#it gets marginally more serious later

[averseunhinged]

wip wednesday i made it wooooooo

this is the only even remotely coherent section of the all human actors au that has been making me cry tears of blood. yes, there is still a bracket. no, i didn't even try to figure it out. i am TIRED.

it's mildly raunchy crack. like pg-13, probs? idk.

In the car on the way home, Klaus made an ill-considered midnight call to his sister, given that Rebekah was three hours ahead in New York City, where she’d been shooting a sit-com about struggling models for the past month. She probably would have been less alright with it if Klaus hadn’t spent the whole call whining about how he’d met the girl he was going to marry, but she thought he was a loser. He woke up the next afternoon to cottonmouth, a deeper sense of foreboding than usual, and about fifty text messages, first from Rebekah, and then from the group chat with the rest of his siblings, deservedly ripping the shit out of Klaus.

The third time he met Caroline was at an industry do, this time much less a party than a press event. [SUPER POPULAR FILM FRANCHISE] hadn’t come out yet, but his Times profile had, which was simultaneously the most horrifying portrait and the most accurate. He’d been giving a lot of thought to the person he was versus the person he wanted to be, and it was all weighing on him. So, when he saw Caroline, his first impulse probably shouldn’t have been that this was his chance. If he’d been thinking more clearly, he probably would have realized that he wasn’t in the best headspace.

“Bekah,” he breathed to his sister, because of course Rebekah was there. Rebekah had been witness to every crushing defeat of Klaus’s life. “She’s here.”

And because Rebekah was a bloodhound for Klaus’s humiliation, she immediately picked up what Klaus was putting down. “Who? The girl you’re going to marry? Where?”

Klaus surreptitiously pointed out where Caroline was standing in a cluster with a few other women, but he was already on the move by the time Rebekah was hissing, “Oh, fuck! Wait, Nik. Goddammit.”

And the thing was, Klaus was a bit foolish. He knew this. He wasn’t unintelligent, but outside of his career, he’d never been known for making well-reasoned decisions. He was impulsive, and while he’d shaken off much of the resentment and aimless rage of his late teens and early twenties, his temper still fueled his choices at times. He wanted to change, was actively trying with some measure of success, but it was an ongoing process. He was all the way across the room before he realized Caroline was surrounded by a veritable coven of women he didn’t want to attempt to flirt in front of. One of the Petrova quadruplets—either Amara or Elena, given that he knew Katerina and knew Tatia—Bonnie-fucking-Bennett, who was flawlessly styled and probably still had no idea who he was, and Hayley Marshall, who had spent years watching Klaus try to make removing his shirt while wearing elf ear prosthetics sexy for MTV and getting into on-set fistfights with Kai Parker for being a smug little fuck who couldn’t be bothered to show up for his call times. So, Klaus was stuck without any chance of a classy retreat.

Regardless, he managed to collect a cheek kiss from Hayley, finally introduced himself to Bonnie, did the awkward yes, our siblings are fucking nod with confirmed-to-be-Elena, and greeted Caroline for a socially appropriate amount of time. It broke down when he had to make a conscious effort not to focus the entirety of his attention on her, with middling success, if Rebekah’s almost silent snickering and Hayley’s bemusement were anything to go by. But after a few minutes, he was, if not relaxed, at least doing a reasonable facsimile of charming and was a bit blindsided when Lorenzo St. John seemed to materialize out of nowhere to press a glass of white wine into Caroline’s hand and wrap a proprietary arm around her waist. Klaus had never met him before, though being in separate wings of the same franchise allowed for a very few degrees of separation, but Klaus couldn’t blame the man when he spent the entirety of their introduction and subsequent conversation watching Caroline with a cross between adoration and hunger so intense that Klaus felt uncomfortable witnessing it.

Eventually, Elena was pulled away by a director with more industry pull than was necessarily warranted. Hayley excused herself to hit the bar again, and Klaus knew her well enough to interpret her shrug and half-smile as better luck next time, pal. Finally, he made up a barely sensical excuse about not having mingled enough and dragged Rebekah away, who parted from Caroline with a hug and farewell that spoke of more familiarity than he’d been aware of.

“Well,” Rebekah said, like the unsympathetic twat she was, “I do believe she’s the girl he’s going to marry, too.”

Klaus pointed a finger at Rebekah, as disgruntled as ever that his younger sister had inherited both their mother’s sweet, lovely face and her innate, bloody-minded sadism. Klaus might have been taller and bulkier, but the extra mercilessness made the difference for Rebekah whenever they’d brawled over snacks, or the remote, or one of her useless, cockwomble boyfriends.

“You knew!” he hissed. “You knew I was going to make a fool out of myself!”

“Hey, there’s no stopping you when you’re on a mission to embarrass yourself. It’s one of your more endearing qualities. And you never said who she was.” Rebekah shrugged. “She’s on my show. Just started filming last month. I don’t know her very well, but I knew she had a boyfriend doing some off-Broadway, avant-garde bullshit with those Augustine lunatics.”

Klaus sighed and slumped a little bit. Rebekah patted him on the shoulder in their family’s typical manner of reluctant, suspicious affection and wandered off to find Stefan, who tended to spend these things hiding behind a pillar, or a large plant, or on one memorable occasion, a standee of himself, and drinking with the quiet desperation of an introvert who might have to talk to people he didn’t know.

The last Klaus saw of Caroline, Enzo was nuzzled into her temple, saying something for only her to hear. Her head was thrown back, laughing, and she looked like everything Klaus had ever wanted.

(But was terrified he’d never find.)

Life went on. Klaus’s world changed dramatically when [SUPER POPULAR FRANCHISE MOVIE] was a hit on an unexpected scale. The box office returns were obscene, and because Klaus got in on the ground floor and his agent was great at her job, he suddenly had more money, and far more fame, than he knew what to do with. But with that came the freedom to do the projects he really wanted to do. Really cared about. So, he was busy. And he was still trying to be better, be the person he wanted to be, not the person it was easy to be.

But he also had too many first dates and hardly any second ones, before he and Aurora decided to get back together for the fourth time. Predictably, it blew up in a final, spectacular way when Klaus had to spend an obscene amount of time in transit, traveling from his shooting location in Hungary to hers in Vancouver and back, just to find out she was fucking around on him again. The thing about Aurora was that she never overtly cheated, because there was always a nebulousness about where he fit into her life that manifested in her casually dating other men without calling it dating. It had been the perfect arrangement for him when he was twenty-three and more cheekbones than brains, but that wasn’t who Klaus wanted to be anymore.

He tried to take a step back after that, but the next time he was in L.A., he slept with a stylist he’d worked with a few times before. Then, he went back to London for his thirtieth birthday, got ratarsed on celebratory Nebbiolo with his best mate from RADA, and had an accidental threesome with Lucien and his fiancé. This resulted in a hungover call to Freya the next morning that was an unflattering shade of gay panic to his only queer sibling—aside from Henrik, who didn’t deserve to be subjected to Klaus’s post-coital regrets—over being a newly thirty-year-old celebrity who tried butt stuff for the first time and didn’t hate it. Freya was a good enough sister that she didn’t hold it against Klaus, but also enough his sibling that she nearly choked to death on her tea, laughing, and crisply informed him that even primarily straight men had prostates.

So, it’s not like he was pining. He wasn’t. But there was a certain level of wistfulness on the rare occasion when he did think of Caroline, which he tried not to do very often, given that he was certain the next time he heard anything about her, it would be because she was engaged to an increasingly renowned British actor with what Klaus could only hope would someday be a hairline that receded more than his own.

(Except it wasn't.)

[boyfriendstevie]

When Steve gets a cold he becomes such a baby, whining, groaning, complaining. Only thing to calm him down is your chicken noodle soup and showing him your boobs </3

asdfjasdfl this made me giggle. he's such a big baby.

when you place a bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup in front of him, he feels marginally better, perks up a little. but a while later he's back to moping around, bundled up under a bunch of blankets, whining pathetically. you're sitting next to him on the couch, half feeling bad for him, and half wondering how you're in love with such a big baby. you've got your hand on his back, rubbing gentle circles as you ask what you can do to help. he huffs, brows furrowed for a second while he thinks, and then looks up at you and asks to see your boobs.

you scoff, "steve, i'm being serious!"

"so am i!" he insists, pushing his bottom lip out into a ridiculously cute pout.

"oh my god," you groan at his ridiculousness, but decide to give in anyway, shaking your head at yourself, "okay, then sit up, stevie."

his eyes light up, and he looks more alive than he has all day, "for real?!"

"you're on thin ice, you better take advantage of this before i change my mind."

steve scrambles to sit up, the blankets that had been wrapped around him falling to his waist. his cheeks are pink from the heat of being under the blankets, nose red from having to blow it so often, and his hair is unruly, sticking up in every direction. he looks unfairly adorable, even if still a little pathetic. you giggle at his eagerness and wide eyes, and stand up to pull the sweatshirt you're wearing over your head.

you're left in your bra, and plop yourself down into his lap, knees pressing into the cushions on either side of his hips, hands on his shoulders, "you gotta do the rest of the work."

"fine by me," he murmurs, hands slide up your back. he's skilled as ever as his fingers undo the hooks of your bra and slide the straps down your shoulders. you let the cups fall away, fabric falling into your lap. steve's eyes get even wider somehow -- no matter how many times he's seen your tits, he's always amazed -- and he leans in, the stubble on his cheeks rubbing against your skin as he kisses your collarbone. his voice is low and scratchy as he murmurs again, "think i'm feelin' better already, honey."

[literaryvein-reblogs]

4 Great Motives for Writing by George Orwell

George Orwell:

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful business men – in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition – in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all – and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

(iv) Political purpose – using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time. By nature – taking your ‘nature’ to be the state you have attained when you are first adult – I am a person in whom the first three motives would outweigh the fourth. In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties.

Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don’t want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist or understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.

Published in Gangrel, No. 4, Summer 1946

More: George Orwell

[aphroditeinthesea]

this was a request from @annaizcool44 but i accidentally deleted it when i tried to post it

“ safe in my garden, an ancient flower blooms ”

jason grace x daughter of demeter ⚡️

reader expresses her feelings to the son of zeus through a shared love of books

tw none

⋆ ˚｡ ⋆୨💐୧⋆ ˚｡ ⋆

“Whatcha reading?” Y/N jumped at the sound of the voice behind her. She was sitting on the porch of the Demeter cabin when she noticed the blond approaching her.

She looked up and smiled, “Little Women,” she scooted over for him to sit next to her, “ever read it?”

He shook his head, sitting beside her. He leaned over her shoulder at the page she was on, “what’s it about?”

She felt her ears warm at the closeness, “these four sisters during the Civil War, and their dad’s fighting in the army so they're trying to adjust to their life now… I guess.”

“Can I borrow it sometime?”

Jason heard a knock at his door in the early morning. He yawned and rubbed his eyes as he stood up, walking to open it. He found on his doorstep a copy of Little Women with a sticky note on top that read “For Jason, with love Y/N” and he couldn't help but notice the fresh flowers that had sprouted around his cabin.

He smiled and looked around. He saw the girl peering from behind a nearby tree. She turned away, giggling, when he looked her way.

His heart warmed. He stepped back into his cabin and flipped through the pages, he found little notes in the margins and underlined quotes.

For the rest of the day, the book never left his hands. During breakfast, during training, his eyes were glued to the pages.

Just before the campfire, Y/N peeked into his cabin, “Jason?”

She noticed him wipe his eyes, “oh, uh, hey.”

She smiled and walked over to his bed, “Beth?”

He nodded, “yeah. Why would the author write that?”

She bit her lip, “Jase, it’s a true story.”

His eyes widened, “no.”

“Yes.”

Tears began pricked out of his eyes, “that makes it so much worse.”

She sympathetically laughed, wrapping her arms around him. He nuzzled his head into her neck. She couldn't help but smile at how the usual tough guy was now crying in her arms over a book. A book she had gifted him.

He pulled away, “your little note made it better though,” he grinned. He opened the book to the last page he had read, “Jason, when you get here, come to my cabin, I know you’ll need to.”

She laughed, “I think I know you too well.”

He nodded, “I think so.”

“You wanna read Pride and Prejudice?” she asked, “one more sister, happier ending.”

He chuckled, “might as well.”

She showed up to his cabin just before curfew, “the Bennett sisters, Jane, Lizzie, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia, search for love in 1813 England,” she announced in a pretend professional voice.

“No scarlet fever?”

She shook her head, “no scarlet fever. Jane gets a cold, but it's nothing serious.”

He hesitantly grabbed the book from her hands, “thanks, Y/N.”

“No problem, Jason, it's nice getting to share these with you.”

“Yeah, it's nice for me, too,” he trailed off, looking away, “I should get to bed.”

“Right, yeah, of course,” she smiled, “goodnight.”

“‘Night,” he replied, closing the door.

“Oh, uh, one more thing.”

He slightly opened the door again, “hm?”

She took a deep breath and placed a kiss on his cheek, “see you in the morning.”

He stuttered, trying to suppress his blush, “yeah- yeah, see you,” he awkwardly smiled, closing the door again.

The next morning she watched him sit at the Zeus table, reading the book. Her heart raced as she knew he was getting closer to the last annotation she had written. She started to regret it, what if he thought the books just made them closer friends? Of course they were friends, she cursed herself for thinking he could see her differently. He glanced up at her, he flashed a smile and a nod her way. She turned pink, looking away.

“Y/N!” the all too familiar voice called to her as she sat by the dock, watching the sunset later that day.

She turned around, “Jason, hi,” she shyly smiled.

He took the spot next to her, handing the book back to her, “I finished the book.”

She nervously looked into his eyes, “and?”

“It was great!” he beamed, “everything about it.”

She furrowed her eyebrows, “even the ending?”

“That was the best part.”

“Jason,” she laughed, “did you even read the annotations?”

He squinted his eyes in confusion, “of course I did.”

She opened the book to the back cover. She folded it open and showed it to him. There was written in pink ink, “Will you be the Darcy to my Lizzie?”

“I know it’s cheesy,” she muttered, closing the book and turning away.

“Yes,” he paused, “wait, no. Yes to the question, not to it being cheesy. Well, it is cheesy but it’s cute. You're cute.”

She giggled, “thanks, so are you.”

He held her cheek in his hand, their gazes met before their lips crashed into one another. She placed her hands around his neck as he now held her face with both of his hands. When they pulled away, their foreheads leaned against one another and they could feel the other’s breath against their lips.

The next morning, Jason walked out his cabin to find a field of multicolored roses had encompassed him. He looked around just to find the girl responsible standing in the middle of the flowers, holding a book. He breathily laughed and made his way over to her.

“Here,” she smiled, handing him the book.

He took it, “Mansfield Park?”

“Jane Austen, she wrote Pride and Prejudice, too.”

He wrapped his arms around her waist to pull her into a kiss, “sounds perfect.”

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

Regarding male vs female suicides, I remember reading a meta study that had been done on suicide methods, and while men were more likely to choose methods with a high rate of success, they were also more likely to succeed almost irregardless of the method chosen. Only drowning was more likely to succeed if attempted by a woman than by a man, and only marginally so. Considering suicide by drowning is already rare, it's further probable that individual successes or failures would skew the data there.

I'd consider that the final nail in the coffin for the "but women attempt suicide more often!" argument. No, women self harm for attention, men are actually trying to kill themselves. These are not equivalent, and the talentless hacks trying to equate the two deserve nothing but scorn and contempt.

"women self harm for attention, men are actually trying to kill themselves."

Yep, that does seem to be a large factor in the disparity.

An ex-girlfriend of mine once texted me, after I broke up with her, to tell me she'd just cut her wrists. So I phoned an ambulance and dashed around to her house, only to find no such thing had happened, that she was just feeling sad and drunk. It utterly bewildered me at the time, as I simply couldn't imagine someone behaving like that about something so serious and playing with others for attention in that way.

Later on I took part in a research project about depression and suicide, and so many questions in the questionnaire being given out were along the lines of "do you think about attempting suicide to get back at or hurt someone" or "have you thought about attempting suicide so that people will notice how you're feeling" and I realized those questions must have been mostly included for the female participants, as I've never heard of any man talking or behaving that way. Not saying such men don't exist, just that there must be far less of them than women, as I'd imagine most people can think of a woman in their lives behaving that way.

[bestworstcase]

Wouldn't mind that Blake & Birdbandit post, not least because fndm's whole 'catGF's role here is to Protectively Glare at the badmom and/or rub her loyalty to Yang in Rae's face'…thing has struck me as reductive & blinkered for quite some time.

lol yeah it’s… kind of obvious that a lot of people aren’t thinking about it in terms of characterization and narrative, they’re thinking about it in terms of wanting yang to receive some degree of protection from raven’s abandonment (even if it’s performative, even if in reality that kind of behavior from a romantic partner in a situation where you’re trying to work out a relationship with your absent/estranged mother is… obnoxious at best, making it all about how the partner feels at worst.)

but like

the thing is blake ran away from yang out of self-loathing cowardice too, and by the time she meets raven, raven has come back and made a serious commitment to make amends, not just to yang but to everybody. she’s back in the inner circle, that suggests a monumental effort to change –

and blake, uh, knows how hard it is to make that kind of change, to come back and apologize and face those fears after running away, because She Did That. not just with yang but also her own parents!

blake is also by a… pretty wide margin the most forgiving member of team rwby, the one most willing to offer second chances, to listen and empathize with people she thinks can be reached, we saw this play out with ilia. and weiss, after weiss acknowledged she’d done wrong and demonstrated willingness to change back in v1. she’s the only one of team rwby who isn’t claws-out toward emerald at the top of risk, and she’s the first one to voice her understanding of why ozpin lied and hid from them. she is, in general, not vindictive or spiteful.

and while i can absolutely see her being more defensive of yang than she is of herself, there is no universe where i can imagine blake of all people engaging in – pardon me – catty mean girl behavior towards raven on yang’s behalf. if she snaps at raven at all it’ll be to rebuke raven saying something caustic, but i don’t think raven is going to be much inclined to be caustic at this juncture.

i imagine it will be more, blake is aloof and wary of raven but cautiously optimistic on yang’s behalf and wholeheartedly supporting whatever yang wants out of reconnecting with her mom, and raven maybe avoids her for a while before venturing to make awkward stabs at conversation, and then blake’s diplomatic and interpersonal skills kick in. they have a fair amount in common personally, and they also have caring about yang in common, and if blake were to express any feelings she has about raven trying to be in yang’s life it would be concern, and probably confided in yang to make sure she understood what yang wanted and how blake can help her. maybe having a careful conversation with raven, later, if they builds up a good enough rapport.

at the end of the day, blake is a) a diplomat and b) way too mature to let whatever private resentment or indignation she feels on yang’s behalf get in the way of letting yang take the lead here. which is the correct way to deal with this situation. incidentally.

[jenlrossman]

Darts as a metaphor for gay sex between Miles O'Brien and Julian Bashir

Yes, I'm serious. Bear with me.

Miles and Julian first play darts in season three, episode 16, "Prophet Margin."

They are playing darts because Julian was getting tired of racquetball—since Miles's wife has been away, they have played 106 games of racquetball. ("Rivals," the episode where we first see them play racquetball, make a strong case for that being a sexual metaphor as well. So basically Keiko is gone and Miles has been… "Playing with Julian" a lot 👀)

There's some good natured mockery/flirting, and Julian ends up throwing off Miles's concentration by mentioning his wife.

In the next episode, season three episode 17, "Visionary," Miles convinces Quark to put a dartboard in his bar. Quark argues that no one has ever come in asking for a dartboard, but Miles assures him people will.

To me, this reads like trying to convince someone that marketing specifically to queer people is important even if no queer people have ever complained about not being marketed to.

Miles and Julian play darts twice during this episode as well, but nothing particularly gay happens (outside of them being gay for each other in general).

Season three, episode 24, "Shakaar," has Miles playing darts with various guys on the station until he ruins his shoulder and needs to have Julian perform surgery to repair it.

Well that's what you get for playing with people who aren't your boyfriend. It's called karma.

In the fourth season premiere, "The Way Of The Warrior," Miles and Julian invite our old buddy Worf to play with them.

He throws a dart, and it goes extremely deep into the board.

The boys look intimidated. And rightfully so. As Jadzia will later (happily) learn, sex with a Klingon is anything but gentle.

(I wish he had thrown two darts, wink wink.)

Keiko returns in "Ascension," season four, episode 17, thereby ending Miles's "year as a bachelor," as Julian calls it.

Miles spends more time with his family, even trying to teach his daughter to play darts (in this context, darts with Molly does not represent sex, it just represents him trying to be a good father and husband and not having sex with his boyfriend). But he is clearly missing Julian; look at the way he longingly gazes at the outfit they wore together:

Julian has also been unsuccessfully playing darts with other people, and he and Miles lament that it just isn’t the same without each other. Eventually, Keiko arranges for them to spend extra time with each other because Miles is so depressed.

Season five, episode 16, "Dr. Bashir, I Presume?" reveals that Julian is augmented and has exceptional strength and hand eye coordination, among other things. This makes Miles realize Julian has been letting him win at darts all this time.

He is understandably upset that his boyfriend has been… uhhh… "faking it" 👀 and makes him play from 3 feet back to level the playing field (Miles metaphorically using marital aids).

He also suggests Julian play blindfolded. 👀

The next, and last, significant time they play darts is in season seven, episode 23, "Extreme Measures."

This is the episode in which Miles and Julian go through a harrowing ordeal which forces them to finally acknowledge that they love their significant others, but they like each other more.

At the end of the episode, the boys are playing darts in the bar. They are drinking. Miles is struggling with his sexuality at the realization of how close he and Julian are.

He says he needs to go home to Keiko. This is the conversation they have, word for word:

"She's a hell of a woman."

"That's why you love her."

"Mmm. That's right. That's why I love her."

There is no eye contact. It is awkward as hell. Is very obviously Not About Keiko, but rather Miles's last ditch attempt to avoid admitting that he would rather be with Julian right now.

So he leaves. Julian is alone, sad.

Then Miles pops back into frame. He has reconsidered. "Do you want to come?"

They leave the bar together, but not before Julian throws one last dart.

It's a bull's-eye. He scores, and, if you believe my metaphor, it won't be the first time he scores that night.

[revolutionsingingintherainnn]

Prompt List

Hey, guys! I've made a list of prompts that y'all can send in, along with the driver you want! I am going to start with F1 imagines, and maybe, later on, I'll include other fandoms too. Also, I haven't really learned how to make an smau yet, so those requests might take me some time.

Feel free to send in stuff aside from this as well!

“We should get married.”

“What would happen if I kissed you right now?”

“I never really left.”

Using each other’s phones without supervision 

Having their first serious fight

“Seeing you like this, I fell even more in love with you.”

“You love me again.” “Who said I stopped?”

“Maybe this was a mistake.”

“Do I make you nervous?”

raspberry lip gloss

pajama bottoms

flushed cheeks

a fogged up mirror

colouring tattoos

lipstick marks on shirt collars

silver bangles

six missed calls

“Silly me to assume that you would care.”

“I can’t believe that we finally made it.”

“We’re ride or die, remember?”

“I’ll be here forever. For as long as you’ll have me.”

“If you insult them, you insult me.”

“We’re a package deal.”

“I could pick you out from a room full of thousands of people.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You’ve saved me so many times; it’s only right that I return the favor.”

“Did you seriously drop everything just to come here?”

“You are my home.”

“I saved this for you.”

“I got you your favourite.”

“I haven’t watched any of it without you.”

“This reminded me of you.”

“You can have the last one.”

“You could put a knife to my throat and I wouldn’t flinch.”

“I made this for you.”

“I knew you would be there. You always are.”

“I don’t care about what they think, I care about you.”

“I know, I know, I’m stuck with you. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“really? i never knew that about you.”

“who’d buying you flowers that isn’t me?”

“isn’t paying for dinner a date thing?”

“for you, i’d do anything.” “i know.”

a tattoo parlour, buzzing with machinery and walls lined with artwork .

an otherwise empty parking lot .

the thick crowd of an audience at a show .

“Wanna dance?”

“i love that about you.”

“your hugs are the best.”

“could you get any cuter?”

“please come back to bed.”

“god, you’re just the cutest.”

“wow. you look really good”.

“can you come here? please?”

“you’re freezing! take my jacket.”

stargazing

“I wish I could hate you.”

“I can hate your guts but still respect you.”

physical touch as a love language

words of affirmation as a love language

acts of services as a love language

“I miss home.”

“You’re safe with me.”

accidentally calling the other wife/husband

a forgotten anniversary gift hidden in a closet

“I think I need help.”

a cherished photograph tucked inside a book

an old, faded love note found in a pocket

a favorite blanket with a small, stitched heart

“What if we get caught?”

“Would you please just kiss me?”

a faded Polaroid tucked behind a mirror

a handwritten recipe with personal notes in the margins

leaving post-its everywhere

thunderstorms

“Thank you for taking care of me.”

Pet names/Nicknames

sleeping arrangements

grabbing the other’s hand so they don’t fall

guiding each other through a crowded room with gentle touches

helping someone zip up a jacket in a chilly wind

subtle protection

“I’m sitting front row. I always do.”

cozy pizza night

sandcastles

“You scared me!”

coming home after a long day

dancing in the rain

domestic life

time difference

hugs

scrunchies

painted nails

promise rings

face masks

sunday morning breakfasts

warm cups of cocoa

late night conversations

movie marathons on rainy day

staying up all night and watching the sunrise together

building a fort with blankets and pillows

[voldkat]

guess who figured out how to do botched 3d modeling . and continued doing so for the entire day . to feed the shape autism

this was inspired by the fact that i have hyperspecific headcanons for how the geometry of their heads and antennae . like every time i draw them i picture their shapes in my brain and rotate them . it's so fucked up /silly

also note that none of their face patterns are dented into their heads !!! the website just kinda fucks up and gets confused sometimes when merging shapes lmao all of these mfs have flat faces

sorry unparalleled innocence fans inno is not here again because i am Still trying to figure out its colors ( getting distracted and forgetting to ) . i might make a follow up post with its model if i ever get around to it ( and might model my ocs along with it )

closeups of each iterator ( sorted by age ) + design notes for all of them + the tinkercad project link below the cut :3c

LOOKS TO THE MOON

MEWNIE !!! a fairly normal looking iterator head . spherical shape . flat cylindrical earpieces with slots to support the antennae . doesn't get any more standard than that WEHBHJF

her antennae are very much standard too !! average height , average width , rectangular little things with singular yellow strips near the end . just an average old model during a time when the ancients were still in the middle of figuring things out

and also the circle mark on her forehead looks more like a crescent moon or a pearl in my design . which is very cool ( symbolism for both her name having "moon" in it and the fact that she's in the scholar passage )

SLIVER OF STRAW

ok . her design is also fairly standard but her antennae are a bit Strange . i figure this might be around the time the ancients are starting to experiment a little , but not as intensely as they do with the second gens

the rest of my iterator designs with antennae have sharp bends and are usually flattened prisms or extruded shapes , with the silly color patterns clear and visible on the side faces . sliver however . she's got ROUND !! almost like some sort of stretched out cylinder !!! AND her color patterns are on the top face and actually dented into the antennae , making it hard to spot them !!!! what a fucked up design . why is she like this /silly

nothing else of note to say tho so we're moving on :3c

CHASING WIND

WE'RE IN GEN 2 NOW GUYS !!! i actually Don't have a hyperspecific headcanon on what their antennae look like so i just eyeballed it based on how i usually draw them . they're certainly a weird shape . rectangular-ish prism thing that gets wider at the top with an ellipse cut out of it . and the color patterns are at the base of the antennae instead of near the top like they usually would be . they look like fucked up bug horns almost

you see the front of the antennae ? where the oval cutout doesnt reach ? yeah . that's not a modelling mistake . that's intentional . there's one little section where the top is nice and flat . what the fuck is up with these tennas /silly

i may give them a secondary pattern on their face later like suns' Lines On Face (/ref) if i feel like making that a signature design choice for gen 2 iterators . but for now all you get is Peculiar Antennae

NO SIGNIFICANT HARASSMENT

OH BOY . EASILY the one with the weirdest head shape . extruded rounded square for a head . screen face . no antennae at all . fucking Gamer Headphones . he was built WAY too different . built correctly ( fit for his purpose ) but also not ( breaks every single known iterator puppet design convention ) /silly j

on a more serious note , his earpieces are significantly thinner ( more flush with his head ) than average , and don't have the antenna notches !! that's the only reasonable comparison i can make tho because he looks SO Fucking Different

there are other little details that i feel i have to mention . like his screen is dented inwards a little . his 'mic' thing isn't touching his face but only by a slim margin . his fucked up eyeball isn't flat or dented in but actually extends out in the shape of a semicircle ish thing . yeah that's about it honestly

SEVEN RED SUNS

okay back to relative normalcy . except the shape of their antennae fucked me up SO bad that it was the sole reason i decided to model these fucks in the first place

they're almost triangular prisms but the outward facing triangle is like slanted inwards slightly . which makes the upright lateral faces weird right trapezoids instead of rectangles . but also they have extra joints at the base of their antennae which allow for more movement !! Thankfully those joints a pretty normal shape ( ordinary cuboid )

also another detail i want to mention is the Lines On Face . the lines bend at 90 degree angles . the left / right sides disappear below the earpieces but the bottom sides kinda just . Stop . after some point . idk that's all i have really

FIVE PEBBLES

AAAAND with gen 3 we've looped back to fairly standard looking !!! he looks just like his sister but with the colors swapped around , and longer thinner antennae . and the fuckass stripes on his face i guess . one of the newest models , yet with little to no thought put into customization , since his creators are getting tired of waiting

it's interesting to me how he's the only design without a symbol logo thing in the middle of his forehead . perhaps the ancients ran out of feasible forehead symbols ? or maybe just a staple of gen 3 iterators ? who knows . all i can do is speculate and make shit up

AND !! as promised , the link , except you'll have to make an account to see it for some reason :

[doberbutts]

genuine question coming from a place of good faith: is it wrong of me to be scared for transmascs right now? the harassment of transfems by both radfems and now even tumblr staff is fucking horrendous, but im terrified that due to so much recent discourse, people are going to blame transmascs for it and hate us even more than they already do.

i genuinely do care about transfems and it’s utterly ghoulish what’s going on right now, and it needs to stop, but I can’t help but get this awful sinking feeling over how it could affect transmascs by proxy — but I’m not sure if that’s wrong of me? is it wrong to worry about, should I be focusing entirely on transfems right now? is it transmisogynistic of me to be concerned about both of these things instead of just the one? I don’t know if what I’m feeling is wrong and it’s stressing me out so badly :(

I don't think it's ever wrong to be concerned about multiple real problems at once.

I have stayed pretty quiet on this situation, mostly just adding stuff to my queue if I agree with it but not weighing in personally. Mainly the reason is that I genuinely don't know anything about the trans woman in question who all of this fuss is for. But, I have seen other trans blogs get nuked for seemingly flimsy reasons, and I have seen self-professed terfs and radfems crowing victory with the latest victims of their mass-reporting.

And I think this is a bit of a PR nightmare, but I also think this site does have a serious harassment problem the staff does not take nearly seriously enough while it also seems to punish in equal amounts blogs that get harassed AND blogs that were literally just minding their own business, with really the main similarities being that they are blogs owned by people belonging to seriously marginalized and at-risk demographics talking about controversial topics like racism and LGBT politics.

It is really quite frustrating that there are now accusations that trans mascs talking about their own oppression are behind this, when not only is there no proof behind the claim but also even without a lot of direct knowledge I am seeing a certain demographic cheering that their mass reports worked and I gotta say, that demographic largely isn't trans mascs.

I also think there is a lot of hypocrisy floating around, because some of these blogs I'm seeing mad about this latest streak of bans are also people who themselves have advocated for harassing others and mass-reporting others who simply fail the vibe check while just existing as themselves, off this website. And while those users don't have the power of the literal CEO, they're failing to see how they've contributed to the problem of this website's user culture of "send the most vile thing you can think of en mass until they break and leave and good riddance".

I say this as someone who also has been harassed by a band of people wanting to chase me off of this website. It is why I don't interact much with dogblr anymore. I have had several people who joined in that dog pile later approach me and apologize, but the damage is still done and I am not interested in engaging with a "community" so willing to tear someone apart on flimsy accusations that weren't even true. I almost killed myself that night, I had a mental break and turned off my blog completely for several days just to make it stop, and returned to see people similarly crowing with delight that they'd successfully run me off. It's happened to me, and the perpetrators were almost entirely white cisgender women, and I have been very reliably told by multiple other people that both my blackness and my transgender status were significant motivators in their poor behavior.

This also happening in the wake of yet another transgender teen killed by their peers has left me simply mentally and physically exhausted. I began involving myself more in the transgender community on here because I wanted this to stop. I wanted to help uplift my siblings and get them out of the pit before the whole thing caved in. It's feeling very hopeless right now for trans kids around the world and in the mean time it's also apparently my fault a trans woman I don't even know got banned I guess..

In any case. Hold your head up. We'll get through this, somehow. We always have. We always will.

[howtofightwrite]

Hey I'm reading a book where a character is in an underground boxing match (with gloves, not bare-knuckle, so they're using some equipment), and while descriptions are kinda sparse it is stating that she's wearing jeans, sneakers and a tee shirt to do multiple rounds of boxing. That can't be right, can it? Or am I the wrong one and is it a not-terrible idea to regularly engage in boxing matches in street clothes like this?

So, with the important caveat that: I wouldn't want to do that, it's not impossible, just unpleasant.

You would sweat up your clothes pretty badly while practicing. Jeans aren't the most comfortable clothes to be wearing when you take a blunt hit, they'll chafe and suffer serious wear and tear. Footwear from the street causes several problems, and simply switching to gym shoes won't solve them.

Fighters shed their clothes because getting your own shirt and your opponent's glove driven into you by a punch is marginally more unpleasant than your opponent's glove alone.

Beyond that, there's a pretty decent chance of getting some blood on them, even in a contained environment. Bloodstains are kinda annoying to get out of clothes. Personally, I've always used a stiff bristled brush (sometimes even an old toothbrush), and bar soap, scrubbing out the blood before it's had time to set, and that's seemed to work pretty well, but it's a bit time intensive, and needs to be dealt with relatively quickly. Needless to say, that's less of an option during a bout, and downright annoying during practice.

There is also a (somewhat minor) danger of someone trying to choke out another fighter with their opponent's shirt. Clearly, it would be disqualifying (and probably get the offender permanently kicked out), but it's an entirely avoidable scenario. While the gloves mitigate it, there's also a risk of getting fingers caught in your opponent's clothes and breaking them. This is more of a consideration in an actual brawl, but it is one more reason you probably wouldn't want competitors wearing shirts.

Interestingly, martial arts that prioritize throws, such as Judo or Aikido, tend to practice with a shirt (or, more specifically a gi), because it provides points to grip, and throw, the opponent. Getting punched while wearing a gi isn't going to be more fun than if you're wearing a shirt, but it's not strictly ceremonial.

Wearing shoes is a pretty bad idea for a couple reasons, depending on the rules. If there's a strict, “no blows below the waist,” restriction, you'll still get fighters accidentally stepping on each other's feet from time to time, and that's a lot less pleasant if they're wearing shoes. If kicking is allowed, shoes will dramatically increase the damage of a kick. Further, if participants are allowed to wear street footwear, you'd see a transition from sneakers to reinforced boots that provided protection from getting stomped on, and allowed for inflicting more serious kicks.

Outside of organized sport fighting, stepping on one of your opponent's feet, then closing distance and pushing them off balance can dramatically shift control of the fight. You can do this in your bare feet, but footwear makes it easier to lock an opponent in place. To be clear, you can reposition, and even walk without lifting your feet off the ground, but it's not something most people train for outside of dance or some martial arts schools, including karate. So this isn't always effective, but for most people who internally think walking involves lifting their foot and taking a step, you can keep them where they are.

So, is this believable? From an underground boxing group without a lot of history? Yeah, I could see people doing something stupid like this. Though, I suspect that over time the shirts and shoes would go, simply because sooner or later someone would find a way to abuse those. How long would it take for that to happen? I'm honestly not sure, and there might be social norms which would keep those around. While it wouldn't be jeans and sneakers, but 19thcentury boxers would have kept their undershirts, pants, and shoes on.

Context is also important, if this is some kind of fight club, then it tracks, but if this is organized underground fighting ring, with betting and spectators, getting the participants to show some skin is also part of the show. If people are gambling, they'd want to see the fighters getting dinged up, as that drives future betting. More than that, it's about entertainment, so titillation is something that can draw in an audience, and incentivize further betting.

Another big question mark is, “multiple rounds.” Normally, there's a lot of downtime between fights, for an individual fighter. This is because, even if you're victorious, you're going to take some hits, and those will have a cumulative effect on your ability to fight (or, even continue breathing.) An unscrupulous underground arena might play a little fast and loose with this, but even then, a fighter who's worn down by their previous bouts will eventually fall, and the arena doesn't want to field bets in a fight where one fighter is half-dead, while going up against fresh competitors.

If it seems like I'm making a big deal about the gambling, when you're looking at organized underground fighting rings, gambling is the business, and everything else exists in service of that.

So, is it believable? Kinda. It's not flawless writing, and without more context, some of the mistakes are more or less forgivable.

You're not wrong, it is a bad idea to wear street clothes into a match like this, but it is possible, and in an ad hoc fight club, it's quite possible for the characters to make these mistakes on their own. That said, it's likely the author didn't realize these were mistakes, so that is on them.

-Starke

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[noxemma]

Super late start, but here's the first chapter of a fic for @winchester-reload's Hot Summer Art challenge (better late than never, right?)

Tags, Rating, Word Count, AO3 link, etc. at the bottom

Beside Your Side

Fic Summary: Dean convinces Sam to look into a potential case where people are going missing from a New Jersey beach town. Of course, they have to bring Cas and Eileen along, just in case it's not a monster. Dean is excited to get the case over quickly and enjoy a well-earned vacation with the people he loves the most. Nothing ever seems to go the way Dean plans it though, and this case is no exception.

Chapter 1: Down to the Seaside

Dean

“Dude, really?” Sam quirks a brow and gives Dean a look that would make him feel guilty if he was actually bullshitting. But, for once, he’s not and he can’t stop how giddy it makes him.

“I’m serious, Sammy! Over the last couple of weeks, five people have gone missing and then a day or two later, a mysterious sand sculpture shows up on the beach looking just like them! Tell me that doesn’t sound like our kind of thing.”

“I mean, it does, but-” Sam hedges.

“But what?” Dean tries not to whine or pout or let on just how excited he really is. “We can’t take a case because it’s on a beach? Can’t go because, God forbid, if it does end up being nothing, we might take a day or two and enjoy a vacation for once? C’mon, Sam. Haven’t we earned it?”

“Geez, fine! We’ll check it out,” Sam huffs. He maintains his stern expression for a few seconds before a twinkle lights his eyes and a small smile starts to form. “But I’m inviting Eileen. Just in case it is, you know, nothing.”

“Deal, but then we have to invite Cas too. It’s only fair he gets to join in if you’re bringing Eileen,” Dean blurts excitedly, already daydreaming about spending time in the sand and sun with the people he loves most. It takes a few too many beats for his brain to catch the slip and he quickly adds, “It’s not like I have a girlfriend, so it’s only fair I get to invite my best friend. Plus, you know, with his grace thing, some R&R might do him good. And if not, then at least a case will take his mind off it.”

“Uh, yeah. Sure. Of course, Cas should come.” Sam makes a funny face and looks like he wants to say more, but mercifully stays silent.

“It’s settled then, we’re headed seaside. I love New Jersey!” Dean whoops as he hustles to his room to dig out swim trunks while Sam lets out a groan.

---

“Ughhh! I hate New Jersey!” Dean growls as Baby inches another few feet forward before stopping again. This vacation case is not going at all how he planned, and they haven’t even made it to the beach yet. He tries to tell himself that he’s only frustrated because of the standstill traffic they’re caught in, but he knows it has more to do with the angel in his passenger seat who’s been silent for nearly the entire trip. Normally he doesn’t mind the silence with Cas.

That’s probably because, normally, it feels peaceful. Not this odd tension. I don’t even know why he’s being weird. People are usually happy to be invited on vacation, Dean stews, gritting his teeth as the truck in front of him bursts forward a few hundred feet only to grind to a halt as another car cuts it off trying to merge into the marginally faster moving lane.

“Jesus! If everyone could stop being an asshole, we could all get where we’re going sometime this year!” Dean shouts, funneling his mounting frustration into road rage.

“I told you the traffic was going to get bad,” Sam huffs over the phone. “It’s your fault you spent so long grocery shopping.”

“Whatever, you’ll thank me when you see how expensive everything is on the island!” Dean can practically hear Sam’s eye roll and hopes Sam can hear his responding one. “Anyway, you guys are probably almost there, right?”

“Yeah, we should be just a few miles away-”

“There’s the bridge!” Eileen excited shout drowns out whatever his brother had been about to say. “I’m so excited; it’s been at least three or four years since I’ve been to a beach.”

“Wow, you really did make good time. Okay so the key should be under the mat if you want to go in and start getting settled. Don’t expect too much though. It’s pretty small and Mom’s friend said it hadn’t really been updated since we were there last, which is at over two decades so...”

“Dean, I’m sure it will be fine. I still can’t believe that Mom and Dad actually took us on vacation here. What was I anyway, like a month old?”

Dean grins as he recalls nearly faded memories of the four of them. Snippets of sand, waves, boardwalk lights, sticky fingers, toothy grins, and a huge umbrella covering his mom and baby Sam flash through his mind. Some are so strong like his father lifting him over the waves and some are so faded they are more feelings than tangible memory, but they’re all still precious.

“We came late July, so you were almost three months, smartass. But yeah, what are the odds and that Dad still had the contact info in his journal and it would still be available to rent on short notice? Anyway, given the rate we’re going, which is zero, we’ll probably be an hour or so behind you.”

“Okay, well, we'll see you when you get here, jerk,” Sam initiates their standard farewell, and Dean silently curses him for it.

“See you when we get there, bitch,” Dean responds reluctantly. The line goes dead, and he heaves a frustrated sigh now that the conversation with his brother isn’t distracting him from the traffic or the blue gaze he’d felt swing his way partway through the conversation.

Another twenty minutes of mind-numbing traffic goes by before Dean’s skin starts to itch. He swaps tapes then switches to the radio, but nothing helps quell his mounting awareness of the solemn, blue-eyed angel in his periphery.

“Dean?” Cas says so abruptly that Dean nearly jerks his foot off the brake. “Something’s been bothering me.”

“Really? I couldn’t tell,” Dean tries to tease but an exasperated edge sneaks in.

Cas frowns, but goes on, “Why am I coming with you?”

“Why wouldn’t you? You’re part of the team and we’ve got a potential case,” Dean quickly delivers the line he definitely did not practice.

“Dean.”

Dean makes the mistake of meeting Cas’ gaze, and he gulps at the intensity of it.

“Sam and Eileen are a couple, not to mention seasoned hunters,” Cas states before his words soften. “I’m effectively human again. How did you put it? A baby in a trench coat.”

Dean cringes at having those words flung back at him. Cas’ shoulders slump and he sounds like he really believes he has no place on this trip simply because he can’t access his grace, which is unacceptable.

“Cas, I should have never said that. So, you might not be able to do your normal angel stuff but-” Dean starts.

“Then why-?”

Dean cuts Cas off with a growl and a smack to the steering wheel.

“You’d know if you’d let me finish. Christ, you’re here because I want you here! I want to finish up this case quickly then relax on a beach with my family like we deserve after everything we’ve been through. I want to hang out with my best friend when Sam and Eileen go off on dates instead of being left alone like the sad schmuck I am!”

Like what you read? You can find the rest of the chapter here on AO3

Rating: Explicit

Chapters: 1/? (hopefully 9 😂)

Chapter Word Count: ~6,000

Tags: No Archive Warnings Apply, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, Case Fic, Established Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, Beach Case, Cannon when convenient, Mutual Pining, Idiots in Love, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con (Dean and background characters), Non-Consensual Touching (Not between Dean and Cas), Hurt/Comfort, I promise it's not as dark as it sounds, Fluff, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, clueless Sam Winchester, Chick-Flick Moments, Cannon typical misunderstandings, Angst?, One day I'll learn how to tag, WIP, JackieDeeArt's Hot Summer Art 2024 (Supernatural), Hot Summer Art, Greek Mythology if you Squint, No Beta, Everyone is bad with words, Except Eileen who is the only emotionally stable person for miles, Dean Winchester Loves Castiel, Castiel Loves Dean Winchester, Angel Grace Dysfunction

[thewritetofreespeech]

For aizen and shinji(seperately ) how they propose x fem reader

Maybe for aizen he never betrayed the soul society or he is the soul king ?

Fluff plz

Shinji Hirako

“Geh….I forgot how hot these dumb robes were.” Shinji complained as he fluttered his new captain’s haori to get some air.

You smirk to yourself at his complaint. Knowing they were hollow. You knew Shinji was happier than he had ever been to be back in the Seireitei, in the Gotei 13, and back at his old post. It had been a long time. One neither of you thought would ever come. When you saw Shinji again after all this time, presumed dead, you’d burst into tears and clung to him for dear life as if to never let him go again.

That was almost a year ago, and now you were settling into your regular lives.

“Well, you look very handsome.”

“I always look handsome.” Shinji corrected of your compliment. Gritting his teeth when you set some new paperwork down on his desk. “Give ‘at the Hinamori.”

“It’s not Hinamori-san’s responsibility.” You retort with a grumble.

“ ‘course it is. ‘s what lieutenants and seated officers is for. Taken work off their poor capt’ins so they can focus on more important things.”

“Let me guess? Like your naps?”

“To name a few.” Shinji choked on his words when you wacked him in the head for his intolerance. Not appreciating your efforts to the division marginalized like this; even if it was a joke.

“Please see that these are completed by this afternoon.”

“[Y/N]-chan is so meeeeannn…..” Shinji whined. “Hey, wait a minute.” He called when he saw you were actually leaving.

You turn around, still in a huff, to see what he wanted and have to act fast to catch the small parcel tossed at you. “What’s this?”

“It’s a present.”

“This isn’t going to get you out of paperwork.” You grumble. Then open the box to see a small ring inside. It took you a moment to process what it meant before you looked up at Shinji in alarm. Who looked remarkably serious, and more vulnerable, than you had ever seen him before.

“I’m a pretty lucky guy.” He stood from his desk and walked over to you. “ ‘m back at my old job. I got my revenge. Lived a buncha years in the human world just amblin’ by like I always wanted to. But there wan’t a day that went by that I didn’t think of you.” He took the ring out of your hands, and then slipped it on your finger. “Haven you back…it almost makes all that crap worth it. So, will ya make me the luckiet guy in the universe and marry me [Y/N]?”

“Yes!” You answer immediately. Wrapping your arms around Shinji and kissing him fiercely.

You both hold on to each other for a while. By the time you break apart you had to wipe happy tears from your face. “I’m so happy. I can’t wait to tell everyone. Wait, we should tell them together. I’ll be back later when you’re done, and we can do that.”

“Wait? I still have to do paperwork?!”

“Yes Shinji,” moment over. “You better not have done this just so you could slack off. No take backs anyway. You’re stuck with me forever now.”

Shinji smirked and moved back to his desk. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Sosuke Aizen

*I know what you said, but.....BUT.....hear me out*

You laid in bed, waiting for Aizen to return after his shower. He’d been a little off today. Not enough for anyone to notice; to the untrained observer he looked like the typical, good-natured captain everyone knew and loved. But you were his lover. So you noticed things in him that were not as keenly aware.

“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” You look up from the futon matting. Aizen walking in with a thin bathrobe on and still toweling his hair. “You have a big day tomorrow.”

“Is something wrong?” You asked him outright.

Whenever you wanted to get to the bottom of something with Aizen, you had to ask him outright. If you danced around the topic, he would dance with you, and suddenly you couldn’t remember what it was you had originally asked him about. “You’ve been acting odd all day.”

A soft chuckle left the captain. “Leave it to you to notice something.” He tossed the towel aside and reveled his handsome face, now that his hair was wet & pushed back without his glasses.

He came over to the bed and sat beside you. Gently taking your hand, which was for once not comforting. “You know I love and trust you more than anything, yes?” He said with a soft sort of smile. “So I’m going to tell you something I hope you’ll be pleased with. In 6 days, after Rukia Kuchiki’s execution, I’m going to overthrow to Soul King.”

Shock rang out through your body at Aizen’s words. You barely hear him over the ringing in your ears on how it will be done, the other captain’s betraying the Seireitei with him, when all this started.

“W…Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want you to come with me.” He explained cheerfully. As if you had just planned some fun trip to the country. “The universe needs balance. And I intend to give it. With this new power I gain, I will create the world anew. The Seireitei and Gotei 13 will no longer be needed as they will be obsolete in this new world of order. An order we talked about.”

Yes, you had talked about how corrupt the Seireitei could be sometimes. How it seemed unjust that somewhere born into high states of privilege after their death, while others were forced to suffer. Who decided that? Didn’t all men die equally? But this seemed…..extreme.

Aizen then lifted your hand and kissed your ring finger. “I need you to come with me. Gin and Tosen are competent candidates, but they lack the vision you and I share. I cannot complete this on my own. A king needs his queen.” You were embarrassed to say that your heart fluttered.

Although you feared what Aizen was suggesting, what this may lead to, you still couldn’t imagine being without him. Not at his side. “Yes,” you whisper quietly as a single tear slid down your cheek, “yes I’ll go with you.”

[the-meat-machine]

Hi. I'm rereading Playing House to refresh myself on it, and I decided to write some author's commentary as I go along, just for fun. This commentary will contain spoilers for the fic up to chapter 17 (the most recent chapter as of the time of writing).

So, yeah. Chapter 1 commentary, under the cut! (And for the record, I don't expect all the commentary to be as long as this one is; I just have a lot to say about the fic in general in this first one.)

CALIBORN: DIRK. WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY PANTS.

Ah, humble beginnings.

When I first started this fic, it was just supposed to be a silly, raunchy ovi fic that I was banging out for fun in between some of my more serious stories. It had a little plot right from the start, but the plot was pretty much entirely just "an egg happens." There wasn't nearly as much stuff about Dirk and Caliborn's relationship as a whole, and DEFINITELY none of the stuff about… well, whatever it is Caliborn is time traveling about in the most recent chapter.

But as I was writing it, I gradually started folding in ideas from a separate Dirkuu relationship study that I was considering writing, and within a few chapters I decided to just merge the two fics into one. Which I think was the right call, in retrospect. I really think the story is a lot more fun this way, and the egg has worked out as a surprisingly good framing device for everything else going on.

But at the time when I was writing this first chapter, I didn't know any of that. This was supposed to be nothing more than a horny egg fic, and the chapter reflects that. It's also much shorter than most of the following chapters. I kinda like how short and punchy it is, actually. I have perhaps become a little too long-winded in some of the later chapters. Actually, that happens almost immediately, as we'll see in the chapter 2 commentary.

Caliborn literally hisses at you. You assume it's supposed to be a threat, but the sight of his tongue winding out from between all those sharp, sharp fangs mostly just makes your dick go doki-doki.

The first appearance of Caliborn's tongue. Dirk's preoccupation with Caliborn's tongue and fangs surely does not mirror the author's.

DIRK: Face it, between your skeletal posterior and my own tragically concave rump, ours is a no-ass household. DIRK: When the ass famine comes, we'll be the first to perish.

This is still one of my favorite lines in the whole fic.

CALIBORN: MAYBE YOU USED THEM TO MANIPULATE THE JADE BITCH. INTO REMOTELY TAMPERING WITH MY TROUSERS. DIRK: Dude. DIRK: What did I tell you about calling my friends bitches? CALIBORN: … CALIBORN: ……….. CALIBORN: …………………………… CALIBORN: THAT EVERY TIME I DO IT. IT MEANS YOU GET TO PICK OUR NEXT MOVIE DURING DATE NIGHT.

Here we also get the first appearance of Dirk attempting to dog-train Caliborn into being a marginally less shitty person. This will come up again with absurdly long-reaching consequences in the Jane chapter.

This line also implies that Dirk considers Jade his friend. That would be a great dynamic to explore. Probably won't happen in this fic, though, alas. Maybe I'll post a deleted scene about it someday.

Also, it may be interesting to note the quantity of punctuation that Caliborn uses. Eleven is a thematic number for the cherubs, and Caliborn frequently repeats things in sets of eleven throughout both Homestuck itself and this fic.

DIRK: What's the magic word? CALIBORN: FUCK YOU! DIRK: Eh, close enough.

Dirk cares far more about Caliborn being rude to his friends than he does about him being rude to Dirk himself. Almost nothing Caliborn does really bothers Dirk on a personal level. This is part of why they're so compatible. It also gives Dirk yet another reason to doubt his own morality. What does it say about him that he's so emotionally unfazed by any of the awful shit this dude says and does? (It says that he has low affective empathy. That's all. Doesn't mean he's a bad person. Try convincing Dirk of that, though.)

CALIBORN: IF YOU DO NOT FIX THIS. YOUR POSITION IN OUR GAME OF "HOUSE" WILL BE IN JEOPARDY.

Ah, House.

My very earliest plans for this fic didn't involve the game of House. All I wanted was to write a silly story about Dirk and Caliborn laying an egg.

The problem with writing anything remotely fluffy about Caliborn, however, is that in canon, he truly and genuinely just wants to fucking kill everyone. He WILL kill Dirk. He WILL kill all of Dirk's friends. This is a core part of his goals. So… how do you get him into a place where he won't just slaughter everyone and be done with it?

In this fic, I've resolved this by giving Caliborn a different game that he's decided he's playing: House. Now he's constrained by a new set of rules--ones that say he has to try to play nice. That he needs to learn assorted domestic skills. And perhaps most importantly, that he can't just fucking murder all of his opponent/partner(?)'s friends--because if he does, he'll lose the game. And Caliborn cannot abide losing a game.

Someday we'll get more about why, exactly, Caliborn has decided to play this game. But for now, all that matters is that he is, and so he's bound by its rules. This turns out to be VERY narratively useful for me.

Not that that's why you've been playing along with his "game", no matter what certain friends of yours might believe. They always do want to think the best of you, and there is absolutely no fucking good explanation for why you would want to shackle yourself to the biggest asshole in Paradox Space. But regardless of your motivations...

Dirk trying really hard here to avoid directly admitting that he's in love with Caliborn, not even in the narration. This will be a running theme.

It occurs to you sometimes that what normal people would actually call this game is "marriage".

Damn, I really just came out and put this right in the first chapter, huh? I mean, it's true though.

CALIBORN: RUB MY BELLY, CUDDLESLUT.

Yeah, so. I started this fic with a scene of Caliborn growing out of his pants and then followed it up immediately with a belly rub scene. I was NOT attempting to be subtle about what kind of fic this is--which is to say, a belly fetish fic. I'm genuinely shocked it's grown to have this much of an audience outside of that community.

The fic HAS grown to encompass a lot more than just the fetish shit, though. I guess by now I'd consider it basically the equivalent of one of those fics that has plenty of plot and character development, but also fairly frequent sex scenes. Except here, half the time instead of sex scenes you just get weirdly lascivious descriptions of how much candy Caliborn is scarfing down. I promise this is hot to some portion of the audience.

DIRK: The fuck have you been eating, dude? CALIBORN: WHY. DIRK: There's like a lump in there. Right here.

And here's the first appearance of the egg! The entire raison d'etre of this fic. Really, what else is there to say about it? It's an egg. It's made of candy. It's inside of Caliborn. Presumably one day it will be outside of Caliborn. One can only hope.

[shihalyfie]

Why do people like Saban dubbing digimon but really hate 4kids for dubbing anime?

To be honest, I don't think that's quite the case. I think most people who tend to have apologia-level worship of the Saban Digimon dubs also have similar sentiments towards 4Kids dubs. It's "my childhood", so it's sacred and you're not allowed to say anything bad about it.

That said, it is true that 4Kids is the one usually thrown under the bus to blame for radical dub changes while Saban is treated as "comparatively loyal (for the time)". This is misleading at best. If it's loyal for the time, it's by a very small margin, and certainly not enough to claim that it's "practically the same" as the Japanese version as many do.

Saban's Digimon dub looks closer to the original because all of the surface elements supposedly look closer:

They kept almost all of the names in Japanese and only gave them "nicknames", unlike other dubs that changed the names radically! (Except they functionally never mentioned those "nicknames" again after the first time, and no matter how many letters each name may share in common with their Japanese versions, that doesn't change the fact they treated most Japanese names like hot potatoes because they sound too Japanese.)

They left the setting in Japan instead of making it a fictional American city! (Except they tried to do that until the number of Tokyo landmarks made it too recognizable, and it's still something they were able to get away with because the Digital World is prominent enough in the narrative for them to not worry about it too much.)

They didn't cut any episodes! (Probably the only one that does hold legitimate water in comparison to 4Kids actually cutting entire episodes at times, but one also has to consider that Digimon is a heavily serialized narrative where dropping an episode would create serious problems for the story, whereas you could get away with a dropped episode from 4Kids' longer properties with filler episodes since more of their shows were based on manga.)

They didn't make any huge changes to the overall plot! (Almost nobody watched Adventure or 02 for the plot alone, and it's only natural that slowly changing every single line to suggest completely different characterizations from their Japanese counterparts would have a massive effect, especially on 02 where it didn't have an extremely linear in-your-face plot that offset that to some degree -- and even then, Adventure wasn't completely immune, because it didn't stop Koushirou and Mimi's Japanese characterization changes from still remaining relatively unknown in the English-speaking fandom.)

"The Digimon (American) English dub didn't change that much" is the biggest lie the fandom will ever feed you, yet it still persists to this day because people will look at these surface factors and call it a day (and even worse, because this myth persists, fewer people will be inclined to check it out in Japanese and confirm whether this is actually true or not). It's never been about how many actual changes there were; it's about how many were noticeable. Few people talk about how there's actually a significant difference in how dub changes were handled the moment Disney took over (late Tamers to Savers), because it's hard to notice unless you actually have seen the Japanese version. Fusion gets treated like a laughingstock dub just because people were actually able to watch it in Japanese first and see how much got changed later; in terms of actual changes, it's not that much worse than Adventure or 02, it's just that it happened during a time it was less socially acceptable to do that.

So because of that, Saban is seen in the lens of a localization company that did its best to be "loyal" in a market where the 4Kids method of drastic changes were more dominant, when in fact they were aggressive about it in different ways (and you can see a very fair share of derogatory, dangerously-racist-leaning comments about Japanese media, writing style, and content from people who were involved in Digimon localization, so it's frankly kind of absurd to imagine they were doing all of this because they cared so much about loyalty to the origin). On the flip side, it is on record that a lot of 4Kids' radical changes were actually requested by the Japanese side itself, because they themselves wanted to push something that would be appealing to the American market, and 4Kids would sometimes go as aggressive as they did specifically because they got the Japanese licensor's blessing to go as hard as they wanted.

(I actually personally prefer 4Kids' original music and theme songs to the Digimon ones -- they come off to me as feeling like they have a lot more genuine spirit put into them -- but that's just my personal subjective opinion, and everyone has their own music tastes. Anyway, that's a digression.)

I personally don't think it's productive to be mad at the dubs themselves. This was all more than 20 years ago, the market was very different, the attitude towards localization was different, Japanese companies had their own varying stakes in the situation, and most importantly, what happened happened and I'm not going to blame kids for watching the only thing that was accessible to them at the time and developing an attachment to it. I don't think there's any point to speculating how Digimon would have been accepted in the US/UK/etc. if it hadn't been changed so radically, because the fact is, we don't live in that alternate timeline, so we won't get anything useful out of fixating on that idea too much.

The only thing I have negative feelings about regarding the American English Digimon dub is, simply, the way the fandom still talks about it. With things like Pokémon or One Piece or Yu-Gi-Oh, where everyone already understands that 4Kids made super drastic changes, if you say you're talking about the Japanese version because what you're discussing wasn't in the dub, people will easily believe you and acknowledge you're talking about something different, but if you try to claim the Adventure or 02 dub was different enough to merit a distinction, you get called nitpicky or accused of being delusional. This is what I really wish would stop. The dub was different! I know localization discourse loves to conflate "different" with "bad", so people don't want to admit that their childhood dub changed a lot, but it did! That's reality! Please don't make this more frustrating to talk about than it needs to be!

[nishnormp]

thinking way too hard about things that probably do not need this much thought

In lieu of tfc merc brainrot, I have decided to do some historical research and character workshopping to shape out the details of everything needed in ficwriting. I have nothing else to post (my art is not going well) so I might as well scream about this

P1: TF2 alternate history bullshit

Abraham Lincoln inventing rocket jumping before the existence of stairs, the entire thing with Australium, so on. Despite TFC having modern kevlar (as opposed to looney toons weapons, but a bit about that later) and a more serious/gritty tone, the setting is still within the TF2 universe; which means having a weird fusion of irl history and vaguely reasonable fantasy absurdities.

To clarify, I am not a bona fide history nut who knows absolutely everything (ffs my own country's history doesn't even play much in western incidents). I've just been doing research thru online articles, videos, and talking to other ppl who know more than me, so my brain can lack a bit for certain things; do correct me if I get anything wrong.

By the 1850s (estimation) Australia became a tech giant due to discovering Australium, making insane progress in basically every field (and also making their population very jacked). Newfound inventions also require raw resources, and this page confirms that australians pick their leader mostly based on pure strength, which begs the question; are they still connected to Britain? Would there still be a benefit for them to be linked to Britian the way they are?

There are many cases where nations plunder other nations just for natural resources; Britian is one particularly infamous force with many colonies, which makes me wonder if Australia ever resorted to snatching them just to afford all the material components that their tech requires. Australia was part of the British Empire up until 1901 irl (not too far from 1890), but the question about resources and sovereignty(even if symbolic) still remain (Britain likely wouldn't like a territory growing at terrifying and eventually unmanageable rates, and at that rate I doubt Australia would settle for middling trade margins)

(Well, apparently Saxton owns England. But that was when he discovered the internet)

There's also the ensemble of first gen mercs. RED and BLU recruit progressively less important mercs as time goes on, starting from important historical/media figures, to modern militant professional-lookin dudes, and finally to the current crop of crackheaded TF2 mercs we know and love. The Original mercs I mostly want to focus on are Abraham Lincoln and John Henry.

I'm not exactly sure if John Henry is even a real person, but he was a symbol for labor movements and the civil rights movement; the fact that he IS a real person in TF2 lore is p vital methinks, especially since him and Lincoln seem to be on the same team. Mercs are paid a lot, even the "bottom of the barrel" tf2 ones: scout has his merch collection to show for it, medic has his exotic animal parts, heavy has his gun ammo (and also casually gave a child 7k dollars), etc; could John Henry have spearheaded civil rights movements not just in America but also other territories (like africa) with the bread and merits he got for the job? Does he have a legacy with rouge merc groups (armed unions?) that fight against imperialism? Maybe even effect/radicalize Lincoln about some things??? Unethical business practices still persist even in Saxton's era (hell, he's an example) but maybe the (hypothetical) challenges to Britain's grasp on its colonies and evolution of munitions would give the people an edge.

I have no idea how a drastically colony-less Britain would affect the timeline of WW1 (esp in less popular side-wars like in South Africa where Britain was very much involved, which may be problematic since my interp of cmedic is FROM there but anyways) (btw they only won that bc they out-attritioned Germany, but by that point maybe the dutch or the americans would take over), but surprisingly enough WW2 ends at around the same time it does irl, despite my initial thought that a roided-out Allied Australia would be more than capable of turning the Axis Powers into a skidmark. The likely explanation for that is that the finer details were just not important for the tf2 comics that took place AFTER (fair enough), but as someone planning to write the 1930s mercs . Pain . My working explanation is that seemingly unaligned private contractors can get ahold of weapons easier than Certain governments, which makes mercs more popular than national soldiers for carrying out certain missions (plausible employer deniability baybeeee).

P2: Conflicting class meta - CHeavy edition

Onto something less heavy, another part of ficwriting is figuring out how characters are...characterized. The TFC mercs dont have much canonical info (I've already turned two of them into straight up ocs because I am NOT going to write p3dos from start to finish of a longfic) so I settle for looking at other things, like gameplay and ingame roles.

The first I focused on was cheavy, the leader of the group. Grouchy, but a surprisingly tolerant team player.

This IS reused from a previous post (im lazy) but the first bullet basically says "otherwise, offensive heavies are frequently looked down on and the power of the other team's defense will have you dead in no time". Gameplay-wise, CHeavy is considered the simplest class and the easiest one to master; most tfc gamers think its a common noob pick. His total health is pretty good, he occupies a big space so he can block narrow paths, and the way he attacks is simple; but he's slow even when b-hopping (grenades cant boost him either) so he can be outrun/picked apart by other classes, which really shows in tfc's most popular game format: capture the flag.

I've seen about a handful video of tfc gameplay that WASN'T ctf (or the slightly diff gamemode with a defense system), and even if the 4th bullet point is right, those two classes are usually doing more important things during ctf. My main point is that despite being the leader, he isn't the type of class to lead the charge.

The most reasonable thing I can think of is that he's just . Really good at strategy and can keep track of his team while reliably holding down a position. That, and his superior bulk makes him shine more outside of the gravel pits. Whatever it is, it does make more sense to me now that I revisit the comic panels where he is VERY spiteful that his teammates got killed (rather than calling them weak, they fr matter to him bc otherwise, he isn't getting shit done)

(Ik the reason hes the boss is bc big scary dude and karmic ass-handing via other heavy who actually respects his doctor but shh the fic demands reasons)

P3: Conflicting class meta - Cmedic edition

The contradiction I can immediately clock is the fact that cmedic never gets mentioned despite his omnipresence in his original game. Most hc's I've seen interpret him as the exact opposite of the current medic, which is a dedicated doctor who also happens to be a sweetheart (with very rare exceptions), but may I propose the theory that all mannco medic mercs are bastards? I'm 99% sure that the original medic was sigmund freud. TF2 medic is just a menace. Post WW1 most moral and noble medics would bust their asses at hospitals rather than sign up to a contract tying them down to just healing 8 other people and killing other people over and over, but that's just my hc (we're all making shit up, might as well have fun with it).

The most common citing for cmed's hidden menace energy is his virus weaponry, but I think his ingame role also shows it pretty well. Practically taking the scout's niche and making it less punishing by having straight upgrades of his two weapons, giving healing utility AND also being able to sniff out spies like a cscout (he can't diffuse bombs or trail caltrops, but he's already powerful as is). Imagine being cscout, having to compete for flag capture points with this guy who practically has everything you have but better (instead of leaving behind super visible spikes he has a college degree). This isn't even like the modern sniper vs spy debate where it can still be debated that spy has a unique niche with his mindgames, cmedic just straight up took copied his homework, 98% percent matching on the plagiarism bot.

Cscout and cmedic beef is very likely, but if cscout is a literal god at what he does then there won't be much issue, since the best cscout is ultimately better at flagrunning than cmedic. Its likely that cscout is simply human tho, so that's some drama that can happen.

Funnily enough the tfc class that gets the most weight and hate on its shoulders is sniper. This is because servers have a limit on how many snipers can join, and if a shitty sniper took up the slots, the rest of the team would be pretty pissed. Meanwhile, a competent sniper is the bane of every player's existence; a missed shot can still slow someone down until a medic cures them.

P4: cmedic backstory building hell - barely organized nonsense

Last one I swear. My drawings of cmedic explicitly portray him as a person of color- more specifically a cape malay, from the cape territory in South Africa; he even curses in malay in one of the posts. Ig I wanted the cast to be more diverse, but it did make his backstory somewhat harder to write.

Mann co is situated in New Mexico, far from SA. How and why did he get all the way there? With the fanon worldbuilding I set, what is stopping him from simply joining a nearer merc group? Probably heard of it through the grapevine, and travelled for fat stacks; wouldn't be uncommon for doctors (or mercs) to be highly motivated due to money. I wondered of what would set him apart from all the other hypothetical medic applicants that probably graduated from upstanding colleges like harvard, then I recall all those common hcs.

1)Most applicants assumed that the job would consist of primarily healing, without considering how bloodthirsty their company would be, and/or 2)the BLU team has been getting genuine medics and chewing them up like gum (and spitting them out utterly mangled, I suppose). There's also the possibility that some margin of these medics actually had some weapon training, but at that point a lot of time has been spent (also some conflicting motives there, I can't imagine the perks that a deadly merc job has over a hospital job unless the guy got a kick out of it).

My next idea was to make him a ww1 vet on the side of the British (australian? american?) colonies of SA, having joined midway after finishing his education. However this would clock his age during the current 1970s timeline to be around 81, pretty old; most of the tfc mercs would be 70s max around that time. Cmedic is visually the youngest of the mercs too, you can compare his smooth eyes to the more sunken cspy's eyes and there is a notable difference. This is really just an issue of me being on the fence about fully oc-fying him (a friend of him suggested making him a vampire, I am almost tempted to make it so).

In the case that particular hurdle is overcome, there are more details I have to iron out. I figured that his motives either come from wanting to financially help out his family after the war's sheer devastation, or just . a general resentment for the way things unfolded, and he swapped to merc work in the states to get properly paid for his work and (attempt to) fill the void in his soul. Maybe a mix of the two. An outlier in his community for being a godless man and having very material and tangible masters (science and money), he abandons the lofty ideals of nationalism and sides himself with the highest bidder in the private market. Also developed an insane immune system (trenches and exposure are no joke).

(Certain classes have shared characteristics across gens, like the demos' deranged smiles and engies' wholesome vibes. With sigmund freud, tf2 medic as the archetypal mad doctor, and tfc medic as the archetypal capitalist doctor, there are now three gens of doctors with dubious machinations.)

He'd probably be a great medic, respecting merc code and all (funfact tf2 medic mentions tfc demo by name, implying that he knows his real name and putting a dent in my theory that being on a first-name basis is a big deal actually , my countertheory to that is that grey mann gave him the team's files and tf2 medic wants to spite them). Cmedic also reverse-engineered the medkit and made a new version for non-gravel war missions, since the usual has several hard drugs (heals to full instantly and gives adrenaline boost, sounds sus especially if you read jarate's side effects) since he ended up somewhat caring about his pack of rabid animals