#always good to have those pulled

[navree]

Incorrect, the fact that Biden has dropped out and a candidate with history of supporting medicare for all and being more receptive to a ceasefire in the I/P conflict has made me go from "I cannot morally support the Democratic nominee" to "I am voting for the Democratic nominee despite the fact she isn't perfect in every respect." I'm really happy this played out. The Dems for the most part abandoned the old Obama platform and it feels like its possible an actual progressive agenda could come to pass in my lifetime.

Kamala 2024!

If you weren't going to vote Democratic in this election before Biden dropped out you're a dorkass loser who does not care about any of the issues you're yammering about here and also a fundamentally bad person, and I hope you get run over by a bus.

But you got one thing right in all of this gibberish, Kamala 2024.

[lesbiannieism]

…i’ll be so honest i’m kinda hoping for a red bull 1-2 this weekend

[cheriafreya]

I can't believe I'm gonna say this but... I'm starting to consider taking a break from Genshin and just go play Wuwa instead for once 😬

[sodapopcurtis-dx-asks]

The bell rings, and in walks Ponyboy! His eyes shift around before he sneaks over to Steve.

"Heard you got 'lotta weed,"

He flashes him a toothy grin-- "How'd you feel 'bout sharin' some?"

“Whassa—” Steve looked around, before catching his eye on Ponyboy.

“How the hell did you get away from Soda?” Steve squinted at him.

“Actually, better question, how do you KNOW THAT?” He pointed a finger at him, eyebrows raised and accusatory as he stared at Ponyboy in front of him.

Ponyboy glanced back outside before smiling big at Steve and leaning over the counter. “Soda's got a big mouth, and he's busy with that beaten daddy outside.”

“That so?” Steve scoffed, leaning over the counter and sneering at Ponyboy. “I take it he gave you a good drug lecture, then? "Be careful, play it safe, don't stay around the dealers"?”

Ponyboy's cheeks went pink with embarrassment. “Awh, he told you all that? I promise Mark really ain't do nothing... as far as I'm aware!” He frowned, not wanting to swear down on anything.

Steve laughed, shaking his head. “He ain't tell me nothin'. I just know. You should be knowin' better than asking something like that, though.”

Ponyboy tried going behind the counter, before getting pushed back by a kick from Steve. He yelped, and the two went at it for a good second.

“Hey! I ain't gonna do nothing, just let me back here!”

“Hell no! You sneaky sonuva bitch, you're gonna try to get some!”

“I ain't gonna!”

The two pushed and shoved at each other, mostly playfully, but also with their typical hatred for each other. There was some hollering in between their hits before—

“STEVE RANDLE AND PONYBOY CURTIS!”

They both stopped. Soda had been standing at the door for a few seconds, a cop was outside not too far away talking to somebody.

The dad from earlier was conscious now, speaking to the pig. Soda was flush in the face with anxiety, a oil rag in hand that was stained with fresh blood.

The two troublemakers split apart, sitting down on the floor and looking away from each other like two bad little kids.

“You two done fighting yet?!”

They both nodded and "Yes'ir"d Soda, heads down and arms crossed.

“Good. Go-lly, I can't leave you two alone for two damn seconds...” Soda went on, before making his own way behind the counter and going back into the storage room to grab the kids.

He talked sweet to the babies, making sure they were okay and had no bruises or injuries of their own before giving them off to some social worker outside. And after that, he spun back around on his heel to glare at both Steve and Pony.

“Y'done?” Steve mumbled.

Soda sighed. “Yeah. I'm done. Got it all covered.” He paused, staring at the two on the floor for a second. ”Y'need to hide that better. There's cops outside, for pete's sake.”

Steve had the bag in his hand from trying to keep it away from Ponyboy. He quickly shoved it somewhere else under the shelves behind the counter.

[frameconfessions]

I hope the protoframes remain relevant even after this story arc for the Drifter concludes, but I also recognize how complicated things would get with how many characters they could keep trying to make stay relevant, leading to a Konoha 13 Naruto type situation where we have too many relevant characters from Umbra & Ordis all the way to Kaya Velasco.

.

[queenlucythevaliant]

make your choice

Digory didn’t think much on making choices. The whole world would be over when his mother died anyhow.

Of course, this didn’t keep him from being curious or adventurous. It was exciting to meet new people, exciting to go exploring and to speculate about whatever mischief his Uncle Andrew was up to. Being a lively young boy was perhaps the best distraction from being a boy about to lose his mother.

Going after Polly was so obviously right that it might as well not have been a choice at all. What else could he do? It was easy to be righteous in the face of an evil old magician who said things like "Ours is a high and lonely destiny."

Yet once they were there in that rich, in-between place, with all the worlds there were splayed out before them— ((Make your choice, adventurous stranger)) Well. What sort of lively young boy would he be if he turned back now?

Digory could feel the bell’s magic ((strike the bell and bide the danger)) beginning to work on him. There was no use in resisting. He felt tendrils of magic sinking deep beneath his skin, laying claim to any free will he’d ever had. He said as much to Polly, but she wasn’t listening.

Polly said ((or wonder till it drives you mad)) that he looked exactly like his uncle when he said that.

Jadis’s whole world had ended. Everyone had died, and she’d just gone to sleep. She might have stayed sleeping forever if he hadn’t woken her. Sitting outside his mother’s sickroom, Digory wondered ((what would have followed if you had)) if that was really so shocking. Hadn’t he been preparing for just such an end? Were Charn and Mabel Kirke so different?

Narnia was not an end. It was a beginning.

And face to face with the Lion, Digory was forced to admit that the bell had not been magic. Nothing had caused him to strike it. Make your choice, the writing had said. Digory had chosen. 

I’ve spoiled everything. There’s no chance of getting anything for mother now.

The enormous Lion asked him, "Son of Adam, are you ready to undo the wrong that you have done?" and Digory sputtered his maybes.

"I asked, are you ready?" the Lion said again.

At that very moment, an ultimatum flashed through Digory’s mind. If I salvage your beginning, will you prevent my end? If make amends, will you save my mother? He thought of refusing, of holding his choice hostage until his future was secure. Could the Lion be bargained with? Could Digory twist his arm, as he'd twisted Polly's?

But what Digory said was, "Yes."

Jadis conjured such lovely visions of the future. His mother's face would lose its gray sheen and she would say, Why, I'm beginning to feel stronger. There would be no more morphia, no more of the terrible drawn look about her when she slept. She would rise from her sickbed, vibrant and whole ((Come in by the gold gates or not at all)) rise and walk to the door and fling it open and then Digory would go running into her arms. 

He gasped as though he'd been mortally wounded. Perhaps he had been in a way. After all, had the gate not said ((take my fruit for others or forbear))? 

Jadis ((for those who steal and those who climb my wall)) called Digory the Lion's slave. Years later, he would think back over all that those words implied. The Witch seemed to think that Digory had no will, if he was willing to subordinate himself to Aslan.

But was it not Aslan who made Digory realize his own culpability ((shall find their heart's desire and find despair)), and in the same breath gave him a way to repair it? Had not Aslan given his will back to him?

And at the foot of the tree, Aslan gave Digory his future back as well. 

He was old, but now he is young again, watching as the stars fall headlong across the black of the world-that-was. The world is ending at last, but Digory does not fear such things any longer.

[loderlied]

sharing some thoughts about deactivating here because it’s been difficult pondering idk.

[undermine-the-instinct]

FIRST TEN PULL OF 2025 LETS GOOOOOOOOOO

[crossbackpoke-check]

it’s all the rest of what i want with you

connor dewar/brandon duhaime :: 8k

Summary:

“Brandon,” Connor says with a sigh. “There’s no baby in there.”

“Not yet,” Brandon says. Connor feels his stomach twist, almost like what he would imagine a baby kicking to feel like.

in these trying times of dewvorce, may i offer you 8k of pwp inspired by @stillfertile’s wonderful art which i had. several breakdowns about 🫶 anyway please enjoy!!!

[vaguely-concerned]

I've been giving some thought to why the device of colt's inner dialogue literally being written out across the environment works so well for me, and indeed why the mechanic of the heart in dishonored gives me the same satisfaction and seems to lend so much life and depth to the setting and characters when consulted. and I just had a flash of insight that duh. it's because it's written and structured like poetry haha. both these narrative devices have elements of poetry to them. shorter and more deliberate, more evocative, densely packed with meaning pieces of language, to contrast with the dialogue writing and all the various voices of the in-universe documents you find. turn the heart on a person in dishonored and you learn some vivid poignant details about them that shape your understanding of and feelings towards them. look at colt's train of thought scrawled all over the island, and you learn stuff both about the island and most importantly about him and his emotional landscape. and the effects of that are manifold.

for one it's able to deliver such subtlety of characterization when compared to the spoken lines. when we get to hear colt speak out loud, his register is mostly colloquial and straightforward, a little awkward/bumbling sometimes, even, when he's in situations he's not comfortable with (he's not a man for speeches <3). he's eloquent and incredibly funny in an off-handed blunt sort of way, with some growing palpable eccentricity thrown in as the loops go on (affectionate). however his internal dialogue (which as I understand really is kind of a dialogue and not a monologue except well. in the inevitable sense, because in the game files there are several distinct 'voices' from different loop versions of colt in there with their own affects) lends us insight into a different expressive side to him: his inner voice is sharp and consise, guarded, sardonic, sometimes verges on manic, shows off depths of insight and aptness of analysis of the people around him that belie his 'but just shooting a bunch of people is so FUN tho :'(' surface funnyman vibe. it's frequently more overtly threatening bordering on ominous than his light-hearted game of escalating death threats with julianna (awww bonding time <3<3<3). most of all it goes to some much darker emotional places than the stuff he seems willing to speak out loud. (there's one on fristad rock on the way to fia's bunker that seems to be about being stuck in substance abuse that has me like '...oh colt' every time.) it has the same lack of formality as his speaking voice -- all lower case, little punctuation, mostly very snappy and to the point language/vocabulary. some of it is observations like someone idly talking to themselves or quips there's no one else to respond to, some is pragmatic tactical consideration, some is pep talk, another genre (the most violent ones, often) read kind of like intrusive thoughts. you'd barely know what he really thinks of these people if not for this device.

ALSO it tells us without having to tell us that colt's amnesia isn't quite as complete as it first seems; he does have these fleeting impressions, emotional impulses and half-rememberances that linger on in the back of his mind, even if he doesn't know his own damn name right now haha. muscle memory of the soul to match the muscle memory of the trigger finger, if you will. also also. the diegetic feeling between the player and him in returning to some text you've seen before with new context and suddenly having that '...ah. so that's what that's about'. we both clearly see what you're thinking but we don't know why or what it means and you wont tell us (you won't tell yourself). sooooo crunchy. many thinky thoughts in my head. time making a stranger of yourself but that stranger keeps hanging out in your living room providing running commentary. damn.

and in some ways I think the twist on the heart concept from dishonored in having the poetry (AND genuinely useful gameplay tips! multifunctional. elegant. a very pleasing font too) be an inextricable part of the art direction and field of vision the whole way through that deathloop is pulling is vastly even more original, effective and fascinating, I've never seen a game quite do this before. it changes something to have these words actually visually, physically placed and embedded into the environment itself. we not only see snatches of what colt is thinking, we crucially see where he's thinking it, at what pace, where he's placing the inner landscape in the outer landscape and perhaps what he associates with each other -- we can use where and when the text pops up as additional context to read into the meaning of the words themselves. some text even gets some animation, flickers in a specific way to suggest excitement/agitation/intensity or anxiety!!! a whole game kinetic typography experience that is functional and stylish, who else is doing it like this!!

my favourite version of this may (predictably) be the remembered homoerotic guitar lesson in frank's club -- the way it unfolds through the room and into the next corridor unhurriedly, dwellingly, which gives it a dreamy, almost absent-minded feeling. the sense of being lost in a memory, how the way you traverse the room decides the pacing of what you're reading. how big and unavoidable the text is on the screen, telling you how much the recollection is occupying colt's mind in that moment. even if you ignore it and look around at other things, it stays there hovering in your peripheral vision. idk how they did this with just text, but it feels breathy and intimate in how it unfolds. taken together with all the other thoughts/messages scattered around the club -- angry, resentful, longing, wistful, fretful, sad, bitter, whatever unparalleled shrimp emotion just ...frank... hovering over where the guy himself is on the other side of a wall evokes in me -- it builds such an emotionally rich impression of what's gone down here and how colt feels about this place (and guy), even though we've barely learned a clear detail of the actual circumstances of the relationship or what lead to the break, and had nary a spoken voice line from colt to guide us. we don't get to know exactly what happened, but we sure do get to know how colt feels about it (a lot of very complicated things all at the same time, as it turns out). which again shows that emotional memory lingers longer and looms larger than factual memory here. a whole-level poem greater than the sum of its parts!! and so much of the game's narrative works like that and I LOVE it I love it so much I want to eat it why isn't everyone talking about this all the time now this is some fucking design!!!!!!!!!

like how often in a game do you literally walk through a poem and thus become part of how it's expressed???? (even more so, when did you last walk through a tender poem that's barely even subtextually about learning to give a gay handjob (to join the bitter breakup poem about even more barely subtextual gay blowjobs) lmao I love this game)? again, I've never seen a game do something quite this before, certainly not so skillfully nor consistently. I'm studying it with my little magnifying glass and a heart full of wonder

[seilon]

love when this is referred to as the gifted kid website. shockingly my mental disorders made me mentally disordered and school never really vibed with that so. couldn’t be me

[adore-gregor]

i'm back on tumblr (again)

[doomdoomofdoom]

I'm legally not allowed to interact much with the Hunger Games fandom because I'm an american studies major in my 20s and would disrupt the fragile ecosystem of teenagers engaging with fictional depictions of fascist structures and just war theory.

The other reason is that I would have to immediately combust from Hypocrite Disease because I had self-insert Hunger Games OCs and engaged in shipping discourse, too. That's part of how we engage with depictions of fascist structures and just war theory as teenagers, and enabling that is part of what makes the franchise so special.

This reduces my natural habitat to 2-hour video essays about the cultural geography of Panem (x) and a few select posts, but that's a price I'm willing to pay for conservation.

[janmikalen]

giggling kicking my feet thinking about my silly guy terrified in pain being held at gunpoint

[trilliath]

Incredibly funny when two of your background ensemble cast OCs decide to let you know that they are somewhat surprisingly quite heterosexual, and in fact have staggeringly intense chemistry with one another - in what is an entirely non-toxic but slightly complicated pining-heavy mentor/mentee fem!dom H/C thing about to happen if you would just tilt the POV character's attention slightly to the left.