#...but not for the plot lol

[skyward-floored]

In iAU, It seems Legend and Wind are going to public school in the AU, are any/all of the other Link kiddos going to public school?

Everyone except Hyrule goes to public school! Hyrule had to catch up a little, and school would just be... a lot for him, so he's homeschooled for now. He prefers being home anyway. He'll probably go to public school when he's a bit older, maybe high school? haven't decided yet. He's also home because there was a little plot hole I needed to fix and that fixed it nicely heh

And actually, in the period of time where Four's powers show up and he's adjusting to them, he joins Hyrule with the homeschooling since splitting into four people in the middle of math class would be pretty problematic. I think I have him do that for just a school year before going back though.

[tediousmalcontentt]

my favorite scene in all of literature is when Neil Josten wakes up in Columbia after being drugged, hurls an alarm clock at Aaron, dumps his water on the floor and throws the cup at Aaron, stuff his clothes down the toilet and squeezes out through the window, has the foresight to call Matt from a pay phone to protect his shit, hitch hikes back to campus, eyes back to brown?? shows up on Wymack’s door like 😜 and reveals he could speak German the whole time?? CHARACTER OF ALL TIME, that is a protagonist who knows how MOVE THE MFING PLOT ALONG

[eriochromatic]

I rose too high, loved too hard, dared too much. I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell.

some last fleeting thoughts on an independent zaun

(original quote from asoiaf)

[xpurplepiex]

look at these losers dawg they arent even co-workers anymore😭

[dana-duchovny]

Can I just say how insane it is that Buck's bisexual awakening was literally because Eddie made a friend who was Not Him

[somewhereincairparavel]

percy had an 'im a big three son' moment when he choked a goddess with her own saliva (controlling a fluid that was INSIDE her body) annabeth was terrified.

nico had an 'im a big three son' moment when he disembodied bryce lawrence (quite literally dissipating and shrinking his LIVING soul into a spirit) and threw him to the underworld, smashing his zombie warriors. reyna was terrified.

yet we were robbed of jason's 'im a big three son' moment where he sucks the air out of someone's lungs and makes them stop breathing, or damaging a person's nervous system with his lightning control, and literally cause internal bleeding, or a damaged/fried skull if he electrocuted hard enough (look up the effects of lightning damage on body y'all will get a whole list, tbh he doesn't even need lightning to do any of this, air control is more than enough since air takes charge of everything going inside the body, but this is just an added effect.) he could give people STROKES if he wanted to. he's the literal definition of burnt out kid who was suppressed from discovering the magnitude of his abilities, because one, his dad's ego wouldn't be able to handle it, two, because he, for some reason, can't be allowed to do anything other than get knocked out :/

also adding on, hardcore pjo fans know that after the ending page of boo, there's this fan story that rick chose to publish in the last few pages of the book where a fan reimagines the ending of hoo, in that work, annabeth collapses from an attack and percy sobs clutching her body. jason calmly asks him to step aside, and kneels before annabeth, jason regulates her breathing using his wind/lightning powers and brings annabeth back fully from her cardiac arrest, causing percy to be relieved. (I wanted to link the pics of the pages here so bad but I didn't have the hard copy of the book with me, and this isn't available anywhere online either, only in the original covers of boo uk and us version, so I edited this post and asked people to reblog this post w the pics if they have the hardcopy, and a kind blogger found the story I'm talking about and reblogged the pictures of the pages, you can check my reblogs of this post for the pictures of the almost all the pages after this scene) considering rick approved and even liked the fan's work well enough to publish it in the official boo book, I'd say rick was aware and never completely ruled out expanding jason's abilities and had them in mind, he simply didn't incorporate it into the books. (also W fan for giving jason the rep he deserves, I will always remember you, you saw the VISION before any of us did, the story was very well written, with great dialogue.)

[katsinspats]

Tragic: Guy you based your entire villain backstory on doesn't even remember you

[stevenrogered]

Everything felt like it was finally getting back to the way it should be. Gerrard was out as Captain, and Bobby was back in. And then Tommy dumps me. And now Maddie is missing, or she's run away, lost her mind, whatever this is.

[gingermintpepper]

I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.

(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)

Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.

(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)

I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.

[allegedly-human-uwu]

Existing on tumblr the past few weeks

[shouyuus]

─── Ⅵ FIGURE EIGHTS

violet; 28,888 words; fluff and smut (at the end), semi enemies to lovers, fake dating, hockey!vi x figure skater!reader, ice dancers!meljayce, miscommunication, smau-intermissions, toxic ex!cait, simpgirl!vi, slowburn, the gays r bad at feelings, lots of making out that almost leads to something, emotional edging (for YOU lol), fingering (both receiving), thigh riding, oral (r!receiving), slightly unhinged!reader, no "y/n"

summary: a hockey player and a figure skater kind of, sort of, not really, but then actually fall in love. what could possibly go wrong? (narrator: apparently, everything.)

a/n: YALL. yall. YOU. ALL. lmfao. i can't believe i finished this (i say, after writing any fic longer than 5k words). but i TRULY doubted for a second that i would bc as i kept writing, it kept... getting longer? i hope that this doesn't drag, and that you guys like it. it's really a fucking labor of love. like heavy emphasis on the labor. shoutout to @vifilms for being my emotional support, and to my irl bf for actually physically reading through like 90% of this fic out LOUD with me to make sure the dialogue doesn't sound awk. BUT ANYWAYS. pls enjoy and PLS tell me what u guys think!!!! the smau fake texts won't start till chapter three, but ! it's my first time making like.. fake texts so sldkfjsd.

TABLE OF CONTENTS ━

prologue: party people

chapter one: shut up and kiss me

chapter two: fists to a knife fight

chapter three: love's dream

chapter four: for cup's sake

chapter five: don't hate the player (suggestive)

chapter six: six (nsfw)

─── TAG YOU'RE IT .ᐟ.ᐟ

pls comment below if you'd like to be tagged for this series! :) if you're already on my vi-taglist via my normal taglist link, then you're all good. if you only wanna be tagged for this series, comment below! pls pls have your age visible somewhere on your blog as this will be an 18+ fic!!!! thank you!!!

prologue: party people

─── Ⅵ IT STARTS WITH A GAME of spin the bottle — a college party post-game, the home team the exhalant victors, the crowds of adoring fans the worshippers at their beer-tower altars, doing keg stands and shot-gunning cans of cheap bud lite for an approving grin or a wink.

“Remind me why we’re here again?” you ask, jerking back as a drunken guy nearly topples into you, the red solo cup in his hand sloshing over onto the already sticky linoleum floor.

Mel sighs, “Because, darling, you promised me that you’d come out at least once if me and Jayce made it through the Challenger Series this year.”

She tugs you behind her, weaving through the crush of bodies till the cramped living room area opens onto a much larger patio, the mid-autumn chill cooling your skin.

“It was a joke,” you say, whining slightly even as Mel grabs what looks like an unopened hard cider from the table and presses it into your hand.

“Yes, and one that hurt my feelings,” Mel sniffs, turning her nose up, though a grin teases at her lips, “so to make up for it, you now have to stay at this party and have some semblance of a good time.”

And that was three and a half drinks ago, because sometime between then and now, you’ve found yourself pulled into an unwitting game of spin the bottle with what seems like half the entire hockey team, sitting next to Mel, her boyfriend Jayce on your other side, chatting animatedly with one of the girls hockey girls. You overhear the words “creatin” and “Bulgarian Squat” and decided that it’s time for you to tune out of the conversation.

“Vi, it’s your turn!”

Vi, your thoughts linger over the sound.

It’s a pretty name.

You glance up at the girl sitting across from you, Number Six — you’ve always known her as that, what with the tattoo on her cheek (there were rumors that it’s actually not real and she just reapplies one of those temporary tattoos every two weeks) and the fact that it’s her jersey number, it’s really not too hard to remember.

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, laughing as she reaches for the empty beer bottle in the middle of the circle. Her right hand’s bandaged up and you can’t help staring at it. When you look up next, it’s to catch her watching you, your eyes meeting in a startling clash of raw contact — the cacophonous noise of the party dulling out to a thin whine somewhere at the back of your head as you stare at her and she stares right back.

You’d never noticed that her eyes, even in the dark, beneath the dim, flickering patio lights, reads mourning-dove blue, so subtle it’s almost gray, so sharp as she takes you in that your stomach drops from inside you. She smirks and twists her fingers expertly around the bottle, setting it whizzing.

You tear your eyes away, your breath sent astray in your chest by just that look alone. You frown at the spinning bottle, your mind abuzz with fragmentary thoughts you can’t quite string along for long enough to form a full sentence — eyes… her lips are pretty… wasn’t she dating… someone? who??? what’s her name again? something pretty —

“— right, ice princess, you ready?”

“Huh?” you jerk your eyes up from the bottle to find everyone watching you. From your left, Mel nudges you with a sanctimonious grin, her eyes flickering down to the bottle and back up towards —

“Go on!” she hisses, even as you blink uncomprehendingly down at the bottle pointing right at you.

Across the circle, Vi’s questioning smirk is all the answer you need as your alcohol-addled brain finally puts together the pieces.

“R-right…” you push up onto your knees, but something holds you back, a niggling feeling in the back of your brain as Vi’s smirk grows wide and she jerks her head towards the living room.

“Want a bit of privacy? Or… would you prefer an audience?”

Half the circle wolf-whistles at the insinuation, the other half roll their eyes, leaning back on their elbows as if to settle in for a long night.

You lick your lips, feeling your mouth scald dry.

“Privacy. Please.”

You follow Vi stiffly from the patio back into the stuffy house, her fingers closing around your wrist as she tugs you behind her through a long hallway splitting off from the main living room, branching into a series of what look like bedrooms. Half the doors are closed, illicit sounds echoing out from behind them, but Vi finds an empty one near the end of the hallway and pushes it open, leading you inside.

“Oh wow,” you say, looking around the room. It’s a typical fratboy’s room, full of suggestive posters, the floor littered with questionably laundered clothes.

“What, not your ideal setting for a makeout-sesh with a stranger?”

You frown as your eyes slingshot back to Vi, her standing feet from you, hands tucked loosely into her pockets, watching you with dark, firefly eyes.

“Thought we were just supposed to kiss once.”

Vi chuckles, closing the distance between you in a few quick strides, crowding you up against the closed door.

“Sure. We can do that. Or…” she makes no effort to hide the way her eyes flicker down to your lips, trailing back up in a line of fire that sizzles against your skin. “I could show you what a real good time looks like.”

Your breath crystalizes in your chest, and the strange, tickling feeling traces down the back of your head till it gathers, hot and unconscionable at the nape of your neck — a spin-click wheel of half-formed thoughts and images ticking by behind your eyelids as you try to remember why the hell this feels so wrong.

And then, it clicks, and you press a hand to Vi’s chest just as she’s leaning down to graze her lips against yours, the friction so delicious you almost lose your train of thought.

“A-are you sure this is a good idea? Didn’t you just break up with that track and field girl? Caitlyn?” you blurt out, a culmination of all the snippets of whispered conversations and half-caught glances of the pair of them across campus. The It-Girl Couple, people called them, the hockey team star and the track and field genius. They were hard to miss, and even harder to forget.

A moth-wing-flicker of emotions crosses Vi’s face as she takes half a step back, her expression morphing into one of shock, and then hurt, and finally, hard-lined disgust as she looks down at you with a thin-lipped grimace.

“Oh fuck you.”

She yanks you from the door, storming out without a backwards glance. You catch yourself against the half-made bed, your breath coming in heaving pants as your head spins. Guilt curdles in the bed of your stomach like spoilt milk, and it only takes you half a second to realize that of all the things to say, that probably was the worst possible choice.

You’d heard mention of the breakup, even if you didn’t have any stakes in this so-called game. It was harsh and messy and loud, and it had spilled across campus like a backed-up toilet, oozing foulness and stank across the grounds till not a single person was left unstained in the aftermath.

“Wait —” you stumble after Vi, but it’s too late. By the time you reach the patio doors, she’s already settling back into her place in the circle, an easy grin slung across her lips.

You swallow, pushing through the door to scurry over to Mel’s side. Mel beams at the flush in your cheeks, convinced (just like the rest of the circle) that it’d been one hell of a kiss, judging by how entirely breathless you are.

“Damn Vi, you gotta learn how to go easy on them figure skaters, hm?” Margot smirks, her eyes glittering as she looks you over, “look at the poor darling — she can barely breathe!”

Everyone laughs, and Vi flashes a convincingly satisfied smirk, shrugging up a shoulder. You glance at her, only to shiver at the arctic ice behind her gaze as your eyes catch once more.

“What can I say? Easy isn’t a setting I come programmed with.”

You duck your head as Vi casts you one more frigid look before turning to laugh at something a teammate has just said, and the circle devolves into good-natured banter and pocket conversations. You gulp around your too-dry throat and pluck Mel’s drink from her hand, tossing the rest of it back in a single gulp. She blinks at you, eyes wide.

“Darling, are you —”

“I — I’m fine just — it’s — I think I’m gonna head back.”

Mel frowns, “Are you sure? I mean —” she looks towards where Vi’s been pulled into an impromptu arm-wrestling match with some dude from the football team, “you could try and —”

You shake your head, “No, I — I think I’m good. I had a good time, I just —” you run a hand through your hair, “I’ve got practice tomorrow and Amara’s gonna murder me if I get there late.”

Mel stares for a second before relenting, a soft sigh on her lips.

“Alright, alright — go on then. I’ll… I’ll see you tomorrow at practice, yes?”

You give her a tight-lipped smile, reaching out for a quick hug before ducking out of the party, skirting the edges of the growing mosh pit forming in the living room till you finally find yourself out on the front steps again.

You close your eyes for a second, pressing your back to the frat house door, feeling the dull thump of the music inside reverberating through the thin wooden frame as you breathe in and out.

You can still taste the heat of Vi’s breath on your lips, feel harsh sting of ice as she’d caught your eyes after. The chill air, once refreshing, pebbles your skin and an involuntary shiver shakes down your spine. You wrap your arms around yourself and give your head a good shake.

Whatever, you think, stepping off the porch, casting your eyes up at the star-strewn sky, a whisp of warm breath fogging up the air before you.

Not like it’ll matter. Bet she won’t even remember me after tonight.

taglist: @traiitorjoe @rizzscary @wetcat020 @alex-thegiraffeboyy @nanasemo @saturnhas82moons @unear7hly @drsnowrose @grantaires-waistcoat @isab3lita @ally-all-around @starrysetup22 @lipsent @lewd_alien @jack-frost-2010 @starsfortaylor @onesockcat @lesbian-useless @armins-slvt

[quirinah]

she dun on my geon till i meshi

[chamerionwrites]

Honestly this gets at my chiefest complaint/frustration/discomfort with fandom as a whole. Which is: in their rush to defend the artistic merit of fanworks I think a ton of people have really valorized transformation and remixing and reinterpretation in and of themselves, when imo those are all quite neutral actions. When done well, they can expand and build upon and subvert meaning in really powerful and thought-provoking (and fun!) ways. When done poorly, they are just as likely to flatten and oversimplify and decontextualize and completely erase meaning. The simple act of changing something does not imbue the choice to do so with creative validity. It is entirely possible for a cover song to be bad (or just boring!). To exactly the same degree that it is possible to transform a pretty shallow and straightforward work into something deeper and more nuanced and subversive, is possible to transform a work into a vastly shallower and less interesting shadow of itself. As with nearly everything in art, it's all about the execution!

But the second you voice this position (which should honestly be a pretty uncontroversial one imo), you get people shrieking at you about being gatekeep-y and pretentious and betraying the sacred fandom etiquette of Don't-Like-Don't-Read.

And like...listen. I was not raised in a barn. I am 150% capable of quietly back-buttoning out of a fanfic I think is bad or boring - which is exactly what I do when I encounter them - and I am obviously not advocating for stupid ships wars or any kind of harassment or leaving hatemail in people's AO3 inboxes. (Which some people will also accuse you of the second you say anything less than lavishly positive about fandom, in true piss-on-the-poor fashion.) Literally all I am saying is that you can't have your cake and eat it too - that if fandom and fanworks (in the broadest sense) have artistic merit then fandom and fanworks (in the broadest sense) are fair game for artistic critique. Which means, in practice, that I can go on my own blog and make a post exactly like this one - critiquing broad trends, or stating that some interpretations are bad actually, or pointing out that subverting or talking back to or reading against the grain of canon is very different from simply ignoring it, or saying "fandom's culture of collage/remix/fuck-canon-I-do-what-I-want can lend itself to to really creative and interesting art but also to a lot of really bland homogenized cut-n-paste art, not to mention some pretty troubling decontextualization." And that if you feel this rains on your personal parade, you are then free to DLDR by back-buttoning out of my blog and/or blocking me so you never have to see my hot takes again, rather than clamoring in my notes about how I should let people enjoy things.

[seldompathic]

They should start a podcast

[taraxippos]

I think people tend to assume that any criticism of worldbuilding is ultimately a demand for a story to grind itself to a halt and give the reader 20 paragraphs of exposition, and like. Most of the time good-faith criticism of this nature is coming from a core aspect of the story not being grounded in the setting in a way that outright detracts from the story's quality. You fix it not by Explaining but by Showing it passively in the makeup of the world.

Like the last instance I saw this critique in was like 'you can't expect an author to stop and exposit the nuances of gender roles/Queerness in a fictional society' and it's like yeah I don't, and in fact this is actually one of the easiest things to show in the text without exposition. If a society has gender norms to begin with you'll see aspects of these norms baked into EVERYTHING. You'll see it in its stories, its religion, its taboos, its etiquette, its clothing, its family structures, its language, its insults, its labor, its leadership, etc. It will have massive impacts on how characters interact with one another and how they perceive themselves. It will help Shape your characters.

If you do this legwork to begin with for the core facets of your story, you will find very natural places for these concepts to be demonstrated without derailing the plot and with little to no exposition. THAT sort of thing is what's being asked of you.

[francesderwent]

can’t explain why but good children’s fantasy is usually closer in essence to good adult fantasy than good YA fantasy is to good adult fantasy. the best children’s fantasy reads like the best adult fantasy, and vice versa.