#so he never does 👍

[bayetea]

I don't like the judo flip in moa as much as the next guy but in my eyes it's largely the result of rick not taking female violence half as seriously as male violence (a result of viewing women as weaker and inferior to men such that their acts of violence don't need to be taken as seriously) and not so much anything about annabeth herself. like I do genuinely feel that annabeth is a complex heroine and definitely one of the better ones in the realm of ya action-adventure fiction produced in the past 25 years but she is still a girl being written by a man and all I'm saying is that her writing clearly reflects that sometimes (more in tags)

[faunandfloraas]

Seungmin saying they changed song by so it would be easier for people to watch and listen and then me seeing people going "Yes! It's good it's on tiktok and shorts now" and I'm like. Oh. You're all so fucking stupid <3

[just-rainbow-thoughts]

Something something similar yet different idk I’ve never been good at comics or captions

[revivisection]

she's 39 he's 4000+ and they're having a slumber party (they squat in the same apartment)

two images of similar themes but very different styles because??? i honestly don't know

[itsalwaysforyou]

the black sky and all those lights

a silly little something i wrote for jalentines!!

When Mal opens the dormitory door, Jay is standing in the hallway in his workout gear, hair tied up in a bun. He’s already grinning in that way he does when he wins a fight. Mal rolls her eyes at him. Grabbing her bag, she says bye to Evie, and joins Jay in the corridor. 

She scowls as they walk, her workout clothes tight on her skin. Jay had insisted they’d do things properly, and not in their usual leather. 

The hallways are decorated for Valentine’s Day, making Auradon Prep even more gaudy and colourful as usual. Pink and red hearts plastered across the walls, boasting the abundance of love here in Auradon. Jay’s had a thousand notes in his locker. Mal’s had none. Every morning, she watches Jay approach his locker like he would a target on the Isle. Weight forward, shoulders squared; ready to fight if needs be. And the paper falls to the floor like blood, only sickly pastel. Scrawled glittery gel pen. Words confessing passionate love, or asking him on dates, or doodles of hearts. Jay smiles the whole time. Greets and winks at girls. Scrunches those notes up in a fist. 

“Everywhere looks disgusting,” Mal says as they approach the sports hall. Heart-shaped bunting crests the doors.

Jay holds the door open for her. “It’s fun.”

“You would think that.”

The sports hall is mercifully free of décor. They drop their bags in the corner and begin to warm up, another stupid practice Jay insists on. His top rides up as he side-stretches. Isle rule: never show skin, especially to the enemy. Except, Jay loved to parade around in those stupid sleeveless vests. She’s yelled at him plenty of times about it—Are you insane? You’re a walking target. He would just grin and say, they’ll have to catch me first.

Jay laughs as he grabs the practice swords from their stands. “Here.” 

He throws it, and Mal catches. The weight in her hand is familiar. Already, her pulse is thrumming faster, and maybe if she closes her eyes she’ll be back on the docks, with the wind ripping at her hair, and the salt stinging her nose, and half a dozen of Uma’s crew jeering over the clanging of swords. 

Jay chucks her a mask too, before attaching one to his own face. The mesh turns her vision slightly hazy.

“Ready?” Jay asks.

Mal’s watched fencing practise a few times, mostly as an excuse not to do homework and instead watch her boys wipe the floor with all those prissy Auradon princes. Coach Jenkins appointed Jay captain of the team a few months ago, a role he takes more seriously than she’s ever seen him take anything. 

“Rassembler! Salute! Lower the point. Masks down. En guarde!”

Mal lunges first, which Jay clearly anticipates, parrying her blow. He circles. Strikes. Mal blocks it. He’s quick. Reflexes honed to a sword’s point; learned by practise and theory. Mal lashes out again, just catching his free arm before he jerks away. She grins underneath her mask. Her breath comes quicker. Jay’s blade arcs down, hitting her chest. Mal swats his blade away. She hears him laugh. She growls. Strike. Parry. Strike. Block. Strike. Jay lands another hit. Their shoes squeak against the linoleum floor. 

“Come on, Mal,” Jay teases. 

Mal lunges like a cat on its prey. Jay’s blade grates against hers like steel against flint. Jay may be quick but Mal’s smaller, and she weaves her way through Jay’s blade until they both have the sword’s point angled at each other’s chests. 

They’re both panting. Jay lowers his sword first. Takes off his mask. 

“You came in clutch at the end,” he says. 

Mal huffs, wiggling the mask off her face and wiping her forehead with a sleeve. “You actually get training.”

“And now I’m training you!” 

His hair has loosened during the sparring, spilling out at the seams. He unties the bun; flips his hair down and shakes it out. In this late-afternoon light, his hair could be made of gold. Hair longer than Mal’s ever had. 

He pulls his hair back into its bun, deft fingers making quick work. When he straightens back up again, his face is slightly flushed from the match. 

And Mal looks at this boy she’s known most of her life; this face and these hands; a boy that has held her at the end of the world and the start of a new one. And she snatches back down her mask. 

“Again,” she says, lifting up her sword. 

She’s swinging before Jay’s even had the chance to pull his own mask back down. Her blade slices against his chest, and she hears the breath escape from his lungs. 

“Fuck!’

Jay’s blocking her hits in no time. Mal grits her teeth. A boy who’s inhabited every place she’s ever been. The shadow along the street; a fixed point on the rooftops. Those long, quick fingers that know their way around bandage; around open flesh; around her own hands. Like a comet to Earth. Like an eclipse. Totally consuming. 

And here, where the sun shines brighter than they could have ever dreamed, she is left blistering. Those girls that fawn over Jay, professing their love with the same ease that Mal can hold a dagger to a throat. Jay’s clicking tongue, and that low fry to his voice when he’s chatting someone up. Everything is always so easy to him. He can wrap anyone around his finger with a wink. 

His blade slams into her stomach. Mal pants, the budding pain in her side clearing her head. Jay’s standing above her like some heavenly deity. 

“Best of four?” he offers.

“Yeah, whatever.”

“C’mon. Let’s take a break.”

Jay drops his sword and grabs his water bottle from his bag. Mal joins him, still gripping her sword, gulping down her water like a man in a desert. 

“We should do this again soon,” Jay says. 

“Tomorrow?”

“It’s the Valentine’s Ball tomorrow.”

Mal snorts. “Yeah, and?”

“I was gonna go.”

His words are coming too slow; too considered. Like when he used to talk about his dad, or a particularly bad Barge Day. Rehearsed. A guard dog who’s smelled danger, prowling at the sidelines. 

Mal presents her blade. “En guarde!” she shouts, and Jay ducks her swing before scrambling over to his own sword. 

“Really, Mal? Another sneak attack?”

“I’m keeping you on your toes.”

They waltz around the sports hall, the blades clashing and slicing and singing.

“We all agreed we weren’t going to go to the Ball,” Mal says, jabbing at Jay.

“We never agreed anything.”

Jay lands a blow. They are at the dockyard, with its rotting wooden pier and dead fish stench. The screeching of metal; the shouting; Mal’s heart hammering like the tide. Blood, and life. The roar in her ears. A dragon’s call. Body moving without a thought, as quick as a lightning strike. Not having to look behind her because she knows Jay is there.

“Exactly!” she says. “Why would we want to go to some stuffy Auradon ball?” Jay tries to say something but she ignores him. “Why would we care about Valentine’s Day? It’s corny, and over-commercialised, and a stupid excuse to make everything about love.”

Jay has her backed up against a wall. With no time to mount his mask, his lips are slightly parted, and his hair is escaping from his bun again. He looks just like he did on the Isle; none of his perfect prince act that fools Auradon. His sword hovers above her throat. 

“Do you yield?” His voice is low.

Mal stares at him. Those eyes that have seen every part of her. All the blood; every smile; her pale skin in the dark Isle nights. The boy that has beheld her every action; weighed it all against his own understanding of the world, and decided that they slot together as easily as a bullet in a pistol.

“Who are you going with to the Ball?” Mal asks. She’s still clutching her sword. She could claim the upper hand, if she really wanted.

A grin creeps across Jay’s face. All those notes and heart-shaped lollipops. The giggling girls at his locker. He could pick any one of them. All of them so beautiful, in their sunset-coloured dresses. He could have anything he wanted.

“Well,” Jay says. “I was going to ask you.”

The sword’s point makes sure they keep their distance. Never too close. All touches so light; so fleeting, as if you could’ve mistaken them for a dream. As if you could’ve imagined the whole thing. All those nights in the hideout where the barrier of the body seemed thin, and the world became so small: just two kids who wouldn’t even dare knock knees. 

So Mal shakes it all away with a laugh. “I’m not going to the Valentine’s Ball.”

Jay lowers his blade. Neither of them move. “Not even with me?” 

“I’m sure there’ll be plenty of other girls who actually want to go with you.”

“I want to go with you.”

His words echo through the empty hall. His word is as steadfast as ever, the only opinion Mal will ever trust. Compass, anchor: Jay does it all. 

Heralded here, Mal as real as the vast sky outside. Here, in his gaze, held aloft by trust where there shouldn’t be and compassion where there shouldn’t be and understanding where there shouldn’t be. A home for all her broken bones. 

Mal’s lips unfurl into a smile. This ache in her chest. In her throat. Jay always being able to disarm her. Jay in every place she’s ever been. Jay as her shadow; her skin; her second self. A reflection in the mirror. The line of separation is nonexistent. Like the sun, like the moon: one cannot exist without the other.

[weidli]

pi have you read this fic. cause you should absolutely read this fic

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30603701

4.07 / It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester

i realize this is supposed to come off as haha dean likes pretty girls but like. what he's actually SAYING is that if he could pick any body to live in he'd pick one that looks like a pretty girl. which is not the same thing

[male-duckk]

thinking abt joe/carlos

[the-acid-pear]

I love the parallel between how Dave and Jack deal with their grief because Dave on one hand just can't let anything go bc he's terrified of losing someone dear again while Jack on his part has lost so much and so often he just doesn't get attached to shit.

[moe-broey]

Smartass guy with a flat affect vs guy who almost always sounds like it's joking and likes to play dumb. Neither immune to the urge to over-explain themselves in earnest. Fight.

And now I'M gonna over-explain myself 😤😤😤😤😤 Because this piece captures like. Some headcanons of mine that are so precious to me, and SO much. Of the Moefonse dynamic and friendship... the heart of how their back and forths work.

But first close-ups/text descriptions for easier reading!

From the very start, Alfonse is playing. That's his intention. To say something he knows will get a good response out of Moe. But his delivery is either too dry and flat or too genuine. He's extremely subtle, and his humor doesn't tend to land because of that.

Meanwhile, Moe can be unaware... generally. But just as much, if not more, it's deeply attentive towards the things it cares about. It takes these things SO seriously. Moe... really hates being misunderstood. It struggles with empathy, and its sense of compassion is entirely self-centered. Which seems unrelated, but all of these things contribute to it making a joke, and then feeling a need to immediately explain the joke. Just to make sure we're all on the same page, here. Nobody is left out.

So just. Joke (passed!) + Joke (also passed!) into Joke (passed, carrying on the bit), into Worry (Joke check: failed.) into Worry/Reassurance (You're my dear friend and I love you. No need to worry) into Understanding/Reassurance (yeah that WAS funny). Which, as a side, really flatters Alfonse... that's not something he gets often. He gets it A Lot from Moe though LMFAO

AND ... FINALLY..... FINAL TIDBIT OF CHARACTERIZATION

This doodle was closer to what the final panel was supposed to be (under the thought bubble), but I got distracted and forgor..... but it has essential characterization.... honestly both drawings do. So it's fine LMFAOOO

But it is So important. That neither of them are acting on their feelings. And it is sooooo important. That they're extremely verbally affectionate with each other anyway. And it all comes full circle, to the top caption. Moe sounds like it's joking here. But it is SO genuine. Also Moe might as well have said "I want you, like carnally" with that. Endlessly ambiguous guy. And for better or worse, Alfonse is built the Exact Same Way. 🧍

Oh yeah and. The. Posts. That inspired this LMFAOOO

They're both doing this. Btw.

[buttercup-barf]

Under the cut are mostly self-insert doodles of decreasing quality. Again, not much directly tied to Team Fortress 2. Might as well toss these out while I have no access to my puter. Much yapping under the cut and in the tags incoming.

Another self-insert, this time less of a "here's me as a tenth class" and more of a "here's my game experiences translated into the class I would take the place of". The Cleaner. Although I guess they could still be wearing either suit. It doesn't matter that much.

That one Convict's Case taunt with Backup would be extremely funny, because the man would be on the verge of a breakdown (he does not want to go to jail so bad you have no idea). The second image- I owe no explanation. You know what I am. You see the pattern with my favourites.

The duality of the man. Resting face versus "just heard you express interest in religion/Russian folklore" face. He's not that hard to make friends with, when you pull him away from all the explosions.

Some doodles of trying to figure his face out. Unfortunately, the more I stare at him, the more I worry that he looks like A Certain Guy With The Last Name "Kazarin", and the fear of never being original in my life caught up to me.

Don't look at me, don't perceive me, I refuse to explain any of my actions to you.

[swordmaid]

my hag romance murder mystery au turning to magistrate astarion working with executor shri’iia we kind of like that development

[spokelseskladden]

was absolutely shocked and saddened to learn that I've become my father if he was a left leaning semi-communist. so that's pretty horrifying and life ruining.

[immortalsins]

might have fucked up so its going on the blog

[inkats]

is it autism or is it a symptom of previous longterm social isolation and lack of agency ?

[vulpinesaint]

tell me about faedrennnnnn

oh my goddddd okay. essay. putting this under a readmore cause not only do i not want all of this directly on people's dash i personally do not want to have to scroll past all this when i go through my little faedren tag for funzies (<— subtle promotion for my faedren tag. which is very funzies)

trying to remember what i told you in my last very long faedren post. i think i have to approach this from my constant litany of 'people think faedren is like this but that's NOT what's going on' and then i will tell you what i've been thinking about with him plot-wise lately :D

so. my thing with faedren is that people often think he is a certain way based off of surface-level observations and while those things may be true to a certain point they are NEVER fully accurate. faedren from the outside seems like a violent fuckboy religious fanatic who wants to fuck his goddess and like. hm. yeah. some of that. but more thoroughly:

faedren is a cult member 👍 this is not something that he knows about himself but it is something that his party members have noted and are. concerned about. lmao. the point being: he absolutely is a religious fanatic, and his views are skewed because he was taught an extreme version of the dictates of calistria (goddess of lust, trickery, and revenge), but it comes along with like. other stuff. he is extremely easy to set off on a tangent about how beautiful and perfect his goddess is and it seems like usual fucked up religious fanaticism but also faedren is like. for real in love with his goddess. he grew up in an environment where he was NOT receiving the connection that people need, and in his head, his goddess is the only being that truly cares for him. so he talks about her with stars in his eyes and follows what he believes to be her edicts with absolute devotion, and a lot of it is driven by this parasocial and extremely personal connection that he created with his image of his goddess as. a coping strategy, essentially.

from that. faedren sleeps around at whatever chance he gets but that's primarily an extension of the sentiments that i mentioned just now. first of all sex as an explicitly approved religious thing haha. second of all he is starved for connection and affection and at this point in his life he has rationalized that the only way that he can get that is in casual hookups. does that come across when he's making out with a random soldier or flirting with any woman he sees at the bar. no. but it's important for me to note about him.

faedren perpetrates and idealizes a LOT of violence but he is not an implicitly violent or angry or destructive person. he's incredibly chill, actually, all things considered. when i say he rocks up to the function sounding like a personal trainer who's really involved in social media wellness trends, that Is reflective of his demeanor and inner life. for him, sex and violence are religious dictates that are the course to personal peace and catharsis and the ultimate path to a happy life. faedren espouses all the beauty of terrible gory revenge not because he really wants to hurt people but because in his head, it's about taking the anger that builds when someone wrongs you and directing it back on that person with extreme prejudice until you find catharsis, and that lets you continue on with your life in peace, unburdened by that frustration. he's not even really that pressed about being wronged. he acts like he's hot shit but that's just a high charisma score and confidence in his objective attractiveness and skill with weaponry; he has very little ego or self-worth, and so he doesn't really care when you bump into him too hard at the bar, but he is very dedicated to his goddess and following her teachings so he's gonna turn around and beat the shit out of you on principle. it's not about retribution as it is about acting out revenge: he's following the steps of revenge as he sees it, which is 1) identifying some wrong and 2) returning that wrong. he has been hurt much worse by people he cares about and trusted before, but he doesn't follow through with that as revenge, because he doesn't process it as a wrong done to him; of course he can be hurt by someone he cares about.

to that point. he is chaotic neutral. not chaotic evil. he'd burn down that village but it wouldn't be about destroying things or hurting people; it'd be some other motivation at play. he sucks really bad (for reasons that are not entirely his fault) and he doesn't do good things but he's not a Bad Person. he's not malicious, doesn't treat people with malice. he follows through on a set of principles that he's been given with devotion bordering on obsession, but that's about personal principle.

he's actually a pretty positive guy :) walks into every social situation with a smile ready to meet new people learn new things. he doesn't really. know how to handle negative emotions. so he brushes off physical and emotional pain and continues on as best he can. tries to numb and ignore the pain whenever possible. he has an alcohol problem 👍

so that brings us to the present! and also to faedren with his party, who he's gotten very close with over a long, harrowing time spent fairly isolated fighting in terrible conditions. group of guys who all have to sleep in the same room with each other to feel safe. shout out to all of these motherfuckers for not knowing anything about connection and affection (abused cult member) (literal demon from hell put into a mortal body) (girl who was raised alone in the woods with just her parents) and therefore not knowing how to express that they care for each other. or even fully realize it, really. the polycule <3

faedren's friends (who he's kind of in love with but doesn't know how to process that) are very invested in trying to get him to realize that he's cared for, that he's worth something, etc. etc. and faedren is REELING with the positive personal connections and affection from people who genuinely care for him. totally fucking crazy. rewriting the rules of life as he knows them. absolutely does not know what the hell to do with that.

it's good though! so they all pile into the same bed to ward off the nightmares and they all go into battle together knowing exactly how they should structure the party and they all know what order they walk in when they go through a dungeon. and then they're getting through a vampire-infested cave system and they get to the end of a puzzle room and they find what they're looking for. and they don't know that this stone is going to temporarily vampirize the person who touches it. and faedren's party member touches it and when he walks into the room, unaware of what's happening, he gets attacked and nearly gets his throat ripped out by someone he loves.

so that. sucks. and he's fucked up about it but he's so woozy on bloodloss that he can't even begin to process that. so it waits until the morning, when he decides that he's going to be pragmatic about it, and tells his party member (who he flinches when he sees in the room, because he may be trying to be reasonable about this but his body is learning otherwise) that it's fine. it's okay. it doesn't matter that he was hurt; there's no hard feelings, because faedren's been hurt way worse before, he can take this, it wasn't their fault, and relationships are supposed to hurt. that's how things work. he was doubting it for a second there, but now he's been very clearly reminded of the way of the world and he's fully aware that caring about someone hurts. smiles. tries to laugh about it. doesn't know how to deal with the negative emotions that would come with this, so tries not to feel negatively about it at all.

and what he takes from that is that yeah. caring about people will always hurt you. and he resolves to pull himself away from his party members to spare himself the pain the next time. he's never been loved by people like that before and it was wonderful but it makes him so much easier to hurt, so it's better to keep things shallow, easy, trysts with strangers and comrades in battle only because he can't take on a whole group by himself.

lucky for him the party member who bit him is also feeling extremely fucked up about it! so they both independently start to pull away from the party. and one of their party members, the little pumpkin leshy who faedren taught to read, gets fucking Slaughtered, and so what is there to really keep them together any longer?

anyway. faedren pulls away. and it's one thing to promise yourself that you'll do that and it's another thing to be face-to-face with the Distance between yourself and the people you were so close with. and he's so so sad and so frustrated with the lack of simplicity and the lack of trust and he's only ever been taught how to channel that into anger

faedren's only ever having been taught to channel negative emotions into anger, and when he's finally dealing with intense negative emotions that he can’t falsely cheer himself out of or staunchly ignore, he only knows how to turn it into tenseness, standoffishness, anger. and he’s not angry. he’s so so sad in a way that he’s never been before (and possibly in a way that he’s always been but has never let himself recognize) but when it starts bubbling over he only has one channel for it. so when he flinches without meaning to at the sight of his party member around a corner (because even though they have lurked in the shadows as long as he's known them, his body doesn't trust them like that anymore) the only thing that reaction can become for him is clenched fists and a tense jaw and eventually snapped harsh words that he doesn’t mean and that he would never have said before. trying not to put a hand to his sword but if his body is in fight or flight then fighting is all his body knows how to do.

so he crosses a bunch of little lines doing things that he didn’t really mean to do and wouldn’t have wanted to do and regrets doing, but he’s never been taught to apologize, and he’s never substantially fucked something up with someone who he actually had to repair a relationship with over something that he actually did wrong and so he just. doesn’t. he gets defensive. gets angrier about it. he knows somewhere implicitly that yelling at his party member after a battle that went wrong was not the right thing to do and that it wasn’t justified, he knows that he wouldn’t have wanted to yell at his friend otherwise, but it’s so so so much easier on his heart to let his mind start spinning the cognitive dissonance into defensiveness. false justifications. more anger in response to being too harsh to begin with. and it cycles and cycles and cycles.

and THIS is where i get back around to my main point because i think this is where faedren starts turning into the person that people THINK he is.

my vision for faedren is that this is when he starts to develop an ego. because this is when he starts putting up walls: he finally gets the love he's wanted for so long and it's ripped away from him, and he's so so sad and so so angry, and he puts up boundaries to protect himself. builds up an ego to protect himself. says, for the first time, "no, i don't want to be hurt," and starts channeling that frustration out on other people. and this is where he does become malicious, because it's where he starts saying "i want other people to feel the hurt that i'm feeling." this is where his revenge fanaticism becomes less about devotional acts for his goddess and more about him becoming genuinely furious at the smallest slight, and carving out pounds of flesh for himself in retribution because it's gratifying. like i said, i don't think that faedren ever really truly has ill intent toward people unless they disrespected someone he loves: i think this gives him the capacity to hate people, given time.

and he's drinking more. and following the pleasures of the flesh. and if he's sleeping with people it's not for any care or connection with them. and he's mean in a way that he wasn't before, that he didn't have the capacity for. and violence is just another pleasure to indulge in because even if it doesn't lessen his own hurt at least he can watch someone else suffer for it. if faedren's ever manipulative it's at this point in his life: when he starts wanting things and taking them from other people. putting his insane intimidation stat to good use. enjoying the lying as the 'trickery' aspect of his goddess' edicts. and then there's the bad person that people have been interpreting him as. which is all to say that i think faedren gets hot and evil. nd i'm really passionate about it 👍

[skrunksthatwunk]

not my dad not liking moral orel season 3 🤭🤭🤭that's so embarrassing for him (<- he's not wrong for feeling that way but i think it's like 60% because he doesn't like it when art gets weird and that's so so tragic for him)