#but sometimes... cheating is good

[zaritarazi]

okay listen i was talking to ki about constantine in legends and we ended up on "zari and behrad and astra but in constantine" and let me tell you. this idea is delicious

astra kind of already has a set plot we can come back to her if we'd like bc i, tumblr user zaritarazi, would, surprisingly, love to talk about the idea of zari & behrad tarazi and how they would fit and act in this universe instead of the legends one

now you're going to have to walk with me a bit because i am, for all intents and purposes, kind of hot glueing parts of dc magic canon together- in fairness, this is also what dc comics does and i am objectively more valid- so we have black adam who never actually shows up in this imagined second? third? season of nbc's constantine, he's allowed to be bi in this one, but basically zari and behrad are minor characters that flit in and out to be like hey. just a reminder there's way bigger things out there and some of them, at some point, will be either your fault or your problem. also did you kill doctor fate you stupid fuck

so like in my head zari is a mix of comics canon, archeology adjacent, very heavily zari tarazi, outside presentation of a very bubbly socialite (THIS IS A TRICK) actual personality of like, extraordinarily clever, too sharp-witted, cares about humanity, but also feels very detached from it by this point. and she's aware of that and she's not thrilled about it. she and john have a deeply antagonistic relationship, and she's right, they flirt constantly and only through negging.

essentially both consider the other a con-person and a professional liar and King or Queen Not to Be Trusted, any time john's flirting gets too friendly zari threatens to tell teth-adam and any time she does that john asks her why he's never actually around (this is a complicated plot point i haven't decided on. i'm writing an imaginary third? season of a show that didn't get a second. bear with me)

actually everyone shut up i'm a genius bc felix faust is a big antagonizer of black adam and john constantine, had a super gross plot when he brought adrianna back to life that we will not be using, but he is a common enemy even though john kills him once or twice a season. bringing the tarazis in as signifiers of the far-off black adam circling in the distance bc john can't kill faust well enough is like... kind of brilliant of me, actually,

also zari is very very good at getting rare items, either because she's rich or very charming or both. i don't think she's a celebrity in this one, i think the tarazis are just rich, not sure how or why, roll with it, but she's a very good finder of things, and also she can still talk to dragons. this is mentioned once and never explained

okay this post went on way longer for zari than i expected- i'm sure you knew this would be the case but you know me better than i know myself- behrad but in nbc's constantine, he's allowed to be bi in this one, post to follow at some point soon

[aardvaark]

the leverage team would have had a games night… once. everyone cheated so much and in such increasingly extreme ways that all mentions of monopoly are banned in their headquarters (this makes talking about marks who monopolize the market very confusing)

[joshdonnas]

josh and donna + walk and talk throughout the seasons

season 3

[chalkrub]

return of mendel

[notfeelingthyaster]

a weird part of the fandom tries to make louis the victim of both armand and lestat, as if they aren't all mutually toxic and louis didn't spend years playing hot and cold in both of his relationships

[annabelle--cane]

say it with me everybody: personal health is completely immaterial to morality, including mental health. leading a mentally unhealthy lifestyle (or what you perceive as a mentally unhealthy lifestyle) does not a bad person make. no one has to socialize, exercise, have healthy coping mechanisms, or lead (what you perceive as) a fulfilling life with fulfilling hobbies in the same way that no one has to go to the doctor to get a broken bone reset. both of those types of management of personal health are likely to be beneficial to the individual, but they are in no way moral requirements or debts owed to society. they do not actually say anything about a person's principles, personality, or actions towards others. additionally, people know themselves and their own situations better than you do. maybe a person judges that the physical and financial toll of going to the doctor outweigh the benefit of getting their bone reset, maybe a person just does not have the capacity to develop healthy coping mechanisms at this point in their life, and yes, maybe a person feels like they are totally fulfilled by "media based" hobbies alone and would feel no difference in their life if they picked up a loom. just like. let people be sick without accusing them of being representative of the lazy, degenerated state of modern society.

[monstermoviedean]

love that we're all like yeah dean is mr. monogamy

[welcometogrouchland]

I'm going to be so real I do not understand tim & steph shippers who feel that Steph dating Tim again would save her character. You can make an argument that giving Tim a more compelling love interest would be beneficial for him! And you can at least make an argument that the fujo mischaracterization of Steph would stop. However she'd still, inevitably, be treated as a prop character/extension for someone more popular 😭 it also wouldn't make her appear in more books! Tim doesn't have many frequent appearances at the moment either! You can just say you like the couple and want them back together without acting like you have some kind of moral stance

[who-ah]

haha i think karmor and albus hold eye contests except its an unspoken thing and its only with albus’ eye chest thing

[faithandfairies]

Re-visiting Antoinette

So, I've been re-watching the show and it has me coming back to Antoinette. Which, I think I always come back to Antoinette because she is important, just not in the way a lot of people think.

The thing is, Louis and Lestat don't communicate properly so you have to look at their actions to figure out where they are at mentally and emotionally at any given time. And painting a more complete picture of Lestat's actions in relation to Antoinette and her purpose according to Lestat does that.

You see, I think by the time Antoinette enters, Lestat feels like he is losing Louis. Their relationship is going down the drain because they're not communicating properly and on top of that Louis isn't feeding well so he doesn't have energy for the parts of their relationship that do work. Louis' lack of proper feeding though is tied to his feelings, his humanity. And his shame of what he is, for which Lestat partly blames himself because of how he handled Louis' turning and their relationship.

And so Lestat starts trying to re-write history to get Louis back. Fix the mistakes he made in the past that Louis holds against him to get Louis back in the present but also as a way to remind Louis of the good times. And he uses Antoinette to do that.

As such Lestat casts Antoinette in the role of Ernesto. Because that's where everything started to go wrong in their relationship. Louis being disgusted with how and why Lestat kills. In Louis' opinion Lestat should never have killed Ernesto. At the very least not in the way he did.

Just like Ernesto Antoinette is a musician. And just like with Ernesto as she leaves Lestat is looking at her like he wants to drain her but he doesn't at that point even though I believe he wants to.

He then also uses Antoinette to remind Louis of his courting period with him. I think Lestat's intention with Antoinette is for Louis to miss him during that two week period as he lavishes all of his attention on someone other than Louis only to then try to seduce him at the end of it, recreating the first time he and Louis slept together after their two week courting period with Antoinette in the role of Lily. Also using the fact that Louis is hungry to try to get him to feed.

I genuinely think Lestat would have killed Antoinette if his plan had worked here. Drained her with Louis most likely. Ernesto's death, but with different circumstances. No humiliation, no torture, just pleasure and lulling her into a false sense of security so Louis can feed. Trying to listen to the objections Louis had to the way Lestat killed. Because the killing itself is non-negotiable, but the circumstances can be negotiated. Lestat is willing to hunt for Louis, and in whatever way that will make it more likely that Louis will feed human.

Lestat's genuinely trying to find viable alternatives for Louis to feed on. Because Louis isn't opposed to feeding on animals. But that isn't a sufficient diet. So what is the human equivalent of an animal to Louis? Louis is opposed to feeding on black people because he considers them his people. Louis is also gay, attracted to his own sex, so all men might be off the table. So I think Lestat goes, would white women suffice? Would that be impersonal enough? Or do you need it to be more personal? Would a white woman that looks like me make you angry enough to feed if you can direct your anger at her? Since male criminals don't do the trick? Or do you need variety of the sexual sort? Do you need to have sex that then devolves into you draining your victim in the heat of the moment?

And I mean, Lestat hit the nail on the head too, you've got to give him that. He knows Louis very well. Because Louis in Paris feeds on humans when he hallucinates his victims as Lestat and directs his anger at them. And in San Francisco Louis sleeps with his victims then drains them. They need so much therapy by the way.

But then here that doesn't work. Louis leaves to feed on animals instead of joining Lestat and Antoinette. So Lestat's like okay, I've got to go back even further. Fix every mistake I've ever made with Louis. Not kill Lily, not turn Louis two weeks into knowing him and use Antoinette to represent that. And so he continues to cast Antoinette in the role of Lily and adds Louis-stand-in and doesn't kill or turn Antoinette. Instead he continues a relationship with her as a human.

But I think Lestat's also realizing it won't make a difference, even if he has learned from his mistakes. I think his relationship with her devolves into a form of self-flagellation through her then. Because he can't turn back time and not turn Louis after only two weeks of knowing him, ease him into things so that Louis doesn't hate Lestat and himself for what they both are. So that he doesn't want to hurt himself and Lestat for what they both are.

I think Antoinette also ended up becoming a way to bridge the gap between Lestat's vampirism and his humanity to save his relationship with Louis when Louis became hard to reach, because Lestat stopped being able to read Louis' mind to understand him and because they didn't communicate well. And because Lestat kept making missteps that created an increasingly larger chasm between them.

Because that's one of the problems, although Lestat understood where Louis thought he went wrong enough to try to fix it I don't think Lestat fully understood why Louis thought certain decisions Lestat made were wrong, why Louis saw things the way he did. Lestat acts on instinct a lot, having been a vampire for as long as he's been by the time he meets Louis and having embraced it as he has. He just doesn't think about things the same way Louis does or at all.

He left Antoinette human as long as he did because it was beneficial to him, because it meant she could help him understand Louis' human side, to be a confidante and a sounding board, but it also genuinely offered a layer of protection to him and Louis for him to be seen with a woman when he and Louis were suspected to be lovers by the town.

Until of course it was more beneficial to have her as a vampire. And of course her love becomes a stand-in for the love he wishes he got from Louis, that he feels he could have gotten from Louis if he'd handled things differently with him.

The thing is, just like everything else in Lestat's mind his involvement with Antoinette is for Louis. It's just that Lestat being Lestat everything he does or thinks he does for Louis alone he's usually also doing for himself.

[gerbiloftriumph]

...evil.

For the absolutely amazing arc that's happening over at @threeadventurers by @captmickey

[ros-sauce]

People are using chatgpt to answer the discussion questions in business communications you people cannot do anything

[riddlesnap]

Although he doesn't remember much about her, Edward takes after his mother a lot and is very much her son which only provided more reasons as to why his father disliked him so. He was convinced for a number of years that Eddie wasn't even his, that his mother had to have cheated on him since he did multiple times in their relationship which was what led to them finally splitting up. It was easy for him to resent this scrawny brown-haired boy who didn't even look like him, a strapping big man who'd once worked hard at Gotham's Steel Mill and later hauling heavy cargo down at the docks.

[brw]

it's so hard being a sue storm head because yes when people talk about sue cheating on reed with namor it's always misogynistic it's always ableist it's always mean-spirited to every character involved it poorly portrays sue, reed and namor and puts them in unflattering lights just for a misogynistic push on their characters. and you do all this and you say all this and it's like damn. i can't advocate for sue storm/alicia masters adultery on main now after doing all that.

[idyllic-affections]

hello.

pantalone w/ a younger sibling!reader (or older.... but that changes the plot slightly!) who runs the most popular chain of casinos in teyvat. shockingly, pantalone doesn't chide or chastise them or look down upon them for their choices. he encourages it, actually.

the house, his darling younger sibling, always wins. and his rivals always wind up in further debt because of them <3 even if they lose, ultimately, they still win. it's a fucked up game rigged in their favor, but really, is that not how all casinos work?

he can't be mad that they're supporting him the only way they know how... well, it's not the only way they know how, but they're supporting him with what they're best at. and he can't really be mad, not really--every time he looks at his sibling, he is reminded of how they really are cut from the same cloth as him.

[soaps-mohawk]

(I know I just sent in an ask but I have another pressing on my brain. No pressure to answer asap though! It's nothing relating to the lore)

So I've been getting back into Chess after not playing for a few years and I started thinking of Mega being secretly good at the game.

Say she asks one of them to "show her how to play" then they do and she proceeds to whoop their ass xD They're shocked and asking how she did that and turns out it was a trick with wordplay. "I asked you to show me how to play, never said I didn't already know how."

Also, I was wondering who you think is the best at Chess in the pack? Do any of them play? And if they do, who is a more strategic player and who is more aggressive?

I like to think they might play. Considering Chess is used as a tool to teach military strategy.

Send in as many asks as you like (no promise I'll get to them right away but I will eventually lol)

Lmaooo she'd so do something like that too 😂 I've played one game of chess in my life and I won because I had someone who competes telling me what to do 😂

I think John definitely plays. Probably learned when he was a kid. Plays for fun now. Definitely more strategic.

Oddly enough I think Simon plays too. He seems like the kind of guy to do any kind of hobby that would keep him out of the house as long as possible. Chess team, sports, volunteering. I feel like he's also more strategic. Plays Price a lot

I think Kyle also knew how to play. Learned for strategy, does it for fun now.

Simon taught Johnny how to play. Definitely the most aggressive.

God forbid you put a game of Risk down in front of them. 'Mega wins the first game they play with her and they never play again. (Price had to ban it from the rec room because tables would get flipped. Only allowed it because 'mega wanted to see how she could do against them. It gets banned again immediately afterward)