#and this happens like. every other page

[albertserra]

The Question of Palestine by Edward Said, 1979.

[chasing-faith-and-fate]

Moon 43

Pt 1

Moon 42 | Moon 43 P2

[gabelew]

i draw enough pre-calamity and pre-botw zora art that creating a timeline spreadsheet was necessary for my sanity (not posting full size versions bc its still very much a messy wip, just wanted to show you guys the scope)

[tacagen]

one of the things that fascinate me about thawne: yes, he CAN be normal with kids! surprisingly normal!

((not at all times, though. his mental illness still spills through and as usual he, in trying to manipulate or hurt others, spits out at them the exact stuff that would hurt him (or have in his childhood/barry's rejection interpretation) the most in the first place lmao))

but at the same time. his like second instinct when doing his bullshit is FUCK THEM (as) KIDS

(and, well. whatever this classifies as)

[epiphainie]

i genuinely do not care if the time jump between season 7 finale and season 8 premiere is like 6 months or a year or ten years or that bucktommy will have been dating for centuries in 8x04 or whatever. i dont care about in-show time, i care about the time i had them on screen and i will be pissed af if they move in together that early

[the-way-astray]

you guys know that instead of complaining that there's too much hate for a character in the main tag, you can just. make positive content and posts about that character yourself and block the negative tags right. you know this is a thing you can do. right

[fantasmadelaciudad]

every social media platform has become so unusable that i might just seriously for real throw my phone into the ocean and move into the middle of the woods.

[skunkes]

tbf better a bad wheelbarrow path than never pushing it out at all. if it works it works 👍

true!

[telesodalite]

...thinking of maybe... of maybe drawing some more scav yuri, of varying levels of cute or unhinged (or both👀?), for the love month, for my mental health or whatever, so uh, is there any particular pairing or such that anyone would wanna see? I need excuses lol

[lucky-clover-gazette]

prince's gambit highlights & annotations

chapter 1

indented text is from the book. some quotes have commentary, some do not. some comments are serious, and some are definitely not. most of them will only make sense to people who have read the series. and, like, there are spoilers. so please read the books first if you're interested!

also: part of the reason i'm doing such a close reading is to study cs pacat's style, especially in terms of how she does romance and erotica. there are "craft notes" that might seem weird, like i'm being redundant or restating something rather than analyzing, but those are more things that i want to remember/take away from the writing!

i'm going to tag these longer posts with "sam reads capri" in case anyone wants to read them all at once.

this is a google doc i wrote with overall content warnings for the captive prince series. it's not perfect, but i do think it's important to include.

Across the courtyard, a couple of alaunt hounds came bounding down the stone stairs to throw themselves ecstatically at Laurent, who indulged one of them with a rub behind the ears, causing a spasm of jealousy in the other.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

the first thing laurent does in this book is pet a dog. i love him so much.

craft-wise, this foreshadows the shift in damen’s perception of laurent that occurs throughout book 2. his/our first impression of laurent in book 1 is him cruelly demeaning damen, almost like a dog, which is something we’re meant to hate. our first impression here is him affectionately indulging actual dogs who clearly know and love him. this might make the reader ask: why do these animals love laurent, when we understand him to be cruel? is our understanding incorrect, and/or incomplete?

context: in arles, the regent closely observes laurent’s attachments. he can and will destroy anything or anyone laurent cares about. but here, outside of arles, it makes sense that laurent would immediately feel more comfortable being affectionate.

laurent’s hot girl summer has officially begun ✨

Damen craned for a glimpse but, not being an owl, saw almost nothing.

The physician rummaged in the satchel and produced one of his endless ointments.

doesn’t this become a running gag? ointment reference #1

That was really too much. ‘It’s cosmetic?’

does damen take pride in his scars, and other physical indications of his experiences? that could be an interesting parallel to the cuffs throughout the series. or maybe he just knows he’s hot either way. or doesn’t want to be fussed over.

he is technically still laurent’s property—has laurent given any kind of indication that he finds the scars unattractive? or did paschal simply make that assumption, which laurent then went along with, knowing it would annoy damen?

The physician said, ‘I was told you would be difficult. Very well. The better it heals, the less your back will trouble you with stiffness, both now and later in life, so that you will be better able to swing a sword around, killing a great many people. I was told you would be responsive to that argument.’ ‘The Prince,’ said Damen.

paschal, sighing deeply as he commits laurent’s exact words to memory: i’m about to become the first homophobe in vere because these petty gay bitches can’t keep their nonsense to themselves

actually, new thing to count—every time a minor or secondary character has a valid reason to complain about damen and laurent’s lack of professionalism in the workplace. this is lamen hr complaint #1 (paschal).

But of course. All this tender care of his back, like soothing with a kiss the reddened cheek you have slapped.

great line.

connects to an ongoing theme: niceness vs. goodness. damen “sees through” laurent’s niceness, as it conflicts with laurent’s meanness that he personally has experienced. in the same way damen has a favorable bias towards kastor and the regent, he has an automatically unfavorable bias against laurent. which is totally fair, given the events of book 1! but this is a new book, and a new stage in damen’s overall series arc.

additional theme for books 2&3: tenderness. a wound is tender; it aches in need of soothing. but what soothes an ache? tender care. if nice is good and mean is bad, where does a concept like tenderness fit in? how exactly will we go from “all this tender care of his back, like soothing with a kiss the reddened cheek you have slapped” to “i think if i gave you my heart, you would treat it tenderly”?

Damen snorted. ‘It wasn’t that bad.’

a consistent damen behavior: the refusal to admit that he is helplessness, and/or experiencing circumstances beyond his control. i would call it toxic masculinity, but i don’t think it’s meant as gender commentary—it has more to do with being a prince and a king, worthy of the throne. toxic royalty, if you will.

‘If you served the King,’ said Damen, ‘how is it you now find yourself in the Prince’s household, and not his uncle’s?’ ‘Men find themselves in the places they put themselves,’ Paschal said, closing his satchel with a snap.

laurent of vere: the people’s prince ✨

also, interesting juxtaposition with previous dialogue about damen and paschal both being at marlas, on different sides of the battle. can we truly say that damen, at age 19, had put himself there? what does that suggest about his character and his kingdom?

‘Yes, of course,’ said Damen. Then stopped. Jord didn’t notice.

he needs acting classes from laurent

Damen said, ‘If you’re not going to tip your head back, why don’t we go find Paschal? He can give you a scented ointment.’

HA. ointment reference #2.

Damen thought of the ivory and gold casing that held a creature duplicitous, self-serving and untrustworthy. ‘You’re so loyal to him. Why is that?’

really nailing in the damen perspective subversion setup. also, the irony re: aimeric's loyalty!

Damen joined the work, where he was the only man to smell, expensively, of ointments and cinnamon.

ointment reference #3. he’s expensive.

‘Aimeric’s young. He says it won’t happen again,’ said Jord. It will happen again, and once the two factions in this camp start retaliating against one another your campaign is over, he didn’t say.

i love how we finally get to see damen in his element here, after experiencing The Horrors for 13 + prologue entire chapters in book 1

‘The Captain is in one of the horse stalls, up to his waist in the stableboy,’ said Jord. ‘The Prince has been waiting for him at the barracks. Actually . . . I was told to have you fetch him.’ ‘From the stables,’ said Damen. He stared at Jord in disbelief.

laurent wastes no time before assigning damen unpleasant tasks. does this count as an hr complaint? i mean it would be damen doing the complaining, am i counting charges they have against each other? no. they’d wreck the curve.

Inside, Govart was unambiguously fucking the stableboy against the far wall.

“unambiguously”

‘The Prince stays here often?’ The castellan mistook him to mean the keep, not the rooms. ‘Not often. He and his uncle came here a great deal together, in the year or two after Marlas. As he grew older, the Prince lost his taste for the runs here. He now comes only rarely to Chastillon.’

context: >:(

Laurent said, ‘I have saved you till last.’ Damen said, ‘You owe the stableboy a copper sol.’ ‘The stableboy should learn to demand payment before he bends over.’

“honey, i’m home!” sitcom entrance

‘Your virtue’s safe. It’s just water. Probably.’

somebody’s feeling playfulllll

Laurent placed the goblet carefully back on the table, and picked up the knife. It was a sharp knife, made for cutting meat. Damen felt his pulse quicken as Laurent came forward. Only a handful of nights ago, he had watched Laurent slit a man’s throat, spilling blood as red as the silk that covered this room’s bed. He felt shock as Laurent’s fingers touched his, pressing the hilt of the knife into his hand. Laurent took hold of Damen’s wrist below the gold cuff, firmed his grip, and drew the knife forward so that it was angled towards his own stomach. The tip of the blade pressed slightly into the dark blue of his prince’s garment. ‘You heard me tell Orlant to leave,’ said Laurent. Damen felt Laurent’s grip slide down his wrist to his fingers, and tighten. Laurent said, ‘I am not going to waste time on posturing and threats. Why don’t we clear up any uncertainty about your intentions?’

laurent explaining to damen that his behavior in arles was a bit in the most insane way possible

He was so infuriatingly sure of himself, proving a point. Damen felt desire come hard upon him: not wholly a desire for violence, but a desire to drive the knife into Laurent’s composure, to force him to show something other than cool indifference.

they’re so normal and well-adjusted

He said: ‘I’m sure there are house servants still awake. How do I know you won’t scream?’ ‘Do I seem like the type to scream?’ ‘I’m not going to use the knife,’ said Damen, ‘but if you’re willing to put it in my hand, you underestimate how much I want to.’ ‘No,’ said Laurent. ‘I know exactly what it is to want to kill a man, and to wait.’

“yes, and” “yes, and” “yes, and”

Laurent said, ‘When this campaign is over, I think—if you are a man and not a worm—you will attempt to gain retribution for what has happened to you. I expect it. On that day, we roll the dice and see how they fall. Until then, you serve me. Let me therefore make one thing above all clear to you: I expect your obedience. You are under my command. If you object to what you are told to do I will hear reasoned arguments in private, but if you disobey an order once it is made, I will send you back to the flogging post.’

this is their starting place for the book! “we hate each other, we owe each other nothing, we know that we are going to eventually attempt to kill each other—but for now, we are calling a truce and working together”

also. would laurent still love damen if he was a worm 🥺

Another pause, and then Laurent indicated once again to the chair. This time Damen followed his prompt and sat. Laurent took the chair opposite. Between them, unfurled on the table, was all the intricate detail of the map. ‘You said you knew the territory,’ Laurent said.

this is part of why i love damen and laurent so much as a pairing. they have interests and skills in common, and they make a genuinely good team. they’re intellectually compatible, in addition to sexually and romantically compatible.

[cedarboots]

reading little, big again and it is tough to make it through a book when you keep having to put it down to process the most beautifully written sentence you've ever read

[novelconcepts]

Moseying along in book 2 of The Expanse, and I cannot stress enough how much I am digging this series—except. There are Marines on Mars. We have fancy spaceship-travel shenanigans. There’s a body horror god molecule having its merry way with Venus. We are in Space, Motherfuckers. Why have I not met a single queer person yet????

[rin-rin-kururin]

other than that... i'm tired. prepare for a long rant in the tags if you decide to read more

[greenerteacups]

Which is your favourite and least favourite harry potter book?

while i think Prisoner of Azkaban is the best on a technical level, my favorite is Goblet of Fire. because it's a fucking blockbuster. like, this is a book that is firing on all cylinders, trying to do a million billion things at once, and it executes the fuck out of basically everything. besides the fact that it dives deeper into character dynamics than any previous book (ron and harry! hermione and ron! hermione and krum! sirius and harry! ron and percy! etc!!), it's a massive expansion of the universe: it opens up whole new wizarding hemispheres, new countries, new cultures, TONS of new characters, the Quidditch World Cup, the Triwizard Tournament, the Ministry of Magic's bureaucratic politics, the Old Guard death eaters, and the beginning of the Order of the Phoenix. it gives us Fleur and Krum and Mad-Eye Moody and Cho and Cedric and Charlie Weasley, and the first taste of Snape's backstory, not to mention pensieves and mermaids and fucking dragons, like sorry, are you seeing this shit??

and then, finally, it gives us the beginning of the second wizarding war. it gives us the graveyard scene and Cedric Diggory's sacrifice, one of the best and most important moments in any book ever, because it's the whole story in a nutshell, and it's also the moment that the plot starts. Goblet is the crux of the entire series, and it nails almost everything. (the exception being the Moody plot twist, which... I did not love, but like: must a conclusion be "good"? is it not simply enough for a story to plow headfirst off the rails in a wildly entertaining direction, and then end? i think it is.)

so those are what I see as the Objective Goods of Goblet. my Subjective Goods are: i love a tournament arc, i love a GAME, i love a set of rules and rituals and ceremonies and opportunities to demonstrate character through contrasting behavior in response to pre-ordained challenges and rule sets. i love you Yule Ball, i love you prom arc, i love you dressing characters up in silly little outfits and making them take each other on dates, i love you teenage drama and misunderstandings and jealousy and teenybopper romantic subplots. i love you goblet of fire.

[another-dra-anew]

...Hm.

[tekka-dan]

I got high for the first time in my life on March 8th, 2025.

I went out with my little brother for this week long event that happens in our city every year called SXSW. My brother and I are basically the same person in different bodies. We even subconsciously wore the exact same outfit and we haven’t seen or hung out with one another for weeks. Lately, I’ve been matching clothes with my friends and I don’t even talk to them about our outfits beforehand (it’s really cool).

Anyway, we spent the entire night just walking around downtime. His friends met up with us and while we were walking around, we came across a THC / Weed shop. My brother wanted to check it out and his friends followed suit. My life forever changed after that moment.

I ended up drinking two cups of THC margarita. Apparently it didn’t have alcohol in it at all.

I didn’t feel the effects of anything until 2 hours later.

While sitting in a rooftop bar, I suddenly felt like I could hear EVERYTHING miles away and I could not only feel but HEAR my own heartbeat. I became extremely aware of everything happening around me and I went into this hyper focused mindset.

Here’s what I can remember about being high:

- I have a deep ingrained sense of awareness and stability within myself because while I didn’t feel like I was in control of anything, not even myself, I knew everything I was doing and I was very aware of everything happening—it just literally felt like I was watching someone else and not the one doing anything.

- My body was trying to have a panic attack but my brain was not letting it. I sat there feeling like I was losing control while being in full control. The best way I can describe this situation is that I remember feeling like I was looking at myself talk while I was talking. It felt like I was trapped behind a glass wall and then there was a “me” that was siting on the other side of the glass and the me behind the glass was freaking out, really nervous and even losing control but the me on the other side of the glass had their back to that version of me and just stayed still, only saying “I got this. We’re fine.” It literally felt like I was incapable of losing control.

- I was able to read while barely glancing at whatever I was reading. I was processing things so quickly that I was unaware that I was talking really fast (which I do sometimes but it’s a nervous tick and I stutter).

- I zoned out literally as soon as I left that bar. I somehow knew where I parked and where to go but mentally I was literally not in my body anymore, I was just moving. This was proven by the fact my brother’s friends were speaking to me and having full blown conversations and I was responding and I didn’t even know what they were saying, but I was holding conversations.

- I kept having to repeat to myself that I WAS awake. Somewhere between the effects kicking in, I started having a scary realization that everything felt like a dream. The atmosphere, the music, the events—all of it. It felt like I was unable to tell the difference between reality and a dream. It started to make me scared out of my mind because I am very aware that what happens in my dreams the consequences do not matter. However, with that sense of stability fading while high, I literally had to force myself to stay present because I was starting to think I was dreaming.

- I’m way more intelligent while high apparently. I struggle with math, I’ve never been good at it. However while high, I was able to calculate my bill and tip without needing a calculator.

- my vision was heightened. I was able to read small fine print in the details section of our menu without my glasses on and without needing to squint. My brother and his friends said they couldn’t see those words even with the menu beneath their noses. I still can’t understand how this was possible for me — even the waiter was taken aback when they showed him that.

All in all — it wasn’t the best experience for me and I don’t think I ever want to do it again, lol. The reason I’ve never gotten high before is because I worked as a veterinary tech and we were drug tested randomly. I started that career when I was only 16 and I just never wanted to get caught up over something dumb like being busted for drugs, so I just stayed clean.

I asked my brother (27) how he felt getting his big sister (28) high for the first time in her life. He said it was truly an honor for him to be able to be there with me for that experience. He said the only thing he wish he’d done different was not getting another drink because he got a little more drunk than he should’ve but he did have to be the one to drive us home because I couldn’t make sense of going right instead of left while driving (I couldn’t trust my perception or processing of things once I got behind the wheel).

Anyway, I wanted to share my experience here because it was surreal.

TL:DR; I got high as a kite for the first time in my 28 years of life with my little brother while out on the town with his ragtag group of friends. It was fun but I wouldn’t do it again, lol.