#that applies to the warnings as well

[thekeeperofbalance]

so while writing my prev post (here) i was reminded of how much i dislike a lot of the canon relationships

mainly bc i'm a person with an excellent eye for unhealthy dynamics (i have much experience with them, but also i'm just very good at detecting power imbalances in relationships) and i felt like discussing them.

keep in mind, i'm fine with ppl who ship (i ship quite a few as well) these. i am just not fine with them being written like they were in canon, because they were deeply unhealthy.

warning: discussions of unhealthy relationships, death relating to valhalla's to-the-death activities (alluded to), abuse, (and because i don't want people clamoring unless they have questions and want me to clarify things, which i am perfectly happy to do, unless your rude) discussions of popular riordanverse ships being toxic/abusive/unhealthy

˚.⋆ 🌱 ⋆.˚

to start: percabeth.

i'll be honest---i haven't ever read hoo, and i never will. i just don't have the patience for it. but when ppl can quote lines abt a relationship being at least toxic, and at most abusive?? i get pushed off any ship real quick.

homes will discuss unhealthy relationships, will display the characters working through the problems presented within their relationships as they grow throughout the story. but i will never, ever, write an endgame toxic and/or abusive ship.

i loved percabeth in the pjo books, for the most part---even if i think it kind of overshadows all the other amazing ships out there, other than solangelo, for the most part. i'm not leaving solangelo out of this either.

anyways, i won't write endgame percabeth. that's just not gonna happen. they'll stay friends, and i've honestly preferred it that way for a long while. they just don't really fit together. i wasn't planning for them to stay together (you will see them together, but there will be some identity shenagins that annabeth will have to realise and imma be going through canon's mess, as well), because of an idea i've had for a while, that eventually birthed the ace-/aro-spec chase joke (magnus in homes is ace, natalie is aro, etc)

˚.⋆ 🌱 ⋆.˚

next: solangelo.

so, something i noticed when reading toa, is that will carries a lot of the emotional burden in his relationship with nico. i mean, he's fucking keeping him alive!! that's not something your partner should have to do. and by that i mean, your partner should not have to bear the burden of being the only thing keeping you alive---that's a fuck-ton of emotional labour, and i will give nico points for seeking some help, but i'm still re-working their relationship.

please do note that almost every relationship change spirals from my main relationship change of alex and magnus's healthy, consensual, and very queer, but not necessarily "typical" to society relationship. most of these characters have never really had a healthy relationship in their faces during their childhoods---i mean, percy has paul and sally, but their relationship is later, and they don't exactly push boundaries to make people reconsider their relationships and emotions. (i.e. alex and magnus are in a non-heterosexual, completely non-sexually-intimate (except for the very rare kiss on the lips, but it never gets further than that), healthy relationship that has extremely close ties to the kids in question)

˚.⋆ 🌱 ⋆.˚

fierrochase.

so, i absolutely adore fierrochase. i think they are, honestly, one of the healthiest relationships displayed within the entire riordanverse (they bow to carter & zia. blitzstone, sam & amir, hazel & frank (i think), and partially sadie x waltnubis which is only partial bc they have problems to work out, btw) that are majorly present and that i consistently remember bc i have adhd shit memory.

but i also must recognise, because this is a point i wish to make for later on, that any dynamic based upon killing your partner is unhealthy. no, i don't care that they can resurrect, that is still fucking traumatising. i will mention that them killing each other/magnus constantly being killed by alex is a mostly fandom-specific plot, so congrats, rick, there's one healthy relationship that's canon (and there are quite a few other ones, but i'm mainly pointing out the idealised ones).

they respect each other's boundaries, are learning about each other, and are taking their time to figure out their relationship. it's not really shown in canon---mainly because we get so little time with alex and magnus in a more-than-friends capacity, but we still see a lot of equal ground between the two of them. which is fucking important.

˚.⋆ 🌱 ⋆.˚

anyways: mallory x halfborn.

y'know the comment i made about dynamics based upon killing your partner are unhealthy a paragraph ago? yeah, this is what i was talking about.

one of the biggest bases, if mallory and halfborn were real, of their relationship would be fear. mainly because you would fear your killer. yeah, you can get desensitized to it, but you shouldn't have to become numb to fear of your partner just to continue being with them. no one is at fault here, and i will show that in the one-shot that discusses mallory & halfborn's relationship. i'm kind of horrified that their relationship is a thing that exists. i mean, can you imagine never knowing when your partner will just to decide to kill you, and did, and has?? even if you can't die permamently, that fear would stick.

especially in homes, where the battle scars stay. magnus will have a scar on their neck from the one time (just the once, and they discussed it afterwards), all of them have scars. (why i changed this will be part of another post.)

i can't write a relationship like that. one of homes' largest themes is healing, is growth, is escaping unhealthy thought patterns and relationships. the song that backs the entire series is don't panic by coldplay, if you wish to know the ideas i'm aiming to represent.

jason & piper, and calypso & leo are also problematic but not generally idealised within the books or by the fandom, and i can cover them later because i don't see much about them (personally) and because i am running out of steam.

lark, out.

[canon-gabriel-quotes]

Transcript:

COME ON MACHINE, FUCK ME LIKE AN ANIMAL.

Audio source

[akiarathewitch]

Hear me out-

[pinetreevillain]

Death of Me Part 1

Viewer discretion is advised for this comic folks!

Next

[lbhslefttiddie]

youve heard of sex flowers get ready for the flower that makes you into a celestial shoujo herione complete with particle effects you cannot turn the fuck off and creates a wifebeam so powerful it can incapacitate and maim and keeps making you burst into tears and fall on your ass which makes the wifebeam More Powerful and you also cannot turn this off either. and is also still, sort of, a sex flower

from one of my favorite fanfictions, Celestial Afterglow by elanor_pam, a fic that defies description in the best possible way

[babsaros]

they talk about testosterone gel like it’s the fentanyl of hrt

[casualavocados]

Chiang Tien as AI DI & Chen Bowen as CHEN YI KISEKI: DEAR TO ME, Ep. 12 (x)

[stuffed-x-arts]

recently got into the magnus archives and with the loop plush dropping yesterday i found the energy and thoughts to do some silly stuff. bonus sketches below the cut.

[feralnumberfive]

This blog will be spoiler free for TUA S4 up until the season starts!

[carlatsukinamistolemyhamsandwich]

I always said I'd never post anything like this when I was actually active on this blog as I didn't want to start drama but you know what, screw it, I'm not here anymore and I'm tired of staying silent on this.

The way some of the fandom treats Yui is absolutely nuts.

And no, I'm not talking about people who call Yui "weak" or who get jealous over her situation (that's a whole other can of worms), I am talking about the other obsessive fans.

I'll start off by saying I am not saying all Yui fans are bad (some are delightful) but I swear she also manages to attract some of the most unhinged people I've encountered on the internet.

I can't even begin to name all the posts I've seen defending her and arguing against anyone who would call her weak or criticise her in any way etc. And while I know there certainly are people who call her weak or fanfictions where she acts as a love rival for one of the boys versus an OC or reader character, I've actually seen far less of those posts than ones defending her, to an almost problematic degree. Like I literally once saw a post where someone was genuinely telling people to kill themselves because they were treating Yui badly in fanfiction and like what the actual fuck?

I personally have no gripes with Yui as a character. She's written to be exactly what the story needed, and if you like kind cinnamon roll characters, she definitely falls into that category, but people don't have to like characters just because they're good people.

In the same way, the diaboys are all terrible to some extent and if they were real people, you wouldn't want anything to do with them. However, I would argue all of them are well-thought out characters with interesting backstories that clearly tie into who they are by the time the series starts. An immoral character =/= a badly written character in the same way a moral character =/= a well written character.

Now I'm not trying to say Yui is a badly written character, as I mentioned above, I think she fits the role she needed to in DL perfectly, but I do think people need to stop treating her like literal perfection at the expense of actual real human beings. I'll admit, I have seen people dislike Yui for immature reasons, but you can't have a go at people for not liking a fictional character.

I know, and have seen, some people argue that your attitude towards Yui reflects your attitude towards rl abuse survivors and just no. That's not how that works. If someone is reading an account of actual abuse and starts victim blaming that's one thing but DL is NOT REAL and it was never meant to be an allegory about abuse or abusive relationships, it's made for people who are horny about vampires. That's it. There is no deeper meaning. I cannot emphasise this enough.

I think if there's any real point here, it's that if some of these fans genuinely value morality and goodness as much as they claim, they would take a good look in the mirror at how they treat real people. If you love Yui so much, use her an example (i.e. being nice), not some icon to beat people over the head with. And people liking and enjoying the darker aspects of DL doesn't make them bad people in the same way watching a horror film doesn't make you a future serial killer.

Anyway thank you for coming to my TED talk. Again, I am not talking about all Yui fans, just the worst ones I've seen. And to be fair a lot of the points I've made here are true for rabid diaboy fans as well. At the end of the day, it's how you treat other people, not fictional characters, that matters.

[w1lmuttart]

do you use gouache when you paint? i'm not very familiar with painting or paints but i want to learn and i really like the colours and general feeling of all your paintings and i think that i might like to learn to use that material as well

I have used gouache in paintings, but not the ones I’ve posted this summer. The lake creature and the canvas w a hole was painted w acrylic, the rest in aquarelle/watercolor! Out of the two of them acrylic is the most forgiving for me lol, since it dries fast and you can paint over any mistakes. Watercolor is either really relaxing or hell on earth, as it dries slowly and you can never paint lighter colors on darker colors, so you need to know which spots that you want brighter and use as little paint as possible in those spots, and the colors spread out when the paper is wet, which can create really cool effects!

[karofsky]

I'm in EST this month so it's officially my birthday meaning none of you are allowed to get mad at me for the next 24 hours no matter how much I spam post ok

[averagekindergartenfan]

‼️TW RELIGION + HOMOPHOBIA, TRANSPHOBIA, ETC.

Fact! It's all "We accept everyone in our religion!" unless you can't remember a scripture or surah. You're accepted unless you don't feel fit in your gender. You're accepted unless you start seeing an interest in someone from the same gender. You're accepted unless you can't focus in class. You're accepted unless you don't fit into God's standard, you're accepted unless your very existence goes against all odds. You're accepted until your not. But hey why not come pray with me? It's not like you're gonna go to hell if you don't, except you will. One sin will cost you your "free" ticket to heaven, and by the fire you shall praise our dear God or feel your skin melt off. He is merciful yet so revengeful. If you cross his path even by mistake, your angels will turn on you and cut off the rope that's keeping you from falling to hell. Anyways I'm gonna go hang out with Satan and shout "GAY RIGHTS!" with him while blasting possibly suicidal music

[sovereignsystem]

ﾒ 𝓓𝓪𝓷𝓷𝔂 ﾒ

He/It ‹/𝟹 Boykiller and lover~ ‹/𝟹 30 ‹/𝟹 Splitroject ‹/𝟹 Homosexual

Hiii I'm Danny~ I've got a few nicknames, but I think I'll stick to Danny on here. You should too. I'm interested in a lot of things that most people don't like, hence the content warnings on this post. But honestly, I'm kind of a walking red flag~

If you wanna know what I'm into, check out my blog~ @bloodiedbygods come say hi, I promise I don't bite ;) 🔪

[monty-glasses-roxy]

I still think it's hilarious that in Meteors AU, literally every single person knows about the haunted pile of robot spaghetti that is Tangle, except for Roxy. Who has been unknowingly visiting them and staring them right in the face, for literally years now. She has no idea. Fucking Cassie's dad Eddie knows about them. The Sewerhell guys know about them. The fucking horsies probably know about them. DJ, who is too big to get anywhere fucking near Tangle knows about them.

But not Roxy. It's a mystery to everyone. Half of them think it's a denial thing or willful ignorance. They're completely wrong she genuinely has no idea they're there. Tangle has willfully made their presence known to so many of the others and have tried a hundred times over with Roxy but she just. Has no fucking clue.

If it's haunted, Roxy doesn't know it exists. That's just how it is. She can see Glitchtrap pulling puppet strings on Vanessa and the others, but she can't see the spooky spirit spaghetti. This isn't even just Meteors. She just has no idea. The guy is like glass that gives her a headache, she can't see them but wow does her head hurt after staring into the darkness outside the pizzeria for a minute. Strange. Weird, even. Bizarre, perhaps.

Why does everyone keep freaking out at the shadows?? There's nothing even there. If there was? She'd know! Even in Meteors with her almost complete blindness in the dark, she'd know! Roxy knows everything that's down here and nothing gets past her without her knowing! They must be seeing things smh smh such overreactors smh

[nedconte]

Tom Cruise fic recs

If someone had told me a year ago that this is what I'd be reading in 2023, I probably wouldn't have believed them. Anyway, here I am with a list of some of my favorite RPF fics.

This list is pretty PWP-heavy and includes mostly bottom!Tom because I'm predictable like that. There are a few different pairings, but they're all m/m. No archive warnings apply to any of these fics.

With you, I'm already winning by Fuddlewuddle 4k, E Tom Cruise/Miles Teller, secret relationship, semi-public sex, belly bulge

Tom and Miles go to the Oscars. The ceremony goes on for so long, no one is going to miss them for a few awards while they go to the bathroom together. Just as long as they're back for the Best Picture award, it'll be fine. Miles isn't sure he'd be able to stop himself, even if it wasn't.

Oscars fix-it! This was lovely and really hot.

Kinkmeme fill: Asphyxiation by anonymous Not rated/E Tom Cruise/Miles Teller, asphyxiation, unsafe kink

Prompt: Tom has a thing for Miles' hands. It's only a matter of time before he asks Miles to choke him in the bedroom.

This kinkmeme fill is short but amazing. It's extremely well written and the characters are very believable.

all we are is indestructible by yellowdressilsa 4k, E Tom Cruise/Chris McQuarrie, wingfic

Chris always wears his wings up and out of the way - Tom finally gets him to let them down.

Somehow an AU where they have wings just makes so much sense for them. I love the intimacy of this.

so come take my hand, come on by notyourwinter 1.5k, E 🔒 Tom Cruise/Chris McQuarrie, shower sex

Tom would stay in the gym forever if McQ let him. McQ doesn't intend to let that happen.

Chris taking care of Tom is just so sweet, I want to live in this fic.

reading about yourself on a plane by yellowdressilsa 2k, E 🔒 Tom Cruise/Chris McQuarrie, topping from the bottom

Tom looks at him a moment; his expression is unreadable but then again, Chris isn't wearing his glasses. "You want to have sex?" Tom asks finally.

I think this was the first Tom/McQ fic on AO3. 10/10, absolutely perfect.

Truth or Dare by anonymous 3k, E 🔒 Tom Cruise/Miles Teller, armpit kink, boot worship, praise kink

"Truth or dare." "No!" Tom said decisively, waving his finger at Miles. "I'm way too old for that." "I'm also too old." Miles shrugged. "But it will be fun! We'll get to know each other, and all that."

This is really hot, I love the praise kink (and so do they).

Turn it on, knock me up, turn me loose by yellowdressilsa 2.5k, E 🔒 Tom Cruise/Glen Powell, pregnancy/breeding kink, top!Tom

Tom probably means "I wish I could have carried them" as an offhand comment, but it starts a wildfire in Glen.

I know I keep saying this about every fic on this list, but this is super hot.

twice as sweet as money earned by Saturn 5k, E Tom Cruise/Paul Newman, first time bottoming, praise kink

Tom could pretend he doesn't understand what Paul is offering but there is no denying the meaning behind Paul’s proposition. They’ve been building toward this for weeks. Tom’s not certain what the details entail, and he’s not sure he wants what’s on offer, but he still manages to sink his next four shots. It’s about options. While filming The Color of Money, Paul teaches Tom far more than he anticipated.

This is the only fic on this list with younger Tom, and I just adore how he's written here. And of course I love how Paul takes care of him.