#people shitting on dunk so much over the years but the thing is

[airenyah]

one thing i really love about the lilly confrontation in ep12 is how even though style is only a supporting character in that scene and the camera isn't on him all that much, you can still clearly see just how worried style is about his dad. like, of course the first thing out of his mouth is "dad" and he's looking at him

but it's not just that. style's dad asks what's going on and we get reaction shots of everyone else (not style), and when the camera goes back to the wide shot while lilly says "i'll tell you soon" we can see that style is still staring at his dad

in fact, right before it cuts away to a different shot, style actually moves his leg as if he wants to take a step towards his dad, as if he wants nothing more than to run to him, to check on him, to make sure he's safe and uninjured and to rescue him somehow:

style wants nothing more but to run to his dad and to check on him. the camera cuts to lilly inviting everyone to sit down and style must have finally looked over to her in reaction to her talking, because when the camera cuts to the group style is looking at lilly at first, but then his eyes immediately move towards his dad again and he's scrunching his eyebrows and you can tell how worried he is. the only question on his mind right now is whether his dad is okay. everything within him is pulling him towards his dad

then bison takes a small, hesitant step towards the table

and with that, style knows he's finally allowed to get close to his dad without risking something bad happening. this is the moment style's been waiting for. the second style knows he can safely start moving, he instantly rushes to his dad with no hesitation, practically runs to him while he keeps his eyes totally fixed on his dad

even when style is sitting down he never takes his eyes off of his dad and i love that we can tell despite the fact that we only see the back of style's head

style sits and he's still staring at his dad and his dad looks back at him and there's some silent communication happening between them, as if style is asking are you okay? are you well? are you hurt? and his dad is like i'm fine, but what's all this?

after this, there are a few other shots in between while lilly is starting to bring style's dad up to speed, and it's only now that style can afford to focus on lilly, now that he's made sure his dad is (mostly) (physically, at least) fine:

lilly now has this whole monologue, with her sons chiming in:

LILLY: You probably don’t know, but your son, and your brother, together with my sons, threw me in jail. They probably thought I’d be in there for life. They must have forgotten that money can buy even freedom. FADEL: What the hell do you want now? LILLY: Is that how you talk to your mother, Fadel? I lost everything because of you. My reputation, the trust I built, my connection, even my employees… Everything was ruined because of you. BISON: As it should be. You don’t deserve anything. Let them go and deal with me! LILLY: What satisfaction would that give me?

style focuses on lilly throughout her whole monologue and we can mostly see the side/back of his head whenever the camera pans out to this shot:

i don't know what emotions are happening on his face since we can't exactly see it, but i think he's paying close attention to what lilly is saying and doing so that he can be ready to jump in at any second if things take a turn for the worse and there's something he can do to save the situation (similar to when keen had him and fadel at gun point in ep10)

kant now decides to speak up and offers his life in exchange for his brother's, and style immediately jumps on it as well and tells lilly that she can do anything to him (style), but to let his dad go.

and after style says that, after style announces that he's willing to sacrifice himself, he again turns his head to his dad and there's again some kind of silent dialogue going on between them as his dad looks at him for a moment, too, before they both put their attention on lilly again:

and i love that style is communicating with his dad again at this very point, because style offering himself up will also affect his dad. his dad might be physically fine if style trades his dad for himself, but emotionally the dad will be ruined if lilly takes his son's life, especially when he's already had to deal with the loss of his wife years ago. style being willing to sacrifice himself isn't nothing, in fact, it's a very big deal and so the two of them communicate about it

lilly continues to talk:

So it was your hero complex that made Fadel and Bison fall head over heels for you. Don’t worry. I prepared some drinks for everyone. You will all… die here together.

and again style is focused on lilly while she talks, paying close attention (i think. it's not like i can see his face, sigh)

because lilly is now the most immediate danger and it's vital for style to know what she's doing in case she is planning on attacking his dad or whatever else she could be doing. then style has dialogue that directly addresses his dad, so obviously he'd be looking at him

and what i adore is that after this style keeps his eyes fixed on his dad again even when it cuts back out to the wide shot and it's only when lilly opens her mouth and continues to talk that style slowly draws his attention back to her

the brothers start pleading with their mother now and we don't see style for quite a long time. it's only after lilly says she'll spare her sons' boyfriends if her sons poison their family members that we're shown style's reaction again. at first he's looking straight ahead before he turns his head and i'm guessing he's looking at kant, communicating with him (or at least trying to? kant isn't looking at him in the shot right beforehand) and then he turns to look at his dad again, in shock

potentially he might also be looking at fadel instead, here. it's a bit hard to tell from this angle and we don't get a shot of someone responding to him, it just cuts straight to lilly. both versions would be coherent: if style is looking at his dad, it's in a fuck is my dad going to die? sort of way and if he's looking at fadel it would be something more like fuck what do we do you're not actually killing him are you?

style's definitely looking at fadel when he says "mueng" after fadel says he can follow lilly's order

it's a please don't do this, please don't kill my dad and maybe also a little bit of a there's gotta be a better way out, right? we gotta be able to come up with something, right?

in the next shot it's a bit hard to tell if style is looking at lilly or at fadel, but judging by how much we can see of his jaw/cheek i think he's looking at fadel, actually

because this is style's head position looking at lilly, we can clearly see the side of his cheek as well as his chin:

when he's looking at his dad we see absolutely no cheek and no chin, just his hair, just the back of his head:

and so i think this is him looking at fadel, because we see mostly the back of his head, but also a tiny little bit of his cheek, telling us he hasn't turned his head all the way to the side:

it would certainly make sense if he was looking at fadel in the context of the scene, because now fadel is the most immediate danger to style's dad if fadel really does give style's dad the poisoned drink, not lilly. it's fadel's actions that matter now, whether style's dad lives or dies depends entirely on what fadel does now

and so style watches fadel closely when fadel lifts the cup and while i do think style kind of trusted fadel not to kill his dad, style was most definitely nervous and was ready to jump in at any moment

fadel and bison do save the day and kill lilly in the end

anyway, the point of this post is i just love how focused style is on his dad in the beginning of the scene when he doesn't yet know if his dad is alright and i love the silent communication happening between them throughout the scene, even though both of them end up as background characters in the brothers vs mother showdown. the actors didn't forget to play the relationship that their characters have with each other and it fills me with so much joy. because style and his dad is easily my favorite non-romantic relationship in this show (save for maybe fadel and bison) and we've been told (and shown) over and over again how important style and his dad are to each other and i'm sooooo so happy that the actors kept this relationship up and kept telling their story consistently even when their characters were by far not the main focus of the scene

[medicinemane]

And maybe you'll be like "but if you don't trust businesses, how can you trust welfare?"

I fucking don't. My mom trying to get on food stamps fucked me up because a lady I never met without my permission got my SSN from my mom and started editing my files. My heart still races to this very second whenever I think about it, it kinda messed me up bad and I'll never ever ever see any kind of recourse

And I'm terrified that I'm gonna lose my medicaid just cause I inherited some money from my grandpa

And I've never even applied for disability cause it kinda doesn't matter finding out if I'd qualify or not cause of my depression, when the rules are so restrictive I don't know if I've even be allowed to keep my house

I do not fucking trust these things on a personal level. I feel like out of a lot of people I have the most to fear from them cause I'm on the edge of having things work, and that gets you punished

...but I need medicaid in order to have insurance (and when you strip out the finance side of medicaid, I love medicaid... they're honestly incredible insurance... I just... I just... dental is like 90% of why medicaid is so important to me, ever since I found out this state pays for it I've actually been able to do cleanings which is important to me cause I can't always get myself to brush)

And I think things like disability and food stamps are pretty damn important on a personal level, and honestly are also good for the economy cause they get people spending... it's practically a free cash infusion into the economy, cause these are people who need to buy stuff

There's just so much important stuff welfare does that it's worth dealing with government

No, what I want is more accountability so if someone gets my SSN from a 3rd party like my mom they're held to HIPPA styles standards where that's not ok to access my files without my permission (She changed my fucking address and tried to get medicaid to investigate me for fraud! Never even met me)

Like have some accountability there and in every situation

Secondly I want less punitive focused rules. I'd frankly prefer bezos get on disability than smack down some poor sod cause they got $2000 in the bank or cause their friend lets them live with them for free

If there's gonna be a cut off on these programs, it needs to be a solid step above the poverty line, cause... by definition I assume poverty line denotes kinda the minimum expected income people can reasonably live off of, and if you take away benefits people are gonna lose a chunk of money to covering that stuff themself, so you need a buffer before you kick people off

I don't fucking trust the government for a second, I've actively been fucked by them and on a personal level I avoid everything but medicaid and only that cause everything but the money is pleasant to deal with and I kinda need it (honestly if I was rich I'm not even kidding that I'd rather give medicaid like $400 a month than some insurance company, I sincerely like them as insurance)

But I'd trust them a lot more if they were less punitive, less out to hunt me down and gut me cause someone handed me a fiver or cause I started to get on my feet, and if government employees had concrete rules they had to follow that were actually transparent and enforced

Like 90% of my problems with welfare go away if they're held accountable and there's less "catch the welfare cheats" mentality going around

I don't trust the government in the slightest, but sadly there some jobs it kinda has to do, so I'd just rather force it to be an open book where the public can keep an eye on it and if they step out of line there's consequences (sort of like I don't trust most mega corps but happen to sometimes need stuff from them... did you know literally every cell service provider has been illegally selling shit like your location data to random people like bounty hunters, and the FCC just slapped them with a fine that's 0.02% of their yearly incomes and debated even doing that? I even can offer a source on that)

...I don't trust much of any authority cause they constantly fail me and kinda screw me. Don't trust doctors either, but I still gotta go to them, you know? ...they're just... they're real bad at listening... so many systems need systemic change

(You know who I really don't trust is the cops. I could point to so many examples. My uncle doesn't trust cops either, and he's an ex Fire and SWAT paramedic, he worked with them and we still got into a long conversation where he basically tore into them far better than I can)

(I don't trust authority that's not accountable)

[drbtinglecannon]

People also fail to factor in Toshiro's mental & physical state, as well as the chimera!Falin reveal, when he finally snaps at Laios and they have that big fight

He is visibly exhausted and had been skipping meals when Laios explains the details of their journey. I love Laios, and I understand why he felt safe to tell Toshiro all that information, but that was a lot to dump on the guy, especially cuz dark magic is HIGHLY illegal. Kabru manages to calm the situation but then they immediately get attacked by chimera!Falin who kills most of the people across THREE parties, Toshiro yells at Marcille about Falin cuz well dark magic was used and now she's a mostly mindless killing machine, then without thinking Laios slaps him for getting angry?? No wonder he finally snapped! Toshiro's mental & physical state also contributes to why he was so calloused in telling Laios how he really felt around him

I saw a post of their fight long before I got into dunmeshi and read the manga myself, and it left out all that info I mentioned above, so I decided "hey fuck this guy" immediately after seeing the post. But then I read the manga myself and when I got to that scene it was wildly different, there was a lot of context and nuance the post omitted that made the fight miserable to read for both Laios and Toshiro sakes

Yes, Toshiro unfortunately hurt Laios in a similar way that people intentionally did in his past, but they also parted on amicable terms with Toshiro giving Laios the bell to call him for help anytime (which Laios accidentally uses to cause Toshiro MORE grief with by unknowingly ringing it 24/7 lol)

i feel like not enough ppl are factoring in the cultural clash between laios and shuro and the many micro agressions shuro faced while being in their group. literally the name 'shuro' in itself is one

his name is toshiro 😭 lets also not forget that he has his own communication issues, in the opposite way that laios does- thats literally a factor in their argument, that his envy for laios's ability to express himself sincerely manifested as part of his distaste for him.

ig all this to say like, was their fight heart wrenching, especially when reading laios as autistic? absolutely. anybody whos ever been in laios's position knows how much it hurts to realize someone you thought was your friend doesnt actually like having you around, especially when they didnt tell you and you had no way of knowing due to not understanding their cues. but im begging yall to step back and see the nuance of this situation cause im gonna be real a lot of you are kinda just brushing over it acting like everything is toshiros fault and that hes a terrible person when in reality hes an average guy who really, really clashed with laios and it led to a very long misunderstanding due to their supremely opposite methods of communication. even laios and toshiro, after letting everything out in their fight, were able to come to an understanding and start a foundation for an actual friendship built on better communication

[ponett]

Any opinion on the Pokemon Gigaleak or nah?

I think seeing some of the WIP assets from when gen 3 was in development is kinda neat, because Game Freak is normally so secretive about that kind of thing. But beyond that I mostly just find this whole situation tiring.

Fans have a tendency to almost treat scrapped material as "more canon" than whatever actually made it into the finished product, in a way. It's treated as this pure, unfiltered insight into the creators' true vision. In reality, most of the time this stuff gets cut for a reason. Sometimes they very quickly realize it was a bad idea that was never gonna work, and they don't go very far with it. Sometimes it's a pitch from just one guy on the team that was never gonna get accepted. Sometimes they're just spitballing. Experimentation and iteration and knowing when to cut things are integral parts of the artistic process.

And hell, a lot of the time creators will just mess around with an idea purely as a creative exercise, or to get an idea out of their system, or to explore a crazy what-if scenario, or even just as a joke, with no intention of ever actually using those ideas. We recently saw this same thing happened with those leaked Rebecca Sugar sketches, where people were like "OMG Rebecca ships this, this is what they REALLY wanted to do with the show, this is canon, this was happening off-screen!!" And it's like, y'all have no idea how much crazy shit your favorite artists draw with their characters just to amuse themselves. The crew on Clarence had a not-so-secret Tumblr where they redrew scenes from Evangelion with Clarence characters. That doesn't mean they wanted to turn Clarence into Eva. They were just screwing around. This happens all the time, and with way more extreme examples than these. Lord knows how many Disney animators have drawn Mickey Mouse with his dick out over the years. That doesn't mean they ever actually wanted to make an official Mickey Mouse porno.

And, of course, there's the response to those myths that were never supposed to see the light of day. Anyone who's even passingly familiar with mythology from just about any part of the world shouldn't be surprised to hear fables about humans and animals having babies or whatever. But now people are responding to those unused stories and going "OMG Game Freak is a bunch of gooners who want humans and Pokemon to have sex!! This is canon!!!" It's so fucking tiring. So much of the modern internet, particularly Twitter, is driven by people who just want an excuse to whip out their favorite shocked/disgusted reaction image and ham up their reaction to something that isn't actually all that shocking. Everyone just wants to get their funny dunks in and feign moral superiority. It's childish. And it's because of reactions like this that this stuff was never supposed to see the light of day in the first place. But fans feel like they're owed every single shred of info from the development of their favorite franchises, so these leaks happen and people run wild with them.

(It also doesn't help that this is all just sourced back to a 4chan thread, so people were posting fake shit between the real leaks and muddying the waters. And also most of it is in Japanese, so people are just sticking documents through Google Translate and going "whooooaaaa this is canon")

[ningvory]

love & basketball — yu jimin

𝜗𝜚ㅤ: gp!basketball player karina x cheerleader!reader

𝜗𝜚ㅤ: your girlfriend, yu jimin, the basketball captain on the school, wins the game for the team. now she wants to celebrate the win with her favorite cheerleader captain.

𝜗𝜚ㅤ: word count: 2.5k

CW: lots of fluff, smut, college au, unprotected sex (no no!) oral (r.receiving), kissing, soft sex (wow that’s a first), kissing, creampie, mating press, teasing, reader blacks out for a sec, squirting, cum eating, praise, pet names

a/n: this took wayy longer than expected so now it’s considered a 1.6k special… thank you all so much for 1.6k!! special thanks to my favorite basketball player @hearts-4-vicky cuz idk a thing about basketball <33

the cheers of the crowd echoed in the gymnasium as the home teams leader, your girlfriend slam dunked on the net before her teammates surrounded her with excitement. karina had just put the team way ahead of the opposing team.

you’re exhausted from all the cheering you’ve been doing for the entire game but, you couldn’t fight the adoring smile that appeared on your face. in complete awe while watching your girlfriend on the court before you called out the next cheer with your cheering voice.

she’s been the captain of the team ever since freshman year and now the two of you are seniors of your university. she’s very versatile and could play basically all the roles if needed. she always made sure her members had the right form, the right attitude when it’s time to practice, that they communicate, and etc. her motto was ‘you came here to practice, come to practice with a good attitude and leave that other shit at the door.’

whenever you had your offdays you would come by and watch their practices, and karina couldn’t help but show you off to her teammates. but she always let them know who you belonged to. sometimes even after practice she would still be practicing and vise versa.

it was a bit cliche that you happen to be the cheerleading captain and you’re dating the basketball captain of your university, sounds like you’re living straight out of a movie and that’s what people tell you.

it’s the last minute during the game and it’s a tie. the crowd is tense, anticipating for one of the teams to win the final match of the season. you don’t usually get nervous during games but now you are. maybe it’s because this is one of the biggest basketball match’s in a while.

the match was closing in, 7 seconds on the clock and karina has the ball in her hands before she’s shooting the ball in the air behind the three-point line. the crowd roars in cheers and excitement when the ball goes into the hoop, giving the home team 3 points, wining the game by 46-43 points.

you sprinted over to the court, excited screams and squeals leave your mouth while you embrace her with a hug. she quickly embraced you as well and spinning you around.

“jiminie baby—you did a-amazing!” you huff out between kisses and giggles, after every game she always does this and you know you’ve won in life.

karina pulls back, hands falling down to meet your waist, “i always do good with the best cheerleader cheering me on,” she smirks before she’s placing a kiss to your lips.

you can’t help but let out a giggle and lightly hitting her shoulder, “y’know i cheer for the whole team, not just you,” you say before you stand up on your toes and pressing a soft kiss to her plump lips.

she chuckles into the kiss before she’s bringing her hands to cup your face. “it only says that on papers baby, me and you both know that,” she winks before she’s eying your body up and down. still in the short green and white skirt and the matching green and white top.

you quickly notice before you stare right at her with a smirk, “my eyes are up here, sweetheart.”

your little moment is cut short, because her teammates and your fellow cheerleaders are soon surrounding you all and cheering.

the once filled stadium is now closed down for the day and the night has grown calm and quiet. the players and the cheerleaders were in the locker rooms getting all their stuff packed so they can make their way back to their dorm rooms or apartments, it was late and most of them were exhausted.

you two were the first to get ready and karina just couldn’t take her eyes off you. she’s carrying her bag on her shoulder and leading you outside, leaving you no room to protest.

“hey—baby—what’s goin—,” you protest when she pushes you to the wall but your silenced when she takes your hand and places it on her clothed dick, hardened under your hands.

but before anything got sensual, the locker door flys open and her teammates walk out, yours walking right behind.

“ohh~ someone’s getting fucked good tonight!” karina’s teammate giselle, teases the two of you. she shamelessly checks you out, her gaze real focused on your ass in your short skirt.

you two can’t help but laugh at her, it’s always been in her nature to joke like that and plus, she’s the school’s fuck girl. those who’ve been fucked by her says she can really please a girl with that dick of hers but she’s not someone whose looking for a long term relationship.

“shut up, gi,” karina lightly hits her shorter teammate with a laugh before she’s picking her bag back up. luckily she’s wearing loose pants so no one can really notice her boner unless they stare long enough.

the walk back to the car was always you favorite part of the night. you two walk next to eachother, warm hands holding her colder ones. you can't help but daydream and remember the first time you both met, a smile always paints your face thinking about the memories.

—

the first time you met, karina was actually a loser. hard to believe with the kindness and the beauty she has. she would always sit in the back of the class, one airpod in her ear. but you, you were the it girl of the university. no one couldn’t tell you that you weren’t that girl anyways, you were great in academics, being a fashion designer and as well as the cheerleading captain, and of course you’re pretty.

you were actually thrilled that you were sharing a dorm with another girl, hopefully being able to help her if she had a struggle adjusting, after all this was the first year of uni for you both.

but on the other hand, many thoughts filled karina’s mind. she really hated the fact that she had to be forced to spend years with another person she’s never even met before. she just hoped her roommate was a nice person.

she was starting to overthink, something that she hated as well. she decided to entertain herself to distract herself from all the nervous thoughts that flooded her mind. she went over to the bathroom, already claming her sink. turning on the water before she cups her hands to get the water and splashing her face with cold water, calming herself down which worked. she began walking back to her room until she heard a voice.

“hi! you must be my roomie, nice to meet you.” your voice echoed, making karina turn around to the source of the sound. there was a girl standing with a few of her luggage, her beauty was breath taking.

“sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. i’m y/n!” you softly said, a cute smile on your face.

karina slightly looked down to see your extended arm and an opened hand with freshly painted nails, “hi…i’m karina! nice to meet you, y/n,” her face lifted up into a smile, reaching to meet your hand. her slightly cold hands felt warm from your soft warm hands.

—

that was the first interaction you ever made. she was a sweetheart from the very beginning, you asked her was her hobbies were and it actually surprised you that she said she really loved basketball. so you told her after school that you wanted to see her hoop.

per usual at the public basketball courts, there were people already playing when you two got there. the two of you watched as one of the teams were struggling to communicate with eachother. really just yelling and arguing more than working together, this caused karina to let out an angry sigh. the main thing about basketball was that it was a team sport, communication is key to the whole game.

just when things were about to get violent, karina stepped in. breaking up the argument with the two girls that were about to throw hands.

just after that, karina joined their team after acting like the captain of the group and getting the team back together. you watched how she passed the ball to her teammates. she set up every opportunity for the team to score much more easily, and communicating with her team. she wasn’t much of a talker so it surprised you how she acted like a different person on the court.

the game ended with karina’s team winning, you were amazed at her talent and passion for the sport you just had to get her to tryout for the official team. from that point on, you two had grew closer and closer, eventually she told you to refer to her by jimin. karina was a name she preferred for people who didn’t know her like that.

—

“what’s got’cha thinkin’ baby?” you girlfriend teased, noticing that you were daydreaming for a awfully long time. you hadn’t realized that you made it to the car.

“remembering the first moments we had together, we’ve grown so far,” you giggled. hugging the taller girl and staring into her eyes with adoration.

she didn’t say anything but smile back at you, cupping your face and kissing your forehead before opening the car door for you to get in.

the car ride was mostly quiet, the radio playing whatever was trendy while jimin drove back to your shared apartment with her hand resting comfortably on your plush thigh.

when the two of you arrived, she opened the door for you to get out the car before closing it and locking it. you both walked up the apartment stairs, hand in hand. when you both made it to the shared apartment, she opened the door for you once again.

once the door was locked, all the bags she was carrying dropped to the floor with a thud, she pulled you to her room and laid you down on her soft bed. you two continued what was started earlier with her ontop of you. your hands were all over her and vise vera, the two of you sloppily made out. soft moans filling the room from the both of you. the air felt thicker, and soon the two of you parted with a gasp and the string of spit that connected your lips together broke.

“so pretty baby, so pretty cheering me on the whole night, fuck..look what you do to me baby.” she grunted. she started grinding slowly into you, making you feel her hardened cock.

when you both were intimate, usually you were the dominant. it’s like she becomes puddy in your hands and she just wants to watch your fucked-out body on top of hers riding her pretty cock.

“let me do all the work, ‘kay?” she softly says, looking down into your pretty eyes waiting for the confirmation from you.

once she got that confirmation, she immediately went to work by undressing you. she took off your uniform top, throwing it somewhere in the room. she began kissing down your pretty body while undressing you.

she slowly takes off your uniform skirt, along with your protective shorts. she sat right infront of you, spreading your legs and pulling your panties drenched in your slick off, making you whimper at the cool air hitting your pretty cunt.

jimin let out a low ‘fuck’ her mouth began to water at the sight of your drooling cunny squeezing around nothing. she needed to taste you so bad, so she dives in. kitten licking and softly sucking on your lil clit, her mind is already hazy and she’s humping her bed while moaning into your cunt.

her hands lifted your thighs and resting them on her shoulders. she sloppily makes out with your cunt, slurps and moans come from her going down on you. moans and cries rip from your chest, hands frantically moving to grip her head. the tight grip you have on her hair has her moaning into your cunt, you let out the loudest moan you ever made when she starts shaking her head and tongue fucking into your cunt.

“ah, ngh! shit!” your voice is airy and high pitched, back arching and pulling her even more closer to your cunt and grinding yourself on her face as your climax approaches: “ji—ah!—r-right there! c-cumming!”

you came all over her pretty face, she rides you through your intense orgasm. kitten licking your cum-covered cunt and planting kisses to your cunt.

"you did so well for me, sweetheart. think you're ready f'me," jimin praises you. she began to undress herself. she took off her shirt first, unclasping her bra, making her pretty tits bounce. you had the urge to just have her sit on your lap and suck on her perfect tits, that’ll be something for another day.

she stepped out of her sweats and pulled down her boxers, reaching her angry red cock that was oozing with precum.

you never got used to her size, you were gripping onto her hand for dear life as her large cock bullies your tight hole, splitting your quivering cunt in half.

jimin started littering your face in kisses before slipping her tongue inside your mouth. the way her cock slid back in forth inside your twitching walls while her cock head bullies your cervix had you moaning into her mouth and gripping on her sheets.

she pulled away from your mouth and put your legs on her shoulders before leaning in closer to you to where your foreheads are almost touching, folding your body in half and in a mating press. she angles her cock with your hole before slamming down into you.

a loud whimper rips from your chest and a airy moan comes from jimin. you were so far gone, drool began seeping out your mouth and your eyes were rolled back while she kept pounding into your tight cunt.

“shit—doin s-so well for me baby, look so pretty like this,” jimin praised you, rolling her pelvis into your cunny and pinching your nipples.

tears began blinding your vision and your moans turned into squeals when jimin’s cock hits your sweet spot. you began to shake violently before you squirted all over jimin and her bed, blacking out in the process.

the view of you below her cumming undone has her pounding quicker into your cunt, desperate for release. it didn’t help that your unconscious self began squeezing her cock, making her moan loudly before she’s filling you up with her warm seed and some spilling out from how much she came.

you don’t know long you were out for but your eyes fluttered open to being laid on top of jimin in freshly new clothes and freshly new bed sheets.

“welcome back, pretty. might’ve went a little overboard.” jimin speaks, apologizing for her behavior earlier.

“noo, s’okay i loved it,” your voice was groggy from earlier, making the two of you giggle, “i’ll get you some tea.” jimin says before slipping out of bed and going to the kitchen.

you know you’ve got the best girlfriend in the world.

[yuurivoice]

Ah yes, the decaying corpse of Twitter strikes once again, but wait! Could it be that the user base is finally so sick of the goofball loser chode at the helm that we've decided to well and truly yeet?

Sorta, for me at least. I've long grown tired of Twitter's rapid decline into what I can only call a whirlpool of toxicity that feeds engagement to the worst people. The negative post turned dunking retweet loop is not really my thing, given that it all seems to boil down to dick wagging and self congratulatory circle jerks.

It's just not a platform I enjoy using at this point. It has been my go to for information and news more than anything, and frankly, I can just go get it elsewhere.

Tumblr, ironically, has withstood the test of time. I began my journey here, and I'm going to invest more time into using it as more than a glorified ask box. How much effort I want to put into it remains to be seen, but I'll probably do more posting and promo here on the blog because SURPRISE tags work. They've always worked. They're fantastic. People can find my shit. There are years old posts still thriving today, because tags.

I am also over on BlueSky! I have high hopes for the platform as it seems to really skew towards everything I prefer in terms of user base, interactions, engagement, etc! I think now is a really good time to try it out and give it a spin as new users are piling in and it has a lot of promise.

Like, actually. I know a lot of us have done the new platform song and dance for years. But Musk and his new best friend seem to have radically alienated a huge portion of users and the line in the sand has been drawn.

So, follow me here!

[rassicas]

In the splatoon fanbase, there are many misconceptions surrounding the relationship between inklings and water. without fail whenever I mention something related to the topic I'll get replies of "actually the canon is [some popular but incorrect theory]" "no they can do this and this canonically [it's actually a headcanon]" "no its really [something NOA made up]"

so to briefly go over The Facts:

Inklings canonically die when submerged in water. And yes, getting "splatted" is them dying for real, respawning is also an in-universe thing that has existed for at least 2000 years and not just a game mechanic. While the dying in water thing originally came from a game mechanic, it has been repeatedly stated that they incorporated this into the inkling's biology. The water weakness is not because of the water itself being toxic. The reason is based in osmosis. in the process of their evolution, Inklings (and octolings) changed a lot, and one of these changes was the ability to transform between a humanoid and swim form. Doing this transformation requires skin that is a thin, semi permeable membrane [this kind of skin is a trait found in real life molluscs]. The evolutionary trade off is that, because of how semi permeable their skin is, the ink inside of their bodies will bleed out when in contact with another liquid. This is the answer given directly by the series' creator. And here it is confirmed that while the water weakness originated from game mechanics, it is very much became a part of an inkling's in-universe biology. Kind of like how a slug will die if you sprinkle salt on it (for a reason that's almost the same as the inklings), but ultimately needs salt in its diet through the food it eats to live, inklings do drink water and other liquids. Its also not like they touch water and immediately explode, it seems they can wash their hands in it and dip their feet in it and be fine.

Some people think the water weakness is stupid, personally i think its reasonable because Inkling biology is already weird as hell and of how ridiculously advantageous it is to be an ink-based cephalopod. the ink gives them the ability to jump absurdly long distances and cheat death to an extent. they're not losing much by not being able to dunk themselves in water. Anyway point is it sucks that all the relevant canon information on this is one of those japan only things/exclusive to developer interviews and pretty much every time it's brought up in English the localizers make shit up. I plan to make a video about this one of these days, but with how 'controversial' the topic is, and how many little details and connected concepts there are, I've been holding it off because I want to do it right. there's also some specific details that are unclear that I've been hoping would be clarified in the artbook or a dev interview but haven't, I might just have to go for it at this point. for the time being, i hope this post helps clear up a few things!

[grotesquedarling]

All Yours.

Toby Rodgers x Werewolf!Fem!Reader

Summary: You are assumed dead, after going on a walk and not coming back. Toby finds evidence of the 'death' and thinks the worst. You return hours later, your ability to heal not working well. Toby helps you clean up, which leads to much more.

A/N: This is a one-shot for a story I am writing for Toby, where reader is a werewolf. If anything is confusing in this one-shot, God I pray not, it is connected to my story and things will fall in place as I post it! Divider made by cafekitsune! Please go easy on me, this my first time writing smut, or anything really, in about 2 years, due to writer's block, so things may be clunky.

Warnings: 18+ minors DNI!, P in V, descriptions of violence and murder, no protection. (If I have forgotten one, please let me know!)

Word count: 3k

“Wh- What now?” Toby yelled. “Sh-she is d-dead!” He was getting worked up, stuttering more than usual.

Tim and Brian couldn’t do anything, nothing that would be helpful anyway, so they listened. They listened for so long they were to the point of ‘listening’. Which consisted of sitting in the room and dissociating while looking interested.

Toby was getting louder, pacing faster, unsure of how to handle the situation. “Are y-you even li-listening to m-me? SHE’S GONE!”

Before Tim or Brian could say anything, there was a loud bang on the cabin’s front door. As soon as all their eyes shot in the direction of the sound, the doorknob was ripped from the door, leaving a gaping hole where it once was. A few bloody fingers could be seen going into the hole to open the door.

The door swung open and there you stood, bloody and bruised. The three men looked at you in awe and confusion. 

“How-?”

“Don’t fucking speak to me,” you growled, “I am going to take a shower.”

Toby just stood there, unable to process the fact that you were actually alive, you may have looked like shit, but there you were, covered in blood and looking hotter than ever. 

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

As the cold water started to run down your body, the dried blood and dirt washed away. The images of the people that had been mauled, maimed, and mutilated didn't go anywhere, though, as a matter of fact, they just lingered and kept replaying.

“Shut up! You stupid fucking cunt, just stay down. Quit fighting back, you won’t win.”

A hand grabbed your hair as you were being yelled at, dragging you over to the lake you had been brought to to be thrown in after being killed. The thought of not being able to swim crossed momentarily, it was gone as soon as it seemed to come. Staying conscious was getting harder by the minute, eyes trying to close and breathing was almost impossible.

Unsure of what to do, a last burst of adrenaline hit, right before getting dunked into the lake. Your hand wrapped itself in the hair of the woman holding you, and dragged her off the dock with you.

Fighting underwater was not as easy as one would hope for in this situation. All you could do was hold on to the throat of the woman trying to murder you. If you’re dying, so is that bitch. Time felt almost as if it was slowed, as you waited for the bitch’s partner in crime to try to help her, he never showed.

Even struggling was hard, but losing is something you were never okay with, you had to win, or not die. Finally, life seemed to have left the woman, but you weren't about to let her trick you. You pulled yourself above the water, dragging the woman with you.

Your hand scrunched a bunch of the woman's hair, and quickly, with all the strength you could muster, you smashed her head into the dock, probably a little more than what would kill her. She will not be coming back from that one, you made sure of it.

As you finished, you stood up and looked down, blood was everywhere, yours and your attacker’s. You had no time to worry about that though, there was a man, somewhere close, who also wanted you dead. Blood loss and pain seemed to start setting in as you reached the grass, knees bruising as you hit the ground.

“What the fuck did they do to me? Why am I not healing? And where the fuck is-?”

Dead. As soon as you saw something, or someone, out of your peripheral vision running off, you noticed the guy was way beyond dead. You gave the woman you left on the dock one last glance, there was absolutely no chance she was coming back, unless someone were to gorilla glue her brain back together.

With both of them dead, you took a few minutes to lay in the grass, in the hopes that regulating your heart rate would start the healing process. It did not.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Tears fell down your cheeks as you sat on the floor of the shower, the back of your head against the wall. Pain was something foreign to you, considering your healing factor, but the healing wasn’t happening, not as fast as usual anyway. The pain was almost unbearable, but the feeling of possibly being dramatic due to never having to feel pain for long seemed to cross your mind.

Unaware of how long you’d be sitting under the warm water, you realized it had been at least 20 minutes. The water started to get cold, the change in temperature wasn’t a bother, considering you run hot anyway, but that meant someone would be checking on you soon, probably Toby. You two had gotten close recently, very close. Too close, according to Tim.

Keeping your composure under the cold water was getting hard, the adrenaline had worn off and everything hurt. Suddenly, you were hyper aware of every bruise and open wound you had, your legs hurt, your body ached, and breathing started getting hard again. A panic attack hit.

A heavy knock hit the bathroom door, and the door opened. The realization of how loud you were sobbing seemed to bring you back to reality. Trying to speak to Tim, who just slung the bathroom door wide open, was impossible at the time, the only thing coming from you were sobs.

The shower curtain moved to the side ever so slightly, Tim’s eyes met yours as you looked up at him, curled into a tight ball, knees against your chest.

“He wanted me to check on you first, can he come in?” Tim seemed to be hiding the worry he had for you, hoping that if he didn’t worry, Toby wouldn’t worry as much. That didn't work. Toby peeked over Tim’s shoulder to see how fucked up you were.

“G-get out Tim,” Toby shoved Tim aside and out the door. Once the bathroom door closed, Toby just stared at you for a minute, taking in the wounds that were not healing. “Why are you st-still bleeding? I th-thought you-.”

Your eyes stayed glued to the wall in front of you, unmoving as your head rested on your knees. Words weren’t coming easy, the panic attack seemed to subside, breathing still seemed to be a big task, and you felt mentally numb.

Out of the corner of your eye, you noticed Toby crouching now and knew he wouldn’t go away without getting the information he wanted and making sure you were okay, and since being okay was not a thing at the moment, he would not be leaving.

“If you’re just gonna sit there and stare at me like that, you might as well get in.” You deadpan, eyes still glued to the wall. “It’s not like you haven’t seen me naked before.”

His eyes widened, “I-I,” he stuttered out, shocked by your offer. “I’ll h-have you know, I haven't ever s-seen you n-naked by ch-choice. You don’t l-lock doors.” He was flustered, but he wasn’t going to turn down the offer. He started to remove his clothes, and quickly.

While trying to stand up so Toby could get in the shower, stars filled your vision and put you right back on your ass and a little yelp left your throat. You leaned into the wall again, completely and utterly ready to give up.

Toby sat down beside you, both of you completely vulnerable, and seemed to be scanning the severity of the damage to your body. He was quiet, more quiet than usual, it was almost scary. His eyes finally made his way up to yours, tears started streaming once again. Never in your life had you wanted to be held so badly, you had always been able to be independent and take care of yourself.

With his eyes still locked on yours, the words ‘hold me,’ slipped from your lips. Without hesitation he pulled you into him, causing you to wince with how fast and rough the action was.

“S-sorry,” he whispered as he gently loosened his grip on you. His fingers started tracing the bruises on your arms, then stomach, then your thighs. Something about him having to be gentle with you for the first time, made you feel a way, you couldn’t tell what that way was, but it was nice.

Leaning into him was a lot better than leaning on that hard ass wall, as he continued looking over your body, you listened to his heart as your head rested against his chest, regulating your own breathing and heart rate.

Pain started to slowly subside, your chest was not as tight, and the anxiety had melted away. Healing still wasn’t happening, at least not fast enough, it only seemed to be slowly coming back, and being the most impatient person in the world it might as well just be not working.

“I don’t understand why I am not healing,” you thought aloud, “If you're done looking at my tits from over my shoulder, will you help me just clean up? I feel absolutely disgusting.”

Toby was flustered once more, and hid his face in your shoulder for a moment. “Y-yeah, I can,” he whispered before helping you up.

Being in such a vulnerable state with you was something he never thought would happen, at least not when you first met anyway. Something about the innocence of sitting with each other, naked in the shower, made him want more than that. He was craving you, in so many different ways.

His impulse control was in overdrive but now, he didn’t want to hurt you, he was supposed to help you clean yourself up. All he could think about, though, was having his way with you. His hands were a little shaky now, trying not to think about grabbing you and pushing you against the wall. That seemed to be the only thought his brain could manage to give him, he was getting frustrated.

“You know, as a werewolf, I can smell many different pheromones, and I-,” you were quickly interrupted before you could finish the sentence.

“Sh-shut the f-fuck up!” Toby practically shouted. “You s-stink and you need h-help showering, let me f-finish helping you.”

“How about I help you after this, then? If I’m not too sore anymore.”

The look on Toby’s face was of pure confusion, “with what?”

You shook your head, “Let’s just finish here first.”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Toby caught on a lot quicker than you thought he would, you hadn’t seen him move that fast and sporadic before. He needed you though, and when you offered yourself to him, even with the state you were in, he was not going to let opportunity slip away.

Your healing seemed to be back to a semi-normal speed. All you felt were light aches and any open wound looked like a gnarly scar, but they were closed up and not bleeding. What more could someone ask for?

“What the fuck were you two doing in there?” Brian asked, but quickly took the question back. “You know, don’t actually answer that. You two share way too much information already. Pretend I never asked, I am leaving.”

As Brian walked away, Toby practically dragged you to his room. His excitement was unmatched. He has wanted to do this since you two beat the shit out of each other sparring, which was about three weeks ago. Something about you looking feral unlocked something within him.

The thought of you scraping your sharp canine teeth across his neck, bringing blood to the surface while riding his thigh was something he never knew he wanted or needed. He wanted to be buried deep in your pussy, he wanted to be between your thighs, he wanted, no he needed to have you in every way possible.

Toby couldn’t decide what to do first, his thoughts were racing as you stood behind him while he locked the door. Once it was locked, he turned to you and lost the little bit of composure he had left. He grabbed you and ripped the shirt you had just put on after the shower completely off your body, and pushed you down on his bed.

Now all that was left on you was your panties, his focus wasn’t there yet, though. His kisses were sloppy yet held so much passion. His hands seemed to wander your body as he started kissing down your jaw line and making his way to your collarbone.

A small gasp escaped you when his hands finally found their way to your breasts. The way he squeezed them made you think he’d been waiting for the moment. The way he held onto you in general made you wonder how long he’d been wanting this. You had to admit, you had also been waiting for this, the way Toby had been acting around you, the way his glances started lingering, or how you could hear his heart rate change slightly when he’d see you.

His lips were back on yours now, and he was growing more and more desperate by the second, he whined a little as he started grinding into your thigh. You smirked when you realized how needy he was. He took that as an opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth.

You could tell he didn’t know what to do next, the way he moved, twitched, and whined into the kisses. Pulling away from his lips for a moment caused him to become confused, but when your hands moved down his chest and started pulling at his pants he realized you weren’t trying to get away, you were helping him. A giggle came from you when you saw the look on his face.

“Wh-what? D-did I do something wr-wrong?” He was slightly worried.

As you shook your head, your hands went to his hair and pulled back into a kiss. He seemed to melt into you. He was so rough, even while trying to not be rough, then there was you. So gentle and loving. Despite being some sort of monster, you were just so patient, it drove him crazy, he loved it.

“I, I don’t kn-know what to d-do first.” He stuttered through his kisses.

Deciding to take things in your own hands so he wouldn't have to decide, you flipped him onto his back. His eyes went wide, he forgot about your strength, he was not going to argue though. With you on top, he seemed to be in awe. The way you looked was angelic.

“Are you ready?”

All that came from Toby was a whine as you went to sit on him, but you were going slow, way too slow. His hands grabbed your hips hard enough to bruise you as he forced you down. He started grinding up into you, and moving your hips whichever way he wanted, there was no rhythm, just random thrusting.

Now it was your turn to whine. Your hands rested on his abdomen and your claws started to come out. A growl escaped you, as your hips rocked in a more rhythmic way, syncing with his.. The moans and little growls rumbling through you were almost enough to get Toby to cum then and there.

His grip tightened on your hips as he started controlling your movements again, very sporadically. You didn’t care though, you were close too.

“Toby, I’m…” was all you could manage before a warm feeling came over you and you were orgasming. Your head went back and your eyes shut tight, and with your pussy clenching around his dick as you rocked your hips through your high, Toby quickly found ecstasy after you.

A string of moans and cusses came from Toby as he rode out his high with you still on his dick. He didn't want you to move, not yet. His grip on your hips was so tight by now that his knuckles were white. It felt as if he was making sure this was real.

“F-fuck,” He managed to moan out. “That was s-so much b-better than any of the p-porn I’ve ev-ever watched.”

You giggled again as you rolled from the top of Toby to the side of him. You laid your head on his chest for a moment, just listening to his heart. You gently kissed his cheek, before throwing your legs over the side of his bed and putting on a shirt that was on his floor. You were almost certain it was not a clean shirt, you used it though, just in case Tim or Brian came in and saw you with absolutely nothing on. Not that they would ask you any questions about what you were doing though. They have learned their lesson asking that one too many times. 

“I don’t know how much longer they will be gone, but I have to pee. When I come back-”

“We’re fucking even ha-harder. I have s-so many th-things I want to try wi-with you.” Toby was very serious saying this, but laughed a little, until he heard Tim and Brian walk in through the front door. He wasn’t going to be able to do anything with you now, they would complain about the noise.

Brian was quick to speak as he walked in, “We’re back, please don’t be fucking in my line of sight.”

Tim shook his head at that statement. “I am going to bed, if you are fucking, do it quietly,”

“They are such party poopers. Looks like it’s bedtime at the old folks home. Whatever, you good if I sleep in here tonight? That couch is going to give me tetanus with those rusty springs stabbing me in my ass cheeks.”

Toby looked from you to his bed, and gave you a strange look. “Your bed is way more comfy!”

“H-how do you kn-know that?”

“I take naps in here when you’re out or whatever.” You spoke matter of factly. The two of you stared at each other, unblinking for about ten seconds. Toby sighed, and promptly made a small  space for you.

“D-don't make this a habit.”

“Sleeping in your room? We just fucked in your bed. Shut up.”

[befuddledcinnamonroll]

QL Things That Made Me Happy in 2024

It's the end of the year, and people are doing a lot of cute things with superlatives and such, but with my limited bandwidth, I'm gonna keep it simple. Those who follow me know I am here to have a good time, and I like to focus on what brings me joy. 2025 is going to be a rough one, and I know I'm going to continue to need the QL space to help me emotionally cope, so if you'll indulge me, I want to just roll around in the good and the happy for a bit.

(Note, there is also a ton of 2024 content I did not have time to watch, so this does not capture everything good that happened this year!)

Diversity of Genre

Every year we're breaking a little bit more new ground! I'm particularly excited to be seeing more mystery/thriller, for both our BLs & GLs. Robots, vampires, animals turned human, and hopefully soon, mermen. We're getting weirder and wilder, and I am here for it.

Baby Steps in Representation

I know, I know, we all want it to get all better right now, but as someone in my fifth decade of life, I've also seen how small step after small step over the years can lead to huge changes. And in a world where a lot of people are trying to drag us backwards, it's important to keep pushing forward, and celebrate each successful step, even when it feels like it's not enough. (And keep advocating for more, of course!)

Continuing to Give Friendship Its Due

Amazing friend groups are fortunately a QL staple, and this year was no different. We got so much good friend representation this year!

Japan Being Japan

The very top at efficient story-telling, whether it be hitting your heart or tearing it apart.

Taiwan Being Taiwan

Never change Taiwan. Just keep feeding me, pretty please.

Acting Highlights

Wow, did we get some incredible performances this year. Way more than I can list here, but here's a few that came immediately to mind.

Special Mentions

ie stuff that didn't fit under one of the above categories.

A year of TayNew

Step one, be the absolute most in the cutest shit ever. Step two, queer up a found family story. Step three, celebrate owning 2024. (And we get more of them in 2025!)

Big getting his due

We've been chomping at the bit for a Big Thanakorn lead role for ages, and our man delivered! And we're gonna get more next year!

A win for creative independence

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I am so fucking proud of Yin and War. They did something incredibly difficult at great personal cost, and made something genuinely unique. Jack & Joker had a lot of layers, including a lot of cultural depth, along with social commentary. That kind of thing is always going to alienate some people, but that's part of what impressed me so much. If they wanted to make something to appeal to the most generic possible audience, they would have done it. They swung big, and made an impact, and I hope it opens up so much more opportunity for them.

When talent grows exponentially

One of my favorite things about having been into QL for a while now is getting to see actors grow and develop past their initial roles. Often the raw talent is there from the beginning, but as in all careers there is a benefit from experience, the right kind of support, and the right opportunities.

2 Moons 2 was a largely forgettable series that managed to land some unforgettable talent, and both Joong and Pavel were highlights. They've both done so well, but in this particular case, I need to rave about Joong's growth in his performance as Fadel. The entire cast is rocking it in Heart Killers, Dunk is also doing incredible, but I have such a soft spot for the boy I immediately fell for way back in my first year of BL, and seeing him steal scenes from some of my all time favorite GMMTV actors. Well done, bebe, well done.

In summary

This doesn't remotely encompass everything (I didn't even get to all the delightful spice from this year!), I am limited by time and image restrictions per post, but as always, I am so grateful to have discovered this arena of media and this space in which to squee about it, and I am endlessly grateful for the people in this space who bring positivity, nuance, grace, compassion, caring, open-mindedness, humility, and curiosity to my dash.

Happy New Year, y'all.

[queenlua]

hey lua what decks do phoenix aceattorney and miles aceattorney play in magic

PHOENIX WRIGHT

once upon a time, a friend bullied me into going to a Pro Tour Qualifier, which was probably the largest Magic tournament i’d ever been to at that time, right?

i was happy to be bullied, to be clear, but the problem was… i hadn’t played standard-format Magic competitively in about 2-3 years.  so my knowledge of the current metagame, what deck archetypes were popular, and what the current cards even were, was staggeringly limited.

“it will be fine,” said my friend.  “here, take this spare deck i built.  it’s super-straightforward and easy,” he lied.

he said this to me approx. 8 seconds before the first round began, so uhhhhh, i sure was playing a game of magical cards without ever having even looked at the damn deck before!

so, lo, literally in the course of playing the deck, i was learning how this shit was supposed to work.  “oh!” i’d exclaim with delight, halfway through my turn.  “THAT’S how those two cards are supposed to interact.  oh that’s super clever.  what a neat combo.”  and then i’d proceed to shiftily look at my opponent over my cards, riffle those cards a lil bit, and then say “pass” with as much of an enigmatic vibe as i could muster.

meanwhile, my opponent was Actually Prepared, and they were Trying To Win, and they were pissed.  they threatened to call Slow Play on me because i was taking so fucking long reading all the cards.  as in, he literally called a judge over, who stood there watching me the whole time, in order to determine if i was being Criminally Bad At Magic versus just A Regular Amount Of Bad At Magic, and i was sweating bullets the whole time because i didn’t know this deck or their deck or any of those cards and AHHHH why is the judge staring at me!!!

….which only served to make it EXTRA-humiliating for this poor fuck when i proceeded to eviscerate them 2-0.  hahahah get dunked onnnnnnnn nerd!!!

and then i also proceeded to eviscerate my next opponent???

sheer dumb luck.  i cannot overstate how ill-prepared i was for this tournament.  i absolutely did not deserve these wins.

meanwhile the friend who gave me the deck was having a much worse time with their deck, and they were like “what the fuck. you weren’t supposed to win. how are you winning with that shit, my deck’s so much better than yours”

anyway.  i think that’s the kind of scenario Phoenix would get into if he were an MtG player.  dude Gets Himself Into Situations And Then Uses Cleverness + Bullshit + Luck To Get Out Again.

(AA4-era Phoenix seems like he’s doing the same thing… but, in reality, he’s actually been meticulously crafting his deck in secret for the past six months.  he’s not even aiming to win the tournament, he’s just exploiting a known weakness in the opponent-matching system that lets him know with certainty who he’s going to get matched up against (spoiler: first round is Kristoph), and he’s hyper-optimizing his deck to beat Literally Only Those People.  meanwhile, Apollo, who built a tryhard hyper-optimized variant of Red Deck Wins, is lowkey annoyed that Phoenix's seemingly-random pile keeps vaulting him just one table above him in the standings, because Apollo knows his deck is better. he knows it!!!! just let him go 1v1 and prove it aaaaughhhh!!!)

((also, in case you want Actual Concrete Cards And Colors And Stuff: in general i think Phoenix prefers limited play (draft, sealed, "anything where you open booster packs on the spot & throw a deck together") to constructed play, because he doesn't like being tied down to any one game plan. when he does play constructed, i think he's less attached to a specific colors and more attached to specific mechanics. in particular: he's not a combo player exactly, but he likes mechanics that feel like bullshit. dude saw Madness for the first time & his eyes lit up & he was in LOVE, "you mean i'm discarding the card but then i can cast it for free??? hell YES." he absolutely ran a poison counter deck during New Phyrexia. ah fuck i just realized he was probably a huge stan for noted awful expansion Battle for Zendikar, i think i gotta cancel him now, sorry))

((and i think Phoenix also has a touch of Timmy in him! like, i went to a huge state tournament once with a bunch of really skilled players, and there was this one dude in our car who had a really solid deck, clearly adhered to a lot of the trends in the meta at the time... but his win condition was a Shivan Dragon. which wasn't a bad card at the time, it was a reasonable win condition, but it was... slightly suboptimal? not at all the obvious pick? sort of random? and multiple people asked him "why is that your win condition" & he shrugged and said "i like dragons." so the dragon stayed & that dude ended up getting second place in the whole tournament so FUCK optimal play, bring a dragon. i think Phoenix would sneak in a dragon now and again. just 'cause))

MILES EDGEWORTH

this one is trickier!!!

young!Miles is just going to play Whatever The Meta Deems To Be The Best Deck, right. the von Karma perfection thing and all. it's all very boring & micro-optimized to be the Best Deck Of Its Kind & he pours over the results of the big name tournaments week after week & does some math or whatever to hyper-optimize his own build of the Obviously Correct Deck. there is no soul in any of this, purely Executing On A Formula.

...but then he experiences Character Growth & has his big gay crisis & now he has to pick up the game again. he opens the latest tournament results... clicks around some win % stats for various cards in a desultory kinda way, and... his heart's just not in it, right?

enter 2-4 era Miles. 2-4 era Miles is playing some utterly unhinged Five Color Good Stuff thing. there's a lot of Planar Chaos cards in there, because that whole set was about Weird Shit & cards doing Stuff You're Familiar With (But In The Utterly Wrong Color!!!) & all that is resonating with Miles more than he'd care to admit. he cannot possibly talk about his unnecessary feelings but he can make a weird noise rock album about them. and by noise rock album i mean this fucking Magic deck.

and he's playing this deck with a 100% straight face, as though this is the exact same behavior that won him the Junior Super Series five years in a row & not a desperate cry for help from a madman. everyone else is like Miles... are you playing fucking singletons... in a fucking standard deck... you know your deck will be more consistent with four-ofs right... and then he gives a cool fish-eyed stare & taps out to cast some arcane bullshit legendary creature & gives a single rap of his knuckles against the table to indicate that he's passing the turn.

and it works, is the thing! all those years of training to be the Spikiest Spike Ever have paid off; this Five Color Good Stuff thing relies on some pretty clever insights to make the mana base work, and parts of what he's doing eventually get adopted by the larger metagame to become an Actual Serious Deck. but, like. it's still a monstrosity. any skilled players watching are still definitely wondering Are You Okay, Dude.

after 2-4, i think Miles settles back into playing something more normal. he still cares about winning, but he's going to do it with a touch of class. he wants a game that involves dialogue, some actual back-and-forth, because just trying to combo off is lame coward behavior.

aw yeah baby we're talking counterspells!!!

he's a blue player at heart & he's happiest when he's updating the autopsy report shutting down whatever his opponent's plan is. he'll splash other colors as the occasion calls for it, but he'd be happy running mono-blue the rest of his life. like, i ran a pretty fun Legacy deck back in the day which consisted of:

every kind of counterspell i could get my hands on,

propaganda because FUCK creatures,

thieving magpies for the card draw,

and a few silver wyverns to, y'know, actually win the game

...and i think Miles would appreciate that deck. just play counterspells until the opponent runs out of steam & then cruise your way to victory with a couple birds. simple. elegant. classic. doesn't involve any of this modern Planeswalker bullshit (Miles regards most developments that happened to MtG post-Time Spiral block or so as affronts to game design).

(i do think Miles has a secret fondness for sagas as a card type, however. they remind him of all that Character Growth, but in an abstract/subconscious/nonthreatening way. too bad most of them are a bit of poor match for the kinds of decks he likes to play)

FINALLY: i think Miles hates playing Commander with every fiber of his being & Phoenix loves it & this is a pretty serious point of contention in their relationship. poor dudes

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

I hear people point out that Catra's redemption arc is 'incomplete' as a means of excusing criticism.

Which, is the exact OPPOSITE of how this shit works?

We are taught this in FIRST GRADE. If you write something, you have to wrap it up! Like. A. Bow.

If Catra's redemption is 'incomplete' that means it was poorly written, and combine that with the other consequences of her arc's bad writing and you can see why people dunk on her character.

There is the option of an open-ending for a character but that requires you to do your damndest, which evidently is something that the writers didn't do, and something that 90% of the fandom doesn't realize.

i agree and disagree with this. i do think that some arcs can be left open-ended, but you have to show the beginning, at least. you can't leave an arc open-ended when there isn't an arc to begin with. you have to write some of it effectively so that the audience knows that the arc has begun and will likely have a successful ending, even if the ending is not shown on-screen.

(pardon me as i go on a long tangent about my favorite show. infinity train spoilers ahead!)

the best example of this that i have is Grace from Infinity Train. her redemption arc was definitely incomplete because by the end of the season, she still had a high number that she had to slowly work on reducing so that she could get off the train. she was by no means a fully redeemed character.

BUT we actually see her putting in effort to change! we see at least 50% of the process as she slowly begins to warm up to Hazel and Tuba, as she begins to realize how wrong her worldview was and the harm that she's been doing to the denizens, and as she starts reprimanding Simon and trying to motivate him to redeem himself like she was doing.

the other thing is that Grace doesn't get forgiven by her victims. Hazel leaves after Grace lashes out at her, and the narrative doesn't act like Grace is entitled to forgiveness as soon as she cries and apologizes. she has to deal with the fact that she hurt Hazel and there's no undoing that.

Grace: (...) Hazel is part of that group now. We don't leave Apex behind.

Grace: Hazel, you're sticking with us.

Hazel: I don't want to go with you.

Grace: Huh? It's okay. We can work around the denizen thing.

Hazel: I'm not going with you!

Hazel: You said the Apex is supposed to be brave. But if that's true, why are you all so... scared of me?

(...)

Amelia: (...) but I am not your caretaker.

Hazel: Grace and Simon weren't either.

(...)

Grace: Hazel, it's not too late to change your mind.

Hazel: Good luck, Grace.

keep in mind, this was a child. probably about 8-9 years old. the writers could have just made her forgiven Grace and said “well she's young, children don't hold grudges”. but they didn't. they acknowledged how much Grace hurt Hazel and they allowed Hazel to stay upset at Grace.

same goes for Simon. while Simon became the bigger villain in the end, Grace was the one who instilled the cult mindset in him in the first place and he never forgives her. he does eventually cause his own demise in the end, but we're not made to believe that Grace was entirely blameless in all of this.

in short, Grace doesn't get a happily ever after, but her arc does end on a hopeful note. regardless of whether people forgive her or not, she decides to continue working on improving herself.

this is how you write an incomplete redemption arc. you have to make the viewers believe that this character wants to change, and you need to hold them accountable for their actions. you can't just have all their victims forgive them despite the fact that they're still an asshole, and then tell us that their arc isn't over yet. how would the arc be over if it hasn't even started?

[paleoleigh]

I don't think I can take much more of this. The constant hate for Taika. The constant hate for us. The constant hate for OFMD. None of which is justified or even based on anything! I just keep wanting to cry. I hate this. I'm not even on Twitter or reddit or anything but here. I barely follow anyone at all. I don't go near the tags. And I still see it! One of the few I do follow, who I've followed for years, just reblogged an absolutely vile post full of misinfo about us and Taika and the show and now I'm ready to cry even more. All I want to do is look at meta and gifsets and bask in how much love and joy this awesome little show brought us all and I keep seeing all this horrible stuff. I hate it and I don't know what to do anymore.

Hi Anon - I wish I knew what to say to make things better. I understand completely where you're coming from though. I've been on this cursed site since at least 2012 and got anon hate for the first time this week solely because of OFMD.

There seems to be a trend lately - not just here but everywhere - to virtue signal by dunking on something "cringe", and people feel the need to justify their actions by clamoring for why it's actually morally right for them to be against it. It really fucking sucks.

But so many people have said this show has saved their lives or given them so much. We've raised over $10k for Palestine and $10k for other charities. We bought food and water for the actors striking this past year. We know the good we're capable of, and it hurts to see others take that in bad faith.

And as for Taika...dude just gets shit on constantly for literally nothing. Misinformation is absolutely rampant about him. My advice for all of this is to use the block button liberally and never go in the main tags. That's how I've avoided seeing a lot of the vile shit floating around here. And as always, my DMs are open if you need to chat. Take care of yourself friend 💜

[a-cat-in-toffee]

this doesn't feel long enough for ao3 and I don't feel like doing tags rn have civilian au Williams and Dakota being gay

"So what, you're like, a real life hero?" Dakota shouldered the bag, bouncing along next to William. "That's so cool."

He shrugged, eyes flitting from nearby person to person. "It's kinda cool, I guess. I'm not like- I mean we're still in training, but..."

"But you still go on missions! And fight stuff!" Dakota grinned widely, hopping to avoid cracks in the sidewalk.

"Eh, not much fighting stuff." Or missions, if he was being completely transparent, which he often had to be. Ha. Invisibility joke. "We're generally more stealthy than fighty."

"That's still really cool, though!" Dakota insisted. "You're still saving people."

William laughed slightly. Dakota had such a black and white view of heroism, it was sort of... refreshing? William was so constantly in his own head about morality, and if what he was doing was really worth it, that talking to Dakota about it felt like getting dunked in cold water and realizing he had been overheating.

"So do you have a super cool secret base?" The smile on Dakota's face was infectious, William found. It was hard to be too angsty around him.

"I guess, yeah. I dont think it'd be a good idea to show you, though."

Dakota sighed dramatically, leaning against William and bringing a hand to his forehead. He probably would have said something dumb, something in butchered old English maybe, but he apparently forgot to account for one thing in his theatrics. William was weak as shit.

Almost instantly William, with a yelp, stumbled backwards into the street. Dakota fell with him, and the two of them landed next to eachother. Dakota's arm was across William's chest, the contact warm and burning only for a second before Dakota sits up, looking down at William. The two are silent for a moment.

Then, Dakota bursts out laughing. "Dude-"

"Not all of us can support the weight of another, Dakota!" William laughed along, letting his head fall down onto the pavement.

"It's not even about that, though! You're a hero, don't you know anything about stance?"

William's chest hurt. It felt good. "I told you! We do stealth shit!"

"They should still teach you basic fighting!"

He lulled his head over, looking at Dakota. His hair had fallen even more out of place, and William felt an urge to fix it. Whoa, bust, calm down there. He smiled down at Will, face barely catching the light from the streetlamp.

"Maybe you can teach me sometime."

"Well clearly I have to!" He looked so pretty. "Whats gonna happen if you get in a fight?"

"I'm sure the others could take care of it."

Dakota sighed, laying down next to William, once more dramatically bringing his wrist to his forehead. "Woe is me, mine darling husband was shipped off to fight in the war, but they didn't teach him how to fight, and he caught a stray bullet whilst on a train."

William felt his face heat up. "And we got married when?"

"Why, quite a many few years ago, of course. My momma didn't approve of you, thought you were a real wrongen," William laughed at the fake accent Dakota had put on as he talked, "But you were an honest one, and you won her over. Now, what I don't know is that you've been sleepin' a little closer in your cot with your bunkmate- and I won't ever find out once the war takes you, but it's fine. I'll find solace in Ashe, who has been my darling friend since childhood."

"Dakota."

"Hm?"

"If you were my husband and I got sent off to the war, I would never cheat on you."

Dakota frowned. "Now I feel kind of bad. Ashe was going to move in with me in order to help me through my grief and tend to affairs. We wouldn't get married but all the village children would whisper."

William was laughing again. He couldnt remember a time he had laughed this much in one conversation. "It's okay- it wouldn't matter if I was dead, right?"

He hummed. "What if your bunkmate was Vyncent?"

"Okay!" He stood up, trying to ignore the burning in his cheeks. "We should get out of the road."

Dakota laughed at him, grinning as wide as before as he teetered off into giggles. Will offered out his hand, looking away when Dakota grabbed it and pulled himself up. He then made the objectively bad decision to look back, being met with Dakotas face much closer than he expected.

He had freckles. They were small and hard to notice, which William thought was odd considering how sun-kissed Dakota's skin was, but now that he saw them he couldn't unsee them.

"Sorry for suggesting you would have an affair with your bunkmate." He giggled. "I forgot you wrote the perfect husband, and would never ever cheat on me, even with cute purple haired boys."

He can hear his heartbeat in his ears. Was William dying? Was this it? Is the what a heart attack felt like?

"Dakota, we're still in the middle of the street."

Dakota sighed, not letting go of William's hand and tugging him along back to the sidewalk. "Of course, of course. And we have to worry about all this traffic!" With his free hand he gestured to the empty street.

"You never know."

William felt as Dakota's hand relaxed, but instead of letting go, laced their fingers together.

Oh god.

Oh no.

William was so fucked.

"Yeah, sure. Let's just get to the bus stop, then you can go home to your awesome and dope superhero base, okay?"

William laughed. "Yeah, okay."

"Best husband." Dakota said it like a concrete fact, grinning, and William's heart did a flip.

He was so fucked and there was nothing he could do about it.

[mrjinx87]

Hi, folks. Steven Emanuel here.

So, for many years now, I have been pretty vocal about my feelings towards Donald Trump and Republicans. For those who need a little catching up, I’ll sum up my feelings right now: they stink and I hate their guts.

Now, admittedly, I am just as guilty as many people are of getting dragged down by politics, becoming consumed with current events, and allowing frivolous online debates about this topic or that topic to suck the joy out of me and make me miserable. I’m sure a lot of you can relate over these past four years especially.

But, here’s the thing: I try, I don’t always succeed, but I TRY not to let my politics consume my entire soul.

I have seen people on both sides of the political spectrum become so engrossed with one issue to the point that it becomes their ENTIRE personality. And sometimes, that has led to their brains rotting, which has then led them to saying and doing stupid things. AND THEN, they sometimes have gone down a pipeline that makes them worse people as a result. I don’t have to look too far for examples either. People I’ve personally known have had this happen to them.

So when it comes to politics, I try all I can to make sure that I’m not the next person to have their brain rotted. I am a fully formed, three-dimensional human being with a variety of interests, and I hope that you can tell that just by looking at the content I post online. I intentionally put a cap on talking about or looking at politics after a certain point on any given day. I make sure to take breaks. I’ve even stopped looking for new political content on social media and YouTube, since I’ve come to the realization that I actually hate about 90% of leftist content creators out there. I know what I like, and I know what I don’t like. So I’ll just stick to the people that I do like.

And maybe this is a sign of my privilege. The fact that I can just turn off my awareness of current issues whenever I want to. I’m privileged in the fact that I’m not going through what a lot of people even in this country are going through. I recognize this. But I truly believe that it’s better for my mind and for my soul that I operate in this matter. For me, it’s about balance. I think you can care about the state of the world and also still take time out to breathe. You’re not a bad person if you fight for what’s right for 3 hours of the day instead of 12.

Also, I just don’t want the people I despise to take up so much space in my head. There are people whose entire existence depends on “owning” people on the opposite side of the political spectrum. What depressing existences those people must have. I don’t want Donald Trump to be in my head 24/7. I don’t want Marjorie Taylor Greene to be in my head 24/7. I take every opportunity I can to dunk on Steven Crowder, and to be clear, I don’t regret a single thing I have ever said about that asshole, but I don’t want Steven Crowder living in my head rent free 24/7. That’s a fate worse than death.

So, yeah, I’m gonna continue to try to maintain balance. That’s pretty much it for my rant. Nobody was calling me out or anything. This was just weighing on my mind recently and I had to let it out.

TL;DR: If you ever see me post something like the guy above, something like “My wife is pregnant. We’re gonna have a baby! I’m gonna be a father! EAT SHIT, DONALD TRUMP.” If you ever see something like that coming from me, you have my permission to have me institutionalized.

[lovelyo]

You Can’t Spell Polin Without Colin

Let me be clear. This ain’t a Colin appreciation post. Colin is an entitled, selfish dweeb but even I can see from his POV.

And somehow the Polin fans who swear up and down they love him can’t.

“Colin is a bitch boy”

“Colin stayed mad at Penelope for too long”

“Where’s supportive husband Colin? Where’s Colin ‘My Wife’ Bridgerton?”

“He just needs to forgive her already, get over it!”

This is gonna be a long one.

“Colin is a bitch boy”

That’s a perfect way to invalidate a man’s feelings. Let’s rage about misogyny but talk shit about guys who has feelings 😒. How is he a bitch boy for being upset at someone he loves for lying to him for years, even before they came intimate and when they were just friends.

He was open and transparent with Penelope every step of the way, bared his heart to her, was vulnerable with her and was happy to see that what he wanted was right there in front of him… only for him to find out she’s LW, the person who has been dunking on him and his family, LW whom he loathed. He cried ffs when he found out. The reason that hurt the most wasn’t that she was LW, it’s that she lied to him. She didn't spare a thought that he needed to know about such secrecy i.e, not giving a shit about his feelings. It mirrored exactly what Marina did. (On top of that, he realized that it was her that sent Marina to her doom) She didn’t reciprocate that same vulnerability he did for her and by the end of the season, still chose LW over him and he just had to sit there and take it.

You wanna talk about men not giving a shit about women’s feelings but it’s alright for women to do the same for men in the name of “girlbossing” 🤢

Colin in 2 weeks simmered down about the hurt Penelope has caused him while it took Penelope several months to get over one comment he said about her, which isn’t even detrimental because COLIN DOESN’T OWE PENELOPE A GODDAMN THING! You can’t get mad at someone who doesn’t want to date you. Who do you think you are to even believe you have a claim to someone like they’re a possession. She ghosted him for months over this while he had and did get over lies, shame, and betrayal in, again, a small amount of time. Who’s the bigger whiny bitch?

“Colin stayed mad at Penelope for too long”

Staying mad for too long? He didn’t stay mad long enough! Please contextualize. This man has been in scheming scandals with the Featherington family since season 1 lol. People are forgetting the trauma that he got from the pregnancy scandal, mainly the embarrassment from it being exposed by LW and having the whole ton know his business, which is humiliating as fuck and made him look like a fool(this is why I keep telling you ding dongs to stop saying LW saved the Bridgertons, she did not!) He had to null the engagement with the diamond of the season.

The start of his hatred for LW started from season 1. Colin told Penelope that she should’ve told him to his face about the pregnancy.

“Aschually 🤓☝️, she did try.”

Actually, she did not.

She tried to hint that Marina was still in love with a soldier, not “hey, the misses you trying to spit game at is preggo.” So his friend, knowing this info, instead of telling him the proper information privately to his face as a fricking friend should, printed out his business.

And let’s play devil’s advocate. Ok, Pen told Colin about the pregnancy and Colin didn’t listen. In the same season, we saw Violet do damage control and spinning the rumor windmill to help her daughter get the fuck away from Berbrooke. Penelope knows how supportive and protective the Bridgertons are with each other and also knows how much they like her since she’s friends with Eloise and Colin. Violet would’ve definitely listened, told Colin, and stirred something up to aid the situation.

But nah.

So that happened plus before that scandal came out, LW mocked Daphne for her lack of suitors and said Marina was incomparable, not Daphne. And then the Eloise scandal, all because of LW. Three Bridgertons struck. Even Season 3, LW talked shit about Colin being fake, so Penelope embarrassed him in front of the ton twice. And of course, she had an excuse, “I just wanted the old Colin back!” So you embarrassing him in front of the ton was gonna make him sweet and kind again? 😬

The woman he loves belittled him twice and clearly stands by it 'cause she’s not giving up LW, just not writing it under anonymity. 'So imma acknowledge that I hurt you, the person I love, but I’m not gonna do anything to fix it, but I want you to still support and love me, regardless of what I do,' is essentially what she's saying.

What utter shit, and then we got Pen stans/Polin fans: “Stfu Colin, your angst is ruining my fantasy ship, go kiss, finger, and fuck Penelope already.”

Oh Christ. It’s like whoever doesn’t cater to Penelope deserves the noose.

“Where’s supportive husband Colin? Where’s Colin ‘My Wife’ Bridgerton?”

Where’s supportive wife Penelope? Where’s Penelope ‘I Love You’ Bridgerton? She has declared her love but hasn't really shown it throughout season 3. Show > Tell. Action > Words. With the lies told to him from past to current, this guy undoubtedly has trust issues. How can he believe her? We the viewers saw Pen Hilton pining after Colin through season 1 & 2, but Colin himself doesn't know that she liked him before then. He even said that he thought she wouldn't feel the same about him as he did about her. So when the feeling is finally mutual, Penelope just doesn't do much. It's like she tells him, "I love you" just so he can shut his fucking piehole.

We've seen, despite Colin being upset, him still loving her, wanting her and working through the pain so he can look at Penelope and not immediately think of LW.

"B-B-But, uh, the entrapment comment was too harsh!"

First off, you people act like you have never said mean things to someone out of anger during a fight.

Second, like how you guys say LW is harsh but tells the truth(which is a complete lie, but nothing surprises me anymore with this fandom) that comment was harsh, but he told the truth. She did trap him. While he did ruin her previous proposal, he did chase down her carriage, but right after he proposed, she blabbed to the whole ton the next morning about the engagement(this showed how much the Bridgertons are morons, but I digress). If anything happened, it’d be hard for him to back out without everyone knowing and questioning his honor. It’d be his second time cutting off an engagement and it’d be his 3rd time being humiliated.

He asked if she wanted to be intimate, she immediately said yes. Eloise told her to tell him even before they had sex, but she didn't. Penelope knew Colin hated LW but still agreed to sex before she told him. She didn't even tell him, he had to found out tailing her carriage! So screw you freaks, that comment was well needed for her ass. As said before, Colin has been duped by the Featherington family so him lashing out and saying that is him telling her, 'Prove to me you're not like Marina." (She isn't. She's worse).

"Book!Colin was more supportive!"

Of course he was; LW didn't hurt him, his family, or anyone else. LW wasn't vicious like she is in the show. When Book!Colin found out about LW, him and Penelope were still friends, they weren't engaged, they didn't have sex; Book!Colin didn't hate LW. He was just jelly that Penelope made a legacy own her and he was there still purposeless at age 33(something the show tried to emulate but fell flat in a pile of horse shit). The situation in the show is way worse than what it was in the book. Book!Colin would hate Show!Penelope.

Where was Penelope's support when she saw that he was emotionally damaged by the LW reveal? Where were her attempts to mend the drift when she saw that he wouldn't sleep with her in their marital bed? Where was the comfort when she saw him lying on the couch, mentally worn out? She just passed by him and even suggested leaving in separate carriages. She did not support him when he was at his lowest, his own wife. Now if the show showed Penelope trying to talk to Colin and comfort him and he responded, "Give me more time.”, then fine.

But that didn't happen. He had to be the one to fix the relationship when she was the reason he was depressed. He never considered giving up on her, clearly with him still marrying her and sleeping on the couch they screwed on right outside their room door where he could’ve slept in another room in that huge ass house. He wanted her to try and reconcile but Penelope gave him nothing.

But he’s being too sulky and not supportive enough though Penelope ain’t returning the favor.

We get drowned with LW drama with the Polin fans admonishing Colin for not being a proper pet to Penelope.

Isn't this show named Bridgerton? What in the fresh hell?

He chose her over his own pride, pain and emotions. Penelope didn't do the same but people want to act like Colin isn't supportive or barely supported her, when in a relationship, it goes both ways. His purpose shouldn't be to prop up Penelope but that's what the show limits him to, F his feelings, f his mental health, girlboss Penelope deserves her man and her HEA as if he's a reward or a consolation prize, not a person deeply hurt by someone he thought he knew.

“He just needs to forgive her already, get over it!”

Y'all are trash for this. After all what Penelope has done to him, you want him to get over it so quick so you can have more cringe romantic scenes and soulless sex scenes. It took Eloise a year to forgive Penelope(and it happened in the dumbest fashion, but that's another can of worms). Just because they're together doesn't mean a speedy recovery. Actually it's worse 'cause they are together. He even told Eloise that she’s lucky she’s never been in love; it hurt that much.

The fact he chose to stay is already a big step of him getting over it, but that’s not enough it seems. You want him to get over the hurt she did to him, the lies, the loss of his own agency ‘cause like it or not, Colin still wanted to marry Marina even after knowing the truth but Penelope took away his decision to ensure his availability for her. She embarrassed his family a good number of times. But hey, get over it Colin.

He’s second when it comes to Penelope. He asked this beotch to give up the gossip column, a thing that caused him and others pain throughout the years, to be with him, forget the past and start their new life together. Nope, she chose her career. LW is power and she still wants that manipulative power so take the L from your wife Colin. Her ego won the day, not their love; Penelope is Colin’s first. LW is Penelope’s first, get over it Colin. It’s harsh af knowing you’ll never be first in the heart of the woman that you love.

If anyone needs to get over anything, it’s Penelope. She should’ve been got over Colin’s comment, now stew in her own shit for months; she’s not entitled to his feelings. She should’ve gotten over the damn gossip column that does more harm than good ‘cause if she’s such a great writer, then explore other avenues of writing. You’re already established, it’ll be nothing of you for your works to become popular since the ton already knows you’re a great writer.

The damage for Colin is deep but he must get over it to be the cushion for Penelope, for him to be in the shadows so Penelope can take all the shine ‘cause “feminism woo hoo!” She’s a career woman and Colin’s purpose is just to love Penelope and nothing more.

Penelope, Penelope, Penelope, it’s all about Penelope.

Their relationship shouldn't be imbalanced like it is. The ship is called POLIN. Colin is just as important as Penelope, but the show and even the fans don’t treat it as such. He’s turned to some irrelevant sidekick who’s an accessory for Penelope and his purpose: well of course it is Penelope.

The show made him publish his journals at the end to be like “see look, he does have a purpose of his own!”, though we rarely saw a lead up to that. It’s addressed once, the LW drama comes in, that part of him is buried until the final episode where it’s framed that his anger was jealousy all along, not him having a vendetta against LW for harming him and his loved ones.

Bullshit on top of bullshit.

Yeah, maybe he should’ve went up there and stood with her when she was giving her god awful speech, but his ‘If my only purpose in life is to love a woman as great as you’ toxic feminism speech would’ve just dulled it. Plus, I don’t think people know how abusive that speech is.

They should’ve stood together, Queen deus ex machina gives her pardon, and then he gives her a speech about how the wound is still there but he knows it’ll heal, to be honest with each other going forward, to put the past to rest and continue on into the future, hand in hand as Mr and Mrs. Bridgerton. Cringe, but at least love is the focus. Him being the man behind the woman instead of the man beside the woman undermined their love story and undermined the ridiculous feminism narrative too, sacrificing the equality aspect of both of it.

I’m just ranting at this point but anyway, this ain’t the Penelope show. Give Colin some fucking grace like you do your Mary Sue.

[rei-ismyname]

Dark Web: X-Men highlights 2

Anecdotally, I only ever see negative commentary on Dark Web. I don't know why - it's a lot of fun with a solid emotional core decades in the making. Also, I'm a sucker for Cyclops and Magik working together, dunking on Havok, and Maddie Pryor in general. Havok is sidetracked fighting shopping carts! We don't need to see that - it's much better if we have to imagine what TF he's doing and why (losing.) Happy New Years btw!

Jean is right, it is a diversion. A running theme in Dark Web is that Scott and Alex have problems and shouldn't be on a team together. The rest of the team is kind enough to not dwell on having to rescue him from shopping carts.

Behold! The Summers brothers not understanding each other very well. There's definitely wisdom in just bailing on a situation that isn't for you, though they should both beat Forge up. He might be good at fixing mechanical problems, but he's not qualified for Summers drama. Maddie absolutely is - the puppies and Goblin gown allow her to set the terms of engagement and shush them up.

It's little Yana again, using her stick to poke Jean this time. Still chasing ice cream too, though she never gets it (boo.) Jean throws down the gauntlet with a hefty backhand slap. Kinda fair, but not cool. Little Yana clearly agrees with me.

Maddie stole a Cerebro drive, or had Venom do it for her. The drive itself is not important here, but we learn that Jean Grey is mutant 00000000001. Not Charles, not Scott, not Hope. Jean. We don't see Maddie's reaction to this but I doubt she'd appreciate it. What does it mean? Importance? Indication she was the first person copied to Cerebro? Charles being a creep? Idk, but it's interesting.

Maddie is wearing a massive smile while beating Havok and Cyclops unconscious with chains. Let's call it an effective use of girl power. As I mentioned earlier, they're definitely shushed.

Jean is the most powerful X-Man, but she's also very good at knowing when not to use it. Scott learnt that shit from her, and they both probably learnt how not to do it from Chuck. He tries this approach at the worst possible times plus he's just not great at empathising with people. Jean surrenders, surprising everyone. I love this and I love how much trust Ilyana has. 'Okay boss.'

Jean surrendered because there's nothing to fight over. Maddie never thought to just ask (because she's so used to strings being attached) and Jean asked herself 'what does she want?' realising she can just give it to her.

Possibly for the first time ever, a crossover event is solved with a conversation and rejecting the notion that it's a zero sum game. I think if the event was longer it might be more clear that women are often forced into competition with each other, with fuckheads like mister Sinister getting away scott free. It's understandable that Maddie wouldn't want anything to do with Krakoa when they have the author of all her misery on the ruling council.

Maddie ends the conflict by decree, but needs to take the whole empathy thing a little further. She opens up Limbo to the powerless and rejected, declaring it a place of healing and safety. With Krakoan backing and some gunboat diplomacy the Limbo embassy to New York city is established. It becomes a haven for mutants during Fall of X and even ORCHIS gives it a wide berth. Oh, Havok is there too, making himself useful by opening curtains. Maddie, as ever, serves cunt.