#im not saying it’s easy to answer but like

[salemlunaa]

🎀 NEW IDEA: ASK CHAT GPT 🎀

ꨄ Use AI to your advantage when it comes to manifesting and shifting…

Although AI can get a little weird and scary sometimes, it’s actually such a great way to get information, motivation and inspiration all in one

Instead of hounding bloggers for the same thing all the time. Go to Chat GPT.

Now, how about i give you a few examples, let’s imagine someone called maya 𖨆

maya is having trouble because she feels like when she tries to induce the void, she always falls asleep and that’s taken away so many years from her dream life

she asks Chat GPT: “I keep falling asleep every time I try to induce the void, I feel so frustrated all the time and I need some help”

Chat GPT answers: “Hi Maya, falling asleep during void practice is common, so don’t be too hard on yourself. One way to combat this is by practicing at a time when you feel awake and alert, like in the morning or after a light exercise session. Another tip is to sit up in a comfortable position rather than lying down, as it can help you stay focused and avoid dozing off. Keep practicing with patience—it’s all part of the process!”

now let’s imagine joey 𖨆

joey is feeling frustrated because he feels like he hasn’t progressed, he’s been in the community for 2+ years and really wants his dream life

he asks: “I’m feeling so frustrated and upset, like I want to give up, I’ve been trying to induce the void and get my dream life for over 2 years, I need motivation”

Chat GPT responds; “Hi Joey, I know it’s tough, but remember that persistence is key—sometimes the journey teaches you just as much as the destination. Instead of focusing on the time passed, celebrate the fact that you’re still trying, which shows incredible resilience. Take a short break if you need to, and reconnect with why you started. Visualize your dream life vividly, and remind yourself it’s worth the effort. Progress might be closer than you think!”

now chloe 𖨆 is feeling really powerless lately, circumstances hit her hard on some days and she feels stuck, she wants to be reminded how the void is so possible and so easy and she’s so capable of it all

she asks: “Can you remind me how powerful I am? Some days circumstances hit so hard and it gets thought!! Can you explain manifesting from a logical point of view to remind me how easy it all is?”

Chat GPT responds: “Hi Chloe, let me remind you of this simple truth: you are the creator of your reality, the God of your world. From a logical point of view, everything you experience stems from your thoughts, beliefs, and focus. Circumstances are just reflections—they only hold power because you give it to them. Shift your focus, and the reflection changes effortlessly. When you truly accept that you’re the one in control, nothing can stand in your way. You’ve always had the power!”

Now you can see how well it works!! You can even use them to give you affirmations, help you with vaunts. You can be as specific as you want, trauma dump as much as you want and say whatever you want without crossing boundaries or being judged. You can use Chat GPT to script, i’ve used it so many times and it has given me so many ideas. And your script will still feel like your own, just see it as your collaborating with Chat GPT and that it you helps put your thoughts into words.

You can even use it when you’re having one of those days and just need to be reminded of the fact that you’re in charge. You can even use it for some tough love or to comfort you as you vent.

Like guys you can do so many things with this, I love Chat GPT so much we’re locked in like this:

LMFAOOO IM JOKING (or am i? 😏)

But in all seriousness, some of you need this. Flooding bloggers asks and dms with questions that they have repeated the answers to multiple times, asking things you damn well know the answer to or just asking for motivation repeatedly can take away from people who actually have a good question to ask and actually need help. Like fogging up a blogger’s inbox repeatedly venting about the 3d, or asking “hOw Do I gEt iNtO tHe VoId?” knowing damn well you know the answer to that, will prevent a blogger from noticing someone who actually has a good question that many people might also have and would actually spark an interesting discussion.

So just ask Chat GPT, it’s okay to have doubts creep in from time to time, it’s okay to need a reminder of basic things, it’s okay to forget how powerful you are sometimes, but you can literally ask Chat GPT to help you with that and it will. Instead of waiting around for bloggers to answer your dm or ask just to say the same thing, you can get actual help, and get it when you want it and how you want it.

Why don’t you ask “explain the law of assumption to me like i’m 5”

“explain the void state to me from a scientific view to help me believe”

“give me some dream body affirmations”

“i’ve been so demotivated, remind me who tf i am again”

“I’m going to come from a filthy rich family when I permashift, can you give me some £10Million+ per year jobs that my desired parents can do”

“I feel so lazy today, bully me into inducing the pure consciousness instead of procrastinating”

you don’t need to harass bloggers for these things when you can have immediate access to the answers you seek.

ꨄ 🧸🎀 Go download Chat GPT and knock yourself out!! 💋

[sevs-corner]

Another one of my wild dreams coming to me, I swear the voices are having too much fun when I’m unconscious, where its the usual Soulmate-Reincarnation trope but the Tf 141 guys always get to meet each other but…you.

Every. Single. Time.

In each new life, they’d always happen to meet, but nearing the end of theirs— a longing always seem to linger in their hearts. Pieces of their memory always missing with a piece of their soul not being fulfilled.

At first, they don’t notice it— it was already rare enough to have 4 soulmates all tied together. So, to think of another partner being somewhere out there? Yeah, that was outrageous.

They were already thankful enough that they had each other, how could they still feel so greedy and longing?

We’re they not enough for each other?

What was lacking? What were they lacking?

When then they hear murmurs of soulmates being together, they all said they’ll feel something snap into place.

They think its the soulmate bond being locked into place, their soul finally complete and fates intertwined.

Yet… they only got to the first couple of steps to that. Seeing that zing in each other’s eyes that recognizes each other as soulmates, the bonding ritual, the return of past life memories…

Every time they get to that point, they’d remember that something was just… missing.

So they try, in each life to the next, to find some way to fix that last piece into place— test out all their theories.

What if there was something wrong that they did? Were they truly partners? What if one wasn’t their mate with the other?

It wasn’t until Price offered the idea that there may be… a fifth person… involved that their tactics changed.

But they never got lucky.

How come it was so easy to find each other but not…you?

They were just about to give up in this timeline, their lives being ran rugged in the military made their hearts weak and souls crushed already— why would they make the extra effort when they already had the partners they wanted right besides them?

But they regret saying that, bringing it up and believing in it when that familiar zing rings across their brains and underneath their skins as they see you— fresh eyed recruit sent right to their team.

It was like their prayers have finally been answered, all the sacrifices their past selves made now coming to fruition—

But you see no zing- you’ve never had one.

That must be another reason why you always happen to miss them- whether it be through an early death, a bad relationship, an unfortunate event, living across the country from them.

But no, you were always right near them. You just couldn’t find them like they did with each other.

It just didn’t click until now for you and they are distraught for you.

They are so happy, souls now complete and their memories as well— but you had nothing.

That feeling of wholeness and unconditional love— you couldn’t feel it.

So they swear, that from then on, they’d always find you next— no matter how many times they’d repeat it, all the struggles and pain, it was incomparable to you who felt nothing from a forced severed soul bond.

My sleepi and awake mind are cooking but im not in the kitchen- send help what the

Masterlist here! Prev dream idea i was talkin about here- its becoming a saga oml

[itsfrenchfornothankyou]

okay so you said genuine question and im not from around here but i do have an answer! so you've unlocked an unskippable cutscene!

this is a much bigger topic than it appears on the surface, and i might be able to answer your question succinctly and briefly, but it would miss out on a lot of the stuff happening behind the scenes which is actually very important!

since this is going to be quite long (I did a rough notes on my thoughts and what i might say and it was almost 1k. so.) i am going to put the rest under a readmore

but now that you've clicked the button and commited, let's break this into parts for both our sakes.

part 1: moral purity and the loss of 'squick'

so there's been a fun phenomenon happening lately online, and it's the idea that you can assign morals by the type of things that someone likes. that the act of enjoying something or disliking something is an inherently moral act.

this in itself has a lot of reasons behind it, and digging through that history would be an essay in its own right, so im going to glaze over it. but the current state of affairs is that your own personal taste, be it in media, in people, or yes, sexual thoughts (even ones without actions) are in themselves, moral.

no matter the cause of these feelings, the outcome is this: if you find yourself liking or disliking something, there must be some reason behind it. if you find yourself grossed out by something, there is a moral and justifyable reason behind it.

this is, to me, related to the loss of the idea of a 'squick'; something that just grossed you out. 'squicks' didnt have to be triggers, they didnt have to be evil or harming you, they were a preference about something you just personally did not like.

now however, along with other terms, we have lost the idea of a 'squick' and so if you don't like something there must be a reason this thing is evil.

so now you have people seeing things like animal packers, and they are for some reason uncomfortable with them. where we might have once said 'oh well, not for me', we must now have a reason for why we are uncomfortable with this idea.

1.5: the perpetrator and the victim

in any given situation, to prevent discourse from becoming muddied or hard to answer, there must always be a person who is definitively in the right, and a person who is in the wrong.

this is a really normal reaction, it's hard to accept something as not having a clear answer, and so it's easy to find ourselves doubling down on something so we dont have to confess to the worst thing of all 'i dont know'.

Coming from disability advocacy, it's important to recognise that there are going to be situations which are not clear cut, in which nobody has done anything wrong, but people have ended up hurt or upset. sometimes needs and people are simply incompatible, and there's nothing wrong or evil there.

but that is difficult and scary, so instead it's much easier to talk about the victim and the villain. if someone is being hurt (i am looking at something that grosses me out) then someone must be intentionally hurting them (evil gross kinksters)

In this understanding of things, the discomfort itself must be harm done, and if harm is being done, then someone must be at fault. it becomes a matter of who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. So in order for them to be uncomfortable and not be evil themselves, the thing that is making them uncomfortable must be evil itself.

now that we've established these things we can actually get around to answering the actual question you asked:

Part 2: why zoophillia?

if this person has deemed the act that these people have done to be evil or bad, why not just call the act itself (which i am given to understand is hyper-realistic animal packers?) evil?

well what you surely understand, and somehwere in the back of their brain they understand, is that that's incredibly fucking stupid.

if you walk up to the average person and say hey, this person is doing this evil thing, and explain that, theyre going to think you're insane. so how are they supposed to tell the average person that this person is evil? they escelate it to most awful acusation they can think of in the moment.

in most communities, the terrible thing that they will accuse someone of is pedophillia, but in the therian circles, they dont need to escelate it to that point, because there is already a hot button topic they can point to instead.

Zoophillia, as i am given to understand, is one of the most hot button topics in the therian community. it is the group which is regularly aligning themselves with therians, that many if not most therians want nothing to do with.

it's also a group that is often conflated with therians, meaning that many therians have an immediate 'no fuck off that's not us' reaction to it, as a form of self preservation. because as soon as people have made a claim that you may be a zoophile, and you fail to respond in the appropriate way, you will be cast out of your own therian in group.

so the use of using zoophillia as an acusation is two-fold. for one, it makes people take the accusation seriously, and for two, it prevents people from doing their own research and looking into it.

because if you are told this person is evil, and if you support them you are also evil, at that point any questioning on your part is seen as complicity in evil acts. as apologism. this person is evil and if you ask my why, you must also be evil.

so lets circle back a little bit here, earlier i mentioned that the typical claim is pedophillia, which everything i said previously about evil acts is still true of, but you might not fully believe me about people escelating to the nearest most terrible thing they can think of, but the thing is that i have seen this before.

Part 2.5: tired asexual

hello again, youve probably never heard of me before, so let me tell you that I'm Asexual. more importantly, I'm an asexual person who has been on tumblr for a solid decade.

if you werent around in the mid to late 10s, you might not know just how bod aphobia on tumblr got, but i was there for it. and you know what the most common accusation of why asexuals, and anyone trying to discuss asexuality were evil?

because discussing asexuality was pedophillia.

yeah, asexuals. the well known 'lack of sexual attraction' community.

Now I can go into the series of claims that led to this, hell I could probably go diving on my old blog and find screenshots of these actual accusations, but that’s kind of besides the point. The point here is that the actual reasons people give for it being ‘insert evil thing’ are unimportant.

yeah, when i say it to you, a person who i am assuming knows a little something about asexuality, that that was the claim, your first thought is that that's an insane thing to say.

but for a lot of people the first time they heard about asexuality was in this discourse. so their brain is now primed to make the connection of 'oh, okay, asexuality is evil.' and now, when they see people defending asexuality, they're already defensive. they assume youre trying to trick them, or make them complicit.

asexuality is not the only place this tactic has been used though, you see it all the time. it's at its most common in things like homophobic legestation, anti-trans bills, or drag bans.

These people cannot justify the initial action as evil, so they jump to something you are more likely to agree with, and try to argue it is the same thing. this is what we call equivocation.

equivication is an incredibly effective tactic in fear-mongering, splitting up groups of people, and getting something innocuous labeled as morally wrong

'Think of the children' is a good example of this. No it’s not that im transphobic, it’s that I’m concerned about children. Therefore, if you’re arguing against me it must be because you yourself hate children and want harm to come to them.  

but not everyone is as obvious as to say 'think of the children' or some other line we've heard a bunch before. they find new ways to say it, and because the current safety tactics are to watch for certain phrases and words, people dont know how to look for underlying beliefs and sentiments, leaving people more vulnerable than ever to this kind of manipulation.

so now i've hopefully answered your initial question of 'why zoophillia', i want to take this a litte bit further and ask, 'what is the end goal?'

part 3: what next?

okay so would you believe me, if i said that until now ive actually been taking an incredibly good faith reading of the discourse so far?

currently I have been presenting this as a misdirection of discomfort, but not necessarily actively malicious. now however, i want to go back to the ace discourse.

bigots on tumblr weren't actually starting shit with the ace community because they really had a bone to pick with asexuals, they were doing it because they were transphobes. Surprise!

this isnt speculation on my part, transphobes have since openly discussed that they used aphobia as a kind of 'gateway' to 'gatekeeping'

if they come out of the gates talking about how 'transexuals are evil' and should be 'kicked out of the lgbt community', then they would be immediately revealed as transphobes and most of the queer community won't listen to them. these transphobic talking points have been around long enough to be identifiable and more easily discussed.

asexuality however was, particularly at the time, very under-discussed. it also wasnt a part of the 'standard' LGBT acronym, which made it easier for them to make the argument that asexual people should not be allowed to be considered part of the community.

aphobia at the time was considered less divisive, you could be more easily convinced that this community you have never heard of is evil, dont question it. theyre pedophiles and groomers, if that isnt enough to convince you theyre evil it must be because you're also an evil person, so don't question it or do your own research. then we might come for you.

This was wildly successful! And now that that campaign has gone so well, they can now openly admit that they were secretly transphobes all along! And wow, you already aligned with us, so you need to double down on hating trans people because the rest of the queer community doesn’t want you back after that bullshit!

now maybe you consider this to be a particularly poor faith reading of the current discourse. maybe i had you in the first half, but all of this stuff about secret transphobes and conservatives playing along in ways that are more acceptable seems a little far fetched and conspiratorial to you. a bit of equivication here and there isnt inherently a sign of deeper sinister intentions. isnt all of this a bit of a stretch?

and maybe youre right, maybe im just someone who has seen something similar play out before, and im jumping to defence at something that wont become the same issue.

but isn't it interesting that the people being most vitriolistically upset about all of this, and attacking the creator of these things and accusing them of zoophillia are also misgendering him?

[Tw: Zoophilia mention]

Genuine question: WHY do so many people in this community jump on everything they find weird and immediate label it as zoophilia?!

Like- animal packers, fantasy toys, yiff art, pet play, kink gear, LITERALLY ANYTHING.

Seriously, relieving dysphoria, having "dirty" urges related to your identity, even straight up liking some freaky shit does NOT mean someone is attracted to animals. And it definitely does not mean they are actively harming/thinking of harming real animals.

People really take whatever is too weird for them and try to accuse it of war crime. Be better y'all.

[blossoms-phan]

dan is so fake he’s always like “this is your chance to ask us important, hard hitting, deep philosophical questions” someone asks how do you feel having an entire generation look up to you and he’s like physically? yeah haha we’re so tall 🤪

[empyreansentinel]

never understood why jack had a portrait of moxxi up in his casino. the place went under after BL2, and at that point they hadnt been together for years. and its not like what they had together was particularly happy or long lasting, either. they were together for maybe a month before breaking up pre-TPS, and thats not even mentioning what happens between them during the game itself, so... maybe its a trophy? it doesnt feel like one when theres also one of angel. but its all i really got because presumably hes been in a much happier relationship with nisha for years, even though the portrait does feel too sentimental for a woman hes hated for the past Forever. speaking of nisha, there's no portrait of her or his wives. which is doubly weird because surely theyd be here too if moxxi is. idk, moxxi and angel are just a strange pair to have it just be them. by themselves is fine, moxxi alone is easily a trophy. and imo its just weird for a portrait of angel to be in the casino in the first place. some secret siren, huh? but together? idk. it gives mixed messages.

[ratatatastic]

quite honestly we should have a canadian whos sole job it is to make a finn giggle do pressers together more often just for the chaos

if i had a nickle for everytime this happened id have two nickles which isnt a lot but its weird that it happened twice.

2024 nhl global series finland game 1 postgame interview | 11.1.24 (x)

[beatcroc]

Mecha-Sonic, Dr. Robotnik has created other robots based on Sonic and thrown them away before he created you. Do you have any thoughts on this?

[lightbulb-warning]

i used to freehand comics all the time as a child and since the part i liked was the drawing part i would just draw panel after panel because i didn't want to stop drawing to think about icky icky words, plus the story TOTALLY still made perfect sense! to me! and noone else, but 'whoooo caaaaares omgggg its not like comics and sequantial art are a communicative meeediummmm lmaoooooo'. i spent my entire childhood telling myself stuff like "oh pfft I know this story by heart- ill SIMPLY remember the dialogue and write it later" ...and. I can't help but admire baby maiora's (call that a minora ba tm tsk) fucking audacity? hubris? confident wrongness? kid couldn't even remember to finish the comics in the first place? INCREDIBLE levels of unearned self assurance, wish that were me, genuinely- what an icon!!! anyway i think i have forever cursed myself

[icewindandboringhorror]

"We can get through this by working together, reach out to your friends, community is all we have, a social network will be your security in the world, now is the time to lean on others!"

I do agree, and it's scientifically sound (pretty sure there is data about how people with better social networks live longer and etc) but also....augh..... what about the severe social issues, difficulty to leave the house, physical issues which lead to like zero socialization energy a majority of the time, etc. etc. Social support can be a replacement for structural support, but.. I guess I just wish it didn't have to be. Community is extremely difficult to build, even moreso if you're someone who has issues with social cues or group conversations or even just being around others in the first place. And blah, nuance, of course I'm just complaining or maybe being too negative or maybe misunderstanding, but, I hardly have the energy to brush my hair once every 2 months.. how am I supposed to maintain a wide social network and be active in a Community and Join Groups lol... sometimes it kind of feels like "er.. well if thats my only option then...... ruh roh". It's overwhelming

[xxplastic-cubexx]

They could name the cat Kelly. It would be funny

KELLY?

[heph]

Hey, I remember you mentioning on your IG something about two types of popular artists and one being good at social media and the other being good at art or something like that (I can't really remember lol). But it got me thinking, any tips for how to be good at social media? Cuz I'm certainly not even after posting art for six years lol

Heya!

What I meant by that is that there are traits that allow you to grow on social media, and traits that determine what a highly skilled artist is, and those traits do not always necessarily overlap.

I've seen so many amazing artists that post artwork that blow my head off, and yet they don't have many likes. On the other hand, some artists at the same skill level who draw more popular things will get way more attention.

That is not to say that either is the correct way to create art, but there is definitely a formula to social media that is in play.

There are a lot of posts about how to grow a social media account, particularly on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram art spheres, and imo you really need to examine what you want from your art before jumping into social media mode

The stuff you create to pander to social media might not be art that you want to create at all - I'm lucky, because I am less artist more storyteller, and what I enjoy is telling jokes and silly stories to liven up people's moods :] this, of course, conveniently does well on social media. On a personal note, I have a history of being a recluse and not connecting well with people, and art is my way of trying to communicate my feelings, one way or another.

So of course, if you draw for any reason other than my own, my approach to art and it's relation to social media might be inappropriate for you.

All that being said, if u take a look at those "get big on social media" videos they always cite the same few points... And you can look into that, for sure, but this video sums up how I feel about all that.

I spent like 20 minutes drafting words after the above paragraph, but I really ended up regurgitating sentiments from the video... So really don't listen to me, listen to that video

EDIT:

I just realised I didnt actually answer the question with my anecdotal experience, so here's a list of things I did

1. Posted like 3 doodles a day on social media

I did this for 6 months on a side account on Twitter recently and got the account to 11k followers... And I did this for 3 months on Instagram a few years ago and I think got 3.5k followers. Of course, do not spam maliciously and make sure your art is still of good quality, but for those artworks I posted quickly, I did not colour, and mostly did clean sketches. This also trains you in the matter of line confidence haha. Again, this worked for me because of my set of circumstances (love for the media, want to tell stories, simple art style)

2. Focus on my favourite aspects of media

This helps with respect to burnout - kinda hard to burnout when you love what you're making! For me, it's character interactions and comics. I want to see my blorbos kiss and if I'm not the one drawing it who will?!

3. Interact with people

People eat up work that they can interact with. A choose your own story situation, one of those like/rt to strip a character 😭 those do numbers for a reason.

Additionally, if you post stuff people love, people will respond to it with comments, maybe their own headcanons, adding on to the work... I've gone into long looong Twitter thread conversations with people who added onto my ideas that I threw up onto the screen and I think it's also a nice thing to do to respond to positive comments haha... I'm not very good at this (read: bad at communication)

I think that's the key points... Hope this helps!

[butchdykekondraki]

whats your favorite scp?

2316 FOREVER !!!!!!!!!!!! and also 7143-j my best friend 7143-j <3

[cheemken]

Greetings! What would be the outcome of the au? A bad end where everyone is defeated by the Timekeeper? Vertin sacrifices themself to protect everyone or do the suitcase fam capture her and attempt to free her ? this au is kinda stuck in my head now lol, like the idea of arcana revealing herself like the geto scene with the brain if u seen jjk.

Hi hey, I'm so glad you're interested in my au hahaha

Idk much abt jjk tho like idk what scene that is but that sounds cool hahah

Anyways

My initial concept is that Vertin came back yeah, and a few starts to notice, I think it'd come to the point where Sonetto and Regulus confronts her?? Bc there's clearly smth wrong w Vertin

Ofc, Arcana plays her part well, and as Vertin, she deflects, saying she's fine, just tired and still a bit shaken after escaping from Manus Vindictae. It was a miracle how she escaped, she thought she'd die then and there

But they know there's more to that. It'd be funny tho but also on brand if Regulus herself knew smth was amiss bc ofc, Vertin using her wand more and more, but the thing that set Regulus off was the fact that Vertin was using her left hand, she's right handed as far as Regulus knows, and ofc, how she uses her tuning arcane skill, how it's like a seasoned magician

And it got to the point that while they're still in the Foundation, Vertin kept her distance, always wandering off by herself, wandering the halls like a ghost, everyone was starting to get worried

And until one night, where Vertin was there in the courtyard, well,, Madam Z and Tooth Fairy tried to talk to her, to go back inside, it's dark out already, and hey c'mon, she's their daughter at that point, and they just got her back from Manus, so seeing Vertin like this, it worried them

Imagine as they try to approach her, Z just stops dead in her tracks, grabbing Tooth Fairy's arm, stopping her, as they both hear Vertin chuckle darkly, slowly turning towards them, and as she did, Arcana's wand formed at either sides of Vertin's head, and her silver eyes turned pale yellow, and she smiles ay them, the same godforsaken smile Arcana always has on her face

And ofc, that lil drawing comes to play, the strings on Vertin, it would be so so fun if like,, w those, and w the influence of Arcana's magic, she managed to take control of a few arcanists too. Like can you imagine her just attaching the strings on the arcanists Vertin had saved, and taking control of them like puppets, that'd be so cool and bc ofc in c2, wasn't there a part titled Puppet, and bc if I remember right, Arcana also called Vertin her puppet

Like that'd be such a cool concept, Arcana using Vertin as a puppet, and w Vertin's hands she uses other arcanists as her puppets too

But also the mental image of all of the arcanists in Vertin's suitcase just fights off Manus followers on each floor of the Foundation buildings, look, I have a concept, I wanna write it, I just don't know how to execute it well, it has Schneider in it, Arcana brought her back or smth to make it hurt more, and the Schneider and Sonetto fight is just cbmxnd ough

But yeah, her defeat, idk, I want it to be some temporary defeat, ofc me being biased, as Sonetto was fighting off Schneider, Regulus rushes to where Vertin is, and ofc, she and Arcana fight lmfao

But do you see my vision when I say Arcana uses Regulus' line against her, y'know the thing Regulus says before her ult right

Imagine Arcana using that, just having Regulus pinned, one hand on her neck, the other on her cheek, her thumb trailing upward to her lower eyelid, pressing down hard, as she whispers in Vertin's voice, "are you ready... To be blinded?"

And Regulus spats out, "are you?" And uses her ult on both of them

Look look it's good on paper and it's a good mental image I can't just execute it well here but I hope you see the vision cbsmnd

But yeah, after that, and more psychological mindscape stuff of Regulus trying to save Vertin, Vertin was saved! That's a good thing right? Arcana was gone, so were the Manus followers, but it was so sudden, it shouldn't be that easy, right

Ofc it's not, Vertin wasn't saved, she never will be. Arcana's wand was still w her, lying dormant, waiting to be called out again, waiting till it finally corrupts their precious little Timekeeper.

[lucabyte]

uhh 7 for the ask game 👍🏻

(For (x), list of characters here (x))

7 - which of your ocs would you be the LEAST willing to befriend irl?

Hmm okay so there's some copout answers here in the form of villains like Cobalt because even outside of him being a shitty moneyman i don't know that "befriend" is One Of The Verbs he's Capable Of. (Like, I'd gladly get into his inner circles to scam him but I genuinely don't think i could pull that off. He simply would not give me the time of day.)

So exlcuding antagonists, even if i WOULD be down to chill with approx 50% of them, we'll stick to good guys...

I think... most of the celebrities kind of suck. Giles and Hainu especially are both grimly megalomaniacal. Almost everyone in the 'Moraine' folder/story/location has some level of either Real Stardom or Internet Stardom and are thus all a little bit tetchy in that way. That whole cast is meant to rub up against each other's egos and be prickly.

But out of all of them there, I do think Giles is the worsstttt. He's the most likely to try and use you to bolster his own ego, and will *also* come crawling back the moment he hits a low point. He sticks around and simply will not go away once you let him in.

He's also just generally the kind of guy to push your boundaries and be skeevy. However, he IS charming and famous, so unless you've kept up with what his former friends have said on the downlow, it'd be easy to be starstruck and bowled over by him...

This was a hard question lol because I write a lot of characters i'd find insufferable IRL, even good guys. Gabriel, Naga, Lollie, Chrome... Though with enough effort I think i could befriend those guys and maybe talk some sense into them. But with Giles that ship has saaailed.

(and as for hainu? ehhh 50/50 that i could fix him by tearing his ego asunder and building him back up again. otherwise he may be just as hopeless)

[royalreef]

you're the top of a mountain, the bottom of a well, the deepest darkest pit in the ocean. sublime and dangerous, terrifying and distant, many want you, many need you, many die because of you, of you, for you.

you're the blood they spill, their last breath, their final moment, and that fills you with pride, and fear, and guilt, and hate, and love, so so so so much love you can't keep much more.

are you keeping those gifts or are you those gifts to begin with? was that last moment yours? it should've been yours.

you want it to be yours

Is it love? Love is such a strong word. She's fairly certain she would know if it was love, theoretically, at least.

She's not the most experienced in love, not really. When she was younger, she didn't really experience even the puppy love crushes that others might speak about. Not many candidates for that in the first place, after all. It was just her and Bellanda for so many years, the two left together because it was just easier to treat them as one entity which offerings of basic necessities were made to, to be tossed to the nanny staff to ensure they didn't manage to get themselves killed in the interim.

Neither of them were allowed around other children, children which would've come from other families, other lineages, and thus would be expected to be loyal to them. That would pose a risk, could muddy things as they got older, either distracting from their duties or creating another avenue from which their positions could be exploited. It was just her and Bellanda, and Bellanda didn't like anyone else enough to get close to them, so Miranda followed suit and kept her nervous distance.

When they got older, even Miranda's entrance into romantic fancies could never be called one of love. Education, maybe, if she was being kind. Once Miranda had settled into her new lessons, was permitted around those who began to show an interest in her, then still yet, could she call that love?

They came in two varieties. The suitors were the first to make their gestures towards her, curtailed at first as her suitors' court opened. They were gentler then, but firmer in a certain way that's hard to name. They spoke and moved with experience, expertise, did not leave Miranda room to question nor doubt them. She thought she had loved a few of them, eager and ready to guide her and to provide structure into the new pains of settling into her title and her duties for what they were.

And if she had entertained them for longer than they really deserved, then, well, that was just to be expected as well. Nothing new was being written at that point, and there had been plenty of other Crown Princesses who had come before who had first enjoyed flights of fancy and impulse with the first suitors to swim beside them, so when Miranda's mistakes came, they were brushed away with ease and forgotten.

Miranda learned quick, as such lessons tend to do. Bellanda learned quicker, and it was Bellanda's education that drew the tentative early period to a close quickly, that taught Miranda to respond first with her jaws and not to entertain sweeter bait. Romance was for physical benefit, after all, and that was why they came.

The second were those who came to her not bearing romantic intents, and the second were those where she learned the swiftest. Like all others of her station, it was best not to spend too much of her time among her fellow royals, all ulterior motives and their own lineages to tend. To keep commonfolk around her was to find someone who couldn't pose such a risk to her, who she didn't have to worry about overstepping or watching what she said around them, and that was a great benefit to any royal needing someone else to occupy their time.

They would come, as staff or as notable individuals that she invited in, offering her time or treats with which to sate their appetite, and they would be thrilled at the attention she lavished onto them. A Crown Princess like her doesn't just pay attention to anyone, after all. To capture her eye was to have something special, something that had to suggest that they were special too. Crown Princess Miranda, Cees'rril'ta Yhtun-Tswe Slz'Exkii, was right at their fingertips, and they could taste the decadence that dripped off her, could have her at their beck and call, were so close to her that they could dip their fingers in and drink it up from the tap. She was a drug, exhilarating, thrilling, the cusp of danger cradled in the hand and burning hot against the thigh, greater and grander than they would ever again touch, and she got them high.

They would come to her, debase themselves for her, beg her for more of her time, more of her attention, more of what she could give. They would think they could keep her, could hold something like her tight in a little box, keep her tucked to their chests and never let her go. They thought they could take her home, that she was something that ever could exist in a home, and if she even so much as vaguely alluded to the idea, they took it as confirmation.

They were cute. Miranda could pick her favorites from among them, select which ones she thought looked the prettiest, or complimented against her scales the best, or said the nicest things about her, or entertained her the most. She wouldn't even pretend that they provided her the same deep need that she fostered in them, but not for lack of trying.

She did try. She had to try, that time was filled with the pangs of loneliness, the deep and desperate urge to find connection, to find a place in the world. Maturity had done something to her that it did to all merfolk pups when they came of age, and it had filled her with a new and sudden interest in people, and that was when she really began to notice the lack of it elsewhere. She depended on Bellanda still, yes, but she was a void, a massive sucking pit of need, and she was starving, hopeless, lost, clinging to Bellanda tighter and tighter as neither of them found they could survive without the other.

But it never worked. Miranda couldn't have explained why it didn't work, only that it didn't. Maybe they didn't, couldn't, understand her? Maybe there was something that was lacking in them, something that made them speak and talk as though speaking to someone else in Miranda's place, someone other than Miranda herself. Maybe there was something in Miranda, still hiding behind the projection of someone so much larger than herself.

Or maybe it was that they had fallen in love with that image of Miranda, the Crown Princess that lavished them with everything they could ever want, the same image that made her enemies quiver and made the courts look upon her when she spoke.

She didn't know. They ended poorly, irregardless. At first Miranda attempted kindness, but something like her is never capable of full kindness, not really. Then she gave up, and stopped trying, and focused solely on the dual needs of keeping them away from anything they might ruin and entertaining herself. It was entertaining, really. Pretty things remained just as pretty when they broke, and Miranda enjoyed the long tease, the leading up, the betrayal, the sharp cut of emotional high as adoration spilled over into the deepest fear. If they loved her for her danger, then they should expect to eventually face it. It was only common sense.

No... She found the ideals of love to be more enticing. After all, just because that need couldn't be met in her suitors' court or in toys, didn't mean the need for connection went away. It just grew and grew, stubborn and furious in her chest, a deepening want that swallowed up the ocean around her as she imagined all the theoretical people who would be able to meet it for her. Someone who would listen to her, hear her, see her first and foremost for what she was and not get lost in what she pretended to be. Someone who could comfort her, and hold her, and knew exactly what to say. Someone who would keep her safe, make her feel secure, could vanquish the yearning from her heart and leave her whole enough to become her own person again.

That was what love was supposed to be, wasn't it? Someone that she could rely on. Love wasn't worth anything if it wasn't someone meeting her in kind. Everything else would be so much easier, so much simpler, if she could find someone to love, someone to confront the world with her.

Maybe she had done something wrong? That could be one reason why love hadn't come to her yet, wouldn't come to her. That she had made a poor nest for it inside her heart, so that it couldn't nestle inside, couldn't make it a home. Or, maybe she had driven her love away? It could've been in any of the people who had come before, people who Miranda had tried to love, who she had thought she had loved, but now wasn't sure. If she had loved them, then surely it would be more potent than that, and so maybe she just hadn't gone far enough, pushed along longer and deeper and simply tried harder to love them.

This was around when her training for her ambassadorship had begun, and the fairytales her tutors had given her to help her learn English only furthered this point of inquiry. Maybe there were only a few people in the world who she could love, select and special people, and she just hadn't found them yet? That made sense to Miranda. That maybe love was something she was destined for, but it just hadn't happened yet, so it floated around unfulfilled until Miranda managed to luck up and find them.

Or maybe find her? She liked the thought of them finding her. That maybe this need for love in them was felt too, great and massive and despairing, and so they needed her too. And maybe they needed her so much and so badly that they'd do anything for her, risk anything, run blindly into danger if it meant simply looking upon her face for once, for just the potential of knowing, oh! That's who I love!

And she had felt the want again on land! Which was not to say it had ever really gone away, no. If anything, it had gotten worse in the span of time she spent away from Bellanda for the first time in her life, a rampant loneliness that threatened to kill her with no one else in the world who would check up on her.

But, after a year, the want did come, and it came directed and purposeful this time, pointed in the direction of other people, other people who she could say she wanted! She could not say if this want was love, but wanting had to be the first step to love, right?

Well. Except that her love, the love that she wanted, the love that she was speaking of, was the wrong love. The thought would've been preposterous earlier in her life, that there could ever be a thinking, feeling person who did not have such a love, such a need for others there in their life, but Miranda had learned better quickly.

She had learned that landfolk do not, could not, love that way. They did not arrange themselves in groups, did not become one with their loves, focused on unimportant things like kissing or sex, things which only ever existed to serve the love, by all of Miranda's accounts. The love that she did have, the love that she had for Bellanda, was something different to the landfolk, and she couldn't explain it to them, because they never would feel that way for anyone else and never could.

So it was want. Miranda would not allow herself to be tricked into thinking it was love again, even if she wanted it to be, and even if the way the landfolk touched her and talked to her made them act very much like the love was supposed to act. And love did require a mutual aspect, Miranda had learned that already, from all the times she had tried to make herself love but failed when someone else said they did.

Times which were rapidly repeating, Miranda was learning. Sure, they might not know love and might not be capable of it, but they were just as capable of everything that had come before. Plenty of landfolk wished to own her, and they were just as willing to try everything that had come before to do it. It didn't really matter if they wanted to shine her and put her on a shelf or if they wanted something more substantial out of her, it was all just a different form of ownership.

They would talk about possessing her, wanting her. They would discuss the ways that they would do it, ways that they could capture her attention and her time, and sometimes Miranda would humor them. Most of her usual company was back in the Merkingdom, after all, and they were harder to call up and insist that they come keep her company now that she was on land. She still had her other needs, other forms of enjoyment, and landfolk were just as capable of providing, even if she never grew any more interested in them.

She really didn't know what to do at this point. The love had to be coming, there had to be someone out there who would love her, who she could love, that she could sink into and close her eyes and be able to relax for a moment. But if her love was coming, then it had to be a terrible tower they were traversing up to her. It had been so long now, and Miranda was getting so cold.

[spidergirl-fibula]

listening to any music lately?

Trans women yelling at me, mainly