#if not then obviously rewrite it

[jeonful]

im abt to cry, i wrote for over an hour and my internet crashed, NOTHING SAVED

no babyyyyy. no fucking way. I TOLD YOU ON CALL TO NOT DO IT STRAIGHT ONTO TUMBLR AND SAVE IT ON A WORD DOCUMENT OR SOMETHING. hopefully you didn't have like 5k words, how long was it? if it makes u feel better, I did that before but when I redid it, it was even better.

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

Part 2/2

By the time Stanley had realized he wasn't as alone as he believed himself to be entrapped in this ravenous abyss; he had honestly begun to suspect that he was finally starting to properly lose his mind.

In all the ceaseless miles that Stanley had journeyed during his apparent permanent residence within the dark devouring void, not once had he encountered another conscious, walking, talking being similar to himself. Every other formerly living creature that he had crossed paths with had been so... silent. Empty. Dead, in every sense of the word. It was as though the very essence of life itself had been sucked out of their bodies with a straw, their forms slowly falling apart piece by piece under the vicious gluttony of the darkness that surrounded them. They looked like they actually were supposed to be there, unmoving and comatose, unlike him.

So, when Stanley first began to encounter the twins, all of a sudden, he wasn't the only one in the dark.

When meeting the first pair of them, he found himself standing in a lake.

He hadn't even noticed the changes at first. It felt as though he had been walking for weeks on end, his body moving purely on autopilot and his aching legs leading him towards a destination only it knew. A thick fog of forgetfulness and flickering memories had descended upon his brain like a heavy blanket of numbing static as he had traveled. In this absentminded state, he hadn't even realized that the ever-present undulating, buzzing darkness surrounding him had begun to gradually shift and morph to form a horizon line; stretching into tall looming cliffsides that almost seemed to close in on him. Once the nonexistent floor beneath his soles abruptly began to ripple and warp, like the disturbed surface of a shallow puddle; only then did he finally notice his transformed environment.

The transition was seamless, almost dream-like. One moment, he was still surrounded by that filthy, overwhelming abyss; and the next, his boots were suddenly plunged deep into the cold, dark lake water.

The silence didn't leave, however. It still choked and stuffed its way into Stanley's ears to clog up his mind with thick cotton; the eerie quiet not quite matching the calm, almost serene scenery the void seemed to have abruptly transformed itself into. Like a movie with its sound cut off; leaving only the unsettling hum of the projector to fill the empty air.

It was odd. The lake was surely incredibly deep. He could obviously tell from how thin and pathetically small the shores appeared all the way from where he now unceremoniously stood in the middle of the lake. Stan could look down and see the darkness below his feet swallow what meager light that managed to break through the murky waters. The overwhelming black almost seemed to beckon him, gaping and haunting; a bottomless underwater pit of pitch black that never seemed to end.

And yet, he didn't sink. Stanley remained perfectly level, the almost ink like waters stopping just at ankle level, as though he were held up just above the surface by some invisible force. Even the writhing waves seemed small and low, as though the waters were shy to climb up his legs further than that. It was odd, so very odd.

However, it wasn't nowhere near as odd as the sight that greeted him when he finally lifted his eyes from the waters.

Stanley had crossed paths with truly unbelievable sights in this strange somewhere; from bursting, collapsing stars; to the imploding heat death of entire universes, but none of them seemed to hold the candle to what he saw then when he lifted his eyes:

Children.

Two, to be exact. Two, nearly identical looking children stood motionless before him; completely soaked through to the bone as though they had taken a plunge into the frigid water that pooled around their ankles. It was a girl and a boy, both adorned with twin expressions utterly devoid of emotion, their wide eyed stare seeming to burn holes into his thin jacket. Their drenched clothes sagged off of their scrawny frames; thin rivulets of water dirpping off of them and disturbing the glassy surface of the water at their feet. The little girl's hair had messily stuck to her face in thin sodden strands, her cheeks still full and round with youth just like the boy's. They looked young. Too young to be in a place such as this.

Oh, but their eyes; their eyes.

They burned with such anger; such injustice, brighter than any dying star or galaxies he had ever seen. Anger towards the world, to fate, to whatever cruel deity that had deemed them fit to be sent to this wretched place so prematurely. They were too young to be here; to be entrapped like he was amongst this hungry darkness. And yet, here they were, sheer denial against their own untimely deaths being the only thing keeping them awake and conscious amongst the dead and rotting. A show of juvenile defiance to nature itself so vehement even the all-consumign darkness seemed hesitant to devour them whole just yet.

It saddened him. It saddened him to know that they belonged there, that they were supposed to be there. He could see it, he could feel it; they were dead. No amount of determination could deny that universal fact.

When they spoke, Stanley could hear anger:

Stan chuckled in a futile attempt to lighten the suddenly heavy atmosphere that threatened to crush him whole. "A lake monster? You kids and your imagination," he teased, hoping to somehow rid the poor kids of the haunted look that seemed to whirl in their glares. No child should have been burdened with such a knowing look; such eyes that looked like they had seen everything there was to see about the world, the horrid and the good.

Clearly, it had been the wrong thing to say, and Stanley's faux pas was rewarded with a scowl from the little boy. A world's worth of sour contempt etched into every contorted groove that his grimace seemed to dig into his much too young face. Stan suddenly felt guilt squeeze at his weary bones for having caused that.

"That's what they all said," the boy spat out, eyes shining with a sheen of wetness Stan wasn't sure he was prepared to deal with.

Stan left that first interaction with the twins with the feeling of guilt and sorrow still clining to him.

He couldn't have known, at the time. He couldn't have known that this wouldn't be anywhere near the last time that he would meet the pair. He hadn't realised just how many of them there were. After that first pair, his endless journeying within the Abyss was hardly be spent alone anymore. Countless more times, he came face to face with the exact same two young and impossibly worn faces; forced to meet one pair of beaten and bruised kids after another.

Not one pair had died the same death as another. Some had gotten lost, prey to whatever threat that had snatched them up out in the open; some had fallen from high up; some had been crushed under an incredible weight; some had burned; some eaten alive; some zombified. Some didn't even seem physically harmed at all, body perfectly intact, and yet that same faraway, distrubed look in their eyes remained.

He thought the worst ones were the ones he found alone. A little girl or a little boy, left all lonesome without their other half there. Twins, he remembered a pair of them telling him once.

Once, he had come across a town full of silent, stone statues. It was a rustic, shabby, almost nostalgic looking town- odd and strangely familiar. The sight of it had tugged at an aged memory that had long since wasted away in the back of his mind. It was serene, almost deceptively so. The sun shone; the air smelled crisp and fresh; numerous waterfalls continued to crash down from the tall cliffsides; and a soft nonexistent breeze whistled through the thicket of pine trees that blanketed the outskirts of the town. None of it seemed to match the gruesome scene of the hundred wailing statues that littered every inch of the town.

He had found the boy's statue on the other side of town, deep within the green forest and toppled over the gnarled roots of a towering tree. Like the rest of the townsfolk, he too, was frozen mid-shriek; his stone face twisted and contorted into a mock impression of a silent scream as his body lay paused in a writhing struggle. He made sure to be gentle when he carried the boy's statue over to place it beside the girl's, whose statue stood far deeper into the forest, sporting the same rictus grimace of terror as her brother's. It somehow felt wrong for them to have been so far apart from one another, even in death.

He had come to dread meeting of the twins. He hated every second he had to confront yet another pair of dead children that did not belong here, but fate had decided they did. He despised having to listen to their tales of woe as they wept about the injustice of the world, of having died young; he despised himself for being unable to do more than weep with them.

"We don't belong here, Grunkle Stan," he would listen to the little girl weep, calling him a title he didn't recognize. He never remembered if they had ever told him their name, but they all seem to know his, without a fail. "If we're dead, then what about you? What about Grunkle Ford? Mom? Dad? What about them? We can't be dead, we can't be," they would say, confusion and frustration written all over their faces. They didn't understand. They didn't understand why they had come to the darkness so early, so unfairly.

He never knew what to say, he'd never been good with words.

All he could do was kneel down to their levels and engulf them in his arms, hoping he could somehow squeeze the pain straight out of their bodies in his embrace. He hugged them, because what else could he do?

[ganondoodle]

(totk rewritten WIP)

been tinkering on raurus design-

mostly taking the general idea i had previously, with these 'tentacles' with lighfern like bulbs at the end (bc the sonau originate from the underground here) in their hair and tails

one is more hyrulean, perhaps hes trying to imitate whatever he found out about the era of myth (old titles) which doesnt align perfectly with the traditional sonau style (but still mixed with it, as with the golden designs mostly designed after the lightfern thignies in the underground)

the other is one more designed after the barbarian set from botw, but kinda .. reverse engineered(?), like what it might have looked like originally .. also more royal

last one is a mix

[fruitydiaz]

at first i was like why didn’t they make the sex flashback with shannon clearly a flashback like the others in the episode and then i realized that it wasn’t a flashback eddie’s just actively rewriting his relationship with shannon while eating lunch with his girlfriend and plotting to cheat on her with the random woman he met at a boutique that slightly resembles his dead wife who did in fact ask him for a divorce before she died but eddie’s not gonna remember that detail rn is he

[aestheticallynotdeerlightful]

Bunch of doodles again, some unfinished comics, some from my sketchbook etc etc. You can really see the sonic fixation kicking back in after 2 years

.

(Please do not use or repost my works anywhere without explicit permission from me thank you )

[taylortruther]

i've said this before but i really like that the albums taylor wrote with joe describe so well the steps of a relationship (not every relationship is like this, but it feels common enough): reputation where there's so much lust, and some baggage, and you feel it's "us against the world" - lover that's about how shit is getting real and it's making you anxious but your relationship is growing - folklore/evermore about how shit is so real that in addition to the past, you now also have baggage from the current relationship - and midnights reflecting on not just your current relationship, but of all those that came before, realizing who you are and what you really want versus what you've accepted in the past.

[patolemus]

Teen wolf rewrite but the only change is that Stiles uses a backwards cap every single day and as a result he is deemed the hottest student in Beacon Hills High School

[secretsofthewilde]

Well. I did say that only one person needed to ask and I'll share. So here you go @raisedbythetv89 @richtea-biscuit

The actual academic essay I wrote and submitted is available to read here (x) for now at least, but as it was written for an assignment with a set word count and parameters, I ended up having to take out the section I had originally written about Cordelia and also there are a lot of references to the set textbook readings I was given. So it might not be the lightest of reading.

Essentially the essay poses the argument that for all the supposedly progressive feminist intentions of the show, we regularly see gender and sexual stereotypes still being reinforced within the show especially through the way that the women are treated for their relationship with sex. That is to to say that while the ‘Scooby gang’ typically seems to contest gender norms, with the male characters often appearing as submissive to Buffy and the female characters themselves each threatening gender norms in their own way, the intimate relations between the characters often undermine these initial contestations. In my essay I explore this through comparing Faith and Buffy's relationship with sex during the early seasons of the show.

Below is my section on Cordelia which unfortunately didn't make it into the essay, followed by a summary of my essay points on Faith and Buffy. I'm mainly sticking to seasons 1-3 for this essay because while I do mention season 4 at one point briefly, the introduction of Riley and Tara mark a change in the nature of sex and what it means in the show.

Part 2 (which is a look at Willow) has also now been written and can be found here (x)

Cordelia Chase

Cordelia starts out as a mild social antagonistic force to our Scooby gang, she is a bully. As the show progresses though she slowly starts to build connections with them, however she isn't allowed into their group until she is depicted as having romantic feelings for Xander, rather than just sexual. When it comes to Cordelia and Xander's relationship she is the dominant one. She has more social power than him and the Scoobys, as well as being more financially and academically stable than him. She also is the only one with a car, meaning she is the one who drives them to their dates. And while this at first seems to be challenging gender stereotypes of powerful men providing for an attractive but weaker woman, the problem is that she isn't allowed or accepted into the Scooby gang until after she sacrifices her social privilege to commit to a public relationship to him. Prior to this sacrifice any relationship or attempt at casual sex we saw Cordelia make was framed as shallow behaviour from her to be scorned or done for comedic effect. We see both her and Buffy seek intimate relationships in these early season, but only Buffy's attempts are framed as sympathetic. It was only when she expressed an emotional connection to Xander that she was presented as a sympathetic character to the audience.

Buffy Summers

Buffy and Angel are the first intimate relationship we see explored in the show and so it's the one that sets the audiences' initial expectations for intimacy. While Buffy is dominant within her social groups and her general use of violence to defeat enemies is something that we would say challenges gender norms, she rarely maintains these traits (or at least they are made much weaker) in scenes that explore her relationship with Angel. Once she's romantically interested in him she routinely takes a submissive role in their relationship; she goes to him for help and advice, places his well being over her role as a slayer, and waits for him to be the one to define and initiate their relationship.

 Unlike Cordelia’s early relationship with Xander, the audience is meant to be invested and sympathetic towards Buffy and Angel. From the get go we have it established that the two love each other, but despite their doomed fate we are meant to want to see them together and therefore we are sympathetic to Buffy's attempts at intimacy with him. When they do have sex and Angel loses his soul, these painful consequences is sometimes seen to be done as a punishment for Buffy having sex, but I think it's more to do with the tragic nature of their gothic romance rather than that - because Buffy and Angel did have the emotional and psychological connection that the show requires in order for their intimacy to be viewed as 'good'. In contrast though, once they break up we see Buffy try to have sex casually with other non-supernatural students but this only results in her getting hurt. When she and Parker have sex he dumps her the following day after using her; which is her punishment for attempting to have sex with something who she didn't really love like Angel. Buffy's also interesting in that her attempt to have a not only loving but sexual relationship also sets her apart from the other slayers - Kendra doesn't have sex, Faith doesn't do emotional intimacy, but Buffy tries to have both.

Faith Lehane

Faith gets to be the sexually free and explorative girl that Buffy is unable to. While she does struggle to do so, within the first three season Buffy does successfully create and sustain a heteronormative relationship that is both sexually and emotionally intimate. While Buffy might flirt with other guys that aren't Angel, she's still easily the "good girl" who cares more about the emotional connection with a guy than sex; in comparison Faith is someone who presents very confident in her sexuality and actively seeks casual sex without any emotional connections. If Buffy is seen to be masculine because of her traits as a slayer than Faith can be seen as hyper-masculine. So she challengers gender stereotypes in that her seeking casual sex and her dominant flirtatious behavior are traits typically reserved for a stereotypical "bad boy" type of character.

When Faith is first introduced to the show as an ally to our Scooby gang, her sexual confidence and behaviours are initially something that Buffy herself wants to replicate. The only time that we actually see her engage in sex on screen however is when she initiates sex with Xander, which coincidently also marks the last episode where she is considered to be someone trust worthy. Faith is the one to initiate sex with Xander, and she remains in a dominant position of control of the scene that we observe. The moment seems to subvert the trope of the confident male "deflowering" the inexperienced and submissive women (who in this scene would be Xander). However the scene is immediately cut with Faith kicking Xander out of her apartment after he tries to initiate an emotional connection with her, and this is framed for comedic effect. By framing their whole sexual encounter as comedic, it's undermining how Faith's sexual confidence seemed to challenge gender roles and instead framing deviations from expected heteronormative behaviours as something to laugh at.

It's also important that the very next episode (Bad Girls) is the one where we clearly see the descent of her mental stability as her reckless behaviour (both sexual and violent) in one-night results in her accidentally killing someone. What was initially seen as traits of a sexually confident woman, and therefore challenging gender roles, then becomes depicted for the rest of the season as signs of her mental instability and her eventual role as an antagonist. This is her punishment for engaging in casual sex; for not having the emotional or psychological connection that is needed for sexual actions to be accepted or approved of by the narrative.

Conclusion

Within the first three seasons of Buffy we see that the female characters are able to challenge gender roles in many ways, however this isn't extended to sex. They can enjoy and seek sex out at times, however they will suffer as a consequence if they don't fulfil certain heteronormative conventions during those times.

Buffy and Faith are allowed to be powerful slayers who are in charge, but in order for their power (and how they challenge dominant ideologies) to remain acceptable it needs to be limited to their battles in the streets rather than in the sheets.

[montied]

Liebgott in Points and The Last Patrol for @sharkboyandlavalieb as half(?) of her gift for the HBOWar Daily Summer Exchange!

[hana-loves-bumblebees]

So I’ve seen people making the argument that Percy canonicaly isn’t dumb + Sally taught him the myths, so it makes sense he’d recognize the monsters, and I’d like to put my two cents in.

Yes, Percy isn’t dumb, he’s an unreliable narrator who downplays himself because he’s not book smart like Annabeth. However, his smarts are more of the quick thinking on his feet and street-smart kind, which come out when he’s fighting and figuring out a way to defeat his foe. And yet. And yet we don’t get to see that in the show much at all, at least not Percy alone being the one to think up a strategy. And it takes away from his character.

“But Sally taught him the myths, of course he’d recognize the monsters-“ let me stop you right here. Because yes, it’s great Sally taught him, but she didn’t-couldn’t teach him how the monsters adapted to the modern world. Because that’s all the books are - myths brought into the modern world, myths adapted to the modern world, so that the demigods would have to display just as much skill needed to defeat the monsters as their ancient predecessors.

If you’re still not convinced, let me direct your attention towards this quote from The Chalice of the Gods, because there’s one more aspect a lot of people seem to disregard completely, and that is the Mist:

Even demigods need to concentrate to see whatever supernatural beings the Mist is hiding in plain sight. Even demigods can be easily fooled into thinking a monster is just a normal person.

We can also see that in the book Medusa scene, where it’s pretty heavily implied some sort of magic that affects both Percy and Annabeth is at play. They don’t immedietally connect the dots, which allows the reader to think for themselves who could this new character be and what their deal is. And the demigods are not any less smart for not immediately recognizing whatever foe stands before them, because the monsters have adapted and no longer are the complete same as they are in the myths, which is something neither the camp nor their mortal parents would be able to teach them. The camp cannot prepare them for how different the monsters and their tactics are.

I do think this could have been fairly easily portrayed in the show. You could have the show Annabeth and Percy be suddenly drowsy/sleepy when meeting Medusa, you could have Percy recognize Crusty after he’s already trapped Annabeth and Grover - he could suddenly remember Sally telling him the story, which would allow the audience to hear what the deal is here, and then have Percy manipulate + kill him.

So yeah. I hope this makes sense. Because I’m so tired of hearing “well it makes sense they recognized the monsters instantly” when no, it does not.

[coeluvr]

I love how the only time Vincent speaks more than 5 words at a time is when he has to argue with people. Me too, Vincent, me too. 😔

[kurithedweeb]

I just learned why Shad hates Irene in canon and knowing what I do now about everyone’s favorite the Matron, I can say with my whole heart,

What the hell, Irene

[swoleas]

instead of the racist growling and sniffing, Taash's dragon blood should have allowed them to communicate with dragons, whether by speaking to them directly or just intuitively

emmrich and davrin get sons. taash should have a giant dragon familiar. they deserve it.

imagine a plotline where the dragon expert isn't just an expert on how to kill dragons but how to befriend them, and this ability is a huge revelation about the adaari that they and Shathaan can bring to the Qunari (also Shathaan doesn't die in this version)

imagine capturing one of the dragons the "dragon king" blighted for Ghilan'nain and Elgar'nan (they wouldn't have a KING. they'd have a QUEEN) and you manage to cleanse the blight and the dragon becomes part of your veilguard family out of gratitude?

[ganondoodle]

(totk rewritten/botw 2 wip)

yes i am making 'new' arrow types that you craft with material in bulk (essentially like the new types in totk but crafting them instead of having to fuse it for each single one- to be specific, ZELDA crafts them for you bc i think its great to give her more stuff to do, the same will work with weapons and repairing weapons but that i will lock behind quests as i mentioned before, maybe you will select the stuff and then keep playing while she does a lil animation and then throws it back to you when in combat, otherwise you can make multiple at once so it doesnt take too much time- or you approach her and open an extra menu for crafting/repairing)

what are the best effects i should include? :3

[rewritingcanon]

stop making fics where scorpius and al have friends and are popular in school. they’re literally loser boyfriends bro their only friends be each other wdym they have other people they’re chatting to on a consistent basis??? the only other people they talk to thats not each other are the blood relatives and even that pushes it

[burningfunobject]

Complete word vomit but like what if viktor decides that whatever the 'arcane' is too dangerous or comes at too high a cost and starts The Glorious Evolution from there?

Maybe he feels responsible for whatever the weird magic orb thingys are and decides that all of this mess (not just with the hex core but also with zaun and piltover) was due to human error so now he thinks he has to help people by getting rid of their 'flaws' like they're ability to make the kinds of mistakes he made in s1.

We know he already doesn't want the hex core to be around anymore so why would he suddenly become infatuated with it?? Like sure maybe it has an influence over him, but I seriously doubt it would last all season

Plus viktors whole Thing is helping people why would he stick with the hex core and all it's bs if it means either vaporising people or shimmer? Viktor is smart that's like the first thing we know about him I feel like he'd find a way out of the hex core's thrall

Idk I just don't really want to watch hex core bs for like a quarter of next season, I'll still probably like it tho