#this isn't a negotiation

[buginateacup]

For the love of everything you hold dear vote Yes tomorrow if you're in Australia. Support the Voice to Parliament and tell Peter Dutton to get fucked.

[zondearts]

Nyra with the MacHeath

[complementaryhalves]

such gentle foreplay flirting

[boarloved-art]

ig ooomfie said i should draw xuanli and i kinda went crazy abt them whoopsydoodle

[katierosefun]

insane to me that if harvey had been even an iota less insane, he probably could have gotten mike to be a lawyer the more normal way. i mean, man is a big shot attorney who graduated fifth in his class at harvard law school and probably has a gazillion connections and he absolutely could have just gotten mike into harvard law school (and talked harvard people into looking the other way about how he got kicked out of college . . . worse people have gone to law school tbh), and then harvey could have just negotiated with jessica about not having a personal associate for another three years or just have had mike become a summer associate or something and then hire mike onto pearson hardman, but noOOoOoOoOOoOOO, harvey was so impatient to get his hands on mike that he had to go through this whole fraud thing. gay behavior

[crystallizsch]

[danmeichael]

it's really cute when a character is completely obsessively devoted to someone they are entirely aware is toxic. submissive not because they're naive but because they are completely content with being taken advantage of.

[memories-beyond-my-own]

There's a pink-haired girl in the line of a coffee shop

- @a-ghost-in-your-picture

*Qiao Ling steps into the line as well, on her way back from a walk. Pausing briefly at the sight of pink hair right in front of her.*

[loriache]

honestly i'm kind of interested in the idea of laios in an arranged marriage. because obviously straight-up inherited monarchies are ...bad, to say the least! but it's what the characters are familiar with (even laios' father's extremely local, extremely minor leadership role is inherited, presumably through the male line). and it isn't just about what they think the best way to run melini is; in terms of ensuring that the other longed-lived nations respect melini's continued sovereignty, having it passed down in a manner that's close enough to their own ways for them to understand it and respect it is important. And it seems like most of the other nations have leadership through inheritance - thought that isn't confirmed for certain except with the elves.

Also, a marriage carries the potential to establish foreign allies - something melini is certainly lacking. A marriage could come with resources they'll badly need, treaties of mutual defence, money, legitimacy and political capital... not that these things can't be worked around, but if laios isn't strongly opposed, there are a lot of advantages! and i don't think he would be, because that's the framework for marriage (conferring practical advantages, building intracommunity relationships and providing a partner to do important work that he can't do) that he had grown up with. he isn't exactly a romantic and I doubt he's holding out for any sort of relationship of that nature.

Like, I don't think it's impossible that they would go with this path, because it's the most obvious and it carries a lot of advantages and it's what almost all the decision-making characters would consider normal and not objectionable. and it could be so interesting.

I think Laios would have major hangups if expected (i.e., by Marcille) to establish a genuine, romantic interest in a woman. Whether because of his sexual or romantic orientation, or just his own deep-seated trauma about rejection and being inherently disgusting and scary. And I think he'd hate the idea of having kids, too, and be very frightened of being like his father. But I don't think he'd refuse on that basis; he could cope with a marriage contract, with clearly laid-out expectations and responsibilities. And when it came to having a kid, I think he'd be reluctant to express that he doesn't want to do it, because he isn't naive and he understood when he agreed to be king it would carry responsibilities like this. It's clear from his nightmare that he already felt pressure from his parents to have children, probably magnified by the fact his father has got a position, responsibilities and wealth to pass on. Obviously he isn't a perfect martyr, so he might struggle when it comes to actually going through with it - but I don't think he'd actually, outright refuse. I think he might do it even though he doesn't want to, and I think that could be really messy in a way that appeals to me.

I don't know, there's something about negotiating these kinds of complicated situations that's interesting to me. and i love a platonic marriage. If they find a woman who has an interest in education, for example, and can work with marcille on setting up schools and universities. she'd ideally be politically savvy enough to be an able partner to laios: even though kabru can and would continue to do a lot of that, there are different spheres that a queen and a prime minister can work within!

how would their relationship work? maybe she finds laios' perspective on the world, and his frankness, unexpectedly liberating after an extremely controlled, cloistered upbringing. maybe she had a rebellious phase, has magic, or something else which makes her a relatively unpopular candidate for marriage - even as melini grows in power, i doubt that they'd be getting offers for the cream of the crop in terms of perceived value on the marriage market, because laios' relationship is a bit too ambivalent/monstrous for that, and melini too new. maybe she's a widow! an older woman, wouldn't that be cool - though they'd want her young enough that she could definitely still have kids.

certainly i think he'd be happy for her to pursue other relationships, though ideally in a manner that couldn't produce illegitimate kids. with other relationships in play, that's even more interesting. like, both kabru and toshiro have complicated emotions relating to infidelity. i think kabru would actually find it quite cathartic to be in the kind of high-status environment that rejected his mother for perceived infidelity, pursuing an affair that all parties consent to, though he'd likely be incredibly aware of the public image - since "image" is what he was rejected for. toshiro... i just really really love the way he'd feel about being the "other woman" in laios' marriage, considering his feelings about his father and maizuru. especially given how much closer he is to maizuru than his mother, being in her position...! his emotions would be so complex, it's incredibly tasty. i bet he'd make a bunch of assumptions about how laios' wife feels about it and be totally wrong, and that's so interesting. also, i think laios' wife should fuck marcille (she and falin have an open relationship).

[and-her-saints]

people often ask me what my type is and to that i say

butch lesbian

fervent opinions about God

[lupiinist]

a marauders!encanto au, but instead of the children getting magical powers at a certain age, the 'powers' (curses or blessings, depending on who's talking) are a product of inbreeding.

[tennessoui]

Hope you had a lovely Xmas, Kit, you deserved a break to celebrate grad school victory! I re-read umbtbyf and then the tumblr tags for it as a lil treat and you said Obi-Wan was going to wait till things were more stable and build a place for Anakin then lure him into it and I was hoping for more details of this loving but sith plan? If they hadn't met what was the plan to lure Anakin in, what was the place/trap, and when was Obi-Wan going to introduce himself? Also how would it have gone? I imagine even Anakin would have seen the news of fallen Jedi murderous traitor Kenobi by then!

this is such a good question that i'm answering a year later and im very sorry <3

so in use my body to break my fall, if companion anakin hadn't been tapped to like. honeytrap the sith lord, i think parts of canon would have happened as they do - many jedi/most jedi die in an order 66-like event

(palpatine is interested in having anakin's raw power on his side and under his thumb still of course, but decides that he may be more influential as emperor in swaying anakin - and that anakin may even come to believe that the fall of the jedi was a good thing because they didn't want him in the first place and sidious wants to train him to be powerful and strong which is something the jedi didn't want to do and wouldn't have ever happened if they were still around)

but sith obi-wan hears rumors about this interest that sidious has in anakin (gossip about how this one companion is so picky even the emperor keeps getting rejected?) and he makes some leaps in logic that aren't even necessarily wrong and he immediately requests to see anakin under the name obi-wan kenobi

and anakin is both interested in seeing obi-wan kenobi and also curious about the man and also incredibly horny for the holo pictures he looks up of him, and hey, like....the separatists won the war and he's not like totally got his thumb on politics so he's not going to turn away a very handsome childhood crush customer because he was a separatist general, like it's not as black and white when youre in the middle of it all and also anakin is pretty horny at the idea of fucking obi-wan kenobi

and i bet obi-wan is very good at seduction (duh) and after one appointment gets anakin to agree to travel with him to a small cabin in the middle of nowhere (horniness makes anakin pretty stupid, theres a few canon examples of this im sure). when he's there and safe and successfully lured, obi-wan has a weekend long fuckfest and then leaves when anakin is asleep and kills sidious and then comes back 'from the grocery store'

(obi-wan in use my body is less interested in ultimate power and more interested in getting what he wants and thinks is his by rights, i.e., anakin and maybe some other stuff, so with anakin secured, he basically cancels the empire and makes it a republic again and then fucks off back to the cabin where he has left anakin)

(anakin wasn't necessarily tied up but it might have been a close call between what obi-wan wants and what he understands anakin would hate him for)

(i think there's still a lot of relationship negotiation, but i don't think obi-wan would have to try that hard to make anakin look past separatist war general - especially post the death of the emperor)

[not-poignant]

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this, but do you think Arden is abusive to Efnisien in FFS? It seems like Efnisien does not like pain yet Arden inflicts pain on him anyway and enjoys it. Can you help me understand?

Hi anon,

Arden is absolutely not abusive to Efnisien. He's probably one of the least abusive characters out there. He is a sadist though.

So, I'm going to be talking about this from the perspective of consent systems, as well as kink, and kinkshaming (which is what you're doing here).

The first thing is no, I can't help you understand if you don't after 770k words of Efnisien clearly consenting to what Arden does to him, feeling free to withdraw consent, being encouraged to withdraw consent, and having Arden constantly check in with him.

The second thing is, it's not your job to understand. That's not what kink is about!! It's your job to accept that someone else wants it and consents to it. This is true in real life as well!

In the world of kink, you are going to come across things that don't make sense to you, where the idea of going through what the other person is going through makes you feel revolted, disgusted, uneasy, or even scared. But you're not the one going through it! You're not the one being asked to consent to it! And therefore, your perspective on it truly does not matter when it's about two other people who have talked about it, negotiated it, consented to it, are consenting to it in an ongoing, informed, engaged manner, and are very clearly happy with what's happening - if not during - then definitely before and after, and aren't asking for anything to change.

These are the basic building blocks of respect in kink society, and it sounds like you don't have them. Which - fair, if you're not in that society, but if you don't want to be someone who kink-shames, it's very important to replace 'I don't understand it therefore it's abusive' (???) with 'I don't need to understand it because they are clearly consenting to it, and where there is consent, communication, and ongoing negotiation, it's none of my business. To assume that what they're doing is wrong or abusive simply because I don't like it is now under the umbrella of kink-shaming, which means I'm the problem here.'

There are many many things in kink that you won't ever understand. I really don't think I can persuade you in one anon response and I don't want to when I wrote nearly a million words about it, y'know?

But I do advise you to make sure that you know that just because you don't like something, doesn't mean this has any impact on what's happening in another person's relationship when there's ongoing, engaged consent. You don't need to understand it, and it's not anyone else's job to make you understand. There's some stuff in kink that I will never want to be around, and I genuinely struggle to see what people get out of it, but - good news - it's not my job to understand! I don't ever have to go through it, and those folks are consenting and living their best lives.

If they're ever not, that won't be about the kink, it will be about ignoring withdrawn consent, or removing someone's consent, or violating their consent.

But other people's kinks aren't about you, they aren't for you, and they don't require your understanding of them, they don't need you to wrap your head around it, in order to not be abusive.

If you can't understand the foundations of consent, negotiation and the overall health and happiness of people in a relationship, I've got nothing anon.

[chamerionwrites]

See I honestly do find the prequels-era Jedi an interesting (and at times painfully recognizable) portrait of institutional violence in that...they aren't cackling villains. They're mostly sympathetic well-intentioned individuals who via a combo of traditionalist inertia, ideological blinders, proximity to power, a dash of plain old arrogance and a liberal seasoning of end-justifies-the-means compromise end up being at best indifferent to and at worst deeply complicit in some pretty heinous injustice. I don't even think this is a completely against-the-grain reading on my part. At the end of the day it's a pretty mild critique, but it's hard to argue that the PT is entirely uncritical of the Jedi imo.

Unfortunately the narrative is never interested in really sinking its teeth into that. And even more unfortunately, a chunk of the fandom will clutch its pearls in horrified outrage if anybody else is interested in sinking their teeth into that

[tired-fandom-ndn]

Something that is very important to remember about Game Changer and other Dropout game shows is that these are not game competitors trying to win a prize, they're professional comedians on a payroll doing improv and playing up their personas for the audience, usually with people that they both know personally and have worked with professionally for years.

[official-brennivin]

If ur a perisex trans person and I schooled u on gender before and another perisex trans person asked me to 'tone down the attitude' or whatever, just so you know I thought about killing both of you with hammers. 100% of cases.