#it's not entirely clear

[lured-into-wonderland]

V is standing next to her, but off to the side and out of view from the mirror she’s looking into. it’s a body mirror, long and tall enough to capture the sight from head to toe. she’s been trying on different kinds of scarves for their outing, gloves and all to match. hooked around the man’s arms are the different fabrics, all varied in length, color and design — it’s important to stay warm. he is just there to lend a hand to Nunnally, providing feedback to each few rotations on her choice in color matching and coordination (he remains quiet for the most part, though, unless she asks for his opinion. fashion is…not his specialty.)

It feels so good to be in a human world. Again. Perhaps Nunnally shouldn’t have forgotten what happened to her not so long ago, but in this very moment, she did. Perhaps the princess should have given more thoughts into the consequences of her being a prisoner of the Underworld, but she wants to forget. Seeing the sky, the sun and the moon, being among humans and their humans' issues make her believe she has escaped her fate, and is back here where she is supposed to be. The only reminder about her recent past (at least for now) is V. Standing next to her. She remembers his powers. She remembers his kindness. She remembers he is the only reason she’s still alive. Perhaps then, she should want him to disappear, too. Perhaps she should want to cut that last link (or the remainder) to who the proud princess has become…

…but she doesn’t…

…Nunnally wants V to stay. To be close to her. But the princess is not sure why. Is it because she feels safe with him? Is it because she knows he’ll protect her from anything and everything? Or perhaps there’s another reason that Nunnally is not ready to reveal even to herself?

She takes another scarf and tries it on. To see how it fits the rest of her outfit. It’s a nice soft wool; it gives her a cosy feeling. But would green go nicely with her fair complexion? So, she quickly chooses a different one; white scarf richly decorated with golden thread…but wouldn’t it make her looking too pale? Nunnally looks at V; he isn’t really helpful. V remains quiet for most of the time, and Nunnally is not sure why. Doesn’t he like anything that is piling up in this room? Doesn’t he like the “new” her? She is suddenly concerned. Does he find her vain?

Nunnally is not truly vain. She might appear so at this very moment, but deep inside she isn’t. V has seen her tainted and humiliated (at least in her own eyes); V has seen the princess in the rags, so now she wants to show him a different self; a different Nunnally. Still not in the royal splendor (does she really want him to see the royal princess?), but definitely a different Nunnally. Though perhaps V prefers her stripped of her royalty. Of her womanhood. Oh, is it that she wants him to see a woman in her?

She is standing there next to V wearing an elegant long dress. The black colour is the background for the seasonal motifs; all the shades of greens, reds, and golds adorn the expensive fabric. She is standing there now confused of why V is not talking to her. She wants him to say something. To calm her emotions down. Again and again. The faint pink creeps on her cheeks as the princess finally speaks: --

“Which one is better? The green? The white? …or perhaps the red one…?” – she adds as she reaches for another scarf. But she knows it is unimportant what she is going to wear. She understands that, although she still wants to look pretty for him. Though if it does make him uncomfortable…: --

“Come on…” – she says as she approaches V and gently takes his arm – “I think I have spent too much time focusing on how I look…” – though I want to look beautiful for you; but that’s not the confession V is going to hear – “We should rather focus on enjoying our…time together…” – suddenly Nunnally realizes she doesn’t know how much time is left for them. What will happen when they back to her kingdom? Where she is to take back her position?

She has dreamt about it when she was locked in that cell. So, why now a hesitation in her heart…?

“Look, V!” – the points outside the window – “The fresh snow!”

“Let’s go out…perhaps we’ll find a mistletoes…” – and end up under it. She doesn't want to think about serious issues. She wants not to be a princess for a bit longer. All she wants is to enjoy these moments...

...with V.

@ofurizen

[inkskinned]

the thing about some men is that they want you to remember, at all times, that you are underneath them. that with one word or look or "joke", you will stay beneath them. that even "exceptions" to the rule are not true exceptions - the commonly cited statistic that one in eight men believe they could win against serena williams.

women's gymnastics is often not seen as real gymnastics. whatever the fuck non-euclidian horrors rhythmic gymnasts are capable of, it's often tamped down as being not a sport. some of the most dominant athletes in the world are women. nobody watches women's soccer. despite years of dancing and being built like a fucking brick, men always assume they're faster and stronger than i am. you wouldn't like what happens when they are incorrect. once while drunk at a guy's house i won a held-plank challenge by a solid minute. the party was over after that - he became exceedingly violent.

what i mean is that you can be perfect, and they still think you're ... lacking, somehow. i hope you understand i'm trying to express a neutral statement when i say: taylor swift was the possibly the most patriarchy-palatable, straight-down-the-line woman we could churn out. she is white, conventionally attractive, usually pretty mild in personality. say what you will about her (and you should, she's a billionaire, she can handle it), but a few things seem to be true about her: 1. she can write a damn catchy song, and 2. the eras tour truly was a massive commercial success and was also genuinely an impressive feat of human athleticism and performance.

i don't know if she deserves the title of "woman of the year," i'm not debating that in this post. what i am saying is that she was named Woman of The Year, and then an untalented man got onstage at the golden globes and made fun of her for attending her boyfriend's football games. what i am saying is that this woman altered local economies - and her dating life is still being made into a "harmless" punchline. the camera panned, greedy, over to her downing a full glass of champagne. congratulations taylor! you are woman of the year! but you are a woman. even her.

fuck, man. write better material.

a guy gets onstage at a college graduation and despite the fact like half the crowd is made up of women, he spends a significant proportion of it warning these people - who spent possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars on their education - that they were lied to. that the "real" meaning of femininity is motherhood. that they shouldn't rest on the laurels of that education-they-paid-for but instead throw it away to kneel at a man's heel. imagine that. sweating in your godawful polyester gown (that you also had to pay for!), fresh out of 4 years of pushing yourself ever-harder: and some guy you've never met - who knows nothing about you - he reminds you this "win" is a pyrrhic one at best. you really shouldn't consider yourself that extraordinary. you're still a woman, even after years of study.

god forbid you are not a pretty woman, but if you are pretty, you must be dumb. god forbid you are not ablebodied or white or cis or straight or good at swallowing. you must be beneath a man, or else they are not a man. the equation for masculinity seems to just be: that which is not a woman or womanly (god forbid). anything "feminine" is thereby anathema. to engage in "feminine" things such as therapy, getting a hug from a friend, or crying - it is giving up ones manhood. therefore women need to be put in their place to ensure that masculinity is protected.

this is something i have struggled to explain to terfs - they are not doing the work of feminism, but rather the patriarchy. by asserting that women and men must be (on some secret level) oppositional and in conflict, they also assume that being a woman is akin to being another species. but bigotry does not stem from observational truths or clarity - that is what makes it bigotry. there was nothing in my childhood that made me fundamentally different from my brother. we are treated differently nonetheless. to assert there is some biological drive that enforces my gender role is to assert that women have a gendered role. men do not see women as equal to them not because of biological reality - but instead because the core tenant of the patriarchy is that women aren't full, realized people.

we are told from a very young age to excuse misbehavior as a single man's choice - not all men. it is not all men, just that one guy. all women are gold-digging bitches who belong in the kitchen - but if a man is mean, bigoted, or violent to you, it's just that particular guy, and that means nothing about men-as-a-whole. it is only one guy who got mad when you gently rejected him. it is only one guy who warns her this trophy is heavy, are you sure you can hold it? it is only one guy who smashes her face into the cake. it is only one guy talking into a mic about hating our bodily autonomy.

i have just found that they often wait until the moment we actually seem to be upstaging them. you sit in a meeting where you're presenting your own findings and he says get me a coffee? or you run to the end of the marathon and are about to finish first and he pushes your kids out in front of you. you win the chess game and they make some comment akin to well, you're ugly away. we can be the billionaire and get the dream life and finally fucking do it and yet! still! they have this strange, visceral urge to say well actually, if you think you're so great -

it's not one just one guy. it's one in eight.

[stubbornness-and-spite]

This user supports AO3

This user is anti-censorship

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This user believes in “ship and let ship”

This user believes that fiction tastes and preferences do not dictate moral character

[valtsv]

an angle i enjoy in cosmic/eldritch horror is when, instead resorting to the old classic "the horrors being so incomprehensible that they break your brain and drive you mad" cliché, the premise is that in comprehending the horrors you are so changed by the experience that your new state is indistinguishable to an outside observer from madness. you comprehend the unknowable just fine, but actually communicating that to anyone else is impossible because they just don't have the mental framework required to understand it. the eldritch horrors don't drive you mad. what does is the ordinary everyday horror of finding yourself isolated, ridiculed and doubted at every turn, no matter how hard you try to make yourself heard and understood.

[volatilemask]

What do you think would be underneath MDK's helmet....or can he even take it off at all.... ive been thinking about that

cant

[demigods-posts]

okay but. annabeth having having feelings for percy. and KNOWING he's developing feelings for her too. but refusing to act on it until she thinks he's about to die. and she'll never get another chance to. so kisses him. and then he crashes his own funeral two weeks later. and now neither of them can deny the tension anymore. and they still have a year left to see if it's even worth saying out loud. or if he was always destined to leave her. because the prophecy has yet to pass. peak writing.

[feathercreates]

"Old friend... I miss you so much. I'm so sorry."

[knox-knocks]

Maybe exy is a little boring to him — but andrew doesn’t just not care about exy, neil notes in the beginning of tfc that he seems to outright resent it. boredom doesn’t bring about resentment. but do you know what does? the idea that a sport you barely give a shit about is the only reason anyone gives a shit about you

[gearbroth]

More Repairs...

[glorious-spoon]

the thing i love about the new backstory for aziraphale and crowley's first meeting is how it makes EVERYTHING about how aziraphale deals with him make so much sense. like, he meets this angel building nebulae, and he's beautiful and silly and full of joy, and he loves these galaxies he's making, they're not even born yet and he loves them, and aziraphale's the one who tells him that they're never going to become, that this beautiful thing he made is just set-dressing for god's toybox. aziraphale is the one who (however inadvertently) sows that first seed of doubt. aziraphale is the one who punctures that joy.

and yeah, of course crowley would have found out eventually. and of course he would have asked questions and aired his doubts. crowley has always been crowley. but i think aziraphale would have carried that kernel of guilt for a long, long time

and then millennia later he meets the demon that angel became, and he's guarded and prickly and suspicious and so carefully, secretly kind, still so clearly the same person, deep down, even as he insists that the angel you knew is not me while he saves goats and children and wayward angels and protests unjust punishments and introduces aziraphale to earthly pleasures for no reason other than to give him the joy of them

he's still, deep down, a good person. he shouldn't have been cast out. he didn't deserve that. the injustice of it must have rankled aziraphale for centuries

and now - now, after all this time, aziraphale can fix it. he can undo the injustice. he can give heaven back to crowley, the way he's always deserved it

and crowley says no.

[gunstellations]

boop! 💙🤍

[inkskinned]

even 2 years ago people still said autism with a whisper. it was also how people sometimes whisper lesbian, like they're afraid of uttering a slur. autistic was either an insult or it was something terrible, a horrible burden only select people endure. "select people" were usually 9 year old boys and skinny white men.

they are not hispanic young adults with a dog and a life and friends. i can make (sustained, calculated, painful) eye contact. with certain people, i don't even have to count how many seconds i am holding their vision - i can just look at them. i can wear clothes that bother me, i will just have a worse day than usual. i might cry about any changes to my schedule - but change is scary! this is normal!

when i was 16 it was OCD. i mean that was the thing everyone said. i totally have ocd. they would arrange 6 colors of gel pen in rainbow order (no worry for indigo feeling left out) and they'd be "so ocd" about it.

if you struggle with intrusive thoughts, be careful at this next paragraph, but. at 16 i developed a compulsion that involved self-harm. my ocd was convinced i was simply forgetting that i'd hurt someone terribly - a thought that persisted for no clear or delineated reason.

at some point i will probably write about how the idea of "morally pure thoughts" was hell for me and others with ocd, but this was the odd dichotomy for many of us: they liked our "aesthetic", but were genuinely repulsed by our lived experience. "intrusive thoughts" now means "cutting your hair in the sink" instead of talking yourself down from believing horrible things. "so ocd" is a label without any true understanding.

it's something i've talked about before - in multiplicity - but i firmly believe in the veracity and necessity of self-diagnosis. i think it saves lives and it saves tragedies from occurring. as someone raised in a house that wasn't safe, self-diagnosis was, for many years, the only viable option. 15 and honestly googling: am i depressed or there demons affecting my behavior.

but it is not genuine self-diagnosis anymore, most of the time. it is a strange, blanched version of that whispered word autism. now certain traits are constantly seen as "autistic" - any passing intense interest. any flubbed social interaction. people say it while laughing - a touch of the 'tism.

and i like the acceptance! i do. i like that people are talking about it. i like that if i self-identify, more people speak up and say me too, bitch. but there is something-else quietly happening, the way it happened to OCD. the quirky, "fun" parts have been washed and sanitized and removed of all suffering. now it is just something that makes you "a little bit silly."

it took me 27 years on this planet before i learned to make friends. something about me just seems incredibly odd, i guess, some kind of radiation monitoring. someone once (in a way that was almost friendly) told me i am doing the right things, but in a way that's off-putting. i have scoured myself raw attempting to be charming.

someone on tiktok does a deep dive into their particular passion. the top comment says "what kind of autism is this lol". like we are a breed of animal. like it has no influence on our experience. like our life is a fresh breeze, an open meadow.

more often for me, life was a drowning.

[sakuraluck]

when i said i wanted to understand whatever’s going on in ivan’s head, i didn’t mean like this 😭😭

[moonsidesong]

quick scribble of 14-crush's original color schemes vs how i color them now for funsies. i feel like ive gotten. a little less?? afraid??? of saturating my colors???? four and ahato... you two used to look so pale and sickly... im so sorry LOLLLL

[deuteragonist1]

Merthur really have it all huh. King and lionheart dynamic. Fucking hate at first sight then speedrun to trying to die for the other. Slow burn? Never heard of her. One of them wears gloves and one doesn't and I'm not even gonna bother to explain why that is top fucking tier. Lies and secrets that could bring about the doom of the kingdom. Obviously adore each other but will actually fucking die before saying it with actual words. The prince is a gigantic asshole who doesn't know how to show care or ask for attention like a person who had healthy emotional development as a child and oscillates between pulling pigtails and acting like an over-eager puppy or both at the same time. Domesticity levels previously unheard of. They canonically wear each other's clothes. One of them makes up words and the other promptly starts using them. Both are extremely into the other's specific brand of dumbassery. Their love language is fucking playing together. "I don't want you to change" fuck this fuck everything

[liz-wes]

Holy hell... we're in trouble. So much trouble.

THE ARTFUL DODGER, 1.06 "Bully in the Alley"