#in which I feature two people who just cannot shut up

[vvatchword]

Metamorphosis

When Dr. Lamb published Metamorphosis, it was by her own hand. No publisher in Rapture would touch it.

“Why the hell did you come down here?” asked one, throwing the manuscript at her across his desk.

“It could not have been written had I not,” she said.

A simple cover in white linen. Embossed on the front, a jellyfish with its tentacles outflung, suggesting the shape of sun beaming down, and below, its larval stage, like a shining pearl.

“The chain of industry is characterized as a force outside of us,” wrote Dr. Lamb in her foreword, “but industry cannot and does not exist outside of human beings. Does industry form spontaneously from the earth? Does it emerge from any species other than our own? No. If it cannot exist outside of mankind, then mankind makes up its fabric, psychology, and utility, and it is foolish to ignore the donations of his time and body. Instead of representing the chain as a spiritual force above mankind, we are served better by imagining every link as an individual human life that exerts pressure on all its neighbors—a pressure which can be detected across the whole of the system itself.”

“Read at the Expense of Your Self!” wailed The Rapture Tribune.

“The Pinkos’ Little White Book!” howled The Rapture Daily Post.

“Eleanor Lamb’s Secret Father,” winked Do Tell!, which was, as always, ahead of the times.

Despite the cries of critics, the book was purchased in droves and ordered by bookstores all over Rapture. By the time the major publishers finally descended to beg forgiveness, Dr. Lamb had founded her own publisher and needed them no more. The little white building sat directly beside her own, churning out a hundred copies per day.

Most unconventional were the prices she exacted. For its wholesale price, she asked for $0.10 per book, well under market standards; from people, she asked what they would prefer to pay. “Free” was always an option.

“By demanding space between each other,” Dr. Lamb wrote, “we have only grown mad for human connection. Any promise of social interaction becomes as powerful as a drug; even the educated find themselves incapable of resisting the most questionable charlatans, and for such tawdry payment as ‘physical touch’ and ‘a listening ear.’ This physical need for touch, this psychological need for understanding, are basic requirements of every human body; not only do we ignore them at the peril of our individual emotional and physical wellbeings, we ignore them at the peril of our society’s.”

Andrew Ryan’s Sunday editorial spat acid.

“Beware the charlatan who rouges the words of science,” he wrote. “Prove that adult human beings require selflessness, Dr. Lamb: you will find a cash prize in your mailbox as soon as you do. Citizens: beware the morass of selfless living. Remember that to be selfless is to sell yourself to another’s service. And for what? The pitiful paycheck of social approbation? One must ask oneself: ‘What does Dr. Lamb gain from the sale of my soul?’”

Dr. Lamb’s editorial sprawled below his:

“Ryan is obsessed with the ‘tyrant.’ What is a tyrant? The tyrant is an individual who demands his wellbeing at the expense of all others; he suffers from the terror of victimization and the unpredictability of groups. When the tyrant views a world of plenty, he does not relax with the knowledge he shall be well; he glances aside at his fellow man and sees robbers. He fears he shall be excluded to the same extent that he would exclude them. Incapable of judging the true extent of his need and unwilling to try, he says, ‘All or nothing!’

“To the tyrant, selfishness is primarily viewed as a matter of survival: ‘If I have survived,’ he says, ‘it is because I have defeated others in order to perpetuate myself.’ Note that the tyrant describes his own manner of ascent; he does not explore alternative modes; he does not face down his own fears or heal his own psychological wounds. By fabricating a toxic environment where only he may prosper, he subjects a captive audience to his personal poison.”

In the first few weeks after the book was published, people could be seen wearing white hatbands or white ribbons on their arms—first by the handful; then the dozens; then the hundreds.

“All of us have dealt with the destructive nature of selflessness or we would not be here. Well do we understand the sacrifices demanded for the sakes of society, God, government, kings—always others, never ourselves. The erasure of our boundaries; strangers asking us to give and give and give even when we have nothing left; the theft of our time and our physical wellness and our labor with no acknowledgment or return. But if we can freely admit the failures of selflessness, we would be remiss if we did not examine those in selfishness. The true question is not which mode of thought is better; the question is, ‘In what context is it best utilized?’”

True Believers gathered on the street corners and watched her building, smoking cheap cigarettes.

“The astute reader will note that these beliefs are not limited to tyrants. Central to the philosophy is fear of attack and a citizenry at constant war with itself. But why should the philosophy fear attack in a modern society made up only of its constituents? Have we not invited only the best of mankind? Why, then, is it wrapped up in the terms of war? Who is fighting whom, and why? Why must all human interactions be defined by the brutality of battle? Why the expectation of destruction instead of that of diplomacy, friendship, communion, education, or art?

“And think of the outcome: for it is one thing to destroy the parasite—but here we destroy paragons, those who believe everything we hold dear, who possess incredible abilities and knowledge that might uplift us all—who, left to their own devices on the surface, might have brought that Sodom to some greater understanding.”

The buildings beside Lamb’s went up in white, one by one by one.

“How many geniuses toil here in obscurity? Have we taken them from the surface only to destroy them? What use is a destroyed glory? Who knows how many beautiful things we have lured down here to die? What use is the philosophy if it only benefits a few, if it upholds the monochrome monolith over the multi-faceted glories of ten thousand teeming brains? What happens when an environment has been tooled to benefit the few over the many?”

A pamphlet began passing around the Drop, ripped from the book and printed rogue by some starry-eyed stranger:

“The philosophy’s intent is to glorify the best in humankind. But what is the reality? It is this: the powerful destroys the powerless. What is the powerful? He who retains the most material goods, social currency, or physical strength—none of which depend on the quality of the idea, but the transmission of it.

“If the idea could come alone, by itself, and be instantly understood, this would be one thing; but all ideas come couched in human beings. Will a Negro scientist with poor diction and no funds fare better than a white Adonis with a charismatic disposition and a tycoon father? In my position, I have met many of the former and none of the latter.

“Why do we expect that the most excellent idea comes couched in power? Perhaps it is to justify the powerful class. Perhaps it is to justify the philosophy’s existence, to soothe our wounded consciousnesses, a survivor’s bias—to reassure ourselves that we have overcome because we have simply tried harder, cared more, possessed fewer vices. But how often does progress come as the dissenting voice, the voice of the small, the evidence we would prefer not to notice and can afford not to?

“In short, the powerless is not destroyed because he is incapable—far from it! No, the best idea might just as soon fall to a glib speaker who only excels in matters of speechcraft, to the more handsome and charming, or he who knows the boardmembers he begs for aid, or to he who crouches upon masses of pre-existing capital. The best idea cannot win until the philosophy acknowledges the natural formation of groups among human beings and deals accordingly.

“The astute reader might notice this: the powerful utilize the group and its mechanisms even as it is derided; the group is formed even as its influence is ignored.

“Why does the philosophy ignore the impact of the group?

“What is the philosophy but a philosophy of tyrants?”

UPRISING: BLACK SCRAPBOOK HUB

[chrissdollie]

rapper!chris x singer!reader hcs

a/n: lowkey a collab with @bambi-slxt bc of all the headcanons she sent me LMAOO thank u sweets!! <3

SFW

chri$ is definitely one of the more "soft" rappers. everyone knows that hes a lovesick puppy for you. he doesnt have ONE line including the words "my bitch". instead he replaces them with "my girl" OR "my wife" :((

i think he would 100% make an album fully dedicated to you. kinda like tyler the creator's "call me if you get lost" in a way. for example, in the song "HEAVEN TO ME", tyler explains his dreams. chris would rap about all of the things he wants to do with you and how he sees you in his life forever

he has many features on peace on the beach with my peach since its partially about your guys' sweet relationship! theres moments in the record where there are beautiful beats paired with your heavenly vocals and cute voice cracks while chri$ is dropping barssss (ill make a post ab lyrics i think he'd add)

sososososo supportive of your creative journey. he was with you as you wrote and planned out your extremely personal debut. he even helped out at the studio :c

but then you started adventuring some time after your 2nd-3rd album. you started experimenting with different genres/styles. you created storylines and visuals along with your music.

out of the two of you, chri$ is definitely more famous. anyhow, he got invited to the met gala and had u has his plus one obviously, where you both looked drop dead gorgeous!! i literally cannot see him wearing a basic ass suit and tie to the met. he has to be on your level and match your uniqueness which make you two stand out so much!

when you both got up the steps, he was being interviewed by emma chamberlin, who was also a fan of his. she asked about the creative process of his newly released album and he totallyy put you in the spotlight, saying "yn helped me a lott honestly. she's... literally a genius." he grins, turning to you while keeping his hand on your waist.

you guys like toying with the paparazzi when they're bothering you. you goofballs make silly faces right in the cameras so they back off

one time when you were being interviewed, your sweet boy wrapped his arms around your waist as he listened to you talk. you were a little nervous and stuttered a bit, but chris consoled you by rubbing small circles into your waist and whispering a gentle "it's okay baby" to your ear.

you fangirl on stage when you catch your boyfriend's eyes in the front row. sometimes you entirely stop what you're singing just to giggle and squeal "hiiii honey!!" while twirling your hair like a little girl. the audience cheers with screams when they realize chris is with them in the crowd-- but feels like its only you two in the stadium when he blows you a kiss (some corny shit he never thought he'd do) and mouth the words "i love you".

for the holidays, u two visit homeless shelters and childrens hospitals and perform for everybody <3

imagine just hanging out at the studio with him and your guys' friends. he's manspreading on a leather couch while massaging your feet resting in his lap as you write lyrics in your lap, your friends helping you out as you do.

you knew that somewhere down the line there was going to be some kind of beef. a popular rapper decided to call out chris for something he did years ago as a literal child. you both ignore it until he sends out a tweet about you. something around, "nd his bitch bad asf id hit fs but she a fuckin weirdass childish mf"

you ignore the fact he called u a "weirdass childish mf", you cant care less, many people dont vibe with ur ideas and thats okay!

u do however care about how his girlfriend would react to seeing him wanting to fuck you. and you'd met her before too, she was a little snobbish, but respectful nonetheless. you joked to your boyfriend about dropping your own diss track on him, but he actually seem intrigued. you shut it down almost immediately though, you didn't wanna make something small such a big deal

but at the next big event you guys went to, you found the rapper's girlfriend and showed her his tweet. she thanked you with a furious scowl on her face before she ran off and slapped the shit out of him in front of everybody

chris gets a custom made $5k chain that has ur name and little details that remind him of u around it :((

NSFW

speaking of that chain, he wears it whenever he pounds into you so you'll be reminded of how he's yours.

chris loves ur vocals so much on stage! he finds them beautiful, but he loves them even more in bed.

"cmon mama lemme hear that pretty voice"

in fact, you two created a song just to have playing in the background while you two get intimate

chris audio recorded him eating u out once and you saying, "oh, fuck chris, it's so good!" and he decided to use that as an adlib in his favorite songs OR disses he wrote about someone being a jerk to u

watching chris perform did things to you. seeing him sweat, brushing his gorgeous hair out of his face, putting in so much energy into his performance... it's intoxicating! sometimes you wish he'd just drop the mic, pull you onstage, and make love to you infront of the world.

he talks about marrying you while he's balls deep inside of your wet cunt :( saying how he wants to drop a humongous bag on your ring, give you the wedding of your dreams, and how he desperately wants to hear "missus sturniolo" from others' mouths

chris will totally pop up behind stage after a show and guide you to your dressing room not so subtly. you apologize to your manager before rushing to your private room like a giddy teenager. "wanna see her sweetheart, she wet for me righ' now? oh, there she is.." he coos as he bends down to his knees right in front of your pussy when you pull down your pretty pink stage costume.

@leah-loves-lilies @1everythingmustgo @star-sturn @junnniiieee07 @mattsneezing @freshloveee@freshsturns@emma4eva @r6diosturns @matthasmywholeheart @donthugmeimhot @blahbel668 @chrissturnsss @joanofarcily @mattscoquette @slutsturn @sturnioloremarker @ashley9282828 @jnkvivi @sturncakez @lanasturn @riasturns @st7rnioioss @strnlxlqve @starlace111 @mattsfavbigtitties @stvrlighht

[dantakeyoman]

You and Kiri Overhear Lo’ak Giving Neteyam Advice On How To Ask You Out (SFW / Comfort)

Reader is Fem! Omaticaya

CW: fluffy fluff, Neteyam is adorable, Lo’ak and Kiri duo strike again, all this is based on this one tik tok sound that I heard that was SO adorable, and it screamed Neteyam

“I’m telling you, that boy is obsessed! I’ve never seen someone pine over another so much,” Kiri laughed, giving you a playful shove.

“You’re just trying to make me feel better. If he liked me as much as you said, he would’ve said something already,” you playfully rolled your eyes, waving your friend off.

You two had just finished healing lessons with Mo’at, and were now on your way back to the Sully tent to hang out with the boys.

Kiri was swearing up and down that the feelings you had for Neteyam were very valid and very mutual, but you weren’t buying it.

Neteyam was a warrior, a Sully, a future Olo’eyktan.

You were just a simple girl who wanted to become a simple healer.

In your eyes, there was nothing special about you. You weren’t the best hunter, singer, or dancer.

So why would he ever like you?

A romantic relationship with Neteyam was a pipe dream. And to keep from getting hurt, you reminded yourself of this fact over and over again.

 “Well, my brother may not look it, but he’s an idiot. And a shy one at that. But that shyness and idiocy is alllll for you,” Kiri teased, giving you a few pokes in the stomach.

“Quit it!” you laughed, frantically shoving her hands away.

That was your tickle spot.

“You’re crazy! I could never say that!” a familiar voice exclaimed from inside a nearby tent.

You and Kiri quieted your giggles, turning to each other in confusion before moving closer to the home, peeking through a small tear.

“Shut it! Do you want the whole clan to hear?!” Lo’ak harshly whispered, shushing his older brother.

Neteyam.

“I’m sorry, but that’s far too bold. I’ll scare her away,” Neteyam dismissed, resting his hands on his knees, which were sat criss-cross.

Her?

You felt a piece of your heart break, and tears well in your eyes.

They were talking about a girl. One who Neteyam seemed fond of.

“We should go. It’s rude to listen in,” you whispered, your voice small and slightly broken.

Why were you feeling this way?

A lump in your throat seemed to grow larger and larger every time his words replayed in your head.

You had tried to push away your feelings, but at the first mention of another girl, it was made perfectly clear that you could not hide emotions so intense.

And Kiri was quick to pick up on this.

“Now hold on a minute. Let’s hear the rest,” she held your hand, giving it a comforting squeeze.

Little did the two of you know, Lo’ak had heard every word you said, and was now going to make it his mission to put on a show for Neteyam’s girl outside.

He knew his brother was a painful over-thinker, and would never make the first move on you.

So why not give him a little push?

“Okay, so what do you want to tell her then?” Lo’ak started again with a sigh, giving his brother tired eyes.

Neteyam groaned, raking a nervous hand through his braids. “That’s the problem. I don’t even know what to say.”

“Girls love compliments. So you gotta compliment her. Tell me a feature of (y/n)’s you like,” Lo’ak smiled, hopefully talking loud enough so you could hear

“Her eyes. They’re so big and beautiful, and have such a pretty, yellow color to them. I want to tell her this, but how should I?” Neteyam asked again.

“Just say it, bro. Walk up to her, flash her a nice smile, then say, Hey, (y/n). Did anyone ever tell you your eyes are beautiful?” Lo’ak demonstrated, making a Neteyam face at the last part.

You blushed so hard you thought you might burst.

Neteyam felt this way...about you?

“See, there you go again. You may be able to say that, but I cannot. I do not......I do not have your confidence,” Neteyam looked down at himself, hanging his head.

This was pathetic.

He needed to get help from his baby brother in order to talk to you.

He had faced his Iknimaya, Sky People, even his angry dad. But talking to you was scarier than all of those three things combined.

Lo’ak gasped, abruptly standing up from his seat. “You have loads to be confident about, bro! Just look at you.”

He smirked, walking over to his brother and giving him a firm pat on the back.

“You’re a strong warrior, a skilled hunter, and a killer with a bow and arrow. Not to mention you have the devilishly good looks of us Sully men. You’re the whole package, dude.”

Neteyam slightly smiled, thankful for his brother’s praise, but still on the fence about all this.

Lo’ak sighed, sitting down in front of the nervous boy.

“Let’s try something else. Why don’t you tell me what you like about her face? Her lips? Her hair? The way she braids her hair? What about-?” “I love all of it, okay!” Neteyam interrupted, unable to take this anymore. 

“I can’t pick one thing to like because they all are perfect to me. She is perfect to me. But I cannot just walk up to her and tell her this because what if she does not feel the same. I’d have poured my heart out, only for it to spill on the floor.”

Damn. 

Lo’ak had no idea his brother could be so poetic.

Sure, it would make him want to barf if anyone else had said it. But this was his brother, and he was happy for him.

Lo’ak smirked, realizing the trap he just led Neteyam in and giving his mental self a high-five.

Mission Accomplished.

Meanwhile, you were practically about to faint.

Your long time crush had just professed his love for you loud and proud.

And while you were over the moon with this news, Kiri’s I told you so face was starting to get on your nerves.

“C’mon. Let’s go before we get caught,” you whispered, getting ready to tip-toe away.

“You ladies can come in now!” Lo’ak cockily announced, you and Neteyam turning as pale as ghosts.

Shit.

...

taglist !!

@vane28282, @remutoast, @p1nkprint, @ladyorchidia, @anthonys-viscountess, @karmz-7319, @cantbuysophialove, @scarabruhs, @an0th3rsss, @deloe18, @mariiyoushi, @av1xar, @alexxcorona113, @may-and-lay, @overlyfancybreakfastfoods, @harshita-hiranyamayi, @qui-02, @myheartfollower, @morks-watermelon, @bangtanxberm, @adavenus, @sweetdayme4427, @lilac13

[the-final-sif]

Dream's Response Summary

Dream posted a response to various accusations, covering just about everything ever because he was done with this shit. I've done my best to summarize it here, but I recommend going and watching his whole video. This is going to be extremely summarized for readability and I'm only going to cover stuff I consider serious so anything about speedrunning is getting skipped.

The tl:dr is: Dream never groomed anyone or had inappropriate contact with anyone underage, he provided proof that one accuser flat out lied, and the other ""accusation"" was from a third party who was never involved. The actual supposed victim released a statement that they were never groomed, nor a victim in any way, never was asked about someone sharing information about them, and wants everyone to shut the fuck up.

Police were never actually contacted, both twitter accounts were lying about doing so to make their claims seem real. Also the supposed snapchat video shown is a very obvious fake.

He covers Manatreed, the run down is the guy was a childhood best friend he grew up with and who was struggling with homelessness. Dream helped him, and never knew about the battery charge (Manatreed had lied to him about it). When Dream spoke to Manatreed's ex girlfriend, she was very clear she never wanted any of this publicly out there, that she was happy that Dream had been helping Manatreed and she wanted the best for him.

Dream still doesn't know exactly what happened with that situation, he has since lost contract with Manatreed, all he knows is he was trying to help a childhood friend and got lied to.

The first allegation from Oxy/Anastasia, he's extremely clear they only ever messaged in twitter dms and he disproves the claim about the texts/tik tok. He has a google voice number hooked up to his tik tok account for obvious reasons, and she was showing imessage texts. This is not possible, which means she was lying.

As part of this, Dream scrolls through his twitter dms and shows he responds to fans all the time and talks to people in his community from all over. He also shows how he's friends with and has hired people that were fans of his, including people like Foolish.

He discusses Amanda, the two of them messaged on instagram back when he was a much smaller creator. He showed/posted the transcript of the two of them talking about normal stuff. They had been messaging since 2020. He did attempt to post a complete transcript of those messages, but she had deleted some of her messages and he doesn't have a way to recover them.

Dream explains that Instagram has a "feature" where if you ever reply to someone, then you literally cannot remove their ability to message you without blocking them. Something I did not know about instagram and which is fucking wild.

Since he replied to her in 2020, that meant she could message him forever and her notifications would be constantly showing up for him. He attempted to delete her messages/her ability to message him back in 2021 and showed proof of this, but realized he couldn't. Dream also in doing so accidentally deleted the context to her messages that she was a fan and basically everything prior to 2021.

Since he didn't remember her (what with the prior messages deleted), she was dmnig him from her personal account without fan content on it and was talking about being a streamer, he assumed she was a smaller streamer he knew and was talking to her as such.

They were talking about music so he gave her his personal snapchat to talk and because he wanted to get some feedback on a new song he was working on. He wanted to send the song via snapchat so he could be reasonably sure it'd stay private.

Dream categorically denies any sexting with Amanda or sexual messaging at all, he goes through why she most likely did this (he had been ignoring her messages and made a new snapchat with only close friends). He also downloaded his own data (something Amanda refused to/failed to do), went through the snapchat logs and did see some messages, but never saw either of his supposed compliments to her.

Amanda claimed Dream deleted her dms and that's why she couldn't provide any of the evidence she claimed she had, but Dream showed those same DMs very clearly undeleted. The dms were never deleted and she lied as an excuse.

Amanda lied about going to the police. Dream had his lawyers file a bunch of requests, and track down the police station that she went to based on the photo. They filed every request possible for any information with this police station, and there was no record of Amanda visiting the station or any records relating to Dream whatsoever. So either she lied about filing anything, or she told a story such that the police filed literally no paperwork whatsoever about the situation. Not even a report.

Dream sent the police station a copy of his own drivers license and Amanda's information so they could contact him if anything did come up, and nothing ever did. Nothing was filed, nobody cared.

Dream got swatted several times as a result of online harassment, including his family, and the harassment was overwhelming and awful for him.

He addresses the gumball situation, he showed up to a birthday party for a friend, gumball's VA was there and kept getting aggressive with him. While on facetime with some friends, Cantu ended up hitting Dream to impress them. Dream was obviously put off by this, but at the end of the night people ended up ubering together and Dream ended up in an uber with Cantu. He thought it'd be fine since other people were involved.

Cantu dropped his phone out the window made the uber driver pull over to look for it and got in trouble with the police. The uber driver tried to talk to Cantu about handling the police in the future, and Cantu started calling the uber driver slurs and claiming the uber driver had "down syndrome".

Dream got involved, trying to defend the uber driver, and Cantu threatened to kill him and called him slurs. Later Cantu apologized and Dream wanted to forgive him. Only later, Cantu started spreading lies about him and calling him a pedophile, so Dream realized the apology wasn't sincere and called him out for his behavior.

The third party who had been filming all of this saw what Cantu was doing lying about Dream and trying to claim none of this happened. They reached out to Dream and gave him the actual video as proof of what happened. Cantu tried to threaten them out of sending Dream the video of what happened, but they ignored him and sent them anyways. Dream also had the uber driver in his video backing up what he said.

Finally, the Jamie Allegations

Jamie is a mutual friend of several people that Dream knew, she did not post the allegations, she was never contacted about any of this she made an explicit statement that she was never groomed or a victim in any way.

Dream and Jamie meet prior to Dream being a youtuber on bbh's minecraft server, they were both fans of Skeppy. Which is why Jamie was followed by Dream, Skeppy, Vurb and some other youtubers in their friend group.

Jamie is still active online and put out her own statement, the person in the screenshots never gave permission for any of this to be put out, and they are very clear that the messages were taken out of context and that the claims made are false. The person in the screens is clear Dream is not a groomer, they never accused him of that, and that the twitter account is lying.

The snapchat video shown is very obviously fake, because snapchat just magically opens itself, there's no finger or button use interacting with the screen.

The burner account never actually contacted the police, Dream records him calling to the department they claimed to contact, and the person answering is very clear they have no contact from this person.

The supposed recent document posted is a fake convo of someone using a fake twitter account to talk to "Jamie", Jamie did not talk to them and it's just fake.

All of this was incredibly damaging for Jamie, who had no idea what was going on, and was getting harassed/stalked/having her irls contact.

Dream has also faced waves of harassment over obviously fake allegations, people have just been taking them at face value. He also shows how easy it is to fake these things as I have done.

He's been swatted, harassed, his family has been swatted and harassed, he's been scared for his own safety several times. It's been awful for him, and all based on fake shit. He's not stepping back from minecraft, but he is stepping back from twitter and no longer engaging with people behaving this way.

Also his ping pong record was undefeated.

[dyeher]

includes| Akaashi Keiji x Fem! Reader x Bokuto Koutaro— smut(1.3k words)

warnings| Oral Sex, Cum Play, Anal Fingering, Degradation, Mentions of Cucking, Mentions of Orgasm Denial, Mentions of Overstimulation, Dom/Sub Relationships.

notes| mean akaashi my beloved.

people regularly made the mistake of accusing akaashi of being the sane one in your relationship. his refined features, lean build, and gentle demeanor usually gave the illusion of elegance, propriety, vanilla. the assumption that a man who preferred to read and write in his spare time was boring was so, incredibly wrong. boring?

he was not.

akaashi keiji, behind the mahogany doors of your shared bedroom was a tyrant, a madman, an unforgiving dictator. the worst kind of leader. it was especially bad when he found one of his meticulously crafted rules were broken. there were three of them, two of which were assigned punishments and one that was left up in the air. open to anything.

rule 1: no one cums before you. the bane of koutaro’s existence is that once his dick gets anywhere near your soft walls, or your equally soft lips he’s left brainless. hyper-focused on the feel of them around him, and this leads to him cumming early. it’s almost like he can’t help it. punishment is overstimulation. the pro-athlete is strapped to a chair, a vibrator tied to the shaft of his cock, and left to stare in agony as akaashi eats you out, sucks and fingers at your pulsing walls until you scream koutaro’s name. koutaro is allowed to cum, as many times as he likes, and punishment usually ends when his orgasms come dry and leave him sobbing akaashi’s name.

“I’m sorry, ‘m sorry, ‘m sorry,” he sobs, “won’t do it again, ‘kaashi, ‘kaashi please, ‘m sorry.”

rule 2: no toys without supervision. you’re dating a manga editor and a professional athlete, not only are they busy often but, you make it an unfortunate habit of not saying anything when you feel neglected. this is where the trouble starts. you always end up sitting on the bed, the black box in your lap chewing on your lip as you consider how much time you have to get yourself off before one of them gets home. if it’s kou, then maybe you can guilt trip him into forgiving you but, if it’s akaashi? punishment involves denial.

you’re not allowed anywhere near their cock for the next seven days. they’ll play with you as they like though; keiji runs long fingers through your folds, teases at your hole absentmindedly, stuffs you with his favorite dildo, and watches your cunt flutter around the glass while koutaro fucks him on your shared bed; koutaro lets you watch as he fucks his fist in the shower, slaps your hand away when you reflexively reach out to help him, sucks on your nipples and litters your pretty skin with his marks but, ultimately leave you unfulfilled. on day eight you’re fucked senseless, made love to slowly, eaten out, doted on, whispered to, worshipped. their way of reminding you what they can do toys cannot.

rule 3: no lying. situations like these were when the real monster came out. an akaashi who took his glasses off before getting to the bedroom was a dangerous one. it was a stupid little lie, supposedly a prank that you and kou had dreamed up but, it had stressed akaashi out and now? now you were going to be punished.

“on your knees,” his voice is deceptively calm, like the lull in the seas before a tsunami, the silence of birds in the trees before a storm. “take me out, suck me off until I say to stop.”

koutaro scrambles to undo the waist of akaashi’s slacks and drag his dick free of it’s confines, he’s soft and koutaro instinctively leans in to run his tongue along it. it twitches, and koutaro hums.

“i don’t want to hear those; don’t hum, don’t moan,” akaashi sighs, “just, shut the fuck up, and suck my dick.”

you gulp where you’re kneeling next to kou, you can see the way he swallows around the head of akaashi’s cock and your pussy weeps a little at how badly he’s going to punish you. he’s moved your antics to the living area, so your knees are probably going to bruise from the rug under them but, you stay silent because you’ve not been addressed; you listen, to the wet sounds of koutaro choking on the pretty head of keiji’s dick.

you glance up to find glacial eyes trained on you. his lips are parted, and you can see that he’s breathing heavily.

“are you going to let him do all the work?” he asks. “get over here.” he shoves koutaro’s head off and motions for you to get closer. “you can both do it.”

kou watches from the other side of akaashi’s cock as you lick a long strip up the shaft and suckle the head into your mouth, he leans in and joins in, bringing one hand up to cup akaashi’s balls, as he sucks at the base and shaft. you pull back as one to run your tongues along the bottom. they rub against the heated flesh and each other, and akaashi moans at the sight.

“fuck,” he groans. “the only thing you’re good at-” kou gives a particularly hard suck at the base at the same time you dip lower to take one of his balls into your mouth and he whines, “-shit, being my little cock suckers, it’s the only thing.”

your lips and mouth are stained with akaashi’s pre-cum so are koutaro’s. by the time akaashi cums along both your tongues where they’re sticking out next to each other, koutaro’s cock is leaking everywhere and your cunt is soaked.

kou turns to you, tongue coated in cum and grabs you by the back of your head and shoves it against yours. your mind hazes, thoughts going cloudy; only akaashi’s cum mixed with kou’s saliva as it swishes around your mouth mixing with yours.

you moan as his tongue swirls around yours, the actions forces you to swallow the concoction and you’re just about to climb into him, when you’re separated by a harsh tug on your hair. your neck protests at the rough handling, your scalp burns but, the pain goes straight to your throbbing clit.

“always so selfish,” akaashi hisses. his cock twitches against his stomach when you let out twin sobs. “you’re not getting anything tonight.” he points out. “don’t do shit to make me angrier, who said you could use my cum like that?”

when no answer comes, he lets go of your hair with a shove. “get me the silicone dildo in the safe koutaro. the one with the vibrating head, and the lube,” he says, and you lock eyes with kou for a second. kou opens his mouth to tell akaashi that doesn’t sound like a punishment, and you slap a palm over his mouth.

“he’ll do it,” you say, “he’ll get it.”

akaashi laughs. “yes, he will.”

you’re concerned about the way akaashi’s smug smile grows wider when koutaro returns with it.

“i’ll be using it on myself,” he smiles. “you’ll sit over there and watch,” he motions to the other side of the room the matching armchairs stare back. “if I can’t make myself cum,” he tuts, “well, i have a few friends who’re willing to help.”

koutaro chokes, and you sink to your ass on the floor with a whimper, “’kaash-”

“sit, and watch,” he says, the hard edge to his voice has you both scrambling to the other side of the room. “if i don’t come, i’ll call osamu,” he chuckles, and koutaro glares at him from across the room, “him and suna would take care of me,” he sighs.

“we’re so-”

“i know, and after this you’ll think really hard about what you do and say without me,” he snarls the words and goosebumps erupt across your chest. “lying to me? what did you call it? a prank?” his laugh is hollow. “it’s almost like, my rules mean nothing to you.”

he’s stripped fully, and settled onto his knees on the couch, face down into the cushions.

“let’s hope i can make myself cum,” he groans as one of his fingers disappears into his ass. “otherwise…” he doesn’t have to say anything. both you and kou know he’d do it, this isn’t akaashi that they can argue with, this is the tryant.

[keyotos]

9:35 ⎯ alhaitham

you wake up to the sun shining across your face. you hear birds chirping and if you focus hard enough you could hear the ocean's waves calmly flowing into port ormos. you also wake up to a certain someone's bare chest.

alhaitham sleeps on his back while you curl up into his side. the way you manage your way into the crook of his bicep practically became routine at this point. his arm lays wrapped around your waist, a firm grasp, but not too tight.

you lift your head, propping yourself up on your hand. you are rarely the one who wakes up early. usually, it's alhaitham who rises before you, getting the chance to do things such as make coffee for you or cook a simple breakfast. you think about doing those things, but there is also another opportunity you cannot miss out on.

when alhaitham sleeps, he looks so carefree. his eyes are closed in a peaceful manner, his brows aren't furrowed like when he is awake, and his lips are placed in a gentle pout. he looks adorable.

you couldn't resist tracing your finger over his facial features. your index finger dragged along the slope of his nose, his cheekbones, under his eyes. your thumb caressed the spot underneath his eyebrow (which was the top of his eyelid), the bottom of his lips, and the apple of his cheeks.

normally, he was the one who got to do this to you. you knew that he spent at least ten minutes just admiring you before getting out of bed. and every time before he left, he'd press a loving kiss on the corner of your eyelid.

but this time, you're the one who gets to admire him. you're the one who gets to trace all his features, study him even though you already know all of him, etch his very being into your brain.

and if you plant a kiss on the corner of his lips? well, he doesn't have to know that. and when one kiss develops into two; another planted on his jaw. two gradually turned into four, which then turned into six, and at this point you've stopped counting. alhaitham was just too easy to kiss; too easy to love.

alhaitham started stirring from his sleep ever since the first kiss. he knew you: he knew what your lips felt like on his skin, he knew that you've left the warmth of his arm, and he knew that you were awake right now. but even so, he chose to stay "asleep."

alhaitham chose to break his act when you were about to move towards his lips. right when you were about to press a kiss to his cheek, he moved his head so you could give him a chaste peck on his lips. he smiled, satisfied that he got what he wanted.

you, on the other hand, felt flustered. "alhaitham? did i wake you up?"

alhaitham yawned, one hand covering his mouth while the other secured his grasp on your waist, "i was already awake," he replied nonchalantly.

you raise an eyebrow at that. how long was he awake? hopefully not when you traced his face. "for how long?" you ask, removing your head from your palm and returning to your previous position on alhaitham's bicep.

"probably second kiss," alhaitham hid his smile as he buried his head into your neck. but you could tell he was smiling either way: you heard it in his voice. after all, you knew him as well as he knew you.

you huffed, "why didn't you say anything?"

"and disrupt you while you were perfectly content?" alhaitham sarcastically answered, "i would never impede with your happiness."

"shut up," you say, sheepish and slightly exasperated with his tone, then let your head fall into his chest.

alhaitham only laughs in response. his laugh his small, light, and airy. you're one of the very few people that get to hear it. "if it consoles you, i had a dream about you last night."

this gets your attention, your head rising up to look at his turquoise eyes, "really? pray tell."

alhaitham looked up at the ceiling as a way to pretend as if he was in deep thought, "well, you were there. but you were a fish. and you had a hat. then you were swallowed by a bigger fish, who took your hat. and then you were swallowed by the big fish, who had the hat before everyone else fought him for it," alhaitham explained with a straight face.

"wow," you deadpanned, "not helping your case, bud," alhaitham frowned at the nickname. something so cruel, so early. you continued, "looks like your subconscious isn't very fond of me. want to tell me anything?"

alhaitham shrugged, "you're very easy to hate." he knows it's the complete opposite. loving you has to be the most easiest thing alhaitham has ever done. it's easy to memorize you: your favorite things, your routine, your body, your mind; loving you was like an accomplishment.

you mock-gasp, swatting him away from you, "i see how it is then. you were in my dream too, if you wanted to know. except, you were a toad. a very ugly one. and dehya was there. so was candace. kaveh too. oh! and i can't forget the general mahamatra," you added cyno in to tease alhaitham. truthfully, instead of cyno, your coworker that owed you a cup of coffee appeared in the dream.

"you guys were all animals, and there was a long drought, so you all banded up to confront the rain god for rain. then, when you went to the rain god's temple, you guys planned a sneak attack and won a battle. and then you got rain," if you thought alhaitham's dream was complicated, alhaitham was absolutely dumbfounded by yours.

alhaitham pulled you closer into him, hands caressing the sides of your body, "my dream was definitely better. mostly because it had only you in it, and not the general mahamatra. or kaveh," your boyfriend lightly scoffed at the mention of the two men. you could only shake your head.

"i was only in there for a short second. before i was, y'know, eaten," you nudged his chest, only for alhaitham to rest his head atop of yours. but then you perked up, "hey. are you jealous of my subconscious? is it cause i dreamed of other people?" you smirked.

"why would you say that?" alhaitham peered down at you.

"well, you did get a little sullen at the mentions of cyno and kaveh," you pointed out, even poking a finger into his chest, separating you from him.

alhaitham only trailed his fingers underneath your shirt, creating shapes on your skin as he leaned in closer to you, "i'm not jealous," he pouted, "i did only dream of you though. proves i'm loyal."

you sigh. he was jealous of your subconscious. oh well. maybe that will teach his subconscious to not dream about your demise, "oh, yet i still died in your dream, so maybe not so much," you mocked, smile brimming your lips, "maybe our dreams are connected. me dreaming about other people probably reflected on your negligence to keep me alive," you teased.

"okay," alhaitham pressed his forehead up against yours, "i did not fail to keep you alive. that was all the circle of life."

"tomato, tomayto. i'm leaving," you only make your way to the edge of the bed before alhaitham pulls you back into him. your back lands into his chest with a 'thump!'

"wait. i'm sorry for my subconscious wanting to kill you. from now on i'll only think of you. as long as you stay in bed with me," alhaitham whispered into your skin, right next to your earlobe.

you let out a small laugh, "you pouting right now, haitham?" you turn to face him, brushing some small hairs out of his face.

"no. will you stay in bed with me?" he presses a kiss onto your jaw and interlocks your fingers underneath the blanket. how could you say no?

"hm. i don't know," you tease, looking around the room to delay your answer, "do i want to stay in bed with an ugly toad?"

alhaitham's fingers poke you in the side, making you squirm, "maybe i should've stayed with cyno. doubt he would've dreamt about my death."

"well, you're in bed with me. not the general mahamatra," alhaitham made sure to hold you close, as if your little dream would make you escape from his hold. yeah, no way would he ever let that happen. not when he loves you more than anything else, regardless of what his subconscious was trying to tell him. you are a routine he would never get rid of. you are a light he would never let die out. you are a fish he would always look after.

"yeah, i suppose," you wrap your arms around alhaitham's torso and rest your head on the pillow next to his, "hopefully i made the right decision," you nestle closer into alhaitham's warmth, body instantly relaxing in his proximity.

when alhaitham kisses the crown of your head without saying anything, you know that you did.

can anyone tell me if it's alhaitham or al-haitham? idk which one is correct so if any of y'all would like to inform me that'd be very much appreciated! ty!!

[nono-bunny]

Losing my mind because it somehow took me literally until right now to realize that a Zuko and Katara encounter is a part of every season finale of ATLA, like, literally, what the fuck? And all of those are strong jumping off points for fics to boot, like???

"You rise with the moon, I rise with the sun" is like. Such a big deal in the fandom, and while it tends to feature in all kinds of fics, it perfectly encapsulates the enemies phase in the enemies (to friends) to lovers of these two. An unreasonably sexually charged line too, wtf were they on about with that scene if not ship bait?

Fics diverging from the crystal catacombs are like. Such an obvious and natural evolution of that scene- it's the "something awful happens there, but what if it didn't?", I think. It was, in fact, the first fic I went out looking for- was rewatching the show and once again felt the accute disappointment of what could've been, and I wanted to read what could happen if it had. Ultimately I think the show made the right choice there, because Zuko getting what he always wanted and realizing it's all wrong is important, but it did rob us of him being a part of the gaang for longer, and that makes me sad.

Then there's the final agni kai.... Literally how can you watch that one without expecting them to kiss after? Genuinely don't get it, impossible. Peak Zutara. Possibly the single best fight of the show, and undoubtedly the best finale scene. A perfect resolution to the bond between those two- that gets completely thrown away to give Aang his woman shaped prize. Of course it's also a popular jumping off point for plot divergent fics!

Genuinely wild that they have THREE romantic coded finals, and yet they don't even end up together. Kataang and Maiko are barely even a factor in the first two season finals, too! Mai literally doesn't exist in the first, and in the second is very obviously representative of Zuko making a mistake. Literally cannot think of a Kataang scene in the first season finale (but I might just be forgetting? I obviously do not care for that one, lmk if there is one and I'll add it, but me being unable to think of one feels a bit telling given how much I hate those scenes), and the big thing for them in the second one is literally recreating a pose evoking a mother and son relationship, which is a big fat F on the shipping factor if I ever saw one.

"Kataang is baked into the show's DNA"- shut the fuck up, Bryke, and maybe have a look at what you ACTUALLY did with it. This isn't the kind of thing that you can just brush off... Especially because those are all scenes people associate with big emotional plot points of your show, and guess who's doing the heavy lifting there? It's definitely not Aang, that's for sure.

[kukuandkookie]

People keep claiming Chinese BL manhua really only have stories featuring toxic male leads, so I offered to give recommendations with green flags... Someone finally said yes, so here's what I typed up in response!:

I Ship My Rival x Me:

One of my personal favourites!

Based on the hilarious novel, commonly known as I Ship My Adversary x Me and also has an audio drama adaptation on MaoEr FM. Basically a story about two actors who are seen as complete rivals by everyone except the actors themselves, which annoys the main character (Wei Yanzi) enough that when he discovers there are actual fans who ship them instead of pit them against one another, he’s so excited he sort of starts shipping them too (in like, an abstract, theoretical manner lmao). This of course causes shenanigans as he actually gets to know the person who people ship him with/pit him against, Gu Yiliang.

Gu Yiliang is a true sweetheart and the greenest of green flags. He’s a complete puppy and I love him. And this means, naturally, the only misunderstandings in this story are of the hilarious kind (you’ll know what I mean if you read it lol). 😂

This one actually used to be available officially in English on the Bilibili manhua’s international app before it got shut down, but it recently got picked up by Seven Seas, the company behind a lot of official English translations of danmei (Chinese BL)!

Touch Your World:

A literally colour-blind boy (as in, he cannot see colour at all and only sees things in black and white) discovers someone who he can see colour on. This person is a designer who has suffered past betrayal and trauma that has caused him to shut himself up and grow much more on edge, but this chance meeting draws both parties out of their shells.

Pixiu’s Eatery, No Way Out:

Not a green flag top in the traditional sense, but here we meet the mythical Pixiu: an ancient Chinese mythical creature who now runs a restaurant. While he’s a penny-pincher with a temper and he doesn’t get along with his love interest at first (a ghost named Wen Xi who he finds suspicious due to Wen Xi’s ties to a past rival of his named Taotie), Pixiu and Wen Xi eventually grow, quite naturally—and hilariously!—into a found family.

The Wife Is First:

Based on a novel of pretty much the same name (and is written by the same author as the popular manhua and donghua, No Doubt in Us (a heterosexual body-swap romance, which also has a subtle gay side ship)). Here we meet Jing Shao just as he’s about to lose everything: once a royal and a powerful general, he has been betrayed by all those around him…except the husband he has never treated well.

As such, when we first meet him, we actually witness his—and his husband’s—deaths. But then he awakens and finds himself back in time to the night right after he was forced to wed this husband of his, and Jing Shao vows to treat him well from now on because he stuck with him through thick and thin despite everything.

Don’t Say You Love Me:

A high school romance with a supernatural twist: Lin Yutong was confessed to by his best friend, Qin Weiyun, at their graduation party. When he drunkenly freaked out and ran away, Qin Weiyun was hit by a car during the chase…

Devastated by his loss, Lin Yutong quickly wakes up to find himself back at the start of his high school journey, right before he meets Qin Weiyun… And this time, he wants to keep Qin Weiyun safe.

But his overly familiar attitude at first gets the wary Qin Weiyun a tad suspicious, because he’s actually quite an aloof person.

The author and artist of this one is also behind another popular manhua titled Your Dream Is Delicious, which is about a demon named Yi Kui who discovers he enjoys eating the nightmares of Lin You. This eventually leads to them—you guessed it—falling in love.

It’s Not That I Want to Wear Women’s Clothing:

Our main character is hired to crossdress to help this CEO get over his gynophobia (fear of touching women) without him knowing. Naturally, this leads to an awkward romantic journey of both identities of our main character getting close to this CEO…who at first glance seems like the typical cold and aloof CEO type, except he’s actually quite a sweetheart.

Salt Friend:

A slice-of-life high school story about the “school bully” named Tong Yang who’s actually a crybaby and the aloof person named Xiao Zhen who discovers him crying. While the two don’t seem like they’d get along at first glance, this quickly becomes a friends-to-lovers story that navigates family drama alongside the romance.

How’d I Get a Heroine’s Script?:

A transmigration story with a twist. Chao Yi is wheelchair-bound but finds himself eventually as a young lord in what is basically a palace drama (court politics, intrigue, family drama, all that good stuff). His System, Qin Que, tasks him with wooing the difficult 7th prince, Gu Yunheng, who smiles on the surface but is quite cold in actuality.

Despite the two getting off on the wrong foot—mostly because Gu Yunheng is really hard to get close to—they soon end up as unlikely allies…especially since there’s a lot of secrets, such as regarding the death of the body Chao Yi’s occupying, the scheming princes, and even Gu Yunheng himself.

See You My King:

Zhang Li, a student interested in what is basically ancient Egypt, goes on an expedition to the ruined civilization and nearly loses his life. Except at the same time, he discovers an ancient tomb with a statue that actually comes to life and saves him…

And this statue even follows him home. This statue is sweet and loving despite its inability to speak, and Zhang Li grows attached to it (or him)… But then the statue falls apart and Zhang Li is devastated.

In wishing for a miracle to bring them back together, the statue’s stone heart sends Zhang Li back in time…to when this ancient civilization is still present. And that’s how he discovers his stone statue is the “tyrant king” of this region, and as cruel as he seems at first glance, both this king and Zhang Li eventually grow close and unfold the different sides to one another that makes them inseparable in the face of all kinds of threats.

Trapping the Foxy Doctor:

A doctor and a psychiatrist meet…except it doesn’t seem like a perfect love story at first glance. Not because the doctor is traditionally foxy (seductive and/or cunning), but because he’s so silly and on-the-nose that he initially kind of rubs the psychiatrist the wrong way. Except, of course, with the kind of sunny sincerity displayed by our doctor Zhi Banyi, you can’t resist him for long…

And the psychiatrist, Lin Li, is himself quite a polite soul despite his complex upbringing. As such, the two end up together through a series of cases where they have to collaborate and help clients, with a lot of shenanigans sprinkled in between (including the fact Lin Li has a side-job live-streaming as a woman—and “she” just so happens to be Zhi Banyi’s favourite streamer lol).

Pirouette Into My Heart aka Salad Days:

You know the “he was a skater boy and she did ballet” kind of set-up? Well here we have a boxer and a ballet dancer…and hey, “can I make it any more obvious”?

This one is basically a feel-good story of the century. It’s childhood friends to lovers, and it’s soft and cuddly and encouraging, as we follow the main character, Jiang Shen, in achieving his ballet dreams. And on every step of the way, he’s accompanied by the boxer Bai Jinyi, who’s also chasing his own dreams.

The draw of this one is that while there’s obviously conflict to drive the plot along, it’s ultimately a comforting story, so you get all warm and squishy inside reading it. Bai Jinyi and Jiang Shen are very supportive of one another, as is everyone around them.

There’s even extras at the very end that swap the classes of the two main characters, which makes for a similarly compelling AU. 🤭

Beryl and Sapphire:

Not always BL but often is. What do I mean by that? Well it’s a story that can switch to any universe even as the characters stay the same, and some worlds are just one-off gags while some are whole story arcs. The original manhua features stick figures, so if you really want to experience this one, I’d recommend the donghua. The first season also cleverly shows the main characters as actors in the OP, which explains all the world-switching pretty easily haha.

Don’t Pick Up Boyfriends from the Trash Bin:

Unfortunately I’m not sure the manhua for this one is still ongoing, but the original novel (all about transmigration and hopping multiple worlds) 100% features a green flag top.

The Guy Inside Me:

I know the title sounds sexual lol but it’s actually a joke about how it’s a body-swap story. 😆

The original Chinese title is “This Question Is Too Difficult”) and of course, the author also wrote Fake Slackers, which has two very smart students act like terrible ones due to not wanting trouble.

Falling to Where I Belong:

The thing about this one is that the top is 100% a total green flag... It's the main character that's more of a red flag, in the sense he at first only asks the top out to humiliate him due to a misunderstanding.

But it's still a heartfelt story filled with regret and growth, and I did really like the portrayal of Cheng Feichi. Personally I think the manhua humanizes him a bit more than the novel since we didn't really get his POV in the novel that often, but I did hope for even more emotion in the ending... Still, it was a satisfying read, and while I would like to comfort the main character, Zhen Yeming, over his regrets, I really want to just give all the good things to Cheng Feichi, who definitely deserves it after everything he went through.

More Than Brothers:

For the "non-freaks" out there, they're not actual brothers, don’t worry; not adopted brothers either. Just a guy who saw his younger friend as his bro…until this friend disappeared from his life and apparently got into a bad crowd… Except in reality he is being harassed and is struggling to leave his abusive family.

The Protagonist Just Wants to Fall in Love:

Kind of a classic in the transmigration genre, except now we get multiple worlds in multiple arcs. Our protagonists are Systems on their final mission, aiming to become human by the end of it, and their task is to guide their protagonists away from the path of "darkening" (essentially corruption).

And each and every one of these systems do so by getting their protagonist to fall in love with them lol.

Unsurprisingly, my favourite arc so far—in the manhua at least!—is the historical one between the advisor and the emperor, but the third—and currently ongoing as the time of me writing this—world between two university students who started getting close during military training and by playing games is also quite cute.

And okay, man I could really keep going, especially with the manhua that are based on novels, but this post is already really long asjakfl. It was, in fact, so fucking long YouTube wouldn't even let me post it at first until I cut it down AMFKGSJDFGS.

But I still want to at least give a shout out to some of the manhua with pretty healthy, green flag tops/gongs!:

Like Han Yuan, despite the characters not getting along at first and Yu Han being rather aloof to the spoiled Luo Linyuan, is still quite sweet at its core. Lovely Allergen is as well, even with their "brotherly" relationship being the forefront of the conflict between Song Yu and Yue Zishi.

Another kind I wanted to bring up is the ones where their worlds or stories are dark, but the characters aren't necessarily. Like The Film Emperor, He Insisted on Being My Patron has a very green flag gong (he's such a puppy!), but he and the main character are up against the reddest of red flags of a villain LMDFKGSJFD.

It's also not a manhua I think people who want green flag leads would necessarily enjoy, given that beyond being "darker," it also goes into the territory of fan service-y and "problematic" nsfw content, but again, the male lead is really quite sweet to the main character despite the shitty situation they're in.

And I thought of Bu Chonghua from Tunhai aka Swallowing the Seas (another one based on a novel), since the main character there, Wu Yu, comes to see Bu Chonghua as so good and just that he pushes him away because he feels like he can't dirty such a man with his own darkness, both in his past and personality. It's a trope I really enjoy.

I'll briefly mention some ⚠️ spoilers ⚠️but the reason I wanted to highlight it is because: the latest chapter of the manhua has Bu Chonghua overhear Wu Yu saying he likes Bu Chonghua, and this is after Wu Yu disappeared and Bu Chonghua is worried he skipped town for good. He follows Wu Yu, all while wondering if the like Wu Yu holds for him is the same as his liking of Wu Yu, and when Wu Yu is about to be gravely injured in an underground fighting ring, Bu Chonghua steps in to save him... The chapter ends with Wu Yu holding him back pleading with him to stop because it's not worth dirtying his hands with such a man as his opponent, and that's such a delicious flavour of angst because like...Wu Yu thinks it's fine for he himself to fight against such a person, but he doesn't want Bu Chonghua to. ;-;

Oops. I didn't mean for this to become a deeper ramble of Tunhai KMSGFKGHSJ. It's just interesting to me since Tunhai and its prequel, Poyun aka Breaking Through the Clouds, may not have what the people who prefer green flag tops want in terms of content, but its tops are technically not that much of a red flag either.

Which also get us to the kind of stories where plot can also sort of outweigh whether a top/gong is a green flag or not. Like No Arguing With Mr. Mo has two characters who struggle greatly in their relationship, with the question of "are they in love?" being an overarching issue for them, meaning it's not exactly healthy, and prevents them from being fully either green or red flags.

I also didn't bring up a lot of historical/xianxia manhua, which I'm sure some people may disagree with... Like the leads in Tianbao Fuyao Lu are arguably quite good, and while I haven't read Dinghai Fusheng Lu yet, I assume it's in a similar boat as something set in the same world.

And then there's the ones that develop into green flags... Like Mo Ran starts off awful, yes, but he does become much better later on!! But I don't think that's what those people after green flags want to hear lol. Plus I'd argue Erha is best experienced in novel (or audio drama) form over the manhua anyway—the manhua feels more like something made for established fans in my opinion.

Regardless, I hope this shows that with so many listed above, many manhua actually feature male leads who really do care for their love interests in a healthy, respectful way, whether they're 100% green flags or they develop into green flags or they're not even complete green flags. ^^

Edit: Oh I forgot to link my full list of danmei/baihe manhua recs HMSKFJSKS. I currently don’t have any summaries, tags, or content warnings in this list though, but there’s quite the range of stories!:

[sailorshadzter]

more random jonsa

mostly i wanted an excuse to write about jon taking care of sansa

In the aftermath of battle, there is much to do.

There are wounds to be sewn, hands to be held, eyes to be shut. She oversees every single moment, stitching wounds and softly singing to the dying, hoping that in their final moments the men who died for them all could find even just an ounce of peace. She waves away those who try to pry her from her work, insisting she would continue on until every last wound was clean and closed, until every last living soul was in a warm, comfortable place, and every last lost soul was a name in her whirling mind. Names she would not soon forget. 

It is only long after dawn breaks on the horizon that she is satisfied with what was left to do- there was still much to decide, much to think about, but she can rest. 

At least for now. 

And so she retreats from the courtyard, returning inside the castle and heading up to her own rooms, unsurprised that when she opens the door the room is not empty. “I wondered when you might take some time to rest,” Jon says as she slips inside, stripping herself of her dirty cloak, knowing it was certainly ruined, covered in blood and sweat and tears. “I thought I might have to fetch you myself.” He’d been forced into bed himself, with bandaged wounds and a sleeping draught, which had only just worn off a short while before. Of course the first place he came to was these rooms, only to find them empty. It doesn’t surprise him, truly, to have learned that she was at the forefront of the events in the aftermath- he’d watched from the double doors as she leaned over a dying man, her eyes gentle, her voice soothing as she softly sang him a song from their own childhood. He knew, in that moment, this was her place to be, this was the time her people needed her the most. One day, if not today, they would recall the memory of their beloved Lady of Winterfell tending to the wounded and the dying and they would honor her for what she’s done. 

She turns to him then, a faint smile curving on her lips as she takes a step closer to where he sits in the chair before the hearth. He’s changed his clothes and the bruising on his face is far more prominent than it’d been hours ago. But as he rises up, he moves with the grace of a man healing, of a man who perhaps was up a little earlier than he should have been, but she can tell he will go on to heal from what he’s suffered in battle. “And I’m surprised Lord Royce or Brienne didn’t force you to do so,” she spares a soft laugh as she thinks of her two most loyal, most trusted companions, both of whom had come in attempts to steal her away from what she’d been doing. 

As she moves, Jon cannot help but to notice there’s a slowness to her movements, as if something pains her. Suddenly, he’s on high alert. “What happened to you?” He asks, leaping to his feet, all so he can close the gap between them. “You’re hurt!” As a man who has suffered many injuries over the years, he knows an injured body when he sees one. “Sansa!” He reaches for her arm as she tries to turn away and she gasps, wrenching her arm from his grasp, a pained look crossing her features. 

Just like that he understands. 

“Show me…” He encourages softly, gentling his touch as he runs his fingers along her wrist, feeling the faint beating of her pulse beneath his fingertips. 

There comes a long pause before she finally relents, drawing her arm away just so she can roll back the sleeve of her gown, where he sees bloodied bandages wrapped around her limb. “It’s not so bad,” she says at once, but Jon is shaking his head, drawing her over to the chair he once occupied so he can sit her down in it instead. “It barely hurts at all-” whatever else she meant to say is cut off as she winces, his gentle touch enough to cause her pain as he begins to unwrap the bandages, revealing the wound to him. It is from a blade, that much he can tell, and while it is shallow- she must have drawn away at the right moment- he can tell it pains her. “It was a wight,” she says softly, drawing his attention back up to her face. “One had a child, I just couldn’t…” What she doesn’t say is that despite her attempts, that child was one they had to bury. What she doesn’t say is that each time she closes her eyes, she can hear the shrieks of those dying and those watching it happen. What she doesn’t say is that it took her years to overcome the trauma of what she witnessed during the riot in King’s Landing, leaving her to believe that this night would haunt her for the rest of her life. 

“Oh, Sansa…” Jon says softly, his hand sliding into place against the curve of her cheek. She leans into his touch, eyes closing as she breathes in. “Let me take care of you,” he murmurs next and her eyes open, blinking with surprise. It takes only a moment for her to nod, for her to sag against him, needing this moment more than she cared to let on. 

Within minutes he’s called for a hot bath and the maids bring the copper tub without hesitation; it takes no time at all for it to be full of sweetly scented water and though there would be talk tomorrow, he waves the maids away. The door to her bedchamber opens a moment later and she steps out wearing nothing but the dressing robe he’s seen her in countless times. “I’ll go…” He begins, but she shakes her head. 

“Stay, please…” 

He nods, but he turns around all the same, waiting until he hears the soft splash of the water sloshing over the sides to turn back around. She’s sunk deep into the warm depths, red hair floating around her as she sighs deeply, perhaps the most content she’s been in ages. He comes close as he dares, suddenly quite aware of the moment they were sharing, but she seems to not mind as she turns her gaze towards him once more. “Your arm…” He says when he finally finds his voice, drawing the stool up beside the tub, reaching for the small basket of supplies one of the maids had left behind. Inside he finds a washcloth and a small bar of soap that smells of honey and milk, which he dips into the water and rubs it into a lather against the cloth. She holds out her injured arm and he carefully, tenderly, dabs at the wound with the cloth, shooting her an apologetic glance when she sucks in a pained breath. “There,” he says when he’s decided it to be clean enough, gently lowering it back into the warm water. 

There they stay until the water turns cool and she says she cannot stand it a moment longer. 

He fetches her a warmed sheet, closing his eyes as he holds it out to her sopping body. She’s laughing softly at him as she wraps herself in the sheet and steps over the tub, her long red hair plastered against her damp skin. “Wait here,” she says, as if he could ever leave, and it isn’t until he hears the door to her bedchamber open and close once more that he opens his eyes. While she’s gone, the maids return to bring spiced wine and a small vial of milk of the poppy- he knows she needs it, even if she won’t admit it. A few minutes pass and she returns, wearing her ivory nightgown, bare feet padding across the rushes to stand before him. “Thank you for that.”

“I’m not quite done,” he admits a moment later, gesturing for her to return to the chair she once occupied, drawing the other one up to take himself. “Here,” he offers her a goblet of the wine, which she takes, tilting her head ever so slightly as she looks at him. “Let me see…” She extends out her arm and he gently pushes back the sleeve of her nightgown, revealing the wound to him once more. It’s stopped bleeding, but he knows infection can grow even in the most shallow of wounds, so he slathers it with the poultice the maids had brought along with the other supplies. 

“I didn’t know you were such a skilled maester,” she teases when she’s drunk her first goblet, blue eyes watching his every movement.

“I learned much in the Night’s Watch,” he admits, pouring her a second, grinning in spite of himself. Hers was not the first wound he’s cleaned and dressed, certainly it was not even to be the last. “That will feel better now.” He says as he secures the new, clean bandage around her arm, comforted by the thought that she would heal in a few weeks time, perhaps even without a scar. 

She had enough scars, after all. 

“Drink a glass with me,” she commands next, gesturing towards the other empty goblet. Jon obliges, pouring himself one before he pours her a third. He slides the vial of milk towards her, which she glances at, before she reaches for it and takes it without a word of protest. Perhaps such a thing would help her forget all that she’s seen this night. “You are well then?” She asks next, concern written into her blue eyes. Jon nods and she seems to relax, sinking back into the chair, red hair falling across her shoulder as she shifts to find the most comfortable of positions. “Truly?” Her hand reaches out, falling into place against his thigh, a gesture so natural one might think she’s done it hundreds of times before. 

A shiver races his spine and he can do nothing else but take a swig of wine from the goblet. “Aye, I am,” he finally says, recalling how it had been her hands that had tended to him, her hands that had cleaned his wounds, stitched them, bandaged them. 

It had always been her to heal him. 

“I’m glad,” she drains the last drops of wine and her head is spinning, though part of her knows it’s from more than the wine or the milk of the poppy. “Jon… Can I…” She trails off, blushing, looking away. “Can I sit with you…?” She asks a moment later, forcing the words from her lips before she loses her nerve. There is but a moment of pause before Jon nods, shifting his position to give her the place to climb into. Her weight is soft and warm as she sinks onto his lap, resting her head against his strong shoulder. He wraps an arm around her and he breathes her in, thankful that despite all that has happened, they still have a moment such as this one. Any instance that night could have changed things for the worst. Tomorrow, they would still have their family, their most precious loved ones, to embrace and to love. 

But tonight, he only had her. 

It does not take long for her to drift off to sleep, but even then Jon cannot bring himself to move her, fearful that it might disturb her slumber. And so that is how they stay for a long while, until the morning sunlight is bright as it streams in through her curtains. Only when he’s certain she is sound asleep, taken by both the wine and the medicine, does he put his arms beneath her and stand up. With her head still against his shoulder, he crosses the room and enters her bedchamber, a room he’s been in many times before. He finds her bed is unkempt, as if she’d tossed and turned within it for hours the day before, just as he’d done within his own. Carefully, he deposits her down onto the bed, tucking the furs around her, smiling as she smacks her lips and turns her head away, deeply asleep as she deserved to be.

He can only hope she dreams happily. 

[emilystheories]

Regarding Elain's love life, I would happily read both an Elriel and Elucien book. In that respect, I am a neutral 'multi-shipper,' and choose to stay out of any shipping-related arguments because of it.

However, in a (hypothetical) scenario in which Elucien and Gwynriel are confirmed endgame, I strongly believe that an Elain and Lucien book would come first.

To (very respectfully) add to the discourse, there are two main reasons for this belief.

1. Timing.

In SJM's latest interview with Today, she confirmed that she is now only writing one book a year.

Then, in that same interview, SJM also spoke about the book she'll be writing after ACOTAR 5; that it'll be "emotional" for her, due to the characters she'll be writing about, and the world it's set in.

Given these hints, many fans believe this to be a Throne of Glass book.

As such, SJM's future release schedule likely looks like this:

2025: ACOTAR 5.

2026: Mysterious book (TOG?).

2027: ACOTAR 6 (or, could be CC4).

As we know, ACOMAF was released in 2016.

This means that if Elain's book isn't next, it'll be pushed back to 2027 — at the earliest.

That means that it will be 11 years — more than an entire DECADE — since Lucien first told Elain that she was his mate, and the resolution to their story.

11 whole years of waiting to see whether Elain will accept or reject the mating bond, which is undeniably one of the hottest topics in the fandom, and has been for some time now.

(To put that into context, the entire 8-book saga that is Throne of Glass was completed in 6 years... so almost half the time).

I just don't believe that SJM will further delay the resolution to the OG Elriel vs Elucien debate (and Elain's story, a character who has been featured from the very beginning) in favour of ships and characters who were only introduced in the most recent book — no matter how popular (and wonderful!) they may be.

2. If Elriel isn't endgame, then the dissolution of their relationship will need to be told from Elain's POV, not Azriel's.

Again, in this (hypothetical) scenario in which Elucien and Gwynriel are canon, these stories cannot eventuate until the connection between Elain and Azriel is resolved.

(And no, I don't believe the bonus chapter, that isn't available to everyone, is enough to 'shut down' Elriel — nor would that do justice to a popular ship that SJM has written about, in canon, for many years now).

Knowing SJM's patterns thus far, I very much doubt that she would write such a resolution from Azriel's POV. Instead, any break up of Elriel will need to come from Elain — from the woman's perspective. In the same way we witnessed Feyre process her feelings for Tamlin and Rhys, or Aelin with Chaol and Rowan.

To spin it a different way: if a Gwynriel book is next, it means that a decent chunk of Azriel's POV will be spent processing his feelings for Elain, before being able to 'move on' to Gwyn. It brings the 'love triangle' (Elain vs Gwyn; woman vs woman) to the Gwynriel book, which I really cannot see SJM ever doing. And, knowing that each couple only has one book, I'm not sure why anyone (especially Gwynriel shippers!) would actually want this.

Instead, in my opinion, the 'love triangle' has always been the point of Elain's book. Lucien or Azriel. Accepting the mating bond or rejecting it. Destiny, or a man you choose for yourself.

[art by elithien]

And, if Elain's book is next and she chooses Lucien, this is surely the best possible outcome for the Gwynriel ship, as it allows for a dedicated Azriel x Gwyn book in the future (with no involvement of Elain, or any ship war drama).

--

In rebutting these points, however, I know people will state that "Azriel has the most set-up and foreshadowing for the next book!" But to that I'd point out:

If true, this hints at an Elriel book more than anything (given SJM's ACOFAS interview, which all but confirmed that Elain's book is next).

Past character involvement isn't always a reliable indicator of future character involvement. As an example of this, most readers were convinced that Fury, Ariadne, Emile and the Thunderbirds would have a significant role to play in CC3 (given how much importance had been placed on these characters thus far), yet that couldn't have been further from the truth.

Similarly, many have also argued that the direction of the plot for ACOTAR 5 is more in favour of Gwynriel than Elucien (which is a valid opinion to have!). But I'd again suggest that this also isn't a reliable indicator, given that most of the plot of ACOSF/Nesta's book wasn't directly foreshadowed in previous books either. For example:

There was no mention of the Valkyries in previous books.

There was no mention of Gwyn in previous books.

There was no mention of the Dread Trove in previous books.

There was no indication that Nesta would ever compete in the Blood Rite in previous books, which is arguably the most pivotal event in ACOSF.

--

Of course, anything is possible, and I respect all opinions and theories on the topic. Most of all, I will happily read the next ACOTAR book, no matter which ship it features.

But, when SJM said that she thought it was "pretty obvious" who the next book would be about, I personally believe the only "obvious" choice is Elain — to continue (and conclude!) the love stories of the three Archeron sisters, before moving onto anything else.

In the context of this post specifically (and my perspective on the matter), this suggests that an Elucien book for ACOTAR 5 is the way to go.

[an-eldritch-peredhel]

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what Eldritch peredhel entail

-@@outofangband

Sorry this took so long @outofangband and thank you for asking this I am! Delighted! And am preemptively putting a read more down because I cannot shut up about they <3

alright I'm just gonna put stuff and headcanons down as they occur to me so expect low-moderate levels of coherency

shapeshifting is an obvious one (gets weaker down the generations) but because my brain is Like This I have caveats!

thanks to my whole peredhil things=gender allegory that my brain spit out without my permission I've long struggled against my inherent feeling that while they can shapeshift they don't like it

but because I'm now aware of my brain's reasoning I can say it's because of ✨fantasy dysphoria✨

that's oversimplifying, obviously, but peredhil already have so much issues with working through who and what they are and compromising between body and mind and spirit that actively choosing to change into/present as something/someone who They Are Not is. Not usually their cup of tea.

As a whole they tend to have specific forms that they prefer as being closer to themselves, and distinct enough that it doesn't feel like they're faking something they're not

(changing to look like a different person, or a edited version of themself is Very Very not fun unless either explicitly for disguise or shenanigans)

(the exception to this is that Luthien can make herself look almost perfectly human without any real issue. she doesn't do it often but especially as she ages she likes to catch glimpses of her reflection and get both excited and sappy. this is in contrast to making herself look almost perfectly like an elf which makes her feel like her skin is on fire.)

(Also I'm pretty sure all of them can flip their agab presentation while only feeling varying degrees of off, and even then it's a different feeling than the shapeshifting dysphoria. Dior and Elwing are the two who I think mind it the most)

They all have the (agonizing to write) trait of feeling very distinct relationships to their species in their body vs soul/mind vs spirit/fea and they all feel it very differently! This isn't exclusive to Luthien's line but the maia blood does make it worse.

Oh! This is a new headcanon of mine actually but!

They all have faces that are very very hard to capture in image. They are the bane of portrait artists (and, to a degree, sculptors) everywhere because the art never looks accurate to life

It's not blatantly off it's just. missing something? Or something was added? maybe it's a little too wide, or narrow, or long, or short, in one place or another

It's not unrecognizable but if you've ever seen the subject in real life you can just tell

It's especially bad with Luthien (and Daeron) and Dior (to a lesser extent) because everyone literally sees them differently, as in their features will be slightly different depending on what each person finds attractive/aesthetically appealing and beautiful

(not a lot, again, it's not unrecognizable, but there has never and will never be any accurate depiction of Luthien as she was as a person)

(as a concept, though, as the most beautiful creature to have ever existed in Arda, a little of her image exists in every portrait lovingly made of a beloved spouse, every child's drawing of their family, in biological sketches of songbirds and field mice, in a sculpture of a stranger's face. Daeron remembers his sister perfectly, but he collects these regardless)

(Arwen, Luthien come again, isn't described as such by her grandparents. Galadriel and Celeborn both knew Luthien, and while Arwen and her father both look as closely to her as genetically possible, to those who actually know them both it's nothing more than uncanny family resemblance. Luthien was to most a concept personified, Arwen is a person with concepts imposed on her.)

The list of people who have seen Luthien how she actually, physically, defaultly is, essentially consists of Melian, Daeron, Beren, and Dior

Beren doesn't see her as she is right away because he doesn't know her right away, but they learn about each other and she shows herself and he sees her and by the time she rescues him from Tol-im-Gaurhoth there are no echoes on her face

(He's always a little bit haunted that he nearly died without realizing he'd never quite seen the truth of her before)

Neither Thingol or Beren can quite see their own features on their children's faces. They clearly take after their mothers, after all!

(This leads to much affectionate eye-rolling on Melian and Luthien's part)

Hair stuff!

It's alive! kinda! it's definitely not normal hair!

It moves a lot on its own. Sometimes like a breeze is blowing where there isn't one. Sometimes more like tentacles. It depends on its mood.

They've got some very pretty traditional cosmic horror vibes swirling around on their heads. It's very sparkly and colorful but in a Forbidden Shrimp Colors that your brain is unable to comprehend way so it reads as iridescent black mostly, or holographic white, where applicable

Luthien's hair actually is a glimpse into space, Daeron's is a glance at a star

(Luthien's magic hair cloak survives, I think, into the 4th age and beyond, though if anyone/anything has found it they certainly don't know the origins of the beautifully intricate living star map. It has seen the reign of countless north stars, yet the lines always point to the same coordinates- where the ancient, sunken, ruined remains of what once was Tol-im-Gaurhoth lay)

Speed round!

Fangs and talons and horns oh my! Are they tooth and keratin and bone, or are they petrified wood and gem and stone? Yes!

They all smell a little like ozone and a lot like petrichor, flowers, and Green. If you've smelled green you know what I'm talking about. Also, unfortunately, like bird. Birds don't smell great, especially wet bird.

Weird Foresight Powers++

(Most of them don't have actual foresight, but all of them are more in-tune with the Song than is natural for an incarnate)

Their eyes glow, most notably in the dark, unless the irises turn black as they sometimes do. They are also all unnaturally bright versions of the less-spooky parent's- Dior's are gold, Elwing's are blue-green like a tropical sea (Elured and Elurin split the color between them- ultramarine and emerald), Elrond and Elros have pale star-gold, Elladan, Elrohir, and Arwen all have silver.

(Daeron and Luthien being the exception again, because I decided they have Melian's eyes before I decided this, and I don't know what color eyes Thingol has. Watsonianly: Melian's spooky genes overwrite a lot. Luthien's genotype is probably much closer to his than her magically overwritten phenotype)

Their sclerae turn black and their pupils white, on occasion, usually when using powers

They don't bleed right. It's a little too red for an elf, a little too light for a human, and it shines strange as it beads like quicksilver on the skin

They have very shiny, cool skin. Luthien looked like her's was silver plate under a stretched stocking, the rest toned it down from there but it's still noticeable.

The Song is. Attached to them. They are all very much Main Characters. Their lives have a clear story arc with symbolism and narrative parallels. They are all subconsciously aware that their lives are a fairytale, whether tragic or no, and yes this has many Implications and affects. They are not the only ones like this, but they are the only ones who, to some level, know they are in a story.

This is the fundamental separation between them and everyone else.

The difference in how they perceive themselves between heart soul and spirit is very difficult to explain and understand, but not impossible to someone who knows them and is willing to put in the work.

The life-long knowledge that they are Important to the Song and their every choice and event they experience and their mere existence serves a greater purpose in a way that most other people simply do not- that's very, very isolating.

No one else can understand how they see the world. Very very few people are willing to try, and even fewer in a way that's not frustrating. There is a reason most of them find only one person to latch on to outside of their family, and a reason they hold on through hell and high water.

(This is about being neurodivergent)

[donnerpartyofone]

horrorphones...

Like many of the cretinous shut-ins who follow this blog, I hate phone calls. If you call me on the phone without an approved appointment I will assume that you are experiencing a deadly emergency. You will scare the shit out of me and I may not even be relieved if there is no deadly emergency. For me to talk on the phone, I practically always have to write a little script, even if we are very close personal friends. I must have a physical list of talking points in case my mind goes totally blank from the enormous pressure and I forget my entire life. I usually have to have at least one drink for calls lasting longer than a minute or two. I would probably be most comfortable conducting all social business from behind a Late Show desk on which I could reassuringly tap my stack of helpful cue cards. I will write you very long personal letters. I will text and DM with you at all hours of the night. I just cannot talk to you on the phone. The phone fries my brain. Actually, I feel extremely nervous even after a phone call, even if everything went well, even if it was super fun. I kind of have to sleep it off.

Unfortunately, not all people communicate in non-phone ways. I have one best friend (I'm an adult, I don't put the top people in a hierarchy as if they all serve exactly the same purpose and some are better than others; I have a couple of verified "best friends") who is just too much of a free spirit to be really into the internet, or to be brooding over long written documents. I gotta talk to her on the phone or she won't feel loved, she'll feel detached and isolated. I love to talk to her, but I still need to get in the like phone zone in order to not act like the total fucking outer space alien that I actually am. Being me is very taxing.

But now I have this old friend, see. An old friend and also a friend who is old. Actually I have no idea how old he is, he was old when I met him. He gave me my first post-college job (my first "real job" ever, I was and remain an unemployable mess) at his comic book store, where I stayed for many years. The whole crew there was very tight. He is a cool, smart, funny, cultured, frustrating, infuriating, offensive, secretly caring and wonderful sort of person. We went through a lot together, including several years of a random customer stalking and harassing me. We dealt with the police together. We served the dregs of society together. Sometimes we hated each other. But he is a major reason that I survived my 20s.

Several years ago he was in a freak accident where he was pinned under a heavy piece of furniture in his apartment for days. It could have killed him. He already had a well-developed case of Parkinson's, I don't know if that's related. Through a series of different events, he wound up moving into an assisted living place on the other side of the country, near one of his brothers. I'm sure he hates it. Every year on Halloween, which is a little bit before his birthday, I send him a hand-drawn card featuring classic comics characters doing all sorts of demented things, along with a little update letter. One year I got a letter back asking me to call him. OH NO, I thought. I didn't call.

Yesterday was a big, very challenging, in some ways very rewarding day. When I was finally all out of tasks I decided to turn my brain fully off and become spectacularly stoned. I was well zooted when my fucking phone rang. I quickly Googled the number, and I'm pretty sure it was the assisted living facility where my friend is. I didn't pick up. They called back once, but left no message. I felt pretty bad, though I also knew that in my current state it would have been a huge disaster if I answered. What if he died? I thought, knowing that he has a lot of siblings and I wouldn't have been that phone call, and also if it were important they would have left a message or kept trying. I forced myself not to worry about it by popping a couple of Benadryl and making it an early night.

I think I have to call back though. I might regret it if I don't. I have been thinking about this for a long time. I have all sorts of worries. What if he's incoherent now? What if we can't understand each other? What if I have nothing to say? What if he IS coherent but he wants to say terrible things about politics (a life-long constant for him, I don't know if he even cares as much about politics as he does about trolling people)? But also what if he like dies and I have to sit around thinking about how selfish I am for never calling him for all eternity? I'm sure I'm the only person making him original personalized art for his birthday every year, but does that really get me out of everything else?

So the point of this post is to somehow force myself to call him. I have way too much shit to do and I am preparing for a lot of stressful social things with strangers and I need to stop being unemployed and I am cramping up a storm. But I think I also have to make the phone call. Maybe I will do such a bad job that I never have to do it again! Pray for me, pray for the sweet saving grace of personal failure.

[bibliophileiz]

I just finished a book called The Queens of Animation by Nathalia Holt, about women animators at the Walt Disney Studio. I cannot believe the shit I found out.

(Hopefully I got this all correct, I was listening to an audiobook instead of reading a hard copy, so I can't consult it for name spellings and the like. I'm relying on Google, and well, we know how that goes sometimes.)

Some things I learned from this book. -Walt Disney became a personal champion of women in the animation department, arguing not just that they were as talented as men but that they could bring something to storytelling that men could not. After his death, the number of women in the animation and story departments plummeted, along with the animation department itself. -But he also paid women way less. (Except Mary Blair.)

Not just women, but many animators had a hard time getting on-screen credit for their work. This was one of the issues that led to a massive strike in 1941 that tore the department in two, temporarily shut down the studio, and resulted in a lot of people, both union and non-union, losing their jobs when it finally reopened.

On the rare occasion women did get credit, they were sometimes ignored by reviewers.

The second woman to be hired to the animation department, Grace Huntington, was a pilot who held multiple speed and altitude records. She eventually quit the studio with the hopes of getting a full time aviation job, but died young of TB before her career could take off.

Traditional animation is apparently a terrible way to make money. Only a handful of the early animated feature-length films made more at the box office than it took to make them.

Women animators were drawing things for The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast as early as the 1930s.

Men thought drawing fairies was unmanly, so the fairy sequence set to Nutcracker music in Fantasia was drawn and directed entirely by women.

While the women animators were doing that, the men drew super gross racist and sexist centaurs to Beethoven music, and the reviewers all hated it. (Essentially they were like HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO BEETHOVEN.) - Generally, male animators tended to like slapstick comedy in their cartoons, while women tended to be more about storytelling and character development.

Obviously there were exceptions to that rule, like Walt Disney and Mark Davis.

Disney hired an LSU professor to write Song of the South. When everyone pointed out to him this was a terrible idea, he hired a Communist Jew from New York as co-writer for "balance."

This went about as well as you'd expect.

When the LSU professor demanded his co-writer get taken off the script, Disney replaced him with another "progressive" white guy.

Apparently he never considered hiring an African-American writer.

Literally everyone, including the studio's legal team, told him not to make this movie, much less hire a white guy from Baton Rouge to write it.

The lead actor James Baskett, who won an Honorary Academy Award for the role, couldn't go to the premiere because it was held in Atlanta.

Meanwhile, the Communist got put on Cinderella. He interpreted the story as a worker rising up against her oppressors.

This is also known as the correct way to interpret Cinderella.

Apparently the writer (so sorry, I'm forgetting his name) included a "violent" scene in which Cinderella goes after her stepmother and stepsisters.

I have no more details than that, but apparently the other animators made him take it out.

I'm now just picturing Cinderella stalking around her house with a raised butcher knife in her hand like in "Psycho."

Artist Mary Blair was art director for many of the classic Disney movies, including Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland. Disney loved her work so much that when she had to move to Long Island for her husband's job, Disney let her work remotely and fly back and forth from New York to Los Angeles.

She was responsible for the rich colors and design choices in the princess movies. She resigned part way through "Sleeping Beauty" but the art director after her used her designs for Maleficent.

Her husband, Lee Blair, was also an animator for the studio before he left to fight in World War II. He was apparently extremely jealous of Mary's artistic talent, and when he returned from Europe, he moved the family to Long Island, became an alcoholic, and started abusing her and later their children. Mary didn't feel she could go to Walt, or any of her other friends at the studio like Retta Scott and Mark and Alice Davis, because domestic violence and divorce were so taboo back then.

Even after the move, Disney let her work remotely, and she spent a lot of time flying between New York and Los Angeles. She eventually resigned hoping to work on her marriage (this didn't really work, though her husband did eventually start going to AA meetings after spending a year in jail for drunk driving) but was later rehired to help design the It's A Small World ride.

Everyone who worked on that ride hated the song btw.

The men apparently got over the idea of drawing fairies making their balls fall off or something by the time they were making Peter Pan, but one of them still asked why Tinker Bell "had to be so naughty".

101 Dalmations was the first animated film to be made using Xerox technology, which decimated the studio's female-dominated ink and paint department (their job was to trace over the animators' work). The Xerox machines could only make black and white at first, which is why so much of that movie is so colorless compared to the earlier Disney films Mary Blair worked on.

The silver lining was everyone got to play with puppies while they were making it because Disney ordered a whole bunch of them to just be there in the studio for the animators to draw.

Speaking of cute animals, the Burbank lot was home to a bunch of stray cats. Disney liked them being there because they hunted mice, so he didn't like when employees fed them.

Disney hated 101 Dalmations, because of the Xerox machines, but it made more of a profit than any of his previous films, because of the Xerox machines.

Julie Andrews originally turned down the role of Mary Poppins because she was pregnant, and Disney promised to wait on her. (Joss Whedon, take notes.)

After Walt died of lung cancer, the animation department was nearly killed and pretty much stopped hiring women. Mary Blair, who had been almost as influential to Disney's art as Walt, was edged out and by the time new animators started working on the Disney Renaissance films, they didn't even know who she was.

Many of the women who left the studio went on to work for Little Golden Books and other children's book publishing companies.

One of the few women animators at the company at this time, Heidi Guedel, who drew Tigger, left with Don Bluth when he departed to form his own company in 1979.

When The Little Mermaid was in production, there was only one woman animator--she may have been the only woman in the entire story department, I don't remember.

Disney then began hiring more women animators at the directive of then-Disney CEO Mike Eisner and head of animation Jeffrey Katzenberg.

One of the women screenwriters working on Beauty and the Beast (I think Linda Woolverton, but it may have been Brenda Chapman) wrote a scene in which Belle puts pins on a map showing where all she hopes to travel.

The animators changed the scene in the storyboards so that Belle is in the kitchen making a cake instead. When the screenwriter saw it, she apparently raged BELLE DOES NOT MAKE CAKES!

Pixar at this time had no women in its animation department.

Brenda Chapman became the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film for Brave. During her acceptance speech, she talked about her daughter Emma.

When making Frozen, Disney held a "sister summit" of women discussing their relationships with their sisters and other women. Men at the summit were not allowed to speak.

btw Brenda Chapman also worked on The Prince of Egypt. (I did not learn this from the book, I learned it just now while looking her up on imdb.)

If I have had a very bad day, and am very tired, then the mere mention of Howard Ashman's name will make me break down in tears.

[valdomarx]

Favourite DW audios ft. the Master

The extended Doctor Who canon can be a bit of a maze, but if you love the master and want to listen to some of the audio stories about them then I have recs for you!

Masterful. A silly story with all of the masters (pre-dhawan) meeting each other and, as you can imagine, not getting on well. Featuring such delights as simm!master and jacobi!master bickering in a car, crispy!master finding love at last, missy as the ultimate agent of chaos, and simm!master trying to persuade other versions of himself to join him in an orgy.

Master Thief / Lesser Evils. Two stories featuring delgado! and ainley! masters, read as audiobooks as both actors have sadly passed away (RIP). These are technically part of the (rather complicated) Timelord Victorious event, but they work as stand alones. A quick glimpse into the mentalities of the earlier versions of the Master.

War Master: All of it. The whole series. A gem from beginning to end. No I will not shut up about this until everyone has listened to it. Legendary actor Derek Jacobi having the time of his life as the most terrifyingly competent version of the Master, causing strife and pain everywhere he goes because he likes it. You say Be Gay, Do Crime, but who is out there living that philosophy like the war master???

(If you force me to choose a favourite from War Master, both Only the Good and Anti-Genesis are tremendous boxsets. My fellow thoschei folks will want to check out Rage of the Time Lords and Hearts of Darkness as well.)

Mastermind: Really fun story showing how the master psychologically manipulates people. The crispy!master is locked in a cell in the UNIT vault, and two guards are charged with making sure he doesn't escape. Big Hannibal Lecter vibes.

Master: Thoschei chaps, are you ready to get fucked up? However messed up you imagine childhood on Gallifrey might be, it's so much worse than that. This is also a tremendous ghostly spooky dinner party story which is full of tension and believably teases the potential of redemption for the master... and shows why that redemption will never stick.

The Lumiat: Talking of redemption - have you ever wondered what the master would be like if they were an unbearably chipper goodie-goodie lady? Poor Missy has to put up with hands down the most sickeningly wholesome regeneration of herself. Highly entertaining.

And You Will Obey Me: Another entry in the "wow crispy!master sure is manipulative and awful huh" series. This story has him going up against the fifth doctor which I find fun. (cut to me holding up an idiot in a cricket jumper: I Just Think He's Neat.)

The Same Face: This is mostly on the list because i love jo grant. But it's also a nice little story audiobook about regeneration, other rogue timelords, and delgado!master doing his mischevious thing. A quick short trip that's worth a listen.

This is just a small selection of my favourites from a massive amount of canon, so there's a handy masterpost here if you want a list of every audio that the master has appeared in to date. And sacha dhawan will be getting his own series (two of them!) soon which i cannot wait for!

[httpiastri]

okay this is a really long ask again bc i cannot shut up so it’s spirituality first then a lot on paul and pee at the end

but NO WAY YOU LIKED NICKELODEON TOO OMG THAT USED TO ALSO BE MY ROUTINE AFTER SCJOOL like id get home and do everything i needed to do just so i could watch victorious, the thundermans, and more and it’s crazy that you have so many experiences surrounding nickelodeon omgomg AND THE FACT THAT YOU DREAMT OF IT?? ive always had dreams that foreshadowed many many events in my life, especially significant events, sometimes months or years before they would happen but sometimes it happens to me with silly little things too and i believe that it happened to you too omg

things like that have happened to me for as long as i can remember so i’m always asking if it’s intuition or me manifesting it and like… could be both tbh

although my intuition has always been crazy strong and i’ve never ignored it even once and it has paid off really well but then again, manifestation is basically just the belief that your thoughts create your reality, simple as that. if you believe it to be true, then it’s true, so sometimes i wonder if my intuition is just a reflection of what i believe to be true, and that in turn is what ends up manifesting? if that makes sense.

and you saying, “it's such a weird coincidence that's not rlly a coincidence....” ?? I AGREE?? 100% because you go about life with people and youre like omg we both did this in this year? and we were in the same place during this time? and we know so many people mutually? and we just dismiss it all as a coincidence until youre like… wait bc how many coincidences until it’s not a coincidence, yk? i feel like the way you put it is like the perfect way of describing everything

(and if paul does end up winning the feature race then… 🤭🤭) but speaking of paul… i find it so odd that the same thing happened in both F3 and F2?? with the win being snatched away at the last moment 🤧🤧 like the worst part is i can’t even be mad about paul not getting his win, like i’m def gutted for him but franco also won it fair and square (i don’t think he passed the track limits, from what i saw anyway) and so it just sucks that things like this happen but im also!! so incredibly proud of franco because i understand what it must mean for him to be the first Argentinean F2 race winner like he’s literally made history within those few seconds but i have no doubt paul’s going to be driving with incredible intensity tomorrow (this is unrelated but at the start of the season idk why i used to be a little afraid of how harsh (…?) he’d become in terms of his driving style… like sometimes i’d feel like it was almost a little dangerous, especially when there were a few conflicts with kimi and i used to be worried that paul might’ve been taking out some anger onto kimi and it used to worry me a bit but i think……. it’s better now? i really really hope so because conflict scares me so bad and especially since no one knows if kimi and paul are still friends, and even they aren’t, you can’t really blame paul because kimi really got two major things that mattered to paul but also idk i think i’m rambling atp but i hope that even if he drives madly tomorrow, it isn’t at the cost of the safety of any of the drivers on track, including him)

but i was actually heartbroken over pepe though 😕😕 i can’t imagine being in his position, probably hoping to get a fresh start after the break and doing so well in between only for this to happen… and like with the way they replayed the incident in the race it looked like he was in the wrong but i rewatched it and it seemed mutual?? so idk why he was the only one who received a penalty for it but like ive also been in positions where i just became a little out of sync with things i usually excel at, and idk how to word it properly but i have a feeling he’s probably experiencing it rn which sucks 😓😓 i hate that feeling so much because you just feel so icky and everything seems so disjointed and im just wishing the best for him tbh, especially since i think it’s pretty clear that he holds himself up to really high standards, and even when he’s in a position someone else might be more than happy with, he’s just not satisfied with it…?

i NEED for pepe to be happy again with race results for once like it’s really all ive been asking for recently

- 🪷

paul and pee, my loves 🥰 sjdkfhdj sorry i had to

but omfg you saying that about nickelodeon, that's so crazy !!!! dreams are such a cool thing, i used to dream like every night but now it's rarely ever.... wish i had more clear examples of stuff ive dreamed about happening irl because i have a very strong feeling that it has happened at least a couple of times? but i can't come up with a single example rn?? 😭

that's also really cool!! and yes i think it makes sense, it's a very interesting thought. i always feel like my intuition is strong when it's about like little silly things, like "how many stones are under this cup", but im thinking like... what if i do trust my intuition way more than i remember, maybe i just haven't acknowledged it or really recognized that that's what im doing? im definitely gonna be more open-minded when it comes to my intuition and kinda try to see what happens 🤭

YES YES exactly!! how many coincidences until it's not a coincidence????????? because when i talk to people about stuff like this, most of them are just "yeah weird coincidence lol" but when does it become something bigger? it's v v v interesting, i personally don't think there have to be a lot of them to actually maybe be something more...

also kinda off topic but also not?? i dont want this to become a religious thing because idk how you feel about that, but i used to be kinda christian when i was younger just because i refused to believe that i just "happened" to land on this planet at this time as a human being. like you're telling me that the universe has been a thing for billions and billions of years, and that it's infinitely large, and i just happen to be a living human here right now?????? there's just no way. like rn idk if i would say that im religious but i believe that there's a reason that im here right now. i believe that there's something or someone (or whatever) kinda making up the world or guiding things, or something, and that's why i don't really see a lot of things as coincidences? like a lot of the time i say "it's a sign 😁" when there are "coincidences" and people think im joking but im usually at least a bit serious on the inside lol. idk if you get what im saying? if any part of this was okay to understand?? but yeah basically people around me have always looked at me weirdly for believing in spiritual stuff etc, so ive tried to hide and repress it but you're waking up all of these emotions in me and i just 😭

i think i jinxed paul win by talking too much about it... the times when ive been right haven't rlly been intentional so i think i shouldn't have shared this with everyone 😭 welp... but yes that's very odd!! and just like franco having his maiden f3 win in the imola sprint two years ago? and now maiden f2 win in the sprint?? 😦 and for example baku is an interesting circuit, ollie taking his maiden f2 win there in the sprint and then winning the feature too, and what happened at the same track two years earlier?? juri vips took his maiden f2 win in a sprint and then won the feature aswell..... an estonian driver in a hitech, will we see the same this year in baku?????????? (or do we have to wait until next year bcs so far it's been every other year? 😭)

yeah im super happy for franco too, i also think it was just a great move 🤭 but omg i totally see what you mean about paul and his driving style.... ive been so worried that he's gonna crash into kimi and just 😭 like yk what he wrote in his insta channel thing? about "i would've won the race if antonelli didn't do his wonder kid thing and ruin my race" after melbourne 😭 he's so so cocky istg (ALSO OMG did you see the clip from the press conference yesterday abt beating most of the big names in the championship??? 😶) but i still love him loads. but yeah i too feel more safe with him on the track, maybe especially since he has turned out to be doing better than i (and probs him too) expected and now he doesn't wanna ruin this lol. but yeah he must have such a complicated relationship with kimi, they used to be cute friends but it's very understandable to feel conflicted when kimi got everything paul should've had 😭

we were heartbroken yesterday already, but today... after this race...... i didn't even focus on all of the replays tbh because i was watching an hour late and in the car, but :(( even if it was his fault, that's not fair 💔 sdjfhdkfj. but yes gosh i agree with everything you're saying, he's so calm and cool off the track but so competitive and like a sore loser (this isn't exactly what i mean but english doesn't have a word for the swedish term im thinking of) in a good way? not in the way that he blames other people incessantly when he loses, but more that he hates it and blames himself and needs to do it better the next time. so this weekend.... 🥲 but yes yes i relate to that feeling too.... it feels so common in sports to do really well one week and the next you're like "?? what's going on????" :(((( and y e s you're so right about him holding himself up to really high standards 🥲 so painful to see

but uh yeah he will do well in monaco, i trust it!! it will happen!!!!!!!

[nancywheeeler]

any movie recs??? 👀

oh anon, i love you and you have no idea the can of worms you have just opened. heck yeah do i have movie recs...

movies i've loved recently:

Rye Lane {incredible modern rom-com, awesome lead performances, gorgeous to look at, takes the "one chaotic day together" narrative structure and runs full speed with it}

Bound {the wachowskis' first movie! a very intense neo-noir thriller. the directing is giving "we're already conceptualizing the matrix" which means they direct the hell out of it}

Harlan County, USA and American Dream {both essential documentaries by Barbara Kopple about union efforts in Pennsylvania in the 70s and Minnesota in the 80s respectively. if you're then looking for a narrative feature with similar themes, Norma Rae is great}

Duck Soup / The Gold Rush / The General {three classics of the Hollywood Golden Age for one! go with Chaplin's The Gold Rush if you want snowy antics in Alaska, Buster Keaton's The General if you wanna see a guy almost die on a train many, many times, and the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup if you want a sharp-witted satire on fascism and war}

movies i personally never shut about:

All the President's Men {it's so sexy when people are good at their jobs! especially if that job is journalist who takes down the nixon administration! if you want a thriller that isn't bloody or overtly sexual, this is the thriller for you!}

The Full Monty {a comedy i believe everyone needs to watch. a 90 minute delight about a group of unemployed blue-collar guys trying to stage a strip show. given it came out in 1997, it's not nearly as dated as you think it'll be and stars a tumblr sexyman hall of famer, Robert Carlyle}

The Vast of Night {weird to describe a movie as gentle sci-fi horror, but that's exactly what this is. it centers around one eerie night in a 1950s town where the local radio station manager and a telephone operator begin picking up strange signals. it has vibes for days and does a lot with a very simple story and small budget}

Cure {...okay, this movie is not for everyone, but if you're down for a very unsettling horror movie, i cannot recommend this one highly enough. the premise is a detective investigating a series of murderers where each murderer has no memory of committing the crime. one of the best-directed movies i've ever seen. like it'll have you holding your breath in scene after scene}

The Last Waltz {since i recommended two other documentaries, i can't resist also recommending my favorite. it's Martin Scorsese's concert film of The Band's final show together. a great movie to put on in the background while cooking / doing chores since it's mostly musical performances, or you can do what i do and stare at Rick Danko the entire time!}

okay, i'll quit while i'm ahead now. if you're looking for movies in a specific genre (drama, comedy, romance, horror, sci-fi, sci-fi horror, horror comedy, romantic comedy with a dash of horror, throw me anything), let me know! i seriously could talk about movies for the rest of my life.