#my head fits a lot of people

[fewsystemsinonebody]

by host (besides Batman and body count, bonus was also... a bonus)

explain your gender in 10 words or less without using boring words like “male”, “female”, “nonbinary”, “masculine”, “feminine” or “androgynous”.

go!

[livingasaghost]

i think one reason why so many people fail to understand andrew and neil's relationship is because people don't know what it is to be aspec. and obviously the aspec umbrella is wide and varied and no one size fits all, but at the heart of their relationship, neil is demisexual. and i fully believe andrew is some form of aromantic. and obviously their shared history of trauma (of all kinds) colors their relationship and their sexualities and actions. but aspec people (and the people in relationships with those aspec people) develop such different relationships than allo people. they care differently, and it's often the care that becomes most important, rather than (just) the attraction. like yes, i choose you because i see you because i am interested in you because i don't quite understand you but i want to, i need to, and i am committed to sticking around regardless of whether we are a legal partnership or not.

people argue all the time that andreil would grow to say i love you some day, that they'd eventually heal enough to get married, but that isn't healing. that's ignoring a vital part of each of them. not only are they both still learning what love is, but love is not what their relationship is built around. they did not ~FaLl In LoVE~ they built a partnership around taking care of the other person. sure they were attracted to each other in their own ways, but andrew doesn't look at neil like he's his happily ever after romance. neil is the person who wants andrew to live, who wants andrew to be happy, who wants andrew to know that he has value even when he's not a good person. and andrew is the person who wants neil to be safe, who wants neil to be happy, who wants neil to know that he has value even when he isn't playing exy. their "romance" comes from holding each other up, from calling each other on their shit, from being a safe space when the world has proven it is anything but. neil is the one who almost starts to imagine some kind of long-term partnership in such conventional terms and andrew is so unconcerned with what that partnership looks like...he just knows the two of them will continue holding each other up as long as they can. and sure they'll have sex and sleep in the same bed and get cats together and all that "romantic" shit, but it's more than romance. it's a life. it's security. it's a chance to rewrite the trauma of their pasts.

and yeah to an outsider all that is romantic, sure. but i don't think andrew and neil see it like that. their relationships is all facts and truths. they feel safest in these absolutes, in the trust they are building together, in the shared language they are crafting between tentative touches and long stares. but to label it something as banal as ~romance~ undersells just what's happening to them. they don't need to say i love you because they know that all of these pieces that make up their shared life together say that for them, and they wouldn't know what to do with those words anyway. their "love" is not the same as other people's anyway. they don't need to get married because anniversaries and dates and marriages minimize just how long forever is, and they are already joined together by the understanding they share.

if the two of them got married or started "dating" it would send the wrong message to people who will never understand. neil isn't andrew's ~boyfriend~ he's the man who convinced him that life can interesting enough to stick around for. andrew isn't neil's ~lover~ he's the man who refused to let him run away from the life he always wanted. it's not romantic, it's survival. it's selflessness. it's learning how to care for yourself by caring for someone else and letting them care for you.

[teratomatica]

you always land on all fours

[andy-clutterbuck]

The Ones Who Live - 1x01 - Years

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Shout out to all artists who had to work without any strong direction or instruction.

I wish you a merry “the client likes it anyways”

[strangersteddierthings]

The thing is, Steve has learned, that becoming untouchable isn't all he wants it to be.

People were too quick to try and reach out for him, ask for more than he was willing to give. He hadn't wanted to give up his first kiss to some random girl at some random boy's twelfth birthday party because of spin the bottle. He hadn't wanted to play Seven Minutes in Heaven with Jenny Jackson or Linda Simons at Tommy's birthday party the following year. He did want to take Mary Linscott to Snow Ball, but she just wanted to make out behind the bleachers instead of dance with him. He didn't want to do that but then Brian called him stupid for not wanting to, and asked if he was queer. So, Steve had turned right back around and dragged Mary back under the bleachers, kissing her until it was time to go to prove Brian wrong.

(Even though Steve knows Brian isn't wrong. That Steve had wanted to ask Brian to the dance as much as he'd wanted to ask Mary but knew better than to do that. He saw how they treated Eddie Munson last year for the suspicion of liking other boys and Steve wasn't going to let that happen to himself.)

Brian had congratulated him after and asked what base he got to. Steve didn't want to get to any bases, but he couldn't say that, so he just punched Brian in the arm and said 'more bases than you' which was true because Brian's date didn't kiss him even once.

Then Carol Perkins approached him at lunch, shortly after Snow Ball, and asked if Steve would be her first kiss. Not because she wanted to kiss Steve, but because she wanted to kiss Tommy H, but didn't want to be bad at kissing. Steve agreed because he liked Carol. Not in the way she liked Tommy, but mostly because she'd asked.

No one had done that yet.

She came over to his house on a Saturday because she didn't want Tommy to catch them and think she didn't like him. They made out in his room because, despite his parents being home, they didn't really care who was in his room with him or if the door was open or shut. Probably didn't even notice he had someone over. She leaves an hour later.

By Tuesday Tommy and Carol are an item and by Friday they were Steve's best friends.

However, for reasons Steve doesn't understand, more girls keep asking him to be their first kiss. And maybe it's because he's already got a reputation, or maybe Carol let slip he'd said yes when she asked, but Steve finds himself kissing a lot of girls he doesn't want to. He doesn't know how to say no. Can't find a reason too. Brian's words play in the back of his mind every time he thinks about saying no.

(Are you stupid? Are you queer? He doesn't want to be either of those things, and given his grade in biology and pre-algebra, he's really only got a hope of avoiding the queer label. His father would tolerate a stupid son. He doesn't think he'd survive if his father had a queer one.)

There are a few girls he's been crushing on that ask him and that was nice. One, Alice Baker, even becomes his girlfriend for a month. His first relationship.

Soon eighth grade gives way to being a freshman and Steve, who has always been handsome and cute, catches the eye of upperclassmen now.

And Steve's not sure how it happens, but he ends up moving past first base with another girl whose name he can't remember, or possibly never knew. He doesn't remember asking her for hers when she led him into one of the bedrooms at the house this party was at while he was way too tipsy.

And then it just grows. The reputation and what people expect from him, and he doesn't want it, but he's never said no before so can he start now? Doesn't he need a reason to say no? If he doesn't have a reason, does that make him queer? He should be wanting this. What boy doesn't want this?

And maybe he does want it. But not like this.

He doesn't want to be slightly drunk at yet another party, following the first girl that grabs his wrist and pulls him after her into whatever secluded area they can find. He doesn't want to keep saying yes when he wants to say no.

The summer between freshman and sophomore year he confides in Carol. It's a risk. Carol can be cruel, quick with her words to tear you down, to spread the rumor that will ruin your life. But she's also fiercely loyal.

He tells her he's tired of kissing people he doesn't want to.

Carol is quiet for a long time, and Steve almost thinks he's made a mistake. But then she speaks.

"Okay. Let's make a plan."

And they do. Then suddenly Steve is untouchable. Carol teaches him how to see the weakness in people and call it out. How to wield his facial expressions as a weapon and a shield. How to put on the air of being the most important person everywhere you go so well that everyone else begins to believe it. How to fall back on the fact his parents are rich, gone often, and, almost most importantly, well known in the community. It gives Steve's name a weight to throw around.

More importantly, all of that culminates in people no longer asking things of him. Instead, they look to him to take the lead, they wait to be asked. It makes Steve feel in charge of his life for once.

But now.

Now, years later, having survived a spring break from Hell and averted the apocalypse, Steve watches Eddie hang off Argyle with ease, fling an arm over Jonathan's shoulder while laughing at a joke, easily pull Dustin into a headlock or wrestling match.

Easy touches that Steve should be able to do, too. A jealousy wells inside him almost as much as the unease he feels in his stomach at the mere thought of letting them know they're allowed to reach out and touch him, too. That Eddie's allowed to reach out and touch.

But then he remembers what happened when he let people have that power over him and he can't bring himself to do it.

It settles in Steve, then, the realization. When you become untouchable, you're unable to touch.

-

@nburkhardt @i-less-than-three-you adding my own lil bit of angst into the mix now (:

[buttercupshands]

thought about this thing for a while

it was extremely interesting to just analyze myself and get like a tier list in my head

[everestgale]

Sorry if this is a bad hour but I have a question. Is there any part of StP you think is genuinely bad?

No worries! I usually respond to asks when I have time/when I'm in the mood to talk anyways, so it's never a bad time to send an ask!

In general, I don't think I really feel comfortable with saying any parts of StP are genuinely bad, per se, because the game is just so expertly crafted and means so much to me personally that I'd be lying if I said I'm not biased to it. And also I'm no media expert, I'm not even that great at media analysis either, so I generally tend to be quite reserved with judgements; there is no way I could, in good conscience, say that any parts of StP are objectively bad or anything like that.

What I can share, though, are my personal dislikes about the game and its writing. There aren't a lot of them, and of course, the positives far, far outweigh the negatives (I wouldn't be here if they didn't), but I still have a couple of issues with the game, and I want to talk about one:

Happily Ever After lets the Long Quiet, or rather, you, the player, get away with too much.

Now for full context, Happily Ever After is one of my favorite chapters in the whole game. It is deeply personal to me, and I resonate with it on a very strong level; it emotionally devastated me, in the best way possible, when I played it for the first time (Paranoid variant), and this chapter holds a very special place in my heart.

...that being said, I dislike the fact that the game never acknowledges that it's your fault that everyone is miserable and stuck in the cabin. You made the decision to stay in the cabin, but the game never calls you out on that, never forcing you to acknowledge that you did this. It weakens the ending of the chapter for me, especially with the princess asking "Do you... still care about me?"... I know the game gives you a lot of options in that moment, a lot of which are written well, but the option to say "Of course I do" just feels so off and so hollow to me, and I can't seem to verbalize it quite well, but it really annoys me.

In general, the ending is very sweet, but in my opinion, it doesn't feel that earned, precisely because the game never acknowledges your fault and never lets you to truly apologize for it, to feel remorseful for it, to earn that moment of dancing under the stars. Though, I do very much like that scene from the princess's perspective, as I've rambled about in tags of this post, as this symbolic moment of her finally getting her wish fulfilled after being denied and denied and denied for so long.

I'm sure I'm not expressing my thoughts very clearly, and I apologize for that, I just feel quite passionate about HEA because it really did impact me so much, and so these personal dislikes about the chapter irk me because it feels like a missed potential to me, on an already such a great chapter. If it affected me this much and this deeply when, in my opinion, it has a pretty major flaw in its story... I can't help but imagine how much more powerful it would've been without said flaws.

Though like I said in the other post, even with those problems, I adore this chapter a lot. And this kind of extends to the whole game too, whatever issues I might have with the game, those all pale in comparison to just how many things the game did right, and just how much this game has impacted me, and just how much I love and adore this game, and just how much this game has changed my life. Thank you, Slay the Princess, thank you, Black Tabby Games, and thank you, Slay the Princess community, all for being so wonderful <3

[bittersweetresilience]

so do you think he succeeded?

[carlyraejepsans]

not only do i not think lynne would ever under any circumstances call or even just think of cabanela as her dad, if that possibility ever came up in conversation i think cabanela would straight up kill himself

[ulteri0rm0tives]

....and if I said I wanted Johnny and Kerry in the messiest divorce arc since Paul McCartney and John Lennon.. what then...

[proffbon]

Every time I think about Lords of Fortune and their cultural sensitivity I have to go 'Don't think about it' like that Portal 2 scene, because I get too invested trying to understand the logic behind it and eventually short circuit.

[rookflower]

ex-kittypet who picked the lock to their front door and ran away

[wonder-worker]

"[Elizabeth Woodville] was the only member of [Crown Prince Edward of Westminster's] original 1471 council not already on the king’s council and her name headed the list of those appointed as administrators in Wales during Edward’s minority. [She remained on the council after it was expanded in 1473 and granted additional governing and judicial powers]."

"In 1478 Prince Richard married the Mowbray heiress. Like his elder brother he had a chancellor, seal, household and council to manage his estates. His council, like that of Prince Edward, comprised the queen [Elizabeth Woodville] and a group of magnates and bishops, few of whom were Woodville supporters. [...] It was Elizabeth who mattered, for Richard resided with her and Rivers treated his affairs as their own."

— J.L. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445-1503 / Michael Hicks, Richard III and his Rivals: Magnates and their Motives in the Wars of the Roses

[limirint]

Thinking about a version of Hinny that tells a story about how naive idealized romance shatters and gets rebuilt stronger into a close platonic relationship

5 year old Ginny who grows up on stories of The Boy Who Lived and feels safe with the heroic character she imagines in her mind

8 year old Ginny who gets teased by her family when she blushes over The Boy Who Lived’s anticipated Hogwarts enrollment, who dreams about meeting her bedtime story protagonist

10 year old Ginny who puts a face to the legend and now thinks of Harry whenever she feels scared or unsure

11 year old Ginny whose admiration and grandeur around Harry boosts his pedestal impossibly higher when he saves her life in the chamber of secrets

12 year old Ginny who gets butterflies when she sees Harry in the halls and fantasizes about fighting alongside him, her hero is real and just as brilliant as she imagined him

13 year old Ginny who is surprised to find cracks in the polish, things that don’t make sense, who thinks Harry is unlike himself when he gets irritated and angry and acts carelessly towards his friends, even towards her

14 year old Ginny who lives the reality of fighting beside Harry and doesn’t get the same floaty feeling about it, who sees beyond the bedtime story and stares directly at the beaten down teenager in front of her who has more rage than he knows how to handle, who doesn’t make excuses when he snaps and makes wrong decisions, and who realizes Harry doesn’t shine as brightly when she looks at him

15 year old Ginny who now dreams of protecting Harry, who worries for him and what’s to come at the end of every remaining good day, who is stubborn and refuses to get behind the front line of battle, who gets annoyed with his stubbornness and meets his outbursts with a matching tone, who forgives him over and over and over because he means it when he says sorry and they all have more rage than they know how to handle

16 year old Ginny who bleeds and cries and screams and fights for the safety of everyone she loves, who looks at a broken and bloody Harry and sees herself, who knows every wonderful and horrible piece of him and would not have it any other way, who loves Harry with a fire that burns brighter than any childhood nightlight ever could, and who holds Harry close with the same ferocity she holds all of her brothers

[hellonerf]

least favorite hetalia ship?

(me pondering rn)