#it feels very weird to be completely without parents and grandparents

[elektroyu]

Funeral is over, we got a lot of compliments from extended family for what we managed to put together in such a short amount of time. Everyone was super lovely, too. Hopefully the next time we all come together it will be for a much more happy occasion. 🤍

I'll try to rest this weekend and do nothing productive (save for preparing the preordered bookmarks for shipping so they can go out on Monday, but that's not a lot of work). I'll have to think about what to do about my financial/ health situation after that, but I hope I can find the time and energy to work on some art asap. I'm missing it a lot already :< and one of the watercolor commissions is already started <3

[hollowed-theory-hall]

Do you have any headcanons for Wizarding stereotypes and social norms?

I love how your brain works! ❤️❤️

Hi, thank you so much 💓. I'm arriving at this ask a little late, but I have a lot of random, small and large headcanons about wizarding culture (in the uk and the rest of the world), and I have a tag for my HP headcanons in general. Many of these appeared in past posts, but I'll try to summarize like 20 headcanons about wizard culture and social norms in the UK (some of them are very based in canon, and others are just vibes):

1. Fashion. I love historical fashion, and I made posts about wizarding fashion in the uk before (wizard fashion, robes vs muggle-inspired fashion, Hogwarts robes). I believe even when we see wizards in more muggle-style suits/jackets, they are still, more often than not, wizard-made and are made with colors and fabrics that muggles would consider weird to put together.

Like, Dumbledore isn't close to the only one who dresses like an eyesore. Even the twins are described wearing some jackets I don't think would pass anywhere in the Muggle world. And everyone is wearing hats, a lot, all the time, especially older generations.

2. Traditions regarding what you do with your wand once you die change between families/location/time period. Like, during, say, the 13th century in England, everyone got buried with their wands, but in the 18th and 19th centuries it was all the rage to keep a wand display of deceased family members at home. (Talked about a bit here)

3. In the UK, most wizards are culturally Christian. Denominations vary, but I believe they have a sort of magical Anglican denomination, which includes some of their own saints and doesn't place a heavy focus on prayer or going to church, and more about community. (I have a whole series about this subject, with the last entry here and the most quote-based entry here)

Similarly, I believe there used to be a chapel at Hogwarts, but it fell out of use throughout the centuries and has been remodeled into something else. I mean, no large castle from the Middle Ages is complete without a private chapel.

4. We know there are a lot of stereotypes regarding wand woods and wand cores ("When his wand’s oak and hers is holly, then to marry would be folly" from pottermore), and I believe there are others.

I'm not the first to note the symbolism between wands and manhood (Lucius losing his wand, short wands associated with a "lacking" character). So, I 100% believe "polishing your wand" is a euphemism for jerking off. Similarly, they probably have sayings like "you know what a long wand means".

Basically, wands are a big deal, and there are a lot of superstitions/stereotypes around them.

5. Because of that, I think some people would boast their wand wood/core, and keeping these facts super secret is seen as you having something to hide. Adding a wand handle to your wand is seen as a way to hide that the wand is actually really short, etc.

6. It's not exactly a headcanon since it's heavily implied by canon, but the first son gets his father's name as a middle name, the first daughter gets the mother's name as a middle name, then younger children get grandparents' names, then aunts, uncles, etc.

7. The legal drinking age is 13 for light alcohol (like butterbeer) or for drinking with parental supervision. For harder alcohol (like Firewhisky), the legal drinking age is 16. (That's the feeling I get)

8. In general, alcohol consumption is seen as healthy and common in the Wizarding World, like it was in the 19th century. The type of alcohol and amount do have social connotations, though. A lot. In terms of class, intelligence, trustworthiness, etc. but drinking in itself is seen as chill and no one really thinks too much of it if it's not extreme (and even then it isn't treated as an addiction). (Talked about here & here)

9. I also think their age of consent is 16 and not 18. (The majority age is 17, so it seems right to me). They could also legally get married at 16, though it's somewhat frowned upon to marry before you graduate. This is a leftover of a time when many wizards didn't stay at Hogwarts for the final 3 years and went on to start with life instead.

10. As I implied, I think it used to be pretty common to drop out of Hogwarts after 5th year. Especially for poorer working-class wizards/witches. This is why you only need 1 passing OWL to keep your wand.

I think NEWTs are treated like higher education of sorts and were/are optional, but like with muggle universities/collages most of the population does study these extra years since many jobs started requir NEWTs in specific fields. Not all jobs, plenty are fine with just OWLS.

It's common to drop many subjects in the final 2 years, like Harry does. He actually keeps more subjects than the average student, who stays with 2-3 subjects for NEWTs at most.

They don't have any universities/academies or that sort of higher education. It's just NEWTS and then apprenticeships/on-the-job training.

11. In general, the number of OWLs the Golden Trio passed is above average. I talked about it here, but the average amount of passing OWLs with grads good enough for the NEWT classes seems to be ~4 per student. Fred and George's 3 each isn't unusual; their brothers are just academically gifted and ambitious. (Bill got 12 OWLs, Charlie is smart, Percy is Percy, and Ron is also really smart. And we don't know anything about Ginny's OWLs, but she must have gotten more than 5).

12. They are very sanitized to violence. We see corporal punishment (Molly chasing Fred and George with a broom) and other violent pranks (F & G melting Ron's tongue with an acid pop, the Mauraders) being seen as normal and acceptable. (Mentioned it a bit here)

In general, their standard for what's considered "bad" violence is different than ours. Anything that is easily reversible with a spell is seen as a little mean but no harm done, or even a little funny. If it's not permanent, it isn't really seen as harmful. When the harm is permanent, that's when it starts being taken more seriously (but even then, it depends on what the damage is, and often it isn't really treated as anything too serious).

13. Also, mental health is not a thing. Trauma is not harm because they don't really consptualise trauma is a thing. They understand when someone's having a "rough time" or if someone's being "overemotional," but they don't have therapy or anything like it. (I always found "mind healers" in fics out of place in their world. The only "mind healers" they'd have are ones for spell damage caused by Obliviate or curses like the Imperius or the Cruciatus). Any emotional/mental health situation is treated by friends/family support if you have good people around you, getting told to "get over it", or alcohol. (Talked about a bit here)

14. The reason Honeydukes has candy for vampires is because vampires are really rare and not seen as savages the way werewolves are. Vampires are seen as exotic, sexy creatures (kinda like veela, just without the magical attraction), and wizards, too, have trashy vampire romance novels. (Talked about this more as well here)

15. It's weird to get a portrait taken when young. Magical portraits are expensive to make since there is like, 1-2 wizards in the UK who do it (I headcanon Dean Thomas grows to paint magical portraits post-series as he is mentioned to draw in the books). So, getting one when you're young means you expect to die soon. It's seen as more extreme than writing a will, and something you don't do without a good reason. It's seen as paranoid and bringing bad luck. As in, getting a magical portrait taken is like asking death to come knock at your door. Hence, why I headcanon Aunt Muriel didn't commission hers yet.

16. Divination as thought at Hogwarts is seen by the majority of the wizarding world as a practice best reserved for wizards/witches who have the talent for it. Like, you have prophecies - seen as rare and mysterious, and you have omens - which is what everyone can learn to do to a degree, but most aren't good at it. There is real magic there (as the centaurs prove) just, not the way Trawlany goes about it. So most wizards treat it as a legitimate field, but one you need a talent for.

17. They're, in general, into astrology. I mean, they study star charts in Astronomy, and the planets' movements is magical in canon (centaurs, certain ingredients need to be harvested in a certain moon phase, etc). So, like, the average wizard could go: "yes, I'm having it tough. You know Mercury is in retrograde," but also, a completely different astrology that is all their own. Like: "When Jupiter is bright, it's a good time for potion making" or something. Along with superstitions that some couples actually take into account when conceiving children, like being born when there is a specific angle between Venus and Mars will make you lucky, or certain plants that predispose you to any Hogwarts house. Like, I'd imagine their birth charts look different from ours, since they pay attention to different things and note them differently. Like, they'd include the angles of various constellations as well, and it'll look different (At least, I'd like to think so).

18. I think they have a lot of little superstitions in general (like seeing a grim). Stuff like, don't propose on a dark moon if you want the marriage to last, seeing a unicorn in the wild is a sign of good luck, professional Quidditch players have lucky underwear they never wash, etc.

19. They aren't prude around nudity. I mean, no one seems to struggle with getting dressed or taking showers with other people in their dorms, even when they aren't used to it (it is something that takes getting used to if you didn't grow up seeing it as normal). There are portraits and talking mirrors that watch you and comment on your appearance in bathrooms and bedrooms, we know many wizards (young Snape, Archie from the Quiddich World Cup) don't wear trousers under their robes (Archie is implied to not be wearing underwear either) and pottermore stated they used to take dumps wherever (though, I think they do have decency around that). Even if we look at the scene before the battle of the 7 Potters, no one considers it weird for them to get dressed in Harry's body. So, it seems nudity or partial nudity around others isn't as taboo or a breach of privacy the way we see it. Especially when it comes to men/boys. (This is part of why no one in-universe sees SWM as SA)

(Which would make sense for a culture stuck in the past. In the Middle Ages, you had bath houses, and families would all sleep in the same room. Sex and nudity weren't as taboo)

20. They think they know about their history way more than they do. I think Hogwarts wasn't built the way they think it was, the timeline of the Peverells and the Founders is all wrong — but no one except a few passionate wizard historians actually know. Everyone else thinks they must know their true history better than muggles because they are wizards (though they don't).

I have a bunch more headcanons that just don't come to mind right now, but I might add them later.

[qqueenofhades]

Hello! This is kind of a weird ask, I'm sorry to bother you, but seeing as you're a very intelligent studied historian that I deeply respect, I was hoping you could offer some advice? Or like, things i could read? Lately, i feel like my critical thinking skills are emaciated and its scaring the shit out of me. I feel very slow and like I'm constantly missing important info in relation to news/history/social activism stuff. Thats so vague, sorry, but like any tips on how i can do better?

Aha, thank you. There was recently a good critical-thinking infograph on my dash, so obviously I thought I remembered who reblogged it and checked their blog, it wasn't them, thought it was someone else, checked their blog, it also wasn't them, and now I can't find it to link to. Alas. But I will try to sum up its main points and add a few of my own. I'm glad you're taking the initiative to work on this for yourself, and I will add that while it can seem difficult and overwhelming to sort through the mass of information, especially often-false, deliberately misleading, or otherwise bad information, there are a few tips to help you make some headway, and it's a skill that like any other skill, gets easier with practice. So yes.

The first and most general rule of thumb I would advise is the same thing that IT/computer people tell you about scam emails. If something is written in a way that induces urgency, panic, the feeling that you need to do something RIGHT NOW, or other guilt-tripping or anxiety-inducing language, it is -- to say the least -- questionable. This goes double if it's from anonymous unsourced accounts on social media, is topically or thematically related to a major crisis, or anything else. The intent is to create a panic response in you that overrides your critical faculties, your desire to do some basic Googling or double-checking or independent verification of its claims, and makes you think that you have to SHARE IT WITH EVERYONE NOW or you are personally and morally a bad person. Unfortunately, the world is complicated, issues and responses are complicated, and anyone insisting that there is Only One Solution and it's conveniently the one they're peddling should not be trusted. We used to laugh at parents and grandparents for naively forwarding or responding to obviously scam emails, but now young people are doing the exact same thing by blasting people with completely sourceless social media tweets, clips, and other manipulative BS that is intended to appeal to an emotional gut rather than an intellectual response. When you panic or feel negative emotions (anger, fear, grief, etc) you're more likely to act on something or share questionable information without thinking.

Likewise, you do have basic Internet literacy tools at your disposal. You can just throw a few keywords into Google or Wikipedia and see what comes up. Is any major news organization reporting on this? Is it obviously verifiable as a fake (see the disaster pictures of sharks swimming on highways that get shared after every hurricane)? Can you right-click, perform a reverse image search, and see if this is, for example, a picture from an unrelated war ten years ago instead of an up-to-date image of the current conflict? Especially with the ongoing Israel/Palestine imbroglio, we have people sharing propaganda (particularly Hamas propaganda) BY THE BUCKETLOAD and masquerading it as legitimate news organizations (tip: Quds News Network is literally the Hamas channel). This includes other scuzzy dirtbag-left websites like Grayzone and The Intercept, which often have implicit or explicit links to Russian-funded disinformation campaigns and other demoralizing or disrupting fake news that is deliberately designed to turn young left-leaning Westerners against the Democrats and other liberal political parties, which enables the electoral victory of the fascist far-right and feeds Putin's geopolitical and military aims. Likewise, half of our problems would be solved if tankies weren't so eager to gulp down and propagate anything "anti-Western" and thus amplify the Russian disinformation machine in a way even the Russians themselves sometimes struggle to do, but yeah. That relates to both Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine.

Basically: TikTok, Twitter/X, Tumblr itself, and other platforms are absolutely RIFE with misinformation, and this is due partly to ownership (the Chinese government and Elon Fucking Musk have literally no goddamn reason whatsoever to build an unbiased algorithm, and have been repeatedly proven to be boosting bullshit that supports their particular worldviews) and partly due to the way in which the young Western left has paralyzed itself into hypocritical moral absolutes and pseudo-revolutionary ideology (which is only against the West itself and doesn't think that the rest of the world has agency to act or think for itself outside the West's influence, They Are Very Smart and Anti-Colonialist!) A lot of "information" in left-leaning social media spaces is therefore tainted by this perspective and often relies on flat-out, brazen, easily disprovable lies (like the popular Twitter account insisting that Biden could literally just overturn the Supreme Court if he really wanted to). Not all misinformation is that easy to spot, but with a severe lack of political, historical, civic, or social education (since it's become so polarized and school districts generally steer away from it or teach the watered-down version for fear of being attacked by Moms for Liberty or similar), it is quickly and easily passed along by people wanting trite and simplistic solutions for complex problems or who think the extent of social justice is posting the Right Opinions on social media.

As I said above, everything in the world is complicated and has multiple factors, different influences, possible solutions, involved actors, and external and internal causes. For the most part, if you're encountering anything that insists there's only one shiningly righteous answer (which conveniently is the one All Good and Moral People support!) and the other side is utterly and even demonically in the wrong, that is something that immediately needs a closer look and healthy skepticism. How was this situation created? Who has an interest in either maintaining the status quo, discouraging any change, or insisting that there's only one way to engage with/think about this issue? Who is being harmed and who is being helped by this rhetoric, including and especially when you yourself are encouraged to immediately spread it without criticism or cross-checking? Does it rely on obvious lies, ideological misinformation, or something designed to make you feel the aforementioned negative emotions? Is it independently corroborated? Where is it sourced from? When you put the author's name into Google, what comes up?

Also, I think it's important to add that as a result, it's simply not possible to distill complicated information into a few bite-sized and easily digestible social media chunks. If something is difficult to understand, that means you probably need to spend more time reading about it and encountering diverse perspectives, and that is research and work that has to take place primarily not on social media. You can ask for help and resources (such as you're doing right now, which I think is great!), but you can't use it as your chief or only source of information. You can and should obviously be aware of the limitations and biases of traditional media, but often that has turned into the conspiracy-theory "they never report on what's REALLY GOING ON, the only information you can trust is random anonymous social media accounts managed by God knows who." Traditional media, for better or worse, does have certain evidentiary standards, photographing, sourcing, and verifying requirements, and other ways to confirm that what they're writing about actually has some correspondence with reality. Yes, you need to be skeptical, but you can also trust that some of the initial legwork of verification has been done for you, and you can then move to more nuanced review, such as wording, presentation of perspective, who they're interviewing, any journalistic assumptions, any organizational shortcomings, etc.

Once again: there is a shit-ton of stuff out there, it is hard to instinctively know or understand how to engage with it, and it's okay if you don't automatically "get" everything you read. That's where the principle of actually taking the time to be informed comes in, and why you have to firmly divorce yourself from the notion that being socially aware or informed means just instantly posting or sharing on social media about the crisis of the week, especially if you didn't know anything about it beforehand and are just relying on the Leftist Groupthink to tell you how you should be reacting. Because things are complicated and dangerous, they take more effort to unpick than just instantly sharing a meme or random Twitter video or whatever. If you do in fact want to talk about these things constructively, and not just because you feel like you're peer-pressured into doing so and performing the Correct Opinions, then you will in fact need to spend non-social-media time and effort in learning about them.

If you're at a university, there are often subject catalogues, reference librarians, and other built-in tools that are there for you to use and which you SHOULD use (that's your tuition money, after all). That can help you identify trustworthy information sources and research best practices, and as you do that more often, it will help you have more of a feel for things when you encounter them in the wild. It's not easy at first, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes more so, and will make you more confident in your own judgments, beliefs, and values. That way when you encounter something that you KNOW is wrong, you won't be automatically pressured to share it just to fit in, because you will be able to tell yourself what the problems are.

Good luck!

[icy-book]

Identity is weird because like, I'm British. I live in the UK, have done all my life, same with my parents. I am completely immersed in British culture, so much so that there are so many things that are normal in Britain that I have no idea are unheard of in other countries, even ones that are considered to be culturally similar (like the US). Especially on Tumblr, surrounded by mostly American mutuals, I'm the British mutual who says mum and crisps and lives in a block of flats and eats Sunday roasts and fish n chips and Gregg's sausage rolls

But, heritage wise, I'm as much South African as I am English.

Yet that almost never comes through. I'm almost completely detached from South African culture, hell I haven't been there since I was merely months old.

When I was a kid, my mum sat me down in front of the TV, to watch the funeral of a man I didn't know. She told me he was a very important man, and he was very important to our family and our history especially. That without him, we probably wouldn't be here today.

I watched Nelson Mandela's funeral. A decade or so later, I didn't really bother watching the Queen's.

It was later, slowly over the course of my life, that I'd realise why Nelson Mandela was so important to our family, what it meant that my grandma had grown up as a person of colour in Apartheid South Africa.

She taught me how to make pumpkin fritters, and I've always called tangerines nartjies because that's what my mum called them because that's what her mum called them because she's South African and that's what everyone called them. I've met more of my South African family than I have my British one, and sometimes they teach me small phrases of Afrikaans that I don't remember later, even though I want to. My dad makes us boerewors, and we drink South African cream soda with it, which is completely different to English cream soda but tastes way better imo. I beg him to buy us some more biltong when he goes to the shops

At the same time, I don't know the first thing about South African culture. Not really. My mum is half South African, and not at all English, but she's definitely British. We've both lived here all our lives

I've never known how to answer ethnicity forms. I feel like I'm expected to put "White British", because that's what most people see when they look at me. Putting down any kind of mixed or other background feels like I'm lying, in a way. Trying to claim something that isn't mine. I read stories about other people's disconnects with their parents' and grandparents' cultures, and feel like I'm not allowed to relate because I'm White, or at least seen as such, and they're not, and it's not for me. But putting just "White British" feels like I'm ignoring so many important things, it feels just as much like lying. Maybe even more so

I'm as much South African as I am English. It's just weird to conceptualise

[rvllybllply2014]

Uh idk. Something about davron adopting a baby, specifically a girl. He wants a baby with Aeron, and magic can only do so much, but it can’t do that nor would either one want it to do that. They ran away before the burning mill. Crack? I’m gonna call this crack and nobody yell at me for this.

Davos and Aeron have been together for seven years now, and friends even longer. They’re all but married in name, so Davos feels like the next step in their relationship is to have a baby. Davos knows that there is some magic that could help them have one of their own but he also knows he wouldn’t want to carry the baby and neither would Aeron. So what’s a desperate man to do? Adopt without telling his partner, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness.

Davos lucks out when he hears about an orphaned baby in town who has no family other than grandparents who really don’t want to raise them. Davos manages to locate the grandparents and offers them a bag of gold dragons. It doesn’t take the grandparents long to agree to give Davos their granddaughter. He’s also lucked out with some of her features looking just like Aeron, mainly her eyes and the way she smiles, she also has Davos’s hair color and her nose is very similar to his.

Anyway Davos manages to sneak the baby back into Raven tree hall by claiming she’s his bastard daughter. No he didn’t know about her until today when her mother wrote to tell him that he needed to come get her, she was getting married and her new husband didn’t want the baby. Once he’s back in his rooms he sends a raven telling Aeron to pack lightly now’s the time that they need to leave, war is brewing it’s not safe for either of them and he also has a surprise for him.

Aeron follows the directions from the raven but is curious about the surprise. He always knew that they would need to give up their houses and the river lands if they were to stay together and live. But he’s pissed when Davos rides up to their meeting spot with a baby swaddle on his chest. Aeron automatically assumes that Davos has killed the poor girls parents to take her.

Even after Davos explains that he paid her grandparents for her Aeron is still pissed, he took a baby from her family only to want to raise her on the run. Aeron only calms down after Davos points out that she’s a nice little similar mix between them, she has Aerons eyes and smile along with Davos hair color and his nose. Aeron absolutely melts when he realizes that. He practically rips her off of Davos’s chest and swaddles her into his.

Davos laughs and tells him, he knew that Aeron would love her just look at how tightly he’s holding her. Davos also tells Aeron that she’s about three months old. They’ll be a happy family as soon as they get to Dorne. Aeron had thought they’d go to Essos, but does concede that Dorne wouldn’t really blink at their weird little family.

As the years pass and their baby grows Davos is completely wrapped around her pinky finger. Anything that she asks for Davos will get her it, sometimes all she has to do is look at an item and Davos buys it for her. Aeron calls him a pushover, she doesn’t need everything that she asks for, or sometimes she just likes to look at something without wanting it. The most expensive items Aeron will buy her is oil for her hair, which Davos uses to help braid and brush it every night. If she has a nightmare Davos will go to her room and sleep on the floor with her, Aeron joins him with pillows and a blanket. Davos is also the one to tell her bed time stories and cries when she says she’s too old for those now. Aeron just holds him while telling him it’s okay, they’ve done a good job so far raising her this is just another milestone.

And the old gods and new gods help Davos if his little girl ever gets married. He’s a sobbing emotional mess the whole ceremony, Aeron does get teary eyed but only cries once the ceremony and party ends. They spend the whole night holding each other while telling the other that they did a good job raising her.

[wildstar25]

Arsay Nun

B A S I C S

Name Arsay Nūn Nicknames None, her name doesn't shorten well (call her Ars and you will be on the wrong end of her blade ^^) Age ARR -> 22 (+5 years in lifestream stasis that Arsay is completely unaware of) Dawntrail -> 25 (+5 years) Nameday 3rd Sun of the Third Umbral Moon Race Miqo'te, "Greeter of the Star" (a.k.a: Keeper/Seeker mix [South Shroud/U tribe] ) Gender She/Her Probably non-binary but has a job so she ain't got time to worry about all of that... Orientation Bisexual, Polyromantic Profession Adventurer, Warrior of Light & Darkness, Scion of the Seventh Dawn, Full time kitty cat

P H Y S I C A L     A S P E C  T S

Hair Midnight Blue with patches of red tip patterning concentrated around the back and sides of her head! Thick with the slightest bit of wave (often gets brushed out) Eyes Ruby Red Skin Very Light Olive with white facial stripes and darker pigmented nose. Tans well but never sticks for long. Tattoos/scars One visible scar on the cheek, multiple around her body which get glammed over. After endwalker, her right hand has a high concentration of scaring around the knuckles & palm (A consequence of her final fight in ultima thul and the proceeding surgery needed to reset the incorrectly healed bones.) She has various arcane geometric patterns marked into her skin in aetheric ink. One at the back of her neck, one on each forearm right above the inner elbow, one banded around her ankle. They are also glammed over to be invisible to the naked eye, but those who are well attuned to seeing aether would see them glow faintly as Arsay casts summoning spells.

F A M I L Y

Parents Sapir Nun & U'hbi Tia (deceased 1552, 6th astral era, killed in combat to the first wave of Garlean invaders in Doma)

Emrara Emra (Guardian/Adoptive Aunt, very much alive in the south sea isles)

Siblings Alphinaud and Alisaie (adopted younger siblings) Grandparents: Unknown and/or deceased In-laws and Other: G'raha (Husband), Y'shtola (Wife) Y'mhitra (Sister in law) Generally main scion members are family to her in different ways Cid and Nero (Weird Uncles) U'odh Nunh (unconfirmed but most likely half first cousin) (There are three female face 4 miqo'te in the U tribe and I HC that those three are the most closely related to Arsay's Dad in some way I've yet to really piece together.) Pets Couscous the carbuncle, Fish the Chocobo

S K I L L S

Abilities Physical: -Multiple Combat styles (Dual blades, Pole arm, Single blade, Hand to Hand, Marksmanship, Knife throwing) -Typical scouting techniques (invisibility, tracking, assassination, can move without making a sound) -Greater agility, dexterity, flexibility, balance, and strength -High Stamina -Strong Swimmer -Great Climber Magical: -Advanced Aetheric Manipulation (Elemental Conversion, Creation) -Summoning, Channelling (Dreadwyrm Trance available at moments notice) Other: -Knows how to sail a ship -Can navigate on land and sea without a map or compass -Can rally and inspire others to achieve great things together!

Hobbies: - Monster Hunting - Fishing - Frontlines - Crystalline Conflict (recreational league) - General exploring/mystery hunting&solving

T R A I T S

Most Positive Trait: Her big heart! She'd do anything for the people she cares about Worst Negative: Terrible sense of self-worth. Needs to do things for other people or she goes insane with anxiety and guilt. Hates being looked after.

L I K E S

Colors: Red! Its her favourite. Smells: the ocean, the breeze through the forest, tropical zones with humidity in the air, her partners Textures: Furs, Leathers, Silky or soft textiles. Drinks: Spiced Chai, Coffee with Cardamom, Citrus of any type and Water

O T H E R    D E T A I L S

Smokes: nope, the only smoke from her is her smoke bombs Drinks: only socially, and not a whole lot. Does not like feeling out of control of herself. Mount Issuance: Probably! Tataru would help her get it all set up at least Been Arrested: Almost but she always gets out of it UvU

Tagged by: @eriyu Thank you so much!! 💙 Tagging: @nivienne-grovant @baublegums @astraveil @yukupo-lalapo @eli-leam (and anyone else who wants to do it! I feel like I'm pretty late to the game on this lol)

[princess-of-the-corner]

Bro Rei's parents would be having a bad time. Let's see. First not only did Enji 'trick' them by hiding his mutation quirked aspects, all of the possible children are in relationships with those of the same gender, one even having multiple partners, two of them are dating mutation quirked people, and Natsuo, who in their eyes, is the best possible candidate to influence (manipulate) literally laughed in their faces when they asked if he had any plans for a wife in the future. Their plans really went down in flames.

Oh Rei's parents are SO mad about so many things.

For a long time they don't even know about the Mutation Aspect. Though Enji publicly has no issue with Mutation Quirks, he doesn't really talk about his own experiences (Though he's faced some discrimination from people who knew/people who saw him with his dad, his mutations are so minor that it barely counts and he can pass as he doesn't have them so it feels weird to discuss when compared to someone like Kaito who is very obviously a Mutation-Type)

So I have bits and pieces of things written in Road to Hell and like. They kinda throw Rei at him without thought for what kind of person he is because of the Status he has. He's the #2 Hero. Only way he could be 'better' is if he's All Might. And also Rei was 'ruining her chances' by exerting what little agency she had and 'scaring off potential suitors'. So they also do something silly like letting Enji and Rei live together before the wedding.

Then the wedding is a 'red flag' to them because the best man is a Mutation Type.

Then they disappear for like a year and Rei's fine with that because she kinda wants to cut them off because she's realized they're kinda toxic but hesitates out of 'they're still my parents' and also while Enji is a lot better in comparison and encouraging to her, she's also still working on believing that.

Then they show up a little bit after Toya is born. They show up completely unannounced btw Enji is off at work and Rei is home alone with a two-month-old. And this is the next 'red flag ' as far as they're concerned because why is Rei actually like. Doing things? Why is she taking care of the child directly instead of handing him over to a rotating list of nannies and going on vacation? They're not poor why is he making her do things?!

After this Rei and Enji make a more active decision to cut them off. (Rei is hesitant because 'they're your parents!', Enji doesn't want to force her, but both agree that they don't want them influencing the children).

At this point, they're upset because to them? Enji is backing out of the 'Deal'. They gave him Rei, and now he's supposed to give them public and financial support like a good son-in-law should! That was the whole point of this! The entire reason Rei exists was to be part of a Deal to further the Family's interests! How dare he back out?!

But one can be patient. After all, you can still get something out of the children. You just.... need to get them away. So they need to wait until the kids are old enough to be able to get away from Enji to listen.

Toya is option one. Though they hesitate because he wants to be a Hero and thanks to Enji they know Heroes can be a bit too stubborn. Doesn't stop them from trying. From sending a letter all 'sympathetic' and 'oh we're just loviing grandparents who want to meet our grnadkid that was kept from us!'. Toya 'dies' before they get too far. When he comes back, he has those nasty little additions. But with the reveal that someone like AfO exists, well. How dare that villain 'infect' their precious grandbaby with a Mutation?

Fuyumi is the next target. They find it silly how she thinks she can have a 'career'! That's not what a woman does! Women are eiher houswives or trophy wives, depending on your socieoeconomic class! No woman works because she wants to! Just because she's only found failures of men who can't take care of her! They try to contact Fuyumi but she ignores them. She may not know the whole thing, but she believes Enji and Rei are good people so if they cut off contact it's for good reason.

Natsuo is a bit more easy to convince. Due to the bad shit happening and miscommunications, he could totally believe that the grandparents he has no info about are decent people, but Enji was just a controlling bastard that he kept Rei and the kids away from them. He'd figure out eventually that they're not, but that'll be later down the line.

Thankfully Shoto fully dodges a chunk of this because by the time he's a legal adult, the family has had several conversations clearing things up so he Knows Better™ when a letter comes for him.

Swinging back to Rei: Her family is one of the many reasons she and Enji stay married instead of getting a divorce. Given her mental health issues, it'd be easy for her parents to get her deemed mentally unfit to take care of herself and in need of a caretaker. All custody of her and power of attorney and all that could easily go to them as her parents. But being legally married to Enji, even if Rei is deemed unfit to take care of herself, all power would go to her husband by default instead. And even at their worst, Rei trusts Enji more than she trusts her parents.

[x-digitaldollhouse-x]

I entered my legacy sim Rhiannon in adelarsims' Spellcasting Tournament and it made me want to share the rest of her family and friends. The immortals of my legacy have kinda become their own sub-legacy within that save that now includes the Vatores and Morgyn in their own household, with their own family, as a secondary cast of characters. So, this is that.

The Grim-Jeong Household:

Iris Scott-Jeong: Daughter of Isaac Wilburn-Jeong, a Gen 4 spare from my legacy, and his wife Talia Scott. Met her husband when he came to reap her elderly parents and she somehow managed to befriend him. He became kind of her only friend in the world after her parents died, which blossomed into a romance. Studied spellcasting intensely until she was finally able to grant herself immortality to spend eternity with the love of her life. Currently runs a magic supply shop that was previously owned by her grandparent Ronan.

Thanatos Grim: The Grim Reaper. Well, technically, he's only *a* grim reaper-- there are others. A loving but stoic father/grandfather. Really good at woodworking, for some reason.

Hecate Grim-Jeong: Eldest child of Iris and Thanatos. Runs a small jewelry-making business and creates the most sought-after magical accessories in the realms. Exists as a mediator between her complete opposite, ideologically-opposed brothers, refusing to take life too seriously but also adamant about caring and finding meaning in the world around her. She studies magic under Iris to enhance her jewelry-making projects and is the second most powerful spellcaster in the family after her mom, who calls her "Catie".

Hypnos Grim-Jeong: Middle child of Iris and Thanatos, and the older of their twin sons. Forced to work at Iris' shop to help pay the bills, but would rather be out partying 24/7. Extremely irresponsible, despite being a father (whoops). Wants nothing to do with the death business or magical studies, and thinks that eternity should be spent caring as little as possible.

Chronos Grim-Jeong: Youngest child of Iris and Thanatos by fifteen minutes. The only child to follow in Thanatos' footsteps as a soul reaper, likely because he was the only sibling born without spellcasting abilities. A very eccentric and strange man who delights in being weird and incomprehensible. Takes his job very, very seriously, and tries to philosophize everything.

Valentina Vatore: Wife of Chronos and youngest daughter of Lilith Vatore. Spends her days holed up in the basement, making art. Has a lot of conflicting feelings about being a vampire; she doesn't want to be ashamed of what she is, but has long struggled with the guilt of hurting people in order to survive. She and the immortal Chronos are a perfect match, because she can reliably drink from him without the fear of over-draining. He's also the only person she feels comfortable showing her monstrous dark form to.

Rhiannon Grim-Jeong: Daughter of Hypnos and a woman he had a one-night stand with. Hypnos didn't realize he had a kid until Chronos showed up one day to reap a single young woman who died in a freak Cowplant accident, and discovered she had some underwear that belonged to Hypnos, a wristband for his favorite club, and an extremely pale infant with a very threatening aura. Hypnos took her in afterwards but wasn't really suited for fatherhood, so his parents, siblings, and sister-in-law essentially did 90% of the job of raising her. Thinks her dad is kind of a loser, but her aunts are cool as hell. Currently striving to become a Robin Hood-style master thief and slowly developing something close to a friendly relationship with Hypnos.

Macrantha "Mac" Mizuno-Barakat: Descendant of Iris' long-deceased cousin, and live-in gardener/groundskeeper for the Grim-Jeongs. Strange Plant-sim who was created in the Strangerville lab. Her adoptive mother is responsible for killing her biological mother, the Mother Plant, when Mac was a baby, which is... kinda awkward, but shockingly didn't traumatize her nearly as much as you'd expect. Also works part-time at Iris' shop. Best friends with Rhiannon.

Sweetie Pie, The Undying One (or just "Sweetie"): Thanatos' loyal black hound. A very good girl.

Butter: The family's spectral cat, adopted by Iris during a stroll through the graveyard on a trip to Brindleton Bay. In life, he belonged to Pol. Tech 9 Smith and his family.

The Ember-Vatore Household:

Caleb Vatore & Morgyn Ember: You know who they are. Hot, gothy, married.

Magdalene Ember-Vatore: Daughter of Caleb and Morgyn. Created accidentally through a magic mishap. Self-employed as an alchemist/artificer who makes strange magical machines. Stressed out 24/7.

Lilith Vatore: You know who she is too. Has three vampire daughters with various mortal men who she didn't particularly care about-- she just wanted a big, happy vampire family.

Karissa Vatore: Eldest daughter of Lilith and essentially the black sheep of the family. Really the Colin Robinson of the family, honestly. She keeps her vampirism and family a well-kept secret, using a fake surname at her office job and only progressing her vampire mastery to mask any and all of her vampiric traits. The more she fits in with the normal sims, the better, but every night she still returns to her home life of chaos and freakishness. Best friend of Hecate.

Katya Vatore: Middle daughter of Lilith who is obsessed with being the ultimate vampire. Melodramatic, hedonistic lesbian goth who can usually be found sipping plasma out of a tacky overly-ornate chalice. Best friend of Hypnos.

Prometheus: magical robot created by Magdalene.

Bonehilda: Live(?)-in housekeeper to the Ember-Vatores and romantic partner to Prometheus.

Shelley: Morgyn's undead cat familiar.

Others:

Nemesis Grim: sister to Thanatos, and also a soul reaper. Surprisingly un-antagonistic, despite the name. Likes to visit her brother's family and is currently recruiting niece Hecate to investigate the mysterious Ambrosia Society.

(Huge thank you to @nefarrilou for the custom reaper tutorial that made Aunt Nem possible and gave me a way to play the Reaper Rewards event without breaking my in-game lore)

[bluedalahorse]

some musings/personal journaling below the cut, feel free to skip

On my mind at present:

The current government situation is, in fact, so rancid. I’m staying as afloat as I can but sometimes it just drags me under into a very dark place. I think I could almost be stubborn and defiant and peppy if these goons were only insulting my own work and everything I’ve worked hard to become and be all of these years. But it goes deeper than that. They’re demeaning and dismantling everything my family has worked on for generations. My father’s medical research and anti-war activism. My mother’s work in the public schools. Both my parents’ present day environmental justice activism. My grandparents’ stance fighting fascism in WW2 and running for local government. My great-grandfather’s activity in the labor movement, which I know so little about, but I know it exists, somehow. My family are not perfect paragons; they had flaws and prejudices of course and I have attempted to reckon with that all of my life. But if nothing else I can say that I am descended from people who gave a fuck about their communities and cared about the public good in some sense. The fact that every last “policy” coming out of this armored tinfoil clown car firetrap of an administration is meant to insult and destroy all the things my family worked for is like… okay. I am used to you all calling me degenerate. But come for all the actually good things that I am descended from and I am burning with the wrath of the Greek gods.

All that said, I need an outlet. I need to pick and commit to a tangible action so that I feel active against the noise. I might need a group to commit to or be part of. I need to figure out how to do that without burning out. My last groups burned me out. I used to have friends who were doing things with me. Now I feel a lot more alone.

Alone? Yes. Or maybe not. Who knows. I can say into the kind of weird mental health fog where if someone from the immediate area (like, a friend I could hang out with in person) reaches out, it’s hard to know what to say back. So I don’t respond as much. I drop things. I need to figure out how to snap out of that, because I know I need my in-person contacts more than ever now. And the more I sink into the fog the more I tell myself that the in-person friends don’t need me or don’t actually want to see me. It doesn’t really feel like bad feelings or sadness, most of the time. It just feels like a cloud that keeps me away from the in-person friends. If that makes sense. Also I now that rationally this is not true but I have not gotten the courage to swipe the cloud away yet.

Somehow I need to find a way to save so so so much money. I might need to enlist some sort of accountability buddy for that. I just can’t spend money on fun things anymore.

One month after MFA graduation and I feel like I’ve had to give up my dream of becoming an author for kids and teens. This is just not a world where that can happen. Publishing is too cowardly. My aunt told me that the censorship I was envisioning “just wasn’t going to happen” implying I was somehow delusional and meanwhile I swear all her kids voted for this fuckery.

I don’t even think I’m going to get to celebrate my MFA. That’s completely off the table now. It feels like there’s no point. I was taught by the best people in the world and they made me an awesome writer, but this is not a world that believes in the amazing things I can do.

Don’t worry. I am talking to my therapist tomorrow. I will probably read this to her. This is an attempt to organize my thoughts.

I know what I have to do and somehow I am going to have to break through the clouds and do it but also it is terrifying.

[alloutofgoddesses]

They removed your tailbone????????????????

YES!!! Story time!

It was winter. It was seventh grade. I was walking back inside on the sidewalk. The sidewalk had not been salted properly. I slipped on a huge patch of ice and instantly felt pain right where your tailbone exists. It hurt like a bitch but I had just taken a hard fall onto concrete so like of course it hurt. It went away after a while so I figured it was fine.

Until it came time to travel to my grandparents house several states away and I was in TEARS by the end of the road trip. My butt hurt SO BAD, way more than the usual aches and pains of road tripping. And then the pain didn’t go away.

At first my mother did not believe me which Rude but eventually I went to my doctor, and she ordered an X-ray and she couldn’t really tell what was wrong so she ordered an MRI and both those things led to her noticing that I have three degenerated disks in my lower spine (honestly probably the cause of most of my problems) and it looked like my tailbone was “anti-verted” which I will forever believe is just a fancy doctor term for “idk man it looks weird”

I get sent to a specialist. The specialist has ZERO bedside manner and tells me, a scared very mentally unwell thirteen year old that my only options are to have a surgery wouldn’t really fix the problem or take Advil for the rest of my life. That sucked. My mom took me to Spirit Halloween to cheer me up because it was so bad.

By this point, I’m in pain all the time. I get a special pillow to sit on both in the car and at school, and it is put in my IEP that I have special permission to stand up in class whenever necessary because the pain was just that distracting. To help mitigate the pain, I am seeing a chiropractor on a very regular basis. It’s awkward as hell because I’m experiencing puberty and he’s constantly touching my lower back and butt.

Blah blah blah I make it to eighth grade and I am having A Bad Time. I’m in so much pain that I think it’s the only thing I’m going to feel for the rest of my life. I am being heavily bullied at church on top of getting injected with a crap ton of religious trauma. At the same time I’m going through a sexuality crisis because middle school. I am scrounging for reasons to get out of bed and it’s only working sometimes. It’s BAD.

Somewhere along the line my chiropractor takes a look at my X-ray and he goes: “This is broken. This is very broken. Your tailbone is broken.”

I look at the X-ray. Instead of being attached to my spine, my tailbone is completely detached from bone, muscle, tissue, and is existing at a 90 degree angle in my body cavity. No fucking wonder it hurt so much!!

On it goes. We know what the problem is but we don’t know how to fix it and this point I have a very healthy mistrust of doctors.

Enter my eighth grade social studies teacher. Her husband has been the gym teacher at the elementary school where my dad works since idk the beginning of time probably. And also, small town, so they both me well.

She hears what’s going on. She sees me struggling to exist on the daily. She pulls me to the side after class one day and says “Hey. My son broke his tailbone a couple years ago. We went to this doctor and the surgery they did really helped.”

Cue social studies teacher getting in contact with my parents and me having approximately a million appointments at a doctor’s office in *gasp* the great city of El Paso, Texas. The doctor decides that it’s best to remove the bone because it just floating around is causing A Lot of nerve damage.

So, July 7th, 2016 I got my tailbone removed from my body in a procedure called a coccygectomy. I had to figure out how to do things while either completely laying down or standing up for two weeks because I couldn’t sit. I walked around with a Franken-butt for a few weeks until the stitches dissolved. I still have nerve damage and I will probably never be able to sit normally or without pain again but it is so much better then it used to be.

And now that social studies teacher is my principal and I have a cool scar that I can’t ever show to anyone because well. The location of the tailbone is. You know.

[wool-f]

30: WITHOUT THE FEAR AND SHAME

Hello friends,

I’m back for 2024, for the thirtieth year of my life, to continue sharing my thoughts, imaginings, hopes, dreams, goals and advice with you all (you all being whoever comes across this blog and reads it).

As always, I began the year making my list of 100 things I want to do/achieve/create in the next 12 months, and this year I’m feeling particularly positive about the list.

I know culturally, turning 30 is a scary moment, particularly for women. It symbolizes this weird juncture between adulthood and the checklist of things we should have achieved by this age – marriage, children, a career, home ownership and more. All the things we pressure women into doing perfectly and all at once, with very little grace granted when we don’t have at least two of these things.

I’m here to confess, I’m in the first job of my potential future career, I don’t have a boyfriend, let alone a husband or a child and I am definitely nowhere near home ownership as a solo buyer (in this economy? Please). Does any of this scare or bother me? No – not even a little bit.

While on paper, it looks as though I have been faffing around in my 20s having a great old time, behaving in a way that some people would consider “wasting my time”, I have enjoyed the past decade so much and I wouldn’t change it for anything.  

I have two degrees, I’ve studied abroad twice, completed an internship in Indonesia with an amazing organization out of Melbourne, I’ve travelled A LOT, I’ve been in love (silly by me but here we are), I’ve danced with my friends, I’ve laughed, I’ve cried and I’ve had one too many drinks on a number of occasions. I’ve lived with friends, I’ve moved back into my parent’s house. I’ve made life-long friends and lost friends who I thought would be with me forever. I’ve read hundreds of books, watched movies and heard so many songs for the first time. Most importantly, I’ve made memories with my loved ones and enjoyed my life.

I don’t regret any of my mistakes, I’ve had fun.

This life has so far been a privilege to live in more ways than one. I’m luckier than most people living and I am extremely cognisant of this fact, particularly at a time when the world is in such a dire state of affairs, to say the least.

I do however, think it’s important to say that I’ve loved it here. There are many things that make me wonder how the world can possibly keep turning but then I look at my grandparents, my friends, the moments we have spent together and laughed, and I know why.

A friend of mine posted a video recently, saying she was freaking out about turning 30 this year, and I can relate to the looming feeling of dread that often comes with a “big birthday” like this and truly up until recently I felt the same way.

All of the things I’ve already written about enjoying life and having gratitude for the beautiful moments in it are true, but I am not immune to feeling pressure or like I’ve somehow fallen behind because I haven’t achieved the things that I am expected to have done.

Over the last six months many things have happened that have given me pause to really reevaluate the importance of being present to enjoy the moment and focus on what kind of life I want to lead and the people I want around me.

I have come to the conclusion that I’m not scared of turning 30, or as media and beauty industry conglomerates would want me to be, of aging or getting older. These occurrences are privileges that many people are denied. I’m lucky to be here and have decided to fully commit to treating every single day in that fashion.  

Here’s to getting old and enjoying it (however I will still be colouring the greys out of my hair forever more xx)

May 2024 be the most free, successful and joyous that I have ever been, and if you’ve gotten to the end of this post, may yours be too.

As always, love you all and have a great week.

G xx

[bonestrouslingbones]

insane stream of consciousness ramblings of a madman desperately trying to rework the fuckass swapfell bros lore up ahead with so so so many incredibly beefy paragraphs turn back now or abandon hope all ye who enter here

ok so it's been building for a good minute/several years now but i think i kinda hate what i did with the grandpa gaster thing ngl. like its such a weirdly contrived and somehow overcomplicated yet extremely underdeveloped element that doesn't even have much reasoning for it other than "people thought i was talking about gaster so i ran with it"

swapfell bros' grandpa gaster who has been retired and working as a weapons dealer for at least over a decade but who faked his death for reasons very loosely POSSIBLY related to royal scientist shit (but we will never have time nor will i have the interest to delve into that At All) & went to live as an anonymous cryptic ferryman instead (which makes me have to figure out questions like "why were they raised by their grandpa instead of their parents?" and "who ARE their parents" and "how recently did the core thing even happen" and "why was the grandpa involved if he's been retired from being a scientist for over a decade" and "why would this not come off as a very obvious lie/coverup to either of his grandsons" and "why does he suddenly start acting like That as a ferryman" OR "if he was always like That why the hell are neither of his grandsons like That") sucks. this idea sucks you can tell wayyyyy too easily that i just pulled it out of my ass i hate it i hate it i hate it

would it be. too much of a change. to revive my original idea of making grandpa semi the one who raised them so that i can take gaster out of the grandparent role without having to make up some random nameless OCs that aren't connected to undertale even remotely, which is exactly what their parents would have been. and then because gaster is still available i can change him to a neglectful dadster who abandoned his kids & went into hiding because of the core incident soon after papyrus's birth. this only leaves the question of a hypothetical mother character but it's a bit easier to get away with not mentioning that one since most dadster fics don't anyway lmao, maybe she's just a surrogate or something idk

the change does still cause some Problems for me in terms of an arc way in the future where The Grandpa IS meant to show up and interact with characters and i would absolutely prefer for a role with this level of influence to be Gaster instead of some guy i stole the name of & made up the rest- meaning i also want that fucker dead For Real instead of the weird faked death thing. but replacing those scenes with dadster, who Fluff literally would not remember or have any connection to at all, would have. significantly less teeth to it lmao

and i could MAYBE have gaster "disappear" when Fluff is a little older and it would at least give some more basis to his abandonment issues (even tho those don't become overtly relevant til the ending of the main story + some of his epilogue arc and by then will be VERY JUSTIFIED even without dadster) but then that would spring up some problems of fluff believing that his grandpa's behavior is completely normal and not abusive, because it's literally the only type of parenting he's ever had. if gaster sticks around long enough for fluff to remember him and connect with him, obviously he would know forms of parenting outside of the strict discipline of his grandpa and it wouldn't really work as well imo

i wouldn't wanna make dadster outright cruel & physically/verbally abusive like the grandfather, probably just really fucking neglectful so that i can still attribute karma's size to stunted growth from malnourishment. maybe a SEVERE workaholic plus functional alcoholic with a side of a lil somethin else to keep him away from home for days at a time. making him also abusive would just feel like i'm writing the same shitty character twice and would probably come off as boring at best and trauma porn at worst and i'm already still annoyed about the borderline cartoonish way i wrote fell sans in self hatred so i gotta redeem myself

plus ngl i do kinda like the idea of fluff and dadster turning out to be very similar in terms of emotional distance/immaturity & substance abuse despite never knowing each other because they're both raised by the same shitty guy. and karma is only able to avoid being in the same spot because he WAS raised by gaster for more than long enough to remember and act out when he leaves, & then still skipped dealing with the grandpa for too long because of how young he is when he's kicked out to become essentially a ward of the state

SO. my options would be to rework that specific arc from almost the ground up OR cut it out entirely which is honestly almost tempting IF it wouldn't be. a lot of scenes & developments for me to cut out lmao. some of which are actually pretty fucking important considering they all lead up to russ no longer being able to avoid talking about how he left his universe and where all his worldhopping abilities came from. that's a little too big of a reveal to cut maybe

ugh. blugh. blagh. smashing all of these stupid purple skeletons with a large wooden mallet like whack a mole

[hopecorps]

random finale opinions that i need to get out there

1. i LOVE plot armour 🥰🥰🥰 i love bobby being saved by the narrative. that being said 14 minutes is fucking insane and they didnt even really give him the buck coma treatment.... they probably could have if they didn't spend three entire episodes on the cruise

2. tommy has been pretty consistently written as someone who does not understand or really attempt to understand buck since 7x5. more than the daddy kink joke (which was like idk in relatively poor taste but i can see that they were like. flirting) the "your father is alive" was REALLY pointed and completely shifted the conversation from something that could have been serious into something flirty (something something buck and his previous relationships having been very surface-level and falling back on this "comfortably" even though he's clearly aching for something else) it just. that pissed me off WAY more. BUT. that plus the outfit at the bach party and the fact that lou was instructed to call buck evan EXCLUSIVELY is painting a really obvious picture for me that they're going to have a more serious break up which i think is being framed as something good

3. i hate eddies parents as much as the next guy but i understand why they took chris and i think it will be good for eddie to prioritize himself for the first time in his entire life without worrying about emotionally scarring his teenager. again i think this sets up an opportunity for growth and is being framed in an understandable way TO ME. maybe im giving the writers too much credit but this is the found family show

4. chris calling his grandparents in the first place does not make sense to me however. he's never done that.

5. buck not hugging eddie makes sense to me as well. like id love if they hugged sure but every time theyve ever hugged has been eddie hugging buck for buck's sake. buck likes to hug. but he also respects eddie's space and i think he was just like. comforting him the way eddie is most comfortable (shoulder touch, thumb rub) and i don't think it was weird that that's all that happened. i think that this does give eddie room to hug buck when he's ready to

6. gerrard being there sucks but it's giving when bill hader became interim captain on brooklyn 99 in between seasons and then immediately had a heart attack at the beginning of the next season. here's hoping

7. i don't have a hot take about the madney henren stuff other than it should have gotten more time and the abridged season really fucked them for so many of these storylines. i understand the people who think it's bullshit and i understand the people who think it's sweet and i feel like if it was given more time and therefore care it would have been received better

8. cartel bad (everyone agrees)

9. athena. girl. (everyone agrees)

10. in general i think a lot of people hopped onto this show really suddenly expecting it to be something other than what it was. it is a network television show: there are going to be corny dramatic unrealistic storylines and that's baked into the dna of the thing. it's an ensemble television show: it's not the bisexual buck show it's going to juggle storylines that are quite frankly more important and especially in a new-network abridged season, it's going to fuck it up a bit. next season is going to be better because they had more time with it before filming. this season had big ideas and poor planning. idk. people are expecting this show to be the pinnacle of television and it is JUST a television show. i have fun watching and that's sort of the point

i'll let these thoughts marinate but i wanted them to sit somewhere

[ceasarslegion]

I've talked a bit about how my early childhood was... unorthodox for a number of reasons, namely in how I was an accident my mom had at 19 and my dad came into the picture later so both my parents are quite young and therefore do things like play video games and get meme references. We also lived with my grandparents and my uncle when my mom was still single and while my mom's side is basically the Bluth family without the wealth in terms of drama and bullshit, there were also a few traits I definitely attribute to why I'm so chill about media today.

We're culturally and ethnically Jewish but not a single one of us is religious, we all consider ourselves dry soulless atheists. Meaning I had none of the weird religious guilt in my upbringing to unpack or unlearn later. Church, temple, mosque etc was something other people did, we did the cultural stuff just because it's our ethnicity and heritage but we also like, did Christmas just because it's fun. No one believes in the spiritual side of any of it.

My family's also not like, super radical but they are pretty reliably centre-left and broadly left wing on the major issues. They vote for trudeau because that's who can actually win in their districts and when topics of American politics come up they throw their support behind kamala now and wanted Pete buttigieg in 2020. There's many queer family members and it was always like, whatever. I'm the only tranny but they got there. Meaning I also never had weird conservative hang ups about shit.

I also can not understate how much my family loves horror. Going back several generations. If there was any evidence that horror tolerance was hereditary (pun intended) it would be us. There's shelves full of horror tapes and dvds in the family house basement, my dad's favourite movie is fuckin, evil dead 2 and we had a framed poster of army of darkness in the hallway as long as I can remember, and we had a family horror movie night. It was tradition even when I was a baby to watch true crime network tv over dinner every night and discuss the evidence back and forth. I still listen to true crime podcasts while I cook dinner as an adult because it just feels right. When I was 10 my parents said "yeah you're old enough for silence of the lambs and fargo now we think." And I was always allowed to read Stephen King novels with my grandpa from the moment I could read them.

And I know that many people would read this and think it a form of child abuse or whatever. It really wasn't. I'm fine, I'm not traumatized, I'm not fucked up, I wasn't back then, I was fine. It did not affect me at all beyond me saying I wanted to go as Freddy Kruger for Halloween when I was 11. Nowadays I still consume a lot of horror and I legitimately believe it is healthy to have this space that is specifically for the fucked up, the nasty, the unspeakable, the horrifying, and to let it all sit somewhere instead of denying those things and feelings exist just because they're icky. And I do believe that this initiation into horror from a very young age in an environment free of religious, conservative hang ups about purity that encouraged a lot of reading and discussion made me the way I am about it now.

Because like yeah, I do think there is a conversation to be had about the transphobic undertones of silence of the lambs. But you completely lose me and I start walking away when you take that to mean "everybody who watches this turns transphobic on contact, it has no artistic or cinematic value or history whatsoever, and you shouldn't watch it at all."

Maybe you guys would've calmed down about media consumption equalling literal actual advocacy for what's shown in it if you grew up in a multi generational horror fanatic atheist family that read their weight in crime novels and simped for Stephen King and I'm only half joking about attributing that upbringing to my current views on the subject

[bajablastwrites]

Random Saiki Headcanons

Saiki x Reader

Reader’s gender isn’t specified

Authors Note: There are random headcannons that I randomly think about but can’t make them into their own thing cuz I can’t think of a way to elaborate them into further detail.

ok so we all know saiki isn’t the most affectionate person out there— at least in the beginning. But I feel like later on in the relationship he likes to hold your hand a lot, especially in public. He’ll just automatically hold your hand without even thinking about it. Seriously he doesn’t even realize he’s holding your hand until someone points it out or you let go of his hand yourself. When you do let go of his hand he turns his head so fast in your direction to figure out why you let go of his hand.

In the relationship I see saiki letting you take charge while he goes along with it because it makes you happy. You still check in with him because you also want him to be happy, you’re always met with “Do what you want.”, “if that’s what you want, I don’t mind.” And “whatever makes you happy.” Every time you ask and Kusuo always reassures you that he’s fine with whatever plans you made for the day. It does make his heart swell a little that you ask him anyways, he won’t tell you though. But it’s little things like that, that affirm the reason why he’s in a relationship with you.

Also if you have a hard time making decisions or are the kind to sacrifice your happiness and comfort for others, Kusuo is even more adamant that you guys do stuff you want to do together, you deserve it after all.

When you guys aren’t together he uses his clairvoyance to see what you’re up to when he’s bored. You could literally just be sitting around in your room spacing out, doing a whole lot of nothing and he could watch you all day. Even more so if you like to talk to yourself, it’s very entertaining and sometimes you make a very compelling argument. He likes to use it as blackmail too as a way to embarrass next time you’re with him.

I feel like if saiki gets into a relationship with someone it will be his first and only relationship. Like the person he gets with is his one and only.

His family is oddly encouraging when it comes to you spending alone time with him, yes even his grandparents (mainly his grandma) they let you guys have a room all to yourselves and his parents cry tears of joy on how their son is growing up so fast. “Every couple needs to have some alone time!” they say, as you feel your face turn red, it doesn’t take two brain cells to figure out what they’re implying. His brother sometimes joins in but as usual he’s weird about it so Kusuo takes you away from his brother’s presence.

Also during the car ride with his parents and grandparents you’ve had to sit on his lap because of the lack of space and his family were all ecstatic about it. Nothing happened of course, but it did feel nice to be held by him so he took note of it and now you get held by him a lot more often.

Sometimes he’ll randomly kiss your cheek out of nowhere and he never gives you an explanation. It’s always when you’re not completely paying attention too, so it always throws you off. From his perspective he loves watching you process what he did, get a little flustered from the unexpected affection and watching you smile before returning the gesture. You never know when he’s going to do it but get him back when he’s wearing his ring.

That being said you guys do like to cuddle in the comfort of Kusuo’s room and it usually ends with both of you sleeping curled up next or on top of each other. His parents have a couple of pictures of your two napping. (Kusuo might’ve stolen one for safe keeping and has it stashed somewhere in his room)

Whenever Kusuo buys you a gift and plans to give it to you he always aports the item he got you last minute and cycles through things he thinks you might like before settling on what he originally got for you. This is all happening before you even open the box or bag the gift is in, he just wants to make you happy. You deserve nothing but the best and you’re always happy with his gifts so it works out just fine. The same happens with you— except you can’t aport stuff but you still get nervous whenever you give Kusuo a gift. I feel like It’s a little tricky to buy stuff for him because he’s pretty indifferent to many things except for sweets, but buying nothing but sweets for him for almost every occasion feels cheap and halfassed so you do your best and try to find stuff he might like or need (doesn’t mean you don’t get him sweets, you just don’t do it for every occasion.). He already knows what you got him because of his powers but hey it’s the thought that counts.

Sometimes you like to show saiki memes and he doesn’t understand them at all and it’s very clear too because he’ll either give you a blank look or be visibly confused looking at it, he’ll then look at you and say “I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you’re very simple minded and easily entertained.” And you’re not even mad about it because that made it funnier. Which encourages you to show him more memes. You’ll send him a meme with no context with “you” to accompany it and sometimes he’ll respond with “me.”

Which brings me to my next point, saiki is very very dry when it comes to texting and uses proper punctuation so he gives you a proper heart attack when you ask him something and he responds with something like “ok.” He just doesn’t see the point in texting when he can talk to you via telepathy, but you like to send him memes so that’s probably the only reason why he checks his phone. So your conversation just looks like you talking to yourself with Saiki occasionally responding to whatever is you asked him. In short he leaves you on read through text but answers you via telepathy, while complaining why you even text him in the first place since he’s a psychic and then explains why texting him defeats the purpose since you can just ask him through telepathy. So you text him anyways :)

Since you know about his powers sometimes you’ve spotted him as a cat or as Kuriko and it gets a little awkward sometimes. Like I said he likes to hold your hand and it’s something he automatically goes for without even thinking. So when he held your hand as Kuriko Teruhashi, Mera and Chio were very confused. Kusuo was extremely relived that you know how to bullshit your way through things like this, it’s how you’ve gotten him out of many situations and this one is just another added to the list. You explained that Kuriko is Kusuo’s younger sister and that she’s a little shy and doesn’t talk much around strangers and likes to hold your hand as a form of comfort. He hates that you said that, but beggars can’t be choosers. But it got them to drop their suspicions and it even worked out when they saw the contents in his bag.

He tried to be affectionate with you as a cat, thinking you wouldn’t know it was him, but you instantly found him out when you saw the control devices on the cat’s collar that looked very similar to your beloved boyfriend saiki as it rubbed up against your leg trying to get your attention and he wants to die every time he thinks about it. You began to tease him about it, telling him that if he wanted more attention from you he could’ve just asked for it, getting a “shut up you weren’t supposed to know it was me.” in retaliation as he let you shower him with lots of kisses and affection, he’s a very cute kitty. He ended up purring and wholeheartedly denies it and tries to convince you that it never happened. But you know what happened and you’re never letting him live it down.

When Touma transferred and started asking people about Kusuo, Kusuo made sure you practically never left his side because he knew Touma was waiting until he left you alone to question you. So he walked you to and from school, to your classes and stayed close to you during lunch or when there was any form of free time during school hours. He knew Touma has been following you guys for a couple of days and would take long and elaborate ways to his house and then teleport you both home when he was sure you guys weren’t in Touma’s sight. For the most part it worked. Until it didn’t. Touma was aware of what Kusuo was doing which only made him want to talk to you even more. You’re the closest to Kusuo and you’re even dating him (Touma had a hunch but didn’t think Kusuo was capable of having a partner so just assumed you guys were just close), so you clearly know something his friend group doesn’t because he’s not guarding them as fiercely as he is with you.

It was inevitable that Kusuo wouldn’t be with you and it was when you were running errands on the weekend, and Touma wasn’t going to let that opportunity go to waste and instantly cornered you and asked you questions nonstop leaving you no room to answer, and if you were being honestly you were so thrown off that you didn’t even process half the shit he said or asked. You know how when you’re not expecting to interact with people and then get caught by surprise and just completely forget everything you know. That’s what happened here, and you were just straight up confused and weren’t processing anything this man was saying. You mentally gathered yourself together and called out to Kusuo via telepathy basically going “mom come get me, I’m scared. :,)” and like a good boyfriend that’s exactly what he did.

You’ve seen Kusuo take way too long making a decision on which coffee jelly to buy that you told him that you can easily make it for him at home, it’s not exactly the hardest thing the world to make, so that’s what you did. You made different kinds, using different kinds of coffee, gelatin and agar agar to see which he likes better. Saiki helped by getting you the different kinds of coffee and he’s planning a wedding as we speak.

[kawaiijohn]

*scrambles in* Hey remember that Egg thing for a dp promt we talked about on that discord server *runs away*

After literally 2 months of not writing shit, I'm back.

Here's the animation of the story this fic is based on.

And here's the fic on Ao3

Rating: T Warnings: Existentialism, Death, References to depression and alcoholism, a lot of weird time bullshit. Characters: Danny&Clockwork

Hatching Inside the Egg

He was trying to fix the portal, when he died.

It was a freak accident. Unfortunate and anything but unremarkable, but fatal nonetheless. It was not a painless death, but the pain only lasted him a moment. His brain was so utterly fried and his body so burned he was better off losing consciousness before the end, trust me. It was a zap, and then nothing.

And that’s when he met me.

“What… happened?” Daniel asked, shaking. His black hair had turned shock white from the force of electrified ectoplasm, unlike anything I had ever seen. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. There wasn't a point in softening my words.

“There was… my parents' portal, a big wire on the ground. I tripped and then… the button-”

“Yes,” I said nodding. I have not been the best at comfort, yet I floated to stand in front of him.

He shuddered, hugging his arms closer. “I… I died?”

“Yes, but everyone does, given time.” I said, polishing the clock on the end of my staff.

I watched Daniel as he looked around. There was nothingness around us, just him and me. As I do with all humans before me, I tried to look at his past. But I realized something bizarre. His past was beyond my sight- completely obscured. I looked to his future, and found nothing- no other lives planned, nothing beyond this accident of his. Daniel Fenton was an anomaly- I could not see where he was meant to be, nor where he was destined to reincarnate. There was only nothingness when I viewed him.

He was not connected to anything but himself.

He was a paradox, a past looping into a future in an endless mobius strip. He was something that should not be, something that should not have reached here.

Perfectly Dead, yet not.

Perfectly Alive, yet not.

And yet how very interesting he was.

“Where am I?” He asked, interrupting my train of thought. “Is this the afterlife or something?”

“You could say that,” I said, staring him down as I tried to figure him out.

He swallowed nervously. “Are you God?” He asked, both clearly afraid and in disbelief.

“Yes, I could be called God.”

I did not wish to tell this fascinating paradox that I was one of many Gods, at least not yet. Something within my very core wished for me to comfort him before I figured out his sentence, where he could even go after this.

Before I could parse my thoughts, I was interrupted yet again by soft sniffling.

"Sam, Tucker... Jazz. My parents-"

“What about them?” 

“Will they be okay without me?” He looked up at me, tears in his eyes.

I chuckled at the familiar, yet uncommon question. “That’s pleasant to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your loved ones.”

He looked at me with eyes full of guilt as he wiped the tears away.

To him, I didn't look much like God, or sound like one either. To him I looked like a toddler, or an adult, or maybe even an elder. All forms of indeterminate gender and race. Maybe I most looked like an authority figure- more a beloved grandparent or teacher rather than the almighty.

I took another moment to look through time before I gave my response.

"Your loved ones will be fine, given some time. Your parents will remember you as their perfect son, they love you dearly and had not had time to grow disappointed in any sort of failure. Your friends will grieve but become closer to each other over it, and your sister… she will use your death as a motivation for her future studies and career, and do much of it in your memory. If it's any consolation, even your bullies will feel guilty for how they treated you, and many will turn over a new leaf."

I watched his shoulders sag in relief, and yet my Core panged in guilt at the amount of information I felt the need to conceal, if only for his sake.

His parents, lost in their grief will try to dismantle the portal, but will not be able to. Ghosts will run amuck in his hometown without a line of defense. Amity Park will be largely abandoned within a year without any sort of protector, only to be put under martial law by some sort of organization. And although most leave, his parents will remain to try and defend their home town in his name. His friends will go through intense periods of grief and regret- survivor's guilt, as it were. Samantha will rage and Tucker will shut down, both succumb to unhealthy coping mechanisms for years before they both get clean for each other. And his sister, a brilliant mind who will fall into a bottle as most of the Fenton line does when handed grief on a platter like this. She will succeed, but she will be a shadow of her once shining self.

And still, this paradox before me, I have no idea in my eons of existence where to place him.

"At least they'll be alright, I guess," Daniel sighed. "So is this the part where I go to heaven or hell or whatever?"

“No, those are not where you are to be. In fact humans are to be reincarnated-" I started.

“Oh! So like Hinduism!!” he interrupted.

“Every human religion is correct in its own way. Now please, Daniel, walk with me.”

He followed along as we floated through the void. “So, where are we going? Is there a special place to do this thing or-”

“No, it’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

We floated along in silence as I contemplated what to do with for all intents and purposes was a lost soul, a human without a connection to the cycle. An unfortunate loner surrounded by nothing but those so unlike him. There was no instruction manual on what to do with a being such as he- others had died in similar portal accidents, but had always awoken on the mortal plane to live the rest of their existences before coming to me. Daniel somehow came straight to my doorstep, and had always been separate from the rest.

How could a being so perfectly Other, so perfectly Liminal, find its way here unassisted?

It was confounding, it was wonderful, it was-

"So if we all just kinda reincarnate at the end, what's the point to living for like seventy something years if we just turn back into babies in the end? It seems a bit pointless if you ask me." Daniel hopped between patches of swirling green void as if they were stones in a stream, a childish action that only some of the youngest of humans have done before me in this place.

“Not exactly,” I said. “Humans have the knowledge of their previous lives inside of them, they just can't access them most of the time.”

I stopped floating and took my staff in both hands, facing Daniel. “The human soul is deeper, more expansive, and brighter than you can imagine. The human mind can only contain so much without frying. Think of it as putting your foot in a pool to check if it's warm or not. You put a small piece of yourself in, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had."

"I guess that makes sense then. But will I ever remember?" 

I sighed. Young Daniel had not yet caught on to his differences. “Humans live such short lives, most just haven’t stretched out and felt the rest of their immense consciousness yet. If one were to stay here long enough, they would begin to remember.”

There was a beat of silence as the boy thought. “So, how many times have I been here already, then?”

I stilled the staff in my hands and stared him down. "Humans have been reincarnated an innumerable amount of times, and they will continue to do so until they are ready for the next step. Your sister, Jasmine, was previously a mechanic named Joe in the year 4,123 AD."

“Wait wait wait... you sent Jazz back in time? Like, you can do that?" Daniel stammered out, unsure of what all to ask.

“Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are somewhat different where I'm from.”

“And where are you from if not the universe or this weird green space place?" Daniel had crossed his legs and begun floating as we talked.

“I come from somewhere else, and there are many others like me. But currently, it's beyond your understanding, and best if we don't speak of it just yet.”

Daniel pouted like the child he refused to say he was. He sat and thought, tumbled the words around in his mind before speaking. “So wait, let me get this right- if I can be reincarnated as pretty much everyone or anyone whenever the hell you want me to be, I might have interacted with myself at some point?”

I smiled sadly at the boy. "It happens to humans all the time, not that any of them would ever know with their memories locked away. But as far as you're concerned, you're a peculiar case."

"What do you mean?" Daniel asked me. "I'm gonna get reincarnated too, right?"

I looked at the boy without emotion. I still did not know how to place this boy in the grand scheme of things, and as he stared at me in fear I felt the need to prod deeper. "I am sorry, Daniel. I don't believe you will."

His expression was filled with soul crushing pain as he sank from his position. "I always felt like the odd one out, and this is just beating it into me harder that I'm some sort of freak."

"You may not belong to humanity's universe like everyone else, but neither do I, nor any of my brethren." I responded, rubbing soothing circles into the boy's back. "Your existence is a paradox, you are not here or there, not alive or dead- at least not truly. How you even came to be here is a mystery."

"None of this makes me feel any better, you know."

"Well, maybe if I tell you what my theory is concerning you, Daniel. it is currently clear that you are more like myself than all of the rest of humanity. You see, this universe- where humanity reincarnates over and over into different people, I created. Every human that has ever lived, or will ever live, is a reincarnation of the same consciousness over and over and over again."

"Why would you even do that? What's even the point of it all, if everyone is the same person forever and ever." Daniel looked up at me from where his head was tucked into his knees. "What do you even gain?"

“The reason I made this whole universe, is for humans to mature.”

He looked me in the eye in disbelief. "You want humans to mature? Why would you tell me this?"

"This entire universe, Earth and all its planets and stars and everything, was created for humanity. It exists so that with each new life lived, humanity's intellect grows and matures."

Daniel groaned in confusion. "I don't understand... They hurt each other, and they love each other. Shit I even tease my friends and I love them, so why would you make a consciousness do all this??"

I stand tall, my eyes gleamed with light in the swirling green void. “Every time they victimized someone, they victimized themself. Every act of kindness they’ve done, they’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by humanity as a whole.” My words echoed with power before this strange anomaly of a boy as my form wavered between ages. 

He swallowed, although he no longer needed to. "Why do all this though, what do you get from it?"

"Because, humanity is like me. They are my child."

"Woah, so like- Sam, Tucker, Jazz? They're all the same baby God?" he asked, incredulous. "That's a little weird for me to grasp, but I can kinda get it. Even if it's still super weird."

"Yes, that is true. It can be a bit weird of a concept for someone as young as yourself I suppose." I chuckled. "But they're still growing, and will continue to do so until they have been every human through all of time."

"So the universe... the whole thing... all the stars and planets and galaxies- they're all..."

"An egg," I finished. "And one that still has a very long time before it's ready to hatch."

Daniel sat before me, uncrumpled from his previous ball like posture, and pondered a while. "So what happens to me now? I'm not like the rest of humanity, so does that mean I just stop existing?"

"No, it's much more complex than just ceasing to exist. Although, it is rather strange you managed to manifest in your universe without my notice- your existence to me is not much unlike a secondary fruit growing within the main one, or maybe even an egg with two yolks." I chuckled at the image. "Simply put, you seem to be a separate entity inside of the universe I created for humanity, and have matured much faster than they. You just managed thatch inside the egg, somehow."

"So... what does that mean for me?" He asked, astonished.

"I believe, with what I have seen of the time after your death, I should give you a second chance." I answered, brandishing my staff. "It would be remiss of me to extinguish such a lovely anomaly as yourself, to snuff out young surprise life of my kind would wrack me with guilt. But I think I have an answer..."

I lifted my staff above my head, and allowed power to course through it. "I think for the benefit of all humanity, I will send you back. To the moment of your death. The nature of such a death will create... some problems, but it will allow you to mature fully alongside the rest of humankind, albeit without your current consciousness reincarnating." My staff chimed with the toll of bells. "You will live alongside humanity, until the very last of humans cease to exist, upon which you will join me here once again as my child alongside your beloved humanity. And in doing this, I will be able to observe your personal development through time instead of remaining in the dark about you."

"So, what I'll be like... immortal?" Daniel squinted at the light coming off of my staff.

"It will be a sad, lonely existence in the end. You will watch your loved ones die, but will make bonds with others as time progresses. I feel you will be happy growing alongside humanity; a protective older sibling to it, if you will." I smiled at him as the light enveloped him completely. "Unfortunately, you will not remember our meeting, not until you have lived your life. We will meet again someday. At least, when the time is right."

As he began to dissolve back to his universe, Daniel cried out. "Wait! What can I call you? You're like, my god parent- literally. I want to know what to call you."

And as he faded completely, I answered. 

"Clockwork, master of the concept of Time. We will meet again, my son."

And I sent him on his way.