#well i'll tell ya!

[vanilla-bean-buttercream]

"Allies should be okay with hearing hard truths that we have been suffering through for years, because if a child has to experience it, they as an adult can take the time to understand it with their adult brain and their adult emotions, and if they cannot handle that, I shouldn't have to be okay with handling their feelings gently."

and

"Sometimes we go too hard on allies because they're the only person who benefits from the problem who will listen to us, and the anger that we have carried from being wronged for years should not be put solely put on the shoulders of people trying to help us, and they should not have to be okay with being mistreated with the same hatred that people have aimed at us."

Can and should coexist actually.

[petricorah]

something something i will follow you into the dark (comic wip)

[tenebriism]

// I wish I had booked my flight home for today instead of tomorrow. A lot of my friends are at Veilguard end game and I wanna be right there with them. 😔 Alas, I have to wait until tomorrow to return to my Rook and her eventual boyfriend Emmrich.

[se-hos]

OMG tell me why i literally just finished my first playthrough of veilguard but the NEW SYLUS MYTH PAIR GOT ME SCREAMING HE'S NOT EVEN MY MAIN

[shopwitchvamp]

if u made a gold and white version of the dark cathedral midi (light cathedral perhaps?) id be ALL OVER IT

That's a guest artist design so it'd be up to them! And let's maybe get through this first set first before I can even begin to free up brain space to think about variants 😅

[drizzlessketchingnook]

Meet Lycoris🌹

Wahoo! I finally add my second MC OC for the Sacrarium series into the mix! This guy has been rolling around in my head for a while now as I tried to get a hold of his personality and somewhat of an altered backstory that diverts somewhat from the canon told in Pario.

I have taken a few inspirations from other media, more specifically MaoMao from Apothecary Diaries since her character is fucking fantastic and I had to take some inspiration from her for Lycoris.

As always, there's more information under the cut. And be sure to check out and support @stygianeyedev and everyone involved with the Sacrarium series!

Nickname(s): Lily (Mother), Treasure(VV), Ruby(VV), Voidlight (Title). Ly (Friends)

Age: Early 30's

Height: 6'6"

Pronouns: He/Him

Gender: Cis Male

Sexuality: Demi/Polysexual (Although this isn't realized until the events of Sacrarium Pario as he interacts with Violo and Vivere in the story.)

Profession: Mercenary (current)

Personality: Lycoris is the stone-faced and silent type. Due to this, it has always been difficult or him to express how he feels and for others to read his emotions in any given situation. However, when it comes to anything related to medical items (be it used for healing, harm or otherwise) he immediately lights up and becomes much more animated. Lycoris is also quite awkward when it comes to his emotions and has trouble reading others if they show interest in him as a friend or romantic interest. He prefers to keep emotional distance with others due to the incidents of his past, but is willing to still be kind and helpful despite everything.

Hobbies: Singing, Drawing, Training, Testing out different medicines (posions, aprodisacs, etc.) on himself.

Likes : Music, Training, Botany and Zoology, Night Sky, Medicine

Dislikes: Tourmaline Ring, Backstabbing, Drunkards

Backstory: Before his mother’s death, Lycoris used to assist her in their village’s local apothecary. It was there that he discovered his love for medicine(especially poisons and the like.) and helping out those in need. After that, he still continued to practice like before, albeit much more reckless approach until he had the chance to help out at the local clinic on one of the smaller islands on the Chain Isles.

It was there that he assisted the main doctor there with their patients as their assistant when he wasn’t doing mercenary work or at the local brothel/restaurant. It was there that he befriended both Zhao and Jackie. Over the years, he slowly began to open up to the two and eventually started to develop a crush towards his fellow mercenary. Unfortunately, Fate had other plans and the three were attacked out of nowhere. Zhao and Lycoris fended off the attackers, saving Jackie. Yet, in the end, as expected, Lycoris was betrayed by Zhao and taken by the Tourmaline Ring to sell to the highest bidder.

[oldguardleatherdog]

For Father's Day:

"The One Decent Thing I Ever Did"

This is a monograph from 2015, previously posted here some time ago, a tale of my maternal grandmother, a below-zero winter night, the New York City subway West Side express during post-9/11, that mentions my father only in passing... and it's about my father.

THE ONE DECENT THING I EVER DID.

I.

A long time ago, during a time of struggle, I did one decent thing:

I'd just gotten on the subway in Midtown Manhattan on a brutal winter night, the No. 2 uptown express, when a couple with a small child boarded the car I was riding.

They were having a very loud conversation with their child (about four years old, I think) who was crying or somehow behaving in a way that was "bad". The mother took the belt from her jeans and raised her arm to strike her child with it.

Don’t ask me why I did this, but I rose from my seat, grabbed the mother’s arm mid-swing, and said, “As long as I am on this train, you will not hit that child with that belt.” She and the child’s father were stunned into silence for a moment as I made my way back to my seat.

Immediately after I sat down, the mother and father began leveling all kinds of vitriol my way, calling me every name in the book, including all the variations of “faggot” in use at the time. I just sat there, smiled wide, laughed loud, and shined ‘em on:

“You can call me ‘faggot.’ You can call me anything you like. Because every minute you focus on me, you are not beating that child with that belt.”

The crowded train car fell silent.

II.

Yuletide, 1982. I was in the service in Germany and took leave to see my grandmother in Florida. My grandfather had passed away the previous March, and something told me to seize the chance to see Grandma while she was still with us. I was only 20, born late in life to my parents, and never got to know my grandparents in the way my older brothers did.

We were in my Grandma's airy, air-conditioned Fort Lauderdale kitchen having coffee one morning when the rest of the family had gone out for breakfast. “Would you like a little pick-me-up in your cup, dear?” I laughed. “No thanks, Gramma, it's a little early for me.” The joys of Florida.

I'd had a rough upbringing by any measure - my father was first-gen shanty Irish born in the early 1920's with a mean spirit and a violent edge, mother not Irish but still violent - but at age 20 I hadn't yet realized just how rough it had been.

“You know,” I said to Grandma, “Harold and Evelyn did the best they could. I mean, I turned out all right, right?”

Grandma leaned back in her chair, took a nice drag off one of her unfiltered Camels, and said in her declarative New England way the words that always meant Listen up, you're about to hear gospel truth:

“Well, I'll tell ya, Joe.” I was all ears.

She took another hit off of her cigarette. “I held my tongue. More than once, I held my tongue.

“But one day, your mother and father were in the front yard with your grandfather and me, and I walked up to your father and said, “Harold, I just want to tell you something. It takes a real man to beat a child with a belt.”

...Wow.

I only wish she hadn’t held her tongue!

I sipped my coffee, looked for palmetto bugs on the lanai. “Grandma,” I said, “I'm all right.”

She looked away, and I saw the colors of the rainbow in the prism of her pendant.

III.

What was I doing on the 2 train heading uptown in the bitter blistering freezing cold New York winter?

Heading “home” – that is, to one of the many rundown firetrap SRO hotels paid by the City of New York to house homeless people with HIV. The City's AIDS regulations set the policy: if you showed up at the HIV center at 30th and 8th before 7 PM on a given day, New York City was obliged to find you housing for the same night and for the next 30 days in a row at the very least.

Strange - in those days, New York would house you but not feed you, and San Francisco would feed you but not house you. Come to think of it, that's the way it is these days.

My dank, filthy, crawling with roaches and vermin crack-house "shelter" was way uptown, near 96th and Broadway. (I had always dreamed about making it to Broadway, ha ha.)

96th Street and Broadway stop was next. The train car was still silent as the parents sat sullenly and the child - Jesus, he can't be older than 3 or 4 years old, I thought - was staring at me, no expression on his little face, but eyes wide as saucers.

The train screeched to a stop. I got up and headed to the door, passing the couple with the small child and the loose belt. They were silent and did not regard me as I passed; the child, I think, might have glanced at me, but I’m not sure. I knew that after I got off the train, or after they got off the train, that poor kid was probably going to get beaten. Severely.

Out the door and onto the bone-chilling platform at 96th Street. A young woman who had witnessed the mother wield that belt came up to me and said, “I’m so glad you did that, I wanted to say something, but I was too…” Her voice trailed off as the pained look on her face finished her thought.

“I understand,” I said to her as our eyes met in that New York way of speaking the unspeakable, then made my way up the stairs into the below-zero winter breezes of the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

What the hell, I thought as I made my way out of the station, I had nothing to lose. Those were dark times, desperate days. I'm no angel. But just once, on that long-ago Number 2 train, I was granted the grace to do one decent thing.

Animal J. Smith San Francisco, California July 22, 2015 and June 18, 2023 v2.0

My maternal grandparents, Ed and Ethel (Schirmer) Olson, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, c. 1980

[ceo-mochee]

Yk I'd say sm about the shipping stuff (specifically the toxic yaoi bs (again)) but I know I'm gonna get called a hypocrite for it so uh... damn.

Stares at y'all like this

Man I sure loooooooooove being one of them toxic yaoi enjoyers as well... (that was sarcasm.... Big. Big. Sarcasm).

[theirloveisgross]

.

[guiltyidealist]

anybody else put in effort to hold it till they're at work, specifically so they can Go on the clock and gain the ~microscopic~ satisfaction of having been paid to piss n' shit?

if your antiwork activism doesn't look like mine get on my fucking level loser

[gcrdy]

Got a corn problem? I'm your man Need a green thumb? I'm a whole green hand!

[keeps-ache]

i should learn to make hash browns

[upperranktwo]

Since S3 has finished I can start doing my rewatch and doing my gifsets per episode for it!!! Been waiting to do these since it started asdhadadas 

[softboyshaven]

Thinking about the Holmes story where a blind girl goes to him and is like "My fiancé is missing and he kept telling me the week leading up to his disappearance that he would always love me and come back for me,were anything to happen so I think he knew he was in trouble and I love him so much and I'm going to wait for him but I'd like to find him faster,ya know?" And Holmes figures out that it was this girl's parents to scam her out of money she was owed from an estate which she gave to them because she was still living at home,which she wouldn't be if she ever married,so her step father PRETENDED TO DATE HER for MONTHS to keep her from ever getting engaged to a real person and when Holmes finds out he confronts this man and this man is like "Well,you caught me! But it wasn't illegal:) so:)" and Holmes is like "No,but it was sickening and cruel and if she had a brother or good male friend he should post you up and whip you but she doesn't." And the man is like "No,she doesn't." And does the Victorian version of sticking his tongue out and Holmes is like "Well,I guess I'll do then!" And HE PULLS OUT HIS HUNTING WHIP.

[orcelito]

Got my score back for my presentation, & it was About what I was expecting. I knew the weak point of the presentation was how dense it was + how much I had to cover, and as a result I did end up largely reading off of the slides. Tried to insert some extra information about the stuff, but didn't have much in the way of discussion built into my slides. So like... I can accept that criticism lol (even if it does sting a lil 😭)

Overall tho I got an average score of 8.6, professor score of 8... I'm not sure actually what will count for my grade. Is he including his score in the average at the top??? Also 8.6 is also not right. When I calculated my score from the tallied numbers, I got 8.31 for class average, 8.29 if I include the professor's rating in there as just one. For some reason, what he wrote is higher than either?? I certainly won't complain about a higher score, though I'm confused lol

But yeah people in general praised my research and preparation. Also video choice. Yay!

I will now try to focus on the good points and not worry so much about the bad. Regardless of any of it, 8.6 or 8 (out of max 9) is generally Pretty Good. Might as my professor for clarification on the grades when I next see him.

[kuiinncedes]

bro