#this is incredibly enjoyable

[squarefriend]

Hi so I haven’t finished Soriel week cause I’ve been moving into my appartment and starting University LOL. So I will be doing late week instead! BUT IN THE MEANTIME

Check out this dragon puppet I’m making. I’m super proud of her so far and wanted to show her off abit!!

Last one is a pic with the other two (non puppet) dragons I’ve made!!

[electroempathy]

One thing about old men, they do be napping.

[oddthesungod]

Fearnie and Mister but.... edwardian era 🤌

[twilight-skies]

To anyone who was genuinely excited/optimistic for this movie until now

[buboplague]

experiment

[cipher-fresh]

My number one piece of advice to other members of Gen Z is that you need to watch more TV shows that are 30+ years old

[starflungwaddledee]

i wanted to do a piece to commemorate all the amazing waddle dees who entered the @kirbyoctournament this year! as starstruck is the last dee standing in the mainline tourney, that's a big legacy to carry, but she's doing her best...!

if you want to help her keep fighting the fight for the Humble Waddle Dee against all these super cool knights, dark matters, gods, and ancients, you can vote for starstruck here!

additionally with the first round of second chance voting now open, all these dee's are back for more, and you can give them your vote in the second chance bracket!! sadly a few of them are up against each other, but from top to bottom, here are links to vote for your favourites!

galaxia // ideena // pip // fondue // starry // mimi // daisy // rainbow // wadhat // wridee // stellar // rope mf // keyper // seam // lemon // flower // and of course starstruck being squished to within an inch of her life there 😂

character credits, from top to bottom!

galaxia @centellazul // ideena @tazmilygray // pip @emmyp0ps // fondue @moonmacabre01 // starry @staring-at-a-blank-pagee // mimi @clownie-rainbow // daisy @starrygoober // rainbow @cali-kabi // wadhat @iwontusethis255 // wridee @mxmanynames // stellar @drawscutestuff // rope mf @mint-termsandconditions // keyper @bloodiegawz // seam @cloud-the-forgotten // lemon @snazzyladreal // flower @eliastheownerof0axolotls

i hope you all enjoy it!! best of luck to everyone and their wanyas in the tourney and second chance!! 💖🙏

[goldensunset]

“He was lonely…”

“He was trying to destroy everything around him! That is not the same as a lonely child! We can’t allow that!”

“The power of the mask made him do it. It was too much for him to handle.”

[crispycreambacon]

nvm gang sprafessor is back on the menu it's just incredibly fucked

[camelspit]

my hot take is that canon sophitz isnt even toxic. but we arent ready for that conversation.

[stillness-in-green]

The thing that doesn't make sense to me if Izuku resolved to kill is how it doesn't let them prove AFO wrong? AFO did his big reveal which only makes it clearer how deep the grooming went and it should've been time for Izuku to understand Tenko and Tenko to understand the abuse then reject the mindset forced onto him. But Izuku killing Tenko doesn't do that. Tenko just dies. It feels very wrong.

I guess Izuku just wasn't very interested in proving AFO wrong! Honestly, the only thing I immediately remember Izuku disputing the guy on was the same thing he disputed Shigaraki on: that he was anything more than a human being. AFO isn't a Demon King, but just a lonely man. Shigaraki hasn't transcended humanity; there's still a human somewhere deep inside of him. Izuku won't correct his allies' use of dehumanizing language for Villains, of course, but he's quick to push back when the Villains themselves self-aggrandize.

Sorry, I really only have withering disdain for Deku at this point. And I guess I don't really see any evidence that Deku was ever particularly driven by "proving AFO wrong." He wants to stop AFO, certainly, but that's because AFO is a monster who takes advantage of vulnerable people to maneuver them into doing Bad Things that advance AFO's Bad Plans and sets them onto Bad Paths that are difficult to walk back, not because he expressly opposes AFO on this or that ideological point about the nature of humanity and society.

(Hit the jump for the rest of a somewhat rambly reply.)

If anything, current evidence is that neither Deku nor the manga itself really do disagree with AFO about the frailty of humans, as expressed by Tsukauchi answering Deku's question about how to prevent future tragedies by shrugging and saying, "You don't, because life fucking sucks sometimes and that's just how it is. Our hands are completely tied on improving the system as we have it, so all we can do is punch out the Villains that appear in front of us to stop them from causing more harm."

That's also me being a bit harsh, of course. The fact that Deku is even still asking that question in the epilogue suggests that the manga hasn't reached its final answer yet, and maybe it will yet come up with something better! It doesn't have much time left, but it's still possible!

All the same, Deku is still having to ask that question in the epilogue because he never truly faced it over the course of the story. Never thinking about what Shigaraki as a person said in favor of fetishizing the Crying Child, never coming up with any kind of non-violent plan of attack or conversational approach, I have to ask what exactly about Shigaraki did Deku ever disagree with AFO on?

AFO, in the end, characterized Shigaraki as a puppet he molded exactly as he desired, a doll who he sculpted and programmed to act as he wished, a feeble child who has never made a single decision that AFO didn't cultivate him to make. So far as I can tell, Deku never really contested that framing. He didn't know the extent of it until the full reveal, of course, but Deku, like AFO, insisted on approaching Shigaraki solely through that "Crying Child" lens. He seemed to believe that nothing Shigaraki said or did on the surface really mattered (save as a reason that Shigaraki had to be stopped and potentially killed), that the "truth" of Shigaraki was that feeble little weeping boy who never grew up.

How could Deku possibly "prove AFO wrong" in that context? He doesn't even disagree with him! I mean, he's got some nice talk about how people deserve a second chance, sure; he says that people doing wrong doesn't make them Villains for the rest of their lives. What does do that, however - insofar as I can tell from how opaque the series keeps Deku throughout the final war - is refusing the hand out of the darkness. You stop being a victim and become a Villain for the rest of your life by choosing to remain a Villain even when offered an alternative (no matter how patently awful that alternative is).

Shigaraki chooses to remain a Villain and Deku doesn't have a counter for that because Deku never really got past the false binary represented by Villains and Victims to begin with. And I think the same goes for people who expected Shigaraki to just fold when he realized the extent of the grooming he'd undergone. Disallowing Shigaraki any agency in who he is and what he's done is defining him the same way AFO and Deku both did; when Shigaraki refuses to accept that framing, refuses to be a passive victim, the only thing left for him to be is a Villain. And when a Villain refuses to stop...

Well, Hawks already told us what the Heroes' answer to that is. "Someone has to die." As no one ever stepped up to prove him wrong, as far as the story is concerned, he isn't.

AFO always knew that victims can be turned into Villains with the right nudges; that's the whole reason for him cultivating "warped seeds" whenever and wherever he found them. Hero Society is - and always has been - much too rigid in its enforcement of the Hero/Villain/Victim narrative to effectively combat him. Crucially, Deku - the boy who wants to bring everything back just the way it was - doesn't disagree with him. He thinks AFO is an asshole for setting people up to fail, but he doesn't disagree about what failure means. So if AFO, Deku, and the story itself are all in agreement, what's even there for Deku to disprove?

Now, there is something that would prove AFO wrong, but it isn't something you can do while insisting on drawing lines to separate sad manipulated woobie victims who just need to be saved from awful unrepentant villains who just need to rot. It isn't something you can do while infantilizing Shigaraki Tomura.

The way to prove AFO wrong is to make room in society to help all Villains. Even if they aren't asking for it, even if they never ask for it, and even if they're jolly bastards who don't really deserve it! As long as there's a point at which it becomes okay to give up on trying to save Villains, Shigaraki will remain unsavable. He will insist on being unsavable. He could no more let that go than All Might could step aside and let AFO's attack kill an innocent at Kamino.

That's what it means to be a Hero for Villains.

Ultimately, what makes AFO right is that he knows that Hero Society makes it difficult if not impossible to uncross the victim-to-Villain bridge, and so anyone who does cross that bridge (with or without his influence) is that much more susceptible to him. Deku, in turn, thinks the only Villains he can save are those who drop everything and come sprinting as fast as they can back to the Hero side, so anyone who won't do that is someone he can't help.

Shigaraki refused to stop trying to create a better world for Villains. Toga refused to live in a world that would imprison her. Twice refused to give up on the friends no Hero would help. It's the same with every other Villain who refused to quietly endure their status quo: in a society that refuses to change how it treats Villains, anyone who won't submit to suffering in silence cannot be saved.

That's the paradigm AFO exploits, and Deku will never prove him wrong without resolving to change the paradigm first. We'll see if the last two chapters get him there.

[fumifooms]

Omg guys out of the 203 melvik fics on ao3, 58 were written/updated in january 2025 so far ALONE, JUST IN 17 DAYS. That's 28% of them. And even excluding meljayvik & jayvik that's 25 out of 75 aka 1/3 what the hell is happening this is the melvik renaissance I never thought this day would come

[atomicrow]

wemon....

[thespookiestparker]

The Price Of Freedom

A/N: hello everyone!! it feels very weird to be coming back to this blog with a new fic but I’ve been trying to put this together for months, I’ve finally torn myself away from the game for long enough to write about it lol enjoy!

p.s. I also made this playlist after I romanced him for the very first time and it was what I was listening to if you want some ✨mood music✨

Summary: Astarion struggles with his newfound livelihood now that he isn’t bound to Cazador

Pairing: Spawn!Astarion x GN!Tav

CW: Angst (That gets resolved), blood mention/description (kind of inevitable with a vampire but 🤷🏻‍♂️)

Over your time traveling with your newfound friends, you and Astarion had grown to be what you considered close. When everyone else had bedded down for the night, the two of you would more often than not find each other.

It had taken time, and you honestly weren’t sure it would happen. For a while, you were left to wonder if Astarion even liked anyone at camp, let alone you. Sometimes, he’d let things slip, though.

Like when you threw a pile of shit at that goblin’s face, he’d let out a soft chuckle. Short and sweet, something you’re sure he didn’t mean to set free, but he did nonetheless before the fighting had broken out. Or, a week later, when you’d started to catch him sneaking glances at you over the campfire as you spoke to Gale or Wyll. You could’ve sworn that a flash of jealousy flashed in his eyes from time to time, but you’d never tell him that you noticed. You didn’t want to embarrass him, even if he would never admit to feeling that kind of emotion.

It all came to a head at the party that was held at your camp with the tieflings from the emerald grove, when he’d asked to sneak away with you for the night for some ‘fun’. Something about him had seemed…off that night when you looked back on it. Astarion had seemed too composed for someone who’d been drinking. The vampire hadn’t said much about his past by then, other than that he’d had a master in Baldur’s Gate who had treated him like he was less than nothing. You could tell that pity wasn’t the answer here, that he would only take offense to something like that, so instead you showed him respect. He was a formidable ally, after all, you couldn’t afford to lose him, even if you hadn’t developed feelings for him.

Now, you were almost inseparable. Every time you fell in battle, he was the first to rush to help you up, and at first you weren’t sure if it was because he’d smelled your blood or if he was genuinely trying to help. That was, until you saw his eyes widen in a way you’d never seen before and only a few times since, vulnerable concern etched into his pale face. It made a pang of guilt explode in your chest that you’d ever thought any less of him.

Every day seemed to allow you to peel away at his prickly, impatient, and overall grumpy layers to get to the man beneath. The softer, more broken elf that had been hiding behind all these nearly impenetrable walls that he only seemed to let down around you, though it had been only partial to start. Even if someone else in the party was able to take a glimpse, you were slowly piecing together the whole picture.

Or at least, you thought you were.

It was the night before you were to reach Baldur’s Gate when the next one of those walls came crashing down around him, startling both of you.

You sought him out in the night, as you usually did, but when you peered into his tent, it was empty. Before you had time to process that, you heard his voice in the form of a deep growl behind you,

“What are you doing?”

Your body whipped around to face him, immediately noticing how he was towering over you. The blood on his chin glistened in the faint light of the moon, catching your gaze before his eyes of the same piercing red did.

You must’ve had a fearful look on your face because he seemed to snap back into his own mind, his expression going from a feral sort of anger to something akin to the familiar loving and vulnerable look you’d come to adore. But this was different. There was a deep sort of pain in his eyes, it made you instinctively extend your hand to him before he tore himself away.

“Don’t touch me.” he spat, his voice guarded and icy. He nearly pushed past you to get to his tent, to shroud himself in the familiarity of complete darkness and isolation.

“Astarion, wait��“ you tried, your hand hesitantly floating between the two of you as he angrily gripped the flap of his tent.

“Just. Leave me be. For tonight.” His voice was nothing more than a whisper just before he disappeared behind the red burlap of his tent.

The heaviness in your heart was devastating and cold, but you left him alone for now and decided to sit by the fire instead. Keeping watch over your sleeping friends as tears spilled silently over your cheeks.

All you could think about was comforting him, holding him in your arms until the pain seeped out of him in waves. But you weren’t about to go against his wishes, so instead you let your emotions run free until you fell asleep. You didn’t mention anything to the others in the morning, and you didn’t want them to notice. Astarion’s business was his own to share, not yours, so you weren’t going to let your emotions get in the way of that. He deserved privacy after all this time, you weren’t about to get in the way of that.

The next days distanced the two of you as your group explored the city. He seemed just as closed off as when you’d started your adventure, if not more, and you were afraid that nothing could get him to open up to you again. It seemed like the others may have noticed as well, though it wasn’t exactly a secret. The silence between the two of you was loud enough to be heard miles away.

“OOO! A circus! Can we go?!” Karlach squealed, gesturing to a sign that displayed a brightly colored poster for something called ‘The Circus of The Last Days’.

Maybe not everyone had noticed. No one else had said anything to contradict you, so you didn’t touch upon it.

“Sure, we can go.” You chuckle, trying your hardest to seem normal right now, for Astarion’s sake if not yours. You lead everyone into the circus, past the elf and the ghoul at the gate, and you all end up splitting off until it was just you and Astarion. You half expected him to distance himself from you again, since he’d seemed to need to be alone, but then his words from last night echoed in your mind.

“Just for tonight”

You weren’t sure why he’d suddenly wanted the distance, but you didn’t want to question it. He was well within his rights, but you couldn’t help the worry gnawing in your stomach that you were constantly pushing down.

All of it was interrupted when he slipped his hand in yours, a discreet maneuver that would’ve gone unnoticed by anyone looking at the two of you, before you felt him squeeze it. A wordless apology, which you happily accepted for now. You could talk later, for now, it felt safe to be enjoying the circus amidst the chaos that was your lives.

“Darling, do you think a statue of me would be too much for our little camp?” He asked, his normal smug confidence radiating from him as he posed next to a nearby tent. It was owned by a mud mephit and his wife, who were conveniently named Boney and Stoney, and advertised statues made of the likeness of any passersby willing to pay their price.

“It costs 5,000 gold!” You laughed, shaking your head at him as you tugged on his arm in a vain attempt to pull him away from said tent.

“So? Don’t you want something to immortalize my beauty for all of eternity?”

“I don’t need it, I already have you.”

The love and care you shower him with never ceased to take him off his guard, but he smiled regardless and continued on with you through the circus, enjoying the frivolous nature of the it all.

Days of traveling later, once your party had not only found Cazador, but made sure he was good and dead, you decided to at least attempt to breach the subject when he seemed to be more stable. Your relationship was so fragile that something this deep and painful could shatter it, which was exactly what you didn’t want.

That night, you found him just as you always did on nights like these, sitting by the dying fire as the rest of your friends headed to their separate corners of your dwelling for the night.

“May I join you?” You ask softly, gently touching his shoulder now that he’d been the first one to make physical contact earlier that day. You always let him take the lead on things like that because you wanted to let him be the one to make the choice of whether or not he wanted that kind of affection, knowing he had so little of his own autonomy for so many years. Even if he had expressed to you that it was becoming easier to differentiate you from those sorts of feelings.

“Of course, darling, always.” He responds in a similar tone, turning his head to look at you as you sat yourself beside him which made some of his stark white curls fall into his eyes.

“There have been times when you seemed to…” You pause, considering your wording for a moment, “...disagree with that statement.”

“That was different, I was…not myself.” He seemed almost disgusted by something, presumably something about himself or the way he acted last night.

“I’ve never seen you that way, it was almost like you were—”

“A vampire?” he interrupted, and you rest your hand over his where it lay on his knee,

“Someone else…You know that I see you for more than what you are. That I always have.”

“Regardless, I am lucky that you saw me in that state and not anyone else. I haven’t been that disheveled since I was first turned, and anyone else would only see a monster, which frustrates me all the more,” without letting you speak, he continued. Seeming to be fueled by the traumatizing anguish that lies within him, or at least some of it, “because it isn’t fair! I didn’t ask to be a monster! No one told me that I’d be cursed this way, and I regret not dying that night on the street—“ he exploded into a rage, though it was like the one you had seen the night he came back to camp. The same deeply seeded pain behind his eyes was ever present as he roared such hurtful words. He stood quickly, turning away from you as shame diffused from his being.

“Astarion…” You cried, holding out your hand for him only to see him flinch away. As if he was afraid you would hurt him, which made a burning pain spread through you emanating from your heart. It felt wrong, like you’d only made things worse without intending to. The tears that welled in your eyes came without your permission but you were helpless to do anything but keep them from falling.

“What?!” He whirled around to face you, his face spattered with tears. A level of distress and anger you hadn’t seen from him since Cazador’s passing. You’re suddenly reminded of the image that was him, kneeling over his former master’s lifeless body as he sobbed. Shirtless and covered in blood.

It had broken your heart to see him that way, but he’d needed that moment to let what had just happened wash over him. To finally be free.

You snapped back to reality when Astarion seemed to realize what he’d said, and how it had affected you as he roughly rubbed at his tear-stained cheeks.

“I…I don’t really think that way. This…all of this…has been… a bit much for me. Knowing that he forever changed me. That I’ll never truly have a chance to be something other than a monster in the eyes of most–”

You step forward, once again extending your hands but stopping just before you make contact with his skin to ask silent permission from him. He nodded with little to no hesitation, urging you on before you gently cupped his cheeks and continued to speak, “I don’t think that you’re a monster…You’ve said it yourself, you are so much more than he made you. I, for one, fully believe that. If you don’t believe it yourself right away, that’s more than alright, because I’ll be here to remind you. Every step of the way.”

He almost can’t look at you, more salty tears threatening to spill from his red and puffy eyes.

“I…don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t need to right now. All that you need to do right now is to rest. We both should.” You answer gently yet firmly, starting to pull your hands from his face before he grabbed one of your wrists.

“Don’t,” he started, an air of desperation in his words, “I…I haven’t been the kindest to you, and I apologize for that, but I don’t want to be alone. Please.” You hadn’t planned on leaving him, but usually touch was something that had made him uncomfortable so you were simply ending the contact even though he seemed to take it a different way.

“You won’t be alone…I’m here.” You reassure, moving your hand to his shoulder instead while letting him hold your wrist. “But I stand by my statement. Come on,” You lead him inside his own tent, bedding down with him for the first time since the night he’d come back to camp covered in something else’s blood, though it would be far from the last.

[chaosxcrushed]

There's a certain CCCC summary video that we really, really like. We think it is a great video for people if they want to grasp the story more clearly, if they're confused, or if they're listening to the album for the first time.

That video being Chonny Jash and the Weight of the Mind on Youtube by W3tBl@nk3t. We think they cover it really well.

However, I'm sharing this for a different reason; they say few certain things that really struck with us until now, that I'd like to share with the fandom. Sometimes, we see people really just.. Miss the point of CCCC entirely, and I'd like to shine a light on what was said here. If you'd like to hear this for yourself on video, the timestamp is 35:57-36:45.

“..I bet we all could relate to that, they are the prime example of the side of you that suffers and the side of you that hates yourself for suffering:

The side of you that just wants to slow down and feel everything even to the unhealthy extent of not being able to do anything else(1), but also the side of you that so desperately wants you to get over it(2).

Sure, laying in bed all day every day to rot isn't healthy, but neither is boiling things down and invalidating your own emotions. Both are paths to inevitable disaster, and that's what Chonny is doing here. Keep in mind that the idea behind this album is being whole, and that means neither of these sides are entirely in the right or the wrong; this album is about inner compromise and acceptance(3).”

1.) The side of you that suffers; Heart. He is representative of Whole's emotions, he holds them. Your emotions can go haywire, especially when one's mentally ill and has no way of their feelings being validated. An emotional person like Heart suffers under the weight of crushing, devastating feelings. He wants to feel things out, have time to just process everything, even if it takes them days or weeks to get over it. It's not healthy, but feeling is what he does, and he wants to help because he knows he has importance. Solely focusing on just your emotions isn't the best thing to do, however.

2.) The side of you that so desperately wants you to get over it; Mind. Many people have been there, have wanted themselves to stop wallowing in their own emotions and just do something else, even to the point where you think feeling things out is unnecessary. This is also unhealthy, but not intentionally. Like Heart, Mind just wants to help, everything he does is in best interest. This is what he thinks will get them to move on the quickest; to leave behind emotions and focus on anything BUT that. Also not the best thing to do.

3.) This album is about inner compromise and acceptance; About being whole. Neither of Heart and Mind are right nor wrong. They have their own ways of doing things, of what they think will help their whole self out the most, but both are unhealthy despite the good intentions. They fight over who's wrong or right, when they shouldn't even be doing so in the first place. It's your thoughts against your emotions, basically; your feelings contradict your thoughts, and it leads to an inner war of sorts. This won't make things better, which is why you can't have Mind over Heart or vice versa; you'll need both of them. In the album, they are only able to be whole when they get along. They harmonize, they 'combine', they see eye to eye with each other and work together instead of fighting over and over. Inner compromise is achieved with this, and acceptance can lead them away from any disaster that there's to come.

What we're trying to say is that mental health is a large thing tackled within CCCC, and yet we see a lot of people who overlook it; thus, end up missing the point of the whole album. We see a lot of people believe Mind's perspective a little too much and treat Heart quite harshly, or the other way where people demonize Mind and say that Heart is perfect, when it's not really that in the slightest.

This is not a hate post towards people's interpretations of CCCC or how they view characters, I'm just saying that people can tend to overlook what's in the very narrative, and we see a concerning amount of people do such.

Anyways. Stream CCCC and put your Hearts and Minds in the get along shirt. Have a nice day.

[maryymaruu]

Okay I'm going to need to find the tumblr account of the author of Ragequit logs fanfic because what the hell kind of dark magic did they use- I developed a new laughter, that specifically manifests ONLY when I'm reading the fanfic-???! 😂

I don't snort when I laugh-!! I NEVER DID! BUT without fail, every time I read the fanfic I laugh and chuckle and giggle and SNORT like a big ahh dork- 😂😂💦💦

For real, it's so nicely written, i can't stop smiling and snort-laughing, oh my gawd. It's so good to see all four of these dorks being so... okay! Not in pain! Not in anguish! They're okay and they're in contact!! Oh the sweet honey for my heart.

I love the personalities the four of them display in this fanfic, they're very enjoyable. Pebbles is really cute, harsh in the tongue but soft at the heart- Moon is a lot more pro-active here and we get to see how she indeed is overprotective of her little brother. Suns is so adorable and shy!! And oh boi, NSH my favorite- the "obnoxious, ALWAYS happy" friend- I feel like there is a big hurt he's keeping secret from everyone and gosh do I hope Pebbles gets to pry it out of him. Go heal each other, you fools (affectionately)