting to be William McKinney and get his own American Empire he's made a lot of comments about different things, like all the shit with Greenland or Canada, or about McKinney himself etc. So I tend to think at least Trump himself is serious.

That said it came out the other day that the Trump Team went behind Israel's back to talk directly with Hamas, something no past US government has done. The Israelis told them not to, particularly without any preconditions, Trump's team ignored them and didn't even tell the Israelis they were doing it.

Now normally I'd say this is a play, Trump is wacky in public to pressure Hamas in private "look we're reasonable but the boss is crazy, work with us to get a deal before..." and maybe that's the line these people are using on Hamas, but I'd be shocked if Trump was in on the play, because he's stupid, lazy, and crazy. Someone told him Gaza would be nice beach front if not for all the war and his rotting haunted house of a brain ran with that to his happy place "making money from my scams"

any ways. It's really bad when the leader of your country is floating ethnic cleansing as a policy idea, and while the why is not important there's something super insulting and depressing that the reason is "so I can built a casino" Trump really wants to be King Leopold (look it up) in Gaza.

finally... a lot of people in America, just don't live in reality when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Don't have any understanding of what October 7th was, what it was like, I'm lucky I didn't lose anyone close to me, but I had met a few people in passing and they were dead and that was November 2023 realizing "oh shit, I know him" about people who were killed in the worst ways imaginable. I can only imagine what it was like inside Israel when it was your friends, neighbors, family, through work I've met a lot of hostage families and that suffering is just unimaginable. Any ways point being Israel suffered a 9/11 level event, with rape and torture on top of the body count. The Two State Solution has been on life support since 2001, with slowly worsening vitals every year. 10/7 killed it for the Israelis.

And this is where the unreality many Americans live in comes in, they don't understand Biden's involvement in the war was a last ditch effort to keep that Two State Solution alive, time and time again pushing Netanyahu off from re-settlement or annexation in Gaza, pushing to involve the Palestinian Authority, forcing a refocus on hostages, over and over again.

so certain people loudly declared that nothing could be worse than the war, that it didn't matter who was President, that punishing Biden, Harris, Democrats mattered more than any results that might come from Trump.

well here we are, the President of the United States endorsing ethnic cleansing in the name of enriching himself... that is, at least on paper, the policy of the United States, we've gone from Biden's policy of a path to statehood, to Trump's of "GTFO of Gaza so I can build a Trump Casino!"

at the very end of Biden's term he managed to deliver a ceasefire that brought home most of the hostages and stopped the fighting and had Israeli forces pulling back. Under Trump that ceasefire is falling apart. I think that's the clearest split in the timeline? like what would have been vs what we will see.

idk what's gonna happen, I don't have a great deal of optimism.

[spirantization]

"Wild Blue Yonder" dealt with some of the emotional fallout of the Flux, so I want to rewind a bit and look at what that means for the Doctor.

I know that the Timeless Child and the Flux are contentious topics. I'm not here to argue either way. But now those storylines have decisively not been retconned, and with both of these fresh in my memory, I feel the need to offer some context for anyone who may not have seen it, and to recontextualize it for myself and anyone who has.

NotDonna: You don't know where you're from. The Doctor: How do you know that? How does anyone know? How does Donna know?

In "The Timeless Children", we find out that the Doctor was discovered as a child alone under a wormhole, and adopted by a woman named Tecteun. There was an accident where the Doctor fell from a cliff and regenerated, and subsequently Tecteun performed "experiments" on them to try to understand regeneration. The show minces words about this but she killed a child a whole bunch of times is what happened. Her experiments created the Time Lords and allow them to engineer their regeneration properties. The Doctor has no memory of any of this, and only finds out via the Master and information stored in the Time Lord Matrix.

The Doctor, predictably, doesn't tell anyone about this revelation. She makes a speech to the Master about how this makes her more, we get a single shot of her looking a bit tired in the TARDIS, then she immediately gets thrown in prison.

Ultimately, the Doctor doesn't know where they're from or who their parents are. And the very fact that they're not from Gallifrey is information that no one in the universe should have. Everyone who knew is now dead.

NotDonna: I saw it in your head. The Flux. The Doctor: It destroyed half the universe because of me. We stand here now, on the edge of creation, a creation which I devastated, so yes I keep running, of course I do! How am I supposed to look back on that? NotDonna: It wasn't your fault! The Doctor: I know!

A fun fact about the Flux is that the Doctor did not cause it. So why does he blame himself? Because the person who caused the Flux was Tecteun.

The reason why Tecteun wanted to destroy the universe is because the Doctor interfered with things too much. Too much morality. Too inspirational to people. She calls them a virus. So her solution to the problem of the Doctor is to destroy the universe, with the Doctor inside, and take her ship to a different universe to start fresh. She also was the one to steal all the Doctor's memories of previous lives in the first place. She's dismissive and patronizing and clearly does not care about the Doctor on an emotional level at all. Tecteun is a piece of work, and the implications of her actions and how they've shaped the Doctor have the potential to go deep.

Thirteen doesn't get too much of a chance to react to any of this, because there is plot going on. And shortly after they reunite, Tecteun gets killed by a different villain. So there was no emotional closure in the moment, and there's now no possibility for the Doctor to make sense of her actions. The Doctor does not tell any of her friends about any of these events. She keeps promising to tell Yaz but does not.

"Wild Blue Yonder" is the first time we, as the audience, hear the Doctor discuss the Flux. And their perception of events is skewed at best. The Flux wasn't caused because the Doctor made a mistake and a lot of people were killed, which is what you can argue for many other situations. The Flux and the devastation of the universe was caused by their mother, who promptly turned around and told them it was their fault for being such an interfering nuisance. We know that the Doctor is often an unreliable narrator, but this is beyond that. These are the words of an abused child who has internalized the narrative that the abuse was their fault.

So the Doctor being able to talk about this with Donna, who has seen what happened, who knows him, and tells him that it's not his fault — it means so much to him. He wants it to be her so badly. And then NotDonna laughs in his face. You can see the devastation. He thinks for one moment that he can finally talk about this with his best friend, and it's snatched away from him. He gives himself a moment to break down in the corridor, and then you can see the walls rebuilding as he suppresses it all again.

At the very end of the episode, back in the TARDIS, he's trying very very hard to be nonchalant. I'm curious. The NotDonna could remember all these things that happened to me while we were apart. Can you? Just wondering. Things happened, but I'll be fine. In a million years. It's not a joke.

He wants so badly to be able to talk about this. You can see it in all the lines of his body language. He's keeping himself together but is prepared to fall apart in an instant. He doesn't want to actually tell anyone, but if Donna just magically knew already, and could tell him it wasn't his fault — well, that would make the world of difference. But she doesn't know, and he can't bring himself to tell her. And so the cycle continues.

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 41, part two

(Masterpost) (Pinboard)  (whole thing on AO3)

Warning! Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Nie Mingjue and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day

Empathy continues, jumping to Meng Yao and Nie Mingjue's encounter in Nightless City. Once again, let's look at how we saw it the first time around.

In Episode 22, Nie Mingjue unwisely decided to do a stealth advance push on Nightless City, as if "stealth" and "Nie Mingjue" ever belonged in a sentence together. After his inevitable capture, Meng Yao rocks up and says hey.

We cut away to the battle outside and then come back inside where NMJ hits MY with a palm strike.

Meng Yao actually expresses anger for once, knocking NMJ over with a kick, and yelling at him for being rude in front of MY's new boss, Wen Ruohan.

NMJ comes after him again but Wen Ruohan gets involved and the fight turns into NMJ vs. WRH until Nie Mingjue is knocked out. He ends up on the floor surrounded by dead or unconscious Nie cultivators; we don't see, at this time, how they got that way.

(More behind the cut!)

In Episode 41: the encounter in front of Wen Ruohan starts the same way, but Meng Yao taunts Nie Mingjue, fondles his shoulder, and then kills a couple of his wingmen.

Meng Yao--Wen Yao?--has never looked better. He's still rocking Nie braids and Nie colors - with a nice snake pattern trimming his robe. I'd like to say this is evidence of his snakey nature, but the idea that snakes are bad and sneaky is a biblical concept, not a Chinese one.

Anyway the important thing about his look here is that his makeup is gorgeous and his demeanor is totally confident. Unfortunately I can't find the tumblr post that talks about his sassy ex-boyfriend energy in this scene, but it was a wise observation.

Nie Mingjue's sidekicks provoke Meng Yao into killing them - one by insulting the hall they're in, and the next by calling him 走狗-- literally "running dog," but Viki translates it as "lackey."

"Lackey" is a little insulting but it's basically a job description, whereas Meng Yao's reaction to being called "running dog" is more like the way people react to being called "boot licker" in English. I'm not saying it should be translated this way, however - feet have a whole lot of meanings across cultures. I think it could have just been translated "running dog" because by 41 episodes into this show, we have learned that calling someone a dog is rude and insulting, thank you Wen Chao.

Anyhoo, after Meng Yao kills the second dude he asks if anyone else wants to call him 走狗, and Nie Mingjue immediately does. Meng Yao just smiles and has his own lackeys bring Baxia, in a fancy box, to him.

Then he fondles the blade while explaining that he's been spending some quality time with it. Nie Mingjue watches helplessly, unwilling to beg but afraid of whatever's going to happen.

Meng Yao tells him that his Dad's sword was better than his, and asks him to guess how many times WRH will have to strike Baxia to break it. I'm saying "strike," but Viki translates it as "smack" and Netflix translates it as "spank," with questionable results. How many times WILL Wen Ruohan spank it, I wonder?

Meng Yao taunts him some more: Wen Ruohan broke NMJ's father's saber and sent it back to him, which caused him to die of anger. He says this while getting up in NMJ's space and putting on an expression of ecstacy.

NMJ hits him, since that's his solution to everything; Meng Yao gets mad and kicks Nie Mingjue to the floor. It's not clear to me why Meng Yao talks so much shit if he doesn't want to get hit.

Aftermath

The confrontation where Xichen protects Meng Yao is the same as episode 23, up to a point. Nie Mingjue wakes up in Lan Xichen's manly arms and has a moment of happiness before seeing Meng Yao standing by holding Baxia.

NMJ goes to attack him but Lan Xichen protects Meng Yao and explains his whole spying gig -- calling him A-Yao, which has gotta chap Nie Mingjue's ass.

Lan Xichen can block a blow from Baxia one-handed. Hot.

There's a nice parallel here, where Meng Yao uses Lan Xichen as a human shield, similar to Wei Wuxian using Lan Wangji to protect him from Fairy in Episode 34.

Wei Wuxian is, of course, way more handsy about it.

Meng Yao passive-aggressively tells Lan Xichen that he didn't explain his actions because that big meanie Nie Mingjue wouldn't have believed him anyway, and then he kneels in front of Nie Mingjue. That's as much as we got of that whole encounter, in Episode 23.

In Episode 41, after Meng Yao kneels, he explains his situation and said that he only said all that dickish stuff to Nie Mingjue to gain Wen Ruohan's trust, and he's sorry about hurting his feelings.

Nie Mingjue says how about you kneel to those dudes you killed.

Lan Xichen tells Nie Mingjue that yes, A-Yao did horrible things, but I believe that in his heart he… we don't hear the rest because Nie Mingjue interrupts by destroying a lantern, but we don't need to hear the rest because it's the same thing Lan Xichen says all the fucking time; it's become his core belief in the years since.

Meng Yao is surprised that it's the lantern that died and not him, but Nie Mingjue is in an impossible situation. Meng Yao has recruited Xichen so completely to his side that if Nie Mingjue wants to stay friends with LXC, he has to accept Meng Yao . You can see in his face that he knows he's beat.

Continued in part 3!

[clothandclockwork]

They shouldn't have been able to make the journey in their condition, but they did. they had to.

Sure, the journey could have killed them, but what choice did they have? Just existing was painful to them, and not taking this journey would have killed them anyways.

There was something wrong with them. Something very wrong. No doctors could heal them of their affliction, no therapist could make them feel okay with it. The only one who might have a solution...

...had to be a witch.

So they pushed through their problems, over treacherous terrain, beyond anywhere they had ever been. It would have been difficult for a normal person, but for them - who by all means should never have been able to get this far - it was nothing.

Nothing compared to what they have felt, or what they could gain and lose.

The final stretch was through a dark forest... which opened up to a beautiful garden fighting back weeds, and a humble cottage patched by someone clearly inexperienced but well-meaning.

They knocked on the door, and prepared their nerves for meeting the witch.

The witch wasn't like they were expecting at all, and yet very much what they were expecting. She was... about human, more or less, though definitely more or less. Her skin was flawless yet pale, her eyes deep yet cold and dull. Her black hair was down to the back of her fancy red and black dress, and looked silky smooth but off in some way. She was taller than them, but in a way that looked like someone shorter was stretched out. But she was clearly a witch.

She even had the pointy hat.

After the shock wore off, they tensed up and forced themself to speak. "Miss Witch... I... I need help. I can't... turn to anyone else... please listen... to my problem."

The witch spoke with a lighter, softer voice than they were thinking. They expected power... of confident dominance or of arrogant distain, of even firm kindness. But this... this wasn't far from their own nervous voice.

"This one is not the-" she began, her arms wrapped around herself, but then went into deep contemplation. When she next spoke, she stood up straighter and let her arms out wide as if to hug them.

"That's right. This one is the witch. This one has been the witch for some time now. Please, tell the witch your problems and maybe you shall receive what you have come for."

The odd way of speaking concerned them for a moment, but they've never heard a witch speak before. Maybe this is just how they talk?

So they explained their problems, their pains, their dooms. And she listened. Finally, they wrapped up their explanation with a plea.

"Please... take away... my pains... my fears... don't let it... don't let it end me..."

The witch closed her nearly-lifeless eyes, breathing slowly as she thought. "This one may have a solution... but... the witch must warn you. Not only is there a price - and no, not money - but... the witch is not that skilled or powerful. The solution would be... inelegant. Crude. Imperfect."

"I'm already... all those things. And I'll... pay any price... but... I don't know what... I have to offer."

"This one already knows what the price is. You will not be in pain or be afraid any more, but your life will not be what you are used to. You-"

"Whatever it is... please do it."

"Very well."

The witch put a hand on their shoulder... and their arm immediately went numb. They tried to move it, but nothing happened; it hung limply by their side. A moment of fear crossed their face, but it quickly vanished. This was what they wanted, after all.

The numbness spread throughout their body - through their chest which felt no more heartache, through their legs which no longer had to carry them through all this, through the other arm which no longer needed to hold any burden... and finally to their finally-smiling face.

They felt nothing, blissfully free of feeling for a short eternity, before they felt something new.

They felt a weird sensation over their skin, though it was more like a sensation where their skin should be. It did not feel like part of them. Nothing felt like part of them. But slowly... new parts of them made themselves known. Fabric replaced flesh, as their mind reconnected to their body. Their eyesight - which was like watching a video of someone watching a video - became blank until they were looking out of buttons. What's happening to m- to m... to- they tried to think, though even their mind began to shift. The noisy polluted traffic of their mind was being cleared out, simple replacing complex. Everything became hazy, but then clearer than it had been for forever. No more pain, no more suffering, just pure, simple, one-at-a-time thoughts. They were slowly losing themself, but somehow still completely and totally them.

What's happening to this one? It doesn't understand? It? This one? But this one is a pers... peron.. .pesers... doll.

Of course it was a doll! Why wouldn't it be? It always has been a doll, watching over that poor person. That poor, always suffering, person. That person wasn't suffering any more, now. It had to let go of them. It was free from them. This was a happy moment.

Then why did it feel like crying?

"It's okay," the witch said. "This one knows you must be going through a lot."

"What did you do," the doll asked, as the world and the witch grew larger and larger. "What did you do to it? Why does it feel so weird? What happened to the person that came here?"

"This one is sorry. This was the only way to save you. The person... became the doll you are."

"It doesn't understand... but... does that mean that person no longer is suffering? Is this doll... okay?"

"Are you okay?"

The doll was finally able to move. It put its fingerless ragdoll hand to its fabric chin. "Hm... it thinks so. What does this one look like?"

"Well... this witch is sorry, but..." She grabbed a hand mirror, and showed the results. The inelegant, crude, imperfect results. She was waiting for more tears from the inexpertly-crafted doll.

The ragdoll smiled. "This one looks beautiful."

[utopiastri]

Put That Guy in a SituationTM - look something about Landoscar in a 20/32 type situation has me hooked….trying to not let others on to their predicament, maybe it’s a bit embarrassing how it happened 🤔

hi anon!!! thank you for the prompt! i went a smidge away from my usual cutesy fluff for this one - your suggestion of embarrassment really sparked something in my brain, even if i took it in a slightly different direction. i hope you enjoy!!!

(prompt list here)

“Look, we just gotta act natural,” Lando says.

Or, well, Lando-as-Oscar says, because it sounds like Oscar’s voice and it’s Oscar’s mouth that’s moving, but it’s Lando that’s actually saying the words and–

Lando-in-Oscar’s-body huffs. “You’re having a crisis again aren’t you?”

“You know it’s weirder of you to be 100% ok with this.”

“It’s a body swap curse, mate, it’s not rocket science.”

Oscar runs a hand through his hair and cringes at the uncanny feeling of there being someone else’s hair on top of his head. “I understand the concept, Lando, what I’m struggling with is everything else related to it like, I don't know, how the fuck this happened."

“I don’t know. Do you reckon we need to have sex to break the curse?”

“What?” Oscar squawks, “Why would we need to have sex to break the curse?”

Lando flushes. “I dunno. Just felt like the right solution.”

“Based on what?”

Lando mumbles something about seeing it online once and Oscar chooses to ask no more follow-up questions lest Lando tells him he learnt about it from some random porn he watched once. He heaves a sigh.

“Listen, like you said, we should just act normal. This whole thing is,” Oscar pauses to search for the right word, “Strange. And I���d really rather not bring anyone else into it to begin with.”

“Agreed,” Lando says before adding, “Hey, if we’re still like this for the race tomorrow and I win but in your body, does that mean you get the points?” Oscar glares at him and Lando pouts. “It’s a genuine question!” he whines.

Oscar’s about to point out they have bigger things to focus on than the effects of this on a race when Jon sticks his head into the room.

“Debrief in five, guys.”

“Sounds good, mate,” Lando says, in an accent no human being has ever used before.

Jon blinks at him. He turns to look at Oscar. Or, rather, he turns to look at Oscar who he thinks is Lando. Oscar smiles weakly.

“He’s, uh, trying to do an impression of me doing an Australian impression," Oscar lies, hoping it sounds vaguely believable.

“Oi!” Lando says, “My Australian accent’s mint.”

“Yes, Oscar,” Oscar says pointedly, “Your Australian accent would be mint because you are from Australia.”

Lando's eyes light up in realisation and he starts nodding furiously. “Right, yep, what he said, exactly.”

Jon blinks at both of them this time. He sighs.

“If you two are doing roleplay, I don’t want to hear about it.” Lando and Oscar both start spluttering, but Jon keeps on talking over both of them. “Just be on time for debrief.”

With Jon gone, Oscar breathes a sigh of relief. Or he starts to, until Lando pipes up.

“I still reckon us having sex will fix it.”

Oscar reminds himself that if he kills Lando right now, he’s possibly going to do irreparable damage to his own body.

The thought’s still tempting.

“Is there a particular reason you’re so desperate to have sex with yourself?” he asks, eyebrow raised.

Lando clearly wasn't expecting that question because he freezes. Oscar’s always hated how easily he flushes but right now, watching it brutally incriminate Lando, he can’t help but be grateful for it.

“I’m not fucking desperate to have sex with myself.” He doesn't sound like he's lying, but the blush on his face suggests he's not telling the whole truth.

Maybe…

His eyebrows raise. “So you’re only desperate to have sex with me then?”

Lando looks up at Oscar, eyes wide. He swallows.

Got you, Oscar thinks to himself.

[cherriesncinnamon]

stress reliever / spencer reid x fem!reader

synopsis: your fellow profiler at the bau is stressed over a case. shoulders tight and room empty, you decide to relieve some of his tension.

warnings/tags: stressed spencer, grinding, blowjob, fem!reader.

word count: 1.1k.

a/n: tell me why this is literally the first thing i've written in a nearly year?! i've been so busy but i've missed this. rewatching criminal minds for the third time so thought i should treat myself to a lil spence smut.

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

"I just don't understand what I'm missing." Spencer announces, clutching his hair in his fists as he slumps down on a chair.

"Neither do any of us. This UnSub loves puzzles, clearly he's really good at them, too." I reassure. SSA Spencer Reid hates when he cannot figure something out. Not because he has a weak ego, but because he really should know.

"God, my head is killing me." He says, rubbing his temples gently with his thumb and forefinger.

"Probably because we've been up for over 24 hours. Hotch and the rest won't be back for at least another hour, a nap couldn't hurt." I suggest, tucking my knees up to my chest in my chair, preparing to drift off in under a minute.

"No. No, I have to figure out some of this, even just a little bit. We can't let this son-of-a-bitch roam free for another second." He picks himself up and looks at the board again, eyes squinting at the words until they're unintelligible.

I show up behind him, taking a look at the board for the fiftieth time that day to see if a few minutes away from it had altered my ability to solve the puzzles. It hadn't. I rest my hands on Spencer's shoulders, and he jolts at my touch. His muscles are tensed and knotted.

"Jesus, Spence. You need to lie down. We know better than anyone that stress does not make our jobs any easier." I urge, slowly massaging his shoulders in an empathetic way. Spencer shakes his head, turning to face me.

"Sleep will not relieve this stress." He replies, gaze fixed. He sighs deeply, looking down at me as if he's waiting for me to provide a solution I definitely don't have. If anyone has the mental equipment to solve this case, it's Spencer Reid.

I guide him over to a chair, sitting beside him. I take a swig of my cold tea and rest my head on my knees. He stares at me with those big brown eyes that are usually full of life - well, in Spencer's kind of way - that are now deadened and hollow. I rest my hand on his and he squeezes mine back with a smile.

This is the first time I'm seeing him smile in days. I look eagerly at his lips, not hesitating to reach out and kiss him. He, of course, kisses back, gripping the side of my face tightly.

There's always been a mutual attraction between the two of us, but neither have ever even thought of acting on it. Derek loves to call us Romeo and Juliet. I laugh; Spencer doesn't get the joke.

I pull his hair through my hands, tugging gently at his roots as our kiss intensifies. I'm so glad he cut that mane, swapping it out for something much better.

I feel myself drifting off to a blissful state when Spencer pulls away abruptly, leaving my lips alone. He grimaces at me, clearly fighting some internal demons I can't see. I know he's not the romantic type, so I'm not sure why I thought it would be a good idea. We don't exchange any words for a few seconds until he gives in and reaches into me. I refuse his kiss.

"Do you really want this, Spence?" I ask, to his contemplation. He thinks for a minute, breath heavily paced. I look down at the bulge in his pants, pulsating through the fabric.

"Well, it sure looks like it." I joke with a harmless laugh. Spencer sighs at me, covering himself with both of his hands. I take his wrist and remove it, lightly stroking him with my palm, much to his pleasure. He tips his head back in the chair from my slight touch, grinding his hips into my hand, eager for more.

Feeling brave, I push Spencer's chair out from under the table, making enough room for me to straddle his lap, placing myself on top of his clothed bulge. Spencer doesn't know where to look, his eyes pacing from my eyes, to my lips, to my breasts, and to my waist. I take his hands and place them on my hips for support.

He's hard against my crotch, so hard that I can tell he won't be able to hold on for long. I play on this, beginning to grind myself against him at a painfully slow pace. He moans out, licking his lips that are dry from his breathlessness. I run my fingers through the front of his hair, pushing the strands out of his face while starting to move faster.

Spencer's hands squeeze my hips, pushing me down further onto his length that is desperate for a release. His eyes alternate between open and closed, unsure whether to admire me or savour the sensation.

"Does that feel good?" I pry, peppering kisses on his supple neck. Spencer can barely mumble a mhm as he groans out more and more. I sense his closeness and remove myself, sliding down to under the table.

"What are you doing? Why'd you stop?" Spencer begs, sitting up in his chair. Looking up, I smile at him, making my way towards his zipper.

I unzip his pants and break the waistband of his black boxers, watching in arousal at his cock spring free. His tip is glazed in pre-cum, veins spiralled around his length, begging to be relieved. I'm shocked at his size, to be honest. I had always thought he would fit the stereotypes of geniuses, assumed that he was compensating for something with his intelligent. But clearly, he just hasn't had the opportunity to show anyone what he can do.

Without waiting a second longer, I lick his sensitive tip then take him into my slick mouth, observing his chest heave inhumanly fast as I move up and down his member, making sure to cover every single inch. Spencer rests his hand on the top of head, stroking my hair softly.

"God." He whispers, squeezing his eyes tightly shut and gripping the armrest of his chair. I use my free hand to stroke the delicate skin of his abdomen, sending goosebumps across his entire body. I can feel him pulsating in my mouth, so close to climax that it has to be uncomfortable.

I remove my mouth, now using both hands to jerk him. The wetness makes my hands glide on his cock, welcoming his finish.

Finishing on my blouse, Spencer takes a minute to catch his breath. He swiftly wipes himself with a tissue from the table, tucking his still half-hard length away.

"Feel better?" I ask, walking towards the door to wander to my office change my blouse before the team arrives.

"Much better."

[bloodyjuls-blog]

Im gonna fight for both of us

P4

So here we go with part 4, sorry it takes me too long but I'm working and hate work haha...

When Alexia entered the hospital she had no idea what she would find there, in one hand, she could find y/n awake but with some tiny injuries (it was what she wished) but what she found was a nurse informing her that they needed someone to give consent to perform an emergency surgery because y/n's accident is a serious life threatening emergency and Alexia knew well, the only person who could do that was your sister, she had the obligation to call her and inform her, she didn't bother to call your parents because she knew that you were not the most beloved daughter in that family, moreover, she knew that they wouldn't even miss you if you died, because she heard many conversations with them in which they clearly told you that you were a failure.

While Lilah, your sister, gave the authorization over the phone, the doctors explained to Alexia what had happened to y/n. First, when they arrived at the hospital y/n went into cardiac arrest due to the impact, then doing a general sweep they found cervical and spinal injuries that compromise her mobility, hence the emergency surgery. What worries them the most is the injury of her brain, apparently it has a severe inflammation and they are concerned that when she wakes up (if she does) she will have compromised her cognitive functions such as speaking, moving, remembering things, most likely she will have memory loss.

When her sister arrived at the hospital she was furious, how was it possible that y/n was drinking again and doing these things as irresponsible. Alexia got angry and said a few things to her.

"Look, I don't think that looking for blames is the solution, what I think is that we should support each other without blaming in favor of y/n not dying, because I swear that if she dies I am going with her, you don't understand the things she was going through, and being honest neither did I, and if looking for blames then blame me because I was the one insisting" Alexia said. "Insist on what, what did you say Alexia" says y/n's sister "I insisted so much on the idea of starting a family, having children, that without those things I couldn't continue with her, that all this time was lost, but I swear it's not like that, it hurts me a lot to know that probably the only thing she heard from me was that while she's always being the loveliest person she is told me that for her the family was me and she didn't need children while she was with me, you don't know how much I regret it." Says Alexia crying and Lilah just approached and hugged her. At the end of the day their relationship is very close. "Ale calm down a little and come let's sit down, I think I understand why y/n is like this with the family thing and maybe when y/n wakes up it will kill me because it's something she didn't want you to know" lilah says calmly. They settled into the waiting room chairs.

"Since she was very little, my sister has always been the black sheep, the daughter that nobody wanted, the girl that when she had the opportunity to left home she did and never came back, you know Alexia when my sister left I was very sad but as an older sister I always saw the mistreatment and never said anything, she stopped going to so many events, so many Christmas reunions, so many birthdays or things like that because she simply knew that they didn't want her, they didn't show it love of support, the only thing that accompanied her in her gray days and well not so gray, was her bottle of whiskey, what can you ask from a teenager who has social pressure for what she does and no support or family that can tuck her in and tell her that everything will be okay" says the sister between soft tears. "I didn't know that, I thought that since she was also getting along with you..." Ale said remembering the phone calls from your parents.

"Of course Ale, you more than anyone knows that she is not one of those people who scream her problems and plead for help, she didn't want you to see her as something weird, that's why she gets along so well with your family, she found love in you, to feel loved, tucked in by someone, valued, no matter what and luckily your family is just like you, if you see the relationship my parents have with me and have with her you would surely get angry because you and I know what is y/n and how important it is to have her in our lives, Ale I'm not going to lie to you, a while ago I also thought that my sister wanted to be a mother because you know mate, look at how she treats the children, they have a very special relationship, very nice, she is a pure soul, but all her life she has seen examples of how not to be parents, how my mother ignored her and her things, Alexia the fact that my parents are not here is not new, when that 17 year old girl in her peak career broke her cruciate ligament, nobody was there for her, not even to give her a bottle of water, and because of that and more things is that y/n is super strong and every thing she sets in her mind to do she achieves it. For many years it was just her against the world and she has lived many blows without saying a word, so if she gets out of here you will understand that it will be very difficult, she will need a lot of support because according to what I have been told, her injuries are serious, probably the only thing that keeps her alive is football and she won't can do that anymore" says Lilah calmer. "I swear Lilah when y/n gets out of here things will be different, I would have liked to have this same talk but with her and avoid this bump in our road but life gives some people a lot and others very little, I swear I will be in her way as long as she lets me, that girl deserves nothing but good things and I believe that all the people she has given her love have let her down in a certain way, but just like you, I also want to do well, did you know that at home I have the ring to propose to her? I swear that without it I can't live" says Alexia more calm and confident. "I'm glad to hear that Ale, you two do each other good, please don't lose that, you're all would be miserable for life and that's not what you're all deserve." Lilah said as she gave Alexia a hug.

Hours later

"Relatives of y/n y/l" says the receptionist on the OR floor. "We are" say Lilah and Alexia at the same time. "The doctor is cleaning up but he's on his way here to report his relative" says the girl stoically. "Thank you very much" they both say in unison.

Once in the study room with the doctor....

"Well, I must say that it was a very complicated surgery because we found internal injuries that we couldn't see in the x-ray and that compromised her health, I am not lying when I say that she went into cardiac arrest at least three times and that worries us a lot because it means that her heart is weak. About her cervical injuries I am afraid that only when she wakes up we will be able to know if she has sensitivity in her legs and if she will be able to walk again, but I must admit that because of the blows her spinal cord has been affected, I want to be very realistic with you, if we manage to have a satisfactory recovery it will be very difficult for her to return to her profession, because the high impact can cause definitive injuries, now my colleagues are monitoring her brain signals because in the resonance we saw very few but we can guarantee that there is no brain death, but any sequels will be determined once she wakes up, at the moment she is not in coma but she was not awake either, we have implemented a method of sedation a little strong but I insist she is not in coma, so now later when the entrance to her relatives is authorized you're all can talk to her, in this state she can listen hope so. Of course, the view that you are going to find is very strong, because she is connected to many tubes and intravenous lines, also her external injuries are a little strong and her foot has an external fixator because there was a fracture of the tibia and fibula". Says the doctor super calm but forceful.

"thank you very much doctor, the fact that she is still alive is because of your effort, let's hope that the evolution is positive, sure it is" says Lilah calm and Alexia super scared because she doesn't understand anything. "Well Ale, y/n is not well and there are strong changes coming in her life and the only thing we have left to do is be by her side to make it as bearable as possible, I am not so much worried about her physical injuries but mental then we must make sure that when she gets out of here she gets psychological attention, and have faith that she will get out of this because she is a super strong person, she always has been and this will be just a very fat bump for her, are you ready to see her" Lilah says optimistic. "I don't know, I just know that if I will always be even if she doesn't want me to, it will be hard for me to see her like this but that's okay" Alexia says forcefully. Alexia's phone starts ringing, it's Ana and Leah on joint call.

"Hi girls."

"Hi Alexia, what happened to y/n, did you find her" says Ana worried.

"Girls, y/n was involved in an accident and it's serious" says Alexia with her voice cracking remembering the anguish experienced a few hours ago.

"How???? What do you mean accident and serious????, my goodness" says Leah in dismay.

"Yes girls, apparently her car overturned at high speed on Tibidabo and her injuries are serious, she probably won't be able to play football anymore" "if you want to come I'm sure y/n would really appreciate it" says Ale sadly.

"I'm already looking at flights to Barcelona, I just can't believe it, what a downer girls, I'm so sad" says Leah in tears.

"Ale tells me which hospital you are, I'm on my way" says Ana in a hurry.

"We are in the one near Tibidabo" "now I'm sending you the location, I'm going to hang up, I'm going to go in to see my baby" and Alexia hung up.

Before entering the room Alexia calls the team managers to discuss what happened and they tell her not to worry that everything is going to be fine and that she can take all the time in the world to be with y/n.

Lilah takes Alexia's hand and asks her if she is ready to go in to which Ale nods not so sure....

When they enter the first thing they see is y/n lying on the bed with many tubes everywhere, one coming out of her mouth, IV in her arms, one in her leg and the fixator in her ankle adding the bandage on her head (because nothing can be seen from her spine but that's where her surgery was) a tube coming out of her side, Alexia's heart breaks in little pieces to see her like this, the love of her life lying on a bed fighting for her life....

"Ale, talk to her and hold her hand, so she could feel you are here, with her, while I go make some calls" "Ok" alexia says.

"Hello my love, I know that the last time I spoke to you I didn't say very nice things but I want you to know that they're not true, I was very angry with you, it is that you are a stubborn honey, why don't you tell me your things, my life you are going to be very well. You are going to recover and although everything will be very different I am going to be with your sister and you all the way, you are going to be well, healthy, strong and laughing at life as always, I am sad to see you like this, I don't like to see that you are having a bad time, I only ask you to fight and stay here with me, don't go without me, I love you so much, all the girls are worried, even Leah is coming from London later and Ana is on her way, I'm sure that when they see me they will want to tear my head off for being stubborn, and you should know that I don't mind not having children but as long as I have you, nothing happens. .. We will buy the little house on the beach that we want so much and we will be very happy my love, I cannot do without you, you are my life, you have always been my life, I love you, very much and I will not leave here and go home without you. I love you too much, you can't imagine how much..." Alexia says through tears as she comes over and gives you a little kiss on your uninjured cheek. She arranges the chair next to you and doesn't let go of your hand, trying to give you some human warmth in that cold room. And she falls asleep for a while to the sound of the monitors lulling her to sleep.

[eriochromatic]

I love your Silco takes so I was wondering if you could share yours on Vander and the drowning incident because no matter what angle I look at, it doesn't make sense.

As far as I can tell from what we're shown, the riot was well under way before Silco threw that molotov, and it's confirmed that enforcers killed Felicia. Thing is, it's implicit that Felicia chose to participate in the riot because a.) Why else would she be there, and b.) She was down with Zaun being independent for HER KIDS. Also, anyone who participates in a riot, or even a peaceful protest, knows they're putting their life on the line. So while I understand reacting to loss with intense grief, it's not exactly a surprise? It's something you have to mentally prepare for when you take a stand against an oppressor?

But then, if you go the ideology route with Silco taking it too far and the riot was Silco's idea, that stunt on the bridge was most likely pre-planned, organized resistance. This means a sizable number in their community, including Felicia and Connol, supported it. Even if Vander had doubts, he went along with it. Otherwise, why does the show open with him beating an enforcer on the bridge? Vander had other options: he could have split the resistance group down the middle by sitting it out and/or trying to stop Silco, neither of which he did!

The letter highlights the loss of Felicia as Vander's triggering event, and Vander admits that there's blood on both their hands. To be honest, I kind of like this because it hints that Silco's violence was acceptable to Vander within the context of revolution, and he thought he could handle the sacrifices required. Ironically, when he couldn't handle it, HIS violence pushed Silco towards any-violence-necessary because you can't trust anyone ever anyway!

Anyway, I know this is the fault of flimsy writing in S2 and what feels like internal censorship with challenging political status quo during production, but two drowning attempts (which for Silco came out of nowhere), followed by expulsion from the Lanes (which he helped build), the guilt of Felicia's death, and the total loss of the friends and community he was fighting for ... I mean, at least Silco's villain era makes complete and total sense???

Ugh honestly I try not to think about the drowning incident or even make sense of it anymore because every time I do, it's just so obvious to me that the writers themselves had no idea what they're doing. Timelines are completely off, character motivations make no sense, so why is it up to me to untangle the mess they made?

I have a huge love hate relationship with season 2 because on one hand, I didn't expect as much Silco crumbs we got in the first place and I'm SO HAPPY we got to see him normally in episode 5 and thriving in episode 7. But the retcon… I was so pissed when Act 2 dropped because the whole bridge incident just stopped making sense like you said.

Then when Act 3 happened, it all clicked together, but not in the "ohhh the story makes sense now" way but in the "oh the writers needed to set up smth previously so this would work." and it completely took me out of it. Like. The writers wanted Vander and Silco to make up with each other. But they don't know how to do that. Let's add some underlying sentimentality between Vander and Silco and Vi's mom, then kill Vi off. That'll make them go back together (along with that STUPID LETTER Vander wrote). Sure that's a bandaid solution and on surface level it works, but I don't think the writers really thought we would think about Silco this much so the moment you peel back the layers nothing makes sense anymore. I think they could've crafted a way more interesting story if they ACTUALLY SAT DOWN AND TRIED to have Silco and Vander reconcile without using Felicia as a crutch, but season 2 has an overarching problem of "lets have all the important things happen offscreen and only imply that they happened" which is just… so lazy…. so I'm not surprised that this happened.

It just weakens so, so many parts of the story and raises way more questions than answer them. Why does Silco pull away and distance himself from Felicia's family? Surely Vi should know him from before? Does Silco only take in Powder because he knew she was Felicia's daughter? Why, WHY does Vander go like "there are worse things than enforcers out there" (implying Silco) in s1 while talking to Benzo????????? when he's apparently felt guilty this whole time ??????? what happened to "I've looked everywhere????" etc etc idk man. from s1 I always thought the bridge incident happened way, way earlier from Felicia dying bc Vi looked like she was about 7 years old during the bridge and around 14 during act one, but then if you see Silco during the s2 warwick flashback he looks like he's 25. maybe 30 at the maximum. aint no way he aged that much in 7 years, in act one he and Vander both feel like they're in their mid 40s idk.

This is lowkey why I kind of only want to draw young Silco.. I love old man yaoi but like. If everything I draw is just flashback version of him, I don't need to worry about logistics of the bridge thing bc it hasn't happened yet lmfao. Or the AU version where everything is solved and no one rlly thinks about that time anymore.

Honestly I've tried to write this response several times trying to spell out my version of the timeline but just. nothing makes any fucking sense. I don't like thinking about how badly the writers fucked up on this part. Silco magically gets an eye injury caused by Vander and they had yaoi divorce but it's fine now. That's just how it is for me and if I think about it even a little more in depth my head will explode and I have better things to do with my time like draw zaundads yaoi

[sakuraonsaturn]

I don't trust Joanne at all.

I don't get why people use Joanne's words and motives as part of trying to figure out Amanda, Wooly, and Hameln.

Now let me clear this up now: I do not think Joanne is a bad person. She is willing to do anything to save her brother. And I think we need to understand that that anything is not within our best interests.

First off, I'm probably a bit biased considering I didn't trust Joanne from the very beginning. We meet this masked stranger who is somehow in our aunt's house. (Seriously, how did she get in there? Kate may have given her the keys but... why didn't she tell us about Joanne at all? If Joanne is helping Kate, shouldn't she have said that Joanne might help us too?)

I mean, I think it was a bad idea for Riley to just go into Joanne's car (and sleep in it no less) considering Joanne hadn't yet given us any real proof of her identity or even her name. Like Riley, stranger danger?!

Like if she had turned out to be someone from Hameln coming to kidnap Kate and/or Riley then this would've been really bad. I know she isn't, but at that point Joanne could've been anybody. And we just... went with her without question.

Then we break into the library with her. Like... even if she had Kate's keys she's not an employee there... so that's breaking and entering.

Then let's talk about Joanne's speech. Kate died because of her. Because she was willing to do anything to get her brother back... because she pushed Kate too far. Joanne admitted that this was mostly- if not all her fault. Now, I think she could be blaming herself a bit too much... it's probably not all her fault. But she also admitted that she used us. For her own gain. Not for Kate or our best interests.

But I think the interesting thing about this is that even though Joanne admits that she did all this... it doesn't stop her from doing it again.

In that Cassette tape, Kate was telling us what she wanted... she wanted us to stop. She wanted us to escape and never deal with Hameln's wrath. But instead of respecting Kate's wishes, Joanne goes directly against them, telling us to fight Hameln.

Once again, I'm not saying Joanne is evil or a terrible person. Just that she's working purely for her own goals... our safety and best interests are not on their radar like they were on Kates.

The whole scene of the Wooly monster killing her could mean anything, not just that it's siding with Hameln. I mean, it could definitely be siding with destroying the tapes... it could also be protecting Riley and Kate from a person who clearly dangerous to them specifically.

That night she screamed at Kate to give her those tapes... and I imagine she was probably pushing Kate really hard to find a solution. Kate and Riley are the only two known characters working in Amanda (and to some extent Wooly's) interests of escaping the tapes and ending the show so it can't hurt anyone anymore.

In the "Do you feel safe tape" Amanda warns us about strangers, and also seems to stop trusting us when she hears Joanne's voice. Remember, Joanne is not working in Amanda's best interests which seem to be our best interests as well. She doesn't want to save Rebecca, she wants to save Jordan. Kate probably knew that destroying the tapes would hurt Amanda and Wooly, she probably would have told Joanne this, but Joanne doesn't care. Amanda doesn't trust Joanne. She has every reason not to. We have every reason not to. For she is someone who is willing to sacrifice anything to save someone she loves... and as noble as that is... that includes us. Kate, Riley, Amanda, and Wooly. If it meant saving her brother... she probably wouldn't think twice about doing something that would bring them harm.

What I'm saying is, both demons recognized Joanne as a threat. Now does this mean they are both working to protect us? I have no idea. But Joanne being a threat to Riley and Kate is an interesting piece of the puzzle to consider.

I don't trust Joanne because she is only in it for her goals and not ours. Not that she's a bad person for doing so, plenty of people could probably imagine being willing to do almost anything to save someone they love. But with a person like that... you just can't trust everything they do and say.

Wooly warned us about strangers. Amanda warned us about trusting people. They were probably warning us... about Joanne.

[dyns33]

The Best Friend part 2

Yes I made a lil 3 parts series for Homelander and his bestie.

If Y/N had to give John one good point, it was that he had been honest.

He could have said nothing, and she probably would have never known.

But at the same time, he wasn't completely stupid, and it wasn't a good idea to keep secrets like that.

Because he himself didn't like being lied to, promising that it would never happen between them, but also that he was giving Firecracker power over him, who could have threatened to tell her everything if he didn't do what she wanted.

Maybe she was blinded by admiration at the moment, claiming that she was at his beck and call and that she wouldn't ask for anything in return, but John knew people. He couldn't trust her.

"I'm not attracted to her at all, I told her that."

"… That reassures and consoles me enormously, John."

"Look, I understand that you're angry. But it was just once, just once ! A moment of weakness. I was exhausted, a lot of things had happened, you weren't there…"

"So it's my fault ?"

"No." He growled before sighing, trying to keep his cool. "I didn't say that. She was very persuasive. How does she know that I… Anyway, it was a mistake. I can fire her, she's no use to me. That idiot is loyal, I can ask her anything I want, but one word from you and she's gone. I can even kill her if you ask."

A lot of people wouldn't know how to react in this situation.

Normally it wasn't a good idea to upset the Homelander. You had to agree with him, not cry, not yell, not talk back. It was already an accomplishment that he admitted he had made a mistake.

Maybe he hadn't apologized, but Y/N was probably smart enough to know that he was sorry and that she should forgive him.

Anyone else would have eventually said sorry, taking the blame on them and making excuses for his cheating.

But besides the fact that she had been his only friend during his childhood, John loved Y/N because she wasn't afraid of him. And that meant she wasn't going to give in when he had hurt her.

"Your solution to a problem always has to be murder. Really, John, we're not eight years old anymore."

"Exactly, that's why we're talking like two adults."

"I'm waiting."

"What ?"

"For you to act like an adult."

Then John chuckled. He put on his eternal air of a guilty child who pretended not to understand what he had done wrong, disturbed that someone dared to corner him in this way, him, the great Homelander.

But seeing that Y/N was staring at him without saying anything, waiting, he quickly regained his seriousness, hiding his embarrassment behind a mask of annoyance.

"I just told you that I wouldn't do it again. She doesn't attract me at all, she's pathetic. I only love you. I've only ever loved you, since forever. The others were nothing, distractions, puppets. You're the only one who really knew me, who made me happy."

"I'm waiting."

"You don't want me to cut her in two, and I can't go back in time by flying around the Earth in the opposite direction of rotation contrary to what some idiots think, I don't see what I can do."

"Apologize."

"… Sorry." he mumbled, looking down, showing a pout.

"No. Better than that, John. Give me your most sincere apologies."

At this point, someone else would already be dead, or at least facing a furious and threatening supe, ready to use his lasers to silence her.

But Y/N was really not just anyone. Realizing that she would not change her mind, John mumbled, hands on his hips, before displaying his fake stage smile.

"I'm so sorry."

"I'm still waiting."

"… I should never have done that, it was pathetic of me. I love you more than anything and I shouldn't take it for granted, you deserve to be treated with respect. Forgive me."

"Hmm. Almost but not yet." she decided, holding back a smile.

She was still angry, but Y/N was ready to forgive him. After all these years, she knew how John was. She knew he would never have said the word "sorry" if he didn't mean it, and he wouldn't have confessed anything if he didn't really care about her.

But the moment was tasty and she wanted to make the most of it, so that he would learn his lesson well.

"What ? You want me to get on my knees ?"

"That would be a good start."

"… Fine."

Y/N had said that as a joke. In truth, she didn't really know what she was waiting for, only that she wanted it to last a little longer. It was impossible to tell whether or not she liked seeing John at her feet, staring at her with fear.

"I'm sorry. Don't leave me."

"Oh, John…"

"I know I can be difficult. You're always good and patient with me, even though I don't deserve it at all. I love you. If you left me, I would die, truly. The day they took you from me, I thought I was having a heart attack. I couldn't breathe. I would destroy everything if you disappeared again."

It wasn't exactly a reassuring statement. It could even have been taken as blackmail or a threat. But John would never hurt Y/N, she knew that.

He would kill everyone else, leaving only them, but he would tear off an arm rather than hurt her.

Tenderly, she stroked his hair, then his cheek, before leaning in to kiss him.

"I forgive you, John."

"Hmm."

"I love you too, I'm not going to leave you."

"Thanks."

"Get up now."

"Hmm. I don't know, I like the view." he said with a small smile. She followed his gaze, still leaning over, understanding that this way he had a full view of her chest and crotch.

The small pat he took on your head made him snicker, as did Y/N's falsely outraged look.

"I know another way to make it up to you."

"It wouldn't really be a punishment."

"I'll just be a little sad if I can't find any milk. But we could also do something to change that."

"Why are you never serious ?" she sighed, rolling her eyes.

The apology ended like that, because she received a call that caught her full attention. Y/N didn't look at John either, who never left her, dangerously serious, and fixed on her stomach.