#when in fact it was not? and was actually pretty charitable?

[singingcicadas]

Every time I see something along the lines of "Megatron was a slave because he was oppressed and forced to work in the mines, forced labour is slavery and oppression is slavery so what happened to Megatron was obviously slavery" a question mark pops up in my head and it's so fucking funny because. Social studies. History. Basic literary analysis skills.

Like I'm gonna be assuming whoever's in the 'Megatron was a slave' camp is talking about idw1 and tfp b/c those are the only two continuities that have Megatron coming from an oppressed background in depth. If it's idw1 then how could anyone miss the obvious communism reference in Megatron Origin? (Guaranteed it's a loose, twisted, villifying, Western-lensed, not-very-good reference, but point is that it's OBVIOUS and unmistakably RECOGNIZABLE.) Workers' revolt ring a bell? It's the first issue in the collection volumes so even if people run out of patience without finishing anything they should have been able to at least get through that before, y'know, making unfounded claims about canon. And the stuff I'm talking about should've been evident in the first chapter. Were the miners upset because they were forced to work in the mines? No, they were upset because the government was closing the mines and laying them off and replacing them with automation; they were upset because soon there would be no mines left for them to work and then they would starve.

'Slavery is forced labour' yeah but uh that's only one facet of it. Forced labour because of livelihood: 'I have to work here b/c it's the only job that's available to me and I have no means of obtaining the skills/licence/opportunity for a different job or bettering my circumstances, if I quit I'll have no income/food/shelter and starve out on the streets' is fundamentally different from forced labour due to state institution of ownership over people: 'I have to work here because I am the private property of the facility owner and am forbidden by law to leave or quit.'

Does anyone like, not see the difference between the two scenarios? Only the latter would be slavery since it has the defining characteristics of 1. legalization of the ownership of people and 2. restriction of liberty. In concurrence. The first scenario's just describing what every fucking exploited worker/peasant/wage-earning lowclass commoner in the world looks like, it's called proletarianism. It's a completely different class category in a completely different social structure that's in no way interchangeable or confusable with slavery unless you want to say that communist revolutions were done by slaves and every wage worker in the industrial revolution was a slave. why not go back further while at it and serfdom can be slavery feudalism is slavery indentureship corvee conscription are all slavery lmao way to rewrite history.

For the people who's only read MTMTE and nothing else there's even a specific scene in there that says this 🔽

This is talking about Rewind. The text literally gives us what used to be the equivalent in Cybertronian society and it's clearly not Megatron's class. And why was Rewind's class equated to slaves? Because they were considered disposable tools, not sentient people. The Ambus Test helped them get rights by proving their sentience as people, which further proves that they don't keep sentient people as slaves.

If it's TFP then did anyone notice that Megatron started as a miner but met Optimus as a gladiator? If he was so absolutely forced to work in the mines as a slave then how was he allowed to leave?

This is how Covenant of Primus describes Megatron going to work in the mines. It's "the only opening available to him". It doesn't say that he's assigned a master at birth and was legally obligated to go work in that opening on pain of punishment. Just implies that he'd be out of a job and income and would probably starve if he didn't. There's still an illusion of choice, of free will.

The closest thing Aligned had to slavery was the Quintession occupation era but the Covenant also spent a whole section talking about how it started out as a mutually beneficial relationship with the Quintessions presenting themselves as the more advanced race and Cybertronians eagerly accepting them as 'masters' (honourific term, not literal) in a pseudo colonizer-who-civilized-the-indigenous-barbarians-and-used-them-for-cheap-labour dynamic which got more and more exploitational as time went on until the Cybertronians had enough and drove them off. But even during the peak of occupation the Quintessions were still careful to give Cybertron the pretense of sovereignty. It was the Quintessions who introduced them to the electoral system and inaugurated the office of the Prime in the first place. The illusion of free will and equality was always there, despite everyone knowing otherwise.

Exodus is extremely clear in describing Cybertron as a birth-defined caste system with rigid hierarchy and little mobility. So that's exactly what it is. a caste system. Not a slave society. There's a reason they're different words, they're different concepts! I don't get why people would feel the need to replace one with the other, does slavery sound better? edgier? Is the purpose for making Megatron an ex-slave to have his backstory sound more tragic? to induce more sympathy? idc people are free to headcanon what they want but at least have the decency to refrain from framing it as canon and bashing other characters with it? Stuff like 'oh Optimus was so selfish/naive/entitled/stupid/insensitive/traitorous/opportunist/privileged to accept the prime title in front of Megatron the poor ex-slave' nevermind that Megatron had repeatedly expressed a desire for taking power through whatever cruel means necessary and was perfectly eager to become prime when he thought he was the one going to be chosen? Nevermind that the council offered up a chance for implementing all the social changes they wanted through legal means with the least amount of bloodshed and Megatron threw it all away b/c he didn't get to be in charge, by committing murder on the spot? Nevermind that 'Megatron the poor ex-slave' is a massive bigoted racist who looks down on Optimus' job and is disgusted by minicons and combiners and insecticons as well as being a devout believer of 'survival of the fittest and the rest don't deserve to live' -type social darwinism and a domestic terrorist happy to blow up factories full of his own caste members and places full of innocent people? Nevermind that Megatron and Optimus already had a deep rift between them because of Megatron betraying Optimus' trust by lying about his role in the bombings and Optimus already recognizing that their methods were never going to match up b/c of Megatron's disregard of innocent life and Megatron never really trusting Optimus anyway? As if making Megatron a slave somehow excuses all of that and pins all the blame on Optimus.

[bwabys-scenarios]

Dating the Phantom Troupe SFW/NSFW HCs

!!REBLOGS APPRECIATED!!

warnings: group sex, breeding kink, scissoring, toy use, fem reader, creampie

taglist: @desiray562 @lovelyxkazuha @ashdownunderscorebeloved @stygianoir @lightshowerrr @highbats69

‼️If you want to be added to the taglist, please check out the taglist information then comment what you want to be added to! Make sure you have your age in your bio and that your blog can be tagged/mentioned!‼️

SFW

-You’re the sweetheart of the Phantom Troupe, healing others with physical touch/affection. You were picked out by chrollo to be a medic of sorts due to your charitable work in meteor city

-you’re pretty pampered, once you get to know everyone they all fall for you pretty quick. the first was Shalnark. it was a puppy crush at first, but soon he was head over heels.

-it goes like this: first Shalnark falls for you, then it’s Chrollo, Machi, Nobunaga, Uvogin, Phinks, Pakunoda, Shizuku, then finally Feitan.

-Pakunoda and Chrollo are guilty of spoiling you way too much with gifts, while Shalnark and Uvogin pamper you with lots of attention and affection. Machi and Feitan struggle with opening up to you and confessing, while Shizuku and Phinks were pretty open with their feelings once asked. Nobunaga is overly affectionate and clingy 😭

-the relationship between you and the others is far from normal, bordering on yandere. they won’t keep you prisoner or force you into anything you dislike though, they’re just a bit possessive and protective. since they’re all good friends, they’re able to MOSTLY share you without any hiccups…

-though the two most possessive members(Machi and Nobunaga) get into fights with the others at times

NSFW

-so, the troupe usually allow Chrollo to have you first.

He doesn't demand this, in fact he tries to insist on drawing straws, but the others respect him enough to let him have you first.

-Chrollo is very gentle with you, making love rather than fucking you. He usually prefers to have you away from the others in a separate room, but will fuck you in front of the others if he's feeling naughty

-everyone gets 30 mins a piece to make it a bit easier on your body(there's 8 of them after all) and all of them always end up cumming <3 some a bit quicker than others(cough Phinks and Shizuku cough)

-The rest draw straws/arm wrestle/or decide by little games who gets to go next.

-Uvogin almost always volunteers to go last because of how big he is. You need time to be stretched out and lubed up before you can take him

-Nobunaga is so quick to cum it’s almost pathetic. He feels bad and will keep going, but soon your thighs and tummy are just covered in his seed!

-Shalnark actually loves an audience!! He shows off how good he can make you feel with pride. Though the others get a bit jealous at his talent at making you cum over and over again

-usually, Shizuku, Pakunoda, and Machi prefer to share you amongst themselves. Lots of scissoring and toy use >< Machi is shy and usually won't join unless it's in private with just the four of you. Pakunoda definitely has a custom made strap she uses to fuck into you

-Phinks is super vocal and ends up cumming inside of you over and over. He can't help it, it's hard to pull out when you're giving him those eyes and whining like that…

-Feitan is surprisingly clingy during sex, wanting to be close. He's another one that prefers privacy due to being a bit shy preforming in front of others

-when uvogin finally gets his turn, you're so spent and wet that he nearly slides in without issue... but he can never truly fuck you without a bit of prep of his own. He'll fuck you with his big, thick fingers before thrusting in :3

-orgies with all the members don’t happen, most of them just aren’t attracted to each other/see each other as family

-though… a few of them fucking you at once is common place. you’re just too cute that some of them can’t take the wait and end up slipping into one of your other holes. if your uncomfy with anal, they’ll use your mouth or hands!

-some of the men are in a competition to see who can get you pregnant first(Shalnark, Uvogin, and Phinks) while the others are just happy with whatever happens(Chrollo) and Feitan… he doesn’t want a kid but can’t resist cumming inside very time so… if it happens it happens.

-they’ve all already agreed to let the father and you decide how the baby is raised(whether the two get into a serious relationship or they all raise the baby together)

[firelxdykatara]

what bugs me about azula redemption discourse is the fact that people genuinely think azula lied that zuko killed the avatar to show she cares for him. if she cared about him, she wouldve had the courtesy to warn him instead of blindsinding him during the meeting. That just added to his anxiety and while her fears of what ozai would do if her if she disappointed him are validated by ozai's actions, that gives her no right at all to knowingly put her own brother in the position. she literally said, "you can't treat me like zuko!" in the finale, which says a lot about how aware she was of how zuko was treated, and the fact that she recognized that that's not how she would like to be treated.

Oh yeah, this is a pretty wide-spread problem in the atla fandom in general but I notice a lot of it in specific azula-stanning (and usually zuko-hating) corners, where it's like 'Azula never even really did anything bad and how dare people call her one of Zuko's abusers for sibling rivalry stuff' as if gleefully crowing to your brother that your father is going to kill him or watching with a smirk of satisfaction as your father brutalizes him is all just 'normal sibling rivalry stuff'. Nevermind what came later, like actually trying to kill him.

So we end up with this kind of discourse that relies on making up a bunch of stuff that honestly doesn't make sense nor fit in with what we do know of these characters and the situation, but because they can do enough mental gymnastics to make her out to be The Real Victim Here then anyone who doesn't agree just hates abuse victims or whatever.

The fact is, at its most charitable interpretation, Azula was bare minimum hedging her bets. Because this scene:

comes before Zuko's meeting with Ozai, where we hear this:

And then, as if that weren't enough, we have Azula herself admitting it:

I feel like a lot of Azula stans who insist she was just trying to help Zuko, that she cared for him and was just trying to help him return home with honor, missed this part of the conversation, or just conveniently forget about it when it comes to defending their fave. But while Azula initially claims she did it to help Zuko out of the goodness of her heart, she comes right out herself and says she doubts Zuko's conviction about the Avatar's death, and she doesn't want any blowback to fall on her if and when the Avatar eventually resurfaces.

She was, at bare minimum, covering her own ass, with little regard for how it would ultimately affect her brother (for whom she has little care or concern, according to how we see their relationship playing out). Lines like you can't treat me like Zuko help to highlight this, because while, yes, they are both victims of the same abusive parent, Azula also became an active agent in Zuko's abuse, and the realization that to their abuser they are both just as disposable even after everything she did for him within that framework is a huge part of what led to her complete psychological breakdown in the finale.

[brynn-lear]

"𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐩" 𝐈𝐧 𝐀 𝐁𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞

Relationship: Diluc Ragnvindr/Gender Neutral!Reader Synopsis: Diluc doesn't seem to like the ex-pirate who visits Angel's Share all that much, but he'll change his mind soon enough. (600 words)

Everyone working for the Dawn Winery didn't know what to make of you for the longest time.

You were becoming a new regular in Angel's Share, though you never bought alcoholic drinks for yourself. Instead, you'd go out of your way to pay Charles extra with specific instructions. You'd buy yourself a glass of wolfhook juice, pay for the next customer's shot— without batting an eye on the price tag, mind you— and then request to keep the glass bottle left behind. The staff would find you chatting up whoever was lucky enough to have their 1L pain reliever paid in full. There had been rumors that you once worked for Beidou from The Crux, so there's no wonder where you received the fortune.

There's also this tiny fact that you enjoy staring at the owner a lot.

If you want to be more charitable for troubled folks, there are better ways to go than paying for their drinks. Therapy is a better start; at least, that's what the Master believed. Despite profiting off your dubious goodwill, he wasn't fond of the execution. Diluc was under the impression that you find a twisted sense of pleasure in watching others poison themselves slowly. A hypocritical line of thought coming from the owner himself, so he has yet to voice them out loud. On the other hand, Venti doesn't think you're any cause for concern. The archon even implied you were an artisan— an attribute that confused Diluc even more.

"Is Master Diluc here?" Venti chirped, one foot inside the tavern while the other hovered outside in case he caught everyone in a sour mood (which isn't a rare occurrence on his end).

Diluc pinched the bridge of his nose. It was far too early for him to open the tavern, so he was the only one occupying the ground floor. He didn't look at Venti, instead his eyes were on last month's payment logs.

"What do you want, bard?"

Venti's face lit up as he marched forward. "I knew you would be too busy this festive season, so I bought you something from (Y/n)'s stall at the recent art fair!"

"(Y/n) sold something?" Finally, the jaded businessman met his gaze. He doesn't attend those. They were more or less Kaeya's scene than his.

"Not just sold— they literally sold out pretty quickly, actually!" Venti grinned, chuckling to himself. "Here's yours, open it!"

…

...

"A... vineyard in a bottle…?"

"Yep! I heard (Y/n)'s hobby was to make ships in a bottle, but this time, they're very inspired by something— or someone— else." Venti nodded, giving him a quick and playful wink. "I guess you two have much more in common than you thought, huh?"

"Instead of emptying bottles, you were both born to fill them."

Diluc chuckled softly.

He gently took the ship on the box, inspecting it. Diluc must admit, he doesn't quite understand the meaning of every detail, but the colors of the miniature people alone reminded him of regulars and other Dawn Winery staff. The people held baskets of grapes, some positioned themselves for a picnic, and he swore he saw a version of Stanley drinking with Venti by the vines.

Diluc made a strangled and surprised noise when he saw a particular red-haired man hidden from plain sight, pouring what was quite possibly grape juice for the (h/c) haired person facing him.

"I suppose so." Diluc nodded, fondly gazing at the ship. "I suppose so."

Ah, so that's what those stares were for.

You were collecting bottles to make these.

Maybe you weren't so bad after all.

[ms-demeanor]

i really liked OJST in the mid-2010s but i didn’t stop reading cause of the cuck comic - wasn’t there also a comic erika moen wrote about (functionally) harassing lesbians with her now-husband?

In the mid 2010s closet-keys criticized one of Erika Moen's early diary comics and described Erika Moen as "Reassuring a cishet partner that it’s totally okay to use hate speech towards wlw at Pride" and condoning the harassment and fetishization of lesbians because of a 2007 comic that she had made as part of a webcomic she had written about gender and her interactions with her queerness.

The hate speech in question is the partner asking "are you sure you want to hold my hand with all these dykes around?" while they are pretty clearly at a Dyke Day event during pride, and the reassurance that 'it's totally okay to use hate speech toward wlw' is Erika responding "sweetie, I'm proud to be with you."

The comic is still up with a disclaimer that it was written at a different time, and I know that's probably not going to fly with a lot of people but if you were a bi woman in the early to mid 2000s it was pretty common to use statements like "lol yeah i'm into women my boyfriend is fine with it as long as I take pictures" to diffuse the biphobia from straight people AND to say shit like "I'm not a party bi, I actually love pussy, thanks" to diffuse the biphobia from queer people. (if you were a bi guy in the early to mid 2000s i'm sorry and I'm sorry now because we got LUG but that mostly went away and you *still* have to deal with the "gay in waiting" bullshit).

That comic ends with Erika and her partner looking at a woman and saying "I'd totally do her" while the woman thinks "pigs" and if you think that means that they literally sat on the street and vocally commented about lesbians passing by them or that they condone harassing lesbians (in, I cannot stress this enough, a diary comic written by someone in their early twenties who is realizing they are occasionally interested in some men some of the time after identifying as a lesbian their whole life), then I'm gonna go ahead and recommend signing up for some variety or other of literary analysis class. Do we think that Erika is seriously implying that she is going to make her boyfriend gay if she fucks him in this comic from a year later?

If this comic bothers you and you see it as a straight-passing couple giving the go-ahead to harass lesbians, you do you, I'm not saying you have to read the comic or enjoy Erika Moen.

I am saying it's a bit of a stretch, though, and certainly the least charitable explanation possible, and that we should probably give people some space to say awkward things about their sexuality and to make missteps when discussing it in their early twenties and not call them lesbophobic fifteen years after the fact for a college comic.

Moen also gets called transphobic because she has described trans men as adorable/cute in a way that could be read as patronizing in one comic and because she made a comic about wearing a packer for fun and for sexual gratification with her cis male partner as a cis woman.

Appropriately, all of these things feel very "late twenty teens tumblr callout post."

If it bugs you, you don't have to read the comics but I've talked about Moen before and I've gotten the anons in my inbox calling me lesbophobic for recommending her comic when in 2007 she made a comic about catcalling lesbians and condoning street harassment.

Which is frustrating because Erika Moen writes a comic about sex toys that has incredible body and gender diversity and is interested in making sure that people of all sexualities are having safe, enjoyable sex and talking openly about it. This is Rebecca Sugar condones war crimes level discourse over a creator who makes a genuinely good comic and gets dismissed as cringe by people who hate open discussions of sex and gets dismissed as a bigot (in ways that I think are incredibly unfair given the vast majority of her work) among people who *claim* to love open discussions of sex but who *actually* love witch hunts.

[arrowheadedbitch]

Okay, watched this video like a week ago and I'm still thinking about it everyday so bare with me as I get this out of my system

Okay, Denki doing electrician type shit on the side

It all starts with something like this, he goes to a little old lady's house and is like "Okay, this bitches house is gonna fucking EXPLODE" and convinces Kamui Woods (I've decided that he's definitely the guy Kami interned from, it just makes sense) to let him rewire this woman's house instead of the regularly scheduled hero work for an internship, it takes some convincing but Kaminari makes a strong argument about how he's keeping this woman's house from blowing up which is pretty damn heroic and if he doesn't do this they'll just have to save a bunch of people from her house explosion later on so really he's doing her, her neighbors, the other heroes, and the city a service here

So, Denki is allowed to detour from regular hero work to completely rewire her whole house because damn did her nephew not know what the FUCK he was doing

Of course, Kamui Woods is supervising and helping (mostly just handing him stuff or holding stuff or standing in the way because he doesn't know anywhere near the amount that Denki apparently just...knows) him the whole time, watching in awe as he finds out this kid can do this kind of thing (How do people think this kid is stupid??? Everyone's been telling him he got the dumb one but clearly this kid is a genius because FUCKING LOOK AT HIM)

At the end, Denki refuses to let the old lady pay him as it was "just what a hero does" and "not that big a deal" so he's paid in homemade sweets

When Kamui tries to congratulate him on a job well done, Denki insists that it "wasn't that hard, seriously it was easy, I don't see what the big deal is"

And when his interning is all finished, this seeps into his work as a pro hero

When he sees someone less fortunate and in need of some rewiring, no matter how big (as long as he can spare the time, being a pro hero is a pretty busy job) he just...does it. Pro bono.

Which completely incidentally rockets him up in the ranks due to the public opinion of his charitability, and the best part? He doesn't see it as charity. In fact, he likes to think of it as some sort of "pre-heroing" (something he had called it to Kamui Woods all that time ago), he saves them before the disaster happens, no need to congratulate him! He's just doing what any good hero would do! Well, okay, you can congratulate him a *little*, but only if you really want to...

And all the snotty not in it for the right reasons heros (Endeavor Dupes, if you will) HATE him for it, making them look bad??? Raising the bar? Making them need to actually be charitible more than once a year for the sake of their PR? But they hate all the 1A kids anyways, so who really cares. They probably would have hated him anyways.

Anyways, had to get my accidental electrician electric hero idea out of my head, lmao, thx for listening 🤣

[siswritesyanderes]

Hii! Would you ever consider writing a yandere snowjanus x reader fic or imagine?

-🐣

Oh boy, I love it.

Imagining they both noticed you at around the same time, separately.

This could be in the Capitol or in District 12; the difference does matter, as far as power dynamic and the tactics available to them and frankly their hairstyles, but for the sake of this post we'll say it could be either one. If necessary, maybe I'll make a separate post for what they're like specifically in the Capitol or specifically in the Districts. (Actually, whether you're a Capitol citizen or a District citizen is also a means of variation, so really there are four different combinations, unless we treat Sejanus' kind of District-born Capitol citizen status as a separate category, in which case five; being District-born Capitol would only matter in the Capitol setting, not the District. Does any of that make sense?)

They both fall for you, but Coriolanus is better at hiding it behind a formal, personable mask. He observes that Sejanus likes you, and if it were anyone else he would feel annoyed and possibly threatened, but he feels pretty in control of Sejanus, so he actually nudges him closer.

His thought is, if he can get Sejanus to do all the work of courting you, he can pretty much slide in there effortlessly once that's done. Let Sejanus clear the way, ward off suitors, prove his loyalty and affection. (Meanwhile, Coriolanus can focus on his University work, his mentorship with Dr. Gaul, whatever other ladder-climbing he's got going on.)

If Sejanus manages to actually win your affections, Coriolanus can use Sejanus' affection for him to add himself to the relationship.

If Sejanus can't win your affections, then at least he got rid of the other suitors. Coryo can take it upon himself to be charming and win you over, and then he can graciously allow Sejanus access to you as well. He does actually like Sejanus and enjoy the idea of charitably sharing someone like you with him; he just will always see himself as the de facto highest-ranking and most important member of the polycule.

The way this looks, in practice, is: Sejanus admires you from afar and feels a passive envy towards any other romantic entities in your life. Coriolanus urges him to act on these feelings, needles the productive insecurities and soothes the unproductive ones. Sejanus trusts Coriolanus when he says that certain people in your life are taking advantage of you or hurting you in some way, believes him when he says that getting rid of them is the right thing to do.

So, Sejanus does things that, left to his own devices, he might only have fantasized about.

It's Sejanus' money and shooting skills backed by Coriolanus' rationalizations and manipulations.

Inside, Sejanus knows that what he's doing is wrong, but Coriolanus is good at making sure the worst of him is rewarded with praise, attention, and you.

With you, Coriolanus is smooth and flattering. He has all the social graces and charming repartee down to a science, if not an art. He is observant, accommodating, and just generally great to be with.

Sejanus is less polished, more endearingly stuck in his head. He's a smart, witty guy, but around you he gets really shy and earnestly wholesome in a way his years in the Capitol have not encouraged. He's been bullied, and he's learned not to be too vulnerable with people, but he finds himself saying really heartfelt stuff to you, and that makes him feel even more helpless than knowing how many crimes he's done to get here.

Coriolanus loves the degree of control over Sejanus promised by the fact that he's the only one who knows about the crimes Sejanus has committed. Like I said, he genuinely likes Sejanus. It feels good to know Sejanus is in so deep and can't turn back. He's going to want to have the same kind of leverage on you, whether it's secrets, financial power, or whatever else. He needs to make sure you need him.

Being with them is nice. They're cute, they're pleasant, they make you laugh.

Sejanus is one of the few people you can talk to about not liking the Hunger Games who will explicitly agree. Coriolanus just sits silently during these conversations, rolls his eyes fondly at both of you, and reminds you not to say any of that in public.

The fact that Coriolanus basically is a Gamemaker now is something that Sejanus weirdly tolerates. You're not sure how the guy who threw a chair in anger, back at the Academy, has resigned himself to just sighing about the inhumanity of it all while sharing a loveseat with his Gamemaker boyfriend. Maybe his time as a Peacekeeper tamed him somehow.

He's comfortable. You're also comfortable. It's weird.

This isn't a kidnapping scenario; you're just in a relationship with the two of them, and as long as you don't try to break up or withdraw in any way, it's all smooth as satin.

If you start going against the grain, though, you're going to find out how many hooks Coriolanus has already put in place. You'll start to see the strings on everything in your life, including Sejanus.

You want to take a trip with your family instead of staying in town to attend a formal event with Coryo and Sejanus? All of a sudden some private statement you made in the past about disliking the Games has been flagged as treasonous, and you're not allowed to travel until the matter is resolved. (If you go to the event with them, the issue swiftly goes away. He explains that he had Dr. Gaul pardon you.)

You want to take a break from staying over with them every other evening, because someone in your family is sick or injured? Suddenly, the hospital can no longer care for your relative for an affordable price, because the Plinths' donations have mysteriously stopped and treatment prices have skyrocketed. Coriolanus is glad to personally pay for them to be cared for.

The more you push, the more stuff will fall apart. If the first little intimidation tactics work as intended, you won't have to see the full extent of the trap.

Coriolanus gives you a jabberjay in a birdcage, as a gift, and uses it to spy on you. He might place Sejanus in charge of obtaining information from the jabberjay, because Coryo loooooves to keep his hands clean.

(Let me know if you liked it!)

[yall-hate-kids-tourney]

Asuka Langley Soryu (Neon Genesis Evangelion) vs. Chloe Bourgeois (Miraculous Ladybug)

Y'all Hate Kids: Screwed By The Writers

Propaganda below the cut (spoilers)

-

Asuka Langley Soryu (Neon Genesis Evangelion)

Fandom historically has treated her like she’s an irredeemable abusive piece of shit, despite the fact that she’s a 14-year-old girl in a terrible situation. She’s also not treated the most charitably by the writers.

Chloe Bourgeois (Miraculous Ladybug)

cw: Abuse, neglect, spoilers

haven't been in the fandom in a while so my memory is a bit fuzzy but the writers hate her sooooo bad it's not even funny. she started having a redemption arc where she realized the error of her ways and started working on herself as a person bc she wanted to be a hero and then did a 180° by siding with the villain. writer called her irredeemable multiple times on twitter despite the fact that she's just a spoiled bratty teenager who was also emotionally abused by her mother. her dad gets victimized despite the fact that he was complacent in the abuse and never tried to help her be a better person. overrall what the hell were you guys THINKING!!!

-

SHE HAD SO MUCH GOING FOR HER.... The writers tried giving her a redemption arc but then the creator of the show said that she, a TEENAGE GIRL, was incapable of change and redemption so all of that development was thrown in the trash and she became a shallow character again. Meanwhile, the creator gives a mini redemption arc to the MAIN VILLAIN, who literally ABUSED AND NEGLECTED HIS SON. She deserved so much better man

-

Typical Mean Girl character with an aborted redemption arc. Chloe has bullied the main protagonist Marinette Dupian-Cheng for a very long time. However, in Season 2 there was a beginning of a redemption arc that was wholly abandoned because the new showrunner deemed that a mean girl (who had an absentee/abusive mother and a limp noodle of a father) is evil incarnate and therefore can not be redeemed in good faith. The one good influence on Chloe's life abandoned her at the time of need and the fandom belittles and blames her for reverting back to her abusive ways when really she was left behind by the narrative. Even her own half-sister never gave her the time of day.

OH MY GOD. DUDE.Ok so she was a main (ish) villain within the first 1-3 seasons, but over time she was slowly getting a redemption arc, and we were getting more info about her past, and it turns out she was pretty heavily neglected as a kid (WHICH EXPLAINS WHY SHE WOULD ACT LIKE A BAD PERSON). And then, Thomas "dipshit" Astruc decided to THROW AWAY HER ENTIRE REDEMPTION ARC, AND WRITE HER OUT OF THE FUCKING SHOW!!!! AND THEY *REPLACED HER* WITH AN RANDOM NEW CHARACTER, EVEN THOUGH SHE WAS LITERALLY ONE OF THE MAIN HEROES???? And when confronted about why the fuck he would write that, Thomas said that she COULDN'T BE REDEEMED. Mind you, this is a TEENAGER, and a abused one at that! I'm sorry if this sounds like like a 2010's YouTube cartoon reviewer ass rant but oh my lord ,,,Chloe I could've saved you

-

i havent watched nor caught up in a while, but from what i remember: she started out as a typical 1-dimensional mean girl, but then they gave her a surprising amount of depth?? like she got to be queen bee, learn responsibility as a superhero, she even is one of only a couple characters we know of to actually fight off hawkmoth's power. they were going to really interesting places with her character, and we were all excited for her redemption arc.

...and then they made her a flat villain again, taking away all of her complexity and development, and instead gave the powers and depth to a new sister of hers that suddenly arrived out of nowhere instead. what

[utilitycaster]

Can I get your opinion, since you seem to be a pretty straight shooter ?

Do you think that Orym is lying to himself when he says he doesn’t want the sword for revenge or isn’t motivated by revenge? In the same way that Laudna was lying to herself and the others about why she wanted the sword?

I’ve seen a lot of ~discourse~ over whether or not orym is being truthful here and tbh I don’t know what to make of it.

My short answer: I suppose it's possible revenge might be among the many factors motivating him, but I don't believe it's his primary motivator.

My real answer? Who fucking cares.

There has been a pretty consistent pattern in which a lot of people who defend Laudna (and Imogen, for that matter) are so laser-focused on their motivations that they utterly ignore the actual consequences of their actions. Because that's the thing, right? You can make speculative claims about motivations; there is no true way to prove that Orym has absolutely no vengeful bones in his body since there's a myriad of reasons to go after the Vanguard and its leadership of which revenge absolutely is one. But you can't deny actions without someone inconveniently pointing out the truth that the action was, in fact, performed by a particular character. So it's a popular focus for people who don't actually have any evidence of their points.

Intent and motivation is, obviously, useful in understanding what a character might do. It's useful in understanding whether they could perhaps be swayed one way or another (eg: Liliana's intentions are in fact of vital importance for that reason, because if they understand what drives her, they might be able to change her path). But it's useless in judging harm done to other people. If someone kills a pedestrian in a crosswalk because they fell asleep driving because they'd stayed up all night for a charitable cause, or if they kill them because they were drunk driving, someone's still dead because of their actions. (For that matter, and I said this in an earlier post, the pedestrian is also equally dead if the driver were drunk driving because they are a well-intentioned alcoholic who fell off the wagon vs. an asshole who doesn't think the rules apply to them.) I don't blame the victim's family for hating the driver in any of the scenarios, even though I think that the some of the above drivers are far more likely to be people who will attempt to rehabilitate themselves and for whom I as a person more removed from the situation may have more pity.

Ultimately, how others see a character in-world is going to be a measure of their actions. So, for example, it does not actually matter if Imogen floats allying with the Vanguard because she wants to connect with her deadbeat mom; Orym is still justified in being hurt and offended because she said something insensitive in front of him. It's better that Imogen is doing this out of an idealized desire rather than malice; I think far better of her as a character and believe there is room for growth; but that doesn't change what she did and that it was, in fact, insensitive. It speaks well to her that Laudna's pressure point is "this sword could hurt your friend" and not "hey what if you could have a sick evil sword of your own", but she did still attack her friend in the middle of the night even with good intentions.

If Orym wants to kill Ludinus out of vengeance for the deaths of his family or if he wants to do so because Ludinus has done immeasurable harm already and very well might destroy the world (and I certainly do believe Orym is motivated by the latter, even if the former plays a role), Ludinus still ends up dead. Sure, if he's motivated only by revenge it might change how you interact with him, the way how Bells Hells treat Keyleth quite differently than they do Ira, but in terms of analyzing whether any specific action was helpful or harmful? Utterly fucking irrelevant.

Anyone making the argument that Orym might not have the purest motives either, as a means to defend Laudna, is either too dumb to even find the correct questions to ask or deliberately throwing up a smoke screen, and as this post indicates, doesn't fucking matter if they're stupid or malicious - they're a waste of your time. Don't even bother.

[fineillmakeaslasherblog]

What would it be like the first time the masked boys show their face to their s/o?

I assume you don't mean to include Billy and Stu since, while they wear masks, it's not a 24/7 thing like with the others. Anyway, I have very strong feelings about this topic so I'm very excited to dive in haha

OG!Michael Myers:

If you see his bare face, it is never for extended periods of time. He will take off his mask when strictly necessary (which is usually just when eating, maybe a kiss if he's feeling charitable, and the once a blue moon you convince him to bathe), but it goes right back on as soon as he's done.

This is not a matter of not trusting you. If he allowed you to see his face at all, that's already about the biggest show of trust he can give. Nor is he particularly insecure about his appearance, so compliments will do little to sway him.

Rather, in his eyes, his mask is his real face. The face that's made of flesh is the face of a Michael that died a long time ago, and seeing it in the mirror feels unnatural.

As such, the first time he takes his mask off in front of you, it is unceremonious and with no warning. The best thing for you to do is not react at all. You may mean well by complimenting him or thanking him for letting you see his face, but the way he sees it, if you prefer his 'real' face, then you prefer a Michael that doesn't actually exist.

Choose your words and actions wisely. Despite his seeming nonchalance, this is the moment that could make or break any kind of future for the two of you.

RZ!Michael Myers:

Okay, RZ!Michael is pretty distinctly different from his OG counterpart here. His relationship with his mask, while no less important, is significantly... easier to navigate.

He does not see any of his masks as a literal extension of himself, and his face doesn't seem foreign to him. In fact, the problem is kind of the opposite.

Masks provide a sense of comfort and, more importantly, privacy in ways he had never experienced prior. After years of being observed and having his every move scrutinized, covering his face is one of the few ways he could keep himself hidden even from himself.

Over the years, he has come to see it as just important a piece of clothing as any other. What this means for you, though, is that he would likely allow you to see his face way before OG Michael would (though it would still take time)

Much like his counterpart, the first time was likely borne from necessity, but unlike him, RZ!Michael definitely made sure you knew that this wasn't something to take lightly. He wouldn't break eye contact with you the entire time (not that he usually does). To the untrained eye, he may appear cold or even angry, but if you've reached this point, you'd be able to tell that he's on-edge, analyzing your every move and gauging every microexpression.

Luckily, if you know him fairly well, it's reasonably easy to pass this test. Compliments are acceptable this time, but don't overdo it. You don't want him to feel under even more of a spotlight than he already does.

He also would eventually be willing to keep it off for more than a minute or two at a time if he's in a good enough mood, though you'd have to ask him directly. He simply sees no reason to keep it off for his own purposes, but may indulge you on occasion.

Bubba Sawyer:

Bubba isn't particularly afraid of you seeing his face, but he isn't thrilled with the idea either.

His masks, while not a literal identity like OG!Myers, is certainly a way for him to express his identity more freely. Not just when it comes to gender expression, but in general.

Besides, his is the only mask where his mouth is exposed, so there's no practical reason for him to take it off in front of you and he simply doesn't see the appeal.

You would definitely need to ask because he probably wouldn't take that initiative for a very long time, if ever. And even when you do ask, he would initially panic and slip away.

It takes a bit for him to come around to the idea and for you to assure him that you don't want him to give up his masks altogether, you just want to know what his face looks like.

When he finally does it, you're hidden away in a room alone together to ensure that you have privacy. He would stall for as long as possible, but when he can't wait any longer, he practically rips it off before he can have any second thoughts.

Please give him lots of kisses and affection. He's already clingy at the best of times, but like this, he thinks he might die if you let go of him.

Brahms Heelshire:

Okay, deep breath, we've gotten through the really complicated ones and are moving on to the more basic "insecure about their appearance" boys.

Brahms is desperately starved for any kind of positive attention. (Or attention in general, which is exactly why he acts out. Any attention is better than no attention.)

The fact that you talk to him and care for him without even seeming to be terrified at every moment like his parents were is nothing short of a miracle in his eyes, and he would sooner die than put that in jeopardy, so any change is a threat.

This includes you wanting to see his face. While his scarring certainly isn't the reason his parents treated him the way they did (after all, their apprehension had started even before the fire), it is still a risk. He doesn't know how you'll react, and that's unacceptable.

It would take a lot of convincing. Even if you have prominent scars yourself, it wouldn't help much since he insists that it's "different" with you, whatever that means.

Patience is key here, as well as finding a balance between not pressuring him while also making it clear that you haven't changed your mind about wanting to see his face. Eventually, though, he gives in.

He's visibly shaking the first time he takes it off and you have to get him to set the mask down before he drops it. Even still, he's staring at the ground, and should you guide his face towards you, he still averts his eyes. He's immediately regretting doing this and certain that you must be looking at him in horror. He can't stand to see that.

Be gentle here. Again, this is about balance. Brahms desperately needs reassurance right now, but at the same time, don't invalidate his insecurities by telling him the scarring "isn't that bad" or that he shouldn't have been worried.

Honestly, a simple "I love you" will probably do you better than most comments about his appearance, at least for now. Unpacking his insecurities can come later, but right now, he just needs to know that you aren't leaving him.

Jason Voorhees:

Okay so here's the thing people forget about Jason: he's the only one of these last three who had an adult in his life who treated him well as a child. Does he still have insecurities? Sure he does! Is he traumatized? Boy howdy is he ever! But he's generally coming from a place of at least being able to fathom being loved in a healthy way.

As such, I think he'd have revealed his face to you the soonest of these six. He doesn't see the mask as a fundamental piece of his identity (at least, no moreso than a uniform), and if you've reached a point where he'll stay with you for extended periods of time, he probably already trusts you a considerable amount. If he had any reason to believe you'd reject him for his appearance, he wouldn't have stayed around to find out.

I honestly think he's the only one of the six who would want you to be the one to take his mask off (with his permission, of course). This is both because he's a dork and wanted to make sure this was A Special Moment, and also simply wanting the reassurance that you can back out if you change your mind.

He's so fucking cute about it, too. Because you are almost definitely shorter than him (speaking as a tall person), he sits down so that you can reach his face more easily. He seems fairly collected at a glance, but you can see him wringing his hands. It's not that he thinks you'll react badly, but...

Pretty much any positive reaction will result in a very happy Jason on your hands. Compliments will earn you a very cute blush, but if you really want to make a mess of him, just kiss him before you say anything and he will damn near pass out on the spot.

Moving forward, as long as you're somewhere hidden away, he will be very happy to oblige you if you ask him to keep his mask off for a bit. Especially if you bribe him with kisses.

Vincent Sinclair:

Okay, we all know Vincent has a really weird relationship with his face. (Thanks, Trudy.) He would definitely want you to see his face at some point, but if you don't show any indication of being interested yourself, I'm not sure he'd ever work up the nerve.

You can and should be a little more pushy with him than you'd be with the others. He isn't as delicate as he seems. (I mean he puts up with Bo ffs) Obviously don't be TOO mean about it, but firm nudges will go a long way.

There would be several times that he planned on taking his mask off but backed out at the last second, which honestly gets kind of infuriating. Eventually, he realizes he won't be able to do it while you're watching him (at least not yet) and decides to instead just take off his mask while alone in his studio and wait for you to come down.

You nearly have a heart attack when you go down and see his mask sitting on a table, Vincent himself standing rigidly and staring at the wall with his back turned to you.

You will have to approach him yourself to get him to turn around, and when he does, his eyes are locked on you in an instant, trying to gauge your reaction.

Strangely, it probably isn't a particularly emotional conversation. Between his stiffness and you having been taken entirely off-guard, nothing flows that naturally. Maybe a few comments from your end and a few laconic signs from him in response, and that's the end of it.

The emotional part comes later that evening, once you've both processed what happened. He apologizes for coming off as sharp, but you can't exactly blame him.

The mask comes off again, with more warning this time, and now there can be a proper back-and-forth.

Please touch his face, especially the scar tissue. It hasn't been touched in so long (even by himself), it has become incredibly sensitive, and he will melt immediately.

Feel free to use this knowledge in other contexts too ;)

[allwormdiet]

Sentinel 9.1

Weld's lucky he's endearing, bc oh my god the ways he manages to step in it this arc

Bro, the city has been kaiju'd to hell, everyone who could use the airports to get out has gotten out, no money is gonna be made any time soon so business isn't happening, and nobody is dumb enough to come to Brockton Bay for pleasure right now. No shit the airport is empty. I'm more surprised that you're surprised by that.

Hey Piggot, sorry your job has gotten like a million times more stressful, hope you're hanging in there

Is robbing part of an airport profitable? That doesn't sound right but I don't know enough about airports or robbery to dispute it.

Also it's interesting to see economics and class inequality come up again, especially in the context of disaster response and response to disasters. The gap between rich and poor only gets wider in times of crisis, and the gap was already pretty fucking wide.

So, finally the PRT power classifications get laid out, having been introduced in Interlude 6 and mentioned again in 8.7. And it's mentioned explicitly as something that was used to sort out villains before eventually getting applied to heroes as well. Presumably an effort to know how to respond in case a hero goes off the rails, or maybe just trying to find more justifications to use the system. Dunno. Don't think it matters a ton in the grand scheme of things, trying to shove every power into a neat labeled box seems unproductive after a certain point.

Also yeah "Brute" is a bit of an unfortunate choice, with the additional yikes factor that they were specifically using it to describe villains at first. Like oh, don't worry about dishing out the punishment, it's a Brute after all.

I think Armsmaster would sooner chew off his other arm than retire, so there's definitely a story there

Also yeah Flechette locked in, as expected

This is the only real thing I can ding Piggot's standing for, I don't think it's hard to tell that a friendly rivalry would mean nothing in this context, so the fact that she's coming down on it for even existing feels like an overreaction. Then again, she's trying to bail out a battleship with a bucket, being humorless is hardly the worst offense in a time like this

"They weren't strictly homeless because they were squatting in abandoned commercial and industrial buildings" is certainly a perspective. When they talk about the intentions of Leviathan, it almost makes me wonder if the Docks were targeted to exacerbate things, get more people pissed and hurting and desperate. Between this, being able to target cities based off of social instability and potential media coverage, and possibly trying to eat or free Noelle, that's a lot of different factors possibly urging this attack and its behavior during said attack, and it might just be all of them at once. That's fucking freaky.

Also I think there was a mild slip-up here, calling Moist a Shifter instead of, I'm assuming, a Changer.

Shaper instead of Changer again

Interesting that Hookwolf is the head of the second Empire successor group, wonder if Krieg just didn't have the drive for leadership or got killed after the Endbringer stuff (thus not showing up on the memorial). Also mildly surprised that he's got the biggest number of parahumans.

The fact that the Pure have been rejected "for the time being" raises my hackles though, I've gotta be real. If the Protectorate/PRT actually stoop low enough to cooperate with fucking Nazis I'm gonna start feeling a lot less charitable

So three Masters is Skitter, Bitch, and Regent. I would guess that Skitter is the one they're concerned about, knowing Shadow Stalker's face, and that the other two would be who they consider possible sociopaths.

"Faultline's Crew" is a terrible name honestly. Coil and Faultline both just suck at naming teams...

Also 12 is the highest number we see here, which I guess means Labyrinth is on paper the most busted cape in the city. Good for her.

That's gotta fucking suck, never having a moment away from prying eyes whenever you're in public. How much of this is Weld being a champ and how much of this is Weld being resigned to this being his life?

That. Is rough.

So, that's something interesting. There's an interesting dichotomy between how parahumans can utterly wipe the floor against regular human combatants, even facing 25-to-1 odds with no purely defensive abilities (Grue's darkness can't stop a lucky hit) and coming out of it totally clean, and now there's this concern. We know that the early independent heroes got their shit rocked, Vikare got killed by a blow to the head during a sports riot of all things, so is there an upper limit on how many humans a parahuman can face at once? Does it hinge on how many parahumans are working together to face the threat, like could Grue only take on ten guys on his own if Skitter and Gregor and Spitfire hadn't been there to watch his back?

I'm probably overthinking this, but Piggot apparently considers it worth worrying about, so I won't dismiss the topic out of hand. Parahumans seem to end up above, below, or otherwise apart from the rest of humanity, and that separation could prove troublesome.

Gotta be strange to have your boss act like your dad, but needs must when you don't even remember who you are.

Also yeah fingers crossed Piggot holds to principles here, she doesn't seem the type but I've been disappointed before

Jesus Christ that's a really long-term plan. They've been at this since what, the late 80s?

Also interesting that the terminology uses is stated in-universe to be dated

So what's the "core" Protectorate team in this context? Is that at or above the standing that Armsmaster had before he derailed his own career? Are we talking Triumvirate level, or is there a middle ground I'm not aware of?

I also really really want to know what the meme was involving Weld, that's such a specific thing to have happen

I'm shocked that this would be considered frivolous. That's the kind of opportunity you'd normally seize with both hands, the idea of waving it off seems bizarre. Do they need the Wards too much to fight homicidal supervillains and disarm megaton bombs to let them *checks notes* get more kinds of training in? That feels shortsighted.

Then again a lot of things in Brockton Bay seem shortsighted. The greatest threat against Coil's grand scheme is his own impulsiveness (although easy money says that Taylor will become his biggest problem down the line), the Empire for some reason bothered with petty street crime and protection rackets while being run by, really cannot overstate this, the CEO of a pharmaceutical corporation that was doing well enough to have an entire skyscraper, and Lung put in like 1% of the effort he could've given to running the city. Maybe nobody is coming up with five-year plans because nobody is confident they'll live another five years, or maybe it's something in the water supply.

This is funny but it's so fucking rude, oh my God

Oh Weld, Weld no, do not think about Shadow Stalker like that, she'd corrode your dick off your body with her personality.

Oh, Weld. You have put your foot in your mouth already.

This story takes a pretty dim view of humanity, honestly. Poisoning an entire apartment block with chlorine gas just so you can loot it and take over feels extreme; I'm not gonna say it could or would never happen, unfortunately people are just as capable of evil as they are of good and there's not really a limit to how far either of those things can go, but for me at least it's somewhat curious that we don't hear more about any altruists in the city outside of the Protectorate; there would have to be good Samaritans somewhere in the mix, and not even most of them would've already been stabbed or beaten to death by opportunists.

Maybe that's just the perspective the Wards are giving us, but call me crazy, I don't think Taylor is going to be any more optimistic about how things are going.

Also, Clockblocker is jumping down Weld's throat here, but he's not strictly wrong. He's coming into this fresh-faced, having not dealt with any of the aftermath of Leviathan. The strain being put on these kids is intense, not least with the losses that the Protectorate suffered and the teammates they're still grieving. Fifteen hour patrols, Jesus Christ.

Bro got owned by a thirteen-year-old.

How did he not get briefed on the dead Wards? How did he not already look them up for himself? Someone, I think multiple someones, dropped the ball there. I'm also surprised that Weld even asked the question instead of just drawing his own conclusions or looking into it when nobody could catch him being a fool.

Current Thoughts

I do not envy Weld for the situation he's being thrown into. Whatever happens in Boston is clearly a different kind of ballgame from what they're doing here in Brockton Bay, and he has not been read into it yet.

I don't envy any of the Wards, this might be the most thankless position anyone in the city might be stuck with, and none of them are even old enough to buy cigarettes or vote, but they have to fend off looters and wade through waters tainted with death and ruin for hours at a time.

How many rights do you sign away taking this job, getting your ass put on the line like this when not even the military takes kids this young into combat? I think Skitter was right, this whole arrangement blows chunks

[faketrex]

💥Spite Club, part II💥

@ashesfromashes politely asked what happens next in this story and since I wasn't planning to write any more, I very nearly just typed it out in bullet points as an addendum to the original post... but then I realized that I wanted to write this scene, actually. So! Here's a little follow-up to the Spite Club six-sentence beginning. No sentence limit on this one, I didn't even try to restrain myself.

(Part I of Spite Club is here!)

...

In hindsight, he'll concede that maybe his plans had been a little over-the-top–but holy shit, Henry's plans had been something else entirely, a whole nother fucking level.

"Extreme," Alex gets out between kisses, while Henry's lips are sliding across his chin and his hands–one on Alex's hip, one pressing against his chest–are anchoring him to the cold stone wall of the castle–they're in a literal palace in Edinburgh and a literal prince of England has Alex backed up against a wall and his lips all over him, "fuck, yes, and... um, extravagant, and... and did I say extreme? This feels pretty extreme–"

"Are you protesting," Henry murmurs against the soft skin under the angle of his jaw, "or are you trying to creatively woo me via thesaurus?"

"Shut up and kiss me," Alex retorts, gripping the backs of Henry's shoulders and tilting his face to catch his lips once more.

A minute or ten later, maybe, Henry's hips are grinding against Alex's and he's trying to convince himself to call a time-out before he embarasses himself, when the whole thing comes to a screeching halt: "I've never had someone pursue me via aggressive philanthropy," Henry says in a conversational tone, annoyingly calm even while his cheeks are red and Alex can feel his overheated skin through the fabric under his fingers.

"Pursue–what are you talking about," Alex protests, pulling back and immediately banging his head against something. It at least has the helpful effect of calming him down a bit, kind of. "Fuck, ow–what do you mean, pursuing you, I wasn't pursuing you, I'm pretty sure I was just minding my own business when you seduced me–"

One of Henry's hands comes up to smooth over the back of Alex's head. His fingers card through Alex's hair, probably messing it all up, but it makes warmth spread down Alex's neck and into his shoulders and spine; he leans back into it, Henry's hand cushioning him from the wall. Satisfaction sparkles somewhere in Alex's chest as he notices that Henry's breath is just as shaky as Alex's is.

"I'm... I'm sorry, did you say you weren't pursuing me? Haven't you–"

"Don't get me wrong," Alex interrupts, trying to avoid any potential misunderstandings when they've both been thinking with their dicks, "I'm not opposed to this, not fucking hardly. I just didn't even have a hunch that you might be into guys. Until now, I mean."

The multiple emotions flickering across Henry's face aren't all easy to identify, but Alex can definitely pick up on the last one, the one that stays put: horny confusion. Alex knows it well, today.

"You weren't flirting with me?"

"Well–"

"You tracked my charitable donations and systematically exceeded them by the smallest possible increments for six bloody months!"

"Henry–"

"If you weren't–" Henry shakes his head, almost knocking his nose against Alex's. "By all means, Alex, please do tell me: exactly what point were you trying to prove?"

"Okay," Alex says as the facts slowly line up in his brain, click-click-click like a roller-coaster reaching the top of the big hill, "first of all, I want to repeat myself: this is great, this is awesome, and I absolutely want to do it again when we're not hiding in a stairway. You're, like, offensively hot. But... yeah, my nonprofit is called Spite Club. And I... well, maybe the name kind of speaks for itself?"

Henry huffs a laugh and shakes his head again. "It most certainly does not."

"Ugh." The roller-coaster of logic processing in his brain tips over the peak as Alex finally realizes the worst, most embarrassing thing–and then that he has to admit that same thing to Henry, right now. "I was–I didn't even see it. Can you believe that? All that organizing, all that sleep deprivation, all that paperwork, and I didn't even realize that I was trying to get your attention. And somehow you managed to figure it all out, too. And–ugh," he repeats, "you're going to be right all the goddamn time, aren't you? I can fucking see that already."

The smile on Henry's face is like brilliant sunshine in the grey Scottish winter. "Oh, am I?"

"Yeah," Alex sighs. "But I guess I won't be a sore loser as long as I get to kiss you about it."

"It was all for a good cause, at any rate," Henry says, still smiling.

In Alex's opinion, truer fucking words have never been spoken.

...

(Alex is a sore loser, in fact, but Henry does kiss him anyway.)

[cdroloisms]

Hot take: c!Quackity is a character with almost painfully straightforward motivations, neuroses, ambitions, and insecurities. He is not a guy with hidden depths, he is a guy who's totally willing to bash your head in on the concrete floor of the shallow end of the swimming pool for daring to point that out.

!!! thiiiiiis tbh. guy wants power and he wants to fuck over the people that fucked him over, and said fucking him over oftentimes is Painfully just not that big of a deal and not that much about him like, at all. (see: being banned from lmanburg sucked, yeah, but also lmanburg was banning half the fucking server from their ranks as it was founded on the ideal of being the cool kids club, and his ensuing Thing With Wilbur for like literal years that spawned off of that is hard NOT to categorize as an overreaction to being told "u cant join our club." yes, technoblade setting off a couple of withers was something obviously upsetting to the lmanburgians at the time, but errr secret army made to drag people not even in your country to get them executed literally with an aesthetic theme around butchers bc the guy you hate is a pig is ... ? his deal with dream is painfully parasocial, and dream is downright charitable towards el rapids considering the debacles that were dethronement and mexican lmanburg.) there's really just not that much that's particularly nuanced or complicated imo about his whole Revenge and Power schtick and his whole wanting to be the next big fucking thing yadayadayada--and it's interesting to me bc i've seen that shallowness be used to defang him (in the idea that it implies that he can't be that dangerous) or otherwise seen people Dig Deep into his character in a similar effort to prove that he's actually-deep-down-really-good-which-is-why-he's-bad-at-being-bad, that the shallowness is symptomatic of some contradictory inner depths that he's closed himself off from, when id generally say that c!q can be pretty fucking dangerous BECAUSE of the fact that there's a lot that's pretty fucking straightforward, he's got a point he wants to fucking prove and little to nothing holding him back, especially when you're defenseless in a box at his mercy

[phatburd]

Bessières and the 600,000+ Franc Question

For @josefavomjaaga

While going over sources and material related to Jean-Baptiste Bessières, there's one thing that keeps twigging my journalist Spidey sense, and I don't like that.

Always, without fail, it's presented as a fait accompli that Bessières blew anywhere between 600,000 to one million francs on his mistress, a Paris opera dancer named Virginie. The fact he had a mistress isn't actually unusual by itself, when compared to the affairs his peers carried on. The exceptions were probably the Davouts and the Lefebvres.

Furthermore, his wife, Marie-Jeanne, discovered the affair after his death when his personal affects were returned to her from the battlefield.

The massive debts the Marshal left behind bankrupted his family, necessitating that Marie-Jeanne into selling their estate, Chateau de Grignon, to cover some of it. Napoleon also paid down some of Bessières' debts and set up a yearly pension for Marie-Jeanne her son. According to some accounts, she struggled financially for the rest of her life.

This is what I don't like about it, and why it doesn't completely pass the sniff test.

I accept that Bessières died flat broke and in debt. In debt to whom, however? Who were his creditors?

When did he meet his mistress? Was that fortune spent over a period of years, or in a fairly short time?

Even as a Marshal of France he had to pay his officers out of his own pocket, and provide his own carriages and some supplies on campaign. If he was flat broke, how did he continue to pay his officers?

Bessières was also bad with money to begin with. He was known to be generous and charitable, to the point where he'd be giving away money to anyone whom he thought was more in need than he was with it. Allegedly, Virginie was in debt herself, and he paid down all of them out of the apparent goodness of his heart.

(This raises even more questions. Was she a gold digger, was she blackmailing him, was he totally besotted with her that he didn't realize what the hell he was doing? Was he just lonely? Did they have genuine feelings for one another? There's a lot of there there, but no real answers.)

My conclusion is, no, Bessières did not spend 600,000 to one million francs on his mistress. Her presence, however, was not helpful to his situation.

He paid down Virginie's debts, however much they were. Being terrible with money, he kept putting himself in a financial hole, and then he kept digging. The upkeep on Chateau de Grignon had to be ridiculous. He still had to pay his officers and his staff. He was probably borrowing and burning through money and racking up the debt. Like that meme goes, "This is fine" while everything's burning down around him. A bit like using a credit card to pay down a credit card, as one might do in the modern parlance.

(His financial problems may have contributed to his increasing depression towards the end of his life as well. Was someone blackmailing him with his debts? Another interesting question that can never be adequately addressed.)

From what I've gathered, he hid all his problems from pretty much everyone. Even Napoleon seemed caught off guard with how bad Bessières' finances were. I argue that the 600,000 to one million francs he owed upon his death were cumulative and not to a single person as the historical narrative wants people to believe.

It seems a small thing to be annoyed with, but there seems to be more than a bit of misogyny to lay all of Bessières' troubles on a single woman as the historical narrative seems to want to do.

Another thing ... if Bessières burned a lot of his recent correspondence towards the end of his life, what exactly was the evidence Marie-Jeanne discovered as proof of the affair. How did she prove it? Did other people know about the affair and kept her in the dark? If so, who was that?

In the novel, "The Battle" by Patrick Rimbaud, a semi-fictionalized account of the Battle of Aspern-Essling, Rimbaud's characterization of Bessières has him wear two gold lockets under his Marshal's uniform. One for Marie-Jeanne, the other for Virginie. I don't know if Rimbaud based that on an actual account, or if it was something he made up. I have a lot of problems with that book though, probably because the translation seems somewhat robotic and not great. It's an interesting idea, however, and maybe worth keeping around as a headcanon.

Did Madame Bessières struggle financially for the rest of her life afterwards? Possibly. I don't have enough information to make a conclusion there, but it's not impossible. She did continue to faithfully visit his tomb for years after his death.

TL;DR Bessières died broke and in debt but it wasn't all because of his mistress. If someone else has something to the contrary, I'd love to read it.

[eldritch-spouse]

Ooh, do demons have birthdays? And if so, how would Santi like to celebrate his birthday? Would it be possible to surprise him or would he catch on?

Demons do have birthdays, most of them. Some, more remote groups of demons still use surface seasons, living rulers or years/decades to date themselves, but it's a dying trend.

Santi definitely knows his birthday, and it's a little bit hard to forget when Grimbly and some of his other acquaintances bug him about it. Mostly because Santi enjoys spending his birthday mornings and evenings with friends. He's pretty selfless about it, treating everyone to a standard meal and wanting to go watch movies or visit weird attractions, play dumb games, get drunk and bumble around- The works.

The nights of his birthdays are usually spent in Lust's clubs, giving into all his instincts, triggering heats in himself and generally being depraved with whoever of his acquaintances chooses to follow him. Sometimes Vesper, if the King's in a charitable mood.

Throughout this all, he's mostly unpreoccupied with whatever is gifted to him or not, oftentimes appreciating sillier gifts. Anything phallic or dirty in a cheap and childish way will get him to snort with laughter.

Now that he's met you though, things are different.

You can certainly catch Santi by surprise the first time. Mostly because he's busy thinking about different ways to celebrate it with you. He's not taking you to Lust with him to get fucked up, it's too dangerous, that part gets scrapped entirely.

In fact, he cancels everything he has with everyone just to be sure, figuring he might start gouging what you'd enjoy with some subtle questions. So preoccupied is Santi with this little scheme, that when his actual birthday rolls around, he's totally unprepared for anything you do.

Legitimately, if you woke him up with your lips around his cock and popped off just to say "Happy birthday, sugardick!" before getting back to work, he might tear up a little.

Yeah sure, he's given some gifts and congratulations at work after his birthday, but Santi's never really been spoiled from start to finish before.

It's very easy to pleasantly surprise him, and you'll find it funny how sappy he gets.

[sweetmage]

I was talking to my friend about DAI's treatment of Anders the other day and how it drives me INSANE. This game is SO cruel and uncharitable to him! Firstly, the only time we EVER see his manifesto in canon (as far as I know) is in the house of a crazed murderer with a pile of bodies in his basement. Every single mention is placing the blame firmly on his shoulders. I know some people subscribe to the "Varric is distancing himself from their actions for his/their safety" which I subscribe to as well simply for my own sanity, but it does sometimes become hard to swallow when it's been revealed that (assuming you romanced him) he knew where Hawke and Anders were the entire time yet he continues to let others trash Anders while he chimes, etc. And I DO understand and sympathize with Varric in a way, Kirkwall was his home and when the war broke out there was mass death and destruction and he had to leave. Anders did play a role in that, but he only sped up the process, he was not the root cause and they were heading that direction anyway. Also, he saw Meritdith's red lyrium nonsense firsthand, he saw the cruelty that preceded it, and everything she did aligned with what Anders was so concerned about. The Thedas-wide fighting is not "blondie's mess". I originally had my imported Hawke set to "supported Anders" but I had to change it to "didn't support Anders" in my next playthrough because the supportive Hawke straight up calls him a "monster" so I found the alternative to somehow be the lesser of two evils. In the end, I guess that's more accurate to my Hawke anyway because he was upset that Anders went behind his back and didn't tell him first, he would have liked the time to prepare for the aftermath and all that. But yeah, the "I don't know if there ever was an Anders" from a conflicted but still loyal Hawke is easier for me to roll my eyes and ignore than "he wasn't a hero or a monster, maybe he was both" from a supportive Hawke. But ugh, I digress... As for the other main characters, I do understand that none of them knew Anders personally, they only know him from the big action he took with the chantry and nothing more. So I think it makes sense that they don't necessarily have a favorable view of him, some of them seem rather confused if anything. Not to mention a lot of them did not personally endure the circumstances that led Anders to do what he did. But I really would have loved for there to be more NPCs that supported him, especially when DA2 introduced "The Resolutionists" who seem to align pretty damn well with Anders.

And we got a character that supported Loghain which is a 10+ year old topic but not a single one that supported Anders who seems to be a hot-button issue atm? At the very least, I wish there were at least some people that questioned the whole "Anders did this, this is all his fault" narrative (especially once DAI itself revealed that the war did not, in fact, start because of Anders) or at least SOME differing opinions on him?? As far as I can tell, the only person who has been remotely charitable to him is Solas in this conversation (the thing my friend sent me that got me talking about it):

And the only other mention I could find of people that may have supported him is in the Annexing Kirkwall wartable mission where Sebastian mentions "Anders's associates" who he believes might know where he is. But then again, this is coming from the man who wants to march on a city of innocents for to find a man who probably isn't even there so should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

FWIW I now play with the mod that makes Aiding Kirkwall trigger every time because it better aligns with my HCs for Seb and I will never in my life kill Anders so... I actually like Sebastian even though I don't agree with him most of the time. I get his immediate hurt and betrayal at the end of DA2 because he effectively lost his family again, but I'd like to after 3 whole years of being prince he'd have cooled down enough to uhhh... not march on a bunch of innocents??? Which seems very antithetical to his character and development in DA2?? Annexing Kirkwall is silly, so I do not see it. But I digress, this is an Anders post!!

Anyway, I know I am not saying anything that hasn't been said to death by this point. I love each and every DA companion in their own way, regardless of whether or not I agree with them. But I feel like this is less an issue with them and more an issue with how the writers chose to frame the narrative. I do have to wonder if the fact that so many people hated and were averse to Anders made them think that this is what the people wanted. I have quite a few issues with Anders's writing and handling in DA2 as well, don't get me wrong, but at the very least I enjoyed the ability to support him all the way through.