#tl dr; i love my spouse

[grimm-the-tiger]

My FL main went through some really weird, organic development over the...oh god, I think it's been five years since I started playing now.

So my main is named Skadi Larkin. They are a little bastard. They started out extremely 2D; I named them after my favorite Norse goddess and the protagonist of the book I was reading at the time. I originally wanted to make them female like both of their namesakes, but the second I saw the third-gender option, I thought it was too good to pass up. This is where they got their primary base characterization as a mad scientist who wanted to Cause Problems.

Then I started the Nemesis ambition and forgot which option I'd chosen for who I was trying to avenge, so they lost both their lover and their older brother under tragic circumstances (only the lover was killed by Nemesis's antagonist, though).

Then I got an Exceptional Friendship and had to give my tragic backstory in order to gain entry to the House of Chimes. Skadi pulled said tragic backstory (orphaned in a hansom accident) more or less out of their ass, but it did establish that their parents are dead.

Somewhere down the line, I realized that technically Skadi is a linguist, since the Correspondence is a language, and I made that their profession on the Surface as well.

Around this time, I started working on character designs for my fan comic. I got really into messing around with skin tone, and somewhere along the line thought it would be fun to draw Skadi (who was originally white) with darker skin, and it stuck.

Then I abruptly realized I was taking a lot of options that increased my Melancholy, and almost all of them were based on the Surface. So now Skadi has a longing for the Surface.

I left the game for a few years, but somewhere during this stretch of time, and I don't know how this happened, but I decided Skadi was now Native American; specifically, Metis. I changed their design to incorporate a sash woven in a style characteristic of the Metis, which also added a bit of color to their design (which was mostly black or grey at this point).

During this time, I started incorporating Skadi into my fan comic. This would eventually lead me to actually flesh out their backstory in greater detail. When I started playing the game again, I also created my first alt by total accident (long story), and I decided to weave her backstory with Skadi's.

So Skadi is in the interesting position of being an Indigenous person who is what we'd probably consider Two-Spirit today but they'd just call "Bollocks to that gender crap". They never belonged on the Surface, since the Metis are in a bit of a liminal space compared to other tribes due to their interesting background (the Metis are the descendants of French settlers and Indigenous inhabitants, mostly Cree), and Skadi exists in a liminal space within that liminal space due to only being half-Metis and raised primarily in white culture, although they still maintained a connection to it through their late mother. They also never belonged because no one else on the Surface outside of the communities they already felt isolated from would ever accept them for their gender. London gave them a chance to express one of those, but not both, and despite knowing that the Surface hates them just for existing, they still long to return.

[laikabu]

saw someone who hc kabru as aromantic bisexual. thats actually kinda good. i dont necessarily subscribe to it but i could see it. not fully aro but in the spectrum i guess

im now just going to ramble about how i think this would work in my head. also labru bc this is my page

he sees flirting more as a game n marriage as something convenient than something he aspires to achieve w the one he loves

flirting n dating is more of a tool to make friends. he isn’t interested in getting serious so that usually turns them off, so he gets labeled as a ‘player’

he doesn’t return rin’s feelings even though he finds her physically attractive, because he genuinely values her friendship and the way he views romance is incompatible with hers and would just break her heart

ok labru territory turn away now sorry im pulling shit out of my ass atp

laios would fit right in with his preferences, because their relationship would be boiled down to “best friends who have sex” like, the easiest way for them to explain their thing

even if they go on dates, they’d be more interested in talking about a current topic or something they need to do, than super sappy stuff. they still do it! but kabru would kinda get uncomfortable with saying sappy stuff, it’s different from flirting. once laios recognizes this, he tells him he doesnt have to do that

it works out because while laios is kinda sentimental, he isn’t really a romantic person. when they were still figuring stuff out, laios just goes “x is mad at me because they think not doing y makes me a bad partner” but really, kabru doesn’t care whether he does it or not

if laios is saying this about a different partner, kabru would chastise him, but since it’s him, he’s totally fine with none of that happening

when it comes to them becoming spouses, they would rather forgo a real wedding and just do the paperwork to make it happen. marcille takes offense to this n thinks its an “affront to romance” esp since kabru wants to plan HER wedding, but neither of them think it’s a big deal

laios has a very hard time distinguishing his platonic feelings to his romantic feelings. he’s just very happy kabru that wouldn’t leave him or get bored of him. getting to kiss him and have sex with him is just a nice bonus.

kissing and cuddling is more of an emotional recharge or comfort etc for kabru than a romantic activity. his friends don’t get it at all.

even in my stupid baby universe its just “kabru wants to have a baby with me for the kingdom? he’s such a nice guy. he told me he wants utaya to live on too… thats so thoughtful.” their relationship is ‘blunt’ and ‘convenient’. the marriage was just to legitimize the heir and otherwise it was just a regular wednesday.

they love each other, but kabru expresses it to the extent that he could, and that works out for laios.

tl;dr basically someone who views romance as a performance than something ingrained w him x someone who struggles w romance. its totally fine if you dont see kabru on the aromantic spectrum, i don’t necessarily see it that way either! i just want to think about how it would work in my fanworks. what do u think. i should add more but im just going off at the top of my head LOL

[leclarifies]

this was meant to be a late night ramble but i got carried away. will format once i'm on my pc, was written on my phone. not proofread or checked for grammar. also i wrote this in two hours so..............

tl;dr: my take on how the both of you will cope with one of max's worst crashes to date.

tw: crash, max having major injuries after the crash, struggles with alcohol abuse.

you had never been one to ever criticize someone for their choice of profession, especially not when it came to something that paid as high as this, but you wondered if you would ever see your boyfriend in one piece after every race.

it was nerve-wracking of course, seeing him go 350km per hour and hoping his car doesn't fuck itself up and end up in a barrier before then catching into flames. he was good at his job, he loved to drive the damn car so why was it such an issue then?

max didn't understand it either. one moment you would be happy for him and the next you'd be ridden with anxiety whenever he would step into the car, he would always reassure you though. the car was fine, he got the world's best engineers working on his car, that he would be safe.

you didn't understand what had happened though, one moment he was overtaking norris and the next he was in the barrier, a gasp escaped your lips and tears brimmed your eyes when you saw car number 1 in the barrier.

you wanted to claw yourself up there and pull him out of the car yourself but you were being restrained by a few red bull mechanics, telling you that it's gonna to be okay and the marshalls were going to get him out in one piece.

"max? are you alright? talk to me mate."

no response. that's when people started panicking.

max wasn't fine, he wasn't okay. so much force had hit him, he was going max speed when he hit those barriers. he couldn't feel his face, couldn't feel his arms and legs. he felt numb, and it scared him. his ears were ringing and the helmet was suffocating him, he needed air. right now.

he didn't know what happened next, through his blurred vision he could only guess that he had been pulled out the car and his helmet was pulled off his head, he could breathe better but not by much.

the next few moments were just a black void.

you were hysterical when you found out that he was being sent to the nearest hospital, the medical center said, 'it's too big of an injury for us to handle here.' you felt like you were the one dying when you heard he had to go through surgery. you knew he shouldn't have picked this profession, it's insane. how was any of this legal and approved by the government? you didn't know.

you weren't given the specifics because you were neither lawful spouse or family, and his family was hours away from being able to come visit him so you had to sit there and wait for him to come to before you could even know what was going on with him. his profession never scared you quite like this did before.

being in a coma wasn't something on his bucket list, he prayed that he would never go through an accident as traumatic to have to be in a coma.

max could hear the voices, they weren't the clearest. he could hear bits and pieces, but never the full conversation. it was almost as if he was half-asleep and the world around him was just so incredibly quiet. he didn't know what he would do or say to you when he woke up, he was most worried about what you would say. maybe kill him before the injuries from the crash could? max wanted to chuckle from that but nothing came out from his lips, just soft breaths. signaling that he was still alive in there to the outside world.

slowly, he would start hearing and feeling less and less of what happened in the world around him. no longer being able to hear your beautiful voice, and that's what hurt the most, not knowing if you were there with him or not.

you had stayed by his side almost everyday when that happened, not wanting to leave even when the visiting hours were unavailable. always waiting nearby in a coffee shop or booking a hotel room the closest to the hospital in order to be there as soon as visiting hours started.

life felt so empty. you were used to his playful banter and teases but you hadn't heard his voice in two weeks now. you weren't religious, having some religious trauma in life, you would never devote yourself to some invisible god ever again, but you prayed. you prayed to that invisible man upstairs to wake him up, that if he were to wake up, you would start going to church, but that didn't come.

you just wanted him to get better, to open his beautiful blue eyes, look at you and tell you that he loved you. faith was hard to come by but you would always come back to that disgusting sterile smelling room and hold his hand gently, some days you would talk to him, some days you would sing to him but it didn't matter what you did because you would always be there. never missing a possible moment where he would wake up.

the doctors said it didn't look good. they hadn't been medically inducing him in a coma for a week now, he should be conscious by the first few days of taking him off the medically induced coma and you didn't know what to think. you were scared.

you had told him so many times that it made you anxious that an accident like this would happen, that he would get in that car and you couldn't see him anymore but you didn't know it was going to be this soon.

at first you couldn't believe it, it had been almost a month since you heard his voice last. he couldn't be, right? he was the most talented driver you knew, there was no way he was in a coma after a big crash. he was always careful, never taking risks that was unnecessary, right?

you were in denial, you knew it. everyone knew it. you were spiraling out of control and there was nothing anyone could do about it, unless they would magically wake max verstappen out of his comatose state.

there was a hole left in your chest when you realized that maybe he was never going to wake up from this, that you would never see his beautiful blue eyes anymore. slowly, you started to lose hope. visits became far and few between, you just wanted to get away. not wanting to see the day that his family decided that there was no more hope for him and to pull the plug.

you buried yourself in work, not wanting to think, not wanting to feel, just wanting to focus on anything else other than the gaping hole in your chest.

drinking became your best friend, hitting up bars as soon as you finished your shift. downing shot after shot, your friends and his friends were all concerned, always asking if you needed anything, if you needed them and that they were there for you, but frankly you didn't care about anyone else.

coming home drunk wasn't something that was far and few between anymore, it would be every other night, then every night and then sometimes you would sneak a flask in when you were at work. just something to numb the pain of losing your boyfriend. it wasn't enough though.

you were angry.

who cared about all of those other people when the person that mattered the most was in a hospital bed? waiting for his own death that wasn't even entirely up to him? you were angry, you wanted to scream at anything, at someone.

why did it have to be him? why did it have to be your max? why did it have to be him at the wrong place at the wrong time? why? why? why? he did nothing wrong, all his life he was a saint. he was never cruel to anything or anyone in his life, all he did was try to please the people around him, why did it have to be him?

you wished you had the answers, you still prayed. almost like a devoted follower of that stupid god most of the population of the earth believed in. you laughed at the irony of your desperation, no amount of praying or bargaining could ever bring him back, it was too late but damn, if you didn't try you knew you'd regret it.

max's family checked up on you often, sophie and victoria being the ones to ask you how you were. you always appreciated them checking up on you when you knew that they were hurting the most out of all of this, they were his family afterall. you were just... the girlfriend. your feelings were not important in this equation.

trudging through life without waking up next to him was painful, the small pitiful meows coming out of sassy and jimmy were almost even more painful. the reminder that you were in his apartment, with his cats but without him. when was he going to wake up? when were you going to wake up from this bad dream?

a ring from your phone had woken you up from your drunken adventures from the previous night, you wanted to yell at them for interrupting your sleep. you wanted to sleep forever, maybe even be in a comatose state similar to max so then you would be able to wake up together.

"hello?" you mumbled through closed eyes, very much annoyed that whoever this person was, waking you up from your sleep. you didn't even bother to check the called id.

"you need to come down to the hospital, right now."

you haven't scrambled up and got dressed any faster than you just did, you didn't bother doing your hair or even brushing your teeth. one second you were in your shared apartment, the next you were in your car, speeding past the streets of monaco to get to the hospital, maybe breaking a few laws and going as fast as an f1 car.

"schatje."

you were crying when you got there, burying your face in max's chest, you wanted to yell at him, for leaving you alone for two months too long but you didn't have it in you. his hand found its way to your hair, petting your head. a gentle kiss was left against your temple as you continued to cry against his chest, you couldn't form words, basically inconsolable.

you were eventually able to peel yourself off of him though, his hand firmly wrapped around yours, mainly for your comfort and not his. the doctor's had explained that he had to slowly learn to walk and speak again because he was in a coma for so long but the first words out of his mouth when he first became conscious was schatje which made you cry a little bit more. some of his friends and family came throughout the day and he could recognize who they were, just had a hard time speaking.

it was only at the end of the day where you two had a time for yourselves, just basking in the presence of each other, finally being able to see his pretty blue eyes look at you.

"lay... ne-next to me..?" max asked, his voice a bit scratchy for not being awake in two months, tilting his head a little to the left, a little quirk of his which you thought was cute and complied with his request. he wrapped his arm around yours after scooting to make space for you, the both of you just laying there in each other's presence, not wanting to let go.

max didn't understand how much time had passed and understandably so, but he missed you. it felt like he had just gone to sleep and succumbed to his injuries but for you, it felt like a lifetime without having to see the love of your life. the atmosphere was quiet, but comfortable. seeing max alive and in one piece was all you needed before slowly drifting off into sleep, and for once the nurses didn't kick you out after checking in on max.

recovery was hard, max had been told that he suffered damage when he got a concussion from the crash. his spine had been mostly intact but since he suffered injuries to his brain, he had to learn how to walk and talk again.

"what about happiness?" a therapist had asked max as he sat across from her. they were doing some exercises to train max's speaking, something that the doctors had mentioned would help max recover faster. max's face lit up before pointing to you, who was sitting next to him, "nice try max, but you understand what i mean."

a giggle left your lips before he tried again, with a pout dancing on his lips, "joy, winning a race?" he tilted his head cutely before the therapist let him have the answer, it was cute. he was cute but he was a fighter.

the moment the doctors cleared him of any sustaining injuries, he was ready to get on the track again, only after six months after the crash.

"you can't be serious max," you shook your head as you paced around the apartment, "it's only been six months... you should just rest for the remainder of the season and get in next year. i don't understand the rush, you have your life in front of you to compete, what's wrong with waiting a few more months?"

max shrugged, he realized after the crash that he in fact did not have his entire life to race. what if his life was taken early and he couldn't spend the rest of his life with her, what then? he didn't want to waste any time. he wanted to get his head in the game while he was at his prime and get it over with before retiring and getting away with her on a private island and living there for the rest of his life.

he didn't want to race for the remainder of his life, nope. he wasn't like alonso who was going to be on the track when he's old and frail and no longer in the top teams. he wanted to win, and that's what he was going to do, to win. he knew that him coming back so soon even after his injuries were going to be hard on you, he was scared to even bring it up in the first place.

it had only been a few months, and he was so ready to come back to racing. his fingers were basically itching for it, but he was very mindful with how you were going to feel, he always was. he hinted at it a couple times before, but her response was always different than what he wanted.

max sighed when you were obviously going to be upset with his decision, "look, i know you're worried and you do not want me in the car so soon, but you have to trust me—"

you set your back straight before looking him dead in the eyes, "i trusted you six months ago! look where that got us!" you didn't mean to yell, but you were scared and you did not want to lose him because he was driving a silly fast car. max looked hurt, and rightfully so. you sighed before you walked over to where he was on the couch, wrapping your arms around him in a hug, which he welcomed with open arms, "i'm just worried, okay? you being in that coma was the scariest thing in my entire life. i even lost hope, do you understand how scary it was for me to lose hope?"

max nods before landing a kiss on your lips, wanting to reassure you that he made a mistake and that it wasn't going to happen again. he didn't mean to leave you for those two months, but he knew that he was never going to do that to you again. he didn't want to hurt you anymore than he already did.

"trust me, i'm not gonna make the same mistake twice and i'm gonna make you proud."

and max never did. he got in the car the next week, ready to fight. baring his teeth for anyone who could get anywhere close to him. he closed out the season with multiple trophies, even though the driver's championship was out of reach.

he celebrated that season with a big smile on his face and you knew it was the right decision to let him get back to racing. as much as you didn't want to admit it, he loved racing more than he loved you and you were okay with that. you were okay with being second to his ambitions and dreams because that's what good girlfriends do, let their boyfriend's risk their lives driving silly fast cars if that meant it made them happy.

unfortunately, you anxiety wouldn't go away even after all the constant reassurance your boyfriend gave you. the nights where you were alone, wondering whether if max was going to pull through still haunted you.

of course, alcohol was still a problem for you. you turned to it when you felt like you didn't have a choice. some nights, on particularly rough anxiety ridden nights, you would sneak out. just grab a drink or two to soothe your heart. it wasn't long before max caught on though.

"where have you been?" max had asked as you entered their apartment after coming home from work, it wasn't like you came home late and came home absolutely drunk which is why you didn't think he was suspicious. there had been a break between the current races, which is why he was home before you were.

a hiccup breaks the silence as you close the door behind you, you lock eyes with max and you can see the disappointment floating in his eyes, that's when you knew that he knew but you weren't sure how much he knew.

"answer the question, liefje," max sternly spoke up once again, walking towards you, in his eyes was a challenge. he was waiting to see whether you were going to lie to his face or not. he could practically smell the alcohol from there, he went out drinking a lot too, being a formula one driver meant parties like there was no tomorrow.

you didn't know what to answer with, so you answered as vaguely as possible, "i was out with some friends," hoping that the answer you gave him would satisfy him enough without him asking too many questions, you tried to brush past him but he held onto your arm.

max had heard stories from his friends, telling him that you weren't at a good spot after the accident. that you turned to drinking and it seemed like nothing could help except for max himself.

he took one whiff and he knew it was alcohol, "which friends?" he asked, not wanting to let you slip from his fingers, he knew how dangerous alcohol addiction was and he wasn't going to let his girlfriend fall into the grasps of it.

"work friends, max— let go. i want to take a shower," you tugged on his hand that was holding onto your arm, but he was unrelenting. he stared you down, not convinced with the bullshit answer you gave him. he knew you had been out drinking, it wasn't even race week. you didn't have an excuse.

max's eyes softened, he knew that somewhere deep inside of you that you were struggling, that you needed help but you just didn't know how to reach out. was it hard to reach out to him? has he made himself so unapproachable after the accident?

"talk to me, what's going on with you?" max's grip on your arm has softened but you could only sigh and look away, you didn't know how to face him. yes, you were struggling but you didn't know how to bring it up. just like everything in your life, you needed someone to comfort you and tell you it was going to be okay and that there were people there for you, but you were stubborn almost in a similar fashion to him.

you only looked back up at him when max squeezed your arm and the eyes that looked back up at him were no longer hard and guarded, but full of vulnerability and glassy, "i—"

"you've been drinking?" max cut you off and finished your sentence for you, now you knew how much he knew of your struggles. you swear it wasn't supposed to get this bad, you promised yourself you would stop on the weeks where he didn't have races, or maybe just stop altogether but that was easier said than done.

"yes," was all that left your lips and that was the day that max swore he was going to get you through this.

max had offered to take a break like you suggested for the rest of the year, just to ease your nerves but you told him that it was a hard no for you. you knew that it was going to get much worse if you got too used to his presence, the cycle would just repeat itself once he got back into racing.

this time there was another road to recovery, just not for him. max had been nothing but helpful, always offering you help, even offering to pay for your rehab. you contemplated whether you even wanted to go or not, you didn't want to feel weak. to feel like there was something was wrong with you, that you were a freak but at the end, after endless heart-to-heart conversations with max, he was convinced you to go.

the first few months were hard, there was no way you could attend the races while going through rehab so you had to just suck it up and go through it without watching. max felt bad, of course he did. that was the love of his life that he put in that rehab center, but he knew he had to make tough decisions if he wanted you to get better.

he felt horrible not having you there for even some of the races, not because he sent you to the rehab center but because he missed you. he knew that the accident hit you hard, but not this hard. he didn't understand how much anxiety racing did to you, and he was beating himself up for it.

he should've seen the signs, should've reached out sooner before they could fester into something as serious as alcohol addiction but there was no use in beating himself up for something he didn't do in the past, as least he was doing it now after he saw the signs of you struggling.

the initial withdrawal symptoms were insane, if you weren't in rehab, you would've probably relapsed the first day there. it was hard for you and you were trying your best, and you did. overtime, you were recovering and that's all that mattered.

max had received updates of course, he requested them. he wanted to see how you were holding up, if there were any signs of improvement. the therapists there all said that you were doing splendid, that she might get out in a few months which was great news to max.

it would only take you another six months to fully recover and the first thing you did when you saw max when he picked you up was jump into his arms, he breathed out a sigh of relief after not seeing you for a couple of weeks. he could live like this.

both of them had their own battles to fight through but the most important part was that they both overcame both battles, never forgetting to support eachother, even when one lost themselves along the way.

[briar-ffxiv]

Hate to do this, but if anyone can help

TL: DR - Due to a lot of financial strain this year and moving before we planned to with little notice, my cats and my family don't have money for groceries for the next few months. We just need to make it to January and we've been trying hard, eating as cheap as possible, not going out, no extra services, etc. Heck, I only have FFXIV because a friend was nice enough to help.

But now, we're out of money and next paycheck once we cover rent and bills, we'll have less than $30. And unfortunately, we need to eat.

So if anyone can help, I'd appreciate it. Anything. Thank you. <3

Below the read-more are the longer details. If anyone doesn't mind boosting or something, I'd be grateful.

More Details:

Basically, due to having to move at least a year sooner than expected with less than 60 days' notice, we've used up every bit of savings and resources we have. Plus, due to some other financial nonsense, including the past roommates being terrible and my spouse's work using loopholes to avoid paying him overtime, we're finally having a really rough time.

We can just cover rent and the minimal bills. Several months ago, we turned off anything we didn't completely need. That includes streaming services, games, and what have you. Heck, we wouldn't have kept on the internet if my spouse didn't need it for work.

We were just trying to hold on until New Year. The New Year means a mandatory raise for my spouse and his boss has promised it's a good one (due to several years of him getting the minimum under his previous boss who was fired for several reasons). So we've been just trying to make it and just have a few months left.

Unfortunately, with just a few months to go, we've basically maxed out all we can. The next step is trying to rehome my cats to remove the cost of maintaining them, although I hate to do it. I really don't want to. Pretty much every cat I have, I either rescued and/or raised from birth. But I'm certainly not going to let them starve or suffer.

I have been trying for months to get a job, but due to personal things and limited options (only one car with limited gas, etc.), I haven't been able to find anything. I keep sending out forms and not hearing much. Due to gas prices and such, I can't even do UberEats or Doordash or something. I'm at a loss and I feel completely useless in trying to help my spouse at the moment.

I really hate asking. My little Tumblr is just cute stuff with my character, aesthetics, and trying to be positive. I'm just really desperate because I don't know what else to do.

We've looked into state help, but I live in Texas and their "poverty line" is absolutely ridiculous. My spouse makes "too much" for us to get the benefits of any kind of help, even temporarily. Due to the crappy roommates, our credit isn't great and we're already struggling to pay off things so getting a loan is pretty much impossible.

I don't really have any skills that people would pay for commissions for. I'd be happy to do writing commissions or something, but I've never had much luck with that.

So, yeah, I just...I really need some help getting through the next 60 days or so. So if you've read all this, thank you. If you reblog, thank you. If you feel like giving anything, thank you. Even if it's just kind thoughts, I appreciate it so much.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart,

Bard

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Good evening (or morning, afternoon, wherever u r) to you, Miss Raven, *tips hat* How do you do?

First of all, I was reading through the your canon Malleus romance analysis and i’ve just gotta say I love how you give a realistic approach to these characters and their world! 🙌🏻

But that also got me thinking, how would Leona prioritize his romantic vs royal life?

As second born prince, I wanna say Leona actually has more breathing room to pick whoever he wants as a partner (if the royal family doesn’t arrange a marriage before he gets that chance), plus, the Sunset Savanna’s next heir apparent is already born, so really there’s nothing worry about succession unless something happens to Cheka and or Falena. But at the same time Leona is still ridiculed by his people, so will that have any affect on who he wants to be with if he happens to choose someone other than another beast(wo)man or someone in a class lower than a noble?

And even tho he isn’t first in line for the throne, Leona is still royalty. I think he could pick a partner who is more private and less sociable with their life, but I also think they still might need to be prepared for the royal life, lack of privacy, speaking with the public, and other royal duties (even if Leona himself won’t do them).

TL;DR Do you think Leona’s status as second prince actually gives him a benefit for who he can pick as a romantic partner and how would the people’s view on him affect this, and what do you think would expected of Leona’s partner in the royal life even tho he’s not first in line for the throne?

What’s your take on this?

Related posts: Malleus / Kalim

Greetings 🎵 Life’s been a bit stressful lately, but I’m getting by! Busy planning something big for the blog too, so excited for that.

I think you must be talking about that post where I discussed what the expectations would probably be for Malleus’s future spouse? Thank you for the praise though! While anyone can ship themselves or their OC with Malleus in the latter, there’s certain in-universe logic that must be followed in the former. It feels very different to be a character in that world versus an outsider looking in. Being able to switch and see from those perspectives is important, I feel.

My thoughts on this topic aren't as concrete as what I laid out for my Malleus post, mostly because Leona isn't burdened by the same expectations as the crown prince or first in line to the throne. I feel like this post will be a lot of speculation, so just be cognizant of that.

As Leona is right now, I don't think he has much of an interest or an obligation to find someone. His focus seems to be on tending to himself and his own goals to help those around him, be it his juniors (Epel, Jack, Ruggie, etc.) or his country (due to his internship at a energy and mining lab). I definitely feel like that's where his priorities lie, and anyone he might take on as a life partner would also have to have a passion and dedication for this kind of service, whether they also engage in it or they at least support Leona's endeavors.

I also think that Leona would personally want an intelligent partner that's able to hold their own in a discussion, but only to a certain extent. Like, they have to be able to coherently express their own thoughts but I don't think he wants to deal with someone so stubborn that they constantly put up a fight with him if they happen to disagree. Leona has demonstrated multiple times that he finds it a hassle when people don't listen to him, so he tries to put himself in situations where he doesn't have to face that in the first place. For example, Leona states that he dislikes Silver and Rook, as they constantly act on their own and seem to disregard anything that others around them say. Additionally, he lacks a vice dorm leader because he made the conscious decision to not pick one, as he doesn't want someone challenging his decisions. Leona also strategically caves to his sister-in-law's demands to avoid wasting time and energy in an argument, since he knows that beastwomen tend to be strong-willed. His partner would have to know when to step back and give him space or when is not a good time to keep pressing a point. That means there'd be a certain element of emotional intelligence involved too, not just general wisdom or knowledge.

In these circumstances, I don't think there would be as much of an importance placed on the social status of Leona's spouse since he's like... what? Fourth in line to rule? His father is still alive, Falena/Farena is still fine, and Cheka's there too. The chances of Leona actually having to step up to that plate are low. There's no pressing need for Leona to find a partner or to produce an heir of his own. I don't recall there being lore about his older brother and sister-in-law having an arranged marriage or what social class his sister-in-law is from, so... there's not a lot to go off of there. I think, at the very least, we can assume there's not as much pressure for Leona to be in an arranged marriage since he isn't the crown prince. I don't get the sense that Sunset Savanna is as conservative with its social expectations as Briar Valley is, so it's doubtful whether or not the public would care about a royal marrying a commoner or a beastman marrying a non-beastman. To my latter point, there doesn't seem to be as strong of a racial divide between beastmen and humans (unlike fae and humans), so I don't think this would pose a major concern. But hey, maybe they do care a lot about status since Leona's flashback keeps harping on the importance of birth order--but that ultimately has no baring on the commoner versus royal thing. Maybe this is me being too much of an idealist, but I do think it would be possible for Leona's partner to come in and prove themselves, since their reputation (unlike Leona's) isn't already marred by being second in line to the throne and having a golden child to be compared to. If anything, I feel like the people would fear for the safety of Leona's spouse rather than what their "marrying outside of the norm" means for the country. Since there's a negative public view of Leona, I feel that this would translate into worry for the spouse rather than assuming they are "just as bad" as Leona. They're an outsider with a completely separate background from Leona's, and that I doubt that most people have the magic to rival his strength. Where would their fear of the spouse be reasonably coming from? I think the more likely situation would be the public feeling sympathy for the spouse (like, what if Leona's magic harms them) and wondering what they must see in the second-born prince. There might be a lot of gossip or concerns swirling around their courtship, little judgmental whispers and passing glances that are hard to avoid, maybe some hissed warnings to be careful around Leona, etc. The spouse should be careful how they react to public opinion though, as lashing out could make them be perceived as ill-tempered and crude, a poor reflection of both their own attitude as well as confirming preconceived notions of Leona. They should be equipped to handle socially complicated situations with grace and tact. When it comes to Leona, they should also be ready to provide him with some emotional support—not as a therapist he trauma dumps to or anything like that, but as a trusted and nonjudgmental confidant.

I think the spouse would receive the harshest scrutiny should they step into a more public-facing role… like if they started to enact or push for policies that go against the country’s reverence for nature and living in harmony with it. They would most certainly get pushback for it, maybe earn ire for not being “attuned” with its people. Leona’s spouse would, at the bare minimum, be expected to represent the values of Sunset Savanna and to engage in its ceremonies and traditions. For example, Leona—the second prince—is meant to train the winners of the Bead Brawl. Whatever royal duties are set for the spouses of the royal family… well, they should be prepared to fulfill them.

On the subject of privacy and sociability, it might actually be a drawback if Leona’s spouse were private and not sociable. Not being seen or interacting in public very often means people are left to their own devices and assumptions—and if Leona is the first person they associate with his spouse, it could lead to the public forming negative thoughts. "Oh, they're withdrawn because they don't care about us. Oh, they must be moody and hard to get along with." There’s a lot of earning trust that has to be done, especially if Leona intends to enact social reform, so I think it would make for better optics if his spouse really put themselves out there and was proactive in the community. Instead of framing themselves as a shut-away or some rando that married into the royal family, they have to be willing to step outside of their comfort zone and act like a leader if push comes to shove, show how outgoing and determined they can be.

Last thought I have on this matter I guess is related to how Leona’s loved ones would react. I don’t think the named characters would care about the details all too much?? Farena appears to respect his brother and treats him warmly, even when Leona brushes him off. He’d want Leona to be happy and at his best mentally and emotionally when and if he decides to help govern the country. And Cheka, well… maybe he’s a little too young to fully understand what’s going on, but I think he’d want his uncle to be happy too. I’d say even Kifaji would be on board with it, though perhaps not as openly as Farena or Cheka. He’s a stern older man, so I can absolutely see him scolding Leona and nagging him about his choice of partner—but in the way that a concerned grandparent would, you know? Not in an outright malicious way like the Briar Valley senators might. Unlike them, Kifaji can see the good in his prince and wants the best for him, even if he comes off as too overbearing at times. Kifaji doesn't unnecessarily act vitriolic or belittling to Leona, he states truths (that Leona acts improperly at times) and earnestly expresses his wish that Leona recognizes his own potential. He'll probably pull up to interrogate the spouse (because he cares that Leona marries someone who loves and values him), but ultimately give his blessings along with a plea for them to take good care of his second prince.

[lavenderprose]

No but really, Gentlebeard meet-cute and sweet silly first date nonsense and then, cliche of cliches, Stede finds out through some series of events that Ed is MARRIED not widowed not divorced full on MARRIED and he's like. Explain?? Explain now??

And Ed's just, "Oh yeah I have a husband. We're separated though. Like really though we're separated."

And Stede just kind of has to take that at face value because Ed doesn't wear a wedding ring and doesn't SEEM like he's particularly bothered and Stede's just like. Well okay. I am also in a complicated divorce-type situation with my ex-spouse. These things happen. We're in our forties. In the grand scheme of things it's not that bad, it's not like he LIVES with--

Oh he does. He very much does live with his husband. His very much Not Ex-Husband. Izzy Hands-Teach is five foot seven inches of pure romantic frustration and still wears his wedding ring on his neck.

He and Ed debrief afterwards and Ed is like. "Yeah that's Izzy. Sorry he was so uptight, he's just...like that. Anyway, probably good for you two to get along, right? Like I get along with Mary. That's good for a relationship."

Stede's like. Okay. Bullet points:

1. The fondness?? The absolute AFFECTION with which Ed speaks about this man? Is the separation in the room with us?

2. Ed has met Mary ONCE and they were normal about it because they're adults. Stede is pretty sure Izzy GROWLED at him about forty minutes ago?

3. And this is the big one. Ed. Ed darling. You are NOT separated from that man. You are in love with that man and that man is in love with you.

Ed, fully having an existential crisis: Oh shit.

Stede "Talk It Through" Bonnet: Don't worry. We'll win him back!

TL;DR Stede slangs that thang until Ed and Izzy vow renewal.

[sparreaux]

Stop the Eviction!

As most of my followers know, my spouse and I (both disabled and living on a single income) have been fighting to stay in our rental home for months now. This started when our landlord decided to start using a local property management company who decided all back rent needed to be paid or we needed to leave. (Honestly, that part is fair as we owed quite a bit.)

This was, quite unfortunately, a few days after I had had a harrowing accident where I fell very hard and received a concussion, which has only added to our stress as it affected both my health physically and mentally as well as costing my short term memory. (I still cannot remember that night or the next week clearly) I have been struggling with managing my symptoms since.

We have striven to get the company their money at a detriment to our utilities and food bills, but we have been fortunate to receive so much help and support.

For the past several months, it's only gotten worse. The company had a court date we were never notified of (which had us judged as no shows so the company was free to break any repayment contract we had signed), added fees such as a pet deposit we paid when we moved into this house almost six years ago, legal fees for said court date, late fees that were never discussed before, extra fees from who knows where and basically have just been monthly harassing us with ten day eviction notices and even threatened us with the sheriff. Also they're claiming we didn't pay them on a certain month. Every time we thought we were on track, they'd pull something else. They've been rude and quite frankly, I would love to move to a different house if that was at all an option, but it's honestly not.

I had set up a gofundme, but since we've been paying everything we've got to back rent, our phones have been shut off for the time being and I am completely unable to log in to update or anything.

The management's company's ledger for us currently sits at $2,275.00. They are asking for at least $1000 before the end of the month, after we've already paid our monthly rent plus some. We have people that we can talk to on Monday, but unfortunately, nothing else until then.

I am also very, very behind on commissions. There are several that are almost finished, but my fibromyalgia has been badly flaring, making it extremely difficult to put out the results I want. That being said, if you do not mind waiting a few months, I will happily add you to my art commission list for whatever you'd like to donate to help us.

Tl;dR: Two disabled people with pets are trying not to be evicted. Will draw for donations.

Thank you so much for current and past support. I promise I am trying to get back to everyone who has helped, it is just taking time, more time than I expected. I am sorry and again, thank you.

0/$2275

C*shapp, P*ypal, V*nmo: duessa

[beetle-blogging]

I'm still not done with this theory. I thought about it again in context of the transcripts of the Small Print in the Marriage Agreement bc something about it niggled at me, and I connected some dots. This is gonna be long and partly a rehash of some of my previous posts, sorry.

TL;DR: Betelgeuse might be, or might have been in the past, trying to gain immortality through marrying and then murdering Lydia the same way Delores tried to do to him, except in BJBJ, he was trying to contractually obligate Lydia into the steps of the ritual through the small print of the marriage agreement. One of which, apparently, includes Falling In Love. He's only trying half-heartedly, though. Cause he likes her.

There was literally no reason for Delores to have been in the second Beetlejuice movie except to give Betelgeuse an excuse to narrate his backstory and exposit to the audience about the immortality ritual that Delores tried to pull on him.

Betelgeuse is clearly both intimately familiar with the ritual bc he was a victim of it, as well has theoretical knowledge of it, or else he couldn't have narrated the flashback like that. He, while alive, wouldn't have known about the cult or the requirements and purpose of the ritual, or even that there was one. He had to have looked that up later.

The ritual definitely requires marrying and then murdering your spouse and stealing/binding their soul, and likely also requires the love of the victim (at the time of the wedding? Wedding night? Murder? Cause while Betel doesn't seem to like Delores anymore, he did look smitten in the flashback and called himself "bewitched". Love is at least useful to get them to marry you) - and possibly also for the victim, because Delores was still acting like she had some possessive, fucked-up love for Betelgeuse. That part is actually very weird. Why the hell would she STILL act like she's into him when she murdered him, or at least tried to? I know fanon has it that he's a fantastic lay, but it's been 600 years. While I'm at it, I doubt the consummation was just for fun or done as a last kindness for the condemned, so there's another likely necessary step of the ritual.

And while that backstory and bit of lore was imo very interesting and sad, it didn't actually add anything, did it? We didn't need those particulars, fun as they were to watch, they weren't relevant to this movie. "Betelgeuse's ex wife is pissed and hunting him" would have given us the same movie minus the lore. Or just write her out. We didn't need her stalking the halls, or killing Bob - which was just added to give her more to do - or even showing up at the church, either. She was completely unnecessary after that flashback. Or even at all, if nothing further is ever going to be made of that ritual or cult (and would we want another soul sucker in BJBJBJ?). Ok, she was scary in a hot way, but that's it. Even without her, Astrid could have opened the door to the Sandworm in order to get rid of Betelgeuse in the church, who'd then have rerouted it to only Rory, followed by "We had a deal" etc just fine. The number 1 complaint people have about this movie is that Delores was just there for no reason. Betelgeuse/Delores does follow the theme of Love Betrayed same as Astrid/Jeremy and Lydia/Rory, and that's neat, but that wouldn't have required a background story involving a cult and a ritual that can get one out of the dead thing, for good gain you Immortality, through marriage and murder.

Then there's this:

Delores: Your soul belongs to me, my love, for eternity.

Betelgeuse: You don't want to spend eternity with me.

That sounded like they'd be bound together forever, not like she was going to eat his soul. At least, it sounds like that's Betelgeuse's understanding of what Delores is after. He'd still have been by her side. He just didn't wanna be after she killed him. Ok, so that bit is also there for a reason. Everything else, between flashback and church scene, is filler. Poor Bob.

Now we come to this transcript of the small print of the Marriage Agreement (only the highlighting is mine, transcript by jadeluz-official (who deactivated, and I don't know their current username or I'd link directly), which tbh, I'm not sure if we can count the text as canon bc it's basically imperceptible to the majority of the audience, but if the transcript is accurate then the contract is plain fascinating:

Do you see what I'm getting at? Cause the Immortality Ritual Theory occured to me weeks before I ever saw that transscript, I first mentioned it on my blog here and send herefortheships an ask related to the idea before that... but the part where Love might be an requirement for the ritual just hadn't occured to me then. Then I reread that small print which would compel Lydia to love Betel, my mind flashed back to Betelgeuse saying Delores had bewitched him, and I was like, uhhhh.

In context of my theory, Betelgeuse trying very hard to to woo Lydia (firm, very visible canon) and also having a contract ready that would obligate* her to love him for eternity and to fulfill all his needs (which is technically in the movie, but barely legible), is very sus. We've got love, marriage, sex (needs), and two people bound together for eternity all covered. The only stuff that's missing is the blood-drinking and the animal sacrifice. Which, 1) might have just been for the satanic aestetics, and 2) would still have been very easy to get Lydia to do if that contract had made her fall in love with Betel.

*again, the canonicity of that small print is questionable, but it does recontextualise Betel's wooing A Lot. Or like, make his motivations for it more ambiguous. Why write the Agreement like that? Why write it at all? (Was that in the script? I very badly want to read the script but I can't find it)

None of the above imo invalidates the headcanons/observations I and other people have made about how Betelgeuse did not try all that hard to either enforce that marriage agreement - which HE never even signed.

(he didn't even have Lydia sign it below when it says it will become effective once it's signed below, and yes I am being pedantic about a prop that people likely weren't meant to read anyway, but someone did bother to write it and it is meant to be a contract written by a demon/evil spirit who makes a lot of deals, so the signature being in the wrong place is really funny to me)

An agreement which should not have been voided by the Code 699 violation anyway bc it's an engagement, not a marriage. Nor did he physically/magically force Lydia into marriage in the church despite having ample time, plus there's his suspicious failure to fight back against banishment and instead inflating like a balloon and becoming helpless at the first "Betelgeuse".

Those can't all be out-of-story oversights. Maybe the handbook was meant to say "voids marriage contracts", but even so, the contract makes the code-violation it's own loophole. There's so much wriggle room to get out of the marriage. It's like the scriptwriters made a list of ways Lydia could escape the marriage this time, and then used all of them.

I don't think Betelgeuse really wants to screw over Lydia the same way Delores did him. At least, not anymore. But the pieces are set up in a way to suggest that the thought has occured to him, and that he might keep the ritual in his proverbial backpocket in case "have her fall in love with me and agree to stay with me forever voluntarily" fails.

Or maybe, he believes that the immortality ritual is still his actual plan A - cause this theory does imo fit quite nicely (as a retcon) even into the first movie where he said he wanted out of the creepy dead thing for good, cause he's arrogant enough to believe he could get Lydia to "help" him with that if only she let him out for a bit so he could make her like him (tbf, Toonverse proves him kinda right; he can be lots of fun) - and is now deeply, genuinely confused why he keeps self-sabotaging and giving Lydia outs, cause he himself is not aware just how deeply he's fallen for her after 30 years of watching her and trying and failing to get her attention. Too deeply in love to just give her a love potion (Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian had them, and hey, if Truth Serums exist...), take her to a church, take her to bed under the influence, and then kill her. And too much in love to make her love him through a contractual obligation that she'd be bound to after the wedding.

Betelgeuse pointed Astrid to that loophole in the Handbook by drawing her attention to the book in the church and implying she'd find info about his and Lydia's deal in it. Mention of the deal is not in there, only the loophole to it is. And he knew she saw that page already because he clearly followed her to Jeremy ("She decided to trade lives with the boy"). This self-sabotage could have (further?) backfired on him because the other page she'd flipped to at Jeremy's was the one about Sandworms.

He's a deeply, deeply conflicted man.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for asking my spouse to open up our relationship?

Tl;dr: He said no years ago but our sex life is non-existent and I'm climbing the walls.

Full story:

Me (early 30s, NB) and my partner (late 30s, M) have been together for over a decade. We have a kid, a mortgage and enough interests in common to keep each other entertained. He's a genuinely good person and the last thing I want to do is hurt him. BUT.

We met before I hit 20, and he was my first ever serious relationship. Our sex life tanked about two years in, but we both had other things going on, and over time I blamed many different factors: living conditions, shift work, my weight gain, health issues, differences in upbringing, levels of queerness - you name it. In the last few years I helped him through a serious medical condition (think two surgeries and a long recovery), but once he was nominally in the clear my mental health went down the drain and I haven't really been back to normal since.

For a while, I had a really good counsellor and for once got to talk about some of the less savoury shit going on in my noggin. It all ended up on a Realisation that we only had sex while sober on a laughably small number of occasions, and any and all attempts on my part to spice things up ended at best with affectionately confounded denial or just a straight up brick wall. I got sober a few years before he did (I'm talking 'uh oh maybe we're having too many too often' rather than 'out of control alcoholism'), which effectively ended our sex life altogether. At this point I'm looking at a solid year since my husband last touched me, and even then it was after he came home from a pub in a silly mood so neither of us ended up getting much out of it. And it's not even the longest stretch.

I floated this as an issue a number of times, and every time he agreed it's something to work on then did precisely zilch. I told him point blank once that I wouldn't be opposed to an open relationship, but he was vehemently against, because that's the first step to a break up in his mind. I suggested he might be ace (there are several clues to that, not just my increasingly unhinged internet history), bought the book as a way to start a discussion - he put it on a shelf and never looked at it again.

After my Big Bad Breakdown earlier this year we ended up in family counselling. It quickly became clear that there are so many things he just Didn't Consider that the sex thing didn't even get mentioned, then we ran out of slots and he hasn't followed up on any of his revelations from the sessions, so I feel like digging in is a lost cause.

I love him, don't want to leave him and quite frankly couldn't even if I did because the UK is a financial ruin. I also have some extremely unfulfilled needs, and can't even rub one out in peace because he finds it weird (???). Even if I didn't find cheating morally Too Far it sounds exhausting and I already have too much going on. I haven't been the easiest person to be around for the last few months, but this has been a years-long issue. So, WBITA to start the conversation on the open relationship again, despite the negative feedback I had previously?

(If it helps, we both have different flavours of neurodivergence, although mine is under treatment and his largely ignored.)

What are these acronyms?

[girls-are-weird]

YR fanfic pet peeves (and corrections): latin america edition

so. i was originally going to post this in january as a kind of "new year, new opportunity to learn about simon's hispanic heritage" kind of a thing, but life got busy, and then my computer died and i lost my original list, so i've had to reconstruct this from memory as best as i could. there may be some stuff missing, so perhaps i'll just keep adding to this post as missing/new points come to mind.

disclaimer 1: if you've included any of the points made here on any fanfic of yours, please don't take this as a call-out. this isn't intended to shame anyone, but rather as an educational opportunity. it's very rare that a latin american nationality that is not mexican or colombian or puerto rican is showcased in an international show, especially outside of the US, and it's given me such joy to have all of you lovely folks make the effort to be open to and research and understand the idiosyncrasies of simon's (and omar's) heritage because the rest of latin america tends to go overlooked in most other fandoms. so i don't intend to scold anyone with this. we can't all know everything about every other culture-- lord knows i don't know everything about sweden, but i want to be respectful to the country and its people and that is why i heavily research anything i don't know and ask people who do know when my research doesn't quite cover it and am open to corrections when even that falls short. i expect most of you come to write about simon's family background in good faith and also want to be respectful to his family's culture, and so i thought i might make things a bit easier for you all by putting the most common errors/misunderstandings i've seen in one handy post. but once again, it's not a call-out, i don't get offended by these things, and i'm in no way implying, if you've done any of these things in fic or in life, that you are a bad person. i understand people make mistakes when they don't know things.

disclaimer 2: i am not venezuelan myself. i was born and raised in the same general region of latin america, though, and i have venezuelan friends and have worked with venezuelan people and have visited venezuela. generally speaking, i feel their culture is very similar to mine (though our spanish is much closer to spanglish than theirs is, haha xD) and feel a deep kinship with them. but of course, i'm no native, and if you're venezuelan and catch anything here that you feel is incorrect, feel free to point it out and i'll add a correction in your name.

warning: this is very long. christ almighty. DX if you can't make it to the end, tl;dr-- feel free to ask if you have any questions or if anything isn't clear. my ask box/messages are always open.

1- "mijo." this is the only one that legit has caused me to click out of several fics/chapters, at least in the beginning, but i've learned to grin and bear it by now. it's not so much that it's wrong, per se, but rather it's more of a location issue. "mijo" is, to my ears, very much a mexican (or, if you stretch it, northern triangle) slang. it IS used sparingly in other countries, but rarely used unironically. instead, if you hear the term used in the caribbean region of latin america (which my country is part of, as is a large part of venezuela), it's almost always used… let's say sarcastically. for example, if your grown-ass adult friend is being a dumbass and doing something reckless, you might call out "oiga, mijo, se va a romper el cuello" ("hey, mijo, you're going to break your neck"). basically, it's a way of calling someone immature like a child. it doesn't have to be ENTIRELY unaffectionate (kinda like the way someone might call their significant other "idiot" or "dummy" but mean it endearingly. in fact, in colombia it's way more common for spouses to call each other "mijo/a" than it is for them to call their children that), but you can also use it with complete strangers-- like if someone cuts sharply into your lane while you're driving, you might yell at them "oiga, mijo, a donde le enseñaron a manejar, en un potrero?!" ("hey, mijo, where did you learn how to drive, in a horse paddock?!"). but even in these sarcastic/neggy cases, it's rare. and EVEN RARER to hear a mother call her children "mijo" or "mija" in this region. it's just not a thing. so when i read it in fanfic, it immediately takes me out of the story because it's so weird to me that linda would sound mexican-- it's a very distinctive accent, which carmen gloria 1000000% does not have. (plus, "mijo" in spanish is a type of birdseed. so it gave me a chuckle the first few times i read it in a fic because i always have that brief second of confusion where i go "why is linda calling simon birdseed?" before it clicks. xD i'm a dork.) it's much more likely that linda would just say "hijo" or "mi hijo," instead.

1b- the way you decide on whether to use "hijo" or "mi hijo" is important because "mi hijo" can sound overly formal in the modern context especially, much like it would in english. in fact, you can use the english version of it, "son" vs "my son" to guide you on which of the two to use. like for example, if linda were to say directly to simon "i love you, my son," she would sound oddly old-timey and anachronistic, so you would just use "son" ("hijo") in that case. whereas if she's talking about simon with someone else, for example saying "i told my son to be here on time," you'd be perfectly okay to use "mi hijo" in that sentence in spanish. it's very transferable in that case.

2- speaking of non-transferable, though, you can't use "cariño" in all instances you would use "sweetheart" or "sweetie." it really depends on the grammatical construction, and it can be tricky to get it right, but it depends on whether you're using it as a direct address or as an object. for example, if you're using it in place of someone's name-- say, a mother telling her child "te quiero, cariño" ("i love you, sweetheart/sweetie") is perfectly fine, because in that case, she could also say "te quiero, hijo" ("i love you, son") or "te quiero, simon" ("i love you, simon"). but if, say, simon says to wille "you're my sweetheart," you would not use "cariño" there; you'd go instead with some syrupy way to say "boyfriend," like "eres mi novio" or "eres mi enamorado" or even "eres mi amor," and if sara tells felice "you're a sweetheart," that would also not involve "cariño" at all. in addition, "cariño" is also very rarely used in plural; if linda is using a term of endearment for both her kids, or for a group of teens her kids' age, she would use a different term of endearment altogether: "hola, mis amores" ("hi, my loves"), "hola, bebés" ("hi, babies") or "hola, mis tesoros" ("hi, my treasures") among some examples. one exception is when you say "cariños míos" ("my sweethearts"), but very rarely the plural by itself. in fact, "cariño" is often slang for gift or present, especially in the diminutive-- for example, if you go to someone's celebratory party for some occassion (birthdays, graduations, baby showers, heck even christmas), you might hand them a small gift and go "te traje un cariñito" ("i brought you a small present"), and if it's more than one gift, or you're bringing gifts for several people, then you'd say "unos cariños" or "unos cariñitos" in the plural.

3- simon's skin is tan, not tanned. this… doesn't personally bug me as much because it's more of an english grammar issue, but i know people who might actually feel very offended if you get this one wrong with respect to them. "tan" is a color; a light shade of brown. "tanned" implies the original color of your skin has darkened with the sun. now, i'm sure simon can tan (lucky goat, says she whose skin burns even while indoors), but about 95% of the time "tanned" is used in YR fanfiction, it's used as a descriptor of the color of simon's skin as we see it on the show. that would imply his skin used to be lighter at some indeterminate before-time and has been darkened by the sun. this is incorrect; that is the natural color of simon's skin. so stick to "tan skin" instead (not tan PERSON, mind you. his SKIN is tan, he is not). and i would gently suggest that if you take away any single thing from this post, make it ESPECIALLY this point, as someone more sensitive than me might interpret this error as some kind of retroactive whitewashing. and i don't want anyone here to get in trouble for simply not knowing.

4- pabellón criollo is one dish, yes, but it's four different FOODS. it's not something a newbie would be able to make off of a recipe (i don't know how to make it and i've been eating it all my life), and it's not something that's likely to be taught in just one day. also, if you're bringing it to a dinner or a potluck, you're bringing four separate food containers, not just one.

4b- also, venezuelan food, for the most part, is not particularly spicy. you CAN make it spicy if you want, but traditionally, it is not. it's flavorful, maybe even saucy depending on the dish, but rarely spicy. i know the joke of white people being unable to handle spice is funny, but there's also plenty of us hispanic people who are equally terrible at it, because there's different levels of spice in the food from different regions of latin america. besides, as a friend of mine perfectly put: we are living in the 21st century now. if you can eat mild mexican food, you should be able to handle traditional venezuelan food just fine. and i'm pretty sure there's mexican food in sweden. plus, wille would probably be more used to international food-- not only does he have the means, but having traditional meals in foreign countries is kind of part of the job.

5- while i'm at it: simon is definitely half venezuelan. this is canon as of S2. there is no other place in the world where that dish is called pabellón. please keep that in mind when you're writing and researching.

5b- this, along with several of the points above, is important because it's a bit of diaspora trauma that whenever we venture outside of latin america and people learn we're latino, they immediately assume we're mexican, or that our culture and traditions are the same as those of mexican people. it happens often, and it's incredibly annoying. not that there's anything wrong with mexico or mexican people-- they're lovely, and their traditions and culture and food are fantastic-- but we are not them, and treating us like we are is reductive. the rest of latin america can be very different and incredibly diverse, and it can be dispiriting when people treat us like we're all the same. so that is why it is important when writing about simon, his family or his venezuelan roots, that you take care to actually research things as they are in venezuela, and not just pick the low-hanging fruit of latino facts you might've learned through pop cultural osmosis, which eight times out of ten will be mexican-only because most hispanic people in the US are mexican and the US exports its media all over the world. i've learned to just roll my eyes at it by now, but some people might actually feel offended or hurt, and i'm sure nobody here intends for that to happen.

6- although simon speaks spanish, neither he nor sara nor his mother nor any aspect of his mother's culture is spanish. "spanish" is what people from spain call themselves. people from spanish-speaking latin american countries are not spanish; we are hispanic, or latino/a/e. "latinx" is… let's call it controversial, at least outside of the US. most people born and raised in latin america don't like it; i personally don't get offended if people use it, but i don't use the term myself. also, you can say "latin food" or "latin music," but we usually don't refer to PEOPLE as latin, but rather latino/a/e. if in doubt, just use latin american or hispanic. they're also conveniently gender neutral.

EDIT: @andthatisnotfake also brought up a very important point: "if you spell it latinx, it makes it harder for screen readers to read (or so I've been told) and some people depend on those, so there's another reason to avoid it." (the unpronounceability of that term is at least part of the reason why hispanic people who live in latin america don't like it.)

6b- never use "the latino/a" on its own to refer to people. "latino/a/e" is an adjective, not a noun, so you would say "the latino boy" or "the latino man" but never just "the latino." kinda like it would be weird to point out the one japanese man in a room as "the japanese." there are some nationality/ethnic terms that just don't work as nouns in english.

7- spanish is not simon's one native language-- or at least not any more than swedish is. he grew up in a mixed-race household, speaking two different languages. it's pointless to call spanish his native language when comparing it to swedish. both are his native languages. also, while we're at this, wille is probably at least bilingual (i'm assuming he can speak at least english), although he only has one native language. it's hardly a competition between the two boys as to who's more of a polyglot.

7b- simon wouldn't take classes on the spanish language-- like to learn how to SPEAK the language-- since spanish is one of his native languages. he wouldn't take them at hillerska, nor in university, nor elsewhere. he wouldn't be allowed. you're literally not allowed to take classes on your native language, nor get credit for said classes. trust me, those would've been an easy extra 24 credits for me in college if that was a thing.

EDIT: have been made aware (thanks, @rightsogetthis and @plantbasedfish!) that at least in sweden and in finland one IS allowed to take classes of your non-swedish/finnish native language, in certain circumstances. i have to say, i'd be pissed if i were taking my french classes alongside a french native speaker, but hey, the system's the system, i guess. ;) so i've struck this one out.

8- dear god please don't use google translate for your spanish translations. listen, i'm not judging-- i do it with other languages, too, when i'm in a pinch. but google translate is literally The Worst (tm) so i always try to either check with someone, or stick to the stuff i already know is correct. seriously, you don't want to know the kinds of crazy stuff GT can spit out that people actually put out in the real world; some of them are quite hilarious. if you're unsure, my ask box/messages are always open and i looooove helping people with this kind of thing, hispanic language and cultural stuff. i know it seems like i'm hardly around, but i do check my messages. don't be shy, even if it's something really small.

PS: while i'm talking pet peeves, malin is wille's bodyguard, not his butler. she's nice enough to attend to him at hillerska because there's no other palace staff around and she's literally stationed outside his door, but she wouldn't do that in the actual palace. there's other staff for that. she wouldn't even guard him at the palace, i don't think, because the royal palaces in sweden are guarded by the royal guard, not SÄPO. if anything, malin might spend the time while wille is in the palace grounds at a gatehouse (like in YR 2x03 and onwards) or at some kind of security office in the palace, and then get called whenever wille needs to go anywhere. she wouldn't be giving wille messages from the queen or walking guests to wille's room or anything like that. that's not her job. (sorry, i had to get that off my chest, lol.)

[rey-jake-therapist]

headcanon: when galadriel talked about celeborn to theo back in season 1 she was actually trying to compartmentalize her worries/grief about halbrand

His name was the first one she screamed after she woke up and she even repeated after it

In my head she was holding on her husband's memory because she had already dealt with the grief of losting him so it was safe to evoke him whereas she needed to stay sane and calm about halbrand

tl;dr when galadriel remembered celeborn in season 1 she was trying to keep her feelings for halbrand in the back seat in fear that they would overwhelm her because she had a mission to accomplish so even in the only time he was mentioned it wasn't about him at all That's how important he is for her lol

she is so over him that can be detached from their shared past

I mean Theo asked her who else she lost in the war so I think her bringing up Celeborn at last made very much sense. The writers probably realized that the Tolkien audience would wonder about him, they HAD to say something about him ! 😂 the moment was also well chosen : everyone who looked at the previous episode with their eyes and not with their butt had seen that the moment that Galadriel and Halbrand shared on that log was deeply romantic, and could have even led to a kiss if they hadn't been interrupted (a classical romantic trope.... S1 Haladriel has all of them 😌).

Mentioning her husband and making the point across that Galadriel considered him "lost" (dead) was necessary at this point, for Galadriel to not look like a cheater. Not that it worked, if we refer to the number of people still clutching their pearls over a law they invented, where Elves love only once in their life and can never, ever catch feelings for anyone else than their spouse, even when said spouse is dead...

The way Galadriel talked about Celeborn always seemed off to me. I know it's assumed that they lived for hundred of years together before he disappeared, because of the books, but the show doesn't follow the book!lore. If they lived together for so long, why would she bring up the day they met ? Why not saying something about where they lived, about their life together, about how united they were ? Why is it the only time she talked about him ? Why doesn't she seem to miss him at all ?

Seriously, the way she talked about him it sounded like they had met and gotten married, then a few weeks later Celeborn left for war and never came back. I know his "fans" firmly believe that he'll make a heroic return in season 3 and that Galadriel will jump in his arms crying of happiness, and that we'll suddenly all stop shipping Haladriel* bc we'll be overwhelmed by their precious love but.... If it's really the showrunners' intention, they have a very strange way of showing it 🤣

Anywayyyyy I know it wasn't the subject of your ask, sorry..... This episode was very much Galadriel keeping everything inside. She really believed that Halbrand died, she also realized she had brought all these soldiers to their death, and she was completely heartbroken over it. But having to take care of a teenager who had presumably lost everything as well, she just held it all back. She had to. I think mentioning the memory of a past where she was happy, and where things just happened as they were meant to (being spotted dancing by a handsome and nice he-Elf, falling in love, getting married with him, etc.), gave her some sense of peace she terribly needed in that moment.

[chronicallyonlinewriter]

This was a weird experience, so I just wanted to write it out somewhere.

I got tattooed yesterday. That in itself is not weird; I love tattoos, have many, and am no stranger to long sessions and the pain that comes with them. This tattoo was on a whole other level, though. We blasted my entire elbow with color, to connect two larger pieces making up my sleeve. If you have never gotten your elbow tattooed, 0/10, terrible experience, do not recommend. But whatever, beauty is pain, love the design, and the tattoo artist is a friend of mine (who is also related to me by marriage, via my spouse). We spent a good four hours just torturing me, then we finished, and everything was fine. It's normal to feel shaky after multi-hour sessions, so I didn't think much about being kind of out of sorts. After we finished I even walked to the upstairs of the shop to chat with the two girls working up there, then walked back downstairs, and then my artist had me stand still in her room so she could take some photos of the tattoo.

I remember standing there and thinking, "Oh, I feel weird. Oh, I feel really weird - oh, I might actually be about to pass out, I should say something to her." And then I woke up. I opened my eyes, and was staring at the ceiling. I didn't know where I was, I did not recognize my friend (who was standing over me telling me, "It's okay! You're okay! But you passed out and you hit your head - don't move!") but for some reason my brain was convinced that I was in a restaurant, being attended to by a stranger. And my brain also convinced me that this was real life: I was in an unfamiliar restaurant, with no idea how I got there. In my head, my actual, real life was only a dream, and it was one I was waking up from. Everything I had experienced in my life - my family, my job, my marriage, my friend, my hobbies, my goals and my interests - never actually happened to me, and therefore I could never go back to those things and those people that I loved. And in that moment I was struck with a terror so momentous, and a grief that was so profound, that it was like I couldn't breathe. It was absolutely something that altered me as a human being. Slowly, it did all come back. Everything eventually clicked - I remembered where I was, who my friend was, I recognized the other girls who ran downstairs to help me out. I was very shaky, but I was okay. I vaguely remember sitting on the floor while my friend called my husband to come get me - and then it was like my body caught up to the grief that my mind had conjured, and then I started sobbing, like some weird delayed reaction (which wasn't embarrassing at all). My husband came and got me, brought me home, made me dinner, and eventually we went to bed. It's strange, that those lingering feelings of grief are still with me today. And I feel very odd in general (I have an autoimmune disease that always flares up after I get a tattoo, and I have to think that at least some of this is because of that.) So yeah. Tl;dr: elbow tattoos fucking suck, and I passed out in a tattoo studio and gave myself an existential crisis, which was not very punk-rock, black-clad, tattooed maneater of me.

[purplephloxpress]

总有一天 a place to hide (can't find one near) - yiqie

That’s just the thing, isn’t it? Wei Ying feels nothing. He doesn’t feel anything, and this emptiness should scare him. He knows he should be scared. He wants to be scared. He isn’t. Fear itself is never scary; fear is just a response. It means that your body wants you alive. It’s the absence of terror that scares him.

I had SO MUCH FUN with this bind! This one had a lot of firsts for me, and is one that I really poured my heart into due to its particular emotional impact on me (tl;dr - I was a piano major in college, burned out, this fic helped me fall in love with music again). It's an Untamed WangXian Pianists AU (TW for anyone interested that it deals with attempted suicide and life following that) and I tried to tie that into the design details literally everywhere I could think of. Black and white cover paper, music note scene breaks, and my absolute favorite part to create: sheet music title pages. The particular song used for that is a recurring motif in the fic and one that means a lot to me personally, and I knew I wanted to include it somehow. Unfortunately I couldn't find an existing image of the sheet music that was high enough quality to use how I wanted, so I used a sheet music program to input it myself!

This book was my first time doing any sort of edge decoration, and I had fun figuring out how to splatter paint with a toothbrush (Spouse: is that supposed to be blood? Me: no but also... kind of?) and it was also my first time doing endbands! (Shout out to the friends who walked me through it over voice chat one evening, and then rolled their eyes when I announced that I'd torn them out and done them over again. Twice.) I went with red and black for both of those parts to match the main characters canonical color scheme, and also because I liked the dramatic pop of color against the black and white cover.

Spine titling was done once again with a foil quill, and I decided to paint the Chinese title of the fic on the cover. I couldn't find a paintbrush that let me get as fine tipped and detailed as I wanted so I may or may not have used a toothpick to paint it on.

I prevailed over: somehow deleted half of my page numbers and had to reprint the WHOLE THING! Forgot to measure the boards as part of my spine width and had to do surgery with 2mm strips of paper! (Thankfully had allowed plenty of hinge because I didn't realize until I'd finished ALL of the titling and I would have cried if I couldn't salvage it) Truly this is my child and I adore how it turned out. Is it perfect? No. Are there things I would change? Sure. But I learned and I did and I'm so goddamn proud of it!

(See below the cut if you want specific details on the binding)

What pieces went into making it:

Fandom: The Untamed

Pairing: Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji

Pairing: Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji

Bookcloth: black Brillianta

Cover paper: black and silver marbled lokta

Endpapers: red cardstock

Titling: foil quill, acrylic paint, acrylic paint pen

Endbands: leather cording for the core, DMC embroidery thread for the bands

Body font: Adobe Garamond Pro

Title fonts: Long Cang and Canva Holiday

Text message font: Nirmala UI

Scene breaks created in Canva

Title page sheet music created using MuseScore

[queer-ragnelle]

I read for spoilers for The Bright Sword, it sounded self indulgent -- The Lady of the Lake is the girlfriend of unprepossessing OC, fix-it for King Arthur but also colonialism is bad... am I picking up the right vibes or should I just read it and form my own view? 😂

Hi anon! I'm going to put my longer answer under a cut since the book is still really new and people may want to avoid spoilers. But firstly, all good stories are self indulgent. Writing for the market is dead, writing for yourself is thriving! So that never deters me from any book or movie. Please do some whacky stuff, I love it! Secondly, I encourage you to ignore bad faith spoilers that only offer criticism without any bright sides. (See what I did there?)

The Bright Sword has the kindest portrayal of Sir Palomides ever written and that means something to me!! It should mean something to anybody invested in the Arthurian literary tradition, I think, as it's been a long time coming. It’s no small thing. I really enjoyed the main cast—Bedivere, Palomides, Dinadan, Dagonet, Nimue, Morgan, Constantine, and OCs Collum and Scipio—they’re all wonderful in their own ways! They're queer, dealing with mental illness, disability, all sorts of things I've wanted from Arthurian retellings for years and haven't gotten in a satisfactory way. I bought the book for those characters and Lev Grossman delivered!

TL;DR I recommend the book! There was more done right than wrong. I shared lots of samples on tumblr and in my Arthurian Theater Server as I read along so people could make their own judgement based on the text itself, and they also liked it.

So my longer answer is—I thoroughly enjoyed the first 30/40 chapters. I couldn't put it down! I was reading at work!! After 31 it crashed and burned a little. There were still a handful of flashback chapters to "the good ol' days" between 31-40 that I also liked, but didn't care for the main post-Camlann conflict resolution, unfortunately.

However, I think I understand how Lev Grossman ended up there. In his Author's Note he stated his inspirations—Mary Stewart, Bernard Cornwell, and Nicola Griffith. And in his Reddit AMA the other day, he said it took him 10 years to write The Bright Sword. I believe all of this culminated in a bit of a disconnected story, as the ending seemed to blindside me. Let me explain.

In Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord Chronicles trilogy, Lancelot is a huge piece of shit from the start. Cornwell’s clearly an Arthur enjoyer. I don’t prefer that approach, but I respect it, and I love Cornwell’s writing. His main character, Derfel, was also plainly a huge inspiration for Grossman’s Collum. That’s a good thing! What I didn’t enjoy was The Bright Sword seeming to shift gears suddenly near the end and make Lancelot out to be a villain that didn’t feel sufficiently foreshadowed. Prior to that, he felt much more like Mary Stewart’s poet-eyed Bedwyr (a hybrid with Lancelot) or Nicola Griffith’s sweetly awkward Lancelot, only to turn around and, literally, snap. BOOM! Cornwell’s garbage-tier Lance. [Insert “He would not fucking say that!” meme here.]

Now regarding Nimue: in Stewart's series, Ninian is with Merlin and then later marries the Fisher King. In Cornwell's series, Derfel is a childhood friend of Nimue and eventually her lover. And in Griffith's book, Peretur ends up with Nimue. So Ninian/Nimue has a long tradition as a spouse/lover of other characters and I enjoyed all of those examples. In The Bright Sword, she was a badass the entire novel, fighting in the battles with intense magic, and she even got her own pov chapters. I liked Collum well enough, he's not my favorite Arthurian OC, but I definitely didn't hate him! His back story was a little eye-roll worthy and his infatuation with Nimue was meh at times, but he’s literally 17 leaving home for the first time. That tracks. It’s not a deal breaker for me by any stretch. Cursed (2020) is where the worst Lady of the Lake romance is at. Nimue/Arthur with some weird shoehorned Gawain love triangle thing? Blech. Get it away from me. It can always be worse!

As a known Arthurian OC enjoyer, I’ll go on record in defense of Collum. He’s fine and characters like him are often paired with canonical characters. I much prefer Nimue end up with someone her own age, whether it be Pelleas or an OC, than stay with Merlin. And The Bright Sword goes to great lengths to show that Merlin is a creep and Nimue a victim who was in the right to bind him in the cave. So this didn’t bother me that much at all.

As far as "fix-it" King Arthur and colonialism bad, not sure what you mean by that. Arthur is dead. That's literally the plot. Did you mean writing Arthur as a decent husband to Guinevere in flash backs? Lots of books and films have done that already, Lev Grossman isn't the first to write Guinevere in love with her husband and an Arthur who is on-par or even better than Lancelot. Personally I prefer when it's balanced but this isn't new or noteworthy. Now, obviously colonialism is bad. That’s the point of King Arthur—the Saxons are colonizers he expels. Not sure what point the spoilers you saw were trying to make there. But it’s irrelevant since The Bright Sword doesn't touch on colonialism very much. Palomides travels west from Baghdad after hearing outlandish stories about Camelot but none of his friends have ever encountered westerners before and they have wildly inaccurate ideas. So Palomides wants to go there and write a book about it (which he does). There’s no talk of the west reaching east from his perspective, and the Saxons are moot, as the focus is a land in want of a king after Arthur’s death, not expelling the Saxon invaders. Could the spoilers have meant monarchy? I don't think anyone is reading Arthurian Legend, which is strictly fantasy, to dismantle the monarchy (or the crimes committed by real life monarchies, such as colonialism). Fantasy, and by extension Arthurian Mythology, is not true to life in any stretch. So that feels like an unfair criticism to make of the genre, even when it takes historical inspiration.

But anyway yes I think you should read the book for yourself! I always advise reading a book before passing judgement. Sometimes a trusted friend will read a book and tell you, knowing best what you like, that it’s not for you. That’s all well and good. But I generally don’t trust the internet’s opinions at large. Much better to feel it out on your own time. I’d love to hear from you again once you’ve read it! Let me know! Have a great rest of your weekend. :^)

[enchanted-lightning-aes]

😪 i have a very silly idea from my silly lil' mind and idk if it counts as taboo. okay, let's say character A is assigned to search for a husband for character C. bc character C needs one to get an inheritance. but her family has old timey values and she's a lesbian, so hence husband. character A finds character B, who fills the slot.

regardless of A's gender or sexuality, let's say they develop feelings for B. bc they spend time together since A is related to C. and vice versa. but B being married to C is an obstacle. and sure B and C are just spouses for appearances but they do have some stipulations. such as C being upfront with B, and B being cool with her to pursue anyone else outside the marriage. but B refuses to act on what he wants bc he honors the vows and stuff.

sorry, this got carried away by me, hehe. 😅 bc hmm. . . is this taboo? bc it's kinda a concept i'm willing to explore, lmao.

Edit: by taboo i mean is it a 'forbidden love' sort of thing or what?

Edit 2: it seems there's confusion, so i'mma clear it up. especially since the letters make it confusin', so.

A & C - related as half-cousins

B + C - spouses, legally

C sees women outside the marriage

A/B - fell for each other gradually but B refuses to be unfaithful despite having zero feelings for C. Bc his rep would be ruined. A gets it but feels shame for their longing.

Tl;dr: is A and B being into each other considered a forbidden love? considering B is married to C for marriage of convenience purposes only? is it?

[enden-k]

endennnn hihihihihihihi i know you would be really biased in answering this but I am at the same crossroads I was almost a year earlier idk whether to pull for alhaitham or kazuha bestie but i would like your very very honest opinion (i also asked my bestie who's a kazuha biased so I would love to hear from you too) pls pls put me out of my misery by helping me decide /j

why specifically kazuha vs haitham again? do they rerun together again or???

also i love and main haitham and all but just bc of that i wouldnt rec everyone to ditch everyone and go for him LMFAO (i probably would depending on the character)

anw not speaking as haitham main/lover/spouse/hater, ill be neutral:

honestly depends. dendro reactions are still the best and strongest and haitham rlly hits hard even without his best supports or whatever. kazuha is one of the best supports and always in most teams

are you in need of a main dps? a good dendro dps? do you have a supportive dendro to pair him with? haitham is super strong, against single or bunch of enemies, extremely fast and one of the strongest dps but hes a dendro dps, he needs to stick to specific teams for dendro reactions (2 dendro/2 electro, 2 dendro/1 electro/1 hydro,....→kokomi/furina/xingqiu, nahida/baizhu/yaoyao, raiden/kuki shinobu (i think even fischl? never tried them together tbh))

i think hthm is v friendly regarding team builds (doesnt need specific 5stars altho he does like to run w nahida like many dendro teams do) - just always have one more dendro with him on 4p deepwood

this is my current team w him for funsies, usually i have kokomi in furinas slot

kazuha is amazing support for many teams, like:

national, freeze comps etc

if you already have a good dps like raiden, childe, ayaka, etcetc you can support them w kazuha since their strongest teams often have him. you can never go wrong with having kazuha, he is one of the strongest and friendliest supports (but he isnt necessarily a must have) - i saw some ppl try to make him a main dps and even tho his dmg output isnt comparable to some other its still possible (tho i strongly believe u can make anyone main dps)

tl dr:

if u want a very strong dendro main dps who will carry ur ass and also got nice tits, and ideally have the team to support him for max dmg, go with haitham

if you have a main dps already and wanna support them or want more cc, go with kazuha

haitham is one of the strongest dps but tied to specific teams as a dendro main dps and not versatile in his role (meaning he lit cant do anything else but kill, he is a main dps through and through)

kazuha is one of the best supports and more versatile in his role (support/sub dps or main dps if u wanna invest in that build)

this is ofc my own thoughts and babbles and idk if any of that helps. not gonna tell ppl who to pull but always here if ppl need help w building n stuff