#open book asks

[ask-mystery-shack-cipher]

[fonthoura]

Hc where Garak knows Julian is a liar, but he can't, for the life of him, know what he's lying about.

Like, he has this feeling, given to him by years of training and an observant eyes, that Julian is very purposefully unauthentic, and it seems that no one else notices.

He sees how Julian talks a lot and overshares, but never really says anything, to the point where his friends would have a hard time answering any question about him, like, for fucks sake, it took reading his file to get to know his date of birth because no one knew.

Jadzia thinks he has a brother, Miles is convinced he has a sister, and Garak is fairly sure he is an only child, the problem is, Julian doesn't talk about it. He talks too much and hardly says anything.

Garak also notices how he is always tense, as if holding back, like when he lets himself be punched when he clearly sees it coming, when he let's things break even though Garak is sure he could've caught them mid air, how he seems to calculate the perfect amount of clumsy in a day (once he even bumped into Garak and pretended to be distracted) and no one notices.

But Garak does, Garak knows he is lying about something, he feels it, specially when he looses on games and arguments, like he could not think of something else but Garak sees it in his eyes that he is hiding something.

And Garak constantly gets worried, despite his best knowledge, about him.

He knows how lonely it is, to keep yourself hidden from the world, to not let anyone know you, to hold the weight of a thousand secrets on his body, and constantly he sees this weight taking it's toll on the doctor.

Julian keeps people at arms length, he gets close on condition, he larps with Miles, discuss literature with Garak and converses with Jadzia, but keeps them all compartmentalized, always distant, even his crush on Jadzia being shallow, no real depth to it.

Julian seems skin deep and Garak knows how it feels and aches for him.

So he constantly tries to scratch the surface, aways tries to get Julian out of his lie made shell like Julian does to him, and he doesn't succeed, but he keeps trying.

Specially after he finds out that Julian had been gone for a month and not even him noticed it, he knows it's because no one would, because Julian keeps so much of himself hidden that you can't distinguish him from a fake.

And then, doctor Zimmermann shows up...

[atihkinsam]

The reason wincest WORKS and is valid and the people who like it are not insane/incestuous (even though some losers *read hellers* may disagree) is solely because of jared and jensen and THEIR dynamic and the energy they put into THEIR characters.

Also read: these characters who are brothers are FICTIONAL. They are not Real People.

Anyone who has siblings can attest to the fact that regular run-of-the-mill normal siblings do not act like Sam/Dean in any way. Not even close. Canon salmondean relationship weirdness/gencest/weirdcest crawled so that fanon wincest could walk. Why is this hard to wrap your head around. People who enjoy/ship wincest are not gross incestuous fucks. They are people who read into the subtext (and sometimes even the in-your-face text) on a Gothic horror show about Super Weird brothers cruising through the American country to kill things that go bump in the night.

Because really, do you and your brother/sister run around doing absolutely everything together? Do you self insert yourself into your sibling's life because you want to have the absolute final say about their actions and decisions?? Forsake multiple romantic relationships in favour of being with each other??? Coop up, isolate yourselves and play house with each other and compare yourselves to married couples/people in relationships???? because if you do, YOU ARE WEIRD much like sam and dean.

Real non-incestuous siblings are usually Normal About Each Other. Get that through your thick skull.

Calling wincesties incestuous is YOUR weirdass incest projections. The call is coming from inside the house.

[clinicallyinsanedumpsterrabbit]

So I may have got The Book of Bill and it has me in a slight tiny itty bit of a death grip hyperfixation where all I've been able to imagine is his pathetic toxic ex ass

This pathetic triangle has once again parasitically wormed his way into my brain after years of absence

Also he totally would try and gaslight Ford and say he probably just lost the shirt when he stole it if ever asked where the shirt went

Ok so I could've put a ton of things in that last, panel, so I did, with some joke suggestive ones as the last two below the cut

I'm going to explode him with stock video explosions a bajillion times over

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I ABSOLUTELY ADORE YOUR SQQ HE LOOKS SO FUCKINH DONE WITH LIFE

The recipe for SQQ is: calm on the outside, screaming on the inside.

[toaster-fire-art]

I've offically come full circle a decade later since I'm back hyperfixating on the Arthurian legend distracting myself from everything and listening to the same music as my 14 year old self was. But hey at least I have the confidence in drawing them now.

I love them so so dearly I'm going just a little insane, I'm sorry to everyone who doesn't know me beyond my usual fandoms, you have to put up with what rearranged my brain chemistry when I was a kid.

This started as just a few of the knights, Lancelot, Gawaine, and Galahad and then it became: "Oh but then I should draw __" and here we are. My designs are all over the place and I cannot be bothered to actually draw armor I'll die i just want to draw pretty patterns. But I think the mismatch of clothing styles and all that makes it cohesive?

And I'm going with Malroy and T.H White influence as it's what I know best, that being said all the boys have their coat of arms alluded to in some way but you might have to squint.

(my laptop absolutely hates me for this one. imagine exporting a file and then having to manipulate the sizing 3 times for it to even be able to upload anywhere, couldn't be me. I don't even know how to show the full thing..)

[apollos-polls]

Anon requested this to be posted without the ask!

[queerliblib]

Do you know of any other free online libraries like yours? I love QLL So Much and I would love to be able to expand my book possibilities even more :) They don’t have to be queer focused - anything is good! (Of course i’m also signed up w my local library which is great and has a good-size selection, but sometimes holds are very long)

one of the reasons we exist is because there isn’t anyone else doing exactly what we do!

there are quite a few other brick & mortar queer libraries scattered across the continent but most don’t have that digital presence (unless you’re in Minnesota! if so, check out Quatrefoil). there are also a LOT of regular libraries with digital collections on Libby or Hoopla - some public libraries have really specific residency requirements to be a member, others have some flexibility (reddit is actually a font of knowledge if you’re exploring this - r/audiobooks or r/libby to start). If you already have a public library card, there are also a lot of resource-sharing initiatives out there between libraries that you may be eligible for - for example MeL in michigan, or the Brooklyn Public Library’s Books UnBanned initiative if you meet their age window, or if you have any connections to an academic library InterLibraryLoan (ILL) - even if you’re not a student/faculty/staff some colleges/universities have ‘community user’ policies you could explore. you can always walk into your library and ask a library worker if your local system is connected to anything like this (they will be THRILLED to answer that question, let me tell you).

I’d also strongly encourage you to go absolutely hog wild on Open Access resources like Project Gutenberg, which has a ton of amazing things in the public domain. also the directory of open access books or world digital library for the more academically inclined.

[aroaceleovaldez]

What is the PR disaster in question that made Rick announce TSATS? I wasn’t active in the online fandom at that point

Of course! This was awhile ago so it figures people don't remember it/aren't familiar:

Basically a couple years back (2020) the fandom had some posts circulate discussing the ways different characters in the Riordanverse were written poorly or offensively. There was a masterpost that went around tumblr but the two major points people were particularly focusing on were Piper and Samirah (particularly because Piper had featured prominently again in Trials of Apollo recently and the third MCGA book had further emphasized and discussed Samirah being Muslim, since it was supposed to take place during Ramadan). Basically each had multiple posts breaking down the ways they were depicted incorrectly or offensively. The entire fandom for a little bit was VERY intensely discussing this (and it's around this time the "RR crit" tag got very popularized on tumblr - it did exist before, but suddenly was being used VERY frequently - cause it was that wide-spread - though the discussion took over basically every side of Riordaverse social media on different platforms). People really wanted Rick to respond to these criticisms, so he did!

He made two blog posts, one about Piper and one about Samirah. He has since deleted both so the links are to archived versions. The short version: he essentially tried to justify his poor research and double-down that he hadn't written them offensively, actually, people were just being mean to him. The fandom, of course, reacted poorly to this.

[Further elaborated events under the cut since this got a bit lengthy]

(Fun fact, this all happened within a month or so of the time i posted an open letter on aphobic tropes in the Riordanverse that Rick replied to, and then he immediately followed with announcing that Reyna was intended to be ace-coded [which cause a LOT of fandom debate] before Rick dipped for a couple of weeks, and then came back to post the blog posts in response to Piper and Sam stuff. So I like to jokingly refer to this as "The time I imploded the fandom/drove Rick off of twitter." Twas I that set the house ablaze.)

Rick fully left social media after this and the LT Musical social media manager became Rick's social media manager for the time being.

So this all happened June/July of 2020. Tower of Nero would end up being published in October of 2020 and a few months after that Rick would state that he was done with the series and wouldn't be writing any more series installments involving Percy, and also that he wouldn't be writing a Nico quest following Tower of Nero as it "wasn't his place to" and encouraged the community to write their own versions of Nico's story.

The community continued to circulate the tumblr posts and discuss the topics of Rick's offensive character depictions, and this is also where we see the dramatic shift in how the fandom depicts Piper in fanwork (though in most cases it is admittedly not an improvement 😬) because of all this discussion. This is also around the time when the fandom brought Viria under scrutiny claiming that she was whitewashing Piper as part of the same discussions, through the justification that she was drawing Annabeth as having tan skin (which she does canonically), and if Annabeth has tanner skin then Piper then that's whitewashing Piper? Except they were using completely separate images of not fully rendered Piper art versus Annabeth in dramatic lighting, so it's all very awkward and poor logic, and did actually get kind of racist. A lot of people were calling it "Tannabeth Blackchase" (yeah, i know) or similar and a common sentiment you'd see repeated is "Don't draw Annabeth as having darker skin than Piper, because that's offensive/racist/whitewashing." (Note: it was not phrased "don't draw Piper as having lighter skin than Annabeth" - we also won't get into certain offensive depictions of Native Americans, but I digress). But yeah, the Annabeth stuff in all that did not age well at all.

Anyways, in October of 2021 however Rick would announce that he was co-writing The Sun And The Star - with a lot of heavy emphasis on how Mark Oshiro works as a sensitivity reader, and some false advertising from the official social media that Mark Oshiro was the first time a non-Riordan author would be collaborating on the series (disregarding the ghostwriters completely). One of the big criticisms in the breaking down of issues in Rick's writing was his lack of ever seeking a sensitivity reader, and fans claiming that a sensitivity reader could solve a lot of the problems. This was basically Rick's "look! I totally listened!!!!" (though it did little to actually improve things, based on the book) and in TSATS as well Piper gets a large cameo at the end where the text very directly addresses a lot of points made in criticism of Rick's writing of her.

We also then of course got the CoTG trilogy later, explicitly stated to be for advertising purposes for the show.

So basically, short version: Rick came under scrutiny for a lot of offensive writing within the span of two months, made some bad blog posts doubling down about it, left social media. TOA ends. Rick says he wasn't going to continue the series/write what would become TSATS. Community celebrates the end of of the franchise but also continues to discuss Rick's poor writing and the blog posts at length. Rick suddenly announces TSATS and Mark Oshiro's involvement. Everybody gets distracted from being mad. Show announcement stuff also happens and the discussions peter out.

[lazylittledragon]

The book I’m reading has a woman who is perhaps a little too cheerful about things like deadly worm infestations and cutting people open

Naturally, I thought of Cyra

this is genuinely such an honour also what book is that please and thank you

[iceagebaby]

obsessed with @mudpuddless king halt au, ive been thinking a lot

crowley is in denyal, he is just hibernian RIGHT?

i also have some skeches of halt in regal clothing, but im not a fan of them, and i cant find accurate irish royal clothing to use as reference, what i drew was just making it up as i go

[crippled-peeper]

shameless e-begging post because I’m drowning. I overdrafted my checking account because I had to buy food & take my cat to the vet, I have to buy prescriptions soon I won’t be able to, and I have to get to physical therapy somehow tomorrow.

I could really use help right now. I’m in year 3 of trying to get on SSDI, and not only is my spine *destroyed*, I’m also bipolar (medicated), have severe chronic pain, and I’m healing from PTSD. I’m alone and I don’t know many people here (I fled abuse across the country). please share this if you can ✨🖤✨

for brevity: my Pa/ypal is @mhickey3 , my ven/mo is @morgen-hickey and cashapp is $MorgenHickey

[theauthor-of-the-journals]

Hey baby are you looking for a new muse? wink wink wink blink wink

Am I- no. Heavens no. I am not looking for anything similar to the relationship I had with Bill.

The internet has taught me that we had an extremely toxic relationship and I do not want to deal with that again.

And even if I were to agree, which I’m not, you sent in an anonymous ask which defeats the purpose.

What a minute…

This is Bill isn’t it? I fell for another one of your tricks but this time I caught it.

Very funny but no. I’m not sure who gave you a phone in the theraprism but I think it would be smart for them to take that away from you.

[dimonds456]

Okay but if Bill actually did steal Ford's eyes, do you know what that would mean??

Cuz the ONLY thing keeping Bill out of the basement- thus away from the portal- were retinal scanners, which would only work if Ford was himself. If his eyes were slits (thus Bill was possessing him) the door would not open.

So that's genius, right? Boom. Now even if Bill possesses Ford, Bill will never get into the basement! Hah!

But uhh. If the Eye Stealer takes Ford's eyes, that isn't a problem anymore, is it? Cuz they could just use those eyes, which would be stuck with Ford's original retinas, and open the door THAT way

And what would Ford have been able to do to stop them? Even IF he had sight, his body was so broken and battered and tired by that point that if he went up against a monster, he wouldn't stand a chance.

Not only that, but if Ford were to get possessed again, no one would be able to tell. Ignoring the behavioral differences, from a visual aspect, they look EXACTLY the same. The ONE TELL that Bill is possessing someone is just GONE.

The only thing Bill would loose in this situation is sight himself, IF he ever possessed Ford again. But that'd probably be worth it considered there is NOTHING BUT GAINS otherwise. That, and he wouldn't have much of a reason to anymore aside from psychological torture to either Ford himself or the people around him.

Like. That's terrifying.

No wonder Ford was so goddamn afraid. If the Eye Stealer was successful, there would be no way to stop Bill. That, and Ford would be blinded for life, and possibly killed, because there's no way Bill would treat his injuries after that, right?

He wasn't just backed into a corner here; he was actively being pushed into it.

[sissa-arrows]

Arabs are not native to North Africa, that's like saying white people are native to South America or South America. They're all there because of colonialism.

Except there’s tons of studies proving that the “Arabs” of North Africa are not descendants of Arabs but Arabized natives.

Very few Arab tribes settled in North Africa and the process of arabization was way more cultural than demographic. For example in a 2017 study that used Tunisia to represent North Africa they concluded that we were 88% North Africans/Imazighen, 2% from Western and Central Africa, 4% Arabs and 5% Europeans.

So Arabs as a whole are not native to North Africa but the people living there and calling themselves “Arabs” are native not colonizers.

You can totally condemn the arabization but claiming that Arabized natives are colonizers is stupid.

Lastly as I always say as an Algerian our grandparents fought for a FREE ALGERIA. For an ALGERIAN ALGERIA. They didn’t fight for an Arab Algeria or an Amazigh Algeria. So I don’t give a flying fuck if people are Arabized or not. We’re Algerians that’s it.

[damthosefandoms]

au where everything’s the same but mr. and mrs. curtis die on darry’s 18th birthday and he has to work his ass off to graduate early so he can bring his (14 & 11 year old) brothers home and in that time between it all, has to rip up a college acceptance letter, turn down a full-ride football scholarship, fix up the house, find a job that’ll take him part time and eventually full-time, and loses his friends who can’t get over the fact he’s not going to be walking with them at graduation because he’ll be done with school before them. darry whose first taste of adulthood hits him like a train.