#things get dark i'm sorry

[phantomoftheorpheum]

Julie and the Phantoms being one of the most heartwarming and feel good shows I've ever watched, while simultaneously having the most absurdly tragic premise will never not to be funny to me.

[upperranktwo]

It's not Zen'in? I'm glad.

[kj-beastboy]

Pregnancy as a kink makes me uncomfortable so man am I glad your pregg Flug stuff is explicitly not kink oriented!

yeah I... don't wanna judge anyone... but it's more than that, it's downright terrifying to me. Blame my hormones bc I'm expecting irl but wow... I'm very sensitive and it feels dehumanizing. but ig that is kinda the point of the kink(?)

it's so common in fandoms!

I'm completely vanilla anyway tho, so not surprising.

I've tried to pretend for a super long time that I'm into kink, but most of them are off putting and I consider them intrusive thoughts, not fantasies. I'm kinda fluctuating between sex-repulsed and neutral (aroace) even fictional... ig kink just isn't for me. I tried so hard to get over it. I know some people in my asks/requests are gonna be disappointed but I'm sorry💔

I'm slightly ashamed of how boring I am and I have serious trouble connecting to anyone in fandoms due to this actually🤕 feel like the most NT autistic person ever.

anyway here's a doodle!

[scificrows]

i like to make fun of murderbot for being all "i hate everyone, i don't care about anything or anyone, fuck off" while simultaneously caring very much about the people around it and the situations it finds itself in. i love how it "accidentally" ends up caring quite a lot about the friends it makes along the way. but i think something that i tend to forget is that murderbot actively decides to care - at least at some point in its story.

idk, as a person that struggles with depression, this paragraph from artificial condition really resonates with me. prior to all systems red, murderbot had contracts. it had routine and it had protocols. it knew what it had to do to just get by, how to perform so no one would notice it had disabled its governor module. it was deeply depressed, yes, but it was functioning (for lack of a better word). in artificial condition, murderbot's routine is gone. it cannot go on in that state of numbly going-from-contract-to-contract, putting in as little effort as possible, consuming media to cope. that option is gone because it escaped (and note that escaping the company was not an active choice, it kinda happened to it). murderbot has two options now: it can either gather all its energy; actively do something new and difficult and distressing; change something in its life and try. or it can let the numbness and the emptiness take over and stop trying. if murderbot wants to survive as a rogue secunit, it has to try. no matter how difficult that is. the wording in that paragraph really hits home for me. the way the non-caring sees an opportunity to slip in and to take over. does murderbot even care? does anything really matter? is anything really worth the hassle? wouldn't it be so much easier to just let your mind slip away a little, to go numb, to be passive, to watch media and wait for things to happen to you? wouldn't it be nice to stop thinking and struggling and feeling complicated things? to stop making an effort? you've been dealing with a lot lately and maybe it's time to just shut down. maybe you'll just take a little break. just slip deeper into this chair and start the show. time flies when you're not paying attention. trying is exhausting. who cares if you don't do the things you wanted to do, you were supposed to do. it'll be fine. let's just ignore those things for now. just let the non-caring take over. just stop thinking. you can deal with the aftermath later. just watch your shows. who cares. but murderbot cares. it decides to care. it decides to fight with all it has and i think that is so brave. and i think in the later books caring is less of an active decision for murderbot. once you start caring, it's easier to keep going than to stop; and murderbot, for all its "i'm a grumpy rogue secunit, leave me alone" behavior, knows just how important caring is. so it's not that it doesn't know what's happening; rather, it lets itself care. tl;dr: caring is not the default for murderbot, it's just the more difficult of two options. and it decides not to take the soft option. it decides to struggle. it decides to care. and so it does.

[corpocyborg]

so like... the Qun being reveled to be pro-trans in DAI makes zero sense... considering both sten & the arishok are shown to believe strongly in gender roles... and that sten even goes as far as to say that a person can never be anything other than what they're born and that a fisherman who tries to become a merchant will never be a real merchant and will only ever be a fisherman pretending to be a merchant... like... ?????

I mean i get wanting iron bull to be pro-trans himself but wouldn't it make way more sense for that to be something he actually dislikes about the Qun... and then it would actually create tension in his storyline between his own viewpoints & agency and the messages he's learned from the qun and partially actually believes and has partially been forced to believe through literal indoctrination and abuse... and therefore whether he becomes tal-vashoth or not could actually be something that matters instead of just a meaningless pseudo-choice...

[slashergirlnancy]

stancy + The Hunger Games AU (mentor!Nancy and tribute!Steve)

[front-facing-pokemon]

[pacific-coast-hockey]

ok now that that last post has popped out of the queue, can i just be corny for a second and say @drew-remenda idk if you're checking notes on a sideblog, but thank you SO much for not deleting your blog. it's such a beautiful and perfect time capsule of the sharks from 2012-2014 and i feel so certain a record this encompassing does not exist for free anywhere else, given how yahoo and the nhl keep restructuring their websites, google is unusable, everything on the internet behind a paywall etc. it's truly such a gift to have all these photos from a decade+ ago available on tumblr. going through all 168 pages of your blog in one night and queuing the posts that delighted me most, and then watching as newer AND older fans have reacted and shared the photos has been so joy-inducing for me. it's been truly such a lovely moment of watching the past grow present in sharkudablr this week.

also a wonderful reminder that no matter what, sharks fans will always latch onto some random fucking guy...long may jamie mcginn reign. thank you so much for not deleting 🙇‍♂️🙇‍♂️

[lovesodeepandwideandwell]

Today in Reasons I'm Glad I Did Not Go Home for Christmas: very grateful not to have been around for my mom dismantling the tree at 3pm Christmas Day when she's waited long enough to have her space back to normal

[lobotomize-d]

Butter roll cookie if... if he was.... uh. . . Student at the Parfedia Academy ...

[desultory-novice]

Apologies AU - Good Ending Drop

Hey, everyone. It was my goal to finish Apologies in tandem with the Tournament, but for health reasons, I won't be able to as I planned. Because I tied the story to the tournament and don't feel like untangling it again and making everyone wait more, I'm going to give you all the ending spoilers, as I promised I would if I became unable to finish the story.

What I'm about to describe is THE Good Ending. The True Ending I had planned out almost from the beginning!

-

In the main-verse...

Susie, who sees too much of herself in Adeleine, decides to take matters into her own hands to bring the girl's older brother back.

She takes the vial of Dark Matter Swordsman DNA that was harvested from King Dedede. Meta Knight catches up with her and argues against it. It's foolish, dangerous, and liable to be nothing but painful to all parties involved. But Susie anticipated interference and asked Zan to bodyguard her. When Zan arrives (late) to the lab, the argument has caused the vial to begin to react to all the negativity in the room. Zan recognizes its contents as Dark Matter and insists on calling Lord Hyness, who in his own quirky way, analyzes their problem and suggests that while the contents are too weak to survive on their own, a resurrection could be possible, using Void's powers to mimic a hive queen, supplying whatever creature emerges the power to survive on Popstar without burning up into ash...

-

In the tourney-verse...

White-Haired Noir is at peace with his life and has come to accept the death of his precious little sister many years ago, but...a part of him still wishes to make Adeleine happy.

Using his fairy-born dimension sight, he discovers an Alternate Noir who is 98% percent compatible with main-verse Noir. This is the Purgatory!Noir from the Re_Birthday post. And he drags this unstable, utterly clueless Noir out of this peaceful void without his permission and secretly "volunteers"  the massively confused, un-alive but un-dead teen boy for the Kirby OC Tournament.

It is White-Haired Noir that is the "good" voice on phone and in Noir's head, encouraging rationality. His goal? Get Noir some friends. Get him to face up to/open up to people about his past. And get him caring about his life enough that he wants to live...! 

White-Haired Noir has seen what the main-verse Star Allies are attempting and knows that the odds of them actually bringing "Noir" back instead of just an emotionless monster are low without a compatible "Noir Soul" (haha) to inhabit the new vessel.

Over the course of many in-tourney events, including Noir learning to have faith in the sibling bonds he built with Gooey despite being Dark Matter at the time, learning to separate himself and Adeleine as individuals instead of clinging to her to his own neglect, privately opening up to King Dedede, who put the pieces together post-possession, about some awful stuff Noir put up with for years in secret from Raquelle's father (who privately loathed Neichel AND her kids and took it out on Noir) to "pay" for Adeleine's good life...

And lastly, using the power of wishes to interrogate if THIS Noir's true wish is to die and be free, to have never been born, to have had a normal "perfect" life, or if he simply wishes for a second chance to be with those he cares about... White-Haired Noir determines that Tourney!Noir is ready and reveals his plan to him. Noir confesses to him that he really does want to live and be with his family again and offers up his stronger soul for Susie and the gang's vessel.

-

Back in the main-verse...

The experiment is a success! They have brought, well, something back. It is not quite like Dark Matter Swordsman in form, nor is it exactly a human boy. It looks a little bit like a spiky haired-Gooey.

After some tense questioning of the emotionless, memoryless, unresponsive goo, it...suddenly seems to awaken. With the voice of a deeply shaken and scared young boy, the violet-eyed blob questions the mad scientist, cultists, and masked man surrounding him... Where the hell is he? And where are his little brother and sister?

Meta Knight welcomes Noir back to the world of the living.

Later, after Noir has time to dress himself in an appropriate scarf, Adeleine and Gooey are brought in and it is a happy and tear-filled reunion all around as Noir confirms that, while this form is strange, it's not dangerous and he's not in pain. He is then re-introduced to King Dedede, whereupon it's revealed that even though Noir likes him, he's still a snarky teen punk at heart, as he sasses the king horribly. (Dedede has gained another kid, but at what cost? XD)

...And that's it.

That's the ending to Apologies I've held onto for nearly a year.

For reading through all that, here is a short comic I drew a while back of the reunited family having a snowball fight in White Wafers.

-

(Not to unnecessarily over-explain the story but because the comic is a little vague, I have to tell you that no, Noir does not ever return to human after his revival. I meant it when I wrote in several places that their parting on Shiver Star was the last time they'd see each other "...in this form." This is merely meant to depict a moment in which Adeleine, seeing her brother alive and smiling and laughing and having real fun for the first time in so long, is able to imagine his old self smiling and is at peace that her brother is finally free from the hurt and misery he bore up with for so long.)

(...And yes, he has a long, silly tongue just like Gooey. Which is why he hides all but his eyes behind the scarf. Gotta keep up that cool older brother look even as a little goo creature! While Noir can't become human - frankly, he doesn't miss having a human body, given the stuff in his adolescence and being over-stressed, underfed, under-slept and just overall sick all the time in his later teens - he does eventually acquire the ability to shift into his old "Swordsman" form for short bursts of time.)

-

(Lastly, you might wonder how I could have had this exact ending in mind from almost the beginning when so much of it is tied up in recent posts like the tourney? ...Well, originally what was going to happen to allow Noir to be properly resurrected into the Dark Matter Goo body is that the Dream Rod from Star Allies was going to appear in response to a grieving Adeleine's wishes to see her brother again, bringing Noir-as-Swordsman back. At least for a LITTLE while, as it would be revealed that with Zero dead, Noir, who was entirely composed of Dark Matter at this point, couldn't survive on Popstar. Every moment he was there, his body was burning.)

(Still, he lasts long enough to have one final talk with Adeleine that helps heal him from the torturous events of DL 3 - in which we learn a highly disappointed Zero drove Noir to the absolute breaking point, shattering his mind and his newly regained soul. Adeleine also tells Noir she has finally realized everything he did for her during their childhood and apologizes to him for not seeing it before. With dawn on the horizon, Noir asks to look over Adeleine's sketchbooks with her before the end... He dies one last time, peacefully, while Adeleine finally gets to properly mourn him.)

(Then, all the "main-verse" sections proceed to happen as stated above!)

-

(...Okay, okay. One last thing. There was also an alternate ending planned where Magolor, taking advantage of the fact that Merry Magoland was built on a nexus point, finds a way to reunite Adeleine and White-Haired Noir - still a teen in this version - using his theme park as a union point, as special birthday gift for Adeleine.)

(I was kinda fond of this one for reuniting the timelines, but it opened up a lot of questions such as, if Magolor made it so that Noir and Adeleine from two different dimensions can see each other as long as they're both in Magoland, could others from the WH Noir-verse see the main-verse this way? It invited too many questions, so that's why I scrapped that one and just let White-Haired Noir grow up instead.)

[purgaytorysupremacy]

oh nuts. a life experience has given me a new layer of perspective on Cas's homosexual declaration of love to Dean.

recently I had occasion to tell a person I had feelings for them knowing full well they didn't feel even a twinge of the same thing for me. while the whole thing was a decidedly unpleasant experience, I kept laughing at myself internally bc I didn't want to say "the happiness is just in saying it" like fucking Castiel over here. (we don't need to talk about it, it's fine.) (I am happier having said it and it's kind of bullshit, but I digress.)

because the thing is, the happiness isn't in just saying it, right? the happiness is in the having. I made a whole TikTok "proving" that the Empty didn't come for Cas when he confessed his love, but rather when he realized Dean loved him back. even for Cas, the happiness was in the having, not in the saying, however brief it was.

and I've always been one of those people who rolled their eyes at the whole concept. why would the happiness be in just being, in just saying it, if it's right there in front of you to have. and then it hit me like a tonne of bricks (as I was washing my kitchen counters).

Cas really didn't think he could have Dean.

at all. in any capacity. he really, truly, and honestly felt to the depths of himself that Dean did not have any twinge of similar feelings, that this really was a Hail Mary shot-in-the-dark. and I think me, personally, really didn't understand that about Cas. that his belief in his love being unrequited was that unshakable.

something else I've been pondering is how audiences have so much more empathy for fictional characters who share traits that IRL they find objectionable and unappealing. but the thing is about fictional characters is that we follow them around in their most private, vulnerable moments. we see Dean mourning Cas when he dies, literally killing himself because he can't live without him, but it's so easy to forget that we're the omniscient ones here.

Cas never knew.

Dean's whole thing was pushing him away, keeping him at arm's length, making it seem like whatever heroic thing he does for Cas he'd do for anyone. he downplays how important it is for Dean to share the Deancave with him, to show him his favourite movies, share his favourite songs. he acts like the things Cas does for him don't mean that much to hide how much they do mean. he uses "we" whenever he even gets in the vicinity of expressing a feeling. "We were worried." "We're glad you're back." "We needed a win." "You're our brother." The audience knew the difference. We saw how he'd clench his jaw or swallow hard or make a face that said "God, I'm being such an idiot". Because we saw him in those little moments. We got to see the cracks in the mask.

but Cas never knew.

the self-hating angel of Thursday was never going to think it was all a way for Dean to protect himself. obviously, that's the delicious tragedy of it all, but what I think I realized at the end of all that is Cas confessing his love to a Dean who didn't love him back wouldn't have worked. Because the happiness really is in the having. If happiness was just in saying it, then The Empty would have come before Cas even finished getting the words out of his mouth.

so Cas's plan wouldn't have worked if Dean didn't love him back.

this is just me yapping on about my own nonsense, but I do think it's really interesting. there's contentment in "just saying it". there's freedom and relief and an unburdening. I think one can argue that it makes being happy in the being easier. there is certainly some joy in telling a person you think that highly of them. but true happiness?

nah.

true happiness is always going to only be in the having. Cas didn't understand the difference until he experienced it, and by then, it was too late.

[pinkd3mon]

I can respect the hater mentality

[necrotic-nephilim]

jaybrusteph. steph and bruce fuck on jason's grave, jason and bruce fuck on stephanie's grave, steph and jason fucking on bruce's grave. threesome where stephanie gets 2 cocks up her ass. they keeo her tied up in a secret part of the cave fir a week with a vibrator on her clit at low vibration and a fuck machine pounding her ass. they share her for another week straight and by the end of it she's mentally checked out and her face id smeared with mascara and cum. maybe they bring cass over once, and all of steph's holes are occupied at the same time. i want her to keep cumming so hard she walks with a limp for a month. she goes on patrol with a butt plug holding in both of their loads. remote controlled vibrators. just the kinkiest shit possible with these 3. any time bruce and jason fight, they take it out on steph. they both try to fuck her mouth and she chips a tooth and dislocates her jaw but they keep going

i've been thinking about this for *days*. bc idk how you intended this anon, but to me it reads as *delightful* non-con and *super* fucked up with grooming vibes. like in my head, i picture it as Bruce dealt with enough problems when Jason came back from death and he *really* doesn't feel like doing a repeat. so when Steph comes back, even if Babs gives her blessing for Steph to be Batgirl, Bruce doesn't trust it and he definitely doesn't like the idea of Steph wearing a Bat. he's been down this road before and this time, he's not making the same mistakes.

so he tells her she's allowed to be Batgirl but this time, there are more Rules. maybe he had a thing with her when she was Robin but Bruce feels like he obviously wasn't strict enough so, he sets new rules this time around. and Steph has no choice but to agree bc she wants to be Batgirl, she feels like she needs to prove herself again.

i love the idea of the mindbreak the first few weeks, too. esp if there are aphrodisiacs or some kind of drugs involved to keep her in a haze where it's all she can think about until she rlly just. breaks. and is okay with it and has no concept how fucked up it is. Bruce invites Jason just because he'll try anything to pacify Jason at this point, and maybe he had a fucked up thing with Jason already and they needed a sub as a buffer.

i also think it's fun if patrolling and missions are the one place Steph has an escape from all the sexual control. so she really leans into being Batgirl bc it's all she has so when they start making her wear plugs and vibrators out it breaks her a little bit. even as Batgirl, her life will revolve around pleasing Jason and Bruce. and Bruce is telling her that she has no idea how much she's helping with this, he's showing her numbers about how Red Hood has been much less lethal since this all started to really get in her head about how this is a duty and it's a favor that she's doing for Bruce and he's so thankful for it, he almost convinces her that she agreed to this somewhere along the way. so she agrees and is submissive when Jason is getting rougher and rougher with her until joints are dislocating and she's crying and doesn't even have the words to ask for it to stop so she can get a breather.

also like the idea of Bruce and Jason arguing while Steph is on a patrol and it's Jason who finds Steph first and without any sort of warning forces some kind of aphrodisiac drug into her mouth and makes her swallow, calmly telling her she has about an hour before it'll kick in so she better wrap up whatever she's doing and hope she gets to Jason's base so he doesn't have to find her and fuck her wherever she ends up when it kicks in-

and all the bruises and injuries she gets from the sex are explained away by vigilante work. i'm also really into the idea of like, gradual body modification without her awareness or consent. constantly having her on muscle relaxers so it's easier to fuck her without prep. adjusting parts of her body with supplements to their likings until she realizes she doesn't really recognize herself in the mirror. her nose has been broken by sex so many times it stoped healing right. her hips are a different size and she has to wear a plug most of the time bc she's usually so loose. just like. Complete Bodily Control over her, yk? and by the time she realizes how fucked up it is, she's in way too deep.

and pulling Cass into it is *really* fun bc Cass is someone she trusts. so if Cass is okay with this, leaning into it and fucking her mouth with a strap while stroking her hair, then it must be okay. bc it's Cass. and maybe Cass is also fucked up, maybe Cass is just trying to provide Steph comfort in a situation she can't get Steph out of. both are good options esp if Steph doesn't know which it is. she never knows if ppl just don't care enough to notice what she's going through or if Bruce and Jason are doing such a good job of hiding it all that they can't see it. and she gets so Stolkholm'd by the end of it there's no escape she even wants. bc it's not like she can go back to normal. it's not like she could come from regular sex that doesn't hurt to the point she cries anymore. so she just. accepts it.

but yk that's just my hurt/no comfort braincell being evil. bc i am evil and i love the psychology of being sexually broken as much as i love the sexual aspect of it. i think it makes it so much crunchier and realistic if there's this haunting acceptance that isn't necessarily a "oh she loves it now" but more of a "she knows escaping will make her feel worse" sort of thing. like she sees Bruce and Jason arguing and just starts to brace for it instead of trying to break them up. it's good food.

[tekatonic]

The Infinite drawings I promised ! Inspired from concept art.

[yusuke-of-valla]

"I couldn’t even name a city from Scarlet & Violet, they were that bland and generic."

One day. There will be mainstream Pokemon criticism that doesn't suck. Like what does this mean and what counts as "not generic"? Why are the identifying features of cities in Scarlet and Violet not as good as the old ones?

The author doesn't have to say you just publish 700 words bemoaning Pokemon wasn't as good as it was with no concrete details or actual points to support your argument and you're fine!