#the fear of being known

[gravyhoney]

mx gravyhoney did you know one of ur text posts got reposted 2 one of those instagram text post pages. cause it jumpscared me when it came across my feed like

🫵NINJAGO MUTUAL?🫵IN THE WILD?🫵

HELLO???? I DIDNT KNOW THIS??????? WHICH ONE?????? ELABORATE??????

THIS IS SO SILLY BTW HEHHEHEHRJFGKTKRKFGKGKFKGKGKGKF

[decadenceandrot]

To be known is to exist in ways outside of your control.

[fondantythoughts]

Thanks @tentoriumcerebelli for the tag from forever ago.

I am actually super fearful of interacting on this site--the fear of being known or saying the wrong thing. I've been a passive user for many, many years afraid to do much else.

It's time I got braver, so, let's start small!

1. 3 ships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Jessi/James (Pokemon), Kurama/Hiei (Yu Yu Hakusho)

2. first ever ship: Joey/Seto (YGO was my first fandom I wrote for, but I never actually wrote any stories about them-- just read a lot!)

3. last song: The Ocean, Against Me!

4. last movie: Fellowship of the Ring (I've done a rewatch of all the extended commentaries, so now I'm rewatching the extended movies without any commentaries)

5. currently reading: Been around Good Omens fanfiction lately with a stopover in YYH.

6. currently watching: Rewatching old Great British Baking Show when Mel and Sue were hosts.

7. currently consuming: Anything that I can vaguely taste (Wildberry poptarts, orange juice, etc.)

8. currently craving: Taste. I got COVID after years of avoiding it and lost my taste. I'm crushed about this because I love to cook, and usually I make some of my favorite recipes around this time of year.

[morphestic]

for someone who writes a lot, i never really post any of my works

[thefunkycreature]

gosh yeah i now understand the horror of getting notes on Tumblr, made a post on an alt and I keep getting notifications, leave me aloneeeeeeeee

[stventricle]

not enough of Louis smiling

[team-moonlark]

Ugggh anxiety

[chloesimaginationthings]

I love your art, and I really love how you did him, he's such a guy (he's my fav 💜)

I HONESTLY didn’t expect such a big reaction to the silly way I decided to draw Withered Bonnie this time, but so many of yall clocked it LMAO

[squidcave]

Finished cryptid poster 👀

[joycrispy]

I'm seeing some confusion out and about over the title A Companion to Owls (generally along the lines of 'what have owls got to do with it???'), so I'd like to offer my interpretation (with a general disclaimer that the Bible and particularly the Old Testament are damn complicated and I'm not able to address every nuance in a fandom tumblr post, okay? Okay):

It's a phrase taken from the Book of Job. Here's the quote in full (King James version):

When I looked for good, then evil came unto me: and when I waited for light, there came darkness. My bowels boiled, and rested not: the days of affliction prevented me. I went mourning without the sun: I stood up, and I cried in the congregation. I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls. --(Job 30:29)

Job is describing the depths of his grief, but also, with that last line, his position in the web of providence.

Throughout the Old Testament, owls are a recurring symbol of spiritual devastation. Deuteronomy 4:17 - Isaiah 34:11 - Psalm 102: 3 - Jeremiah 50: 39...just to name a few (there's more). The general shape of the metaphor is this: owls are solitary, night-stalking creatures, that let out either mournful cries or terrible shrieks, that inhabit the desolate places of the world...and (this is important) they are unclean.

They represent a despair that is to be shunned, not pitied, because their condition is self-inflicted. You defied God (so the owl signifies), and your punishment is...separation. From God, from others, from the world itself. To call and call and never, ever receive an answer.

Your punishment is terrible, tormenting loneliness.

(and that exact phrase, "tormenting loneliness," doesn't come from me...I'm pulling it from actual debate/academia on this exact topic. The owls, and what they are an omen for. Oof.)

To call yourself a 'companion to owls,' then, is to count yourself alongside perhaps the most tragic of the damned --not the ones who defy God out of wickedness or ignorance, and in exile take up diabolical ends readily enough...but the ones who know enough to mourn what they have lost.

So, that's how the title relates to Job: directly. Of course, all that is just context. The titular "companion to owls," in this case, isn't Job at all.

Because this story is about Aziraphale.

The thing is that Job never actually defied God at all, but Aziraphale does, and he does so fully believing that he will fall.

He does so fully believing that he's giving in to a temptation.

He's wrong about that, but still...he's realized something terrifying. Which is that doing God's will and doing what's right are sometimes mutually exclusive. Even more terrifying: it turns out that, given the choice between the two...he chooses what's right.

And he's seemingly the only angel who does. He's seemingly the only angel who can even see what's wrong.

Fallen or not, that's the kind of knowledge that...separates you.

(Whoooo-eeeeee, tormenting loneliness!!!)

Aziraphale is the companion.

...I don't think I need to wax poetic about Aziraphale's loneliness and grappling with devotion --I think we all, like, get it, and other people have likely said it better anyway. So, one last thing before I stop rambling:

Check out Crowley's glasses.

(screenshots from @seedsofwinter)

Crowley is the owl.

Crowley is the goddamn owl.

[elysiae]

do you think operator & drifter treat their warframes wildly differently?

somewhat insufficient TLDR: i think the operator and drifter are emotionally attached but in vastly, strikingly different ways, and it manifested very, very differently too.

in operator's case, it isn't that they dont *care*, but they know how durable a warframe is. they know they can take one hell of a hit, and they'll be okay because that warframe takes the brunt of it (albeit with some phantom pain if the damage is bad enough). theyre less comfortable outside the confines of those large, bulky war machines because they know they're ultimately safe. those warframes can take hits. they cannot. the operator knows they were people, but they never met those people before the tragedy. besides... a lot of them really are just empty shells. they're hardly the people they once were, especially since they recreated those warframes from blueprints. don't get me wrong, they do remember the anguish of the originals - they were there, they lived it, and they still have empathy for them... but the operator knows the limits of every warframe like the back of their hand - they can maneuver however they want, they can take hits, they can run into armies and not be too afraid because they (as in the operator and the warframe this time) be fine. even if the warframe is damaged, they can fix the damage, so no harm done.

but drifter on the other hand? at first i think they never really realised the power they had. in their mind they were still them, just running, rolling on the occasion, it took them ages to maneuver those things *properly*, and probably only ever really learned with the operator's guidance. they would not let a warframe take a hit, not because they felt empathy for it (at least not a lot, last i checked you kind of need at least *some* to have effective transference?) but because they were so used to walking around vulnerable. yknow, not inside a killing machine. but what would've really solidified the difference was after they went to 1999. sure, hearing that these things used to be people is one thing, but at the end of the day, to drifter, they're still just machines. drifter never got to experience what the tenno did, they never had to deal with reaching into their freshly scarred minds to ease their anger, sorrow, fear, rein them in like the terrified animals they were turning into and hush their cries with understanding - they only knew the dead inside remnants... but it's an entirely other thing when you go to the past and see the people who were hurt. you meet them and you get to know them, become their best friends - maybe even date one of them - and it hit drifter like a fuckin' freight train. they have this entirely different view on warframes from that cold perspective they had at first. they weren't just war machines. those are people. every time they go into the head of those machines, they're looking through the eyes of *people.* people who had families and desires and hobbies, things they looked forward to, entire futures ahead of them that were snuffed out. people who were scared, people who didn't know what was happening. people who knew what was happening, who lived in fear knowing they weren't able to stop it... people who lived in fear of losing themselves. and i think it hit drifter a lot harder than they'd ever admit.

but thats not to say one of them is more attached than the other - both of them care deeply about their warframes. it's just that, they have different ways of looking at them. after all their experiences were so vastly different, it'd be impossible to look at them the same way.

(too lazy to type it out all over, but i have an example in the tags i think kinda helps pull it together more)

[scarapanna]

I liked your art, you won🎉🎉🎉

WE WON NO REDEMPTION WAHOOOOO/silly

I'm still terrified of the redemption route for this clown though hdhghfg, I want his silly self to stay evil and wimsy and goofy and with redemption uhhh

We're like

I dunno I'm sooo scared devsis is gonna take away that aspect which is what makes him just so funnn. Please pretty please let him be god awful and rotten and rude and goofy if you take that route Devisis I want him to keep his funny wimsy qualities. Please please pleaseeee write him well y'all are doing sooo good with him don't fumble by taking the redemption route (And if they do it better be good and he better stay chaotic and goofy and sassy and condescending and all his "rotten rabid thing" qualities)

If they do him (And his fun aspects justice in this dreaded hypotetical) then I may be cool with it. Though the mean ass possum has grown on me so much I'd 100% miss that evil and unhinged part of him TONS, devsis have mercy pretty please/silly

[Longer more insane ramblings are in the tags hsfhfhhv]

[usertoxicyaoi]

"You don't actually dislike singing, do you? You probably still like it a lot, right? I think you sing really well. Go ahead and enjoy karaoke without worrying. And, are you always this cheeky? Don't do that anymore. You actually look more normal here."

HISHAKAI SHINDO (2025). EPISODE ONE.

[meanbossart]

Hi. My boyfriend @barbatusart made an attempt on my life this morning. (EDIT: he didn't, this is a joke, I'm just dramatic)

Here is Neil Roberts, the dark urge's lovely voice artist, reading out a (slightly edited version - the original is a little more... crass) DU drow monologue from a short comic I have planned in the future.

I will be bopping him with a newspaper about this in the future.

[superbat-lmao]

Sometimes I see time-travel!superbat where Bruce meets an older version of Clark and can’t quite believe that it’s not an alternate reality. That things will play out for him like it did his counterpart. Where he doesn’t believe that he’s worth it, or that anyone could stick around through his idiosyncrasies.

The fics unfold as Clark weathering that paranoia or distrust. His amusement at Bruce’s obstinacy. Or Bruce’s shock and disbelief at having a relationship.

What I would like, is a fic where Clark meets older!Bruce, one who has been married for years and shows how he loves his husband. Where Clark sometimes can’t quite convince himself that Bruce actually wants their relationship and isn’t just humoring him in some sort of way. That under all of Bruce’s masks, the ones that choose the most optimal decision in any situation, the ones that stress team cohesion and efficiency, that Bruce just wants him. Plain and simple. No ulterior motive. Just want.

I want that Clark to meet a Bruce who is so settled in his marriage, that he doesn’t realize how the smallest of concessions are blazing neon signs to Clark. Laughing at a joke, leaning into touches, faint non-smiles, eye rolls, shifting his weight, literally any tell of his that he normally suppresses and just. Allows Clark to see. Puts on for Clark because he knows it amuses him. Wants him to see and be a part of.

Just, the easy acceptance of Clark’s love that he couldn’t convince himself he’d be able to make Bruce believe. Being loved back, just as fiercely. Altering habits not out of necessity, but preference. For someone so stoic, so controlled and measured in their every response, to see him be as relaxed as he’s capable of. To know that Clark has shaped that relaxation.

I think that the first thing Bruce does, unthinkingly, catches Clark off guard. Maybe he blinks at a question or raises an eyebrow. Reacts in a way he doesn’t usually allow. And an alarm goes off in Clark’s head. He keeps a list, a tally of all the ways this man isn’t his Bruce, all of the ways he’s softer. He thinks there must be something wrong. An alternate universe, a trick of some sort. Because it’s wrong. For as miraculous as it is to see a Batman that actually chuckled at one of his jokes, it strikes him as wrong. Some sort of forced personality change.

And if he confronts Bruce about it?

Bruce is devastated. To learn that the man who becomes his husband doesn’t believe that his love will affect him in measurable ways. That Clark will actually distrust him for how he’s changed. That the most remarkable thing he’s ever been a part of is so unbelievable that Clark looks for other explanations.

And Bruce may acknowledge that he can do a poor job of showing it, did a poor job of showing it in the beginning, but he loves Clark. For no particular reason other than that he wants to. It is not kindness or pity or whatever other misguided concerns Clark has. It’s that he wants him and allowed himself to be changed. To be better. And he tells him so.

(When older!Bruce sees younger!Bruce he has a few helpful suggestions. Well, he thinks they’re helpful. Younger!Bruce can’t quite see how “make sure to roll your eyes once a week” would make his future marriage better, but who is he to question it? It obviously worked out. Even if Clark looks at him like he’s grown a second head the first time he does it. Actually he’s pretty sure he x-rayed him but won’t call him on it. Just this once.)

[antiparticular]

listen to life enternal followed by excelsis if you want to be punched in the stomach and also chest