#sorry tired so not a lot of words

[a-bucket-in-the-void]

anon support attack!!

we love you bucket!!! <3 <3

you’re doing great in life and you’re gonna continue to do great!

<3

[bloobydabloob]

Holy shit I love your Dirk interpretations, it's so true and I could talk about this shit forever. I feel like another part of his character that people seem to forget (along with Roxy for some reason) is that he's from the future in solitude in an apocalyptic wasteland. I just see that part of his character always removed which is disappointing because I feel like that's a pretty big part, especially regarding his themes around technology, his brother's theme of Time, his own isolation, and how he plays in the vastness of the universe and spacetime.

Art I drew related to the subject because I like to respond to asks with art.

But absolutely. I certainly understand where the lack of discussion over his isolation + upbringing comes from, considering a majority of the fanbase that I have seen builds their ideas based on their own version of postcanon. I’m not entirely sure how that would be fixed, but certainly even in the somewhat recent past I would see a lot more content regarding his upbringing both literally and symbolically. I don’t have much to add regarding the things you’ve mentioned, because they just are what they are. Dirk being confined to a singular room left to him by a father figure he never met, in a future where the only other person left on the planet is someone he cannot pursue a relationship of because of himself, with purely 3 robots to keep him companion, one being an exact replica of his own brain who is *also* trapped inside a pair of glasses, is about as literal as it gets to me.

The contrast to me involving the flooded, organic world in comparison to the little speckle of Dirk’s apartment packed with the dude and his technics is not only a representation of his isolation and entrapment within himself, but also of his lack of control. I think his obsession with & themes of control are a direct product in the case of Dirk specifically *of* this kind of upbringing. His themes of technology are also related to his themes around control. So much of his character is actually revolved around this to me like so much. Dirk is so deeply disconnected from humanity in every way and so much of his character + symbolism is based around that.

It doesn’t even have to be about the symbolism or anything though. It’s just pretty *interesting* in the literal sense that he lives in the middle of the ocean in the future. There’s not only a lot to theorise on to do with his young life there, but on how it might affect him in the way he acts for the rest of his life. The latter part is probably what I see mentioned the most by people talking about Dirk regarding this, I’m surprised I don’t see more discussion on the former too though. I really ought to actually talk more about Homestuck stuff on here. I will do it myself.

Roxy & Dirk’s relationship is largely ignored though because there is a narrative a certain demographic spreads that Dirk resented and blamed Roxy for her interest in him, and thus too many people believe that their relationship was or would continue to be an abusive one. Realistically, I believe it’s important to acknowledge that the way Roxy treated Dirk regarding his homosexuality wasn’t right while still acknowledging the obvious amount of respect and admiration Dirk had for Roxy. I mean we have a huge piece of dialogue from their post trickster mode conversations on the quest beds from Dirk purely stating how he feels about Roxy that people completely ignore somehow. I think this usually happens to characters that are women though. I know everyone says it, but it is true. Jane gets the exact same treatment of boiling her down to solely her negative aspects. The things I see completely mischaracterising both of them are horrific.

I mean how much more explicit can it get that their relationship is obviously very important to Dirk? But I digress. I think the best or I should say “most interesting” interpretations of their relationship usually come from DirkRoxy shippers actually.

I would be interested to hear about Dirk’s relation to his brother’s theme of time though. I don’t have any thoughts on this and I don’t recall ever hearing anyone talk about it before. If you or anyone else would be willing to enlighten me I’d be thrilled.

[mohntilyet]

more than anything in the world it kills me that illario did not do the easier thing, which would be to kill caterina. and i think that’s of course largely to do with lucanis. a world where he kills lucanis is fine because he doesn't think caterina was ever going to love him anyway. a world where he kills caterina, he loses lucanis too.

[throwawayasoiafaccount]

When I see stuff like this I kinda want to bash my head into a wall:

To start off, I’m not sure whether this person was commenting on book or show Cersei, but honestly, it doesn’t even matter because she’s so much more than the ‘ambitious villain’ or the ‘murderous girlboss’ tropes in both the book and show.

(Of course, I do have my issues with the way Cersei was written in the show like most people but this is simply a rant post so I’m not going to go through the differences of Show vs Book Cersei)

Cersei is a female character who was shaped by her environment, who’s insecurities were created by her environment, and she’s a woman who’s idiotic mistakes can be traced back to how her environment shaped her. She’s much more than a murderous girlboss, she’s both a victim of the system and also a beneficiary of it, while also acting as an agent of it to keep the status quo while also desiring what the system denied her.

Cersei is NUANCED and complicated and even now people hate that about her and want her to have been a purely evil woman handcrafted in a vacuum, ignoring the context of her life because readers would rather not engage with Cersei’s victimhood and nuances because that ruins their idea of: She Was The Problem and Always The Problem. (People would rather say that she deserved her walk of shame instead of interacting meaningfully with the theme of systematic gender-based violence that is so prevalent in Cersei’s story. The exploration of patriarchal violence in Show Alicent’s story is done so horribly in comparison.)

And what really pissed me off about these tags is that this person has clearly decided that they don’t care to interact with the nuance of Cersei and are fine with flattening her, and yet they shit on others for not liking Alicent.

Because of the way Alicent is written in this show, she almost always has a ‘woe is me I can do no wrong’ attitude, which of course drives people away from the character (woe is me I deserve to take a child’s eye 🥺). However, what actually annoys me is how she’s made out to be stupid, foolish, ignorant, and inconsistent due to the horrible writing of this show, all of which are deviations from her book characterization. Also, I despise it when people want me to support writing decisions and changes made in adaptations that are downright misogynistic and are meant to attract the male gaze.

But what pisses many people, including myself, off is how the changes made negatively impacted many other characters. Alicent’s terrible characterization is like a black hole that distorts and warps the whole story! It’s annoying af!

So when people like this say: ‘She’s nuanced and people just can’t handle it 🙄;’ I say: No. She’s horribly written and a different character from the book and people have a right to be critical about these changes that stripped a female character of 1) her agency and 2) her intelligence!

And the thing is, there was little reason for the writers to have made all these changes to Alicent’s characterization! In the book she is an interesting character with clear motives and understandable reactions. She’s cunning and ambitious and acts the way a noble lady who became queen would. And despite her clear ambitions and dislike of Rhaenyra, she still makes a comment wondering about who would protect the Princess from Ser Criston, and yet she then takes Cole into her service after his falling out with Rhaenyra. That’s a perfect example of nuance! Show Alicent could never compare to book Alicent’s clear moral values and consistent disregard of said moral values in pursuit of power.

And because of this, Book Alicent isn’t easy to stomach. It’s hard for most people to come to terms with a character like her and it’s even harder for people to feel sympathetic for her at the end when she went mad with grief.

On the other hand, Show Alicent was designed in a way to garner pity, and when the writers felt like her current arc wouldn’t be enough to garner the specific reaction they wanted they would then throw in a time skip and suddenly she’s completely different and yet still Thee victim. She’s designed to be as sympathetic as fucking possible! The camera angles, the background music, and the lighting is set up in a way to make sure you the viewer feels pity or sympathy for her! Cause that’s her role in this series! She’s thee Ultimate Victim!

But too bad for the writers as many people are fed up with this kind of inconsistent writing. Even when the writers created a whole new challenge for Alicent where she’s shitted on by the green council and forced to face the beast she helped to raise, I and many others could never feel any satisfaction as it was clear that once again Alicent was being made to be Thee Ultimate Victim who was just led astray by the patriarchy and was a victim of it and was only just realizing it so don’t you pity her don’t you feel sad for her and now she’s trying to do the right thing so pls pls pls pity her 🥺~ So it shouldn’t be surprising that many people are annoyed by these eNLiGhtEnEd changes that have led to a complete deviation from the source material.

To summarize: Cersei is an excellent fucking character who’s by no means easy to stomach, and because she’s not easy to stomach she’s often reduced to annoying ass tropes by dumbasses who are reading above their comprehension level. But when you actually try to understand her, you can easily see why she turned out the way she did and you can feel sympathy for her while understanding that she’s both victim and perpetrator! On the other hand, Show Alicent is a mess and HOTD is trying to make her serve a different narrative role than she did in the books so ofc people are going to be unhappy with the changes as book readers are once again faced with the annoying reality that the writers don’t give a fuck about the source material.

[kheprriverse]

Y’all thinking about an older Ares has RUINED me

[sesamenom]

Flavors of numenoreans (minus the druedain because i still haven't figured out how i want to draw them)

[pmpwbrrs]

dark does NOT want to get its bag wet. beige helps to prevent that

im not sure if these two are capable of compassion tho. do not be fooled

also floewrs 💦💦🌷🌿🌷🌿🍃🌸🌿🪻🪻🌿🌼💦🌼

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

oooo it's been a while since the last snippet :]c it's another fantasy au one where I'm! Putting! Barnaby! Through It!

a minor warnings: implied/referenced major character death <3

 No one eats dinner, and Frank won’t stop tapping his spoon against his bowl. Tok tok tok it goes, over and over again.

Poppy made a simple stew from their provisions, but only Eddie and Sally make an attempt at tasting it. Their halfhearted ‘it’s good’s don’t pierce the pressure weighing down on them all. Barnaby swears he can taste it, thick and cloying. 

Already he keeps catching himself looking for Wally. Where is- he starts to think, and then he remembers the moment Wally fell with a spear piercing his chest, and the grief rises so fast it nearly drowns him in a heartbeat. Barnaby can’t bring himself to try and hide it behind anything but a stony mask. In any other situation he might try to put some levity into the group. Cheer up the sad and empty faces staring into their meals. 

He wouldn’t be able to think of a single lighthearted thing even if he wanted to. He doesn’t.

Tok tok tok-

Shuffling from Howdy’s tent has everyone glancing over at it, and Frank’s spoon stills. Howdy briefly woke up while Poppy was cooking. All he did was sit up, look at everyone, then pitch to the side and vomit. They got him into a tent before he passed out again, mumbling something about puppets. Frank made a comment about how Howdy was supposed to be a bit out of it, not at fae-drunk levels of hazy. Eddie had muttered back a dejected apology, and after that the camp was silent until Poppy’s announcement that dinner was ready. The spoon continues tapping when the shuffling stills.

Tok tok tok-

Since Eddie and Sally saying that dinner is good, there hasn’t been a noise beyond the occasional sniffle. It’s a good thing Julie isn’t trying her stew - it must be disgustingly salty from all the tears dripping into it. 

Tok tok tok-

Barnaby sighs through his nose and puts his bowl down, sick of looking at everyone’s misery. He would say that he’s going to go sleep, but he has a feeling that none of them are getting a wink tonight. 

Tok tok-

Before he can stand, Frank blurts, “We shouldn’t have attacked it. It was a mistake.”

“Please don’t,” Julie begs.

“There’s no need to rub salt in the wound,” Sally says firmly, her stew starting to sizzle from the rising heat in her hands.

“Not right now, Frank,” Eddie mutters. 

Frank visibly bristles, and he launches to his feet. “I refuse to pretend not to have seen what I did! The truth is a terrible thing, but someone needs to say it. Wally lied to us.”

“Frank…” Barnaby warns.

“We shouldn’t have attacked the demon,” Frank barrels on, ignoring him, “because there was no need to. It didn’t eat Wally until the end because the demon is his patron. Wally was never a wizard at all, he was a warlock-”

Barnaby lunges with a deep bark that echoes against the trees. The crickets symphony falls silent. Frank trips backwards over his seat, staring up with wide eyes as Barnaby stalks around the fire, growling. Eddie and Sally slowly stand, inching between him and Frank. 

Barnaby stops, snout bunched and canines bared. He jabs a claw at Frank. “Don’t you ever say that again. Ever.”

Frank’s mouth flaps uselessly for a moment. When he speaks, it comes out as a whisper, “I’m-”

“If you end that with right instead of sorry, I’ll make damn sure that you are.”

Frank wisely keeps his mouth shut. The crickets continue chirping.

Barnaby glares at him until Frank looks away. Barnaby straightens his vest with a sharp tug and strides away from the fire, towards his and- his tent. Just his, now. Murmuring breaks out at his back. He yanks the flap open, grabs his pipe and herb pouch, and heads towards the forest. He pauses only to listen by Howdy’s tent, waiting to hear proof of life before continuing on.

Once he can’t see the firelight anymore, Barnaby chooses a random tree and sits heavily in front of it. Rough bark digs into his back through his vest. A night bird hoots overhead. Crickets continue to make their music, but Barnaby wishes they would shut up for good. 

Light from the full moon pours through the branches to provide just enough light to see by. Barnaby holds up his pipe and quickly puts it to the side to take off a grimy glove. The heart-pad and blue fur underneath contrasts vibrantly with the dust-grayed rest of him. After a moment he removes the other glove, wincing as the leather drags over his injured knuckles. He turns his paw over and scowls at the dirty black edges of the red-raw scrapes. He should have punched harder. He hopes it scars, even though he knows it won’t.

The gloves themselves are scuffed up, but not beyond use. Barnaby folds them into his pocket and gets to work lighting his pipe. He packs it and instinctively opens his mouth to ask Wally to light it for him. The words die on his tongue as he turns only to see dark forest. Empty woods save for the tiny blue lights of night wisps floating on the breeze. 

Barnaby stares into the darkness with yawning dread. He keeps looking. How long will it take him to stop? How long until Wally’s face starts to smudge in his memories, until his voice is gone and Barnaby doesn’t even remember what his smile looked like? How long until Barnaby only thinks of him in passing? 

He doesn’t want to reach that point. He desperately does. 

Will it hurt more or less? Does it matter? He wants it to ache until he dies.

Barnaby frantically fishes his sparkrune out of the herb pouch - only there for emergencies, when Wally or Sally isn’t there to light it for him. It will wear down to a nub within the month. He strikes his thumb claw against it, and sparks fly expertly into the bowl of his pipe. It takes a moment to catch. Barnaby lifts the bit to his lips and takes a drag before enough smoke forms for a lungful. 

Maybe he should have grabbed the stronger stuff. If he breathes enough of it, maybe he’d be able to see Wally. 

But Barnaby doesn’t get up in the end. He sits against the base of a tree and hugs himself, the pipe’s intermittent glow betraying the shine in his eyes.

[queen-scribbles]

.

[c4ts4ndstuff]

the "foundation" of the castle will use prismarine blocks btw, here's a rough example

i can't decide, and i keep forgetting about all the blocks they've added in the past few years which makes me excited and harder to make a decision

[actiiasluna]

content warning: this poem contains mentions intrusive thoughts of self-harm. please be careful and stay safe <3

my fingers are traitorous. they're itching,

trembling to spill crimson onto the page.

sanguine, my words desire to be let out of their

cages. i don't want what's inside to

escape my ribcage. it's too loud for me.

i'm scared to let her out, but the syllables spill

regardless. i am unable to keep her contained.

i wonder if it would be

easier if i were underwater. what if i

came up to breathe once in a while? but i

didn't talk. what if i just stayed silent and

let the blood dissipate? what if instead of forming

words the letters just floated off, found

places to be lodged into the sand, perhaps

found by visitors unlucky enough to be

stung by the tentacles of a jellyfish made of

a fallen vernacular?

did you know that jellyfish don't have brains?

they know what is danger / they seek to

survive. i wonder, am i surviving or living?

are they synonymous?

i wonder what it would be like

to decay. to let fungus claim me. i wonder

how it would feel if the mushrooms made me

one with this earth, where i feel

so very out of place.

would they remember me? i don't think the

decayed are victims. it is simply a cycle.

i'm scared that my interior will

fade. that i'll just be an empty outline. that

maybe that's all that's left.

maybe i'm too tired to

have a beating heart, and it's just

cold broken things inside.

just pieces of shattered clockwork.

i don't know if my

machines ever truly worked.

and i'm not sure if they'd notice.

what if they just let me shatter?

what if i'm made of glass, and i am

a menagerie of thoughts, all visible through my

delicate exterior? would i break if i

fell off the precipice? would my

shards glitter? would

that be more beautiful than

this incomplete form?

i want my words to spill out into

the earth. i want them to be

soil. i want leaves to grow from me, for

mycelium to sprout within. the hyphae

are more beautiful than i could ever be.

one moment in the mirror and i

shift from beauty to the reverse.

i don't understand

my own being. i don't know what

it is that i can define myself as.

did my hands want me to

release the verse that's

drumming inside, that's threatening

to escape the bars, that's trying

to break me from within?

did they really

care? or did they

just want me to bleed

for the sake of seeing carmine?

would it be

easier if i

just

didn't

breathe

oxygen?

[hexesandroses]

One of these days your lack of respect and appreciation for fic writers and artists alike will drive everyone off this app and you'll be left with nothing but ai content. I'm sick of this

[boxwinebaddie]

when i put ravenstan in this croptop it's all over for everyone

[wooahaes]

i wanna talk about it, so i'm gonna talk about it.

cw for death & loss of a family member, mental health issues, shitty family relationships, suicidal thoughts. just... it's a lot of my thoughts because i need to get them out, end of.

i knew what i signed up for when i told my parents i would be the one taking care of grandma when she entered into hospice. i grieved then, i think, and that's why i've been so... okay now, in a sense. like, it hurts, but it doesn't feel like a new pain. it feels like that phantom ache you get when you think about past heartbreak, or how i feel when i remember my long-time best friend and i aren't speaking to each other anymore because we just drifted apart. i think now i feel both guilty and relieved. relieved that she's no longer struggling because i know my grandma always hated feeling like she's a burden (she's not and she never was, no matter how often we told her this) and being so reliant on us.

and guilty because i had a breakdown in the days leading to her death because everything had weighed down on me so heavily. i hate the things i thought in the heat of the moment while i was sobbing one night after she'd gone to sleep, so angry because of how much things had changed. she was getting worse. the nurse had taken out the catheter because she just couldn't do it anymore, so i was constantly being called to help her with that. i was tired. i just wanted to sleep, and my sleep schedule became this ugly, messy thing of sleeping when i could and being called every 1-2 hours (3 if i was lucky, and i've never been lucky).

i feel guilty that dad was the one who found her. i don't think she struggled. i think it was just... one minute she was here, trying to sip a gatorade, and the next she was gone. i'm glad she didn't struggle. i'm glad she's no longer struggling, even though i miss her. i wish i had eaten dinner with her more often, but she always shooed me away because of that feeling of being a burden. i didn't want to argue with her, so i did what she asked for me. but it's so strange because dad found her, woke me up, and we just... the shock broke both of us, we both cried. he called my mother, i called hospice, and within an hour, we had calmed down and were working on what comes next.

and then an hour later, we were all sitting together with the hospice nurse, waiting for the funeral home to come and get her, and we were laughing over stories. it was so strange. it was almost like we had all moved on quickly, except no one had because there was this tension in the air. i think if we hadn't been laughing and talking, we would have been crying. i think i'm honestly grateful that we were laughing.

i told a lot of my close friends. i vaguely posted here because i knew i'd talk about it more later, but i told my friends pretty much outright. initially it was shock posting, of me breaking because it happened so suddenly. and then i talked more with people. i decided that i just wanted normalcy for the most part, that i'd reach out to people or talk with them all if i needed to talk.

it just feels so weird. life moves so fast. i just want it to slow down for a minute.

the funeral is this afternoon and i'm not going. my parents understood even though my mother won't stop bitching about how she wishes i would go so she doesn't have to. i know it's because it's physically hard for her to go, but she's not the one who spent almost 6 weeks caring for grandma around the clock. she's not the one who was emotionally and physically exhausted by the end of it, the one who woke up every day wishing to kill herself because all of the stress was getting to her.

our relationship was actually good for a minute, but now she's back to being the bitch she's always been. one of my friends said something about the way his step dad used to be: if he was having a bad day, then everyone had to feel the effects of it. and while he grew, my mother's always been this way and always will be this way. she's never going to change. if she was, she would have changed by now. she knows she's hurt me. she's asked for forgiveness not because she felt remorse, but because she's worried about not getting into heaven or whatever. i wish she'd just realize we're never going to agree on anything, so avoid those topics so that we can pretend we're fine because i leave and never speak to hr again. it's what i do.

we're moving into my grandma's house. it was left to us in the will, and now it feels weird to go through so many of her things. we've already made the decision to donate her clothes (she was a tiny woman and all of us are very much not tiny) to a women's shelter in our city. we're slowly going through things, figuring out what we're selling, what we're keeping, what just needs to be thrown out. it feels like no one else here cares even though i know my dad does. he's lost both of his parents now, after all. it's hard on him and he's never going to show it because he's never been an emotional man.

i'm so tired. i just want all of the hard parts to be over now.

[bibuckleykinard]

how many times do we need to learn as people that irony and hyperbole can be harmful because 'jokes' aren't easily distinguished from genuine thoughts and feelings until we stop rewarding people for speaking or posting about violence

like even if you're joking/don't actually believe that/think whoever you are insulting is bad/immoral/fictional therefore deserves it - ad hominem attacks always do more harm to the people who share those characteristic then the individual you intend to cause harm to or discredit

[a-substantial-trash-pile]

i am a harvey and Elliott lover, i know everyone wants to bonk shame (my letters break sometimes bc im on mobile i am so sorry n doesnt want to go in shames mame :< ) with their faces and i dont understand, ignore this ask if you want to btw but otherwise what do you see in him?

if you want me to be real, i relate to the self-hatred and depression that he deals with. i've had very similar thoughts that he's had in my life. it's really nice to watch him grow and get help for himself and try and find happiness, because it's something i want for myself too. so i love him because maybe in a way it'll help me love myself. also i think he's a cute dork.