#(depends on what happens i suppose)

[tblsomedoodles]

The Preferable Alternative - Part 10

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Getting ready for work but i just finished this so here it is

: )

[markantonys]

season 3 episode 7 is titled "goldeneyes"! (source)

definitely makes me think this episode will focus on the battle of the two rivers and climax of perrin's plotline while 3x08 will focus on the climax of rand & co's plotline, but we shall see!

[alexandraisyes]

God what if I wrote a short fic about Lunar and Eclipse and toxic codependency because I've been going insane all night and I feel an urgent need to explore just how fucking reliant they were on each other to the point that even after Eclipse killed Lunar in canon he still felt like he needed Eclipse like

God that's so tragic and fucked up what if I wrote about that

(They remind me so much of Sun and Moon)

[pepprs]

ok. moving out update. today i:

talked to my beloved ex supervisor / mentor (<- SCARY!!!!!) to ask her about her experiences living by herself esp as a short woman (which is not a big deal except for how it is + how my parents think it is) and get her advice abt how to navigate that experience psychologically and practically. i asked her if we could talk abt this very impulsively on thursday after not having the courage to do it for almost a year btw (<- BRAVE!!!!!!!!) and i was still too scared / embarrassed to ask her some stuff abt safety / self defense lol but it mostly went really well!

started making a budget and determined that a) i may be getting overpaid somehow (😳) b) i may be getting double or even triple charged for my health and life insurance (😒) so now i need to call hr on monday and figure all of that out. and also c) i suck at math but we knew that. but i forced myself to figure out what i did wrong so that’s an achievement

made my first ever student loan payment 😀🔫

booked a tour of one apartment and attempted to book a tour of another (the same place i was looking at in may) but their website was glitching out and then they didn’t answer when i called to schedule it over the phone which. hm. 😒 but yeah the tour(s) will happen mid week next week and im going to ride the shuttle to the apartment complex(es) and back to campus to see what that’s like too!

posted on local subr*ddit asking for recommendations for those two apartments + other places in the area. haven’t gotten anything back bc i just made the post but 😎👍

read a bunch of old journal entries from 2021 to remind myself of what it was like to move onto campus and how i pushed through my family’s hurt and disapproval to live the way i needed to. haven’t finished reading it all yet but i will tomorrow (while also doing my stupid homework 🙄)

[panstarry]

will u still continue artfight? whats going on with af

hi! yes, i will still be continuing to participate in art fight. no, the event is not over.

just to start off: i joined art fight as a user in 2016, was hired as a chat & site mod on february 2018, and resigned in march 2022. my resignation was due to the fact that at the time, i could no longer keep up with mod responsibilities while juggling school, work, and extracurricular activities.

right now, there's been staff resignations across the server/site for multiple reasons. i'm erring on the side of caution at the moment and will let further announcements disclose exactly why. nobody, former or current, is calling for boycotts. and personally, i'm of the opinion that referring to what's happening right now as a "strike" is inaccurate. you can continue working on your attacks and participating in the current event. every one of us loves art fight and would like to see it continue and have also worked to make sure that users are able to enjoy it as well. i would advise against donating to the site until the dust settles.

there's a lot of misinformation and out-of-context messages going around right now. please take these with a grain of salt: i saw a couple docs and screenshots going around with outdated or straight up incorrect information (for some reason i saw mentions of a data breach going around? there is no data breach, i don't know where people are even getting that from. furthermore, there is no "ceo of artfight". art fight is not a corporation or a company, so this language, to me, does not properly describe what's happening rn)

i'm not sure what can be disclosed to the public aside from this ^ so please hang tight, be excellent to each other, so on & so forth. thank you <3

[ruvviks]

made the realization my vampire story would work best as a video game and now i can't stop thinking about it

[journey-to-the-attic]

hmm not sure how to feel about obey me running the same pop quiz concurrently in both games

there's a weird disconnect - the new ui and sfx of nightbringer did a good job of giving that disjointed feeling of being somewhere unfamiliar, but given that the pop quiz seems to be taking place in the present that mc came from, the nightbringer ui just feels.... off in the wrong way

given that i've got more resources there i'll probably keep using the original game to play the pop quizzes, but since you can get devil points for s ranking a rhythm stage in nightbringer, seems like these events will be a good place to farm some!

(though in the first place i'd rather they finish the nightbringer story before adding supplementary content like this)

[bibiana112]

I like this happiness can be found in any world speech putting the focus on the fact that being able to compare between a hypothetical less tragic version of events is in itself what causes unhappiness and dissatisfaction sure for the characters it's literal timeloops but real things like anxiety and ptsd often trick you into losing focus of the good things in the now and to lose yourself in the what could have been

[seventh-district]

.

[finalgirlkateausten]

📚

ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER DRAMA

A 1960s Succession shivlina AU ~ 897 words ~ rated E

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Shiv paces, barefoot on Roman's stupidly ornate carpet in his stupidly ornate sitting room. She knows her brother, and doubts he ever uses this room. It's all the height of luxury and simultaneously not his style at all. Still, his staff keeps everything clean, and she sinks her toes into the soft, thick carpet as she runs her hands over the back of the velvet couch. She's antsy like she gets when she smokes with Kendall, and she's done this enough times that she shouldn't be, but the whole situation is anxiety-inducing and she can't stop worrying that this time will be the last straw and, perhaps worst of all, her set-up requires her to trust her brother.

As if summoned by her thoughts, the front door opens noisily and she hears Roman yell down the long front hall. "Shiv! She's here! Pay me!"

Shiv pulls her white slip down as if she can make it fall below mid-thigh and grabs a wad of bills from her purse. Roman is halfway down the hall when she steps out, an annoying grin on his face and his arm around the waist of a tall, shapely brunette. Shiv hands him the money and he steps away from the woman as if he's been burned, bowing ridiculously to them both and then passing Shiv to exit out the back door, probably off to enjoy his own deviant sexual escapades.

Thirty years old, and Shiv can't pay for her own fucking prostitutes.

It's just a risk she can't take, like the clubs she'd frequented in her youth that she'd had to abandon once she obtained a husband who would question her whereabouts. New York is a big city but a small world, and enough of her father's associates utilize these sorts of services that she can't risk word going to the highest bidder that Logan Roy's daughter beds women semi-regularly.

Karolina slips her hand into Shiv's with a mona lisa smile, and as soon as they touch Shiv's anxiety fades away. She pulls Karolina into her even as Karolina tries to lead them back into the sitting room, and they end up kissing against the door frame. Shiv crades the back of Karolina's head so that she doesn't bang it on the wood, eager to muss her neatly-styled bob.

"I've missed you," she says, breaking the kiss with a smile.

Karolina's eyes flash as she returns the gesture. "I've missed your daddy's money."

"You are terrible," Shiv breathes, her voice getting husky at the zest in Karolina's rebuttal.

Karolina pulls her leg over her hip, rucking up Shiv's slip and sliding her hand under the hem of her panties. "Mhm? Then what does that make you?"

Shiv kisses her viciously for a few more minutes, until she can feel her pulse dizzy in her head and banging against her chest and hot in her cunt. Karolina's hands are everywhere, but her touch is too much and not enough all at once, and Shiv doesn't know what she wants and thinks maybe she doesn't-- can't-- want this, not right now. If she wanted someone to fuck her hard just to give her an orgasm and be done, she wouldn't pretend to be asleep by the time Tom got to bed.

"Lina," she gasps, the nickname a necessity born of her empty lungs and not truly an endearment, "let's move somewhere else."

Karolina just looks at her, with her dark eyes and slow smile. She runs her finger down Shiv's neck until she's pulling at the neckline of her slip, exposing the red trim of her red-and-white lingerie. "Whatever you want, Siobhan."

Shiv hadn't told her her full name until their third meeting. She hadn't expected to like it, in such an intimate but theoretically detached way. And then she had.

To be honest, this isn't as detached as she'd hoped either. There's a lot of things she hadn't expected about Karolina.

"You're a work of art, sweetheart," she coos as she leads Karolina into the sitting room. "Let's get you out of this dress... I wanna see all of you."

Karolina smirks over her shoulder at her as Shiv pulls the zipper down. "Well, maybe you should get undressed too.

Shiv drops Karolina's dress to the floor and obeys, removing her silk slip to show off her flattering ensemble, stark and clean with trim almost matching her hair.

Karolina is in an all-black set that feels much more severe, and it takes Shiv's breath away. She lifts herself to sit on Roman's chessboard, pieces scattering. A king rolls off the table and comes to a rest at Shiv's feet. She steps over it, placing her hands around Karolina's wrists and kissing her deeply. She sinks to her knees, watching Karolina's dark eyes flash as she moves her hands from her arms to her thighs.

"Please let me," she says softly. "I need to."

"That's what I'm here for," Karolina purrs, cupping Shiv's cheek and tilting her chin up so that they're making eye contact. The hanging lamp is giving Karolina a halo, a reddish-orange light thanks to Roman's absurd fixtures. Karolina's nails dig into Shiv's skin a bit as she finishes her sentence. "...to give you what you need."

When she lets go, Shiv buries her head between Karolina's thighs until she's able to forget about the outside world entirely.

[forestryfae]

anyways i think. if someone says "i want to do something" and you just fucking leave without them or you make no effort to try to include them or help them include themselves youre not trying hard enough

in other words, a group of us said we wanted to go for a walk but apparently youre not allowed to use the bathroom before you leave so they left without me<3

[narwhalandchill]

ANYWAY now that ive gotten my firefly rant off my chest and on a more positive note about the story overall; i Really liked it!!!! and character-wise specifically the biggest surprise for me in a huge W way was actually acheron??

& given i was actually somewhat committed to pulling her anyway (well. initially as kafka replacement to pull my first lightning carry after losing 50-50 but. Well. she had mercy on me at the v last moment thank goodness 😭😭) so actually ending up liking her character this much just cemented that resolve for good too. cant wait for her!!! like i am still meh on her base design not bc its that bad by itself but simply bc seeles existence just cheapens it so much like. Why are they so similar. but its not bad lmao

anyway to her actual characterization. first of all. the VAs delivery omg yall beidous english voice is already one of my all time favorites in genshin and shes doing an amazing job as acheron like. she started talking and im just INSTANTLY warmed up to her just from that KDJSKDKJK i love love love her attitude and energy!!!!!

n personality wise too??? like ive seen others mention a similar sentiment but its just the way how. even after getting the warnings from now Two separate characters that shes up to no good. im just like. "nah id win" abt it SHSKDKSI like throughout the story she comes off as so damn likeable and grounded and realistically friendly (as in not like. too open n aligned w the player from the get-go to feel believable for the character as opposed to a plot contrivance) that i just. even if shes bad news im team acheron truly.

she has genuinely funny one liners too ??? like not necessarily jokes outright but the kinda comments she says are just . very realistic in that dry witty way that comes off as natural and entertaining shes so charming!!! i love her. the more contemplative stuff she says too

but also like. girl whats up w the ominous red text ily but are we cool 😭😭 and the whole shredding us into thin slices on first encounter in the dreamscape like. Ok uhhhhhhhh ik i said nah id win and team acheron forever but this is kinda. worrisome

BUT that just means im so fucking excited to see her go apeshit too lmao like. oh shes an emanator here to do murder and spread death? COOL i hope she has fun!!

(and ik i said firefly rant over but. what the actual hell is that post firefly merk dialogue option where the games like very heavy handedly implying ur supposed to be blaming ACHERON for "letting it happen" in some emotional frenzy???? bro what 💀💀 0/5 moment i would never. n even if she plausibly did im just. dude her being cold towards firefly is just a plus for me when the narrative has just railroaded the TB into being sooo charmed by her magical presence lmao i Liked that acheron was suspicious n cold)

overall Definitely wasnt expecting acheron to establish herself as such an instant favorite for sure but. shes here now and im v happy abt it im super looking forward to seeing those more dubious goals of her come to the forefront in the future like. im so curious about whats up w her and her memory and that red text and everything

[hyuuukais]

who was gonna tell me i'm already at 4k on the second chapter of my zombie fic 😦 like i'm not even half way through this chapter i don't think 😭

[majorshatterandhare]

I started a piece of art today which is based on some plant species* that I think would be good to colonize Tim in @gunpowder-tim’s headcanon of the Persephone Tim headcanon; so it’s art based on a headcanon of a headcanon of a headcanon 😅 [sweat simle emoji].

It’s gonna take a long time I think, but I am planning on posting it here even though it’s just gonna be plants and no Tim (because I am much better at drawing these little doodle plants than drawing people).

*so the art is basically of real species we have on Earth, but I maintain that they wouldn’t have the same plants on the City, so in my brain his plants are just similar to these ones.

[longagoitwastuesday]

I keep thinking of that reply in my Odysseus/Agamemnon post about how I regard differently Odysseus' and Agamemnon's actions, while acknowledging that at times Agamemnon is written as a sweet man and Odysseus is always straight up shitty, and how it was taken as some sort of defense for Agamemnon and as a form of pointing out the double standard; and that wasn't at all what the post was about for me, even though I can see where they were coming from. To be honest, given I didn't imagine it would spread anywhere other than my own blog, I didn't explain myself very well (or at all).

The fact is that when I talked about Odysseus not caring about hurting someone else's child to start and end a war I was indeed comparing his actions to Agamemnon's, but my words about supporting Odysseus' wrongs and cheering him in his terrible actions, while in a joking tone, weren't entirely a joke. I do think that Odysseus does some very shitty acts, and some quite terrible ones depending on the sources. That's a fact, that he does is at the core of his characterisation and it's what makes him so much fun; but not even when he is at his most cruel does he harm his family, his own son. Agamemnon, while sweet and loving at times in some texts, at his worst is willing to sacrifice Iphigenia. When readers regard with more sympathy Odysseus over Agamemnon despite both being responsible for children dying, I don't think there's a double standard in this aspect at all considering it's never his own kid Odysseus harms. And that's the key, I think.

Odysseus and Agamemnon have very different priorities, a very different view on loyalty and duty. It could be said that Agamemnon acts out of selfishness, but it could also be read in a kinder light, saying that Agamemnon is ruled by the gods first, and by his role as head of the achaeans; Agamemnon is not entirely himself. In opposition we see Odysseus acting perhaps mainly for himself and his own family and men; yes, he is a king, but he has not the role Agamemnon has. As a consequence, Agamemnon submits his family's wellbeing to the war, to the gods, while Odysseus stops the plow before hurting Telemachus but is (depending on the source) the cause of Iphigenia's sacrifice and Astyanax's death.

Both Odysseus and Agamemnon have reasons to support their actions, and both can be sympathised with; it's fiction after all. When it comes to fiction, at the end of the day which character a reader is drawn to or sympathises with is mainly an issue of personal taste, but I suppose it also implies a certain level of one's own views or preferences on morals, what makes us find certain actions more justifiable, or tasteful (perhaps that's a more accurate word), than others. Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter, no matter how sympathetic or understandable the reason, generally sits worse on people than Odysseus doing the same with someone else's kids, because they're someone else's. This different emotional reaction they provoke has place not just metanarratively, but also inside the very story; it is narratively significant, given it determines how their arrival home plays out, how their wives react to them, and thus their futures. Ultimately it determines whether they live or die.

I think both terrible acts go in line wonderfully with each characterisation, showcasing the role they hold in their world, what they value, what they care for, what they're willing to sacrifice for themselves and the others, how much of their own they're willing to give and bend. While looking at the wider picture it could perhaps be drawn that Agamemnon is the better person out of the two, but Odysseus' selfish actions are perhaps easier to empathise with, especially from a modern viewpoint. Odysseus is treacherous and prone to betrayal, but not against his own; Agamemnon follows the rules of the gods. How fitting in that context that Odysseus doesn't die at the end of his story, that he cheats the death heroes so often are fated to, almost as if cheating the narrative itself, bending the rules of the world he is ascribed to; how fitting in the context of those texts that point towards Sisyphus being his father. But that's another topic, and I've already talked a lot.

[van-goghs-smoking-skull]

its not about kink you fucking moron

So you honestly believe someone is going to give his slave [someone made to work against their will and considered to be the slave-owner's personal property, which is a horrible thing and should ALWAYS be illegal as a violation of basic human rights] an engraved golden collar worth more than any other Roman citizen, even the richest ones, could hope to add to their own wealth in a year? And that they would never possibly give such a valuable piece of jewelry, essentially, to their Slave [willing participant in certain adult activities, which is the business of consenting adults in their own private places and sometimes parties or shows for that sort of thing and should not ever be illegal, as the government should not be in the business of dictating anyone's consent in those activities]?

Let me guess, kink hadn't been invented yet back then, which I'm sure somehow explains some of the rather kinky historical art from that time. Have you considered that there may be cultural differences between, say, plantation owners using slaves to pick cotton in the US/POC arrested and imprisoned under some absolutely clown-ass laws and worked for free under the US prison system vs. the system in ancient Rome in which entertainment in the arena were frequently done by slaves, in fact MOSTLY by slaves, who had signed up for that work? See, it simply meant someone who wasn't getting paid directly in coin, however, training and fame were payment options. Back under that system, if you wanted to gain fame and other perks in the arena, you could sign up as a slave to one of the richer citizens of Rome in exchange for training under other famous Gladiators. And it was even common enough for the highest earning Gladiators who had won enough fights to be presented with a wooden sword by their master, symbolizing freedom, and they could choose to retire or keep fighting as a free man, either as a trainer for their former master, for another slave-owner, or on their own if they could afford the villa, equipment, food, services and entry as an owner of Gladiators. Generally, you wouldn't call gym membership, training, and a chance to become a world-famous wrestler slavery today, but it's much the same thing now, minus the guaranteed food, shelter, medical care, and other perks they used to get as slaves.

The Greeks were popular slaves back then, too, as they were considered to be very highly educated and quite good at accounting, speech writing, and excellent at political science. As slaves, they were given rooms in the family home, food, fine clothing, and other perks, including the ability to discuss politics with their master, if perhaps their master happened to be in the Senate, similar to unpaid interns and activists in Washington, DC, only now they don't live with politicians or get gifts for their work (instead the politicians get gifts, usually referred to as bribes by people outside of politics). Imagine the looks you'd get if you claimed Obama started off as a slave on his path to becoming President, and yet he was an activist at one time, and as an activist, worked for others, sometime voluntarily (unpaid).

Sex work was also done by slaves, and if a rich guy who could afford it found a woman or man particularly interesting and they were willing, he could very well buy their contract out and add them to the household. Slavery meant different things in different cultures and has changed in meaning over time.

Maybe go study World History using credible sources and stop getting all your information from booktok.