rivnedell

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My h.e.a.r.t

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I could die to change what happen and kill Palpatine myself I swear

everything is fine.

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L.i.f.e

4 pm, almonds and tea and journals

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First of all, fuck her and what she does and says.

I'm not going to boycott the movies with which I grew up with. Movies in which actors, directors, producers, thousands of people over a decade worked and poured their souls and heart into ; which they parted from their original inventor. We're all, the original cast included, are disgusted by this.

She doesn't have the right to take us, who grew up with those movies, who fucking gave it our money, time, love and dedication as hostages and use the status she earned thanks to us to say and do all the absolute shit she wants.

The HP saga cast absolutely parted from her and her disgusting ideas and claim loud and clear their support to lgbtqia+ people. Daniel Radcliffe campaigned and worked with the Trevor Project. He said years ago and keep saying it that "If the movies brought you joy, whoever you are, keep this magic in you." Emma is a Human Rights activist and firmly reject Rowling's ideas, to quote only a few.

I'm not going to let her shitty toxic fucking ideas ruin their work, their involvement to HER characters and the magic that, yes she created, but she forgets that if there hasn't been so much people to love it and millions of others, she wouldn't be able to pour her fucking money into transphobic activities.

By the way, she encouraged the reboot because she estimated the original cast wasn't "loyal" to her and by extension to her ideas.

So I will continue to watch the movies. Continue to keep my power and my magic and to keep transforming it into something so much mote intelligent, loving, kind, compassionate and understanding than she ever will.

For the books it's different, and so yes, because it involves only her and her writing from her brain, I'm boycotting them. I had planned to buy the entire collection of HP books, I had purchased the 2 first before her activities were uncovered. I won't purchased the other books.

I won't watch the reboot. No need to explain why.

I'm a cis-woman who stands for the rights of women (& children, too often forgotten btw) and feel sick and shocked to see some cis-women feeling threatened.. By human beings just wanting to exist the way they want.

All my love.

(Source)

This is EXACTLY why we beg y’all to boycott HP, especially the reboot. Anywho, gonna take advantage of the tag inevitably trending by listing pro-LGBTQ+ groups to support and invest:

Mermaids

The Trevor Project

InterACT

The National Black Justice Coalition

Lavender Phoenix

Black AIDS Institute

GLAAD

National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center

Lambda Legal

Queer the Land

Act Up NY

Human Rights Campaign

FOLX HELP

Feel free to add more charitable organizations below! Oh and one more thing: DO NOT HARASS THE KIDS CAST ON THAT SHOW, or you’re equally as bad as Jowling-Knowling-Rowling.

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Little reminder, just in case.

women supporting women means supporting trans women too btw.

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Happy pride everyone. Sending and spreading love 🧡

this is how to do pride right?

happy pride!

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Look at this. These movies are almost 20 years old and they look like they just got released, it's mind blowing. They're still so underrated.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) IMDb Trivia

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Story Starters #2

“I’m Fine” Starters (for characters who are breaking but hiding it behind practiced smiles and default sarcasm)

✧ I’m fine. I mean, sure, I haven’t slept in three days and my thoughts sound like static, but yeah, I’m great. ✧ It’s easier to make jokes about the chaos than to admit how much of it is mine. ✧ Every time someone asks how I’m doing, I lie a little more convincingly. ✧ I can’t tell if I’ve gotten stronger or if I’ve just gotten better at pretending. ✧ I cried in the bathroom stall and came back out with a joke ready. No one noticed the red eyes. They laughed. ✧ I tell people I’m tired. It’s easier than saying I can’t remember the last time I felt okay. ✧ I’m the go-to friend for advice. No one ever asks if I’m surviving. ✧ I don’t know what scares me more—someone noticing or no one ever noticing at all. ✧ I’ve built this version of myself that everyone seems to love. The only problem? I don’t recognize them anymore. ✧ Smiling is just muscle memory now. I wish it meant something.

 Enemies Softening Starters (for when hate starts turning into understanding, and understanding starts burning a little too sweet)

✧ I used to hate the way they looked at me. Now I hate how much I want them to do it again. ✧ We don’t talk about the moment our hands brushed. But we haven’t stopped thinking about it either. ✧ There’s still tension when we speak—but now it’s the kind that makes my stomach flip, not clench. ✧ I catch myself defending them when they’re not around. I don’t know when that started. ✧ I know I’m supposed to hate them. I just don’t remember why as clearly anymore. ✧ They’re still annoying. Arrogant. Impossible. And I think about them way too often. ✧ When they’re angry, I find myself watching too closely. Like I want to understand the fire, not put it out. ✧ We bicker the way fire crackles, dangerous, but kind of addictive. ✧ They’re the last person I should trust. And yet, when things went bad… they were the only one who showed up. ✧ It’s not that I want to kiss them. It’s just… I wouldn’t dodge if they tried.

“I Thought I Was Over It” Starters (for characters who swore they’d moved on—until the memory hits like a bruise)

✧ I saw them across the room and it felt like a ghost walked through me. ✧ I thought the ache had gone. But one song, and suddenly I was seventeen again, heart cracked wide open. ✧ I can say their name without flinching now. But thinking about them still feels like biting into something bitter. ✧ I told myself I healed. But then I saw that smile—our smile—and all the old hurt came flooding back. ✧ I let them go. I did. I just didn’t expect to still miss them when it rains. ✧ I don’t want them back. I just want to know if they still remember me too. ✧ I laughed when I saw their name. That sharp, bitter kind of laugh that tastes too much like grief. ✧ There are people I’ve loved since. But none of them cracked me open the way they did. ✧ I found our old photo and couldn’t throw it out. I just… moved it to a drawer. ✧ Healing isn’t linear. Some days, I forget them. Some days, I remember everything.

[rivnedell]

OH my god

WILL POULTER Photographed by Jason Hetherington for Man About Town

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Where the Shadows Lie: Chapter 2 - Five Seconds of Eternal Spring

There was something about the chase - no, not the chase, the totally-not-creepy approach - that already felt romantic. She wandered back toward the reference stacks, where the shadows drew long and illumination bloomed from dim 1980s desk lamps. I felt like I was following her through a place that was at once an enchanted forest, but also the school library.

I meant it quite literally.

Vines and ivy twisted among the bookshelves, disappearing up into the ceiling, curled around glowing blue stones. I saw bizarre, long-limbed figures crawling amidst them, little dibbuks or something with oversized noses and pointed ears on unknowable missions. 

A…troll? Was it a troll? Something big and brutal-jawed with beady black eyes and sloped shoulders leans forward to pick through painting catalogues, mumbling unintelligibly to the crow-feathered girl scanning a QR code.

I ignored them, following the gentle percussion of Tessa’s shod hooves around another stack. I reached one of those towering walls of tomes the library curates but few people seem to stumble across. Their age could be measured in triple digits, and a slender iron ladder on wheels was required to reach up to the higher levels…how was that not a bold-faced defiance of OSHA?

Lanterns hung from the ceiling, limning her in pale light as she stood on one of those ladders a few meters above me. 

I was engrossed by the sight of her, and I will not pretend like I’m a man of decency…I dared an errant peek under her skirt and felt my breath hitch at the sight of that bright purple thong gracing her hips; I could see the swell of her sex pressed against the fabric, the shape of bulbous labia beneath. 

Quickly shifting my attention from between her thighs to something less obviously perverse, I cleared my throat to get her attention.

Grab the bull by the horns.

The garden of my woes overflowed with problems, spilling forth unattended into the orderly, if barren estate of my life. 

Lasciviously pink purslane danced in bands across the courtyard of my mind, as Tessa waltzed gracefully through my thoughts…I could practically taste her, right on the tip of my tongue.

A black bramble of fear spiderwebbed outward from mildew-ringed puddles of rainwater…my stalker’s blank visage stared up at me from the puddle…not a reflection, but somehow omnipresent in the water.

A tangled, dead oak tree that had once flowered proudly among the pillars of my identity mouldered and turned stony. Once colorful Khamdoan prayer flags were stamped with black bile that read ‘POSITION TERMINATED’.

As if those three blights weren’t bad enough, there loomed a fourth complexity in my life I’d yet to solve, one quite different from the other three. It was the Bascom Ridge Suspension Bridge problem; a conundrum that should not have kept me up as it did but it was just in the way; there was a poetic relevance to it.

Let me explain.

Professor Paz had randomly assigned a group project to the entire Control Systems class, and I ended up with Bohen Sautner and Milly Long; the former was singularly focused on his future career with the NBA (yeah good luck pal) and, due to his position on the college’s lucrative basketball team, he was generally allowed to coast by. Milly Long did her part of the project with a certain lackluster haste, so while it was done, I’d probably have to make sure it wasn’t garbage.

For my own part, I had to design a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller; in common English, that’s a control device that responds to external change. In the case of the bridge, that means gusts of wind and the kinds of waves that we see in Dade County…Or that made traversing the different Abbacies perilous in Khamrungsa. 

Didn’t take a genius to see how that would have been useful for me.

There was always the temptation to give in to despair, cut my losses, drop out and go work in carpentry…but how soulless that felt. That in turn makes me feel entitled; if I hadn’t gotten lucky and had Rachel to help me get here, my choices would be scarce. 

My best friend Aryn, for instance, wasn’t so lucky; she was playing it safe with loans to go to the tech college and become a phlebotomist, just so she could have some income in this price gouge-singularity of a town.

Speaking of, my phone made a quiet blip as she pinged me; I was thankful for a distraction from Kp over Ki.

<blockquote> `Aryn: bruv are you still in the library designing a video game controller`</blockquote>

As was usually the case she found my plight amusing; she’d heard me whining about it, interspersed with my own equivocations concerning Tessa…should I make a move? Should I wait for her to make a move? Would she even make a move? ‘Why oh why did her pantherine form dance across the backs of my eyes as if seared there by a darkening flame?’ I would ask Aryn, prompting her to gag.

<blockquote>`Ascher: yes I am, it doesn’t have nearly enough buttons. whut do you want`

`Aryn: some of that kosher bussy, boi 🍆💍 ur gunna be ma strawberry 🍓`

`Ascher: 😐`

</blockquote>

Christ. I didn’t even know that word existed until she exposed me to it with her…eccentric taste in comics and pornography. I didn’t even know how she got a hold of that stuff, the university system was strict about checking our online activities.

I knew what she was bothering me for, of course…the four of us - me, Aryn, Karl and Vicky - had a YouTube channel with a few thousand subscribers, hardcore fans of our ‘ghost hunting’ show. I caught it all on camera when we went into abandoned factories, moldering houses and sealed-off university wings to catch paranormal activity. 

Some of it was even real.

<blockquote>`Ascher: bro i can’t come i know you’re going to ask me`

`Aryn: ascher can you not be a little bitch? We suck at this when you don’t come, karl’s pantaloons are still brown cuz of possum-poltergeist`

`Ascher: 👻🐭 is this just part of an elaborate plot to get me in your bed to lay some cable? All you gotta do is ask boo 👄`

`Aryn: 🤮 why did i ever show you that episode, now you’re laying cable everywhere man; in bed, in your car. dude come on it’s our season finale, we’ll stay up late and wait for your slowness`</blockquote>

It was a kind offer, but I intended to be here until midnight at least. I glanced at the corner of my laptop’s monitor…already half past 9. I had a long way to go and found myself chained to the seemingly impossible conundrum of the derivative term in my equation…again, in layman’s terms, I have to build a mechanism that moves the suspension cables of a bridge to compensate for the environment so it doesn’t collapse. 

The derivative was the part that predicts what will happen in the future, so the cables don’t overcompensate and snap like dental floss.

I was always a mediocre hand at math, and dealing with the added distortion of choppy wind, waves and simulated traffic gurgling over my bridge was making my life difficult. Differential calculus in particular was not my strong suit, even if Linear Algebra was. 

All of it was abstract as a color’s flavor.

I really didn’t want to disappoint them but I had to wonder…was this me being ‘incredibly weak’, or just caring about my friends’ safety and happiness?

<blockquote>`Ascher: if i finish by midnight ill tell you but don’t go without me, you’ll get possessed and it will get weird.`

`Aryn: what if the ghost is a hot chick? if you come back to my place it’ll be like you’re with two chicks at once, or if the ghost is a hot dude it’ll be awesome for me having two dudes inside me 🥵🌶️`</blockquote>

Ah. That was one of the reasons she wanted me to come out tonight. 

The exact texture of my friendship with Aryn was a complex tapestry that went back to when we were five years old in the same shitty foster care hovel. She and I have been through a lot together; I actually lost my v-card to her (she lost hers to that douchebag Kyle Burgmann with the Lamborghini) and…we definitely mess around when neither of us is seeing anyone. I’d recently broken up with Nieve Chen (a curious ache that lingered in spite of its bitter ending) and Aryn and I had already dallied a few times.

Sometimes I wondered why I didn’t just date her, and remembered it’d be…weird. 

Weirder than fucking her. I could use the relief and closeness, though.

<blockquote>`Ascher: if im done at midnight ill come with you guys and if im not i can still come over tonight and relieve you of your tension`

`Aryn: mmmm good 👅 I could use a nice deep massage, you get places most folks can’t`</blockquote>

Flattery always worked, frankly…I could already feel a stirring in my loins as I pictured joining Aryn in her bed, her dark thighs smooth and mostly exposed in the shorts she slept in. She had a voracious appetite to match mine; there was that at least. 

Still…she wasn’t the object of my desires. That person, in fact, was sitting three tables down, diligently working on her own project.

My thoughts drifted from Aryn like a flock of birds abandoning an electric pole, drawn toward the dawn…laying eyes upon her felt like the sun cresting over the stormy horizon of my heart. How could I describe someone like Tessa? Everytime I tried it felt inadequate. 

She’d strung little wildflowers on green tendrils amidst her horns; it made her appear as if drawn from a Bouguereau painting. The delicate lines of her face were relaxed, wearing a cupid’s bow smile as she bobbed her head to whatever was playing in her earbuds.

Tessa had been catching me staring more often, and when I felt the whiskey-warmth of her gaze track toward me I looked away lamely, pretending I was glancing at my phone…and when I dared sneak a peek back I made contact with her eyes. 

My breath caught, lips parting like I already had some excuse lined up.

She was wearing a lacy, low-cut black tank top that proudly displayed the ripe fullness of her bosom; I could see the impression of her nipple rings pressing against the fabric, infinitely tempting. A little necklace of pink and blue blossoms dangled around her shoulders, golden pinpricks of light rising from gently waving stamens. To my complete surprise Tessa smiled warmly at me, and - 

- in my mind I was suddenly transported to a tan prominence of rock overlooking an unknown sea The Gulf of Antalya. Her curled dark tresses whipped against my face as we stared into each other’s eyes. The heat was oppressive but dry, and her Aegean-tan skin was sheened with only a light gleam of perspiration. “Nothing in all Seleukeia, in Thrakesia or Dyrrachion can match your radiance,” I tell her -

…that didn’t feel like my usual imaginative meanderings. What was that…?

While I was staring blankly at my computer screen, I heard the rhythmic thnk-thnk-thnk-thnk of Tessa’s hooves, and when I looked up she was sashaying away toward the back of the library. A shimmery, almost weightless skirt of silver drifted around her toned legs; her shins sported short brown fur and ended in cloven hooves. 

She looked once more at me over her shoulder, as if to check that I was still staring. 

Which I was.

I thought about Doctor al-Rashi’s advice, to ‘seize the bull by the horns’ which had an uncomfortably suggestive air. Still…the underlying meaning was significant. 

That impulse you get when you’re about to do something really risky and crazy snuck up on me, you know? That sort of free-wind spirit that has your eyes blown wide open while you’re doing something insane like, jumping off a roof into a pool, or starting a fight you can’t win, or chasing a girl who was WAY out of your league.

I got up and followed her.

There was something about the chase - no, not the chase, the totally-not-creepy approach - that already felt romantic. She wandered back toward the reference stacks, where the shadows drew long and illumination bloomed from dim 1980s desk lamps. I felt like I was following her through a place that was at once an enchanted forest, but also the school library.

I meant it quite literally.

Vines and ivy twisted among the bookshelves, disappearing up into the ceiling, curled around glowing blue stones. I saw bizarre, long-limbed figures crawling amidst them, little dibbuks or something with oversized noses and pointed ears on unknowable missions. 

A…troll? Was it a troll? Something big and brutal-jawed with beady black eyes and sloped shoulders leans forward to pick through painting catalogues, mumbling unintelligibly to the crow-feathered girl scanning a QR code.

I ignored them, following the gentle percussion of Tessa’s shod hooves around another stack. I reached one of those towering walls of tomes the library curates but few people seem to stumble across. Their age could be measured in triple digits, and a slender iron ladder on wheels was required to reach up to the higher levels…how was that not a bold-faced defiance of OSHA?

Lanterns hung from the ceiling, limning her in pale light as she stood on one of those ladders a few meters above me. 

I was engrossed by the sight of her, and I will not pretend like I’m a man of decency…I dared an errant peek under her skirt and felt my breath hitch at the sight of that bright purple thong gracing her hips; I could see the swell of her sex pressed against the fabric, the shape of bulbous labia beneath. 

Quickly shifting my attention from between her thighs to something less obviously perverse, I cleared my throat to get her attention.

Grab the bull by the horns.

She favored me a glance downward.

“Hey Tessa. Hope I’m not…catching you at a bad time?” I hazarded; god that sounded lame.

To my surprise she smiled again and the sun blazed triumphant in my chest. “Hi Ascher, not at all, I was just…oh it doesn’t matter. Let me come down to you.” My eyes followed the side-to-side sway of her hips as she climbed down, of her callipygian perfection…god that ass. 

Once she’d come down to my league level, she seated herself on the fifth step easily, crossing her legs and leaning backward. “What’s on your mind, hm?”

That Hellenic accent of hers; a lilting roll of her ‘r’s, a rhythm foreign on this side of the pond…it did things to me, just as much as the valley of her cleavage.

“I’m actually having a pretty tough time with Paz’s assignment,” I chuckled self-consciously…wracking my mind for the right words. “You know, the bridge thing.” 

The bridge thing, Ascher. Nice.

“Yes, I know, the ‘bridge thing’.” Her eyes gleamed golden-orange as her smile widened, stifling a little giggle like she found my outward stupidity endearing. “What’s getting you down?” Tessa’s fingers danced along the silver chain hanging around her neck, a nail tracing lightly over the shape of her collarbone.

I wondered what it would feel like against my lips.

“I got stuck with making the PID controller - ”

“ - ah, so they dumped the hard part on you, Ascher - ”

“ - precisely, and honestly I just can’t get it right. I’m using the formula Paz gave us but it just doesn’t work. Every time I run the sim, the bridge starts oscillating and wobbles like a…I dunno, like a seizing horse. It overcompensates and goes down in the mud. Paz never taught us how to deal with the derivative.”

The last part was an excuse to try and banish my growing sense of dumbness, the feeling that I was just shaming myself in front of the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen over some throwaway differential calc that anyone could do -

“That’s the hardest part,” she pointed out.

Oh.

“...it’s like trying to use math to predict the future based on a panic attack. Everything just starts spiraling, it all gets jammed together and I can’t make sense of it,” I continued, handing her my cellphone - I’d taken a photo of my simulation. Everything she did was graceful, even the way her fingers closed one by one around my Samsung reminded me of a blooming rose viewed in reverse.

“Giving me your phone so freely…wonder if there are some naughty pictures on here,” she mused. Normally this sort of thing wouldn’t phase me but she had my cheeks brighter than a raspberry, and I knew she could see it.

“None that you’ll find.” I tried to sound real cool, and it must have worked; Tessa pushed a string of wildflowers back into her dark hair and pursed her lips with a little ‘ooo’. She handed my Samsung back and pushed off where she was seated, her smiling face inches from mine.

Butterflies and moths fluttered rampant in my belly; she hooked a finger in my belt loop - a shockingly erotic motion that made me bite the inside of my cheek - and tugged me after her. “Come on Ascher. I’m gonna show you why I’m a better teacher than Paz.”

“That’s not hard,” I quipped, drawn along like a moon in her orbit.

I wasn’t oblivious; it was clear as the light from one of those blue rocks that she was flirting with me…but didn’t she flirt with everyone? Had to remind myself that I saw her go home with Liam on Saturday, caught her making out with Jun on Sunday, and last night she and Tara were dancing up on each other at Crucible. 

For her, flirtation was as natural as a sparrow’s flight, her lingua franca; it shouldn’t have felt special because it wasn’t, but it did…like when a celebrity took notice of one of her fans for the first time.

Tessa touched everyone like that (so I presumed) - fingers dancing over chests, her laughter tickling their lips - but the way she did it with me made my heart pound. It made me feel special even though I knew I wasn’t, and I found it as tantalizing as it was humiliating.

“Sooo. We breaking into Paz’s classroom, hacking his computer and making off with an answer key?” I fell in at her side as we left the library; my fingers sought something to grab onto, unsure of what to do with themselves. They wanted to crawl around her waist and pull her closer…they wanted to brush through her hair…they wanted to brush along her jawline, her breath against my lips.

I shoved my hand in my pocket.

“No, silly. That’s cheating…think of this as foreplay.” I almost bit the tip of my tongue off. Foreplay. How does she get this comfortable this fast?

Her hands were clasped behind her back as she strode at my side…ever accompanied by the quiet ‘clp-clop-clp-clop’ of her hooves. “Besides we’re going to Grafton Hall, I wanna show you something cool that gets my point across, yes?” Grafton was only a couple buildings down. The sun had already started its descent Californi-way, so our path was lit by black-hooded street lamps. A spider the size of a squirrel skittered out from under one, watching us peevishly; a tiny green tie hung around its…well, its neck-equivalent. “[Stay away from my lamp!]” it groused. 

I noticed Tessa glance its way dismissively.

I couldn’t find words at that moment, just because of that subtle motion…I’d seen the uh, the creatures interact with each other, like the fox with the blue dresser. I’d never witnessed a person even respond to the things I saw all around me, constantly. 

What did it mean? Was I just hallucinating? Certainly wouldn’t be the first time I’d made a bigger deal over something trifling…

“Ascher?” she asked after a bit - oh god I’d just been staring off, walking silently at her side.

“I was just thinking, our passcards don’t get us into Grafton after 5pm.” Phew, quick recovery.

“Mmm, but I TA with Hunjadi, so I got…” She held up an empty hand, closed her fingers, and opened them again. A little brass key gleamed in her palm.

“This. Just in case she’s too lazy to close up after dinner.”

Impressive sleight-of-hand…I’d seen a lot wilder shit in my time, but this floored me. Probably just the giggle-hots on my part.

“How’d you do that? Where were you hiding it?” I had to ask.

She stopped at the ugly, rusty side door leading into the brick fortress that was Grafton Hall, her expression serious as stone. “I was hiding it in my ass.” She stared me down, unsmiling for a second before bursting out into laughter at her own joke.

What an incredible dichotomy of a woman.

Like a figure from a Gentileschi painting, given elegant life, all soft golds and bronzes…then she cracked an ass-joke (no pun intended). Her laugh was a swaying song that reminded me of a wandering river; raw yet gentle, wild but dignified. 

The two of us stood there, laughing like idiots - that kind where you’re bent forward, tears threatening at the corners of our eyes. Wasn’t even a joke, just…a wildcard moment from Tessa.

I’d never expected anything like that from her, and it only made me fall deeper into her golden spiral.

Then I remembered: I wasn’t hers. She had many lovers to choose from, certainly higher caliber than me. That was what made me cling to the side of the gyre, kept me from drowning.

Even so, my imagination awakened uninvited, and painted a picture where I tugged the door shut behind with a squeaky-clang; in the dark I’d press her against a wall and hear her gasping smile; our lips would meet, fierce and hungry, my hand would slide up her bare thigh to take her hip and press my arousal between her legs -

- the door made a k-thunk as I pulled it shut behind me, leaning my back against it and watching her clop ahead of me…watched her ass sway with each step, which wasn’t helping me control an unwelcome erection. My hands were firmly shoved in my pockets, holding it down against my thigh and trying to look chill as I followed her.

Grafton’s first floor had the characteristic 1970s ugliness of a proper university. The linoleum floor’s color reminded me of gruel mixed with caulk, and glass panels on the walls displayed student projects. 

A pair of gnome-like creatures whose red flesh reminded me of lacquer were maneuvering a gurney through the hallway; a humanoid shape underneath a black tarp twitched, an arm falling to hang off the side of the gurney. Looked like it was made of porcelain; it waved at me as I went by.

We stopped at a door that looked like every other one, and when she cracked the lock we walked into a high-ceilinged room filled with machines I vaguely recognized. The reek of soldering flux hung cloying herein and a trio of big lathes squatted against the wall. Each one cost…well, probably as much as I was paying for my (now questionable) degree. 

Lightbulbs set in grated hangings cast dim illumination from on high, buzzing like insects on a summer night.

“Ever been in here?” she asked playfully, leaning against a bench with a five-axis vice connected to a power supply. Her fingers danced across it affectionately, like a favored musical instrument.

“Not before you invited me in, I don’t think welding is a consideration for my major.” I couldn’t help but pick up a rubber mallet, turning it in my hand idly…just so they could have something to do besides resisting reaching out to touch her.

“You should come hang out sometime Ascher.” Tessa reached out and curled her fingers around the mallet, gently dragging her nails over my knuckles. “Seriously, we do more than just fuck around with blowtorches.” For me that moment was electrical; I wanted so badly to believe that she was showing interest in me but I’ve seen those eyes before, and they weren’t just for me.

I was nothing special to her.

I think she saw the sadness in my smile. I’m pretty shit at hiding my emotions, and there arose this questioning look in her eyes. She was going to ask me what the matter was, I could tell. 

Master of evasion that I was, I turned my attention to the vice. “What’s this thing do?” I let her take the role of teacher again, slid it over her pretty, bared shoulders like a cardigan.

She was too smart to just be distracted, but she let me play my game and wore the professor’s role gracefully. “It’s a vibration testing vice…it’s more or less the real world version of the PIC sim. Look…” there was something so surreal about watching a satyr work a vice like this - you only ever saw paintings of them cavorting, drinking, chasing nymphs. 

Here was one, hallucinated into existence before me, selecting two bars of mild steel that she clamped in.

“This one here on the left,” she began, tightening that section of the vice and adding some bolt-clamps, “is rigidly clenched.” Tessa pulled her lips back with a little smirk. “It’s never good if it’s too tight, is it.” She winked, swinging the mallet in her fingers to the beat of my throbbing heart. “This one’s got some give to it, now…”

She reached out, her fingers on my arm. “Go and ahead, ooo…wow, you work out, don’t you…” Tessa’s attention seemed fully on my bicep, testing it with her strong fingers. 

At the risk of sounding like an addle-brained jock, yes I went to the gym rather obsessively; I’d had this silly vision in my head of arriving in Khamdo in peak condition. Now I just went to focus on something besides the gulf of my future. 

Her attention made me want to giggle stupidly, but I restrained that impulse and grinned stupidly instead. She returned it, like the sun sparkling on a lake, her eyes almost glowing that amber light…and I foolishly wondered if that was for me alone.

“Hit them with the mallet,” she finally suggested, dragging her nails down amidst the crags and lines of definition in my arm before letting go. 

I carefully tapped the steel bar bolted into the machine; it rang sweetly.

“See how it sings? Pleasant, beautiful even, yes? That’s how it tricks you…now.” She gestured at the other bar, almost giddy. That one I struck, and it gave a dull -clank-. “This one tells the unappealing truth, you’ll see.”

Tessa bent forward to plug the vice into the wall-outlet; I couldn’t help myself, staring at the backs of her thighs, disappearing under that shimmery silver dress…the shape of her comely ass was a fixture against my vision - I was literally unable to pull my eyes from it - and she slowly straightened. All the muscles in her back, her legs, they moved under her skin, the flowers strung through her horns glinting like stars in the low-lit chamber.

“Just watch…it won’t take long.” She slid a finger along a black knob, turning it to the right so that the machine vibrated violently. The two metal rods became a blur. 

For a bit we just watched; I sat on a three-leg stool, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees. I was intensely aware of her presence at my side, radiating warmth and an unseen light that eroded my better judgment like a puddle draining into cracked earth.

I wanted to press her against the table behind me and kiss her with chaotic passion, lips crashing against each other without order.

I wanted to push her to sit in one of the stools, slide her skirt up, pull down her panties, and show her what I can do with my tongue.

I wanted to tell her that I’ve been into her from the very first time I saw her, that I loved her horns, her glowing eyes, her hooves. I’d never told one of them - you know, the…Otherfolk, I guess - that I could see the horns, or the fire, or the tree-trunk arms.

I didn’t do any of those things because I had propriety, and of course an unhealthy fear of rejection. 

“So. Who’re those girls I see you with all the time?” Tessa asked casually, never taking her eyes from the noisy vice.

The question caught me off guard; anytime she showed any interest in me did, I didn’t think I’d ever get used to it. “Aryn? Or Vicky?” Those were the first two that came to mind; I didn’t really talk to or see Neave Chen anymore…a sore spot in my heart I steadfastly ignored

“Porque no los dos?” she quipped, turning to gently brush some dust off my shoulder, fingers lingering for a moment, thumbing ash gently from my chin…the gesture was so casual, like something Aryn would do yet utterly unlike her straightforward tomboy-energy.

“Oh they’re just buddies, Aryn has been my friend since we were little and Vicky lived in the room above me Freshman year, so we kinda cliqued up I guess. Get drunk together enough times and it’s kinda inevitable.” No need to tell her I was probably going to end up in Aryn’s bed tonight.

“Mmm. So. You’re single?”

I was. At least, that’s how Aryn and I saw it, our bedroom antics aside.

It would have been easy to just say ‘yep!’ but me being me, I had to stop and overthink it…I knew I was staring at the vice, probably looked like I was ignoring her or hadn’t caught the question like a dolt.

Was she just curious for curiosity’s sake?

Was she interested in making me part of her little man-harem?

Or…against all odds…was she actually interested in me? This stunning, otherworldly woman of my (clearly disturbed) dreams asking me something so…casual. 

I opened my mouth to answer -

-SNAP!-

I felt it like a thunderclap through my shoes.

I watched as the metal bar she’d bolted down tightly broken down the middle, while its partner kept on trembling. “See Ascher…” Tessa unplugged the vice, presenting the broken steel. “Rigidity and too much control, you’ll see how the steel snaps…but this one didn’t, did it.” She laid the solid ingot in my right hand, as if to assure me it was real.

I thought about it for a bit, relating it back to my simulation. It made me think of the bridge, of its struts and supports bolted tightly down, shearing in the wind just the broken steel bar.

All those little disturbances and oscillations, it felt like herding cats; eventually one would get free, then all the others would make their escape and the whole structure fell apart. “So…I think what you’re saying is by trying to control all the variables, I’m overcompensating.”

“You’re overcompensating.” I was suddenly quite aware of her entering my space again, and my eyes met hers - a mistake, as the power of speech seemed to leave me. Her fingers found the hem of my T-shirt, tugging downward on it lightly. “You’re being too careful.” She was close enough that I could feel her breath against my chin.

Seize the bull by the horns.

I watched her eyes flutter just a little as I drew close; I couldn’t hear anything but her breathing, the scrape of her flats against the concrete. Her lips barely brushed mine and just like that a hundred million flowers bloomed in my heart.

Lightning raced from the tip of my tongue down through my chest, striking my loins.

Desire and wanton need clawed at me as my palm found the smooth, tan skin of her waist.

My thoughts became a jumble of simplistic impulse, of wordless erotic imagery. Unadulterated, simple joy.

Spring reigned eternal in my heart for those five seconds.

[rivnedell]

When a Character is Falling in Love but Doesn’t Trust It

Love is terrifying. Especially for characters who’ve been hurt, shut down, or raised to believe vulnerability is weakness. So when they start falling? It doesn’t look like a Disney montage. It looks like panic in slow motion.

✧ They start noticing everything and it unsettles them. The way their voice cracks when they laugh. The way their fingers tap when they’re thinking. These little details burrow in and refuse to leave. And that awareness makes the character feel exposed.

✧ They become hyperaware of their own body. Where their hands are. How close they’re standing. If they’re blushing. It’s like being inside a body that’s betraying them constantly.

✧ They act a little mean. Not because they are mean. But because being cold is safer than being real. Sarcasm, distance, teasing, they use it like armor.

✧ They hate how much they want to share things. They’ll see a funny meme and instinctively want to send it. Then stop. No. Don’t get attached. They want to tell them about a childhood memory, then bite it back. Too personal.

✧ They become inconsistent. Warm one moment, distant the next. Showing up, then pulling away. They’re testing how much of themselves they can reveal before it feels like too much.

✧ They assume the worst. They know it won’t last. That this person will leave. That they’re misreading everything. Love doesn’t feel safe, it feels like a countdown to pain.

✧ They self-sabotage. Pick fights. Flake on plans. Pull away emotionally just to “protect themselves” before it goes wrong. It’s tragic and messy and real.

✧ They notice silence more. What wasn’t said. A delayed reply. A joke that didn’t land. Everything becomes a sign that maybe this love thing was a mistake.

✧ They want to run, but never do. The desire to bolt is constant. But they don’t. Because something about this person is pulling them back, despite every warning bell going off in their head.

✧ They don’t trust the feeling, but they keep falling anyway. And that’s what makes it beautiful. And heartbreaking. Because they don’t want to fall. But they do. And maybe, just maybe, that’s the bravest thing they’ve ever done.

[rivnedell]

[rivnedell]

This resonates quite a lot now.

Stop waiting to feel ready. Ready is not a feeling, it’s a decision.

[rivnedell]

Continuing to make Harry Potter Saga, movies especially to me, is an act resistence to her bullshit. Letting Hogwarts down would mean letting HER rule it and own it. She gave birth to it yes, but WE make all the success possible. (And she tends to forget it because if no freaking one had read her books she couldn't use her fucking money for transphobic activities.) So it's our money, our dedication to her universe she uses and it pisses me off.

Hogwarts is ALSO OURS. And we decide to keep it alive without allowing her bullshit pollute this magic world of our childhood.

[rivnedell]

This is so beautiful

Joy Sullivan, from "Late Bloomer", Instructions for Traveling West

[rivnedell]

retrodisneydaily's five year anniversary celebration

favourite films by era (as voted by our followers)

snow white and the seven dwarfs the adventures of ichabod and mr. toad cinderella robin hood

[rivnedell]

Wolke living our dream to us all ✨🥹💜🩶

May the fourth be with you all

Today marks one year since I introduced the peeps to Maia and it has been a ride.

Thank you all so much for the love and the great people I found thanks to this community.

I love you all

Safe to say I get to live the Mando girlies' dreams these days.

Keldabe kisses to my cyarese: @zaddymandalorian @djarins-cyare @djarins-wife @djarinwidow @djarinmuse

@dindjarindiaries @grogusmum @rivnedell @immarocketman @penvisions

@clawdee @evolnoomym @roughdaysandart @idonotenjoyourcompany