#('who woulda thunk??' in this case)

[ferahntics]

Sanity has left the chat.

Original under the cut:

[kisstheashes]

Finally figured out what subspace drop feels like to me and WOW a lot of those "i feel really weird :/" times after intense play with Daddy make so much more sense

very much like a uh. restless feeling for me. I feel disconnected but like. in a way that an aux cord is most of the way in the slot and needs that last little push in to actually connect. But i also feel like i cant think well, like all my thoughts are calling to me across a vast canyon. i get fussy about what i want to eat and watch and wear and everything. And then it goes untreated, and i get moody, and then I'm shut off sexually for a bit.

sometimes telling someone to be aware of something really is not enough. this has been happening a lot and i just figured it out. i wouldn't be surprised if my daddy was having dom drop too & has no idea

[johannestevans]

the thing is, i genuinely am interested in cases of criminality and various forms of antisocial behaviour, theft, violence, etc, but so much of true crime is like WHOAAAA THIS PERSON WAS SO CRAZYYYYYY HOW DID THEY GET AWAY WITH IT

and it's like. well. there was no intervention in trauma. that's it

like i'm watching this series about this woman who was a pathological liar with loads of different identities and people are like "wow she lied about having kids!!! and she then didn't spend any time with her own kids!! what a weirdo!"

and it's like. well her first baby died an accidental death

and following this, her next child was removed from her custody by the state. she then, when pregnant again, fled to ireland, took on an alternative identity, and avoided going to the hospital, had a homebirth ON HER OWN, bc she was frightened of the same thing happening

and the same thing did

and it's like. yeah that's so crazy that she's in a different country from the children she's not allowed to look after. that's so crazy she doesn't want to be in contact w her kids or living in the town where everyone knows her and thinks she's insane and evil. who woulda thunk it

like idk the fact that you've done this documentary being like "wow this horrible evil woman was so crazy and we wanted to do violence on her to punish her for being a freak and telling all these insane lies" is like. perhaps an indication of why someone like this would tell so many lies

esp when like. documentaries like this will be like. "oh her baby died... so suspicious, so concerning..." (inquest said this was an accidental death)

like. the difference between someone who tells insane lies and steals money vs someone who actually engages in violence

like this is the thing like. i understand the fear and anxiety people have about their trust being broken, but it's so bizarre whenever you watch a true crime documentary about someone who has never engaged in violence, and everyone is like "she's so scary, i'm so scared, i keep a weapon"

and it's like. ok ok so. this person who is non-violent and has never been violent, and you're talking a lot about???? carrying an axe??????? to protect yourself from her?????

who your kids all say was never anything but loving, kind, playful, and intelligent? who you exploited for cheap labour?

like. sorry but that's the flipside of "oh, this person took advantage of us because we couldn't afford official disability support"

so you took in a woman that you didn't have to pay basically very much at all, without checking out her background, to exploit HER

"well we couldn't afford childcare so we got this au pair bc we had no money"

yeah. you took in a woman you didn't have to pay tuppence to. just room and board. and then on the side she's obviously also doing a) lies to make people like her

b) doing scams to make money bc she has none

like. this documentary was produced by RTÉ and includes tiktokers as experts bc speaking of shitty things you don't pay for, the RTÉ has a budget of fuck all and they're not great lmao

but it's like. well why is no one questioning the ins and outs of how and why someone did something

where did the money go. what did she spend the money on. why do you need to imply that this insane traumatised woman who just lied and stole things was capable of violence to justify your desire for violent revenge. if lying is so bad, why can't you just be honest?

idk like. i don't particularly care about samantha cookes in herself, and i don't disbelieve that many of these scammed women feel their trust was broken and feel scared and betrayed and upset.

but why is a documentary ostensibly about this woman like, mostly about other women being upset

"i was very concerned she'd do something to a child"

you literally had her looking after your kids all the time.

"i slept with a hatchet beside my bed"

why. she was never violent. she talks about children dying because her baby dying fucked her head up. 1+1=2, lads, it's not rocket science

to me like. these forms of scamming and theft and criminality are interesting bc it's like. well how and why did someone do all that. what made them tick, what motivated this behaviour

and instead you have all these like. implications that this one mentally ill person is like. evil and scary

and a) even actual violent abusers and killers, it's more interesting and more valuable imo to understand how and why they were motivated to do violence, and the ways in which they were permitted and enabled to do so by police/the state/society

b) many of these people aren't even fucking violent. they just tell lies or steal money - and in this case, a lot of what she scammed for wasn't even money, but random bits of crap, bc it helped prop up her lies.

when your immediate reaction to the concept of a person who's like. fucked up. and compulsively, pathologically tells lies. or when your response to a woman whose baby died beside her in bed, and then wrote poetry talking about babies dying

is to immediately imply that she's the devil incarnate

like. yeah. that people dehumanise and despise this woman and revile her even before she ever did anything to anyone, and then that people feel the need to imply or threaten retributive violence against her at the first available opportunity, is in fact a contributor TO how and why she acts that way

[delkios]

so i saw u write heatwave & chase and rescue bots stuff

i dont know if u do anymore but if ya do and are okay with promts I would love a heatwave comforting chase maybe like after he got squeezed by the boa constritor?

Apologies for the taking a while to get to this. I wrote this in a notebook about a week back and almost immediately misplaced said notebook when I got home. It was, in fact, still in the bag I'd placed it in, who woulda thunk.

Title: The Little Things Fandom: Transformers: Rescue Bots Rating: G Word Count: 746 Characters: Heatwave, Chase Summary: Set after 1x06. Sometimes it's the little things you need help with.

The chief was certainly taking his sweet time with his impromptu second hike and, though he was good at hiding it from the other humans, Chase was starting to fret while pretending he wasn't fretting. He'd pick up a couple books only to put them down some time later without hardly reading a page. Boulder and Blades tried to take his mind off things with protocol quizes and mindless television respectively but Chase's attention kept wandering until they gave up. Heatwave eventually found him sitting at the Sigma's main database, adding pointless metatags to old reports.

"He's fine." Chase jolted at Heatwave's words, a testament to his state of mind. "Chief called in a minute ago, told the kids he'd be eating out tonight." Kade had cheerfully speculated they may not see him until morning. Dani and Graham seemed happy Charlie was open to dating again and Cody was trying to take advantage by weasel an extra hour on his curfew.

Chase hmmed quietly, running his hands over the console and turning back to the monitor in an attempt to appear normal. "Emergencies can happen at any time, Heatwave, I know you're aware of that. Griffon Rock has a fairly large amount of them given population size."

"So what are you worried about? Being called out while Chief is gone or that something might happen to him while you're not there?"

One of Chase's hands ran over the door panel on his arm. It was subtle, something Heatwave only noticed because he knew Chase's habits so well, the way his servos lingered over a dent that shouldn't have been there. Carefully, giving Chase ample time to notice and stop him if needed, Heatwave grabbed Chase's wrist, turning the arm so he could see the damage more clearly. It was a superficial flaw, a couple of shallow divots that crumpled the edge of the door. In most cases Heatwave wouldn't have brought it up but there had only been once incident that could've caused that. "Why did you let that snake damage you? You could've gotten out the its hold easy."

"Indeed I could have," Chase said coolly, allowing Heatwave to continue his inspection, "but doing so would have risked the creature's welfare. I did not want to kill it."

Heatwave wanted to say that Chase's safety was more important than an Earth animal's life but Chase would have argued the point and something that would easily be fixed by his self-repair wasn't worth the fight. Instead he let the arm go and started looking over Chase's frame more closely. "Any other damage?"

Chase may have gotten away with hiding his injuries from Blades but he knew better than to attempt the same with Heatwave when he already knew something was wrong. "There is nothing that my self-repair can't handle. But," he admitted somewhat reluctantly, "I think the snake may have damaged my light structure."

He stood, silently allowing the other mech to study his back. A finger traced along the struts connecting the lights to Chase's roof. "Yeah, I see it. Brackets are misaligned, the entire rack is crooked." He pushed on Chase's shoulder until he started toward the recharge berths. "Lay down, I'll straighten it out for you."

"That's not necessary," Chase protested though, tellingly, he made no move to struggle, "it'll likely be fixed in the next day or so."

"Yeah, probably. But I doubt that <i>and</i> all those dents will be fixed by the time you next patrol tomorrow. And if they're not I know it'll bother you. You're very particular about your appearance."

That got him an indignant sound. "It's unbecoming of an officer of the law to allow themself to fall into disrepair," came the tart reply. "Obviously physical appearance falls under that criteria."

"Exactly," Heatwave gave him a playful but insistent shove. "So shut up and let me do this for you."

Chase exvented, shoulders falling. "Heatwave," he started in a tone the larger mech knew all too well, his heavy engine revving in warning. Chase paused before an apology could leave his vocalizer and Heatwave hated that, of all the emotions Chase had become familiar with, guilt for a perceived inconveniencing of others into caring for him happened to be one of them. But, sensing the old argument looming at his next choice of words, Chase said, "I appreciate you looking out for me."

Rumbling in satisfaction at the change of tact, Heatwave patted Chase's back. "Any time, partner."

[lizardsfromspace]

Gamer's obsession with player counts at least made sense when discussing live service flops, but then they started talking about single player games and. Why. Who cares how many people are playing at once when there's not any "can you find someone to play with" utility to that

It really goes hand in hand with the idea that the game of the year is whatever sold the most copies, and if you dare suggest a game that sold well and has lots of players can be less than a masterpiece it's sus. Commercial success and critical success are one in the same. This entered the conversation last year when they got mad all the game of the year awards went to Baldur's Gate 3 and nobody nominated the open world Harry Potter game for anything

Of course, they also tie this into a panic about "wokeness", even though most of the live service flops failed bc, well, they were ripoffs of already popular live service games that added nothing new to the table. They're pretending flops are down to radically alienating core gamers when most of them were decried for being derivative since it turns out "get Overwatch players to play a game that's just like Overwatch" is as poor a strategy now as "get WoW players to try our WoW clone MMO" was in the 2000s

Anyway they're now obsessively comparing the player counts of Black Myth Wukong, the fastest selling game of the year, to...some indie game called Dustborn, so low-profile it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. They're sharing this as if the info that a relatively obscure indie game and the most highly promoted game of the year have vastly different player counts is a revelation of great import and not something obvious to anyone who knows anything about anything. At least they were talking about actual flops before, this is just a small game so small it doesn't have a Wikipedia page, and which I haven't heard any mention of outside of gamers mad it exists, and a handful of articles reviewing it, largely in response to them. It was a backlash in response to something few people would know about except for the backlash. Ya did it, ya cracked the case. Small thing less popular than really, really, really big thing. Who woulda thunk it

[imaginespazzi]

NIVI PAIGE 2000 POINT HOW ARE WE CELEBRATING TONIGHT OMGGG

That’s literally our 🐐🐐 right there 😭😭 so fucking proud of her, especially considering everything she’s been through! I hope she and the team are out and celebrating!

Also, did you see how Geno said he slashed his offensive playbook and just made it simpler?? Wow, it’s like you just needed Paige to basically run the offense and we’d be clicking! God, I hated the sets he’d run and how he’d force his players to run them during the game 😭😭 I fr hope he’s turned the corner and has finally woken up, but that’s the best we’ve looked

Also, did you see Azzi’s statline?? That’s a shooter through through 💀💀 she’s gonna get some boards next game tho trust I’m feeling 2 rebounds incoming and 2 steals lol

I hope they had the time of their lives last night. Between Paige getting 2K and Aubrey coming back and the team just playing so well in general, they deserved a night out fs!

Bro I saw that and I don't know if I wanna give Geno a hug or strangle him because what do you meant it's taken you *checks notes* NINETEEN GAMES* to realize what we've been yelling at your from the very beginning. Like PG Paige with a focus on getting her, Sarah or Azzi the ball works better than lineup russian roulette? WHO WOULDA THUNK IT?

Listen baby girl is a shooter and she shot it but what happened to saying she was gonna get rebounds like girl? 0? Tbf, she does box out like nobody's business and sometimes it's just a case of Sarah and Jana being taller and getting the ball first. But yeah I'd like a respectable 2 rebounds 2 assists average pretty please.

[thelastspeecher]

ANYWAYS if you wanted more Horse Boy Stan AU stuff, here you go! Stan finally getting his job as ranch hand!

——————————————————————————————

                 “Well, I’ll be!”  Stan snorted awake at the sound of a loud southern drawl.  He sat up.  Mr. and Mrs. McGucket were standing in front of his stall, looking at him.  “Ya made it through the night human, Stan!”

                 “Yeah, I- I guess I did,” Stan mumbled.  He stretched, trying to dispel aches from spending the night on the concrete floor.  Sleeping in the stall was far less comfortable as a human than as a horse.  “So does that mean…”

                 “I reckon ya got the gift under control!” Mr. McGucket said cheerfully.  Stan stood up.  He walked over to Mr. and Mrs. McGucket.  “We’ll get ya some food ‘n maybe a bit of cash ‘fore ya get back on the road.”

                 “Oh.”  Stan looked away.  “Yeah, I can- I can get going.”

                 “Mearl,” Mrs. McGucket scolded her husband.  “Give him a moment to breathe!”  She smiled at Stan.  “Take yer time.  We won’t rush ya out.”

                 “I was only jumpin’ to gettin’ ya ready to go ‘cause, well, you’ve already been here an awful long time,” Mr. McGucket said quickly.  Stan looked out the open barn door.  Red and orange leaves covered the ground outside.  A few new ones gently fell from the tree that Stan had stood under for shade during the summer.  “I mean, ya got here back in May!”

                 “Yeah,” Stan muttered.  “Who woulda thunk it’d take me months to figure this shit out?”

                 “Ya still picked it up awful fast,” Mrs. McGucket said.  “Faster ‘n we expected.”  Stan nodded silently.  Mrs. McGucket frowned.  “There’s somethin’ troublin’ ya.  What’s wrong?”

                 “I, uh…”  Stan rubbed the back of his neck.  “I need to pay you guys back.”

                 “What?” Mr. and Mrs. McGucket asked at the same time.  Stan groaned.

                 “I can’t- you guys paid thousands of dollars for me.  And then probably thousands more taking care of me.  Just so that you could teach me how to…”  Stan waved his hand vaguely.  “Control the gift or whatever.”

                 “It was worth it to help ya out,” Mrs. McGucket said.  Mr. McGucket nodded.

                 “We weren’t goin’ to let ya go out in the world unable to control what form yer in!  You’d just wind up fer sale at another auction!  A young feller like you, with his whole life in front of him, why, it’d be wrong to waste yer years as a horse.”

                 “Still.”  Stan took a deep breath.  He stared down at the floor of the stall, scattered with straw.  “Just- just tell me how much I cost in total, and I’ll- I’ll figure out a way to pay you back.”  It felt weird, insisting on paying someone anything, let alone thousands of dollars.  But the guilt was overwhelming, particularly after how close he’d gotten to the McGucket family.  “How much is it?” Stan asked.  His voice broke.

                 “Well, we’d have to sit down and do some calculations,” Mrs. McGucket said.

                 “Okay.  I can- I can muck out my stall or something while you do that.”

                 “Or…”  At the tone of Mr. McGucket’s voice, Stan looked up.  There was a twinkle in the middle-aged man’s eye.  “You could muck yer stall and all the others, while, say, earnin’ a salary.”  Stan frowned at him.

                 “What?”

                 “All our kids are either moved out or at college durin’ the school year,” Mrs. McGucket said.  “We get by hirin’ local folks to work the ranch.  But none of ‘em got the gift.  You, on the other hand, do.”

                 “What are you saying?” Stan asked.  He had a feeling, but didn’t want to say, just in case he was wrong.  Mr. McGucket beamed.

                 “How’d ya like to work off this, uh, debt of yours?” he asked.  “As a ranch hand!”  The way he said the word “debt” made it clear Mr. and Mrs. McGucket still didn’t think Stan owed them anything.

                 But I’ll still be able to pay them back.  And…it’s not like I had any real plans for where to go next.  I might as well stick around for a while until I figure that out.

                 “Deal,” Stan said firmly.  Mrs. McGucket’s smile could have lit up the whole stable.

                 “Oh, that makes us so happy to hear!  We were hopin’ we could convince ya to stay.”  She pinched Stan’s cheek.  “All of us grew awful fond of ya.  And we really would prefer a ranch hand with the gift.  It makes the horses more comfortable.”  The stallion in the stall next to Stan’s, a pinto named Beans, whinnied in agreement.  Mr. McGucket chuckled.

                 “Sounds like Beans would be sad to see ya go, too.”

                 “Yeah, I’d miss him,” Stan said.  Beans was the first one to properly befriend Stan.  The McGuckets, though generous and hospitable, took some time to warm up to him, given how he had gotten the gift by riding the youngest McGucket child without permission.  Beans, however, sought out Stan early on, often giving him horse lessons.

                 “Well, now that yer stayin’ as our farmhand, we’ll have to get ya trained up on how to ride a horse,” Mr. McGucket said with a wink.  “It’s a requirement.”  Stan shrugged.

                 “I don’t think I’ll mind being on the other side of the saddle.”  By now, Stan was an experienced steed in his horse form.

                 “Enough chattin’ in the stable,” Mrs. McGucket said.  “Let’s go in the house fer some breakfast.  We can discuss the terms of yer employment there.”

                 “Sounds good.”  Stan grabbed his blanket and pillow.  “Uh, are there any hotels around or-”

                 “You’ll be stayin’ in the house,” Mr. McGucket said.  He and his wife stood back so Stan could exit his stall.  “When we’ve hired locals to be ranch hands, they’ve stayed in the house.  So’s they can be ‘round fer emergencies.  After all, we’ve got a couple pregnant mares right now.  Ya might need to supervise a birth in the middle of the night.”

                 “Oh.  Uh…”

                 “Not on yer own, of course,” Mrs. McGucket said.  The three exited the stable and began to walk towards the farmhouse.  “You’ll start off with the simpler tasks fer the most part.”

                 “I reckon a good chunk of yer responsibilities will feel awful familiar to ya,” Mr. McGucket said with a grin just like his two youngest children’s.  “After all, ya just spent months bein’ on the receivin’ end of ‘em.”

[darkboysroadtrip]

They're now all at the breakfast place, finishing up eating - weirdly enough it is actually called 'Waffles', who woulda thunk.

"Wow, looks like one out of five people believe in you not fucking around Remus" Virgil snickers.

Remus dramatically holds his hands to his chest, "usually I would take this as a compliment! But how dare they in this case!"

"I'm surprised there was at least one person" Roman jests.

"Yeah, me too" Remus agrees.

You guys not believing he can do this, he gets even more pumped up to win that dollar.

[also, whoever requested Remus in e20 for that thing a while ago, here's a sketchy sketch of that for now! I thought it would fit here]

[stunflsk]

i don’t get fandom. i don’t have comfort characters or ship people or read fanfiction, and when i read a post someone has reblogged of this sort of nature i scroll up to see who posted it in case they’re worth unfollowing but it’s never the same person. it’s everyone. everyone but me; i am the unusual one here. who woulda thunk the blorbo website was filled with users who are into obsessing over their blorbos

[dullahandyke]

Turns out a large chunk of con staffing is standing in one place just in case someone needs you. Who woulda thunk

[queenofbaws]

oooh! May I have a (Control) Trench/Northmoor thing? Been a while and I loved what you did last time. Preferably something soft and light-hearted?

(I'm currently too clammed up and angsty and generally blah to write anything, so *someone* has to do it.) <3

catch me catching up on some not-quite-six sentence sat(or)sunday!

The interdepartmental bulletin had gone over like a lead balloon - at least in the executive suite. Its phrasing had been cheerful, almost irreverent, peppering in all the buzzwords du jour: synergy, community, appreciation, morale, describing the exercise as everything but what it actually was.

A bad idea.

Trench had seen the surveys go out - neat, painstakingly organized things they were - and for a good week after the copy machine had cooled off, each pneumatic THWOOP! of an incoming mail tube made him wince. There was no way in hell this didn't break bad, no. Way. In. Hell.

Yearbook superlatives were still yearbook superlatives by any other name; and maybe he wasn't some high-falutin' expert on the matter, but he was pretty damn sure this sort of juvenile popularity contest counted as archetypal, no matter how wild and/or wacky the categories were.

Whoever's idea this little team building exercise had been, well...he hoped they realized they were playing with fire. If not metaphorically, tempting the Oldest House with a tasty morsel of iconography, then, uh, literally. They might literally find themselves set aflame.

The thought occurred to him again when the day finally came and he found himself standing in front of the corkboard in the Executive wing, his eyes moving with slow, calculated saccades across the pages of dot-matrix printing posted up there. Perhaps, he thought - perhaps - they'd skirted the Oldest House's wrath through careful consideration (the sides of each sheet torn off perfectly at the perforations, the proper usage of an even number of Bureau-issued nondescript thumbtacks, the wise omission of any of those digital smiley faces the younger agents seemed so fond of those days), but he'd seen Broderick's name on the list. He'd seen the title he'd been awarded.

No one was out of the frying pan yet.

Like the cliche alone betrayed him, a familiar warmth filled the room. Without glancing away from the list, Trench swirled the (now steaming) coffee in his mug and took a sip. "Director," he said by way of greeting, not without the faintest upward tick to the corner of his mouth.

"Had one of these in high school, you know," Northmoor answered, all bluster and proud swagger as he joined Trench at the corkboard. "Most likely to succeed. You believe that? Like somehow, in someway, the whole graduating class was prescient. Who woulda thunk, huh? Oh, if only they knew..."

Ah. All right. There he'd been, expecting the water coolers to be bubbling over while the wallpaper glue melted off the damn drywall, and yet there was Broderick, grinning like the cock of the walk. Trench was still fully, fully of the opinion that this whole mess had been a bad idea - an awful one, really - but now he added an asterisk to that thought, a footnote down at the very bottom of his mental write-up of the scene:

The superlatives had been a bad idea.*

*But funny, too.

With his mug, he gestured towards the corkboard, offhandedly asking, "You've seen it already, then?"

"On my way in, yeah," Northmoor answered, folding his arms and squaring his shoulders in a self-assured stance as endearing as it was obnoxious. "Great way to start the day - really puts a spring in your step, doesn't it? Seeing how the rest of them think of us?"

Trench hummed a soft "Mhm" of agreement into his coffee, experience having taught him to savor it now, while he had the chance. Soon enough, he suspected, that wouldn't be the case.

"You hardly sound enthusiastic about it. Here, what'd they give you? Hmm...Zachariah...Zachari - ah, there you are!" His finger traced its way down the list from a safe distance, the paper darkening in a spot or two along the way. "Most likely to benefit from a vacation. Ha! Hey, you have to hand it to them, they're not wrong." Without waiting for a response, he continued, obviously just excited to share his own title. "Try not to look so grim about it, Deputy. I mean, it's not what I was voted, but c'mon...not everyone can be Hottest in the Bureau."

Echoing himself, Trench once more hummed in agreement. "True," he said flatly, hoping against hope there wasn't anything on his face suggesting how close he was to snickering. "You'll have to excuse my candor for saying so, but I don't think anyone here has a leg to stand on if they argue you're not the hottest one in the Bureau. That's just simple fact."

He waited. That probably made him as much a part of the problem as whoever it was who'd put the surveys out in the first place, but he did it. Trench waited until Northmoor turned to look at him, his grin sideways and shining and perfectly fetching; Trench waited for that very moment, and then, perfectly calm, fanned himself with the case file he'd been holding in his other hand.

The grin didn't drop all at once. But it dropped. Doubt flared in Broderick's eyes, then realization, then fury, then actual honest-to-god embers. The room positively wilted in the ensuing heat pouring off of him as he whirled around, shouting at some poor pencil pusher to "GET ME THE NAME OF WHATEVER CLOWN THOUGHT THIS COCKAMAMIE BULLSHIT UP," and Trench? Why, he loosened his tie. Kept fanning himself. He set his coffee mug down as its contents began to boil, and he forced himself to admit maybe there was a bit of truth behind those superlatives after all.

He probably wouldn't get a suntan from watching Broderick burst into flame upon realizing the whole Bureau had joined together to make a horrific pass at wordplay at his expense, but the ambient heat he was putting off was the closest he'd come to a tropical vacation in at least ten years, and if he was honest with himself...yeah, yeah, he was benefiting from it, all right.

[honeyvenommusic]

damn. shoutout to the homie Hansel from nightlife they posted a snippet of a little exercise they were working on production-wise the other day and it finally gave me enough inspiration to open my DAW for the first time in 7 months (granted for 5 of those months i was working out of town BUT i still brought my midi keyboard in case i got an idea i wanted to try or it would be relaxing to give it a go and take a break from work but i just couldn't-- really missed my bass though but couldn't bring it)

but i worked on that snippet the other night just kinda forcing myself into it bc days before i downloaded it because i heard something when they posted it but just the effort,,,, wasn't there so i was like ok done my part for now lol. so then i was like let's just try some vocals see what comes out we don't have to be in this session for long stop when you feel at all tired. and tbh i got tired and stopped like an hour later and thought it was probably hot garbage so ok at least we're back in it that was the goal we don't ever have to touch it again if you come back to it and realize you truly don't like it (thankfully we're long past the point of believing anything is actually garbage until we sleep and revisit lol). so didn't have high hopes and then came back yesterday because funny enough wow who woulda thunk i went back into another session from god knows when just before i was about to practice bass and was like huh... let me see what this is..... added to that song and then went to the warm up after and was like oh. so not hot garbage. it's actually pretty dope and i love what we contributed to it oh maybe i will keep going huh.

anyway all this is to say i'm making music again lol.

[inirat-andnothingmore]

THIS. but also, re:black and white readings of the loumand dynamic. While Armand doesn't have to conform to how some people think healing from csa and grooming works, and has complete autonomy over his actions and his body, and can obvs assume any role that he wants to sexually. but sometimes I'm like, maybe he's not trying to recover? At least not consciously, he's thinks everything that happened after the brothel was for his best. Him and marius were in love and everything was perfect until santino.

Like, yes him being submissive can just be his own preference and not something he's trying to reenact but doing something even though u want to (given that said something is a thing that you have a negative history with) without having dealt with absolutely any of it, (in Armand's case, without maybe even realising that there is something he needs to deal with in the first place?) can subconsciously reinforce certain ideas that you already have in your head. The continuous reinforcement (on top of his years with marius) can really only do more damage and set him in his ways. Just ask pavlov.

Im not an expert on how a character like Armand would go about healing, but I don't think abstaining from anything is the way obvs, but maybe being careful with indulgence is warranted. That being said, at the same time i should like him to whatever he wants to do now that he can.

Oh look its obscenely complicated. 😅 Who woulda thunk? not me y'all.

I love everyone in this room rn RE: the topic of Loumands Dynamic and black&white readings. Also imo, another part of what's going on is a LOT of ppl, in and out of the fandom, are just plain weird about kink and the sexuality of abuse/rape survivors, how a victim "should" behave and what makes a Good VictimTM. So they see Armand and Louis' implied sex life and lose their minds because they refuse to even try & process a survivor doing kink as anything but Reenacting His Own Abuse or wtfever.

u see it a lot in armand fans who insist that he has to exclusively dom in his relationships going forward otherwise it means he's not healing and it's like ??? that's not how it works 💀

[kenobster]

I have a really hard time maintaining my suspension of disbelief during the RotS movie for everything after the "what have I done?!??!!" line. For me, it all happens too fast; Anakin needs another hour of development or something before I can hop on board; George Lucas fails to convince me.

Thus, I've been terrified to read the RotS novelization... Because I knew, before going in, that Mattew Stover does possess the power to convince me.

And that's risky.

Because my carefully balanced cognitive dissonance between pre-O66 and post-O66 content all hinges on the fact that my suspension of disbelief will consistently fail to endure Anakin's betrayal. Not because he's a fave (despite the often unfortunate consequence of my current WIP being in his POV, Anakin actually shifts anywhere from #2 all the way down to #4 on my list of baes at any given time) but rather because he is the crux upon which the entire narrative sits. Anakin's fall to the dark side is the bridge connecting beginning to end for every single one of my favorite characters. It's the fuel behind the fictional universe's swing between hope and despair and hope. If I become convinced that Anakin is Darth Vader, then everything else will be thrown into jeopardy. The entire table will be flipped and I won't be able to control where its contents land.

Well... I finally took that risk and read the RotS novelization, and... having sobbed for the hours, I was both right and wrong. :(

On one hand, my opinions/feelings toward Anakin have not changed in the slightest. I don't find his actions any more (or less!) excusable than I already did. Which means that my other favorite characters have, thankfully, retained their status quo.

Instead, my opinion of Palpatine changed. And by changed, I mean it has sunk from thinking he's a sicko, a manipulator, and an evil Sith Lord who needs to be destroyed -- and it has plunged into an exponential spiral of revulsion, despair, and absolute loathing. In the novelization, he is the abuser of which the movie shows only glimpses. He gaslights and grooms and lovebombs. In public, he is the politician that wields his "future apprentice" as if he's parading a silent trophy wife. In private, he is the extremist who assaults Anakin with an endless barrage of radical propaganda (we're not arguing, my boy, we're just discussing). He makes the most ridiculous farfetched insinuations and then manufactures their evidence. In doing do, he ensures that Anakin feels betrayed by anyone who can provide logical (and explicitly desired!) counter arguments. Palpatine drills these accusations into Anakin's head so ruthlessly that even Anakin's loved ones become so worn out by their repetition -- and one by one, each of them (even Padme!) gives up on arguing, too. Palpatine is the mastermind behind Anakin's isolation, exhaustion, and general malaise. And there is no escape because Palpatine is also the orchestrator of Anakin's sacred Jedi duty to sit there, as regularly as possible, and "take careful note" of all of his abuser's tiniest reactions. Any attempt Anakin makes to disengage from this assignment (which happens surprisingly often) is seen by the Jedi as an immature shirking of responsibility -- which is by design. So Anakin stops attempting to disengage. In order to save himself the energy it takes to perform verbal and mental gymnastics, he (and this is explicitly stated) stops arguing with Palpatine's opinions. And eventually, because of how hypervigilant he has both become and been expected to be, Anakin is so desensitized that he's willing to agree with literally whatever Palpatine wants. Palpatine becomes his sole source of information. And honestly, it was stunning Anakin managed to resist for as long as he did.

Part II left me in a state of excruciating mental fatigue. After reading, I became emotionally exhausted and terrifyingly numb.

Part III reminded me that, for myself, these feelings (or lackthereof) would end at the same time as the book ended -- but that, for Anakin, "This is how he feels Forever." For forty years. For the rest of his life.

In the end, despite Palpatine's pretty promises of expensive speeders and entire star systems and forbidden Sith lore, Anakin gave everything he had -- and ended up with less-than-nothing in return.

Not to mention, there is the less complicated but no less crushing sadness I felt at Palpatine's merciless destruction of Obi-Wan's entire fucking family. H i s e n t i r e f a m i l y. :(

In conclusion, I may not have to mourn my love for my favorite characters, but I did not avoid the all-consuming grief that Stover convinced me to feel :(

tldr; 5/5 would read it again 😭😭😭

[cluster-b-culture-is]

hi, sorry, whats pro-endo and sysmed?

cluster-b person here. love your blog ♡

Thank you!

For an older answer to your question that talks a little more about the articles I mention later on, I urge you to read this post, although it is pretty rambly and just a tad angry/exasperated in tone. I will explain here in a way that is hopefully easier to read and more concise, along with less rambly and emotionally-driven.

Tl;dr, "pro-endo" refers to being supportive and accepting of endogenic systems, i.e., systems that did not form (exclusively) from trauma. This also (usually, and at least for us) includes supporting mixed origin systems. Sysmeds refer to system medicalists, who gatekeep systemhood, which causes damage and harm to the plural community. Pro-endo also does not mean "actively engaging in syscourse", which is a common and, frankly, exhausting (and sometimes even triggering!) misconception to deal with.

System medicalists, or sysmeds, are people who try to gatekeep systemhood and medicalize plurality, and most (if not all, as i have yet to meet or hear of a "pro-endo" sysmed) believe that systems must form from trauma, and all believe systems must be disordered. This is false, as has been shown time and time again by multiple studies (link goes to a document that contains multiple studies on plural people, both traumagenic and not; note, at least one of the links is broken, but if you search the title, the study is the very first link that comes up).

The reason this is relevant is because Mod Reef is a non-disordered endogenic collective, and feels deeply uncomfortable with sysmeds, due to some of these very common beliefs held by sysmeds:

That all endogenic and/or non-disordered systems are faking for attention

That all endogenic and/or non-disordered systems are actually traumagenic and just don't realize it

That all endogenic and/or non-disordered systems are harmful to the community

That all endogenic and/or non-disordered systems are invading disordered systems' spaces

Some combination of the above

Sysmeds have also perpetrated harassment towards endogenic and non-disordered systems in many cases, and many who don't do it themselves have justified it in their minds through one or more of the points above (or through some other thing that I may be missing). Even if they haven't, sysmeds often remain close-minded and refuse to listen to the experiences and stories of endogenic systems.

The ironic thing is, they believe that they are protecting the community, when they are very much doing the opposite. There are many horror stories out there of exclusively medicalized communities being vicious and controlling, and often ripping each other apart at the slightest sign of someone not fitting their expectations. This is blatantly dangerous and makes the community inaccessible to questioning systems or to systems who don't fit within "the box".

The term sysmed is often called transphobic, due to parallels with the term transmed. However, they describe different things, and the suffix "-med" is not exclusive to transgender medicalists. It must also be noted that sysmeds and transmeds often use similar arguments to try and make their points, although smarter people have detailed these similarities than us, and seeing as it is late, I am very tired, and this post is already long, I will not attempt to do this myself.

Note that pro-endo does not necessarily mean "actively engaging in syscourse". I myself try to avoid syscourse as much as possible, as it is entirely too exhausting and anxiety-inducing for me to handle; I simply do what I feel I need to in order to make the spaces I am in safe for me and those around me.

[echosong971]

regarding the sketch prompts: I humbly suggest Cayde holding a Smallen,,,,

baby smallen would be very confused