#let's go with --

[leashybebes]

I hope you feel better soon!!!! Being sick sucks, not even staying home from work in bed really feels good when your body is angry with you.

If inspiration strikes I would like to request some of 🩸 or 🫠 please!!! Wishing you a brilliant nap that heals you instantly.

you are so sweet. no nap, but i think the painkillers finally kicked in!! to celebrate have some 🫠 side note, please don't feel too bad for buck, they are both being terrible versions of themselves here.

"You should take me to dinner," Evan says from where he's got his head resting on Tommy's chest.

Tommy looks up at the motel ceiling, at the faded brown stain from a years old leak. He thinks about being in a restaurant with Evan, instead of a string of seedy motels and for a moment he just…wants it. It's not what this is about, but he wants it.

"You know we can't do that," he says.

Evan stiffens in the loose circle of Tommy's arm for a second before he rolls away and sits upright on the edge of the bed.

"C'mon, don't be like that," Tommy says, following him across the mattress and kissing his shoulder.

Evan shakes him off. "You think I'm cheap."

Tommy thinks of the new watch, the cashmere sweater, the expensive cologne.

"I absolutely do not think that," he says, biting Evan's shoulder gently this time before kissing up the side of his neck.

"I'm serious, Tommy. Dinner. Figure it out," he demands.

[bluespring864]

Why tennis is such a mess sometimes. Some thoughts in light of the PTPA lawsuits.

These last days, with the news that the Professional Tennis Players Association is suing the governing bodies of tennis, I've seen all the takes from "why can't we just have a proper union" and "the PTPA has some good points but they're pushing their own agenda" to severe mistrust of the PTPA leading to straight up defending tennis governing bodies for all the things people on tumblr usually -rightfully! - give them shit for.

Most of us here are tennis fans just trying to have a good time, so if you've never really thought about the governing structures of tennis, that's very understandable in my book. I have, too often, because I see parallels with things I am familiar with in my own life. So I thought I'd share a few thoughts that might help understand the situation of professional tennis players and the structures that surround them better.

The first thing to be very aware of is that these players are self-employed and work in what's most often called an 'independent profession' and/or a 'liberal profession'. What that means is that a) they are their own boss, often at a very young age, cover all their expenses themselves, manage their finances, accept responsibility for mistakes, and employ their teams and can hire and fire them at will and b) their profession is not regulated, which means that (in theory) any old idiot can become a professional tennis player, you don't need a degree or an apprenticeship or anything else to call yourself a professional tennis player.

Now if you are self-employed, you are encouraged (and depending on the legal system of the country you are registered in) to a certain extent obliged to find your own clients - and i mean clients in the plural here, because if you only work for one client, you might be guilty of what's called "bogus self employment", i.e. you are behaving like an employee and thus should be employed by your client, who then e.g. needs to pay social benefits (insurance, pensions etc.) on your behalf.

Already you can see that this is different for tennis players. There are several organisations a tennis player works for, so to speak, - the Slams, the Tours (ATP and WTA), the ITF - but they aren't competing with each other or contracting you for the same thing. Rather, they have the market divided amongst themselves and each have their own "product" (Slams, tour level tournaments, Davis Cup events...). The only organisation that comes to mind that is to a certain extent competing with them (but also not really) is UTS which calls itself "the world's newest tennis league." Tennis players can't really pick and choose and e.g. only play Slams or only play on the Tour, which is due to the ranking system which these organisations share. To a certain extent the governing bodies seem to notice (or maybe have been pressured into noticing) that this is a problematic situation, what with e.g. the WTA recently announcing paid maternity leave for their players. (Important to note here is that while this situation is certainly problematic, for various reasons I personally think it wouldn't necessarily be desirable to have tennis structured more like a free market, but that is a discussion for another post.)

Now, a second thing which is different in tennis than in most independent professions is the way the players' interests are represented. Before the PTPA, there was no independent association that spoke for some or all of the players, which is highly unusual considering professional tennis has been around for over half a century at this point. The liberal professions I am familiar with all got organised very early on in their existence to form at least one, usually several, professional associations where membership is not mandatory (because, as stated above, this is not a regulated profession, unlike e.g. lawyers or architects who have to become members of a Bar Association or a Chamber) and which does lobbying on behalf of the profession and defends the members' interests and the interests of the profession at large.

Now there's a lot of things you can and should criticise about the PTPA, but you should also keep in mind that it was literally founded less than five years ago, and now is acting in an environment where tennis governing bodies were used to being able to do what they wanted without proper players' representation and are therefore by default hostile to many things the PTPA has to say (This is a silly metaphor, but imagine you have always been allowed to decorate a place yourself, because you own it. Now, however, all the people who actually live in this space suddenly say things like: 'The colour of the wall is hurting my eyes' and 'No, you have to get rid of this chair because it's uncomfortable' etc. etc. This is more or less what's happening to these organisations at the moment.) And if you're wondering how hostile and afraid of this development the governing bodies are: the ATP removes eligibility for pension benefits and player council participation for players who are members of the PTPA or support the PTPA. Which is a quite scandalous and probably illegal thing to do, in my opinion. That part at least should be an easy lawsuit to win.

Hm, what about these players' councils then, you may ask? Well, yes, these exist, and the players elect their representatives. But the fact that the ATP one is called "Players' Advisory Council" already tells you a lot about how much actual influence they have over where the sport is going. The players are consulted, nothing more.

Now I have lots thoughts about the PTPA lawsuits and all the topics that are discussed there but I still haven't had time to read them in detail. If anyone is interested, that will become a topic for another post. For now, I hope this post was at least a bit helpful if you've been asking yourself 'What the hell is going on here.'

To recap: Tennis resembles a liberal profession but has far more rigid structures and less market competition than you would usually expect in such a profession. Tennis players are independent workers and thus should organise to defend their own interests, which has not been the case until very recently.

[pokemon-npcs]

[suguwu]

i cannot for the life of me explain this better but i am currently obsessing with the idea of aventurine asking if you want to stop during sex bc of something he thought he saw in your face or your body language, and you can't help it.

"do you?" you ask, a little more tender than you mean to be.

(tenderness does something strange to aventurine, you've found. it slits him open. he curls back in on himself, a snail within a shell, and you don't see him for days, after.)

and something in him cracks open, a yawning canyon, a grave swallowing him down.

you think it might be the first time anyone's asked him that.

[panvnsleake]

lets just say. i like abstract art. -🥤

[rhytmrocket]

oh yeah uh

so i wanted to make a post about this much earlier than now but i forgot

but uh, in my rh au, ghosts exist. yeah. those who died/didn't make it, they are ghosts now. wahoo.

i imagine that they're semi-corporeal-- they can't be seen by living beings but can interact in small ways with the living world, like moving small objects, flickering lights, giving chills to anyone they phase through, classic horror movie type stuff

i actually don't know why i didn't mention this in the original post, i just kinda forgot i guess

so because of that, in my notes and concepts, i usually call the au "ghosted," as a sort of double-entendre. the games that didn't make it to megamix were "ghosted--" left behind, and they also became ghosts. i'm a genius, i know (sarcastic)

so there's your new possibilities for angst. have fun.

[perelka-l]

There was a sort of draw your ship as this here and I had those two suggested to me so... Yeah... Yeah... He would. (Congrats on your catch, Drayster~)

[darwinquark]

OK you were not kidding that riara fic was not playing around and I already need more of psycho Rafe but I just wanted to say this description of JJ

"He's like one of those sandpipers that forgets it can fly so it obsessively chases the water's edge in a cartoonish blur of legs."

Laughed for ten minutes

loooooool you know I gotta sneak my zingers in amidst the trash

[narastories]

oh gods what the fuck

So uh what happened was, I was typing away merrily into Focus Writer. I got to about 20k and then the point where I want to move things around came a bit sooner than usual. So I though, let me copy each scene separately into Wavemaker, make cards with my notes and rearrange some things. It worked beautifully, I was really happy with it.

Then I thought, okay, let me export it in one so I can work on the rearranged version again in Focus Writer. And then I got this fucking monstrosity.

So either the Wavemaker doc export thing is broken or this shit isn't compatible with each other. arrrgggghh I have no time to figure out how to remove the fucking HTML tags from this and I don't want to...

Don't worry, I still have an untouched odt file + I can move things around by hand, it's just frustrating. IT WAS SUPPOSED TO MAKE MY LIFE EASIER NOT HARDER

Edit: Okay so apparently if you use Chrome + Microsoft Word it will work. And then I'll upload that to Google Drive is that what you want me to do??? Well fuck that shit, emphatically.

[ariadne-mouse]

Finally starting UNEND and right off the bat, FIONA AND JACOB stonks! Incredible!

[ilovedthestars]

trick or treat... something spooooky :3

if only i'd ever written a single word of that Frankenstein AU idea...alas! i spent so long mulling this over, i don't really write horror and even like, suspense is rare for me and i think i've shared all the best examples of it.

so here is a more recent wip that i hope is written suspensefully!! to set the scene: a ghost ship has just been detected on the edge of Preservation space. It's drifting under no engine power and not responding to comm contacts. Murderbot goes with the station responder to check it out, and when they get close they pick up a short range "assistance needed" signal. Here's two snips, since they're short:

---

“So they were desperate.” “Yes.” “Why couldn’t we pick up the signal until we got this close? It’s not very good as a distress beacon.” I had also wondered about that, and I had an answer from my analysis of the signal. “It isn’t coming from a bot pilot. It matches the signal strength of a planetary rescue marker. We had similar ones on surveys. It’s meant for a hopper flying over an area to be able to locate a single lost human, not a ship in the middle of space.” “So the bot pilot is probably down, or it would be broadcasting a stronger signal.” “Probably. Or it’s playing dead.” “What’s your assessment?” “We can’t rule out that it’s a corporate decoy.” Indah made an I know, you’ve said that already face, but I wasn’t done. “We shouldn’t stop treating it as a potential threat, but I don’t think that’s the most likely scenario. I think a system failed, some panicked human managed to set off an emergency beacon, and then the ship lost power completely.” “So you think when we board it—“ “We’re going to find a lot of dead humans.”

[they board the ship, and find a lot of dead humans. they go exploring a little bit....]

The size and layout of the room was familiar. Just big enough for Indah and I to both squeeze in without her getting too close to me, but not much bigger. A cabinet in the corner that was tall enough to hold a set of armor. A locked crate to hold weapons and other security equipment. And in the corner— Indah took a step towards the chest-height white cube, looking puzzled. I said, “That’s a cubicle.” She froze. “For?” “For SecUnits.” Indah cursed under her breath. “Is there one inside?” “It’s shielded to scans.” I moved towards the cubicle, and she got out of my way. I had an unpleasant guess about what was still drawing power even before I put my hand on the casing. There was a faint buzz. It was running. I grabbed the handle and pulled the door open. There was a SecUnit inside. My threat assessment spiked, even though I had anticipated a high probability that the cubicle was occupied. The SecUnit had its eyes closed, and it didn’t move when I opened the door. I watched it for a few seconds, and then said, “It’s in stasis.” Indah had one hand on her baton, like that was going to do anything against a SecUnit. “What does that mean?” “It’s like sleeping. Or…cryo pods, like on the generation ships…?” I wondered if those actually worked the way they did in the dramatization of Preservation’s founding that I’d watched with my humans once. “It’s partly offline. It will only wake up if a system tells it to.” It still hadn’t reacted to me opening the door. The cubicle didn’t seem to be kicking it into a restart. “It probably disabled the automatic restart and sealed itself in here. It was trying to escape the contamination.” “Clever,” Indah muttered.

[leashybebes]

❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹 let’s all be uncomfortable together!!

He stays gone longer than he means to in the end, because with every moment he spends out of the house, the idea of going back and having to talk about this becomes a heavier and heavier weight in the pit of his stomach. He keeps looking at his phone, flicking through his contacts, rotating between Hen and Eddie and Maddie, but none of them feel right. Tommy's become the person he talks most things through with, the person who acts as Buck's sounding board when he's figuring out how he feels about things, but he can't - how can he possibly - 

"Fuck."

Buck shoves his phone back into his pocket and starts heading home. The porch light is on, waiting for him, and it makes Buck want to cry.

[starlightvelaris]

Lestappen roses au but it’s a pov switch and gender swap (FEMALE MAX)

the genderswap roses au wouldn't work imo, but! there's def a f!Max in the works (@arkhammaid can vouch for that) and it's going to be great

for the pov switch, the last fic (for now? maybe?) in the series will have a bit of pov switch, so there's that!

[beevean]

feel like elaborating a bit on my new Helia thoughts, using this post by @legendarybelmont as a springboard (sorry bestie if you don't like this lol)

I'm starting to feel about it in a vaguely similar way as I do for Lenector, as horrible as it sounds. Let me explain: NCFV really wants you to think N!Hector and Lenore are good for each other because they sass each other and understand each other's plight in a world that doesn't respect them, right? But it conveniently glosses over all the unhealthy aspects like the massive power imbalance, Lenore's past abuse and promises of using him as a sex slave, Lenore's current self-centeredness, and even N!Hector ruining Lenore's life with his plan that lead to the destruction of the Styria council. So the story is uncomfortable to say the least, but if someone cared, they could appreciate it as a massively toxic ship built on shared misery and trauma bonding and ignore the canon ship tease.

Helia is kind of like that, except ofc that Julia did nothing wrong :P but similarly, the story does make sure to show you how good Hector and Julia are for each other: their personalities mash well (Julia is delightfully witty but still empathetic, which makes for a nice combination with the comically serious, angery but also polite Hector), they are both connected to Isaac, they are both familiar with a life of shunning, they both end the game grieving (the same person too, allegedly), and you can imagine them supporting each other and understanding each other like no one else could - I love Rosaly, but I pointed out that she simply can't understand Hector's past and nature, only accept it.

But then you remember that Hector is still grieving Rosaly when he accepts to live with a woman who looks identical to her. You remember that he tried to let himself die - the second time in the span of three years. You remember that Julia is grieving the man Hector wanted to kill, and indirectly killed. You remember that Hector completely ignored Julia's pleas to try to save her brother, her only family, and as extra spite he simply willed himself to not be cursed. You remember that Julia has the tendency to hide her feelings behind a polite smile, and Hector may not be as socially blind as Alucard, but he's also rather self-centered.

Now, I don't really like the trope of projecting your lost love onto a living one, a big grievance I have with the series as a whole lol - but it's one thing when Dracula does it, because he's centuries old and highly self-centered as well and you can make the argument that he didn't really respect Lisa if he went on a human killing rampage in her name :P there's no intended moral ambiguity with Hector.

But we can go beyond the intentions of canon, and have fun deconstructing the unhealthy parts of their future relationship. Somehow, they're both so good and so bad for each other, in a very unique way: they understand each other but they might feed into each other's trauma and be constant triggers. I'm sure they can eventually reach the part where they heal from their past, but it's going to take a long time.

(personally I'm not too keen on doing this because Hector suffered more than enough by the end of CoD, and if I wanted to see him suffer and develop all sorts of mental illnesses in a relationship I can stick with Draactor. But it's just me. Sure let's have fun with unhealthy m/f ships too lol)

[mikimeiko]

Day 1 - Trough Switzerland to Liechtenstein and Austria

Time for the big summer trip :D

First step: from Milan to Vaduz (Liechtenstein) by bus

The bus driver tells us ahead of time when there will be a panoramic view in case anyone wants to take a picture <3

We spent almost an hour at the Bellinzona stop because a passenger got into a fight with the driver and the driver refused to leave with that passenger on board, then the police got involved, then flixbus headquarters made him take the passenger. I honestly have no idea what happened between and who was in the right but it was... eh.

Switzerland is INSANE. Like, its just so breathtakingly beautiful it doesn't even feel real.

Vaduz (Liechtenstein) is a weird place.

Tiny capital of this tiny country, it is literally a miniature city, including those commercial buildings that are usually several stories tall but... smaller. AND surrounded by all these amazing mountains and pastoral landscapes, creating a kind of unsettling dissonance (also quite fun).

Since my flixbus was "delayed" I had time just for a quick walk around the city center, and I ended up buying a pretzel with butter, a slice of plum cake and a herbal soda at the supermarket (I love these herbal sodas so much, I am very sad you can't find them so easily where I live but I always drink them when available!).

There are cows everywhere! Well, not EVERYWHERE. But I've seen more cows today than in my entire summer trip last year in Italy XD and there were also sheep? Like, in a small patch of grass near the road? <3

After the endless bus journey of this morning, I have to say I'm very happy to be on a train again <3 on to Innsbruck!

I am in awe of the beauty of the Alps. How can they be so incredibly spectacular all the time! So different from stretch to stretch but still unequivocally alpine? So many trees! So many shades of green! So many rocks! So much water! AAAAAHHHH

Innsbruck is big, maybe slightly bigger than I thought it would be. It's also very pretty, even overcast.

(I don't know why this is the only picture I took XD I was hoping for better light tomorrow morning but still XD)

But everything takes longer than anticipated and suddenly is later than I thought and I'm tired but I have to buy a couple of things and I have to eat something, but I thought there were some food stalls near the market but they're closed? In the end I got a sausage with cheese in it of which I forgot the name with a good sauce (of which I also forgot the name XD) and bread, and it's a little better now.

It's been a long day and I barely slept last night, so I think I'm gonna go back to my hostel and relax.