#so therefore: tumblr salt

[alargehunkofdebris]

the necessary anguish of the Good Omens 2 finale

Ah ok. So after 4 years of waiting post Season One and ten cumulative years of bookish fannery, I watched bonified New Content of Good Omens. And when those credits rolled, I sat there, not in my expected state of pleasant satisfaction, but in a state of abject shock.

I actually don’t know if I’ve ever had such a reaction to a show before. Or, rather, that I could still have such a reaction. I’m thirty, for goodness sakes – I was planning on being thrilled and charmed and entertained, not having my hands shake so much that it was hard to type a text. I wasn’t planning on losing an entire night of sleep because my heart wouldn’t stop pounding really hard, Neil. This was not expected. I had an estate sale to run the next day – by God, I needed that sleep.

 Anyway. These are my thoughts on the season, and on this upswell of mourning/unhappiness at such a gut-wrenching ending. As always, this are my dumb opinions and nothing more; take with a grain of salt, etc. 

I have seen a lot of suffering on Tumblr today. Everyone is in pain, and it makes sense. I, too, am in pain. But I might be in the minority, because I thanked God/Mr. Gaiman when things turned to pure pain in the end. Because narratively, despite the anguish we all feel, this is how it needs to be. And I was getting real worried there for a second.

When we have a mini-series (ie, a show with a set number of seasons) it can’t act the same as a series without a set end. We’ve got three potential seasons; therefore, they logically should behave like a three-act play, or the three acts in the standard Western movie/book plot. This middle season is the middle act, the second act. While it definitely doesn’t work exactly the same way, and needs its own story arc to work as a season, it is still functionally the middle part of one overarching plot.

And what usually happens near the end of the second act? All Is Lost, and the Dark Night of the Soul.

We NEED this to happen. This is what makes a plot delicious. If we’d had this perfect, lovely, romantic season where the stakes aren’t raised one bit and everything is fixed at the end, we would want for nothing and the gorgeous tension that keeps us waiting and watching would be lost. We wouldn’t feel that drive to create fanfics and fanart, we wouldn’t have the need to speculate or dream, because most of the tension was eased, and you just can’t have that if you want a highly anticipated third season. We’d have nothing huge and concrete to look forward to.

In fact, I was getting really worried once the Ineffable Bureaucracy started happening on screen, because I could see (I thought) past that bend in the road toward the end. I could see how this season might conclude, with big happy confessions of love and hugs and handholding (that’s all I expected, because I only expected the same chaste level of affection with both angelic/demonic couples) and then…then it’d all be over. What more could there be? I mean, there certainly could be more, but THIS is the main thing people waited for. The Happy Confession. The hug. The handholding. Whatever we got. And in my mind, having it now, at the end of season two, just wasn’t adding up – it did not fit. It couldn’t. No, we can’t have this now. It doesn’t work.

I get this peculiar thing that happens when things start getting too “everything is great!” in a story. I get the “someone needs to die” instinct. Instead of pure happiness that things are going great, there’s this feeling of intense discomfort, because I feel the weight of the shoe that’s failing to drop. I need it to drop, or else it throws off my entire standard-Western-narrative-trained brain’s balance. In the build up to The Scene, when things seem to be going swimmingly and heading directly towards the happiest and syrupiest of endings, I had to pause and pace my living room and roll around on the floor to alleviate the sheer build up of stress. Things can’t go this well. They can’t. There hasn’t been enough bad things, this is too sweet, too much. Can’t handle it. This can’t just be pure wish-fulfillment at this point; Good Omens shouldn’t work that way, it never has. We’d be happy in the moment, but then it’ll ultimately be a let down. No more danger. Nothing keeping them apart. No more tension, no more story. It was all too easy.

And then, finally, that shoe dropped. After a season of mainly getting along and being just thrilled with each other, they began to really argue. Things got horrific and serious, and I literally let out a breath of relief. I was able to watch without pausing every two minutes for a breather. Ok. Things weren’t over. This wasn’t the end. We had more to wait for.

And then it went on. The confession started, but in that gorgeously wrong way. And for the first time that season, I was actually feeling the stress of the story. Yes, there was danger throughout this season, but it was always layered with humour and wit. You didn’t get a demon scene without them doing something hilariously stupid. You didn’t get an angel scene without them being delightfully out-of-touch. The stakes were high, but they weren’t allowed to get EXTREMELY high. We never thought there was any question of them getting out of scrapes unscathed, because it was never all serious.

Never…until now. There was zero humour at this point. After 6 episodes of being pleasantly delighted, I was feeling the dread. However, I still thought I knew where it was going.  

See, I thought I had it figured out. If I had any extra money, I would have bet some of it. I knew that, whilst they’d likely have some kind of subtle confession of love and caring, and perhaps a touch – a hug, or a hand-hold (like Gabe and Beez) – I knew we couldn’t expect a kiss. This is a story thirty-three years in the making, and it’s always been in that grey area. They weren’t humans; they didn’t necessarily show affection that way. Besides that, we’ve had so many TV shows that get close, but rarely ones that go all the way to smoochville. OFMD was one of the very first, but it was new. It wasn’t an old, established story from the 90s like this is. It didn’t have decades-old fans waiting with bated breath for canon content. For Good Omens, we heard it time and time again in interviews; it’s a kind of love story. They had this kind of marriage. They cared for each other. They had a bromance. It’s close, but never quite there. So I thought I knew exactly how this would go, and would be thrilled with what we got. 

And then it absolutely didn’t go that way. It went exactly as far as so many hoped. And it went there like a knife to the gut.

And it was perfect.

Goddamn, what a season ending. Despite my lack of appetite and failure to sleep, I could not be happier with what Mr. Gaiman did. I am screaming crying throwing up and I’m thrilled about it.

The middle of a story is typically what drags; it never holds the highest stakes. Lord knows what we’re going to get in season three (knocking on wood), but I can only expect it to get bigger and heavier. And by God and/or Satan, am I prepared, in this deliciously painful purgatory, to wait and see.  

[familyabolisher]

hi! i'm a follower, & i enjoy reading your posts and essays. in your recent post about the anti-intellectualism kerfuffle on tumblr, you said, "Part of my communism means believing in the abolition of the university; this is not an ‘anti-intellectual’ position but a straightforwardly materialist one."

i haven't heard of university abolition before, and if you are willing, i would like to hear what it's about. what is the university abolitionist image of a better alternative to universities? should learning still be centralized?

thanks for your consideration. :)

University abolition, as with any other form of abolition worth its salt, understands the role played by the institution of the university under capitalism in sustaining the conditions of capitalist-imperialist hegemony, analyses the institution accordingly, and recognises that the practices that the university purports to represent (that of intellectual production, the sharing and developing of knowledge) will undergo a fundamental overhaul and reconstitution under communism. This means looking at the university not merely as an organic institution wherein we study and develop ideas, but asking what ideas are developed and legitimised, and who is afforded the opportunity to do so, and why the university exists in the first place; we are taking a materialist rather than idealist approach. 

Simply put, the role of the university is to restrict access to knowledge and knowledge production, and to ensure the continuance of class divides and hierarchised labour. These restrictions come about in a vast number of ways; the most immediately obvious is the fact that one must meet a certain set of criteria in order to qualify for entrance in the first place, and this criteria tends to require compliance with the schooling system (itself another such arm of capitalist governance), a certain amount of wealth (and/or a willingness to accrue debt), and an ability to demonstrate methods of intellectual engagement compliant with the standard of the academy. Obviously, there are massive overlaps in this set of criteria; those who come from wealthier backgrounds are more likely to have had a good education and thus can better demonstrate normative intellectual engagement, those who can demonstrate that engagement have probably complied with the schooling system, and so on. The logic behind the existence of private schools is the idea that sufficient wealth can near-enough secure your child's entry into the university and therefore entry into the wealthier classes as an adult, with the most prestigious institutions overrun by students from privately educated backgrounds. Already, you can see how this is a tactic that filters out people from marginalised backgrounds; if you’re too poor, too un[der]educated, too disabled, not white enough, &c. &c., your chances of admittance into higher education grow slimmer and slimmer.

Access to the university affords access to knowledge; most literally through institutional access to books, papers, libraries, but also through participation in lectures and seminars, reading lists, first-hand contact with active academics, the opportunity to produce work and receive feedback on it, the opportunity to develop your own ideas in a socially legitimised sphere. As I explained above, who is afforded access to such knowledge is stratified and limited; the institution is hostile to anyone deemed socially disposable under capitalism. Access to the university also affords access to a university degree, with which you can continue down the research path (and thus participate in the cycle of radical knowledge-production being absorbed and defanged by the academy, and water down your own ideas to make them palatable to institutions which tend to balk at anything with serious Marxist commitments), or gain entry to better-paid, more stable, more prestigious jobs than those which people without degrees are most often relegated to. In this sense, the people who are more likely to be able to meet the access criteria for the university and then successfully participate in it are able to retain their class position (or else promulgate the myth of social mobility as a solution to mass impoverishment) and thus gain a vested interest in maintaining the conditions of hegemony. Those who gain entry into the middle class have done so after undergoing a process of stratification according to means; which is to say, class, race, [dis]ability; and tend to lose interest in defending a politic which seeks to destabilise their relatively privileged position in the pecking order.

Success in a research career, too, depends upon liberties afforded by wealth; can you afford to go to all these conferences, do low-paid and insecure teaching work in the university, churn out research, and support yourself through a postgrad degree without going insane? Not if you don’t have independent means. In the UK, the gap between undergrad and masters funding is absolutely wild—obviously there are scholarships afforded to a limited number of people (another access barrier—the whole institution runs on the myth of artificial scarcity), but broadly speaking, it’s pretty much impossible to put yourself through an MA with just the money you get from SFE unless you work a lot on the side to pay your bills (this is what I tried to do; I went insane and dropped out, lmfao) or have independent wealth. Establishing oneself as an ‘academic’ is simply easier when you have financial security. In this way, the people who make it to the very top of academia (the MAs, the PhDs) tend to be people who come from privileged backgrounds; people who are less likely to challenge hegemony, who will maintain the essential conditions by which the university sustains itself, which is to say the conditions of social stratification. These people often tend to hold reactionary positions on class—the people who are outraged at how little a stipend postgrad students get tend not to think twice about the university’s cleaners being paid minimum wage, or think of working-class jobs as shameful failstates from which their academic qualifications have allowed them to escape (how many people have you heard get absolutely aghast at the thought of ‘[person with a BA/MA/PhD] working a typically working-class job’?). Academic success tends to engender buying into the mythology of academia as a class stratifier and class stratification as indicative of one’s value, even amongst people who probably call themselves academic Marxists.

Universities are also tangible forces of counterinsurgency. I live in the UK, where universities are huge drivers of gentrification; university towns and cities will welcome mass student populations, usually from predominantly middle-class backgrounds and often coming to cities with significant working-class and immigrant communities, neighbourhoods formerly home to those communities will be effectively cleaned out so that students can live there, and the whole character of the neighbourhood changes to accommodate people from well-off backgrounds who harbour classist, racist feelings towards the locals & who will assimilate into the salaried middle-class once they graduate. More liberally-oriented universities will tend to espouse putatively progressive positions whilst making no effort to forge a relationship with grassroots movements happening on the streets of the city they’re set up in; student politics absorbs anyone with even slightly radical inclinations whilst accomplishing approximately fuck-all save for setting a few people off on the NGO track; like, the institution defangs radical potential whilst contributing to the class stratification of the city it’s set up in. 

This is without even touching on the role played by the university in maintaining conditions of imperialism and neocolonialism, both through academic output regarding colonised regions (from ‘Oriental studies’ to the proliferation of white academics who specialise in ‘Africa’ to the use of the Global South as something of a playground for white Global North academics to conduct their research to the history of epistemologies such as race science as transparently fortifying and legitimating the imperialist order) and through material means of restricting access to and production of knowledge based on country of origin (universities in the Global South are significantly limited in what academic output they can access compared to those in the Global North; engagement with Global North academia relies on the ability to move freely, something that is restricted by one’s passport; language barriers and the primacy of English in the Global North academy) keeping knowledge production in the Global South dependent on the hegemony of the North. Syed Farid Alatas has termed this ‘academic dependency,’ as a corollary to dependency theory; academia in the GS is shaped by the material dependence it has on the West, which in turn restricts the kind of academic work that can be undertaken in the first place. Ultimately, all institutions under capitalism must ultimately reroute back to the conditions that favour capitalism, and the university is not an exception.

This is just a very brief overview of an expansive topic; I would recommend going away and examining in greater detail the role played by the university under capitalism, and what the institution filters out, and why. What sort of research gets funding? What sort of knowledge gains social legitimacy? What can the university absorb and what must it reject? Who is producing knowledge and to whom are they accountable? etc.

[jiraisupportgroup]

why do you get to sit in your heated home with daddy’s money and tell everyone who can and can’t wear jirai kei?

I don’t usually respond to stuff like this, especially because I’m fairly certain this was just ripped from a popular j-fashion creators video, but:

I feel like I make it quite clear that when I talk about jirai kei it’s just my opinions. I openly state that I’m likely a dumbass and you should take my word with a grain of salt considering I’m not a spokesperson for the Jirai Kei community, I’m not an expert on Jirai Kei, I also don’t speak Japanese so I can’t rly access a lot of “OG” jirai kei content that launched the community.

Additionally: I’ve never stated that anyone can’t wear anything. The closest I’ve gotten to that is when I state that I don’t generally believe “jirai kei” is the appropriate term for the fashion (therefore you can’t rly “wear it” if we want to be super technical) or when I said that “fashion jirais” who complain about the community can fuck off.

Never at any point in that did I say that anyone can’t wear anything. If you want to wear girly kei or dark girly or larme or ryousangata or whatever the fuck you want to wear - by all means please do. My main point is if you don’t like the jirai kei community, don’t interact with it. You can post coords and find friends and have a lot of fun with the clothing if that’s want you want to do. You can buy Liz Lisa & MCM bags and generally live your best ryousangata life. You don’t have to interact with the jirai kei community to do that. Block the people you find annoying. Block tags, block accounts, block whatever you don’t want to see. No one is going to be mad at you for not wanting to interact with the “dark side” of jirai kei (as people love to call it for some reason) UNLESS you’re adamantly saying “the dark side is wrong” and then using a shitload of jirai-related tags. Other tags for these clothes exist. Separate the two if you want, I don’t give a fuck; jirai kei doesn’t own the clothing.

I’m not going to sit here and outright defend people in the jirai kei community posting people’s coords and bullying them, I’m not gunna sit here and defend the fatphobic or racist things that have been said on jirai kei twt. I will point out that those posts are not actually super common in the jirai kei community, and the people that post them generally aren’t very well liked by other landmines either, they also tend to be very young. It’s a really big community. There are going to be “bad apples” especially because it’s a community based around mental health issues. You can’t look at that handful of posts and say “the entire community is toxic and awful”. Venting & the like are very common, but it’s pretty rare that I see people actively posting hate like that, and there is a huge difference between the two. Most of the landmines I see are too scared to even make vague callout posts. Maybe that’s just Tumblr, idk, but honestly the amount of hate I see in this community is rather small.

Secondarily to your point; my house is not fucking heated. I can barely afford to run the AC in the summer or the heat in the winter - typically I turn it on when my BF is here and turn it off when he leaves to save money. I have my own apartment. I work for my own apartment. I can barely fucking afford it. I make about $2700 a month and my bills add up to be about $2400 a month (and it’s not like an expensive or nice apartment it’s literally full of roaches and my oven doesn’t work). I usually end up spending about $100 of the leftover on cat food, and then have $200 left over for gas to get to work AND food AND toiletries for the MONTH.

I don’t have “daddy’s money”. I live by myself about 8 hours away from my family; they don’t have shit to send me. My dad died 3 years ago and left us with 50k in debt because he decided paying taxes was optional. When that happened - I was making 17.50 an hour and I had the HIGHEST WAGE out of anyone in my family. I was trying to finish college which I was attending on a scholarship bc I couldn’t fucking afford it, I was working overtime, trying to organize my dad’s funeral bc no one else in my family could do it, and paying tax payments. “Daddy’s money” was a negative sum. I frequently send leftover cash to my family if there is any just to help them in any way I can.

The cute and nice things I can afford are typically bought either because I pick up overnight shifts at my secondary serving job or from sugar daddies. Although I stopped sugaring about 3 years ago.

I started working when I was 15. I started SW when I was 17 to help my family pay rent. I did SW from about 17 years old to 21 and stopped shortly after my father died because I didn’t have the time anymore. And I fucking hated it but it made money.

Don’t fucking come at me saying I’ve got a nice house and daddy’s money when I’m sitting in a roach-infested apartment that I work myself to the fucking bone for & I spent multiple years trying to pay off my dad’s debt.

Fuck right off with that dude.

[stormsbourne]

I can't tell if they were always here and just feel like they have rights to be louder and more annoying now, or of they were stealth before, or if there is a genuine influx of right wing shit heads on this site, but considering that this is a site where people often believe whatever they read I am urging you to fact check and not take people at their word. You're already seeing them make attempts that they know will speak to the tumblr mindset like "elon musk is just an uwu autistic baby who doesn't even know what a nazi is, how could he do a sieg heil?" and other crap like that. that is step one but the well of shit will only get deeper and it is imperative that you do the following:

1) do not take them at their word; fact check what they say. even the above is easily disproven by the fact that elon has positively interacted with nazi and fash ideology dozens of times in the past year alone.

2) be ready for them to get better at this and sneakier. anybody who looks at the video can tell what elon is doing, but they're going to come up with smarter defenses and excuses. do not be the person who falls for this "ethics in games journalism" level bullshit. stand your ground and don't let yourself be gaslit.

3) try not to make excuses for your own unwillingness to check things. "oh I'm neurodivergent so I just can't tell." I am too. unfortunately you (and I) must be ready to double check everything and take things that are said with a grain of salt because they are counting on people to not bother, and especially counting on ignorance and apathy and wanting to stay in your comfort zone. apathy is a weapon, but therefore, so is awareness.

4) unplugging is actually sometimes a weapon against these turds because they are hoping you get inundated with so much shit that your brain becomes incapable of prioritizing it and, again, goes into apathy mode. learn where your personal line is between staying aware of the news and doomscrolling. if you notice that things are making you actively depressed or furious or aggressive in a way that affects your every day life, it is not only ok to shut it off, but it is important to do so. a movement cannot proceed without its members.

4a) accordingly please curate your experience. block liberally. close posts that are making you mad. consider unfollowing people if they're posting shit that upsets you regularly, even if they are doing it from a side or position you agree with. you gotta look out for your own self.

5) survive.

[fookinhellcurlyy]

Larry in Jamaica Masterpost Pt. 1

Quite a lot of things about Jamaica scattered around here, though I haven't found a fully outlined masterpost about it so here we go.

Also, what pushed me to research more about Jamaica was this debunk post from an anti. Since I don't have a full reference of what had transpired during that period, I decided to take on the responsibility of collating information across the internet, including this account's own debunks for transparency.

—

February 2014

Harry on vacation.

TL:DR; The receipt of T Blair about Larry being together at that period. There is a possible debunk claim about his receipt I added below (huge grain of salt as per usual). Nonetheless, they could still have been together given the simultaneous MIA period.

H and L both went MIA on 28 Jan (Louis had been ski-ing with Eleanor previously and Harry had been in LA and also got the anchor tattoo) and were not seen again until 5/6 Feb.

Harry went to Jamaica for a family vacation as reported on 7 Feb. | x

There was a photo of him at the Norman Manley International Airport reposted by a UA from a fan on 7 Feb. | x

It was confirmed that James (Corden) and Gary (Barlow) were there. | x

Later on, it was mentioned by James that he first met Jeff (Azoff) in Jamaica. It was assumed that it was around this time.

The Larry receipt from a certain “T Blair” was posted on a forum/website. Comments span from 22 to 25 Feb. | x 

Possible debunk claim for T Blair: as per @larrynotlarrie | x

“In keeping with our intentions to be fair and present all sides of the situation as we see them - it has been brought to our attention by a valid source that the now-defunct blog that tblair commented on was run by someone who believed Harry and Louis were together at the time. The person who wrote the blog would at times create different aliases to comment on their own stories to generate traffic. Therefore, we do not stand behind the comments of tblair and believe “his” account of the situation was likely fiction. Whether or not H/L went to Jamaica together is up to everyone else’s interpretation/speculation.

Note: The larrienotlarrie account has already deactivated and I have no prior information about the content and credibility of the blog’s contents. Though this is the first seemingly larrie-centered blog I’ve seen that provided this possible debunk. 

EXTRA: Larry anon receipt mentioning the aqua tank top. | x

Not sure if they were pertaining to 2014 Jamaica or after that; but definitely before the September 2016 one.

—

September 2016 to January 2017

Harry’s HS1 Album Recording / Possible multiple Larry in Jamaica occurrences.

TL;DR: It's possible that Larry were together in Jamaica multiple times between September 2016 to January 2017.

Tumblr post by @cristinayanggirl which was outsourced somewhere from Google (which is also the reason why I wanted to make a more thorough research of this series of Jamaica events). | x

September 2016 Jamaica Timeline by @sslarrysettingsail | x

TL;DR: Louis was spotted multiple times every month from January to August (1, 17, 20, 25, 21, 16,10, and 20 times), and was only seen 5/6 times after Harry left for Jamaica in September.

September and October 2016 Larry Location Summary by @iftheresnolove | x

TL;DR: In support of the aforementioned September 2016 timeline, the table above spans to October 2016.

Louis Sightings 2016 Summary by @parodiesofuktabloids | x

TL;DR: "So he’s definitely been seen in LA ~30% of the year. His unknown status is the biggest at ~40%, and he’s currently spent 25% of the year out of LA. It seems like more because as the year has gone on, he has been seen less and less in LA, and is either out of town or his whereabouts are unknown."

PART II: March 2017 + Others + Debunk Claims

[lola-andheruniverse]

Anon who asked me about "sides" in the caryl fandom and which one I place myself on because you believe I "switched sides"/changed my opinions:

I'm not posting your ask because you named people and that's not something I do on my blog or generally agree with. The only instance you'll find me naming or tagging people is in fic recs posts, so that caryl authors who are on Tumblr can read them and be found by readers who'd like to reach out.

If you have a problem with the opinions, feelings and/or behaviors of a particular individual/blog, I ask you to 1) please reach out to them directly so you can express your disagreement or 2) use your block button, so you no longer see content you don't like. I believe that our fandom is big enough to hold every single caryler out there who wants to join in, regardless of their opinions, posts or feelings. People should feel free and safe to post whatever they want, either 'positive' or 'negative'. I have no problem with anyone in the fandom and I respect everyone's opinions, even when I disagree with some stuff I read.

Please, I ask you to not use my ask box to indirectly badmouth, bully or attack any caryler.

That said, the answer to your question is after the cut.

I'm not on either "side" and never have been. I'm just another enthusiastic fan that loves Carol and Daryl. Since joining the Tumblr fandom just before the pandemic (I was a lurker for many years), I've been using my own critical thinking skills and knowledge of AMC's shenanigans to form my own opinions.

I'm confident in TBOC because I believe there are concrete reasons that support how I'm feeling, from Melissa's return, to filming spoilers and rumors, to Tribeca and SDCC. You're free to agree or disagree with my interpretation of these facts, and to feel positive or negative about it.

I also continue to believe that AMC/Gimple hijacked the original caryl spinoff to highlight the richonne spinoff because it follows similar decisions made before to give Rick more screen time at the expense of all the other TWD characters. I believe Melissa had no choice but to opt out of the original spin-off and negotiate new terms to ensure that Carol's (and therefore Caryl's) story was respected and told with integrity. To me, that's why there were things to be sorted out, as she said, and why she lengthily discussed Carol with Zabel and co. even before scripts for the France spinoff were written. She was involved since the beginning, yes, but she only signed on when she got what she wanted. There is no greater supporter of Carol than Melissa and we have known this for years. I'm glad she's back in her own terms. I believe it was a pretty difficult time for her, as she expressed it by basically refusing to promote 11C or the series finale, and by not saying anything about the whole mess on SM, while other cast members/friends such as Laurie Holden and Khary Payton spoke out in her behalf.

I believe AMC tried to make money off just Daryl because he's their original character and it backfired in their faces. They also made a mistake using Norman to save face as he should have been protected from the SM backlash. Norman has never been a reliable narrator and I always take every thing he says with a grain of salt, but I don't think he's intentionally malicious. I appreciate how much he loves Daryl and is considerate of his fans, even when I don't approve of his behavior. I just wish he would keep his frustrating mouth shut. I believe Norman had lots of input in S1 and that he initially thought he could pull it off without Melissa. But there's no Daryl without Carol and no Carol without Daryl. It's crystal clear how much Norman's happy for having Melissa by his side, and how much they love each other and are excited for S2. I'm glad they are reunited, both for them and for us, but I believe everything worked out in the end because Melissa didn't give up on getting what she wanted. I believe she had lots of inputs in S2 and is satisfied and happy with the final result.

So, that's how I believe things have gone these last two years. Again, feel free to agree or disagree with my interpretation of facts. None of us will ever know exactly what happened, but each of us can decide what to believe based on our own judgment of the facts. That's what I do and will continue to do.

In the end, for me, the important thing is that Melissa and Norman are happy and that Carol and Daryl get their hard-earned happy ending. It's everything I ever wanted and I'm going to enjoy it. I hope you enjoy it too.

That's it. Caryl on!

[lambilegs]

You’ve made me wanna write again but I’ve never really published any of my writings anywhere and especially not tumblr so I was just wondering if you have any tips? Or borders you recommend and all that kinda stuff (p.s I love your writing)

AWEEEE you're such a sweetheart, thank you so much!! and thank you for trusting me to give this advice <33 I wasn't totally sure if you meant advice on writing or posting on tumblr, but I went with the second option. if you wanted advice on writing, though, lmk!! <33

definitely tag your works. I've run a few different tumblr accounts by this point, and on all of them, my earliest published works only circulated because I tagged the shit out of those babies LMAOOO

definitely don't put pressure on yourself about, like, the "aesthetic" of your posts. if you enjoy that aspect of it, then totally go ahead, but if it's something that just feels like a drag and makes you not want to post, then it's totally valid to choose not to. you know, writing and posting here should be fun, so if adding stuff to your posts like colours and photos takes away from that fun, it's totally valid to just drop it. plus, I've seen all different kinds of formatting on tumblr, and really, it doesn't affect how many people will read or interact with your work, you know?

if you come across other writers/creators who you admire, it never hurts to pop them an ask!! one of the best parts of posting your writing online is that you get to foster community with other people and writers in that fandom. it helps pump inspiration for you and them to to write, since you all get to gush about certain characters with each other, and become a sort of support system for one another. and that's very comforting and motivating to have when you post your writing online. so, never hesitate to try to forge those bonds with people, because from my experience, most creators in the same fandom as you will be happy to interact.

to add onto this, if you like someone's writing, tell them!! again, this is not only a kind thing to do for other writers, but it's another way to interact with other people in the fandom and feel a sense of community. you get to boost their confidence in their writing, you two get to bond over something you both have a connection to (aka the piece of writing in question), and it's just a lovely moment to share with other creators.

if you ever get overwhelmed with asks/requests, remember: you are under no obligation to respond to them. this is your account, and it's your space to cultivate. so, if there is a high amount of asks and/or requests, and you just can't get to all of them, or don't feel like getting to them, there's nothing wrong with simply deleting them and starting fresh in your inbox. wanting requests, wanting asks, does not mean you have to respond to every single one if you feel overwhelmed. because it very much can be overwhelming if you have an intense influx of messages in your inbox and you don't have the social energy to respond to them all. so, either take your time getting through them, or if you ever want to, deleting them is totally valid too. you're human, and this is your blog -- you can do whatever you want.

don't be afraid to rb your own writing if you wanna bring it back on people's dashes when they're more active! nothing wrong with that, plus the people deserve to know that you posted <33

making a masterlist helps a TONNN when it comes to keeping track of your posts and writings, as well as tagging everything. but, also, I'm very intense on organization so take this with a grain of salt HAHA

it helps to have a pinned post that states basic info about you, as well as what your boundaries are in terms of writing, interactions, requests, etc. therefore, people will know what you're okay with, which will help in ensuring you don't wind up dealing with a request or interaction that makes you uncomfortable. in my opinion, I think it also helps if your pinned post does also have your 3-5 most recent fics, just so anyone who hasn't been on your account for a few days can get to them easily through that.

never hesitate to ask for your followers or moots' help!! whether it be about advice for something technical like when to post, or wanting their opinions on certain ideas or concepts you have, it never hurts to just post that you're down to hear people's ideas, or post a poll where your followers can help with a decision. so long as you make it clear from the get-go the context of any ideas your followers may share with you (whether it be just to explore that idea together, or for you to eventually use them in a fic), you're good.

and always be open if someone politely tells you something they'd prefer to see on your blog, whether it be more sensitivity towards a certain topic, or a text style. ultimately, it's your decision how to interpret and take in these asks, but so long as they're civil, it's always fair to give them that back.

but, if someone comes into your inbox clearly hating or trying to stir drama, I think either ignore it, or respond after taking a few moments to cool off. just so you can respond to it while still managing to rise above them and whatever they spew towards you.

mwah!! lmk if any of this is confusing or you want some expanding from me on it, because I'm currently kinda brain-hazy from doing work so idk how well I spoke on all of this HAHA also I cannot wait to see you post your writing, I'm sure you'll do amazing!! <33

[dailycharacteroption]

Mummy (Pathfinder Second Edition Archetype)

(art by Uriak on DeviantArt)

And it’s time for another archetype from Book of the Dead that lets you play an undead character! This time it’s a pretty interesting one in that we’re looking at: mummies!

Mummies have been in RPGs since the beginning, but their presence as undead creatures is actually relatively recent compared to the age of the culture they come from. That’s right, there are straight up no stories of mummies rising from their grave to torment the living in Ancient Egypt, presumably because a mummy, by necessity, was one that had undergone all the proper rites of death and therefore didn’t have any reason for stories of them rising and complaining about it.

Heck, even The Curse of the Pharaohs, the idea that those that dare disturb the tombs of kings would be cursed with a painful death is fairly recent, with the closest thing we actually have from the various dynasties and periods of the nation being warnings to not disturb or desecrate the tombs and sarcophagi of a pharaoh lest they lose the favor of the gods, but those are more akin to having the awareness to realize that your successor is probably gonna deface any statue of you they can find and strike your name from all records they can get ahold of, because that happened a lot.

The actual undead mummy is actually a creation of foreign writers, going as far back as the 1840s with Gautier’s The Mummy’s Foot, and 60 years later with Bram Stoker’s (yes, that Bram Stoker) The Jewel of the Seven Stars, along with others in that period like Arthur Conan Doyle, and so on.

Curiously, most of these undead mummies were not monsters per se, having no hostile intentions towards mortals, but rather, were often love interests for the protagonists, which smacks of elements of the exotification and sexualization of the East, which is unfortunate. On the other hand, if there’s any online community that can emphasize with the idea of dating an immortal being from a bygone era, it’s tumblr. This focus on desire also explains why even more horror-focused mummy fiction often gives the mummies ways to “rehydrate”, regenerating themselves into a fleshy, lifelike form, if only temporarily and usually at the expense of some poor sap, cursed or otherwise.

Mummies as horror monsters didn’t really start until the 1930’s with Boris Karloff in the Universal Studios The Mummy movie, and even that retains the notion of the mummy regaining a semblance of life, since he only spends one scene of the movie as a shambling corpse and the rest as an offputting older gentleman who politely insists not to be touched.

Beyond that, mummies in fiction have ranged from being similar undead sorcerers to being particularly dusty zombies that may or may not have a would-be necromancer commanding them, and their appearance in tabletop games has similarly varied.

In Pathfinder, the generally accepted paradigm is that mummies range in power from the basic variety, which were typically mere servants or mummified accidentally by extreme outdoor conditions such as bogs, deserts, or extreme altitudes, whereas greater mummies (represented by the Osirian Mummy and Mummified creature templates in First Edition) were a step above, retaining their skills and sense of self. Meanwhile, at the pinnacle were mummy lords, created from the bodies and souls of the most powerful and magically-skilled pharaohs.

However, a detail that was brought into focus with Second Edition was that mummies, no matter what culture they belong to or where they are found, are undead tied to the land, which makes sense due to the way that every mummification process involves at least some level of environmental process, from being soaked in anaerobic bog water/peat to being desiccated by the sun or natron salts, and so on. That connection is what gives many mummies their strange powers over the environments they hail from (like conjuring sandstorms or turning into clouds of sand and the like). Of course, that connection also subtly taints the natural world around them wherever they go, given their status as undead beings.

While it is possible to play a character who underwent the ritual to become a mummy in recent times (either just after death or more horrifyingly while still alive), the nature of this archetype lends itself better to playing a time-displaced undead character who only just woke up from their eternal rest. Whether you’re a millenia-old citizen of a now-defunct desert kingdom or some poor explorer that died in a bog and only clawed their way out a century later when someone accidentally stepped on their head while wading through the muck, there’s a lot of potential there.

So let’s take a look, shall we?

Like all undead archetypes and certain other spellcasting ones, you can technically take this archetype at first level, but must obviously take the dedication as your 2nd level feat. In this case, the dedication provides the basic undead benefits, as well as increased physical durability at the cost of fire vulnerability. Additionally, their unarmed strike becomes stronger as they pull water from their targets on contact. Meanwhile, they also establish a bond with an extreme terrain predominant to the region they were mummified within, which determines the aesthetics of later abilities as well as what terrain certain other abilities function with.

Case in point, most are able to stride through difficult terrain in their bonded environment with ease, as well as see through concealment within it as well, be it the snowstorms of the arctic or mountains, the sand of deserts, or the fogs of the marsh.

Whether it be from their strikes or from another ability, they can use the moisture drawn from other creatures to trigger a transformation, regaining a semblance of life and vitality for a short time.

Many also develop the greater benefits of undeath, as well as resistance to actively harmful aspects of their bonded terrain as well.

Whether they were mummified alive or merely endured the traumas of their soul being bound to their corpse, the process of becoming an undead mummy is filled with anguish, which they can then weaponize in one of their more infamous abilities as an aura of despair. While not yet potent enough to paralyze with fear, it can send foes fleeing.

While this archetype can’t grant true mummy rot, they can inflict a withering necromantic affliction on foes when they get a particularly lucky blow on foes, consuming their vitality and body while it lasts.

Some of these mummies can call upon atmospheric phenomena from their bonded region to summon concealing storms of mist, sand, and the like, making their presence obvious but their exact position impossible to determine, making for a useful defense.

Those of a warrior disposition often learn to channel their lesser curse through weapons rather than their limbs.

While otherwise ordinary cloth, many mummies can infuse some of their malevolence into their wrappings to briefly animate them, following up a strike to entrap foes with them.

Taking their bond with the terrain further, some learn to actually become the terrain, turning into flying clouds of an appropriate substrate such as mist, snow, sand, bog water, and the like.

In a horrific display of their mastery of moisture and life force, powerful mummies can suck both right out of foes in a wide conical area with a horrid inhalation, harming them and healing themselves.

Finally, some refine their despair aura so they can do so more often, and those that are especially affected are outright paralyzed with fear for a few critical moments.

The mummy archetype does a good job of emulating the powers most commonly associated with undead mummies in a balanced way, and can certainly be fun for any sort of character without requiring you to invest super heavily into it. If the game takes place in a lot of set pieces covering their favored terrain, it can be quite powerful if you spec for that, or you can just focus on being an especially tanky undead melee character. Certainly the despair ability is useful for every character, and being able to enshroud oneself or turn into clouds of particulate is useful for close and ranged characters alike. As such, there is no one specific build for this archetype, but you can choose to add it’s benefits to whatever build you’re going for.

Like I said before, it is entirely possible to play a truly ancient undead with this archetype, which opens up some interesting roleplaying opportunities. Obviously culture clash between your original culture and those that exist in the modern era is one, but also consider the knowledge that you bring with you from your old life. After all, undead mummies have included royalty, high priests, mages, and more in fiction, so their perspective can be interesting.

His hairs all fallen out long ago and his husk as dry as an old waybread wafer, Nshantu the Ensnared is the oldest storyteller among the anandi, though that’s hardly an impressive boast since he ventured high into the mountains to become a mummy. Still, the silk-bound arachnid boasts the deepest pool of knowledge in the region, which he will share with those who offer him information in exchange.

In their quest to  defeat the risen pharaoh that has kidnapped their patron, whom he believes is a reincarnation of his lover, the party finds a lead in references to one of his old servants, a jaathoom, or djinn genie who still dwells on the material plane.

Ever since the party made it through Blackwater Bog, something has been following them. They sometimes sense something on the edge of the firelight that vanishes when they try to find it, and just yesterday the woman they’ve been escorting found a muddy handprint on her bag. But is this stalker foe, or friend?

[kooki914]

Which part of the Undertale/Deltarune fandom do you just hate?

Part of me doesn't want to spread hate in an already divisive community, and a different part of me loves complaining. So, readmore added for the sake of a "warning" aka if you don't want to read my entitled whining just scroll past this.

TL;DR: petty bullshit that's hardly even relevant anymore.

I kinda see the Undertale and Deltarune fandoms as two separate entities at this point. From the original Undertale fandom, what it was all the way back when the game first came out and before Deltarune was a thing, god I hated the moral policing. "You can't do this" or "you have to do that" and the fact that something as small as Drawing A Character In A Dress caused an artist to nearly get chased off of tumblr? Fucking insanity. And the constant character assassinations? What they did to Asgore? What they did to SANS? If I ever get started talking about all my gripes with that old fandom I'd never stop.

For the Deltarune fandom though, at least what it is now, god I hate the hype. I'm not subscribed to the newsletters because I hate the general culture around waiting with baited breath for new breadcrumbs, as that just manifests as Dread for me rather than positivity. Like if I start thinking too hard about Deltarune's potential release dates I start biting people's heads off. (No offense Salt lmao) It sucks because even when I DO get somewhat excited (like I did with the latest newsletter) it's immediately followed by the fandom running everything from the newsletter down into the ground, which... on the one hand is understandable because we're all starved for UT/DR content but on the OTHER hand it really feels like we all need a new hobby, like collectively. I'm happy for you if this brings YOU joy but personally I'm a little tired of seeing the 1000th artist interpretation of yet another scene that's literally best conveyed through text.

Also if I can be EXTRA petty, I dislike a lot of "making my own tenna" or "my own deltaswap" things rattling around in the fandom right now. This is entirely Being A Whiny Little Baby™ syndrome from me because I do the EXACT same shit, I just don't have anything good enough to post don't follow fandom trends when it comes to that sort of thing. You know that meme about two wolves inside a person? One of my wolves is like "cringe is dead and this is a harmless creative activity that gets people together and talking about things they love therefore its Good™" and the other wolf is like snarling and barking like "but it doesn't appeal to MEEEE" Like if I see one more TVhead Tenna I'm actually blacklisting his tag. If I see one more deltaswap that entirely misses the mark on what I like in role-swaps I'm gonna start killing.

So, yeah, I guess I just hate things that feel like they're outside of my control/don't appeal to my extremely hipster contrarian tastes. Aka petty bullshit no one cares about go figure

[paeliae-occasionally]

pae pae, what is one piece of lore you’ve been gate keeping, and why?

pls go on a tangent

Hello love, sorry this took me a little while to get to. Real life :( but in return you get the longest rant I have ever put on tumblr so I hope you are proud of yourself. (Also why have I been keeping it secret? It just hasn’t come up and it is a whole story so buckle up.)

Lore time…

Ok so the lore we are talking about today is Where are the gods??? There were gods but now they are gone. This is broken into 3 events: The Separation, The Dissolution and The Accords (including magestones)

The Past

In the past there were hundreds of gods who roamed the mortal plane. Gods of elements, life and death travelled there to shape the world as they saw it.

As the world developed, the latent simple components of thought and souls began to settle into creatures of the earth.

This created a race of humans, who were the first beings who had souls yet so little innate energy that it would not sustain their bodies forever.

With the rise of humans, Gods of thought and memory grew in power and purpose as more thinking creatures were formed. They had a whole new domain to weave.

The Separation

At this time any magic done by mortals was cast from their own tiny energy store so was small enough to be unnoticeable. The gods intended to keep them to their small powers so that they could never rival the gods in terms of power.

One of the Eldest gods, Ezemhaziel god of controlled magic, traveled the earth trying to create a new way to control magic, the runes. He found a mortal Rin, who seemed to have a talent for magic and a creativity that could help in his work.

Ez created a bond with Rin to share some of his large energy store between them, this is called a Laren bond. Ez later taught him to cast straight from the world around him, similar to how modern mages cast. The pair grew closer and became almost inseparable.

A group of gods watched in disdain as this mortal gained the ability to cast powerful magic. They hated the idea of the narrowing differences between morals and gods, so they decided to remove the threat to their power. These gods gathered and when Rin next left Ez’s side they drew a group of mortals together to kill him.

Rin was attacked by the mortals. He called out to Ez, who came but the gods held him back, and kept him out of Rin’s sight. Rin was killed by the mob. Ez tried to save him with every power he possessed but could not reach him in time. Ez then cursed the gods and the runes and left the mortal plane.

During the encounter Ez pulled so much magic to himself that he formed a concentrated area of Ike, (magic) so much that the mortals could feel the magic that hung in the air around them. These mortals eventually discovered methods to harness the magic around them and became the first druids. Further down the line they also train the first mages. So despite the gods’ efforts (and largely because of them) the mortals get access to more powerful magic. Even though this is all the other gods’ fault, they blame Ez for creating the magic dense area and summon him to a trial.

In his grief Ez does not return to the world so the gods decide that it is reasonable to kill all mortals who have acquired magic and salt the earth where the collection of magic is.

The gods start to go about enacting this, but many other gods are against the idea of culling mortals. This resentment builds especially in gods who rely on mortals as their domain. Gods of memory, thought, fear, illusions and names stand up for the mortals who act as the medium of their power.

The gods who require mortals and therefore prevent the slaughter called themselves the Azeraad, and the gods with no need for mortal creatures label themselves Dieral.

For generations there is a stalemate with a few gods killing and protecting mortals, but most remaining still to prevent a large scale godly war.

The Dissolution

In the decades while the gods watch each other, mortals develop more innovative and powerful magic and build up mage cities. In their development the mages do not forget the massacres that the early Dieral gods committed and plan revenge. They begin work on becoming immortal to further show their power as equals to the gods. Secretly a group develops weapons to use against immortals.

The mage city of Laith’Seyleren is the centre of immortality research and the forefront of magic development when the Dierals finally take notice.

The Dierals break the stalemate to ensure mortals never discover immortality. They destroy the entire city of Laith’Seyleren utterly, no one survives. The other mage cities don’t even find out until a day later when a group of diplomats teleport into a wasteland of rubble and ash.

After this the Mages and the Azeraad gods declare outright war on the Dierals.

The war rages in the deserts to the north west of the Illeri lands with the dieral gods building temples on the mountains to the east and the mages building tall thin mage towers to the west.

Hundreds of mages die in an altogether uneven battle until one mage Muliva Kazi invents a way to bind gods and trap them in Demi-planes then cut the plane off into the aether beyond. This entirely changes the battle as the gods can now be killed. Even the Azeraad gods who fought with the mages were uncomfortable with these machines.

During the battle, a group of mages and Azeraad gods have been working together to end the war but after Kazi’s machines are invented they gain the support of some minor Dieral gods as well.

One member of this group, Paeliae of Laith’Tielere, plans to carry a peace treaty into the temple of the Dieral god of light who leads their forces.

While Paeliae travels through the desert into the walls of godly defences, Ezemhaziel wakes up. He sees the war and the suffering of the mortals and gods and calls on all of the power he could not reach so many years ago to kill the God of light.

He succeeds and takes the fallen god’s seat in the Dieral hall.

Paeliae finds him there and presents him with the treaty. Ez agrees to negotiations of peace and calls the Dierals and Azeraad gods back from the war to meet.

As soon as these words have left Ez’s mouth Paeliae falls to the ground, broken by journey but fulfilled in his purpose. Ez swears one last promise to remember the fallen mortal.

The Accords (Magestones)

The Gods and a collection of mortal mages gather for peace negotiations after years of war.

A compromise is reached where some magic will be bound away so it can no longer be used by the mages or gods.

Magic was bound in giant engraved rocks called magestones. These were made of a translucent stone that glowed and hummed with power. Bindings ran like water across the surface of the stone keeping the magic contained.

Specifically magic relating to immortality, time, and the type of godly binding that Muliva Kazi invented were all collected in magestones so they could not be used again.

Particular war criminals, both gods and mages were also bound in magestones to appease both sides and as a reminder so that a war on this scale would never happen again.

In exchange for the mages giving up large portions of their magic, the gods who fought in the war agreed to leave the mortal plane and return back to their home planes. While in their home planes they can only help their followers indirectly, I.e. creating bonds that are incredibly weak due to the long distance.

Modern Day

So in the modern day the magestones are well established. Mages are taught about the magic restrictions and a few horror stories of people who tried to perform that magic and were absorbed into the magestones. There are a few magestones in Zairel that come up in the Xaeren WIP which is fun.

There are a couple of occasions of gods breaking their pacts and entering the mortal plane and one instance of a god breaking out from a magestone. (He is trapped again eventually, this starts the mist war.) —————————————————————————

Hope you liked the PAGES of lore. There is more but this was already the longest tumblr post I have ever made so that will have to wait.

Tagging the Tag List~ which is new for me:

@thelovelymachinery, @an-indecisive-nerd, @the-letterbox-archives, @oliolioxenfreewrites and @winvyre

[sb-retrospect]

Hello tumblr. This is a blog dedicated to updates for the potential "callout" on the Succubuns closed species ARPG. Im making this blog available for people to reach out to me so that I am not just submitting anons to @succubun-salt

About me: I am not a member nor have I ever been a member of the Succubuns species, therefore I have nothing to lose if im somehow identified but I would prefer to remain anonymous. I have seen how succubuns has wronged its users in awful ways. I would like it to be publicly known that the species is an unsafe environment under the current moderators.

Feel free to send asks here in regards to the potential callout post.

If you have any information / personal experience from Succubuns, please submit it here as I'm interested in compiling information: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSewcttFp_mI9EGJSRpZW8rwBspE7RQLpB4y2fDK3vWjR7082A/viewform

[zukosdualdao]

Im glad to read the takes of a fellow zuko stan :)

Honestly, it feels like people just hate on him way too much lately. The posts ive seen on twitter, on tik tok, on tumblr... Do people just not like him anymore? Why did everyone turn against him so suddenly? I've been hoping it's something temporary, just a trend, but. I don't know anymore. People mock his disability, spit on his trauma, wish death on him and interpret everything he says or does in the worst possible way. I saw someone crying about how entitled he was because he took aang's seat when watching the play just the other day lmao. Another person wrote about how mysoginistic he was because he didn't remember katara's name when asking about kya's death to sokka? There are those who even call him a colonizer on the same level as iroh lmao. It seems their justifications for all the salt they throw his way are along the lines of "he's been loved for too long, aang stans have suffered way more, people just watched the show again and realized how bad he actually was, he's catching strays since his fans keep setting him up, his fans paint him as perfect and erase every bad thing he's done" etc etc. I'm all for criticism and deeper character analysis, but this is just said in bad faith. I also think it has a bit to do with how different engagement has become in fandom spaces recently (things people support in fiction need to be morally correct) and well, zuko was the perfect target. He's done bad things, sides with the villains for a good portion of the series, redeems himself but there are things he still has to work on... I don't know, it's been getting to me. There are many other harsh things ive read said about him (like implying how every single member of the gaang hates even after redeeming himself), but i honestly don't have the energy to delve into each and every one. His arc was poorly executed and his development was badly written now, apparently. I kind of just ranted here, i apologize. Im very happy to read the posts of someone who genuinely likes him and doesnt throw him under the bus to defend or elevate other characters...

hi! i'm glad you're enjoying my blog <3 and no need to apologize for the rant, i'm always happy to talk about zuko!

about to theorize a bit as to why it seems like maybe zuko has become a more contentious character, but it should be noted i have not been exceptionally, actively involved in the fandom very long. i loved atla as a kid, have retained fond memories, have witnessed some discourse from the fringes over the years, but only recently has it overtaken my brain to the point of making a whole blog about it. lol. so, like, grain of salt, etc.

i think a big part of it is what you said - in the last few years of fandom in particular, it feels like there has been a huge upswing in purity culture, moralizing liking/not liking certain ships or characters, and an overall increase in very black-and-white thinking. there's also an emphasis on "holding people accountable" (good in theory), often without specifying what, exactly, that looks like (less good). the idea then becomes that if you've done harmful things, there's no way you can ever make up for them and should just, like, hate yourself for all eternity and also die, probably, which is not actually helpful to anyone.

so, i think for those who ascribe to that mindset, zuko is a prime candidate for them to criticize. and while there's nothing wrong with criticizing a character or their arc or writing if you truly have a problem with it, as you've said, a lot of the time, criticisms against zuko don't seem to be made in very good faith. after all, a big part of zuko's arc is having to unlearn some very black-and-white thinking. also, zuko is not a real person. he is a character, and therefore a narrative tool, and if we want him to be 'held accountable', we need look no further than the story itself, in which he is probably the character the narrative holds the most accountable for his actions due to his prior status as a villain.

(it reminds me a bit, actually, of another favorite character of mine: alec in the tv series shadowhunters. he starts out the story already in a heroic role, unlike zuko, but a big part of his narrative is unlearning some prejudiced cultural mindsets and challenging not only his previous ideologies, but his conception of himself and the people in his life as well. as a result, alec can look sometimes more obviously flawed than the other main cast, but the point is that the narrative asks him to examine those flaws and change and introspect and grow in a way that it doesn't always ask of other characters when they are showcasing their own flaws. which does make me thing about zuko vs. aang in the atla narrative.)

the other thing i think is contributing to zuko's more contentious status in the fandom is how long atla's been in the cultural consciousness, and how common it is for things that used to be popular to cycle through to people starting to criticize or actively hate it to people saying "no, actually, it's still pretty good, you just don't want to like a popular thing" (this is me rn), to maybe eventually getting popular again/at least in certain subsects of the audience. zuko was probably one of the most talked-about aspects of atla for a long time, and while i can understand how that could get frustrating (because there are some other really great characters and aspects of the story!), that's not, like, for no reason. people connected with and admired his story for a reason, and many still do, and (in my humble opinion) that is because it is one of the most thought-out, intentional, and nuanced character arcs of the show.

the ableism, i think, really gets to me because like... even if every criticism from the people who hate him were 100% accurate and said in good faith (they're not, but let's pretend for a minute)... that still wouldn't be an excuse for ableism against a character with a prominent facial difference (or making fun of abuse survivors for the permanent injuries they sustain from abuse.) if zuko had never redeemed himself and stayed a villain, it would still be wrong to talk about his scar and abuse the way some of his detractors do. and the show agrees with me! you know how i know? the only two characters to ever make fun of zuko's scar are villains in the narrative: zhao and azula. ("make fun of" might not be quite right for zhao, since what he said - "you have the scar to prove it" - is far more matter-of-fact than azula imitating him by covering her eye or "make sure they get your good side", but he's absolutely being a huge jerk about it.) other characters react to zuko's scar in all sorts of different ways, even when he's still in a villain/antagonist/anti-hero role: zuko's crew is horrified to learn how he got the scar, song sees a point of connection and tries to reach out to him, but, while i think well-intentioned, she breaks a major boundary by trying to touch his scar when he hasn't conveyed he's okay with that, jet makes assumptions about his background because of it, lee, the kid from zuko alone, asks with curious, childish naivete how he got it, only for his father to reprimand him for asking, aang reacts with annoyance/boredom to azula's ableist joke, and katara trips over her words to correct him when zuko thinks she's essentially calling him "scary to look at". not all of these interactions are positive, but the characters (all of whom are written as pretty sympathetic, even if also flawed) aren't outright trying to make fun of him for it, and the narrative never implies he deserves to be treated as less than because of it, even before his redemption.

anyway. if people don't believe in characters' (and, hell, irl people's) capacity for growth and change and don't want to have nuanced discussions about how trauma can impact these things, i mean... that's their prerogative, but i don't understand why they enjoy the show, because those are big parts of it (and not just wrt zuko.)

i know it can be frustrating, anon— trust me, i get very frustrated. but i promise you, there are plenty of people out there who a) still love zuko and his story and b) are capable of and willing to talk about things with nuance and in good faith. i'm happy to be part of that corner of fandom, and i bet you can manage to carve out a space where more people like that exist, too! <3

[sevensoulmates]

Thank you so much for the explanation, because yes I wasn't seeing the bigger picture (about the titles for the episodes) but yes, it's logical that the meaning behind the title will be to set an overall atmosphere for the whole thing. And I didn't knew about that many references to movies/series? mainly becausey I haven't seen most of them 🤦‍♀️ and other references about phrases (I just didn't know the "why" behind the titles).

And of course sometimes the characters don't even know what's going on their minds yet but luckily I'm on the "Eddie/Buck taking their sweet time realizing how they actually feel" side, getting there is half the fun right?

Thanks for the sharing the post by useramor, I didn't knew about it!

Can I ask another thing? I was really curious about some fans panicking over the possibility of Eddie calling Buck "brother" in incoming episodes, where is this coming from and why is this bad? I just don't get it and I feel like I missing some info.

Thank you for your prompt response, I really appreciate you taking the time to do it.

Titles do have some importance but most of the time the original source material doesn't have THAT much to do with it. Such as the movies, etc. Titles can help set the tone, and general themes, but I wouldn't take them wholly literally, as I've seen people be disappointed in the past because a title like "What's Your Fantasy?" didn't immediately equate to Buck and Eddie doing the nasty in that episode.

It's funny you should mention the "brother" thing, cuz that's actually what I was thinking about when I answered your last ask, hence the "CHARACTERS LIE!!" moment LOLOL I was actually debating making a whole post in regards to that but I was on the fence. Your ask gives me the perfect excuse.

For context: the "eddie calls buck his brother" rumors came about from some accounts on twitter and tumblr who claim (without proof) that they have a "source" that works for 911 that is feeding them info and pictures. Even if the source part is true, all of it is still out of context, and therefore anything that is leaked should ALWAYS be taken with the SMALLEST possible grain of salt. Nothing is true until we see it with our own eyeballs on our tv screens.

I feel like I'm one of the few people who didn't immediately be like one of them calling the other brother means it's the end of Buddie!! We already know that this arc is going to revolve around Buck (and possibly Eddie too) being confused and uncertain of where their relationship stands. I think that the purposeful confusion and uncertainty are because neither Buck nor Eddie really understands why their feelings are getting hurt or why the other is acting in certain ways. That, plus all of the last few seasons, have shown that Buck and Eddie don't really talk a lot about who they are to each other. They kind of just....live in that nebulousness and hope no one comes along and points out how odd it is.

Something else I want to point out is that if the rumor is true, we don't know AT WHAT POINT in the episode he says this. What new information might have come to light before this? Additionally, we don't know what acting choices might come along with it. Does Eddie look weird as he says "brother"? Does Buck make an odd face? Is the camera focus on the scene being uncomfortable? Is the "brother" comment accepted easily or hesitantly? Is there romantic/soft or discordant music in the background? What is being said without being said in the moment? There are simply too many unknown variables in the equation including story context, editing, sound, and acting choices for me to immediately be like "damn, guess I'll give up now".

We also don't know if this happens in episode 4 or 5 which also vastly changes the context.

I'll also tell you what my first thought was when I heard the "Eddie calls buck his brother!" rumors. I thought "Oh of course he did, he's still deep in compulsory heterosexuality".

Let's think about this in two ways:

If Buck comes out as Bi, and Eddie calls him his brother for the first time since they met? That's so strange. Why now all of a sudden is Eddie purposefully trying to immediately shut down the possibility of them being romantic? Why does the idea of Buck having a romantic interest in men suddenly make Eddie feel the need to draw boundaries? One could say it's a homophobic response, or (more likely) an internalized homophobic response. One could also say it's so Buck does not get the idea of a romantic relationship being possible between them, which again, why does he feel the need to draw that distinction if they're both oh so confident they're the best of friends and will never be anything but friends. "Brother" is also distancing language as well. It could be a way for Eddie to distance himself from Buck, and in turn, Buck's queerness. Again, why? No one in his immediate circle is homophobic so why does he feel the need to distance himself in every way possible from even the tiniest idea of queerness being associated with him? All of it screams internalized homophobia and compulsory heterosexuality to me.

Now let's go the non-queer route. Say Buck is still straight as a ruler. They resolve their issue, Eddie reassures Buck that they're best still friends, etc. I am again wondering why Eddie feels the need to use "brother" for the first time in years. It should imply being closer than friends. But Eddie has already proven that he views Buck as closer than his blood family, hence why Buck is in the will, and Eddie's family is not. So why again, "brother" if not to purposely draw attention to the odd (and out of character) word choice. This could once again be Eddie using distancing language, which once again implies all of the stuff I said before. And in this case, it's even odder, because Buck is (as far as Eddie knows) a straight man. So why the need to draw a boundary? That lends more to Eddie having a potential fear of being perceived as queer by Buck. That also lends to internalized homophobia.

And all of that aside, at the end of the day, Buck and Eddie are not blood-related, and they didn't grow up with each other, so even if they call each other brothers...it's always going to be in a metaphorical sense. And there's the fact that FEELINGS. CAN. CHANGE. Eddie might believe he sees Buck as a brother at the moment, but that could change in a single instant. If Eddie's really not had that many other close male friends in his life, he might truly believe that what he feels for Buck is just friendship and not realize that actually...this is something vastly different. Or, like I said, he might be LYING. The writers could also be LYING to us on purpose.

It's possible that it could be used as a red herring, to make the audience believe one thing, and then they plan to subvert it as a "plot twist" at the end. It could be used as a plot device and a stepping stool to so many other things. And additionally, why now? Why in this big episode where it seems like sexuality might come into play? Why not in episode 1 when Eddie could've been like "You're like an uncle to Chris". And of course, again, the biggest point of them all: we already KNOW that Buck and Eddie are the closest of friends. We've seen it, new audiences have seen it. So why suddenly redefine it as "brothers" during an episode where it seems like Buck is getting his own feelings regarding their relationship confused.

The last thing to think about is this: how does doubling down on Buck and Eddie being "brothers" push the story forward? Story needs conflict, and 911 thrives off of creating long-term conflict. How does being "brothers" set up a long-term conflict for them? Or, if being "brothers" is the resolution for their conflict, then what is changing as a result of being "brothers"? How are they getting closer than they already are by being "brothers"? Truthfully, them redefining their relationship to "brothers" changes absolutely nothing about their relationship.

I don't agree with people who say "This shuts down all hope of buddie" because season 6 already pulled them as far apart as they could be. It gave them female love interests to do something with if they wanted to this season but fact of the matter is that the writers didn't want to pursue those stories. They threw Buddie back together so fiercely and chopped their love interests down to less importance than randos on calls.

So what is left that actually can cause Buck and Eddie's relationship to evolve into something we've never seen from them before? The only answer is romance. So, no, I'm not worried about some random "brothers" comment.

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

5, 17, 25, 29

For the ask game, please!

woooo! more asks! Thank you thank you! :D <3

5. What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?

Oooh probably a few of the ones listed in the previous ask about fic ideas that I have noodling around in my head.

Off the top, I'll probably not write "Grima Becomes King" even though it would be fun. Mostly because I know it would be the world's longest fic and the idea of writing it makes me feel tired.

17. What’s something you’ve learned about while doing research for a fic?

Oh man, many things. What comes to mind is how much I've learned about late antiquity/early medieval Scandinavia for all things Rohan & Grima related.

I think an interesting tid-bit was the gender disparity of infanticide. Not shocking, given how patriarchal Scandinavian society was at the time, but far, far more girls were killed than boys. Also skeletal remains show that in times of famine, boys were given more (and better) food than the girls.

(don't tell tumblr, they're very keen on thinking Viking (tm) society was a world of gender equality and other nonsense)

25. Have you ever upset yourself with your own writing?

I have! In different ways. For Grima stuff - the scenes where he's forced to eat his horse in My Land is Bare were just - I icked myself writing them. Degradation in general icks me and I always get in a weird headspace after writing it.

I have absolutely made myself cry writing bits of Thus Always. Particularly the death of Downey's father (that chapter has a banger of an ending line: So, in silence they look at one another, truly look at one another, for the first time in thirty years, and in silence Amos dies.) The eulogy appendix also gets me. Annnd this bit with Downey's mother:

Annette catches Downey at the door, squeezes his arm, says, ‘I never understood why you did what you did.’ ‘Why I left? Surely he told you the gory details.’ ‘No, no, I never understood why you chose to…to be like that. Did I do something wrong?’ Downey takes in her weeping eyes, her pain, her sorrow, the mad grief over things she has no words for, and he just shakes his head. Just shakes it and shakes it and shakes it.

the infamous "did I do something wrong and that is why you're a queer" conversation that many people have unfortunately had

29. Share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic. (If you don’t have either, just share a random fic idea you have that you don’t plan on getting to.)

Something from a follow-up fic to Swimming Through Fire world. Two years after the war, a year after Grima and Éomer came to some vague Arrangement, and Éomer's off to go get married. Lucky him.

They're on their way to Umbar as I have Eomer marrying outside Gondor for reasons of regional political cohesion. Safan, everyone's favourite main man from the ROTK installment of the Swimming Through Fire series, makes an appearance.

---

Of course, Safan could have other sources, Gríma reasons. About Éomer. About what he is like as a man. Safan is talented, clearly capable, and trusted—therefore, he is likely to have heard his fill about the future king of Éomarc.

Who is currently standing towards the front of the boat watching the horizon dip up, down, and again again again.

No storm, but the sea roils. Gríma was told it’s the wind, a beautiful day for the voyage, but choppy. Hold fast. Do you know how to swim?

He told the sailor: I can hold my breath for two minutes.

The sailor laughed: that’s a start, I suppose.

No, no, I can swim. I’d just rather not.

Then hold fast.

So, he’s holding fast. He’s watching the water. The surf kicked up, foam white as the froth of churning milk. He thinks he wants to be sick.

What did he have to break his fast? Sweet buns, fruit, cheese. They dine light in the morning in Khephanto, same as they do in Éomarc. A welcomed change from other parts of Gondor where it is blood sausages and eggs and liver and salted fish and fried mushrooms piled high with toast and hot milk and gods the memory makes him more nauseous than he thought possible.

He tries to lean over the railing, thinking it would make sense to be sick into the ocean, but the thought of being so suspended over water—only his head, his shoulders and chest, but still—it sends him skittering away.

Foolish, of course, he survived the river Isen when he fell in. He survived Limlight more than once as a boy. He’d be fine until they fish him out.

Provided they fished him out.

Gríma finds Éomer again—still at the helm. Golden haired in the golden sun looking at ease despite the tumult.

They’d fish him out, Gríma thinks bleakly. Surely. Éomer would make them. Surely.

He wouldn’t be left to drown. Horrorhorrorhorror—how the chest burns and everything’s upside down and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and————

A bucket.

Gríma looks up, realizes his hands are on his knees and he’s shaking. Safan stands before him, holding the bucket.

‘Didn’t realize you’d be so sour stomached,’ Safan says.

Gríma wrenches the bucket from his hand, turns around, and is promptly sick into it. Somewhere, someone laughs. He’s certain it’s at him. He would care if he didn’t feel like his stomach wanted to crawl up his throat.

‘Just lean over the side,’ Safan suggests, all fatherly.

‘Can’t.’

‘Alright.’

‘This is horrible.’

‘You’ll get used to it.’

‘Inhuman.’

Safan laughs.

‘Truly,’ Gríma insists. He hugs the bucket of his bile. ‘Horrible. I’m going home by land. I don’t care if it takes me three months.’

Safan pats him on the shoulder, tells him that he’ll get used to it. It’s only another two and a half days—two if the wind holds. Gríma pulls an ugly face: two days! He doesn’t have enough in him to throw up for two days of travel. Safan shakes his head, pats his shoulder again, insists that Gríma will be fine.

‘Horizon,’ Safan points, ‘keep your eye on that and your stomach should settle.’

‘It’ll settle when I’m dead.’

‘I love your optimism, I’m sure your future king does too.’

Gríma makes no response, save to turn away from Safan and sick into the bucket a second time.

/

Early afternoon, still the first day, they’ve yet to have the blessing of crossing the small hours into daybreak, they’re not even at dusk, yet, and Éomer finds Gríma who has found a rope pile to sit on, with his bucket, trying to stare at the horizon.

‘I don’t know how you’re not ill, my lord,’ Gríma whines.

Éomer makes no reply. His eyes are also trained on where sky meets sea—a beautiful greying line if Gríma was in the mind to admire.

‘Perhaps you are sick as well,’ Gríma suggests.

Éomer shakes his head.

‘Assuredly,’ Gríma insists.

Éomer smiles, taught it stops half-up his face.

‘Knew it,’ Gríma mutters.

Éomer strides to the railing, leans over, and vomits. Gríma laughs. His future king makes no response. Gríma needles: ‘Would you like a bucket? The bucket is wisdom itself.’

‘I’m fine,’ Éomer replies, as if nothing occurred. ‘I don’t see why you’re making such a fuss.’ Slipping into the northern dialect of the Wold Éomer continues, ‘You’re not being very sympathetic for someone also suffering.’

‘My lord, you should know better than to come and roost upon my stoop in search of sympathy. It died in the womb. I might have eaten it.’

‘Along with your heart?’

‘To be sure. That shriveled, little thing.’

But his future lord-king is smiling, if not outright laughing, and Gríma doesn’t know how to stand in this moment. It’s been two years since the war—almost exactly. They’re just entering April, a fine month to travel in. It’s been fifteen months and a week since that first post-war winter yule when things between them became…sticky. Gríma isn’t sure how to term it, he isn’t sure there is a word for it. He is sure Éomer wouldn’t know and so has never made an effort to ask.

And what is there to ask about? Aside from Gríma’s commitment to burning down the entirety of the world should Éomer ask it of him. A bit of a rub, a bit rum, that the lord should instead ask him to create rather than destroy. Which is just like Éomer, to be contrary to Gríma’s desires whilst being, at the same time, precisely what is desired.

He thinks he might be sick into the bucket again.

‘Éothain told me about the creatures you’re concerned we’ll become victim to,’ Éomer says.

‘His investigations did little to assuage me. That said, their appearance could put me out of my misery, which is a boon.’

‘I think you’re over-reacting.’

Gríma turns away from Éomer, thinks he’s going to be sick, but it passes. He turns back around. On Éomer’s face is writ feint amusement. Gríma he thinks he should be sick on Éomer’s boots to make a point.

Some shuffling of feet as Éomer leans against the side of the boat to again stare at distant horizon as instructed by Safan. Gríma supposes he could try it, but doesn’t think standing wise at this precise moment.

‘Have you heard anything further?’ Éomer asks with a fantastical attempt at disinterest.

Gríma feigns confusion: ‘Further, my lord?’

‘About this—about Lady Dihya,’ he slides through her name in a chaotic fashion, it’s half Éothéod and half an approach to Umbar pronunciations. Good gods, Gríma cannot wait for them to meet if only to hear them butcher each other’s names in such a full-frontal fashion. ‘You were seen speaking with Safan.’

‘Safan and I are acquaintances of old.’

‘Shouting at each other over a wall proceeding a siege hardly makes one an acquaintance of old.’

‘Hardly a siege,’ Gríma scoffs. ‘Lord Aragorn lightly threatened them with ghosts and they saw reason and left.’

‘And the draugr.’

Gríma tilts his head skyward. Éomer follows suit asking if that brother of Gríma’s is around. Which brother would Éomer son of Éomund be asking after? Gods Gríma, the only brother who could possibly be present—the bog-drowned inhuman one that’s a crow half the time. It tried to peck the eyes out of a Meduseld mouser the other day. Hasn’t Gríma taught it manners, yet?

‘Baldir was never keen on following orders,’ Gríma replies tartly. ‘It is hardly my fault he is enacting the behaviours of his kind, now that he is what he is. He’s not eating people or horses. Nor goats, cows, hounds, most cats, and other such important creatures. I cannot vouch for poultry or hares. And no, he’s not around. I told him to fuck off back home before we left.’

Éomer mouths: fuck off back home with some mild astonishment. Gríma gives a desultory look: what?

Éomer tries another question, ‘Did Safan tell you anything useful? Are there things I should avoid saying or doing?’

‘I am not here,’ Gríma holds up a hand, turns away and vomits into the bucket. It’s all bile, at this point. He tried drinking water with ginger in it, recommended by Éothain, but it came to naught. He wipes his mouth, pushes hair out of his face, turns back around to Éomer. ‘I am not here in an advisory capacity. As I told Safan, I don’t know why I’m here. I hardly expected it.’

‘My uncle,’ Éomer glances at the men around them—all Haradrim or Gondorian, the Éothéod are generally seasick and showing it. He continues in the Wold dialect: ‘My uncle took you aside before we left. Éothain and Gundahar both saw it occur. You spoke for a good space of time, what did he say?’

‘Oh, that. He was telling me to mind myself and not get into trouble. That the first whiff of anything suspicious he’ll know whose door to knock at. As if I haven’t learned my lesson! truly I wish people understood that. I make mistakes, the lords know, but I tend not to make the same ones twice.’

Éomer, to his credit, does not believe Gríma—at least about the not knowing what his role is. Gríma hopes he believes him about lessons learned. He had assumed Éomer did—few others, but at least Éomer. Hama would believe him, if he were alive. This thought does a strangeness to Gríma’s chest, an emotion he is learning to name regret. He rarely feels it, if ever, but with Hama yes, it rears its ugly head.  

Gríma sometimes wonders what the percentage is that Éomer believes. Is it fifty per cent of what Gríma says? Eighty? Twenty? Or entirely situational? Probably entirely situational. Probably Gríma doesn’t want to know.

‘Surely you’ve been briefed,’ Gríma says into a long stretched silence.

‘Of course I have.’

‘Then you have nothing to worry about.’

Éomer gives him such a statement with his expression and Gríma would laugh if it were appropriate. Instead of saying: horseshit and you know it, Éomer replies: ‘For the sake of relations between countries I want to make a good impression. My uncle said he trusted me to represent Éomarc.’

‘I should hope so, as future king yourself you’re the embodiment of our people and our land.’

Grating, grating, grating—Éomer paces this through. Gríma wants to say what he always thinks in these situations, that Éomer is the better option to Théodred. One represents Éomarc more wholly and entirely than the other. Théodred was nice. Théodred would have tried. He would have done what he thought was the best. Gríma knows better than to sneer those sentiments aloud to the cousin and inheritor who sometimes goes morose and burrows into himself when the former heir is mentioned. The man who Éomer idolized, to some degree, and who did not live long enough to shatter those illusions.

Well, well, that is Éomer, sitting in the sun comparing himself to dead heroes who cannot be faulted in anything because they are dead.

Another wave of nausea comes, Gríma waits to need the bucket, but it passes. How is it so warm? It’s April, it should be the perfect temperature at all times.

-

‘A rat with a bucket,’ cheerfully calls a voice.

Gríma puts on a flattering smile, ‘my lady, it gladdens my heart to know you are not similarly afflicted.’

‘Not a whit.’

‘Truly,’ Éomer asks. ‘I can’t believe that.’

‘Sorry, brother, but alas that is the case.’ Éowyn does not sound entirely sympathetic. She then glances between them and to her brother asks: ‘What conference have you with Wyrmtunga?’

‘Trying to get information out of him about what we can expect. He chatted with Lord Safan last night.’

‘My how we’ve resurrected ourselves,’ Éowyn sneers at Gríma who continues, with great effort, to appear cheerfully nonplussed but gods gods gods he wants to be sick again. He knows he must be green about the gills for how she laughs. ‘Uncle said you were to behave.’

‘I am, on my honour.’ Gríma adds, ‘on the life of Stigr.’

‘Not nothing,’ Éowyn owns. ‘How do you know lord Safan? He seems above your station and rank, now that you are nothing in particular.’

‘The war.’

‘They shouted pleasantries at each other over the walls of Pelargir,’ Éomer explains, ‘before Aragorn reminded everyone time was of the essence.’

‘Lord Aragorn was just as party to the pleasantries, my lord.’

Éowyn’s keen eyes, sharp as knives, slice from brother to Gríma and Gríma knows a dissection is occurring, there will be a result from it, but it will not be accurate. He knows where her assumptions will lead her, and he is right when she asks: ‘Did you know him through Saruman?’

‘No, my lady, I never met him save that day during the war. I had assumed he died, until he showed up as ambassador.’ He adds, half-afterthought and undertone, ‘not everything is a conspiracy.’

‘I hear she likes hunting,’ Éowyn tells her brother, ignoring Gríma’s reply. ‘Stalking and the like. Talk to her about that and you’ll be safe.’

‘What else did you hear?’

‘Books—histories about seafaring voyages and distant battles, also political machinations. But she is not adverse to the occasional bout of poetry. Recite her something pretty about nature, I heard. She’s partial to birds and fish, also long descriptions of sand dunes which are, apparently, beautiful.’

‘I see.’

‘I’m doubtful too,’ Éowyn agrees. ‘But having never seen one, we could be wrong. Her favourite colour is red and her favourite metal is copper.’

‘See,’ Éomer snaps at Gríma, ‘this is useful information I can do something with.’

Gríma levers himself upright, a dangerous decision for it sets his stomach on edge again, bidding a well-rehearsed and beautiful good-day to them he stalks across the ship towards the prow. He read a book about ships while in Minas Tirith and tried to memorize all their bits and pieces. This is a long, round nosed, shallow bottomed galley. Predominantly used for trade and moving passengers and animals. Gríma marks the three masts, the place for the oarsmen, though as they’re “with the wind” it's just sail work.

In the stern is the—he blanks on the term—but it’s a built-up structure where captain and important guests stay in relative comfort. Everyone else gets shoved below deck with the lice and livestock.

Castle! That’s what the structure is called. A castle.

Daft name.

Or maybe not, he doesn’t know anything about ocean-going vessels. They must be defended, especially merchant fleets, so perhaps castle is apt. Defending the keep, except it’s your boat.

Nearing the prow Gríma grips the railing and stares forward. Fresh sea air helps keep stomach in check. By the time the breeze gets to the back where he had hidden himself there was nothing much left to it. Knuckles whiten as his hands twist on the wood. Well waxed, there are no splinters, but he can feel its course nature against skin. A grounding experience. He sucks in a breath, holds, exhales.

Marvelous, he tells himself, it’s all marvelous. His still being alive and in one piece, mostly. Also this. Boats, oceans, skies, new lands, languages, the many and varied people present in the world. Oh, no, not distracting enough, he leans forward, is sick into the water as he gets hit with ocean spray.

Well, he thinks as he wipes salt water off, at least he knows his face is clean.

[pleasantspark]

Valentines Day HFIL Special Sneak Peek.

Text is below the image.

“Shut up!” Cell growls, “Give me that candy!” “Why? It’s mine and you can’t just take things that are owned by other people!” “I can! And that was Orion’s, and Orion is my property therefore the candy is my property. I own Orion and that candy so give it to me!” Cell snaps, and the seriousness of the moment was shortly interrupted by that claim. “Cell that was kind of… Weird I am not going to lie, like claiming you own someone who is… Uh…” Fu struggles to think of a word. “Yeah, I thought so too, but we’re halfway through February and this episode or chapter if the people are reading it on tumblr, wattpad, A03, Quotev or Fanfiction.net, then hello! Otherwise it needed to be out on the 14th, and in 2 days my birthday special would be out. So, we didn’t have much time to think about that before we wrote that line, it was written on the 12th.” Cell explains.  “Holy fucking wall break Batman, that exposition was not needed, now it’s filler and an anon on Tumblr is going to complain about this joke!” Fu complains.  “Right , Right, I apologize. Let me start over.” “Go ahead.”  “Shut up!” Cell growls, “Give me that candy!” “Why? It’s mine and you can’t just take things that are owned by other people!” “I can! I am PERFECT CELL, everything should be owned by me, and me only! I am entitled to every piece of goods in this realm! And when I ask for something I GET IT!” Cell snaps, “How was that?” Cell asked, Fu nodded. “Pretty good.” "Pretty Good? Don't you mean pretty perfect?" Cell asked, Fu rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Don't over do it." Then Fu straightened his face. “You can’t just be a Veruca Salt and come in here claiming small objects as yours! That’s not how it works, I am NOT giving you the object! Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers.”  Fu said. Cell smirked. “Oh if that’s the case, then finders keepers losers can weep, because I found an item that i most certainly intend to keep!” Cell grabs the Candy Bar and breaks for it. “Hey get BACK HERE!” Fu yelled, but didn't attempt to make a run after him grumbling to himself.

I added a missed opportunity line so there.

[dailyautophagy]

I have off tomorrowwwwwwwsa

we all do probably but

it doesn’t feel like Saturday to me

I’m a big fan of that lol

I don’t have a ramble in me but imma force one out because

This Tom papa special is pretty good but i don’t wanna give my undivided attention to it

He is making jokes about food influencing your behavior and mood and I know he makes his own bread cause I listen to him on podcasts lol and he is just good at his job and doesn’t preach to people he just does good jokes that might make people think twice before eating a bag of cool ranch Doritos because a while after you want to kill yourself a lil

I think I typed that 5 hours ago and then i came back to this to ramble more and then tumblr did a crash and it didn’t save the rambles after this ramble (sad, because decent lol)

there are four married men at my work that go out of their way to be nice to me and like not other people and just

why

i mean know why (and no I ain’t gonna touch it) but like why do they think that’s okay lol are they just being nice out of pity

I know it is not ideal to be aware of motivation existing for every and all things but like it does and therefore no these people are not just being nice to be nice there is a reason

There’s always a reason for everything even if it’s not a good one or

Like I don’t know the reason we evolved brains that are painfully aware of our imminent death but I know there IS ONE lol

I know a lot of the reasons for things now, health issue things, sadnesses and such

Don’t pretend being depressed is just part of life and it won’t be / I think therefore I am / if you say you can you will & if you say you can’t you’re right /

You get it

I am tired

I want to cum

I need to drink water

We’re all the same really lol

The thing about ants not tryna leave the boundaries when someone draws circles around them and then showing all the BORDERS OF COUNTRIES like I get it lol but we need them at this point because without them the places that suck will trickle into the places that are nice - if we had started with no borders everyone would be the same maybe lol or dead

I know nothing John snow don’t fucking listen to me

You can actually :/ i do know a lot of things and it’s not like hidden secret knowledge it’s just not ever addressed lol because guess what’s easier? Popping pills

I don’t like that about the world

It card to find someone without a prescription lol even I smoke weed ffs that kinda counts plant or not

The only person raw dawging life is ….no one.

Find me someone not drinking caffeine and not prescribed anything. I thought did but he sneaks cans of Coca Cola and has prescriptions now (cause he didn’t take care of his damn body)

AND NOW IT IS 3AM

It’s three am I must be lonelyyyy

No it’s actually 411 according the the fucking alarm clock this asshole downstairs is sleeping through lol it’s set for 405 so even I didn’t hear it for a whole 6 minutes .. but I’m not IN THAT ROOM LIKE HE IS. Idk how people sleep through loud noises like that lol DRUGS?!?

I mean dude makes almost 1000 a week and I take 300 because life is expensive and this isn’t a goddamn homeless shelter but he’s somehow always poor lol which like how - I’m buying the groceries

Which I forgot I said if I had to pay for them I wasn’t going to be also preparing all his meals like you want a slave you gotta stock my shit lol

But last night he was napping (last night aka like 5pm yesterday) so I went in the kitchen WHERE I BELONG to make dinner and put dishes away and I made rice (which just requires patience like you gotta wash the rice and then let it boil - I do a cup of rice almost 2 TBSP of oil and 1/2 tsp salt and 1.75 C water and I hate American measurements lol I think that was one way they tried to fuck up our ability to use food as medicine. Cause back in the Florence nightingale time (and location) they had recipes we prolly never even heard of. Remedies and recipes

I get so mad now when people don’t understand that our own body is responsible for our own healing and you just gotta it the right conditions lol like definitely SET broken bones and definitely antibiotics have saved lives but MOST things most illnesses and even most diseases are within our realm of fixing. You don’t need doctors. We didn’t evolve from cavemen because doctors existed. I’d venture to argue that doctors now do more harm than good. Granted we are not taught the things or given the tools to know how to fix ourselves lol but like the truth is out there man lol

Seriously though I wish I found Barbara O’Neill when I was in school. I graduated highschool in 2008 and dropped out of college after people started dying from pills and getting their drugs laced with fentanyl lol but alas my career didn’t require it.. despite everyone else I work with having a college degree.. So LOL at them.

I’d be in legitimate debt instead of just bad at money

Also I swear to fucking god these assholes are going to make me take my days off around Christmas so I don’t get all the OT again lol

Trust me, your omnipotent creator doesn’t get offended by words, and since I’m not a believer like that I’m not actually using the lords name in vain or whatever the fuck …. Wait yes I am because I am using it in an empty or meaningless way … I always thought it meant thinking like “this is gods fault” and being so disappointed by god you then curse him

I don’t know

Spiritual, yes. Religious, no. Religion is responsible for all the wars. And those imaginary lines we decided were worth killing people over. I mean now it’s too late the lines are necessary because some countries are shit holes and some are not but maybe if we had never segregated ourselves we wouldn’t be so different from eachother but TOO LATE what’s done is done and now I don’t want people imported from other hemispheres and TBH neither do their gut biomes you’re supposed to eat the food indigenous to your area lol that’s why I can fuck with everything apples forever like I wasn’t raised on milk I was raised on apple cider lol AND IVE NEVER BROKEN A BONE I’ve really fucked up my elbows and tailbone but nothing to my knowledge ever broke perhaps teeny tiny fractures and for sure bruises but never casts never snaps 🤞 I hope I hope I hope the universe never makes me / I never do anything to warrant that karma lol my brain is the mob btw if I disrespect the order of the world instant karma and thus far it (my karma) has been eerily accurate

If I’m mean or do a rude thing, something bad happens to me lol usually nothing too serious but low key (so low key I would never actually say this to humans esp my sister) but I think my XL abortion is why I don’t have parents - which I know is like not how cancer works lol I know they grew that shit over so many years and it was a direct result of their lifestyle / dietary choices - but yet I still feel that(low key) if I had had that baby they would not be dead.

And that’s a weird way to feel.

But I don’t think there’s anything after this lol because I think energy gets recycled but not SOULS or whatever makes us have a spark of electricity in every cell. Salt water I guess lol shits crazy

There’s so many layers to health and once you realize the building blocks matter

Like do people not liken it to gas grades and cars

Put premium in your body it is worth it and ultimately over time regular will fuck up the engine

Our body our cells our mf dna is made up of what we eat lol well it’s actually nucleotides but NUTRITION AFFECTS HOW WE MAKE NUCLEOTIDES and therefore our dna BUT we cannot change our chromosomes and we cannot fully detox from an mRNA vaccine lol

I should go back to sleep lol

I want to brag about famous people living near me and being on my ro…can’t even say that lol as I don’t wanna dox myself or career

If you know my job don’t fucking tell people please lol they don’t need to know

Suffice it to say that I only own a home because my parents are dead and not because my career is a real money maker lol but

See can’t even brag about the benefits without basically doxing

Doxing is a such a faggot word lol

And concept tbh like mind your business troll

I hope every human responsible for the squirrel euthanized in NEW YORK okay caps gets mugged Or assaulted Or like some not death but like a physically painful thing happen to them because what the fuck is wrong with you lol you did this because you were “concerned”? Well now it’s dead, are you happy? Nothing to be “concerned” about. Fucking disgusting. And obviously voting for Kamala so like

The type of people who are voting blue blindly are the type of people who can’t mind their own business and need the tv to tell them what to believe

Also imagine setting a ballot box on fire and genuinely believing you’re on the right side of history

You don’t have to like trump personally but you do have to respect the fact that millions of us do and we literally elected him to be a presidential candidate despite the television programming everyone to hate him - we don’t watch news lol maybe someone watch fox but like I do think most of us don’t even have cable anymore like

Now tis 6am and I am still not back asleep lol but it’s not dark anymore so I might have to stay awake

I love my nails and I’m so grateful for the glass files the pretty blonde one told me about (I mean I think I knew they existed but I didn’t use them lol) and my nails like so useful so strong so GOOD FOR PICKING MY FACE which is BAD lol I can’t not pick my face I hate this for me

Like I’m probably better off touching my phone cause then I’m not picking my face lol but being perpetually on tumblr feels like not a good thing but also it is the best way to not spend money lol not shopping online OR FIND US IN THE APP or whatever something about capital letters in advertising always made me feel like a robot was yelling at me

Rumble is the best way to watch Barbara I always just listened on SoundCloud whilst at work but the viewing of her and the white board is a much different experience lol not hugely better but a little better

Seinfeld and laying with bobo

Bison steaks!!! I forgot they are amazing and ground bison burgers are kind of not lol so just be aware

I think they’re less fucked with than cows but it’s possible that’s just wishful thinking

End ramble heavy eye shallow breaths maybe i will see you inn the dream world WHO WHO WHO WHO what are you an owl lol sometimes i want to say things just

To be able to make a joke after

And sometimes

I can’t stop wanting

To fix my teeth they are not okay on the bottom like I’m gorgeous my smile is gorgeous but if I talk you can see the bottom teeth are not good and i want it fixed i want it fixed i bought the things to fix them one time and then i did not do it i just used the ugh no doxing me it was like I didn’t truly feel I paid for the jawns?? I assume that’s why i had the gall to waste almost 2k like that

They are useless at this point like my teeth didn’t just go back to how they were before that would be too convenient they’re a new type of screwy now

Whatever I don’t know why I’d use the same people imma prolly try… not byte lol cause I already did byte

But I don’t want one I gotta go to dentist for ever like if I was willing to sit in those chairs and breath those gross airs every month 🤷‍♀️

Okay lay down sleepy lol