#the fact remains that people WILL do it

[zucchiniegg]

#dead dove is such a useful tag if used right because you know that whatever is on the label the author commits to it (via @dropdeadjack​ )

^ dead dove is meant to be used in conjunction with other warnings, to indi not to replace them.

'creator chose not to use archive warnings’ is the tag you’re looking for if you want to tell readers ‘there might be some fucked up stuff in here, but i dunno if it meets the point of a formal tag/i don’t want to spoil it/i don’t want to promise anything/etc.’ it already exists!

the conflation of "dead dove" into a genre of fic when it's intended to mean "there are warnings here, take them seriously because you get exactly what's on the tin" is probably one of the worst things to happrn to fandom because you get people who tag "dead dove" and no other type of warning. like. cool. this is worthless

and you get people saying "anyone who writes dead dove is morally awful" or whatever. which is like. hello. this is a label you slap on the front of something to say what it is not a type of story

[sensitiveheartless]

(The rest is under the readmore!)

(Next part) ->

[intotheelliwoods]

Thats it this post is an @kathaynesart appreciation post. Comment or reblog if you love and appreciate Kat and her work <3

[thegreatyin]

And thus, with the passing of 24 hours, Caeru's ambition truly comes to an end. Major Nemesis spoilers below the cut- we're talking endgame ambition business here. Mostly on a character RP front.

The Doomed Scientist made quite a few... choice decisions, in the end. Killing Cups once and for all, recording his story as one of grief-

And sparing what little remained of Mr Mirrors, leaving it free to roam Parabola as it sees fit.

Some of them, he can explain. Others, he's still left to feel... discontent.

Cups needed to die. That much was certain from the start. It was a tyrant, as all Masters are, and complicit in the bargaining and eventual destruction of four (potentially five) cities, as all Masters are. It was an obstacle. A murderer. A petty monster that felt no remorse even on its deathbed, and it went out of its way to ruin multiple lives just because it felt owed its own sick and twisted idea of revenge.

It killed his first love. It looked him in the eyes and he knew what it had done and he knew from the start it was going to die.

Perhaps, in the end, it knew too. And yet it still pleaded, and wanted to live, and-

It made a bargain.

A bargain Caeru didn't take.

Not because he didn't want to. Gods, he wanted to. He wanted it. He wanted it more than anything else in the world. To have Greylu back, to give him the gift of life, of love, to show him the wonders of the Neath and the beauty of the correspondence and all of the people Caeru has met and loved and found home with along the way-

But. He couldn't.

Because Cups was a monster. And no matter what, it deserved to die. And he could not, in good conscience, allow it to live.

Even if sparing it meant everything he's ever wanted.

So he's left here, now. With a bloodied traveling coat, and a bloodsoaked knife, and a favor finally fulfilled.

And nothing to live for. No resurrected lover, no charming visits to Helicon, no slow dances in the living room, no memories to rebuild and lives to live and he won't live again-

Nothing. All he has is a coat born of obligation, not to his love, but to people he's never even met. To lives he's never even touched. To a paramour, still alive, with hair of rose-pink, who doesn't even remember her own brother's existence.

Cups didn't die for Caeru's sake. Cups died for the sake of all who wanted it dead. For the revenger's court, and the ghost screaming in his ear, and the reckoning that will not be postponed indefinitely.

And Caeru, who acted as a tool to carry out their wills? Who all but betrayed his own lover, just to satisfy a cause he never knew existed?

All Caeru is left with, is regret. Regret-

-And grief.

[t4transsexual]

"when they find your bones theyll know youre really a [sex assignment]" thats not true actually im gonna get buried beside my wife and our headstones are gonna read "evan" and "caspian" and our shared last name and im gonna be buried in a suit and shes gonna be buried in a dress and maybe we'll throw in a trans flag for funsies and they may learn we were trans but more importantly they will know that we were in love

[ferryfoam]

I think about The Seige of AR-558 all the time. It's probably one of my absolute favourite ds9 episodes (along with In Purgatory's Shadow and By Inferno's Light which can not be topped) that one part where Julian is treating the wounds of one of the star fleet officers who've been essentially abandoned in this war zone and the officer is clearly so deeply traumatised by his experiences there is one of the most poignant moments in the entire show to me. The dialogue is so good and it really reminds you that this is an actual war theyre having, not just some flashy space battle where the good guys win and then everything is fine- it's had lasting impacts on these people who star fleet is meant to protect but really they send out a group of officers to a planet and then leave them there for months longer than they were supposed to be and so utterly do not care about these people because they see them as disposable. Even after Sisko and the ds9 crew realised how awful the conditions were everyone was expected to stay there - a position too important to the federation for them to let these people go home but not important enough for them to send backup or replacement officers (I though Quarks presence in the episode was really good as well for providing a perspective of someone not in StarFleet and a lot of the things he said about human nature and the actions of the federation really reflected how I was feeling about it as well haha)

Also the music was really good

(Edit if you want to hear more of my take on star fleet corruption I have put it in the tags)

[kurokoros]

Yes. Because Tommy and Billy are the pinnacle of reliable characters and not at all people who 1) aren't privy to the details of someone else's relationship and 2) aren't trying to get under Steve's skin.

Steve and Nancy were absolutely in a grey area after their argument in S2. The fact that there's wiggle room to infer cheating at all makes it inherently unclear whether or not the characters were broken up. At the very least, they weren't on the same page at all.

Hell, I'd say it's completely in character for Nancy to cheat in this moment because we've repeatedly seen how she's impulsive and doesn't really consider other people's feelings when they conflict with whatever goal she has in mind.

[longagoitwastuesday]

Every day I am haunted by the fact JJK could be amazing but it will be just idk Bleach or something

[3liza]

im not entirely clear on what this post is saying but it reads to me like "no one likes muffing", but the woman who coined & popularized the term "muffing", mira bellwether, was a trans woman who died of complications from covid and lung cancer last year. she was my friend. she wrote an entire zine on fucking trans women, called Fucking Trans Women, which has an entire chapter on muffing and how and why people like to do it. so i think we have it on pretty good authority at this point that some/many trans people experience sexual pleasure from muffing??

[not-poignant]

Do you think there will be Raphael pov in palmarosa at any point? I love how you write hiiiiim

Hiya anon!

So far I'm leaning towards no.

The reason is that I actually like that he's so hard to read, and because I find the concept of writing his mind genuinely challenging because he is so inhuman to me. I think if I were writing his POV I'd feel seduced by the urge to humanise him 'internally' and we'd lose the mystery and mercurial power of seeing him as an outsider (i.e. from Astarion's POV).

And while that's tempting in its own way, I'm very much not wanting to do that either! Part of what I enjoy in this story is watching Astarion deal with the loneliness in a way of being with someone / spending time with someone who thinks so differently to him, who prioritises differently to him, who has different values to him, and who is so very *not* human.

And sometimes that's something I want to write, but I actually don't want to humanise Raphael to that degree, so I'll be avoiding his POV, I'm sorry!

[clownsnake]

Been watching adventure time for realzies instead of through osmosis and man. Ice king. MAN.

Literally every time Simon is referenced after the initial reveal has me bawling my eyes out. what do you MEAN he saved the farm world universe from the mushroom war. And he asked for help as he died. What do you MEAN Finn wrote mean letters to ice king and flame princess to make them fight and called ice king "simple Simon". I thought it was just the specifically Simon focused episodes that'd be fucked up but once you know he's Simon, literally every appearance of him or ice king is so tragic.

[contagious-watermelon]

what is the deal with everyone identifying themselves by their birth sex? i see it all the time. everywhere. and also — maybe it's just a function of the people i happen to see, but it's almost always people saying they're "afab" rather than its complement.

it's telling, to me, what they really think of (other) trans people, because they act as if your sex at birth is constant and unchanging throughout your life. one of my coworkers said they had a low voice for an afab (meaning low for someone who's never gone through a T-dominant puberty). people use the acronym — denoting what sex a doctor determined you to be when you were born — not always accurate because sex traits can be mixed or ambiguous — as a placeholder for present-day "male" or "female."

it's the same thing, i think, as when people say that sex ≠ gender and mean that trans men are female and trans women are male. sure, some of them are, maybe (though I'd bet it wouldn't go over well calling them that), but it's called SRS for a reason; transsexual. with our current technology, we can't completely change a male person to a female one or vice versa — but we can change a whole lot of their phenotypic sex characteristics, whether that be by removing them or switching them to the other sex. that's kinda the whole point of medical transition, actually.

so to me it just, idk, it reveals how people are really thinking of their own transition as well as others', that they see your birth sex as unchanging, fixed, inevitable destiny. that's exactly what transphobes think of us. why does our own community have to think of us that way too?

[deus-and-the-machina]

ffxiv garlemald discourse is so funny because people will go "ugh people just cant stand it when things aren't black and white" and then you look at how the empire are portrayed in stormblood and shadowbringers and its like hm. that seems like a pretty intense and accurate display of violent imperialism to me! Wow I wonder why people in this day and age may find it hard to feel sympathy for them or even hate them on principal. god its such a mystery.

the games like 50/50 to me on how it tackles these themes because I actually like the garlemald arc in EW, I think it has a lot of horrific and powerful scenes depicting how self destructive fascist propaganda and beliefs are, but I also think it doesn't go far enough on some fronts. the garleans' xenophobia is most notably and obstacle to getting them to accept the contingent's help, which is what they're there to do,

but there's never an admission of harm from any garleans on the uuuuuuuuh massive amount of war crimes the nations around them are still suffering from they're just kind of like "we misjudged you...but you actually wanted to help us all along" like yeah thats great now can we get you all some deprogramming because you keep talking about returning to your prime and glory days and I think we need to unpack some stuff you really SHOULDNT return to. im not even really talking about EW proper but the patches where things are a bit more chilled out and people are recovering.

It feels like they wanted to have their critique of imperialism and also have things end with the beauty of human connection and reaching out and these things just don't mesh well because hey a lot of your modern day audience is not gonna like having to treat people yelling xenophobic things at the cast and your character with kid gloves after you showed them hours and hours of the awful things these people's beliefs have done. especially in the present day hoo boy.

[theshadowrealmitself]

Love the fact that a huge majority of the Humans we see are Humans who get to work in the field they want, post scarcity, and because it’s something they really want to be doing and they don’t actually have to be doing it, they’re all workaholics about it

Human trying to claim they’re not overworking themselves by pointing out that no one’s making their other coworker take a break

Their coworker who is a Vulcan

In the spirit of fairness tho, the higher ups force both of them to take some time off, and although Vulcans may not display emotions, the Human has a sense that they fucked up by bringing their coworker into this

[flowercrowngods]

cw suicide mention & imagery

original play idea where people seem to live their normal lives but the audience gets the feeling that something’s wrong, there’s a tension and there are things that obviously go unsaid that hang in the air between the characters uncomfortably long enough until the last member of the audience has filled in the blanks in their own way.

there is a figure off to the side, a very young man in a suit, watching them, unmoving and silent, and as the scenes and progress, as characters leave and appear, as the setting changes, the young man is always there. no one interacts with him, but there are moments when they almost do. when the characters stop what they’re doing when they stand close to him, and appear to listen. but there’s nothing.

the sound of TV news reports, all playing over each other, create an uncanny and uncomfortable buzzing that never, never stops, and there are too many to really make out the words. they get more silent the closer they get to the young man in the suit, quieting down to nothing when they stand by him to listen — but the characters seem unaware of the change. so does the young man, statuesque though he is.

then there’s a little girl, covered in dirt, her hair askew, her cheeks rosy — the image of having spent the day outside, playing in the dirt, a smile on her face, her eyes big, as she skips towards the young man and asks, “can we go now? can we play?”

the young man cards his hands through her hair and says, “you go ahead, i’ll be right there.”

but still he stays there, seated.

everything continues as before, but the characters slowly undergo a complete change in character, in routine, in appearance. the old man who wore suits is not dressed in sweats and old, worn out, dirty shirts. the sweet, kindhearted young adult is now quiet and apathetic. the woman who, in the beginning, was talking her friend’s ear off and could barely stand still is unmoving now, staring out into nothingness.

the buzzing and bustling background noise is slowly, gradually getting louder as the characters become increasingly nonverbal and unmoving. the lights dim down.

then all at once, after a crescendo, the noise stops suddenly, the lights turn off completely, before, with warm, yellow light, a woman we’ve seen before — as she stares into nothingness — appears on the stage, slowly approaching the young man as if unsure of her body but undeniable in her grace.

they smile at each other for a moment.

m, whispering: you’re not supposed to be here, not yet

w, cradling his cheeks: i was always supposed to be here long, long before you

m: i know. i’m sorry, i—

w: i know. i forgive you. i’ve always forgiven you

m, after a while: but not yourself

the woman shakes her head.

w: a mother will never forgive herself for burying her child, and a father will forgive himself even less. (a beat) you have such a handsome face.

m: it’s not your fault

w: so beautiful, those eyes, i’ve missed you so much

m: listen to me, it’s not your fault!

w: and your hair! papa would be so glad to know that—

m: mother. mama. listen to me. it’s not your fault

w, tearful and whispering: you were supposed to be fine. you were always supposed to be fine. it was never supposed to be this bad, we were supposed to help, but—

m: i know. i tried, i really did. both times

in that moment, the little girl comes skipping on stage again, approaching them with her wagging ponytail.

g: what are you doing here, mama? will you play with me now? it’s been so long!

the woman gasps, her tears getting the better of her as she falls to her knees and pulls the girl to her chest, who readily returns the hug

w, sobbing, kissing her cheek: hi, baby. yes, i’ll play with you, of course i will. let’s go.

the young man helps his mother up, allowing her to pull him into a hug, and she whispers: “as much as i love her with all my heart, i’m so proud of the young man you’ve grown into. and now i have you both, just as i always did.”

the young man brushes a kiss to her cheek, then lets her go, watching as his mother disappears with the little girl.

m: i have to stay a while. i’ll follow you soon.

(woman and girl, hand in hand, exeunt)

the lights dim, and the buzzing returns, accompanied by the sound of dragging footsteps the audience cannot see, until everything’s back in total darkness. the noise stays. growing louder in increments, leaving the audience uncomfortable and unsure if this was it.

as they quiet down, we hear a man, sobbing uncontrollably, before eerie silence takes his place, too.

the curtain falls.

[fisherrprince]

desperately trying to pick apart Alphinaud’s outfit by layer because its a hooded long-sleeved short jacket over a little backless dress jacket (with a turtleneck and clasp on the collar?) over a fancy zipped sundress and knee highs (??). also he has a fancy little tie