#obligatory psa

[thatsprettylane]

[turtledotjpeg]

[cornercritter]

the most self-indulgent false piece ever. literally no lore, i just wanted to draw her as a merperson because i CAN

[vamprisms]

will never get over seeing girls react to having a buzz cut for the first time

[curlygrant44]

*pulls Curly in for the sloppiest kiss known to man*

-( @francisco-alvarez )

(ooc: I'm so sorry you don't have to include this if you don't want to lmao😭)

Considering that he's three sheets to the wind, Curly doesn't fight the kiss; if anything, he melts into it with a hum of interest, although his eyes don't quite want to open so there's no telling if he has any idea that he's kissing someone who's practically a stranger. He's clearly not in his right mind at all-

Especially considering that a few seconds into the kiss, he slumps into Francisco, unable to support his own weight on such unsteady legs.

He may not know what exactly is happening or which part of the ships he's stumbled into, but he makes a list in his head of what he does know:

He's drunk. Well and truly drunk, for the first time in years, and it only took him...something like four shots, not that he was counting.

Whoever this is, they're not very good at kissing, in his opinion.

Right now he really doesn't care because it feels pretty great.

It's hard to think about how great it feels because his head is spinning so much even with his eyes closed.

This almost certainly isn't Jim, which means whoever this is has decided to brave death to kiss him, and that's flattering. He doesn't think he's worth that at all.

It's definitely not Sunshine or Mistake, either, because they don't have a beard. Which rules out the entire list of people who could reasonably plausibly decide to kiss him.

This feels like being back in college, and that's nice. He thinks about college a lot these days. He misses it, most of the time. That might have been the only part of his life that was really happy, but he tries not to think too much about that because that gets very depressing, very fast.

He really, really, more than anything in the world, wants a nap.

[antlersacornsandallium]

Deep breath

Posts talking about the need to unpack religious trauma from pagan practices or the influence of cultural Christianity on how modern pagans interpret their experiences practices ... Are not an attack.

You do not need to feel defensive. You don't need to feel confused by confused by what different people say online when it comes to things like "you're not actually being pagan if you do x thing" and then someone else says the opposite.

What you read is not always a conversation spoken directly to you.

(Except this. This, I am speaking directly to you.)

You're not sure where to begin with connecting to faith? Well congrats, no one ever is, welcome to the club, pull up a chair and start listening. Here is a tangled ball of yarn - what you make with it is entirely up to you. There are no easy answers, and there never were and never will be.

To people coming from more dogmatic faiths, this transition is jarring. You want a ritual, you want to know the right words to say, you want someone to teach you the steps of the dance. What you should sacrifice, how you should do it, what does this god like, what rules you should follow.

The rules are always the same, and they never changed for you regardless of your faith.

Be honest. Be kind. Be brave.

The rest is decorative.

Example: offering the gods mead. Does the recorded history say that mead was offered to the Norse gods? Absolutely. Do we know why mead? Why the blood of cattle? Why these sacrifices and not others? You can read about these things on the surface level and never think about what made these things valuable for this purpose, and be no closer to any answer. You've done the ritual and said the words but gotten no meaning from it.

To the point that I frequently see newbies coming in wondering anxiously what they should do if they can't find mead to offer a god. And I sort of want to shake them a bit and ask why are you so desperate to connect to a deity you don't understand? Is it because you were conditioned to believe that this is how humanity should interact with the divine? Do you believe that to have faith really means to believe in a god, and you just mentally swapped out which ones?

Why on earth do you think that sparkling apple juice is any less valuable than honey wine?

When were you going to question why everyone told you to offer mead? When were you going to ask "why this specifically though"? When were you going to wonder why you were looking for a book of do's and don'ts and why you were prepared to believe that the only acceptable offerings were the ones you were told?

The mead is decorative. It doesn't matter. The offering itself doesn't even matter - it's a representation of kindness and reciprocity. It has as much meaning as leaving a gift basket at a neighbor's door. You want to have a good relationship with your neighbors, so you build one. It's very important as an action, but the substance doesn't matter that much. The intent does.

So do yourself a favor and stop stressing. You are only hurting yourself. Your trauma needs healing and the scars may always remain, but you need to learn to put down the sword before it can begin. You don't need to fight, you don't need to boast, you don't need to read every book of medieval Norse poetry to understand any of it.

The rules are the same. Be honest, be kind, be brave. Start there. Decorate the rest however you want.

[applesandbannas747]

does pacat rlly not care about fence anymore 😭 i feel like it’s much better than dark rise and could be better than captive prince too…it’s been a year since i last consumed anything fence-related and i really don’t understand what’s going on with the series?? but anyways i like ur fics a lot & agree with ur reviews of srb’s novels, which also could have had so much potential but ended up kind of sucking in a lot of ways.

Pacat is a mystery to me. Personally, I believe Dark Rise is his best work--it shows much better pacing than Captive Prince and gets the same impact and feel without going to such extreme and explicit horrors, which shows a lot of skill (I know CP is his most beloved series but he's improved a lot since writing it haha). What gets me is that Fence STARTED really strong and I counted it as his best work for sure. There were fun tropes and dynamics, interesting characters with a central relationship promising contention, fighting, and tension, and some fun elements in the mystery of Jesse and potential in the reveal of Nick's lineage. And you could tell there was passion in the project...but even by the later issues of the original 12-issue run, Pacat's social media reflected a large disinterest in Fence, and that disinterest has shown in the story as Fence continues to progress.

I try to logic and rationalize and analyze everything Fence related and literally every time I do I get met with 'it's not that deep' from the actual canon lmfao but I'm going to offer my rationalization anyway lmao the only reason I can think to justify Pacat's lack of interaction with Fence on Twitter besides not caring about it much is that it doesn't fit his brand. Which is only defined by two other series, but it's very much a high fantasy/historical fantasy dark romance with stomach-churning undertones and much darker themes than Fence. So I gave him that excuse for a long time. Fence doesn't fit within that brand at all, so from a marketing standpoint, it makes some amount of sense to focus more on the other franchises. However, I think this strategic thinking is giving too much credit--Fence has always had really shit marketing so either Pacat has no mind for marketing or he doesn't care to market Fence, which both get us back to the only real reason being he just doesn't care about it as much as his other things.

Do I expect Pacat to be hanging out in the Twitter FENCEtag? No. But I do think it's strange that he'll post tweets saying happy birthday to other people's books the day they come out, but literally didn't ever make a Fence Redemption announcement or say anything on the release day. The most he's done is retweet a couple things from BOOM! and 2 other outside sources. And this is regular behavior--he didn't do announcements for RIVALS or RISE either and didn't promote them at all. Yet Dark Rise gets announcements all the way along--title announcement, release date announcement, cover reveal, etc etc etc. He also posts and retweets fanart for his other 2 books really regularly, yet he didn't even retweet all of Jo's (the co-creator and illustrator of Fence) pieces for the Fence event Jo hosted in April, let alone bother with much fanart of it. There's just no reason for the vast gap in involvement and enthusiasm other than him very strongly preferring his other projects and not bothering with the effort of interacting with Fence. He'll occasionally ask culture questions (like if Americans say 'coz' for cousin or how to say something in French) but that's legitimately the best argument there is for his interest or care in the project.

And lastly, his lack of interest shows in the story. He handed his story off to someone else to write novels for and simply let her go wild without regard for how it impacted the comics or the fans. Further, Pacat lost track of his own story and characters between Volume 3 & 4 in a way that I cannot excuse as anything other than inconsistent characterization. And I know I'm biased there, but I make so many people in real life read Fence that I don't jabber at about it/pull into the fandom (so they have no knowledge of my takes), and all of them have commented on the 180 the characters made between the volumes. And, listen, if I wouldn't accept that kind of inconsistency in characterization when grading my 12-year-olds' narrative writing projects, why am I still sitting here trying to excuse the lazy/poor writing in a published and successful author? The pacing is also telling--a lot of conflict was skipped over 'off screen' between the volumes (which, say it with me folks, is lazy writing). Nick's resentment toward Seiji turned into full admiration sans any ill feelings or acknowledgment that even if he IS hot shit, he was still a major asshole in his initial conception, and Seiji apparently agreed to drop his thing about Jesse (you know, the thing that had them in a fist fight approximately 40 pages of comic before). There was no build-up to their relationship or resolution of the conflict that made it unhealthy (expect to have Nick 'admit' Seiji was right to treat him like shit...) These things push the story along a lot faster; rivals to lovers moves really fast if you skip all the tedious development of the characters getting to know, respect, tolerate, and then like each other. Pacat loves rivals/enemies to lovers and (to be blunt) mean/cold bottoms, so it is so fucking bizarre to me that he'd speedrun the relationship and change the characterization so much when it's directly moving away from his preferences (see: Captive Prince, Dark Rise). I don’t know how it happened from anything other than sheer laziness or from not caring about Fence so deeply that he let SRB overwrite the characters and romance he'd originally created.

Last, there are just SO many inconsistencies and copyedit-level mistakes. And I get it that typos happen, but it happens so much that it's like,,, are you even rereading the scripts before you throw them at your publisher? And the continuity errors are massive at this point. Seiji's year in France, which was apparently the result of his loss to Jesse, is only possible if time travel exists and also timelines exist simultaneously. How do you fuck up so big when constructing a story you care about? At least by the time it gets published, you should be sure it's READY to be published. It's like he's writing issue-by-issue as he goes with no plan and can't be bothered to skim through the previous issues to check for things.

I just can't come up with a reality where Pacat actually loves Fence when this is all the care he gives it. We are so so so lucky to have Jo--she is literally the most amazing and gives so much love and care to Fence, and it shows...I just wish Pacat's writing didn't affect her contribution to the comic too. But she at least loves Fence even if Pacat doesn't seem to tell her all that much more than he tells the rest of us LMFAO

This turned into a WHOLE messy essay, I just have a lot of thoughts and they've been brewing for years so sorry to go off on my mad ravings and thanks for tuning in XD and also!!! I'm so happy you like my fics TT.TT <33 and also that you see my point about the novels uwu

[aintgonnatakethis]

I have this game where, after watching a film, I go read its Wikipedia page. It's crazy how often what's detailed there is just... not what happened.

Today's example is Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (*cough* Daniel Craig full frontal nudity 👀)

"Dyer stages a suicide attempt"

Me, having just watched a guy clearly tweaking off his head on something and in the middle of a psychotic break: 😐😐😐

"Dyer begins to become something of a nuisance, possibly beyond Bacon's ability to tolerate him much longer."

Oh I see, whoever wrote this has some opinions about addiction and mental health, huh?

And that's not even touching on how the actual trigger point for Dyer's depression, addiction, and suicide wasn't even mentioned??? Bacon wanted Dyer to have really rough dominating sex with him and became verbally abusive when Dyer didn't want to. It was clearly the inciting incident - from the moment early on in their relationship when Dyer tried to indulge Bacon's masochism (whispering "sorry" before he starts the scene, I mean come on!) up to the point where Dyer can't get it up because he doesn't want to hurt Bacon and is viciously berated for it.

It's only after that he turns to drugs and begins the slow descent into depression and suicidality. Quite a big thing to miss out of a 'summary'. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[emcant]

Great therapy session! I feel sick as hell 👍

[mushroomjar]

I talk a lot about cannibalism for someone who can't stand the taste of blood

[pirategf]

unfortunately vaping can never compete with smoking when its 1am and you're a little drunk they NEED to do something about this

[autistickaitovocaloid]

It could just be because I'm a hotheaded youth but the way some tumblr users talk about anyone under the age of like 23 makes me go into a sort of demon blood rage.

[yourlocaldisneyvillain]

I so enjoy seeing anons thirst over you. One of my favourite things to see on the dash

any particular reason you enjoy that so much? :)

[northsballadmoved]

ohhh head full so many thoughts about robbsansa being twins that ultimately makes the lannisters & their allies hate her more...when joffrey is having the kingsguard beat her for robb's victory, he brings in folktales about how robb defeated lannister men with an army of wargs and feasted on their flesh in the night, & how sansa is as unnatural as her brother and their wolves. and as twins? they not only share blood but a part of each other. they are constant mirrors. robb wins, sansa is punished. because what robb is capable of, so is sansa. she is the ever present reflection of the lannisters losses. and i think joffrey was as afraid of them as he spited them.

[swordofruln]

[mun] hey uh not directed at anyone but just a fair warning im not a big fan of the whole "making a villain muse your hero character's punching bag and expecting no repercussion" thing i sometimes see in the rpc.

theres already been far too much of that in the homestuck rpc i used to partake in, and i nowadays have 0 tolerance for that now, so if you dont like that, feel free to unfollow.

people who roleplay mean or villain muses want to have fun as well. this isnt just about having a power fantasy or in stroking a muns ego because their muse is the justified good guy:tm:

its about fun for both people, and if you weigh the scales severely against the muse of your partner, be they good or evil, one party falls short of enjoyment, and thats not fair.

that being said, if you have your muse interacting disrespectfully with a villain muse who does have feasable means to reach yours and retaliate, dont act surprised or offended when their muse reacts in kind.

if someone i wasnt okay with disrespecting chien pao did so, i would absolutely have chien pai maul their muse and then i would fucking end interaction completely.

im too old to put up with this sort of righteous selfmasturbation so if that completely goes against your own comfort, i respect that, but also respectfully ask you to unfollow.

thank you for reading.

[arcxnumvitae]

Hi

Hello

Everyone having a nice, pleasant, enjoyable Sunday?

Small psa. I have only a finite amount of patience. If I softblock you and you continue to follow me two or three more times in a way that shows you know it isn’t Tumblr just glitching (and Tumblr has never glitched so badly to where it will have you unfollow the same person three times in a row), I will hardblock you. 

If you still try to later follow me from another blog later despite that? I will hardblock you again and feel very fucking annoyed! Respect that I said no, how about that!

I guess I have to make this post to make it clear to whatever other blogs that may be out there to knock it off.