#just feels like i’m losing

[impzone]

really fuckin sick and tired of feeling like a poorly multiclassed dnd character

[wherewolf]

the responses i’ve seen to shiv’s ending seem very quick to write her off as just another sad victim of the cycle, which isn’t without truth BUT!!! that is not even remotely the summation of shiv’s story.

i don’t think she votes yes to “save kendall” or to try to finally set her brothers free. and i don’t think her main concern was that ken was becoming their dad. she absolutely noticed and didn’t love it, but that was not her motivation in betraying him. she was thinking about herself.

it’s tempting to make a martyr out of her as she is the only female child and we see her suffer the onslaught of misogyny that comes with that. but to make her into a saintlike figure who got beat takes away the power and intelligence behind her decision.

at this point she’s stuck between two non ideal choices, but she recognizes that they have accidentally made her the single most important player in the game. because while she can’t have the outcome she’d prefer, she has the power to decide the fates of everyone else. the written off lone woman now holds in her hands the fate of every man in her life.

so she thinks about the long term benefits of both options and realizes that one side leaves her completely without any leverage.

her brothers have proven to her multiple times in the last few days alone that they will cut her out and walk all over her the first chance they get. siding with them leaves her nothing to bargain with. she would just have to hope that ken would actually take care of her. and that level of vulnerability is not only unacceptable to her, it’s stupid. and shiv fuckin roy is not stupid.

so she thinks about the other side and about what she actually wants for her life. and against her better judgment, it’s becomes unfortunately clear that she wants tom. the way she wants him is not altogether loving or even good but it is necessary to her. she sees relationships as having winners and losers and she chose this man specifically so that she could be confident in her ability to win. except now he’s grown some balls and made himself unavailable to her.

she may not like the way her husband is evolving but she already placed her bets on him, so she’s sure as hell not losing to him now. there’s also a part of her that feels intrigued by this new man she’s married to. it’s interesting to have a sparring partner in him instead of having to looking for excitement outside of their marriage.

so for maybe the first time ever, she processes what tom has said to her and thinks about what he actually wants.

he needs her to prove that she cares. he needs to know that she is capable of sacrifice. if she can’t find it within herself to do this for him, then she will lose him, and by extension, she will lose.

siding with tom gives her the opportunity to once and for all make a grand-stand gesture of love, but more importantly, it creates leverage for her. never again will he be able to hold the moral high ground over her head. never again can he say she doesn’t love him. never again can he call her selfish or uncaring. above all, he can never betray her again, because she just removed all of his moral justification for turning on her. he doesn’t realize it yet, but she’s just taken back all the power in their relationship. just in a more subtle way than she’s used to operating.

and just like that, she has the ceo of a multi billion dollar company in her pocket, while situating herself as the only descendant of logan roy to still be playing the game, having removed her brothers from the equation permanently. she may still be far from the top but she’s creating a path for herself to climb.

so yes, she’ll let tom play king for a day, and she’ll have his baby and say “congratulations,” and play the gracious wife, but tomorrow is a new day with lots of room to maneuver. and when her husband puts out his hand, she’ll place her own on top. but she won’t grasp it because she doesn’t need to.

[rystiel]

idk what we’re all calling the concept of fiddlestan working together but i’m calling my version the portal partners AU 🙏🏼

[messiahzzz]

it’s been almost a year now… is the bg3 fandom finally ready to talk about how gale’s “hubris” is the sole product of actively feeding his insecurities further and straight up denying him help & guidance when he was at his lowest and needed it most. it’s not one of his core traits and never was. he isn’t some closeted power hungry monster that is just waiting to be enabled. what he wants is admiration, recognition and acceptance. which is also what he sought from mystra before the orb disaster happened. he had no desire whatsoever to become a god himself or challenge her rule, he simply wanted to be seen as sufficient in her eyes (“to serve her better”). to be as equal as he could possibly be in a relationship with a literal deity. he has a deep passion for magic and knowledge that affects almost all areas of his life and enjoys the display thereof. he wants to be the smartest person in the room and enjoys when his work is recognized. he may be perceived as arrogant when it comes to his skill, but he IS NOT hubristic. it truly takes so little for him to be wholly content.

[dykedvonte]

I think it says something that Jimmy absolutely destroyed the crew and ship in half the time Curly was captain. Like he couldn’t even get them past 2 full months before breaking down.

Like he really couldn’t be half the man he thought Curly was.

[pippinscribs]

Yearly reminder to myself that Veth died and came back wrong

[minty364]

DPXDC Prompt #97

The Justice League fought hard against the anti ecto acts but unfortunately it wasn’t enough and the laws were passed anyways but not before a clause was added to them that states the JL had the right to pull a ghost out of a facility of they had potential to work for them. When they see the potential hero Phantom is caught by the GIW they of course do their best to acquire him. Unfortunately the government sees Phantom as JL property now instead of his own person. Phantom seemed content being trapped on the watchtower and explained it was better than whatever the GIW was planning. Superman thinks something weird is going on with the ghost as when he supposedly went to bed in the room he was assigned he’d temporarily gain a heartbeat again. Constantine is just glad the young prince hasn’t decided to kill anyone in the US congress yet for passing such a ridiculous law. Batman’s adoption senses are tickling.

[dreamofbecoming]

listen i know we all love steve “completely ignorant of queer culture to the point that bisexuality is a surprise” harrington being roasted and educated in turns by robin and eddie, yadda yadda, good stuff. i read “they made a horror version of rocky?” in a fic recently and cackled. also a big fan of “he knew he was bi from the start and just never talked about it” as a trope, love it excellent well done

but what about steve who realizes after starcourt that the most important person in his life now has this thing that’s a major part of her life that he knows nothing about, and what if he fucks it up? what if he says something ignorant or rude by accident, and hurts her? what if he loses her because he didn’t know the right thing to say? what if he can’t keep her safe because he doesn’t know what to look out for? absolutely fucking not, this steve says

and listen she’d never say anything, because she can tell that he can tell how much she likes teasing him and teaching him things, so he plays dumb, and she thinks it’s very sweet. but she notices when the zines she keeps under her bed that she buys at that one secret bookshop in indy when she can sneak away on family trips start going missing, always one at a time, and replaced in a few days with another disappearing. and she finds the new ones he must have gone to buy the weekend she was at her aunt’s house hidden in the back of his closet when she goes to steal one of his sweaters. and she notices when he slips more of her queerer movie recommendations into his personal take home pile rather than the movie night stack when he thinks she’s not looking.

she doesn’t notice when he drives to indianapolis after she tries to explain to him why she can’t just ask out a cute girl, tries to impress on him the fear attached to every moment of attraction that he simply has never had to feel, but later she finds a crumpled receipt from a diner in one of his jacket pockets when she’s looking for his keys, and the address is across the street from the bar the gorgeous woman at the bookstore told her about, the one she memorized the address of but hasn’t worked up the guts to think about visiting, and she knows he must have gone looking for a place like that, must have been trying to understand, must have been scoping it out to make sure it was somewhere she could feel safe, after she told him she never had.

so when eddie nearly pops a blood vessel when they clock each other and she mentions that steve is the only person she’s ever come out to before, her hackles come up. because she gets it, she does, he’s only known king steve until recently, so it makes sense that he would be afraid, be concerned for her safety.

but steve is her person, and no one- no one- has ever made her feel as protected or as cared for as he does. no one has ever tried as hard to understand her, no one has ever put so much work into making her feel safe and seen and loved. and she thinks maybe even if no one else ever does, that’s ok. because she has steve, and more importantly steve has her, and that means no one gets to question his ally credentials in her presence without a dressing down to remember, no matter how well they mean or how recently they helped save the world.

(and maybe she’s not as surprised as she could be when he figures out bisexuality all on his own, because she’s been reading all the same pamphlets he has, after all. and she’s seen the way he looks at eddie, i mean come on. maybe no one else has noticed, but then, nobody knows steve harrington like she does.)

[keferon]

did you expect this au to blast off?

I didn’t even expect this au to exist ??

[bakudekublogblog]

kacchan really is so funny for being like BUT WHAT ABOUT BAKUDEKU CANON when he finds out izuku is quirkless

[marshmallowcat666]

I’m currently hyperfixated rereading Ftfo and can barely do any drawing but I’m trying!!! ‘^’ Designs are easier to draw for some reason so might see only those for a bit T-T

anyways have my version of Lord Lunar’s Gemini! They get fun new outfits!!!

[turtleblogatlast]

[ cw: dismemberment / ]

I think a lot about how Leo’s rescue could have easily ended in him losing a leg as the portal snaps shut on the Krang still clutching the limb, or, alternatively, only having Leo’s right arm make it out, still held dearly in his brother’s hand as the rest of Leo is left behind. (The latter hits even harder, as it directly parallels his future self in the worst of ways.)

I think a lot about how so many things could have gone wrong during the course of the movie with even a little bit of a change, but it really is harrowing how much of a coin-flip the entirety of the Prison Dimension rescue was.

[tombstoneswerewaiting]

more recurring symbolism in fob songs

don’t let pete near a bridge with a box of matches i beg

[derrygirlstrash]

Clare is mischaracterized a lot lowkey because I think people love Clare for being an anxious lesbian so much that they instinctively craft a more palatable version of that trait onto her and it’s a shame because Clare is a fascinating little beastie. She is childhood friends with the likes of Erin and Michelle for a reason after all. She is arguably just as selfish as Erin /affectionate and just as impulsive as Michelle /affectionate it just is formed around the insane molten hot anxiety disorder inside her little lesbian brain. She thinks she’s better than them when in reality she is just as bad.

I’d argue she stays selfish /affectionate longer than Erin does. Until the final two episodes I fully believe Clare would have sold any of them up the river for a corn chip if that corn chip would save her skin. It’s often said that Clare and James hold the single brain cell but I think the truth is likely that Orla holds it and they just forgot to use it or hand it to someone cause they were going ham on a bag of sweets.

If you hate Erin for her selfish traits and just kinda forget that Clare is just as bad then idk what to tell you they’re birds of a feather.

[ghost-bxrd]

ooh i’m now thinking about the court intrigue part of your dragon au, and dick and jason being smack dab in the middle of a power struggle. bc there’s a faction of ppl who don’t want dick as crown prince; he’s foreign opinionated, popular, and not as easy to control. and so when jason comes along looking like the spitting image of bruce, and seemingly shy and manipulatable, they seize onto him. and jason’s obviously super smart, but he’s not used to the underhand way the court works, and starts to trust many in that faction bc they’re kind to him( bonus points if they have some servants working for them, bc jason trusts the servants way faster as fellow common ppl)

and dick isn’t an idiot, so he sees what’s happening and sees his little brother who he loves but doesn’t know that well, start to befriend all the people plotting against him. and he can’t call him out on it and look jealous (even though he is super jealous bc here comes this adorable kid, who could be bruce’s real son and isn’t perpetually a foreigner, coming along and stealing his father’s love and trying to undo everything he’s worked for). so he instead tries to befriend jason more, while always half being on guard for a knife in the back. jason picks up on weird vibes but has no clue what’s happening bc he’s a kid and the court is filled with so many weird vibes lol.

and jason grows increasingly entrenched in that faction, and then dies in a way that looks like he turned traitor but it went wrong and he got killed (not what happened, but the evidence is very convincing) (the anti-dick faction is also upset bc darn there goes their heir). and bruce and dick are heartbroken (bruce especially since he was blindsided since dick never told him any of his suspicions since he didn’t think bruce would believe him). but they don’t spread the news of jason as a traitor bc he was a kid and they don’t want to do that to his memory, and there’s like a tiny kernel of hope that maybe there was a mistake. but then jason comes back to life on the dragon of the tyrant, and immediately begins gunning for the throne (via attacking the heirs to the throne, tim and dick). and dick is heartbroken all over again, bc his little brother really does want him dead and to steal the crown. jason has 0 clue about any of this and is hurt and confused why his brother is calling him a traitor. cue much angst

Omg the MISUNDERSTANDINGS I am THRIVING

Dick and Jason would inadvertently end up in a downward spiral of hate and betrayal, with Dick convinced Jason is trying to usurp the throne and Jason thinking Dick never loved him and took the first chance to get himself a new little brother. One that isn’t common folk 😭

But also, Dick could think that he could sacrifice himself to keep Tim safe.

Jason wants him after all, right? He might be angry at Tim, but it’s Dick who he wants dead. The crown prince. Because if he’s gone, Jason will be next in line for the throne. And if Dick is smart about this, he can strike a bargain that will ensure Tim gets to live….

[feelingtheaster99]

I just finished Fourth Wing and I realized that the reason that Xaden never really hated Violet is because he knew about her from her brother and already knew she was a good person and I want to CRY