#mostly because i was thinking about this myself

[shotmrmiller]

(Unnamed for now, 4.8k words of nothing but self indulgence because ex bf simon is king. just porn without plot, the usual filth. also i wrote myself into a hole with the smut but whatever.)

If your friends knew that you'd gone to great lengths to look presentable— less cave-dweller, more human— hoping to get lucky tonight only to end up waving off anyone of interest because you're too busy sulking about a relationship you willingly broke off, they'd kick you from the group chat.

(Or never let you live it down.)

But here you are, perched on a barstool, its cracked leather slightly sticky beneath your legs, the cocktail you'd ordered a while ago sitting mostly untouched on an even stickier bar top. Lamenting. Moping all over a guy who hasn't bothered to return a single phone call since you left him the voicemail. And it hadn't been his fault, really. He'd been upfront with you from the get-go; he's a busy man with a job you don't want to know about and are safer not knowing about.

You'd noticed the specific wording he'd used. Not better off but safer off, its implications perilous. The hardened look he'd given you when you'd pressed him on it, hoping for a slip of the truth, had been the first and only warning you'd needed.

Get off his case, understood.

You clench your teeth, irritation nipping at your nerves. You'd like to think that you've mourned this ex-relationship plenty and feeling an acute, smoldering ache again over a whisper of a memory (and not even a fond one at that)—

Time to douse these flames.

Waving the bartender down, you push away the watered-down drink and gesture for a shot. She eyes you warily, hesitating for a moment before sliding an empty glass over and reaching for some top-shelf bottle your bank account already feels the bite of. The fiery burn that courses down your throat resembles the one in your chest.

The alcohol swiftly does its job, offering a sense of relief, and you're grateful for it, even if fleeting. The room starts to blur a bit, the strobing lights overhead bleeding together like a watercolor painting left out in the rain, and you let yourself sink into the moment, the gentle ebb of intoxication pooling heat in your cheeks, warmth seeping into your limbs.

Things don't look so bad now; the world has taken a dreamlike quality to it, with softened edges and vibrant colors. With the liquid courage dulling the sharpness of your previous thoughts and easing the tension in your shoulders, you reckon that now you can start looking for your prey of the evening. It's why you even bothered to slink out of your comfort zone in the first place.

Mission directive: Get laid. Or plan B: go home with a new number saved in your contacts.

You rest your chin on your palm, eyes lazily scanning around the room, taking in the hazy but lively atmosphere. The dance floor is a whirl of energy, couples moving to the rhythm of the music, a group of friends huddling in a corner, hands gesturing animatedly as they chat each other up, and at the front—

If you swiveled away in your chair any faster, the courage you'd knocked back 10 minutes ago would come back up, spilling onto the bar top the barkeep gave up trying to keep clean. There have been numerous instances where your mind plays tricks on you, teasing you with glimpses of big and blonde in your peripheral while out running errands, the miserable lump in your throat only dislodging once you've made your grand escape.

(It's not running away; It's a tactical retreat. You'll face the music when it's less deafening.)

And in keeping with tradition, you settle your tab and scurry off to the bathroom, clutching your bag like a lifeline. A familiar shadow just walked in through the front door, once again haunting you. No matter how many times you whisper reassurances under your breath, dismissing it as a cruel joke your mind loves to play, the semblance of him never fails to arouse a bit of panic in you.

The trip to the bathroom feels like you're trekking across the country, weaving in and out and around crowds of people, dodging flailing limbs like an extreme sport. The inside is relatively small and cramped; three stalls for the entire bar. It's blessedly empty, so you beeline to the sink, hoping for a splash of cold water to settle your nerves.

The water is startlingly cold, or maybe it feels colder because you're flustered, and you're mid air-drying your hands when you hear it: that unforgettable gait, heavy and solid, like a tank rolling over rugged terrain. It's something that you can still hear echo in the small confines of your flat when the world is quiet. The mirror in front reflects your tense face, its edges cloudy with time and poor-quality cleaning solutions.

Get a grip, you're losing it.

Until the door swings wide, hinges screeching as it gives way with no resistance, and you realize that you're not losing it. But you just might.

"'Ello, poppet."

Incredulity forces a chuckle out of you because it's either you laugh or you cry.

"Nice," he eyes the cracked tile beneath your feet, "choice for a night out. Beer's more piss than ale, though." The door closes behind him.

The mockery in his voice is wildly unwarranted, especially for a man you haven't heard from for a better part of the year, and you finally gather your wits to bite back indignantly.

"What? It's not your cuppa? I always assumed you ratted out in seedy holes like this." The bruise-tight grip you've got around your bag makes your fingers ache. "I'll be sure to pick a more refined place for you next time."

He wastes no time closing the gap between you two, your three steps back negated by his single one with laughable ease, and the space around you seems to shrink, his presence swallowing it whole. You'd forgotten just how large a man he was— is.

A different beast altogether.

"No need. We won't be comin' back 'ere again." Your brows quirked at that. He's gone and learned French, apparently. Oui. You try to keep your personal bubble intact by taking another step back only to come in contact with a stall door, its chilly surface forcing your spine rigid. Cornered, caught in the crosshairs of the hunter's gaze, and the intensity of it makes you feel vulnerable, bare, as if you're staring up the barrel of a loaded gun.

"Easy, lovie, no need to look at me like tha', 'm jus' 'ere to talk," he says with a tone that's tinged with condescension, and his giant mitts are up and palms facing you like he's dealing with a skittish animal. There's a thought there, buried deep, that you refuse to acknowledge.

"Talk?" The question bursts out before you can stop it, followed by a sardonic laugh that feels unexpectedly cathartic as it leaves your mouth. Talk now, when you not only kept your line of communication open but also actively tried reaching out for weeks? Weeks spent waiting for a response, foolishly hoping he'd give a damn enough to at least put up a fight for you and what you had?

He tilts his head slightly, eyes unreadable. "Better late than never," he remarks, but that's the problem, isn't it? You were forced to come to terms with never, whether you liked it or not. And you had not liked it, but it had been necessary. To know there was a part of his life you weren't welcome to, regardless of reason, was something that shadowed your interactions. The realization that you were kept at arm's length due to the duality of his life was too bitter a pill to swallow.

It'd been a painful process making peace with the fact that maybe things just hadn't been meant to be. C'est la vie and all that tripe. But now, here he stands before you, having materialized out of thin air, a bloody intrusion upon the fragile peace you've built for yourself— it feels like a mockery of the emotional distress you've had to endure.

"Better late than—? You honestly fucking think you can just," you stumble over yourself in disbelief, "just corner me in a tiny bathroom of a dingy bar to talk?"

Simon raises one bulky shoulder, unconcerned. "You chose the place."

His piss poor attempt at a joke is like a slap in the face. "Right. Goodbye, Simon." You step around him briskly, your arm brushing against his. Just as your fingers graze the cold metal of the door handle, his encircle your wrist and gently pull you away. The span of his palm could easily engulf the entirety of your hand, and you can't help but wonder if you're as delicate and fragile as you feel in his grasp.

"Let me try that again," he murmurs tentatively, and you curse your good nature— the one that's always been too quick to soften even when you know better. You know just how clumsy he is with words, how his tongue ties itself in knots when emotions creep into the conversation. Simon gives your wrist a tender squeeze. "Ya can leave whenever you want."

Damn it. Damn it. Fine. This confrontation has been a long time coming anyway. "Then try again and make it fast," you snap, words short and clipped. "How we haven't been kicked out of here yet is a bloody wonder."

He steps away from you and leans his hips against the sink, arms crossed over his chest. Here Simon stands, no longer a hazy apparition in the corner of your eye but fully here. Real. Uncomfortable so. You shift your weight from one foot to the other.

"Didn't mean to disappear on ya," his tone carries a note of something resembling regret. "Work took me across the world, couldn't reach out t'you even if I wanted to." And there it is, the crux of the problem. His job. Always his job. The one part of his life you've never been allowed to see, what had been the ever-constant shadow hanging over your relationship. What tore him away from you for weeks at a time only for those same gaps to start getting longer and longer while his stays grew shorter.

That's not good enough.

"So that's it?" Simon cannot honestly expect you to take his paltry excuse and run with it. As if it's enough to stitch together the wound his silence left behind. "Work? That's what you're going with?" It's the audacity that stings the most, the hope that you'd simply accept it and move past all of this heartache.

For all you know, he could be lying through his teeth, spinning enough truth to make it seem believable. You must have your suspicions plastered on your forehead because Simon peels himself off the sink with a sharp breath and narrowed eyes.

"'M many things, love, but a liar ain't one of 'em." His hand disappears into the front pocket of his worn denims, and when he pulls it free, you instantly recognize the tattered, frayed edges of his wallet. Still clinging to life, it seems. As stubborn as the man holding it. He opens it and extends it to you because it's imperative you see...?

"Work." And right there is an ID, not your plain old driver's license, which you're unsurprised to see absent. The man has no business being behind the wheel of any vehicle; he's a threat to all life and limb while on the road— but a military ID, the insignia emblazoned on the card unmistakable. You'd pieced together as much but never fully assumed, never formed a picture, just a blurred outline that left more questions than answers.

Name: Simon Riley. Rank: Lieutenant. Special Forces is right above the square where a photo is supposed to be. "There's no picture." You flash your eyes up at his in question.

"Never," he states.

You swallow thickly. An admission, this is. A roughly hewn olive branch tucked away in the ratty wallet you'd told him to toss ages ago. He snaps it shut with a practiced flick and then rucks up the right sleeve of his jacket up to the crook of his elbows, exposing his forearm, stark and freckled, the skin pale but then closer to his wrist, his flesh taking on a more golden hue— honeyed, sun-kissed.

Simon Riley does not tan.

"Sat on my arse out in a barren stretch o' land f'r months on end, cookin' under the blazin' sun while waitin' for orders tha' never came," he grumbles, voice weary. He doesn't flinch when your wandering fingers feather across the darkened strip of skin. "The only form o' communication was local." You flip his hand, the underside of his wrist startlingly pale like the underbelly of a fish. "Couldn't 'ave reached out even if I wanted to. No signal."

It hangs heavy, what he was willing to share, and you're wondering if he's only asking for understanding or something else. Your treacherous heart flutters in your chest, breath squeezing from your lungs. A tiny part of you hopes for he's asking for that something else.

There's a new scar on his palm, close to the hardened calluses on his knuckles, the deep, puckered groove still red and raw— fresh enough to make you wince— and you can't help the frown that pulls at your lips. You can bet he took care of this himself, the oaf. Probably spit it clean and wrapped it up with whatever he had on hand. He's lucky it didn't infect.

"Only when I came back did I receive the missed calls, the texts, the bloody voicemail," he gnarls, and while the sharpness of his tone isn't aimed at you, you feel the biting sting of it anyway. Simon cradles your hand in his much larger one, and he doesn't squeeze, doesn't hold too tight; he simply holds it, the choice to refuse him if you wanted.

You don't.

"And this isn't something you could've told me before? I know I pressed when I shouldn't have," chagrin pools in your cheeks, "but I worried for you. You were sometimes so unreachable, standing between two worlds at once. I couldn't help ease the weight of your responsibilities because I didn't know what I was dealing with." As you thread your fingers with his, they feel impossibly small, brittle— like the bones of a bird swallowed in the expanse of his hand. How unsettling.

(Yet you wouldn't have it any other way.)

Simon shakes his head, slow and deliberate, but his grip on your hand tightens. "I've more enemies than friends," he mutters, raising your hand to his masked lips, the gesture oddly tender as he presses a kiss on it even though it forces you to rise onto your tiptoes. You blow a puff of air, mildly exasperated. Big geezer.

"Every time I rid myself o' one, two take their place. I only did it t' keep ya safe. There's nothin' they'd love more than to exploit any o' my weaknesses." He says it as though the admission itself is dangerous, and maybe it is, but the risk, you believe, is one worth taking even if he won't.

Where he sees danger, you see trust. And that's all you ever wanted. Trust, because either you'll have all of him or none of him, so you tell him that.

His grip tightens imperceptibly. "Only wha' I feel is safe f'r you to know. Nothin' more." You know he means it. You've seen how far he's willing to go, how much he's willing to sacrifice, to keep you out of harm's reach.

Simon will shoulder just about anything alone if it means you'll be kept safe.

How lovely. He's taken it upon himself to play Batman when no one cast him into the role. Ah, well. A win is a win, and you've long learned some battles aren't worth the effort today, so you tuck this conversation into the back of your mind, a note to revisit at a later date. As for now, though...

"Alright, Si," the old nickname slips from you so easily, as if it never left, "We can continue this tomorrow, if you're able, but as for me," your gaze flickers to the faint ring of grime around the drain and the scribbles covering the peeling walls, "I've just about had it with this place."

But he's got no interest in letting you go now, not when you've given him the second chance he'd been desperate for. Instead, he jerks you to him, your shoulder colliding into his chest, his arms cinching tight around you. There is no grace, no soft pretense to it— just a raw, unfiltered need of a man clinging to what he's been too afraid to lose; your arsecheeks apparently because that's what he's currently pawing at.

Pervert. Honestly, you'd applaud him for holding back from groping you for this long. No shame in giving credit where it's due. You thought about letting him have his fill, indulging his starved-dog behavior until his hands started to wander beneath your clothes. You ought to make him stop this before it spirals into something completely out of your control.

Ah, but then he latches onto the sensitive spot on your neck, right below the ear, so close to your drumming pulse and your words snag in your throat like fishhooks when he suckles.

It's tragic how quickly you cave.

Simon's breath fans hot over your spit-slick throat, slow and composed while yours is sharp and shallow as if you can't quite catch it. He jerks his head toward the stall, and you freeze, disbelief rooting you in place.

"You're joking." He's gone and lost whatever scraps of sanity he had left back wherever he was because there's no way you're getting down and dirty in— your lip curls in distaste as you look at the industry-grade bottle of disinfectant that sits in the corner— here. But then he's dragging you toward the nearest stall anyway, your bag tumbling to the ground, not my bag, Simon, shit, you owe me another. The door is a pitiful excuse for privacy, barely clinging to the hinges and sporting a gap wide enough to make you grimace. You've hardly any time to register anything else before Simon is already at your feet, smoothly dropping to one knee, the crown of his head dipping slightly below your navel.

Simon's hands cup the back of your thighs, palms spread wide as they trail upward, the tips of his fingers finding lace and not your everyday cotton. With a deliberate slowness, he lifts the hem of your skirt, his neck craning just enough to bring his line of sight under the drape of fabric, and his gaze lingers.

Oh right. You've got on that set— the one he'd carefully chosen for your birthday, that one that fits you so perfectly it almost feels unfair. A little indulgence that'd been meant for his eyes only. Even as you'd slipped it on earlier tonight, it'd felt like you'd been breaking the rules.

It makes you wonder...

You hook a leg over his shoulder, the heel of your shoe digging into the straight plane of his back. "Well?" Your question is wrapped in feigned nonchalance. "Does it make you upset?" Simon shrugs, dismissive, his eyes steady as they lock onto yours. The dim light above buzzes faintly, its unkind glow spilling over his rugged face. It does nothing to soften the sharpness of his features.

And you notice a new scar, tiny, close to his hare's lip.

"Doesn't threaten me, sweet'eart."

A sharp laugh escapes you. How infuriatingly arrogant. Simon leans in, his nose brushing against your sex roughly before he takes a crude sniff, unrestrained, unapologetic. Nasty as always.

The faintest smirk curls the corners of his lips. "Can't blame me, my girl and I 'ave been apart f'r too long." Humming, you place a hand on his head, palming over the short bristles of his hair before curling around the back of his neck, and you grind down on him.

"If you're hungry, then eat." The smile you give him after your gracious offer is nothing short of salacious.

Simon thumbs your gusset to the side and slips his tongue through your folds, and it's electric, raw. Frissons ripple through you, starting from your nape, and it cascades down your arm and your legs, and the sensation is sharp, almost overwhelming, and you bow forward, nails digging into the dense muscle of his traps.

It's been so fucking long.

Hot, wet pressure circles around your swollen clit, purposefully shy of what you covet, enough to stir something within you but not enough to satisfy— nowhere near enough. It makes you testy. Impatient. It pushes you to lose control, feeling it slip from his grasp, only to land squarely in his.

It's the exact reaction Simon craves. You can grind down on the tip of his nose all you want, push and pull at his head every which way, but you don't come without his say so, and to earn that, there's something you have to do.

By the way your teeth sink into your bottom lip, bite-swollen and glossy with spit, peering down at him with bleary eyes after having rutted against his face without restraint, frantically seeking the friction you yearn for, you also know what to do.

Good.

Now he waits. Your pussy is dripping slick, dewy honey trailing down his chin and joining the sticky mess pooling near his knee, but he doesn't care— his focus is entirely on you. Simon knows exactly how this will end. You're as mulish as ever, he muses, but you'll break. You always do. It's not a question of if but when, and he's content to wait as long as it takes for the inevitable. After all, he's a patient man when he chooses to be.

Your chest heaves with every ragged draw of air to your lungs, your pretty lips quivering with need, eyes shimmering with unshed tears. If he had the skill, he'd pencil this very moment onto paper, immortalizing it. The desperation that clings to your features, the frustrated grunts you give when he laps at your— his— cunt, tongue skimming just shy of your pearl.

It's intoxicating. A heady visceral rush that courses through his veins and pools white-hot in his groin, stiffening his cock almost painfully.

And then, when a finger dips into your sopping entrance, the composure you'd been desperately clinging to begins to come apart. Simon watches it unfold through heavy-lidded eyes, the gentle part of your lips, the tremor in your breath— he drinks up every single second.

"Please," your voice is barely more than a breadth of a whisper. Your surrender is almost as sweet as you.

The kiss he plants on the inside of your thigh is searing as he hums. "What's it?" The prickly stubble of his jaw scratches against your skin. "Don't lose ya courage now," he murmurs, "you've already fought 'alf the battle.

Heat licks up the sides of your jaw, but you truck on, dignity long lost, in tatters next to your bag on the floor. "Please let me come." Your words come out in a half whine, half plea, and Simon's response is immediate; he cants your hips as two thick fingers enter you fully, and at this angle, it's more than he knows you can take, but you asked for it. Begged for it.

Simon takes it slow, not easy, the suction on your clit maddening; strong, fluttering pulses that seemingly beat in tandem with your heart and the world begins to tilt on its axis, his strong hands keeping you anchored lest your knees give way beneath you.

The world narrows down to the sound of your hiccups, the tension coiled spring tight below your navel, the feel of his shirt knotting in your fist— if he had hair long enough to tug, you would've ripped it out.

You knock your head back against the door almost violently, the dull throb stamped out by the livewire crackling beneath your skin when you finally do come, a scorching heat radiating from within your core out, leaving a raw, tingling sensation in its wake. It stings, you dazedly muse. The orgasm that was wrenched from you was so thunderous your pussy stings. It's short-lived but potent, and you can't help but wince, your lips curling, teeth slightly bared in discomfort.

Ouch.

Simon, on the other hand, is just peachy, unbothered as ever, leaned back on his haunches, chin glistening with slick, his thumb sweeping what's about to drip off his nose.

"Don't think for a second I'm returning the favor here. I've standards, Simon." He huffs in response but says nothing, expecting nothing less of you, instead opting to shrug his jacket off and place it over your drooping shoulders. Your limbs feel leaden as you exit the stall, Simon nimbly reaching for your health hazard of a bag before leading you toward the door.

Your fingers curl around the knob, and twist and pull—

and nothing. Confusion knots your brows together as you retrace your steps. Had you pushed or pulled it open? You can't quite recall, so you give it a firm push it instead—

and nothing. Again. The door stays closed.

"Need help there?" Irritation sparks within you, wishing your glare would eviscerate the obstinate door. Does Simon think himself funny? All you want is to go home, scrub yourself sparkling clean, and sleep until the late afternoon, but the door is conspiring against you. Good. Great, even.

"Bloody door," you grumble, "It won't open." Simon steps forward, unhurried, and twists the handle once, twice—

"Open sesame," he says, tone utterly flat and casual, and you snap your slackened jaw shut. "Oh for fuck's sake, Simon, keep your shit jokes," but the door opens with a click.

You're joking.

You're fucking joking.

It swings wide with a creak, and you glance around instinctively. Nothing out of place— just the usual drunken bodies flowing in and out, their laughter and slurred conversations blending into the background.

Simon drapes a heavy arm around your shoulders, large hand squeezing firm as he walks you out, and you trudge alongside, your gait sluggish, until a massive bulk stumbles into your path, and Simon quickly places himself between you and the drunken mass, both a protector and a threat.

The bloke is a guy with a row of thick hair that runs from his forehead to the nape of his neck, the sides clean shaven. "Sorry, bonnie, didnae mean ta-" limpid blue flashes to Simon, his thin-lipped smile stretches wide— too wide— flashing too many teeth for comfort, "bump into ye." He doesn't linger though, clodhopping his way back to the bar. There's a bold-lined tattoo on his nape, of a... revolver? A choice.

"Walk. I'll take ya home. Won't come in for a nightcap," the lines by his eyes becoming more pronounced. "Scouts 'onor." Simon pulls you along, and you're fighting off the sleep in your eyes when a man in a cap, his profile partially hidden by the brim, bumps his knuckles against Simon's shoulder, and curiosity outweighs your fatigue.

"Who's that?"

Simon grunts. "Security."

You don't remember having been frisked by security when you came in.

The crisp air outside bites your cheeks when you step out, and you're grateful for Simon's forethought as you tug the sides of his jacket closer to you, burying your nose into the collar— it smells of cigarette smoke and him, musky and woodsy— a quiet comfort. Sleep tugs at your eyelids, each step feeling heavier than the last as you make your way towards his vehicle.

The metal door groans as it opens, and he extends a hand, aiding you up when you squeeze it as you slur out a confession.

I missed you.

He doesn't falter in his movements as he guides both your feet inside, and his hands are steady as he adjusts the belt, buckle quietly clicking into place until he straightens, gaze dark and fluid as it lingers on you.

He runs the rough pad of his thumb along your bottom lip tenderly.

"I know, sweet'heart. Get some sleep."

The door closes with a firm but gentle push.

I know, he says. Exhaustion pulls at you, dragging you further away from consciousness. Bastard.

Simon doesn't wake you when he pulls up to your driveway, hooking an arm under your knees and the other around your waist to take you inside, your head lolling on his shoulder. Tomorrow, you'll ask him how he knows where you live, considering you moved for a new job months ago.

[gloomygloworm]

I open Dragon Age: The Veilguard

I play the game, and I think to myself ‘weird I thought this was a choices and politics game ft metaphors from real history like slavery’ 

My friends go “you’re right that’s what it’s supposed to be but this game is lacking those things”

I go “oh bummer that sucks, I like moral quandaries.”

I see a post that publicly wonders why people are upset that one of the main metaphors (slavery) is missing from the game.

I respond saying yeah its weird that people are complaining that a Big Metaphor is missing from the Big Metaphor Game

I get asked what part of the game matches the Main Metaphor, and I respond with “well, the elves are second class citizens.” I am doing research specifically on the elves. I read in the wiki, with sources, that yeah, no, I’m right, the Church said “if you kiss an elf that’s basically the same thing as kissing a dog.” Elves don’t have rights in most of the countries that the other games are in. One of these places in the North is the Big Metaphor Place where they looooove the Big Metaphor and using the Big Metaphor, but I get called weird for wondering why it’s mostly absent from the game.

I open my blinds and find out that National Holocaust Remembrance Day is no longer a federal holiday. I also find out that my government is trying to "deport" the native citizens of said country. I go back online and find a thread from 2009 where one of the writers explicitly states “Yeah the Dalish started as a metaphor for the Roma but evolved into more like the Native Americans, and the Andrastean Elves are like the Jewish during Nazi Occupied Germany.”

I say “oh okay so Tevinter is like Nazi Occupied Germany. Yeah it’s weird that they’ve kind of sanitized this place and I can’t find the evidence of this anywhere.”

Someone calls me weird again and tells me to read the Codex. Someone else mentions the very beginning of the game, where you see shackles on the ground and there is mention of an elf who is freeing slaves, none of which I witness. I wonder if the slaves are in the room with me. 

Someone else mentions that this is the first time we see Tevinter without any biases, mentioning two characters, Dorian and Fenris.

My friends, horrified, tell me Fenris is an ex-slave (who can be given BACK to his slave owner) and Dorian’s family are Slave Owners. I think to myself huh that’s kind of a weird thing to say considering the biases are “I was a slave” and “Yeah my family owns slaves but that’s kinda bad huh” cause that’s the same exact concept. 

I say “well elves don’t have rights, that sucks, but I wish we got to see more of their day to day. I hear about these alienages that in other games we’ve been able to see, it’s weird there isn’t one in the very poor part of the Capital of the Big Metaphor Place, where there would be a high number of these people.”

Someone says “why do you want to see them suffering? That’s weird.”

I say “yeah but there’s beauty in adversity and I didn’t write the game, I want to see this big tree the alienages supposedly have as a sort of last hope for the city elves to cling to their lost culture.” 

Someone calls me weird.

I open my blinds and politicians and big public figures are giving Nazi salutes in public rallies. 

I boot up Veilguard.

I boot up Origins and get called a slur within the first five minutes of the game. 

I picked a circle elven mage, but I use youtube to look up the city elf origin and go “oh holy fuck wow they just put it right out there huh? That’s the world state, now I know.”

Someone tells me that I should play the game because I would enjoy being sexually assaulted and violated.

I literally don’t have a response to that in any comprehensive way because that is a wild thing to say to a stranger. It is, in fact, two subjects I have intimate knowledge of as a victim of both domestic abuse and sexual assault. 

Someone tells me to just read the Codex.

Someone tells me to just read the Diary of Anne Frank.

I buy the art book for Veilguard and see that some of the major players they nixed were ex-slaves. I look at Reva and I say “oh hey cool concept” 

Someone calls me an idiot online and I laugh while closing my blinds, because purity culture is once more making a comeback and if I licked a single rock in Arlathan all I’d taste was bleach.

[forsaken-headcanons]

You know what? I mustered up the courage to come off of anon just for this. (Not gonna tag myself, but knowing my writing style, it’s probably gonna be obvious who I am lol.)

So uh. I’m fine now, but for some context: I was kinda upset earlier. And like a perfectly normal person, I wrote some self-indulgent rarepair stuff to make myself feel better. And now I’m sharing it with you all! Hope you don’t mind :]

Elliot / John Doe

Elliot once ‘tamed’ a feral John by feeding him pizza. It was a complete accident, too. He was trying to give it to Shedletsky, but John got in the way. 

It didn’t stop him from attacking the others, unfortunately. But he did leave Elliot alone for the rest of the round.

Being able to neutralize a threat like that is a big deal, so you bet that Elliot tried that shi again. Through trial and error, he discovered that John’s favourite is a plain old cheese pizza.

John’s memories while feral are fuzzy at best, and complete blanks at worst. Thus, he enjoyed getting properly aquatinted with Elliot after he managed to snap out of it about halfway through a round.

Using that one ‘the killers share a cabin across the water from the survivors cabin’ hc, John and Elliot will sometimes “meet up” between rounds by standing on their respective docks and shouting across the water at one another. They’d chat for as long as they could about the most random of things, just enjoying each other’s company.

Elliot once found a way to get a box of cheese pizza over to the killers side, and the gesture almost brought John to tears.

Noob / 1x1x1x1

Since there’s only four killers (as of writing this), I imagine that there’s barely any breaks between being chosen for rounds. And if the Spectre’s feeling particularly mean, one killer might get chosen over and over and over- (totally didn’t experience a server once with like 4 or 5 Mafiosos that we got back to back.)

See where I’m heading with this? The Spectre ends up favouring 1x1x1x1 for a while, which leads to him being worked to the bone. I’d say ‘poor guy’, but this is probably karma at this point…

No one really thinks much about it until 1x just straight-up collapses of exhaustion during a round. That was the moment that everyone realized that the killers weren’t these unstoppable machines of death; that they were bound by the same rules mortals were.

Maybe it’s naivety. Maybe it’s curiosity. Maybe it’s something else entirely. But regardless, Noob’s the only one brave (or stupid) enough to approach a killer like this. The embodiment of hatred was clearly unhappy, but it’s not like he could hurt anyone in this state.

While the others did their thing, Noob kept watch over 1x. Mostly to make sure he didn’t start killing again, but also because a small part of him felt bad for the guy.

Even after the round ended and 1x got the rest he needed, Noob didn’t seem to fear him as much after that. It initially annoyed 1x1x1x1, but he eventually started to see the noob in a slightly different light when they offered themselves up after realizing that he hadn’t gotten a single kill in like, four rounds (not back to back this time, luckily. But still.)

1x eventually confronted Noob on their behaviour, and you know what he said? Noob admitted that he thought 1x could be a better (and less murder-y) person if he just had a friend. 

And the crazy thing is, they were kind-of right.

There. I said my piece. I was oddly scared about sharing these for whatever reason, but yeah. I like imagining these goobers doing silly things together, and I’m tired of pretending that I don’t/lh

(I should honestly write a fic for this or something. I have way too many ideas with these guys-)

Ahh, you're the fella who I see liking all of my posts. Hello there.

Really nice headcanons and really nice rarepairs. I hope you're alright now and whatever upset you is now dealt with.

[alltheboysandgirlsiloved]

As we all know. I am still hoping that season 3 will not be the final one and after seeing the previews of jwct S3 I tentatively allow myself to keep hoping based on this picture alone:

I think we can all see why. Brooklynn has a prosthetic arm which she definitely didn't have by the end of season 2. It is very likely that Soyona made it for her (as in: ordered to make it for her). Now, let me remind you that until the events in the lab in Senegal, Soyona absolutely didn't trust Brooklynn therefore it is highly unlikely that she made it before these events.

In this picture they are on the plane but it's safe to assume that it's not taking place during the flight from Senegal to wherever they were going by the end of season 2. Why? Because, as we established, Soyona couldn't have ordered the prosthetic arm from Brooklynn before Senegal. So it must be another flight, supposedly rather long flight as we can see them playing chess (which indicates that they have time to spare). We can also see that Brooklynn shows no signs of "I'm about to betray Soyona within the next three minutes" on her face. Which means that she's still pretty deep into infiltration at this point. So I doubt that the moment they step out of this plane, Brooklynn's about to run away.

To sum it up - taking everything into consideration, I would be rather surprised if this scene was taking place anywhere before episode 4, maybe 5. Keeping Brooklynn's expression into consideration, I also doubt it's the episode in which Brooklynn escapes (as she gathered enough evidence). This is a very stretchy theory (mostly just my fever dream) but that would maybe indicate that Brooklynn will stay by Soyona's side at least until the middle of season 3, which... Really leaves very little time for her to find Camp Fam and make peace with all of them.

So yeah. In conclusion - season 4 will save us all.

[correcthorsebatterystaple121]

Most kids do not enjoy spreadsheets. Most kids, as far as I know, float through elementary school in a haze of pre-Excel bliss, never once dreaming of tracking their finances or doing their taxes.

Not me.

I was born with a filing cabinet in my brain and a deep desire for patterns. As soon as I understood the concept of "more than one thing" I felt an overwhelming urge to put them into a color-coordinated list. Marbles? Arranged. Books? Shelved by author. Stuffed animals? Writing those little bitches' names down in my diary like I was Light Yagami and they were America's Most Wanted.

I used to lie on the floor of my bedroom and HAND-DRAW grids on taped-together sheets of paper with a ruler, probably because I didn't know how to turn on a computer yet. When I had successfully made hundreds of (sort of) identical boxes I filled them with incredibly important information about my OCs, such as name, eye color, number of siblings, magic powers-- you get the idea. (I think most of them were unicorns, but I can't check because I lost all these proto-spreadsheets at some point in the two decades since i made them.)

Around age 9 I gained access to my family’s desktop Mac and started spending all my time alone and unsupervised in the "computer room" (early 2000s kids remember) because my parents didn't know enough about the Internet to be worried. Luckily their kid was a nerd, so instead of discovering porn or chatting to 40-year-old men or whatever my peers were doing I found Excel and was immediately fascinated. So many options! Such easy data entry! I could even color-code!!

I used my new power to invent endless OC families with at least 20 kids each, all named around a theme like "plants" or "semi-precious stones" or "Irish". I spent more time on baby name websites than a pregnant Mormon-- all for the sheer pleasure of writing them down, picking my favorites, and neatly squaring them away in Excel docs, organized by age and hair color. I'm sure there are still dozens of them on my dad's hard drive somewhere, buried alongside the maze of nested folders I created to categorize and store my favorite photos of cakes.

(the cakes are a whole other can of worms, but really this too is spreadsheet...)

My biggest project, though, was recording all the different color names in my mom's Lands End catalogs. It took years and ended up with HUNDREDS of entries. I'm not sure there even are that many colors, and if they do exist they're certainly not fully represented in Lands End heather v-neck sweaters. But damn if they aren't all written down in color-specific columns!

this project extended into high school. On an unrelated note, I didn't go on a real date until I was 21.

Look, I'm being rude to myself because I can, but it's fond teasing. Spreadsheets are great!

For example, I actually do well with money even though I'm an impulsive little bastard with a bad memory, no sense of consequences, and a strong desire for little treats-- mostly because every single week I sit down and meticulously go through my finances in my carefully tailored Money Spreadsheet.

(I also sit down every month and meticulously go through my Spotify history, but that's beside the point. My Spotify chart makes graphs, and everyone knows graphs are cool.)

But really, I genuinely think it's helped me manage my likely undiagnosed ADHD that i so enjoy organizing stuff into little rows. Or maybe it's the other way around, I don't know. Chicken and egg ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So yeah, spreadsheets! A fun and helpful way to organize things that do and also don't matter! Don't come for me and my 256 Spotify playlists, okay?? We're fine. We're chilling. We have the dozens of pages in my Notes app listing all my new OCs and their attributes to keep us company. I haven't changed since I was six years old.

Because this came up in my life recently, a question:

To be clear I mean a spreadsheet in any program (Excel, Sheets, Notion) and for any reason EXCEPT for it being required of you. It could be cataloging stuff you own, categorizing characters in a show you like, etc. But it has to be something you chose to do without being paid or graded for it

[gardenwalrus]

The Beatles speaking about themselves in DISC (12 October 1963) [Paul & John section here]

[GEORGE] Our dress style has changed…  It was when I was relaxing in a Boeing jet on the way back from America last week that I realised that in many ways I was still the same George Harrison I was before The Beatles were so well known. But I also realise that in some ways my life HAS changed - mostly for the better I’m glad to say.  The most obvious change is financial. That’s very nice, but I don’t think it's the most important thing. It’s nice to be able to buy a new car and new clothes when you want them, but I was happy when I couldn’t afford these things.  One big way The Beatles generally have changed is in their style of dress. Eighteen months ago, for instance, we dressed far more casually than we do now. 

I think my social life has changed considerably as well. Now we meet far more people than we ever met before.  I mean, like, when we appear at a one-night stand we’re often invited back after the show to a nearby club. People seem to go out of their way to try and make sure we have a little fun after our work.  A question I’ve been asked quite a few times over the past 12 months is: “What do you think is the right age to get married?”  I honestly think there’s no such thing as ‘the right age.’ I think that you should get married when you decide that this is the time when you should get married. This is a decision which you can only make yourself. There’s no correct age.  In my personal tastes, I’m a bit undecided about clothes, too. I haven’t got any definite preferences. But if something I see pleases me I’ll buy it and wear it whether it’s in the French style, or Italian, or English.  One thing I really do get enthusiastic about is music. As I’ve said before in DISC, I like the coloured American groups like The Shirelles and The Miracles. But I’m fond of a lot of other music - Segovia on classical guitar, for example. 

+

[RINGO] I’m the silent type…  I’m the one the boys call the silent type. Well, I haven’t got all that much to say for myself, and I prefer to listen to other people speaking. My real name is Richard Starkey, but the Ringo bit has been with me for so long, I don’t think of myself as a ‘Richard’ anymore. Of all the Beatles, I live nearest to the city centre - about 10 minutes walk and six bus stops away. It’s not a rich part of town, but my mum has all her friends there and doesn’t want to move out.  Some of my family are just outside London. They sometimes come and visit us, and once a year my dad makes a trek down south.  I want to do things for my family, but they keep telling me to save my money. Eventually I think I’ll open a chain of hairdressing shops in and around Liverpool. I’d like my main shop to be in the centre of the city, and be THE place.  I have enough hairdressing friends to keep the shops well staffed, but feel with a haircut like mine it would be best for me to stay away from them!  I have my hair cut about once every three months! I’m joking of course. I have it trimmed when the mood takes me and have no special barber.  You don’t hear very much about me in the group, because I don’t sing. I had my big and only singing moment on ‘Boys’ for our LP, and really made the most of it.  And, surprisingly enough, although I’m a drummer I don’t have a favourite musician. Well, not a real one. I like to see good showmanship in any artist, and I hope to get a chance of seeing Brook Benton while he’s in England. It’s a stroke of luck he’ll be doing the Palladium show at the same time as us, but I’ll probably be so nervous, I won’t have time to appreciate his act.  I don’t eat very much. If I did, I’d probably have much more energy. As a kid, I was very fond of chips and jam-butty (that’s a jam sandwich), and to this day, I still like it. Even if I enjoyed it, I don’t think I’d ever get used to eating caviar or drinking champagne.  One of my ambitions in life is to learn how to play the piano. I’d willingly take lessons if only I had the time. But my main ambition is to be happy all the time.  Yet I don’t relax very much. I like to be active. Even if I have a chance to go on holiday, instead of sitting in the sun all day I’m off exploring the local neighbourhood. I think I do this because if I didn’t I’d be nothing more than just plain lazy! I very rarely go near a Chinese or Italian restaurant. Don’t like either food, and if anything has onions in it then I’m completely done for.  I’m mad for rings. I wear four, and would wear them on all my fingers if I didn’t think they’d get in the way. Often I get wrist ache from drumming too much, but the only other ailment I suffer from is occasional colds. I’m not as bad as John though. He keeps on losing his voice. Never doing a performance, but usually just after a recording session. 

[velvetvexations]

It got to a point where the weird background noise of distain for transmascs within the queer community, frequently from other fucking transmascs, made me stop really wanting to call myself a trans man. I kind of avoid saying it where I can now. I'm factually transgender but I'm "just some guy" I'm "something like that" when asked.

It wasn't the active vitriol that did it either, it was the casual, mocking scorn.

I'm proudly bisexual, proudly queer in concept, but... Maybe it's because being extremely dysphoric and disabled made it hard to be proud in the first place, maybe I'd feel differently if I wasn't mostly housebound and could meet more queer people in the real world, but it's nearly impossible for me to feel pride in a part of my identity that so much of my own community seems to consider trite and embarrassing.

I don't know, maybe I /am/ a whiny loser transmasc who can't take a joke, but I think even just joking about entire identities being pathetic and annoying can't be good for the community. Either way, thankyou for sticking by your brothers and siblings, Miss Velvet, you do make me feel less ashamed in this way.

The idea is that men have surely brought it on themselves. And I don't really see how you can't apply to that logic to anyone. Like, if a transfem abuses a transmasc, and a transmasc abuses a transfem, it seems like those two people in particular are dead even, and should have a greenlight to be horribly transphobic to each other. It's so obviously childsh, pointless nonsense that serves no purpose whatsoever.

And I mean, COME ON. They'll be like "oohhh but why can't we make our widdle jokie wokies :(" and then you ask them to give you some of their act and it's just a nihilistic screaming cocaine bender about how much they despise the guts of everyone other than themselves and sincerely thinks the world would be better off without them.

"but oppressed people get catharsis!"

IDK, maybe I don't want you to get catharisis. Maybe I want you to be frustrated and miserable for as long as that's where you get your catharsis from. We're gonna be over here doing something that's actually praxis and does good for whatever cause while your therapist tries to introduce you to breathing techniques that might make you less of an annoying death-obsessed freak.

And truly we fucked up letting it get this bad. Everyone could broadly agree it was fine to make fun of dominant groups but it's spiraled so far out of control people care more about targets they can actually hurt instead of the one's doing the oppression.

Which is cowardly, too, by the way. Like, have you noticed how little any of those bloggers talk about transphobic cis people? I talk about transphobic cis people. The closest they come is bringing up TERFs to make up a 100% fake backstory justifiying slurring other trans people, and femboys to say anyone who isn't attracted to trans women are simply transmisogynistic liars and the people they are attracted to simply a poor immitation of Trve Transwymyn.

Their politics are not remotely oriented towards anything remotely productive and never have been, because they don't care about transfemminism, or transmisogyny, or any of that, it's the furthest thing from their minds, what they care about is getting the constant attention that requires an enemy.

[unhinged-as-hell]

Rant about melvik antis because this is actually bothering tf out of me.

I'm happy melvik is getting more traction, but at the same time I'm not yknow? I loveeeeee everything about melvik, the dynamic they could have, the parallels they do have, and even that it's a rarepair. But now people are going to go out of their way to hate it and the shippers, and put the ship in a box where everything is black and white when it's clear everything in the show is anything but. I don't understand when people act like a ship personally offends them.

The entire point of a rarepair is that the characters just interacting is rare. That's why people like exploring them, because they wanna know how they could've have been. "In canon" this "But in canon-" that. We know we don't have anything in canon about them, that's half of the reason why we like them. Also I have it very strange when people think they didn't interact at all in the 7-8 years they knew each other before season 1.

I don't want it to be canon, I'm happy with Meljay being canon, or even Jayvik(since I love them both too), I just want to be able to have something to myself without people making it seem like it's a terrible thing, and that all melvik shippers ruin both of their characters while me(and other melvik fans I know) love them mostly because of how their characters are. I love their canon character development, erasing it would be the worst thing I can think of.

One of the reasons why I jumped on the melvik train was because it was further away from how toxic this fandom is with ships.

That's all.

[gwydionmisha]

I literally lived past sixteen because antibiotics exist. I probably would have been deaf and extreme disfigured by pus oozing infections if I'd made it that far, because my immune system is fucked for genetic reasons. I can breath because I have modern medicine and electricity.

I am so incredibly grateful for modern plumbing and sewer infrastructure. I am furious that my country is in the process of abolishing modern medicine, because modern medicine saves so many lives.

I often think about the unimaginable number of people who died in the past, not just from water born illness, but because nobody was healthy enough to draw and carry water from the hole in the ground they were using as a well to where the household lived. If everyone's down with some illness, shitting themselves to death, the dehydration would be fast and ugly. How many more people would have lived with clean water coming out of a faucet close to hand?

I am happy I'm not constantly battling vitamin deficiency.

My family have been city dwellers on my mother's side since a bit after the American Civil war. My father's ancestors were all city dwellers since some point in the 18th century, likely earlier. Life expectancy was extremely poor for people at my family's general prosperity level. My Dad's ancestors would have been dead long before my mother's ever met them most like with medieval urban sanitation and the way disease spreads fast in port cities. Statistically, my Mother's family was even odds to have died before she was born, and she was even less likely to have lived to produce me. Even with antibiotics, her sister died before graduating college. Antibiotics kept my mother alive to reproduce, but given the genetic givens, she and her sister would have died in childhood or early teens.

Medial European cities tended to keep their population up by constant influx from rural areas. People who couldn't afford to leave in fever season if it was a bad influenza or cholera or whatever year. They stayed and often died instead. My ancestors weren't the sort of people who could afford to take a few months off from work and live in the country

I was a 14th Century specialist. The cities shrunk markedly in a lot of countries between 1346-53 (depending on when it hit your country) and 1400, when wave after wave of plague came and came and came, hitting each new generation of young people killing so, so many of them.

I love that if I don't like where I'm living I can just take my stuff and leave. I don't have to ask anyone's permission. I don't risk starving to death if I leave the parish in which I was born because charity was mostly tied to the parish system and I'm pretty damned disabled.

I think a lot of people picture the thousand year or so stretch of the middle ages aren't picturing themselves poor and unfree peasants or labourers living in garbage and shit and vermin infested cities with barely enough in a good year.

When I picture myself in the middle ages, I picture myself dead before eighteen from accident or illness.

I was born after antibiotics so I got to live more than half a century with a genetic condition that was a death sentence to our ancestors.

I got so many choices my ancestors a thousand years ago wouldn't have had. I got to move under my own power across a continent. I got to go to university. I got to chose a job that only people lucky and wealthy enough to become highly literate could have had back then. All my non-household work was compensated. I get to sleep when I want. I have a hovel with light and solid walls which is full of books. I have so much preserved food in my hovel, I literally give a bunch of it away to other poor people. It is February this far North and I literally had fresh salad yesterday. Laundry is not an endless backbreaking nightmare task that literally can take days depending on a bunch of factors.

girl help they're putting "modern people under capitalism work more than medieval peasants" posts on my dash again

[hacash]

I finally finished my next book on @batmanisagatewaydrug's Book Bingo 2025 after a rather long gap (for reasons which I daresay will become clear in a moment). This book was set in a country I have never visited, and the blorbo marking it off is Anne of Green Gables' own Marilla Cuthbert. For no reason other than she'd have had as much difficulty getting through this as I did, probably.

Set in a country you have never visited

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

So I really tried with this book. Sadly I think if it wasn't for this bingo card I may well have abandoned it, because fair warning, it is very, very dense. I'm glad I didn't, because it's very impressive, but still, I definitely agree with the literary critic who described feeling 'a kind of aesthetic battle fatigue' while rereading it.

The book tells the story of seven generations of the Buendía Family in the fictional and slightly supernatural town of Macondo, and my God, do they go through it in a big way. I think a big part of why I struggled to enjoy this book is that it feels like mostly description and very little dialogue/people actually interacting with each other - which, combined with the fact that (even though the book follows the history of one particular family) we don't get much insight into the character and personalities involved, so that I really struggled to actually care about the people that were part of this story. At times the book felt more like a history than an actual novel, which is a style I've never really personally enjoyed. It is such an epic, and although everything that happens is certainly awe-inspiring, it never really reached my heart.

(Aside from the magical realism, which I'm totally happy to never question, there is also just a lot of interpersonal drama which just...happens without anyone really talking about it. Why does this family seem so predisposed towards incest? Why did the main character fall in love with a nine year old girl, marry her, and then not seem to notice when she dies a month later? These things just...kinda happen.)

That being said, it is undoubtedly a gorgeous book. The prose itself is so beautiful, and so intense, and the sheer scale of the endeavour is genuinely impressive - I think the author clearly set out to do portray something big and magnificent, and he definitely does so. I also enjoyed the magical realism of it: the fact that weird shit happens and apparently we never really find out why and we just roll with it and it works.

All in all this is definitely an impressive book. I can see why it's a classic, and I'm glad I can say I read it! I can even see myself picking through bits and chunks every now and again. I just can't see myself reading the entire thing for pleasure any time soon.

[mapbottakeamap]

Ok ummm I just finished the golden raven and I am not ok.

That was a hell of an emotional rollarcoster that was spread over a week because my stupid ADHD brain decided to not let me sit down and read. Lmao I read like 300 pages in the first day and then it took me a week to finish the rest.

But yeah anyways...THOUGHTS

OH MY GOD. THE FIRST SEVEN PAGES AND I WAS ALREADY CRASHING OUT. AND THEN IT ENDS WITH THE MOST WHOLESOME THING I'VE EVER READ.

I THOUGHT LOTS OF BAD THINGS WERE GOING TO HAPPEN TO JEAN BUT NAH I GUESS NEIL JUST CAN'T CATCH A BREAK LOL.

Every time Neil was mentioned I actually lost my shit lmao. AND THEN HE GETS INJURED?!? I literally have written down in my annotations "at least the fics from the foxes pov are going to be fire" 😭😭😭 I'm def going to write some myself lol

I was def scared the whole time because Nora said it was gonna be worse than tsc but I think it ended up being a lot lighter. Jean got a lot of healing AND WE FINALLY LEARNED SOME STUFF ABOUT JEREMY!!!

I am pissed about us never getting to read about what happens during Jean's exposure therapy. Mostly because I'm scared that Nora's hiding it for a specific reason. Like, whenever he goes over it's in Jermey's pov and when it IS in jean's pov it literally cuts of RIGHT before it's about to start.

But yeah, JEAN IS HEALING YIPPIE!!!

That's pretty much all my immediate general thoughts. Alr time to go theorize on really specific stuff.

[legalmente-loca]

Guys, guys... We have reached five hundred subscribers (applause, applause). The special this time will be different from the others. To celebrate that we have reached half a thousand subscribers, I am going to thank you all and also let you know my mutuals.

First of all I will thank Jensen Ackles, who is after all who I mostly write for. It is a great honor to be alive at the same time as him and I am grateful to him for bringing out my most creative side even in my darkest moments. Now, after that, let's start with my mutuals

@yjessy: Well, for starters, she's my best friend in the real world outside of Tumblr and their stories. She's the only person in my life who knows about the kind of content I write. And the reason why I talk about her instead of talking to her is because unfortunately she doesn't have Tumblr due to lack of space on her cell phone, but I know that I have her unconditional support and friendship. I thank you for that.

Well, @v1v1-3, you will have the honor of being second on the list: You came to me asking me questions to form your own page and I loved answering you and I was so honored that you chose me out of so many talented writers here. I love that you tag me in every challenge you participate in, and please, never stop doing it. it's very fun. For all that thank you.

@ausantana: You are not a fanfic writer, you are a film fan who gives her opinion on each film and I love your aesthetic. Maybe I started following you because we liked the same things and I always imagine you as the girl in your Icon; Sweet, with a pretty smile, intelligent, charismatic. Maybe you're not like that, maybe you're the opposite, but in that way your photo tells me about your personality. I love reading your opinions and I enjoy each one of them. And for that I am grateful to you.

@figthoughts: I love your little stories and you were one of the first writers that I chose to follow to continue reading you. You were part of my inspiration and I always loved and will love the way you write. And for that I thank you.

@sunsbaby: Your !Reader introductions always make me know more about the personality that I have to bring out of myself when reading your stories and I honestly enjoy it too much. I have fun with these different facets and it shows that you have fun creating them. And for that I thank you.

@soldiersgirl: The way you write Soldier Boy/Ben is amazing and always catches my attention. I hope you never stop writing about him and giving me more amazing content. It doesn't matter if you only write for him, that's enough for me and I know it's enough for many too. And for that same content I thank you.

@dulcescorderitas: Your stories are short, but that doesn't make them boring, and you can upload ten in a day that will never be too much. I will always be surprised by your imagination and speed when writing and you are fantastic. And for entertaining me with your incredible writing I am grateful.

@valjy: It's incredible how with so little you can achieve such great things. I don't think we have interacted much, but I still enjoy and love what you do and I hope you keep it up. You are the meaning that sometimes less is more and I have put that into my own writing. And for that I thank you.

@whisperingdaze: I think the first thing that caught my attention about your page was your Lana del Rey Icon. As a big fan of hers, my mind quickly goes to anything of hers. But I didn't stay for your photo, I stayed for your writing. You relate everything so well that I can even effortlessly imagine what you describe. I thank you for that.

@h8aaz: You said I was one of the first ones you read and one of the ones who inspired you to start creating your own page. I know what it feels like to be in your place and that connection you feel with that writer you read at night before going to sleep. I honestly didn't think I would experience things from the perspective of the writer, from the source of inspiration, but you made me experience it. And for that thank you. Psst (I still miss Sammy sleeping in your Icon).

And last but not least, @zepskies: What can I say about you? You were one of the first ones I read and I think the first one I read about Jensen. You were my main inspiration to start creating my own content. I was guided by your page to create mine and I love that Latinas can write outside their language and be successful, you demonstrated it yourself. And for that I am extremely grateful to you.

Thanks to the people on my Tag List for wanting to pay attention to each story uploaded and thank you for being patient with me. Sometimes it can take me a while to upload what you desire from the character you want.

And for you, followers, who read my stories and accompany me on this journey, thank you all. Without you, what I would write would be worthless. You are the protagonists of this and every achievement of mine is your achievement. I know well that life can be difficult, but I also know that humans are strong, all of us. No matter our differences, our fierceness and desire to live are what unites us. Thank you for joining me and let's move forward!

[nextstopwonderland]

(I put an abridged version of this untagged on my blog but honestly i need to give it a longer tagged write-up)

So Yuta saw this side of my sign before his match against Willie Mack at the Oakland Collision:

while he was looking at the hard cam (which is where I was front row with @sonnykissed) and yelled “he’s DEAD he’s DEAD” right at me to which I think I cursed my head off at him idk I go into automatic when it comes to Bryan and slander and also Yuta being a shit post-murder.

(Watching it back now here’s what the camera caught: here’s the tail-end of him yelling ‘DEAD’ while I point at him and wave the sign and say ‘fuck you!’ I’m pretty sure 🤣)

So I’m randomly waving the sign during the match at times while also trying to update y’all on things

He does I have till 5 which I mostly miss and then once again curse him the fuck out (while apparently Nigel on comm also calls him out for it and also for Bryan ( thanks for that info @shes-a-voodoo-child)

When I listened back Nigel said “people questioned Yuta, I questioned Yuta when Moxley forced him to do what he did to Bryan Danielson” and then “I have till 5 an oft repeated phrase from the American Dragon Bryan Danielson, again Wheeler Yuta reveling on the fact that he was the one that caused the end Bryan Danielson’s career, at least for the time being.” AT LEAST FOR THE TIME BEING. do you miss your dragon Nigel? Do you know something? Are you gonna visit him in Napa while he’s on child and chicken duty before Sacramento and plot a revolution return? (A girl can dream okay)

So then Mox comes. I try to get him to see my sign but he doesn’t. He tries to brainwash Yuta into “finishing the job” and I yell over and over “don’t do it don’t do” (at that point we didn’t know he was telling him to take out cope on weds we thought he just wanted him to take out Mack which also happened) I can definitely hear myself screaming in the clip although none of the words are clear I’m sure I’m sure I’m booing and calling him a piece of shit among other things

But then I watch him in the ring stroke that briefcase, like lovingly stroke it and I see emotion on his face, real emotion and I’m like oh shit, What’s happening here? An Actual Yuta conflicted character arc after so long with legit nothing?

And my first thought as he stroked that briefcase that way was what was inside it. And the last time he ever saw what was inside it. And who was wearing it. And who it belonged to.

And I know for sure he was thinking of it, too. In fact it was pointed out to me by @extracurriculargrief that the last time he ever even touched the belt was this moment:

Was that going through his head?

So he’s leaving the ring and I’m still kinda pissed at him for doing mox’s dirty work even while realizing he could now be Going Through It and I start screaming “THINK ABOUT IT YUTA!!” while waving the still missing Bryan Danielson part of my sign. The same part he dismissed to me earlier.

(Apparently I can be seen on camera yelling at him on the fite feed. I have not been able to find the fite feed yet.)

And he’s standing by the ring post and turns to look at me while I repeat it over and over and he is staring at me, staring at the sign, solemn and serious and I can see his eyes because he moved his hair during that whole emotional moment and he says to me “I will. I will. I will” while nodding and still clutching that briefcase to his chest, still totally and fully in character.

And I nod to him and I think I smile a small sad smile, just completely overcome, and then I collapsed into @sonnykissed because that emotionally drained me and YEAH folks

Never expected to contribute to the death riders storyline (especially when I’d all but given up on them actually continuing the Yuta part of it in terms of Bryan) but here we are

Here we are. I have no idea what will happen here:

I’m going to the sacramento show and I was already planning to bring the same sign (but to update the days) but now I’m pretty sure I’m also going to update it with words coming out of the sad dragon’s mouth. He’ll be saying “think about it Yuta.”

[septic-salad]

hiya, I’m curious in what inspired your version of Bell? I love hear about how people develop and evolve their OCs.

I think subconsciously my biggest inspiration for my bell was my c!Wilbur design

Specifically my older design where he was more heavily based off of a great horned owl

At the time I was still "grieving" my previous hyperfixation that I, sadly, had to drop due to a controversy. I just could not get myself to fully separate the creator from the character I loved so dearly.

Other than that the original design was just a big conglomerate of what I found attractive or cool 🥹

^^^This was my very first attempt at drawing him, for me the hardest part was just figuring out what I was gonna do with his hair (mostly trying to make sure be wasn't just a carbon copy of c!Wilbur.) He was supposed to have a lot more owl-like elements in his character design and personality, but now the only thing that's really left are the hair spikes.

He also had glasses for a while, along with a big scar across his face (which my very old c!Wilbur design had, and now that I think about it it's quite funny), but those disappeared over time due to me mostly forgetting to draw them and then deciding if I keep forgetting they must not be that important anyways to his design.

^^^At first I tried to mainly use him for comfort (this is gonna sound really autistic so bear with me) because I'd project onto Adler quite a bit and sort of use him as my gateway to feeling comforted. At the time I was recovering from a previous relationship and found it incredibly difficult to be open about my feelings again, I think this helped ease me back into it.

Then, of course, I couldn't help but play around with Adler being an absolute loser incel and Bell being his beautiful alt gf that he somehow pulled. This is actually what morphed into my modern AU :)

A lot of him stayed the same really, the biggest part was how his personality changed as time went on. Originally I went the lazy route where he was just this big dumb limbo guy, which is pretty clear in his first ref sheet. Now I like to think he's at least slightly more complex than that ^^'

[unrelentingforse]

No, Caitlyn is not a fascist

As time passed after the ending of arcane I've come to realise that labelling Caitlyn Kiramman as a "dictator" is plain wrong and it heavily mischaracterizes her as a person who was so clearly manipulated by a woman in power.

Arcane writers have done everything they can to explain to the fandom that the gas was mostly used on chembarons and their goons. Obviously other people were caught in the crossfire and got poisoned from the gray, but this is nowhere near what the nazis were doing. And it is also NOT a valid reason to call her "KKKiramman"

Yes, she created checkpoints. Yes, she wanted Singed to be put in a dungeon. But - let's be real right now - she didn't do that out of her hatred for the poor people of Zaun. She did it because she wanted to avenge Jinx. All of her actions are caused by her grief, hate, guilt and loneliness.

You can argue that if she wasn't a fascist then she wouldn't do any of it and would've given up her power. But this actively ignores the grief she's going through. And also completely ignores the definition of fascism. What was she supposed to do? Just give up all of her assets and power when she was at her lowest? Beg on her knees for forgiveness? Just forget that her mother died a horrific death and forgive Jinx for everything?

Caitlyn actively despised how she was seen. Here's some quotes from S2:

When talking to maddie she said that she never thought this operation would go for so long. She didn't seem happy or malevolent about it - which would be true if she hated zaunites so much as you guys are painting her.

When Ambessa came to her Caitlyn accused Rictus of inciting violence against zaunites (after she became "the fascist dictator")

In the same dialogue said that there needs to be a reason to arrest someone.

Again, in the same dialogue - "Why is peace always the justification for violence?".

Actively acknowledged that she was manipulated and used as a pawn by Ambessa when she was talking to Vi.

No, her throwing that wooden boat is not abuse. I genuinely don't know HOW this is a real argument.

6. "Hating you...I've hated myself"

7. "No amount of good deeds can undo our crimes!" is the biggest one. She didn't say this about Jinx - she said it about herself.

I could go on and on listing you quotes from S2 but to be frank - this is not how character development works. You don't just say a bunch of words and magically become "better". You change how you act. And you don't magically become "worse" when you say something heinous.

Most of you have the ability to see nuance in Jinx's character. Why isn't the same for Cait? Is it because you just agree with her? Is it because you divide "good" and "bad" people by whether or not they agree with you?

What about Cait giving up her seat at the council for Sevika? What about her fighting her mentor just for the freedom of the people she supposedly hates? What about her asking zaunites to fight alongside her? What about her ratting out everything about Ambessa's defense in viktor's village AS SOON as she gets support from Vi and Jinx?

Obviously in real world it would seem that I argue for the "both sides" bullshit. I am not. And I really don't want you to think that I'm acting as superior because I'm able to see nuance in Caitlyn's arc. I want to show you that it is REALLY REALLY important not to dehumanize your enemies. Because

when you dehumanize nazis YOU BECOME ONE!

You NEED to be able to see them as humans so that you can see yourself in them and correct that. So that you see your friends and family in them. Because so many people realize they were living with racists/homophobes/transphobes/antisemites/bigots in general for their whole life only when the elections come. I want that to stop. And you can begin to do that by watching arcane one more time and not basing your opinion on something as fragile and unstable as a public opinion.

[xemylixa]

I myself must confess that, with fictional characters, I kinda alternate between judging them as characters (in which case they're tools to tell a story, so anything goes so long as it arranges itself in an interesting pattern), and as people (in which case holy shit get away from me the lot of you!), with very little in-between, lol.

So, from this latter idealistic perspective, I must note the fact that Kmicic paid an eye for an eye and judge him for it, even though I understand his motivation just fine. It's how my brain works currently. I absolutely understand what you meant, though. I just can't commit to such a sentiment myself, if you know what I mean.

Kmicic's saving grace is, indeed, that sincerity you noted (I've no idea how he even lies with such cunning - that Charisma score allows for some insane Deception checks! sorry for the D&D lingo, it's true tho). And, particularly, a vital interpersonal skill that it allows him to have and that I learned the term for recently - accepting influence. Once Oleńka's cutting words land and make him think about where he is in life, and this brick wall of "I'm awesome and doing the right thing! :D" allows a trickle of bitter truth through it - there is no turning back. (Especially when it's Michał - this time it's a peer saying that; and Oleńka is still a woman. Kmicic is a horrible snob and that never really changes. The Tatars, like you said... yuck. Oh, and he kidnaps her - I think we're all really quick to forget that one! He completely escapes responsibility for a lot of things. I'm salty about that. Anyway...)

The same acceptance of influence, I think, becomes a core belief of "I need help, and I need guidance", as opposed to "I'm always right and if I'm not the worse for the facts". He knows he hasn't got it all figured out - and so he staggers like three different times between different lords. (Eventually landing on The Right One after literally the same thought process that got him into Radziwiłł's trap... because of course the problem was "whom to serve under" and not "what do I personally believe in", riiiight author? :D I despise feudal morality with all my being, by the way; does it show?)

And that would be why he acknowledges Kuklinowski as a possible reflection of himself - because he no longer thinks he's above all this. Also, Kuklinowski was "his biggest fan uwu", and by now his very existence only reminds him of the darkness within himself that he's only just sort of conquered (with strict guidance, again).

I'm not sure Kmicic is actively afraid of this still being his future. I think it's mostly a symbolic way to get back at his own past, now that he knows how horrible it was.

...I used to be better at writing concise essays, I swear. This just ran away from me. You put it a lot better than I could.

czemu ta scena jest taka silly

be who you are