#it took awhile but here it is

[jovialturtleface]

Decided to draw my favorite TTYD partners.

[disappointeddyke]

dyke bod

[blindmagdalena]

Center Stage in a Gilded Cage (chapter six)

18+ 4.6k. homelander x f!reader. stalking, kidnapping, imprisonment, abuse, forced relationship, slow burn, eventual smut. gif credit | fic directory | AO3.

“You must never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention. Walk slowly, and pretend to be thinking of something else. Sing a song, say a poem, do your tricks, but walk slowly.” ― The Last Unicorn

When he first moved into it, Homelander loved everything about his penthouse. He’d given extensive feedback to the interior design team, even going so far as to offer crude sketches of what he wanted.

He’d always had a specific vision for his home: spacious and open, but not vacant. Rich colors that wouldn’t strain his eyes. Windows and mirrors that gave and reflected as much light and space as possible. 

No white walls. 

Not a single blank space. 

He wanted art on the walls, but not just any art. He wanted historic portraits and moments of history. A face on every wall, the same way that the people on TV had pictures of people on their walls.

Pictures of their family.

He doesn’t have a family, so familiar figures from his studies would have to do instead.

His favorite place was his bedroom. The mirrors give not only the illusion of space, but company.

To this day the bed is as plush as it was then. It’s stacked with fluffy pillows, and the sheets are made of soft cotton. They’re always vibrant, always colorful. The staff washes them in gentle detergent instead of bleach.

He spent his first night in that bed with his face buried in the pillow just smelling it.

It smelled like home.

However, the longer he’s lived in his penthouse, the more the spaciousness of it began to feel like absence. The distinct lack of something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on right away.

It eased on the odd occasion that he had company, but as soon as they were gone, it was as though their presence had carved out holes in his home that he couldn’t fill.

He added statues. More portraits. He left the television running because the silence of his own isolation had become deafening. He started spending more time away. His home had gradually morphed from a place of freedom into a finely decorated version of the same horrible fluorescent box he spent his childhood in.

At least in the box he’d known there were people watching him. With him.

How he’d hated it back then. He hated how he could always hear the camera lenses adjusting as they monitored him from somewhere else.

It makes him sick to have missed it even a bit.

Thanks to you, he no longer has to.

There’s an inherent thrill to coming home that had been lost before you. Excitement starts to prickle up his spine as soon as he steps into the elevator and hits his floor. He can’t remember the last time he’s been so excited to go home.

Every day this week you’ve cooked for him, sat with him, laid in his arms, lived with him. In the last three days you’ve come a long way from the timid thing you started as, no longer jumping at his every move. You still tense at his touch, but he’s willing to bet a few more of those massages will remedy that.

Your presence can be felt even when he’s at work. He recently connected the hidden security camera on his balcony to his phone, ensuring he gets pinged any time you open that door. He isn’t worried about you going off unattended that way, given that it’s a hundred story drop.

It makes him smile to see you getting braver, occasionally stepping out onto the concrete to stare out across the cityscape. Soon he’s going to have to take you for that flight he promised. 

While he’s spent these evenings with you blessedly free of obligations, tonight will be different. He has to leave, and he won’t be able to bring you with him. At least not yet. You aren’t ready for that kind of exposure, nor what being revealed as his beloved would entail.

The media would eat you alive. He won’t subject you to them without proper preparation.

He isn’t cruel.

Vought’s hosting a gala that will serve as the early foundation of their campaign to move supes into the military, and as such, the U.S. Secretary of Defense will be in attendance, and it’s Homelander’s job to convince the man of the innumerable benefits of the operation. 

Ridiculous. He might as well try and argue the benefits of a smartphone to a fish.

If these people can’t understand why having honest to god superheroes in their military is a good idea, he doubts anything shy of a hand delivered miracle from God would sway the morons.

It’s just common sense, for fuck’s sake. War has only ever been a matter of who could bring the biggest gun. They will never find a greater weapon than him, much less a weapon that chooses to protect them.

However undeserving of it they may be.

He lets out a rough breath and shakes his head to knock loose the talking points that have been bashed into his skull over the course of the week, determined to leave work at the door. 

“I’m hoooome,” he sings as he steps in through the doorway, the mechanism locking behind him with a soft beep.

It feels good to know you’re safe here. While he doesn’t have enemies, per se, there’s no telling what some lunatic could be driven to do if they knew about you.

“Living room,” you call.

The familiarity of it makes him smile.

This is what coming home was always supposed to feel like.

He hums a little tune to himself as he walks, a slight bounce to his steps.

“Something smells good,” he says as he rounds the corner, finding you curled up on the couch under a blanket.

Cute.

On the table across from you is a neat little stack of glass containers full of food. He cocks his head, pausing to pick one up for inspection. “You meal planning out here or something?”

You slip out from under the throw and stand. Something is… off. He hears you picking your nails before he even looks at you, and when he does meet your gaze, there’s a subtle apprehension you’re clearly trying to mask with a cordial smile.

“It’s just leftovers from lunch,” you say, eyes flickering from the container of food back to him. “How was work?”

“The usual,” he says a little curtly. Due to your unusual demeanor, he’s forgotten the laundry list of complaints he’d saved up at work with the intention of sharing with you. 

In his experience, it’s rarely a good thing when people suddenly start behaving differently.

Especially when they try to hide it.

“Something wrong?” He asks, giving the penthouse a cursory sweep. Everything looks to be in order.

Your eyes widen a fraction, but you catch yourself from looking overly surprised at being caught.

Got’cha, he thinks. He’s spent his entire life reading the subtleties in people’s body language, seeking out ways to understand the things they say when they’re not speaking. The things they won’t say. Particularly to him.

“No, no, nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to… I want to ask you for something,” you say, hands falling to your sides, your spine straightening.

His brows lift, his curiosity piqued. “Sure. Fire away.”

You’ve been here for days, but you haven’t made any requests of him despite his numerous offers. There isn’t a thing in this world he couldn’t obtain for you. Hell, he doesn’t even care if it’s legal. It’s about time you took him up on a little self-indulgence.

“Do you remember my friend John?”

His head gives a sharp little tic of a turn, his brows furrowing.

John.

He hates the effect hearing you say that name continues to have on him. It isn’t as though he has a meltdown every time he hears the name John. That would be pathetic. It’s the most common name in America, for fucks sake. 

However, there’s something particularly vile about hearing you say it with such gentleness.

“What about him?” He asks flatly, hackles rising. He was hoping you’d ask for something fun.

“I’m worried about him,” you say, clearly fighting to keep your tone even. Your fingers curl into the fabric of your pants. 

He doesn’t understand why you’re so nervous. It makes him suspicious.  “And I don’t want him to worry about me. We’ve had a routine for months. So I thought–”

“Oh,” Homelander interrupts, setting the container of food back down as understanding dawns. 

They’re scraps for your stray pet. 

“No problem, I’ll have someone take this to him,” he says, gesturing encompassingly towards the food. 

“No,” you say, the firmness in your voice catching him off guard. “I want you to take me, and I want to give it to him myself.”

He bristles, needles of suspicion creeping further up his spine. “Why?”

Though you’re quick to swallow it back, he doesn’t miss the flash of frustration in your eyes.

“You said you’d take me anywhere I wanted to go. Were you lying?”

He lifts his hand sharply enough to make you flinch, his index finger pointing only inches from your face.

“Don’t you ever call me a liar,” he says slowly, fist curled so tightly that the leather of his gloves groans in protest. “I didn’t say no, I asked you why.”

Your eyes are wide, your heart drumming loudly in his ears. He hates that look of fear, the look that tells him you’re waiting for him to hurt you when he’s never done anything of the sort.

You have no right to look at him like that.

“Because I want to. I want to see him, and make sure he’s okay, and because… because I want–” You stop mid sentence and break eye contact, pressing the back of your hand to your opposite cheek. You take in a slow breath to compose yourself. 

With a start, he realizes your eyes are welling with tears.

“I want to say goodbye.”

At a loss, Homelander stares for a long moment. For the life of him, he cannot fathom how this little charity schtick could possibly be so important to you. Isn’t he enough for you?

You’ve been spending your days carefree in domestic bliss, yet here you are crying because you aren’t taking a box of food to some bum. It’s baffling enough to give him a migraine.

On the other hand, it was that persistent nurturing that drew his eye to you. If not for your diligent care, he may not have seen the same potential in you. He likes that you care. He just wants you to care for him.

He lets out a long-suffering sigh.

“Don’t cry,” he says, voice full of his exasperated bewilderment. He lifts both hands in a placating show of surrender. “Fine, fine, I’ll take you, and you can do whatever it is you need to do.”

“Thank you,” you practically sigh. Your hand drops from your face and you look at him with palpable relief, your lips spreading into a faint smile. He likes your smiles. He likes being the reason for your smiles. That, at least, comes as a slight boon.

He clicks his tongue, observing you for a moment before he blows out a raspberry. He cups either side of your face, stepping in close to you.

“I hate it when you make me take a tone with you, you know,” he says, brushing the tip of your nose with his. Your breath catches. “You should know by now that I can’t say no to you.”

His thumb strokes your cheek. He’s been gentlemanly in your time here, accepting of your hand in his, your lips on his cheek. When he wakes up hard as a rock with your body pressed to his, he’s taken care of himself in the bathroom. Frankly he’s been more than a gentleman; he’s been a fucking saint.

“I’m downright pussy whipped, and I haven’t even gotten any yet,” he huffs through a little laugh, almost close enough to taste your lips. 

He hasn’t felt your lips on his since that night in your apartment. He wants them exactly as they had been. Pliant and without tension or fear, yet still you tense as he holds you close. You place your hands on his chest and though you don’t push him away, they’re braced to prevent him moving closer.

There’s a faint tremble running through you.

“Don’t tell me you’re still scared of me,” he says, offering you the sharp edge of a smile. He means for the words to sound playful, but even he can’t deny that there’s an underlying ache. Insecurity and impatience in equal measure.

Can’t you see how good he’s been for you? He’s had enough of having to beg for and pry every scrap of affection in his life from reluctant hands. All he wants is–for once in his life–to be freely offered tenderness.

“Your strength scares me,” you eventually admit, palms flat against his chest, stare focused on the backs of your hands.

He tips your head back, coaxing your downcast gaze up to meet his. The closeness of you makes your eyes look large and deer-like: a prey animal that recognizes its hunter. 

“It’s unreal, I feel like I’m not…I feel like I’m made of glass when you touch me.”

As a boy he snapped bones as easily as other children snapped twigs. He cradles your skull knowing exactly how much force it would take to crack it. 

You’re right to feel the extent of your own fragility in his hands.

“I won’t break you,” he says, the words little more than a breath.

“Do you promise?” you ask, your own voice barely a whisper.

“I promise.”  

All those that have come before you have taught him his limitations. And yours.

With that, the tension in your arms softens a fraction. He takes a mile from the inch you give, moving to encircle you in his arms. You slide your hands up his chest in turn, moving over his shoulders, around his neck. The way your fingertips settle on the nape of his neck feels like heaven.

Pressing his forehead to yours, he closes his eyes. He listens to the tempo of your heart gradually slow, settling like the wings of a bird finally accepting the safety and kindness of its cage.

Just then, ever so slightly, you tilt your head and lightly press your petal-soft lips to his. The shock of it knocks the wind from his lungs. Joy hits swiftly afterwards, sweeping through his body from his head to his toes. He kisses you in kind, his lips spread in a smile against yours. 

This–more than any kill or record breaking profit for Vought–feels like a victory.

He cups the back of your head as he savors you, branding the memory of your yielding lips against his into his mind. You move to pull back, but his yearning is a beast he cannot tame, and it’s the beast in him that holds you still, intent to relish the kiss just a second more, which becomes just a moment more.

Trapped, you slide your fingers up into his hairline, combing through his sheared undercut into the longer blonde locks. You send a jolt through him when your fingers tighten suddenly, pulling his hair taut between them. 

The sensation shoots through him like a bolt of lightning. His stomach flips, suddenly aflutter with butterflies. He makes a noise against your mouth, which regrettably makes you stop, your fingers going slack in his hair.

It doesn’t hurt–you don’t have the strength necessary to hurt him–but he can still feel it, and it feeds a gnawing hunger in him to be made to feel anything at all. 

“Do that again,” he says between fervent presses of his lips. “Feels good.”

To his delight you slip both hands into his hair and grip it, eliciting a low moan.

Fuck.

He could get lost in this. In you.

Your pulse has kicked back up, but so has his. Your heartbeats dance with one another as you kiss, drowning out the rest of the world. He moves from your lips to your jaw, your throat, peppering hungry kisses down your neck, ignoring the tension he can feel building back up in you.

He could make your whole body sing if you’d just let him.

Your hands move from his hair, pressing once more to his chest. With how weak you are, it takes him a beat to realize you’re actually pushing against him.

An impatient little growl escapes him. He holds you in place, too deep into it to let you go now.

You suck in a shuddering breath, pushing harder. “Homelander–”

His teeth graze your pulse point, and his tongue presses in to taste the rapid flutter of it. The taste of you is intoxicating, your skin salty-sweet.

Do you know his taste yet? Do you crave it the way he craves yours?

There’s fear in you but there’s desire there, too. He can feel it in the way your skin warms under his touch, hear it in the quiver of your breath, and smell it in the heat between your legs. 

“Wait, wait, just–would you just wait–” 

He exhales roughly and pulls sharply back, leveling you with a harsh stare.

“What? What! You kissed me, remember? So which is it; do you want me, or do you just want to be a fucking tease?”

He feels his desire like a longstanding hunger he’s only just become aware of. A painful, gnawing thing that demands he sink in his claws and rip, devour, relish. He’s been so good in all of this that one little taste was all it took for the feel of it to come crashing down on him.

For as badly as he wants you, he wants so fucking badly for you to want him, too.

The look of you is one for the history books. Flushed and wide-eyed, you’ve taken his words with a shock like you’ve been slapped. Your hair is mussed from his hand pushing against it, into it. Your lips are kiss bitten and shiny, plump with all that blood rushing to the surface.

It makes him want to bite them, bruise them, claim them. 

Those same lips open and close as you struggle to form a response before eventually settling on one.

“I’m sorry.”

He recoils from that, features twisting up in displeasure. 

No, no, no.

“I’m sorry, I just–”

“Shut up,” he snaps, letting go of you. He screws his eyes shut, not understanding how he got from where he was a moment ago to where he is now. 

All that sweet delicious heat is fading away, leaving him feeling emptier by the second, his skin prickling uncomfortably under his suit. 

He would be clawing at it if he could.

“I don’t want you to be sorry,” he says, hitting the word like a hiss. “I want you to–I want you–”

I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you.I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you.

He pushes his hands into his hair, gripping the short strands tight enough to ache, digging for pain so that it might bring him clarity and stop the terrible repetition his mind has latched onto. He can imagine so clearly how things should be, what you should be saying, feeling, and I’m sorry is nowhere in that vision.

He hates that word. It echoes in his psyche like a curse, dragging him back by the throat to the only stretch of time in his life he ever felt weak enough to say it.

Back then, in his days in the lab, Vought was always testing the boundaries of how human he really was. At one point, when he was still a boy–maybe eleven or twelve–they began to reduce his sleep by an hour every few nights.

Each day they would repeat the same grueling tests to see at what point the lack began to affect not only his cognitive abilities, but his powers. Given the sheer amount of Compound V in his system, there were some who wondered if he really needed to sleep at all.

It would have been miraculous if he didn’t. It would be one more aspect of his perfect design that they could pat themselves on the back for. 

Unfortunately for both him and them, it was not so.

When they realized the deprivation did affect him, they wanted to understand how badly. They continued to deprive him until they had reduced his sleep to nothing at all, keeping him awake by any means necessary for days. He begged for sleep. 

It’s a marathon, John, Vogelbaum told him. Eleven days. That’s the record for a human. You can beat that, can’t’cha, tiger?

Tiger. It always made him feel stronger when Jonah called him that.

Ultimately it was less about his perseverance and more about his endurance. He didn’t have much choice in the matter of whether or not he would fall asleep. 

Every time he started to doze off, an alarm would blare in his room, startling him back awake. 

I’m sorry, he would sob, riddled with guilt for the failure.

There was never any answer.

When it was over and neither he nor the scientists had anything to show for it–nothing but misery and a newfound insomnia–he decided he would never be sorry for anything ever again.

His temples are throbbing, his skull aching from the pressure of his own strength. 

Though his eyes are tightly shut, he can feel the searing heat of his laser vision pressing against his eyelids. 

It makes him want to scream, to run, to fly, to break apart everything around him, but he can’t. He’s too powerful to ever allow himself a physical outlet.

When the average man throws a punch to blow off steam, at worst they’ll put a hole in the wall.

Homelander could punch through to the core of the planet. 

Maybe he could split the whole damn thing in half. He’s never been allowed to find out.

Instead, he focuses it all inward. He swallows the feelings like bile and fights not to choke on it, on the tension of his own impossible power straining his muscles. He can’t hear your heartbeat anymore, it’s drowned out by his own blood rushing in his ears.

Or it’s not there at all.

You’ve fled, he realizes. His stomach churns, and still his mind is on a punishing loop of all the things he has ever wanted that he cannot accept he’ll never have. 

I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want.

Anger surges through him and the heat of it is painful, twisting all his already tautly wrung innards and flushing them with fiery rage.

She’s not sorry. She has no idea the fucking meaning of it. If she wants to know what it’s like to be sorry, then we’ll–

Arms slip around his neck, and suddenly his mind hits a deafening quiet.

What?

The feeling is so alien to him that it takes several seconds to understand that it’s you. That you’re here. That you’re… holding him.

Faintly he feels the tug of your meager strength, and he leans into it, his cheek coming to rest on your chest, head tucked under your chin.

He opens his eyes, the world still awash in the crimson glow of his lasers, and he feels you flinch at the sheer heat of them. He works to blink the light away, his hands resting on your hips, gripping at the fabric of your pants.

“You’re still here,” he says, voice frayed with confusion and steadily ebbing tension. 

“Yes.”

“I thought I was alone.”

“You’re not.”

Gently, you comb your fingers through his hair. He doesn’t need his super senses to know your heart is pounding. He can feel the hammering pulse of it against his cheek.

Your fear is so tangible he can practically taste it, but he wouldn’t know it existed at all if he went only on the way you’re holding him.

How is it you can be so afraid and yet feel so firm against him?

“It’s okay,” you whisper, a faint tremble in your otherwise firm voice. “You’re not alone.”

Tears sting his eyes. He moves his grip from your hip to the fabric at your back, your shoulder, his hands climbing your clothes with a clawing desperation to ensure every bit of you is real and within his reach. He envelops you in his arms and nuzzles you, exhaling another breath of the terrible miasma that had built up like sulfur in his lungs.

You move your other hand in soothing patterns between his shoulder blades–just as you had before–and with every repetition of the pattern he feels the rage, the pain, the fear, the misery of it all drip away, like a wet cloth being wrung dry.

The two of you stand like that for a long while, focused only on the sound and feel of the other. The burn in the back of his throat and in his eyes fades. By the end of it, he feels heavy with the exhaustion of holding back the weight of his own might.

Slowly, he lifts his head to meet your gaze. You’re somehow even more beautiful than you had been. Your edges are frayed, and though there is lingering fear, it doesn’t repulse him to see it.

Because you stayed.

Your fingers slip from his hair, moving to his face. It isn’t until your thumb moves through the wetness on his cheek that he realizes a tear had escaped the burn of his lasers and streaked down his face.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” you tell him, and to his own pleasure, he believes you.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright. I know you didn’t,” he says, cupping your face in turn. He brings you forward and presses a firm lingering kiss to your forehead. 

He’s in control again, and he speaks as if that were always true.

“Just like I know you’ll make it up to me.”

He draws away with a crooked smile, the episode fading to a distant corner of his mind as he puts the fractured pieces of himself back into something cohesive. He strokes your cheek, admiring your features. Your eyes.

In hindsight, it’s strange to think that he’s always thought of you as the sweet, doting little rabbit to his wolf. 

Staring at you now, he’s sure he’s looking into the eyes of a fox. 

“C’mon,” he says, siding his hands down your shoulders so that he can take hold of your wrists, guiding you towards the balcony. “It’s about time I take you for that flight I promised.”

Wouldn’t want to keep John waiting for his meal any longer.

( chapter seven )

[kithtaehyung]

AGUST D : HAEGEUM (解禁) POSTER SET 3 ⤷ 23.04.21 1PM KST | ig ; twt (click for hi-res)

[chiscribbs]

This is fine 👍

---------------------------

Grown Apart AU: [Premise/Concept Art] [General tag] [Intro] (W belongs to @ch3ry-b0mb)

Thread: START / <<Part 7 / Part 9>>

[linkedin-offficial]

local full time technician gets alot more than she bargained for, more at 8

some stuff for dragons in my flight rising lore! sirko runs a circus on the outskirts of hyrule, and pipimi unfortunately gets wrapped up in the places hijinks after being hired by them to be a full time technician.

more details under the cut!

like stated previously, sirko is the ringleader of a circus called "the sensational sunset circus", popular for its sunset aesthetic and plethora of attractions. pipimi was attracted to this job offer because she was looking for an excuse to get away and leave her old life behind. so, she applied, and the moment she arrived, she was adorned with compliments and attention. to her suprise, she was the only new hire theyve had in years. and the longer she stays, shes grows quite certain she knows exactly why.

(and yes, the tadc parallels are apparent .. oops 😭 my brain loves to unconsciously attach my hyperfixations to eachother)

all of the members of this circus are very different and have quite striking personalities. the current list of the living (excluding sirko and pipimi) is as follows :

mowbray - (he/him ; sibling and right hand man to sirko) a fairly lax individual most of the time. one of the few of them with a braincell. can usually tolerate most things but can very easily snap if you bother him enough. friends with pipimi solely because they both are somewhat smart enough to not go insane immediately.

holiday - (she/her ; makeup artist and costume designer) fairly laid back and super duper chill, and easily one of the sweeter members of the circus. she doesnt hesitate to bring others up in mood and try to help where she can.

she has a .. "special connection" with pipimi, letting her call her 'holly', and visiting her often. she says its just because of how often her clothes tear, but most of the other members speculate other .. interesting reasons.

jaxton - (he/him ; That asshole) probably the one guy who most likely wouldnt lay down his life for pipimi. he constantly bullies her, teasing her at every chance he gets.

when he isnt messing with her though, hes trying out new tricks to impress the locals and maybe scam some out of their money. hes tried countless times to help his fellow coworker iskam try and become better at her scam artistry, but iskam certainly isnt smart enough for his precious arts. what a shame.

iskam - (she/he/they ; "future seer" vendor) a particularly clueless individual, he enjoys trying his hardest to predict others futures, genuinely believing hes right when in reality, she just makes things up. the money is just a bonus to her endeavors. couldn't count to 100 if you asked.

on the plus side, they like the company of pipimi, mostly because she tries really hard not to hurt others feelings. pipimi knows iskam is wrong, but wont say it.

pakwan - (she/they ; resident dumpster fish) somehow more clueless than iskam, but still just as cheerful. she enjoys a melon snack more than anything in the world. well, not really. she enjoys pipimi's company more than anything else, and often accidentally splashes her with water with excitement when pip comes by.

she loves doing tricks, especially for pipimi. pipimi loves to listen to pakwan ramble about her day. in a sort of mutual peace of mind, kinda way.

mang - (he/it ; horrible little rat bastard thief) being small and cunning has its advantages, and mang uses them well. known to be the local thief of the circus, it takes every opportunity he can to sneak about and steal anything he can fit into his pockets. if you can get on his good side however, youll never lose another key again. because of this, it quite likes pipimi.

halimaw - (he/they ; the beast of the basement) dangerous and cunning. halimaw is sly with his words but bumbly and outrageous at the same time. large and un-anxious, he wont hesitate to bite your head off if you refuse to listen to him. gets what he wants, and when he doesnt, he takes by force. these are primarily reasons why he was locked down there. better safe than sorry.

saya - (she/her ; sister to holiday and ex-partner to halimaw) very reserved and almost acts as a mediator. she values her dance skills VERY seriously and considers dance the ultimate art, much to her sisters dismay. they dont fight about it however, and they are quite close.

anyway, thats it for now!

ill probably be talking about these 10 sometime in the future but for now have this !! i love thinking about them and they mean alot to me <3 circus freaks

[culssi]

ITS OFFICIAL OMG OMG OMG YESS LETS GOOO

Why did I do this idk but I got a bit (that’s an understatement) excited. It’s currently 2 am when writing this. Help.

I spent 1 hour of this crappy drawing why.

[dogseatdog]

"I always felt like an outsider. But that built me up, in a sense, to prepare for this work. And this is all a bonus compared to what I've journeyed through. So, imposter syndrome? No, I've never suffered with that in acting. I've always felt in place."

[cdroloisms]

I find it strange that a lot of people are coming forward and saying that the staged finale was a bad play for one reason or another but it really isn’t and I don’t understand where the hate is coming from.

yeah i've seen some of this the last few days--staged finale has always been somewhat "controversial" in the lorehead scene, so a measure of disagreement/discourse about it makes sense. especially bc it was honestly a very big change to what people thought was the story and required people to go back and reevaluate a lot, which. people are naturally resistant at doing

but while obviously i think that some healthy discussion about these things is good, and i feel like i have seen a level of...misunderstanding? about it?? which has gone into the ways that people disagree

staged finale refers to the decision to stage the finale. that's it. staged finale just asserts that based on preexisting foreshadowing and based on the sheer level of suspension of disbelief in order for genuine finale to be real, it made more sense for the finale to be staged than for it to have been genuine. how the finale was planned, when the finale was planned, and to what ends it was planned are all things that you can disagree on w/ other staged finale believers/supporters while still being a staged finale believer/supporter, ykwim? if you believe that c!punz faked his betrayal to c!dream, then congrats! you believe in staged finale. oftentimes i see people say things like "i don't believe in staged finale, i think that c!dream faked the betrayal and all and always had c!punz on his side but i think that the reason behind why he did it is [X]" and it's like. staging the finale is one (1) event, not a comprehensive explanation for everything c!Dream does. that would be more in line with something like the "strategist dream interpretation," which in itself does have different readings as well.

people have listed all of the inconsistencies in the staged finale before, but just to summarize--the guy literally could've dipped when everyone came to "defeat" him, c!tommy leveraging his own life is basically no leverage at all when the mans has the revive book, skeppy cage is a joke, c!dream revealing all of his plans when they were maybe 10% carried out (the entire damn attachment vault was empty of items besides stuff that was literally faked, his own damn stuff, and stuff that he stole recently from c!tommy such as the Axe of Peace and the discs) is ridiculously stupid, why the hell does he have blackmail against c!punz included in a bunker that c!punz clearly had access to???? the list goes on.

(as someone who took awhile to be fully convinced in staged finale, what really tripped me up was the stream punz did the day before: here's a post breaking it down that definitely helped me to see it in a different light.)

as far as foreshadowing goes, just off the top of my head: the original prisoner is a constant question from the day of the prison's creation, being something that's even highlighted on the day of the staged finale itself. c!Dream saying he has "the biggest house on the server" and how it's full of redstone. the entire conversation he has with c!punz, obviously. his holding back on the favor with c!techno, the connection between the revive book and the prison that he establishes the day they begin prison construction.

from a logical perspective, the plan as c!Dream establishes it doesn't make any damn sense. c!dream had opportunities to escape that he didn't take for illogical reasons (if the only reason why he allowed himself to stay in a fucking possible kill chamber was to keep c!tommy from committing suicide, then? what about the revive book? what about the fact that he literally kills c!tommy just a few months later????) -- a level of plot contrivance is expected in the medium, but for a lot of people this was just. Going way too far. Unless he literally lost his whole mind (which, to be fair, was the persona being played) there's just. really no other way to make sense of what was going on there, if it was all genuine.

the other argument is a narrative one--people claim that the story established by a genuine finale is cleaner than the story of the staged one, and honestly. it's like. like that's...a feature, not a flaw? the reason why the genuine finale worked isn't because it was logically believable. dream is Dream Manhunt. he's famously hard to nail down, famously good at escaping sticky situations, famously a man that can outsmart his way out of crazy disadvantageous situations--like. just in terms of minecraft skill, i'd wager that most people would think that dream would've technically been able to pull off an escape even when facing down the collection of enemies that were there. like he had 2 stacks of pearls.

narratively, though, the staged finale has a story that's quite appealing on the surface. the "story" of the events from the spirit speech onwards is one that revolved around the idea of "attachment." c!Dream rejects attachment in favor of control in the spirit speech when he says he refuses to let his love for his dead pet control him anymore, and he focuses on the ability to use the discs to control c!Tommy. the fact that c!Dream's relationships deteriorate at this time seems to support this point, and c!Tommy's strength in his relationships being what saves him and damns c!Dream ties everything off into a neat bow. c!Tommy wins because he has friends and c!Dream loses because he doesn't, moral of the story established, hip-hip-hooray. And so it goes.

but when we look at this more in specifics...? it does start falling apart a bit, doesn't it?

although c!Dream supposedly begins his rampage over his existing emotional connections with the spirit speech, his reputation had been in shambles long before that point. c!Dream-as-villain is first established as part of the greater story in the lmanburg revolution, and that's a title that he never really sheds (this point being emphasized in inconsolable differences and the book c!Wilbur has c!Dream write.) Dethronement happens within a day of Spirit Speech, iirc, and on that day c!Quackity specifically points out that c!Dream has no one on his side but c!Punz. the moments where he is more specifically isolated go back to events such as november 16th, where his alliance with c!Wilbur involved blowing up L'manburg, his deal for the revive book, which involved his publicly betraying Pogtopia, or his opposing Manberg to the literal Manberg cabinet. etc. all of these events in the Manberg/Pogtopia era had c!Dream's loyalties erode to end up as just c!Wilbur and later c!Schlatt for the book, two dead men. (and i say eroded loyalties as if pogtopia really believed dream was on their side, like, ever? like he was never trusted in their ranks, even by c!Tommy, who was definitely the person he worked the closest with outside of c!Wilbur.)

if we look at Dethronement itself, it doesn't actually fit the pattern of "c!Dream cuts off his attachment to people in order to make himself uncontrollable" -- in fact, what it does fit the pattern of is. Staged finale? Faking an end in a relationship with people that he does consider important to him, making a public appearance of betrayal + anger to mask an existing connection, drawing attention to their being enemies to hide the fact that they're actually friends--that's not c!Dream cutting anyone off. That's just the exact same ploy that he uses to make people think that c!Punz betrays him (only c!Sapnap and c!George ended up deciding that Nah We're Gonna Kill You Now. Fuck You It's Coup Time. so that's how that ended up.)

Otherwise there's...the Badlands, who were perfectly happy to agree to joining the coup on the day of dethronement if it got them more power and land. c!Techno, who c!Dream wasn't an ally of until later on with the favor established and then doomsday, and who was someone c!Dream was quite openly wary of + afraid of due to his combat skill. c!Dream was alone literally before exile even happened, his remaining "attachments" of c!George and c!Sapnap turning against him like the day he goes on a whole spiel about ohhoho from today onwards i DONT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT MY ATTACHMENTS !!! I ONLY CARE ABOUT THE DISCS !!! like congrats you don't even have a chance to cut off any attachment at all dingus they all hate you and want you dead already.

further, with c!punz, he literally says that they're more than just employer/employee in the infamous conversation they have about planning a betrayal. if the whole point of the story is "attachment good," then why is it that what takes down c!dream is...his one remaining attachment? if his fatal flaw is that he didn't trust people enough, why is it that he loses because he trusted someone too much? it's not like c!tommy had any attachment to c!punz--c!punz explicitly "has a reason" to betray c!dream because of money. he helps c!tommy because dream "should have paid [him] more." none of that reflects that spirit of "attachment" that people claim was c!dream's downfall.

(not to mention how the people present in the staged finale to take c!dream down included people who literally hated c!tommy's guts. like. what brought them together wasn't the power of friendship, it was the power of we hate this green bastard.)

this isn't to say that c!Dream didn't have some relationships that go up in flames because he starts acting particularly cackling evil villain (with the green festival being the specific moment where he really goes full in with that persona, going from someone that was framing himself as having a Reasonable Complaint to literally the joker as soon as he gets the disc from c!Tubbo. It's purposefully played as a "mask off" moment that is meant to make him look like a crazy fucking villain in front of a large audience--whether or not you think that was a choice that he made in character or not, the way his personality changes as soon as he receives the disc is jarring.) In particular, his relationships with c!Puffy and c!Sam come to mind--c!Puffy burns the house she made him when she decides that he's too evil (but, uh, c!dream really wasn't even there for that and didn't ever have a particularly close relationship with her) and c!Sam is among those whose opinions of c!Dream become drastically more negative around the period of time that spans green festival->doomsday->staged finale. but it's important to note that c!Dream's relationships on the server aren't...great, at the time of spirit speech. They're uh, really fucking bad, actually. dethronement only makes them even worse, and all of this happens pre-exile. c!Dream had significant reason to be paranoid and afraid for his life long before exile happens, which is Quite Significant, Actually, when you consider that that paranoia is literally what goes into his decisions to carry out the staged finale + put himself in the prison (which isn't the case for genuine finale, where he's more motivated by a desire to control the server without being controlled himself.) staged finale does solidify c!dream-as-villain for a lot of people, but it never would've worked if people didn't already see him as a villain in the first place. c!Dream doesn't make people hate him with the staged finale; he uses hatred that he already knows exists to put himself in what he sees as a safer position.

and look we could go into a whole discussion about manberg/pogtopia c!Dream (which i do think is way overdue to be fair considering that that's where the paranoia + isolation that motivates him post-november 16th comes from in the first place) but this post is long enough already and i still have to figure out a better way to articulate my thoughts on the matter. anyway. carrying on:

people still have different feelings on why he carries out staged finale in the first place, but what we do know for sure is that it was meant to protect punz and protect the revive book. by firmly establishing that c!punz and him were on opposite sides, he keeps the revive book safe and both of their lives safe by extension: as long as no one would kill both of them at the same time, they had a means of reviving the other if need be and obviously had the information on how to raise people from the dead secure. which was important to them. and otherwise...c!Dream is paranoid. c!Dream is very, very paranoid, and this paranoia goes back at the very least to when he learns about the revive book. the prison, for all the dependence that it required of him, was tailor made (and the construction process controlled by dream every damn step of the way) to make sure that whoever was in the main cell would be safe from external threats. the security of the prison and the prisoner was the POINT. i've seen some assertions that staged finale implies that he predicted everything that happened after he was put in prison and...no? i'd say that c!dream's behavior indicates him being thrown off by c!sam as early as bad's prison visit, c!sapnap's prison visit for sure. c!Ranboo being banned from visitation pretty damn obviously fucks him up, tbh. he has c!punz explicitly out there to keep an eye out on the server while he's in the prison, where he was meant to remain for a period of time that was supposed to be much shorter than how long he ends up being there. likely because, you know, he was supposed to have a consistent and reliable source of information with the outside world in the form of c!Ranboo, and c!sam wasn't supposed to fall off the fucking rails as soon as the prison started. people have also talked about how having the staged finale be true means that c!dream doesn't lose, which...i mean. gestures at the prison arc? that whole thing is a loss so catastrophic it literally destroys him. he's never the same after the prison happens. the false betrayal of c!punz is deliberately like ironically described to c!sam, who was the REAL betrayal that fucking. ruins him. he loses SO MUCH over the course of the prison, which was something he literally designed to keep himself safe from external threat. as far as losses go, i definitely find that a lot more compelling and a lot less contrived than watching c!dream go "whoop de doo guess i have to die now" when he's like 3 pearls away from making a clean escape in the disc vault, tbh.

at the end of the day, i think having some conversation about staged finale is fun! and it's always good to reexamine what you believe to make sure that it still holds water. but i've really not seen much staged finale crit that makes the genuine finale feel favorable as an explanation: logically, it makes a lot less sense. narratively, it relies on a story that the audience wants to be true and acts as a "clean" explanation for everything while not actually taking into account a lot of what was ACTUALLY going on for c!dream (cutting off attachments for the sake of control versus watching people turn against you and becoming increasingly paranoid, for example). and believe them or not, the content creators involved have always asserted that staged finale was the plan from the beginning, not any form of retcon. (and we do know that people have been dodgy about stuff like the "original prisoner" literally since the week that c!dream was imprisoned, so take that as you will.) (okay to be fair theyve been dodgy about the original prisoner since the day that the prison began to be constructed, but the QnA from that first week of imprisonment sticks out to me in particular because cc!Sam had the biggest fucking smile on his face and staged finale would've been planned out and then carried out in entirety by the ccs and the c!s by that point.)

this is a longass post but uh hopefully it makes sense, lmao. tried to touch on most of what i've seen recently 😅

[bigfemboyenergy]

wait, take him with you- he wont help you on your journey but he will critique your music taste (he needs more friends)

[taxi-boi]

I JUST REALIZED I NEVER POSTED THE UPDATED VERSIONS OF THESE

BLUH

the sillies :)

[puckinghischier]

I think mustache nico is growing on me….

HELLO???

i need to know where this pic came from and why i was not made aware of it immediately

[tag-of-light]

The leader and his favourite hunter | Fierce on the battlefield, smitten with each other, and doting parents to their children. A'dyalani taught Zara to use a bow, dreaming of the day she'd surpass her as a hunter, while A'vheo took Zeke under his wing, preparing him to one day lead the clan. Oh, how proud they'd be if they could see where their children would end up.

[devicecontact]

Sloppy edit of “heights” with some stock image guy. you could pick up a mag hank if you wanted to

[aerodaltonimperial]

OKAY I AM BEING BRAVE AND GOING TO AN INDIE WRESTLING SHOW ALONE NEXT WEEK, YAAAAAY

[iguessitsjustme]

Okay. I've sat with this for a few hours and I still cannot figure it out. I don't know if playing Dancing With The Devil during Sun and Lin's sex scene this week was brilliant or not. Because listen, it absolutely did not fit the show or the characters. Don't get me wrong, it's a banger of a song that I have been listening to since Big Dragon aired BUT it was not the appropriate song for that scene.

However, I'm sure MosBank fans (myself included) appreciated the throwback. I was literally just telling @heretherebedork that I think Dancing With The Devil is a much better ISBANKY song than Pink Sea (the Sunset X Vibes opening) when I got to that scene and had my soul snatched out of my body. So I can't decide if it was brilliant to use that song as a kind of love note to MosBank fans or if it was just plain bad.

I think I have to land on somewhere in the middle. I think it was a bad choice show wise. It had no business being in the show, but at the same time the show already had a lot of issues and I thought the song/sound choices were not the greatest the whole time. But it was a good choice for fans. Which is fun and all but I wish it had been a different song. Well looks like typing this helped me figure out my feelings on the matter.

By choosing Dancing With The Devil, they betrayed the show and the story they were trying to tell (I know I know it wasn't done well up to that point either but hear me out). Dancing With The Devil belonged in Big Dragon. It belonged with Mangkorn and Yai because it completely fit their characters and their dynamic throughout the whole show. It does not fit Sun and Lin. Even at their...surliest, their meanest, their most devlish, neither one could accurately be labeled a devil. And especially not in a scene where they are coming together in an act of love (god I almost threw up typing that because I can't stand emotions but that's what that scene was). It felt disingenuous to the characters to have a song that did not represent them playing.

Now, with all that said, I want to make myself clear. I still loved it. I love that song every time I hear it. So I will criticize the choice to use it when a more fitting song should have been chosen, but I will still enjoy the scene and the show for what it is/was. This might be the first time that a song choice that took me out of a show and the scene did not ruin my enjoyment of the scene. It's truly a mixed bag. I am full of contradictions and multitudes and they are all coming out and being represented by that fucking song choice. Anyway, that is to say, go listen to ISBANKY's music. It's good and he deserves some more love there.