#HAD A THOUGHT OF INTEREST ME THINKS

[shocked-collar]

ok but AU where Strade was never killed but he was somehow paralyzed from the legs down in the scuffle with MC. Ren still plays out as if he had died, taking control of the entire household now that Strade lacks the movement necessary to maintain it the way he did before, and he gets to actively watch his little man go from a small, frail little pup straight into Fox. Eventually Strade begins to lose himself, as even though Ren's hand will always be more merciful than his own was, it's still nothing short of agonizing. At first, Ren is still very immature, so he often finds himself locking Strade in literal closets when he needs to dish out discipline or remind him who's in control now, but it eventually gets easier to raise a hand or take a knife to him. He even gets him a wheelchair early on. Not that he ever helps him down the stairs, but still.

Let it be known, Strade losing mobility in his legs is not a punishment. It's not a punishment, it's not karma, it's just a what-if. If Strade were to rely on Ren, could he trust him?

For the first two days perhaps.

But now he's a 70~ year old, weak, practically malnourished man with overgrown, ratty hair, reminiscing on how loud and powerful he used to be, nestling into the hip that's been given to him for comfort, feeling a sharp hand scratch his scalp as they look out the window together. Together, as they have always been, through everything. Just like this. Even way back at the bar, Strade unknowingly adopting his solace, his caretaker, his downfall, now knowing almost nothing but him, a day he fantasizes about jumping back to sometimes.

"You smell awful." The fox comments, continuing to pet and cuddle his paperweight. "Didn't I bathe you recently? Are you not using all those spray-on deodorants I've gotten you at the very least?"

He receives no response. Strade finds it easier that way. In a world of Fox having it his way, this is the one thing he can control.

The older man felt a cold wave as the fox removed his claws. "You really need to take better care of yourself. Look at you.. Skin and bones, rolling around my home smelling like shit... Though I should expect this much decency from you by now." He began to trail away, finding a seat of his own and plopping down, taking a cup from the small table beside it. "Were always a... pampered little thing, weren't you? Every beck and call, ha~!"

Strade wanted to disappear. Wanted to sink so far into his worn chair it would swallow him whole. Wanted to vanish into thin air, wanted to die right here. Ren is entering one of his fits again. Where he just goes on and on and on about their earlier dynamic, and how much of a fucking idiot he is to have gotten himself hurt. It's exhausting for a man whose first love is his ego.

There wasn’t very much that scared Strade. But the first time he came to the realization that Ren looks at him the same way he looks at his ‘products’ was definitely a moment that dragged his stomach to his feet. In an AU where Fox never had to handle the loss, the devastation, the hole left in his heart and the need to fill it, he found that Strade is now… kind of a tumor. Something he got used to. Something Ren, as Fox, is not able to appreciate, like a Fox who suffered Strade’s absence when he wasn’t ready would.

Not anymore.

They both died a long time ago.

[lucabyte]

even dogs pass the mirror test

[linkedin-offficial]

me when i get the opportunity to think about speculative biology and non-existent game mechanics in media i like

⠀

[anghraine]

It's always been intriguing to me that, even when Elizabeth hates Darcy and thinks he's genuinely a monstrous, predatory human being, she does not ever perceive him as sexually predatory. In fact, literally no one in the novel suggests or believes he is sexually dangerous at any point. There's not the slightest hint of that as a factor in the rumors surrounding him, even though eighteenth-century fiction writers very often linked masculine villainy to a possibility of sexual predation in the subtext or just text*. Austen herself does this over and over when it comes to the true villains of her novels.

Even as a supposed villain, though, Darcy is broadly understood to be predatory and callous towards men who are weaker than him in status, power, and personality—with no real hint of sexual threat about it at all (certainly none towards women). Darcy's "villainy" is overwhelmingly about abusing his socioeconomic power over other men, like Wickham and Bingley. This can have secondhand effects on women's lives, but as collateral damage. Nobody thinks he's targeting women.

In addition, Elizabeth's interpretations of Darcy in the first half of the book tend to involve associating him with relatively prestigious women by contrast to the men in his life (he's seen as extremely dissimilar from his male friends and, as a villain, from his father). So Elizabeth understands Darcy-as-villain not in terms of the popular, often very sexualized images of masculine villainy at the time, but in terms of rich women she personally despises like Caroline Bingley and Lady Catherine de Bourgh (and even Georgiana Darcy; Elizabeth assumes a lot about Georgiana in service of her hatred of Darcy before ever meeting her).

The only people in Elizabeth's own community who side with Darcy at this time are, interestingly, both women, and likely the highest-status unmarried women in her community: Charlotte Lucas and Jane Bennet. Both have some temperamental affinities with Darcy, and while it's not clear if he recognizes this, he quietly approves of them without even knowing they've been sticking up for him behind the scenes.

This concept of Darcy-as-villain is not just Elizabeth's, either. Darcy is never seen by anyone as a sexual threat no matter how "bad" he's supposed to be. No one is concerned about any danger he might pose to their daughters or sisters. Kitty is afraid of him, but because she's easily intimidated rather than any sense of actual peril. Even another man, Mr Bennet, seems genuinely surprised to discover late in the novel that Darcy experiences attraction to anything other than his own ego.

I was thinking about this because of how often the concept of Darcy as an anti-hero before Elizabeth "fixes him" seems caught up in a hypermasculine, sexually dangerous, bad boy image of him that even people who actively hate him in the novel never subscribe to or remotely imply. Wickham doesn't suggest anything of the kind, Elizabeth doesn't, the various gossips of Meryton don't, Mr Bennet and the Gardiners don't, nobody does. If anything, he's perceived as cold and sexless.

Wickham in particular defines Darcy's villainy in opposition to the patriarchal ideal his father represented. Wickham's version of their history works to link Darcy to Lady Anne, Lady Catherine (primarily), and Georgiana rather than any kind of masculine sexuality. This version of Darcy is a villain who colludes with unsympathetic high-status women to harm men of less power than themselves, but villain!Darcy poses no direct threat to women of any kind.

It's always seemed to me that there's a very strong tendency among fans and academics to frame Darcy as this ultra-gendered figure with some kind of sexual menace going on, textually or subtextually. He's so often understood entirely in terms of masculinity and sexual desire, with his flaws closely tied to both (whether those flaws are his real ones, exaggerated, or entirely manufactured). Yet that doesn't seem to be his vibe to other characters in the story. There's a level at which he does not register to other characters as highly masculine in his affiliations, highly sexual, or in general as at all unsafe** to be around, even when they think he's a monster. And I kind of feel like this makes the revelations of his actual decency all along and his full-on heroism later easier to accept in the end.

------------

*The incompetently awful villain(?) in Sanditon, for instance, imagines himself another Lovelace (a reference to the famous rapist-villain of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa). Evelina's sheltered education and lack of protectors makes her vulnerable to sexual exploitation in Frances Burney's Evelina, though she ultimately manages to avoid it. There's frequently an element of sexual predation in Gothic novels even of very different kinds (e.g. Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Matthew Lewis's The Monk both lean into this, in their wildly dissimilar styles). William Godwin's novel Caleb Williams, a book mostly about the destructive evils of class hierarchies and landowning classes specifically, depicts the mutual obsession of the genteel villain Falkland and working class hero Caleb in notoriously homoerotic terms (Godwin himself added a preface in 1832 saying, "Falkland was my Bluebeard, who had perpetrated atrocious crimes ... Caleb Williams was the wife"). This list could go on for a very long time.

**Darcy is also not usually perceived by other characters as a particularly sexual, highly masculine person in a safe way, either, even once his true character is known. Elizabeth emphasizes the resilience of Darcy's love for her more than the passionate intensity they both evidently feel; in the later book, she does sometimes makes assumptions about his true feelings or intentions based on his gender, but these assumptions are pretty much invariably shown to be wrong. In general the cast is completely oblivious to the attraction he does feel; even Charlotte, who wonders about something in that quarter, ends up doubting her own suspicions and wonders if he's just very absent-minded.

The novel emphasizes that he is physically attractive, but it goes to pains to distinguish this from Wickham's sex appeal or the charisma of a Bingley or Fitzwilliam. Mr Bennet (as mentioned above) seems to have assumed Darcy is functionally asexual, insofar as he has a concept of that. Most of the fandom-beloved moments in which Darcy is framed as highly sexual, or where he himself is sexualized for the audience, are very significantly changed in adaptation or just invented altogether for the adaptations they appear in. Darcy watching Elizabeth after his bath in the 1995 is invented for that version, him snapping at Elizabeth in their debates out of UST is a persistent change from his smiling banter with her in the book, the fencing to purge his feelings is invented, the pond swim/wet shirt is invented. In the 2005 P&P, the instant reaction to Elizabeth is invented, the hand flex of repressed passion is invented, the Netherfield Ball dance as anything but an exercise in mutual frustration is invented, the near-kiss after the proposal in invented, etc. And in those as well, he's never presented as sexually predatory, not even as a "villain."

[fenharels-chewtoy]

I get being a fan of Solas but you gotta appreciate Lavellan herself too. She’s the other half of the ship and part of what makes Solavellan so fascinating to me. Sure, you can play Cadash or Adar or Trevelyan and get something interesting but there’s something so compelling about Lavellan as the Inquisitor.

All Inky’s can be kind, caring, compassionate, but it takes a special level of strength to be kind after losing everything. Lavellan is taken from her old life, turned into a religious symbol for her oppressors, and stripped of her identity and culture. There is an undeniable alienation she experiences, both from the shemlen, and then from her own beliefs (and her People/Clan) as she goes through the events of the game; she learns that the history she worked so hard to study and preserve was built on the backs of slaves, that her gods were tyrants and slavers, and that Fen’Harel’s name was ruined through millennia of propaganda and perpetuated lies. She is changed from her time as the Inquisitor and from falling in love with Solas—mentally, physically, and spiritually. She fell in love with the god, with the monster, her people were taught fear, and as the stories go, Fen’Harel’s touch leaves you forever marked.

The Dread Wolf’s name is not worshipped in reverence; it is invoked in fear, in anger—it is a curse, reviled, and spit like the most corrosive of poisons.

But that isn’t who Lavellan falls in love with. Just like the Inquisitor, Fen’Harel is a title and mask worn by a broken man forced into a role he didn’t want.

She was taken, twisted, turned into something she didn’t want, but she did not let it break her. The world had taken so much from her time and time again, yet they continued to demand. She gave up her home, her life, eventually her friends, and even the very organization she dedicated everything to. Forced to make decisions that shed as much blood as it saved. The rest of her life was spent in pursuit of a man looking to end the world, long after she’s already saved it once before. She holds her head high and bears the weight of the world like she was Atlas himself. The Inquisitor bends and bows, but never does she break. Despite this, despite it all, she still remains kind. And Solas? Sweet, gentle Solas. His heart is still so kind but he’s hardened it.

A romanced Lavellan wants to help Solas, to save him from himself. She sees the mask for what it is and knows the man—the spirit—hiding behind it all. Wisdom, taken from his home, turned into a weapon and then a symbol—a god. Forced to fight for what is just, Fen’Harel breaks under the trauma wrought upon him and by him.

He is weighed down by duty and service—to Mythal and to his People. The world was broken by his actions, and he seeks to rend another to restore what was sundered.

Wisdom was lost, turned to Pride. It hides under the guise of Fen’Harel because he believes it is not what the world needs.

The Evanuris claim that Fen’Harel is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, when he was a weapon forged by their own hand.

Lavellan chooses to walk the Dinan’shiral with Solas. Maybe for some, it is because they, too, believe the Veil must come down, and the world restored to its natural state. But, as loredrinker said in their fantastic post, it may be because of connection. They see that Solas is suffering; that he’s been alone. This path would break what was left of the gentle Wisdom underneath it all. The Path of Death, he called it.

She said so herself: “I will save you.”

She walks the Dinan’shiral, not as Solas does, but parallel to him. She does not walk it expecting to reap death, but to stop it. They’ve both experienced loss—lived through horrors no being should ever experience. Leaders, symbols—burdens taken on by shoulders that shouldn’t bear them alone.

And Lavellan will not allow Solas to bear this alone. As she had done with her friends in the Inquisition, she is offering him connection. She will ease his burden if he would let her. Despite the isolation she no doubt feels, she makes sure none of her friends ever feel alone. She supports each of them, gives them a shoulder to lean on, and takes their pain as her own because that’s just who she is.

I will bear this weight with you. You are my heart. We walk this path together. Pain, terror, a terrible future, but you do not have to go alone.

And in the end, the wolf finally takes it. And oh, what a relief it must be after all this time. Millennia, suffering. Alone, lonely, on a path he set for himself, believed to end in eternal isolation. After all, Solas’ worst fear is dying alone.

But no. This is not your fate, vhenan. Ar lath ma.

[arinmoss]

Anya Mouthwashing

[flwrkid14]

Buried Beneath The Laughter They Ignored

Tim is totally fine. Ridiculously fine, actually.

It didn’t matter that he woke up feeling this bubbling, manic laughter in his chest, like everything was suddenly so fucking funny. It didn’t matter that he’d woken up from another nightmare last night, crying, calling for his mama—not the mother he lost, but the mother he gained, Harley Quinn. And it didn’t matter that most days, he felt more like Joker Junior than he did Tim Drake.

It didn’t matter that no one else seemed to fucking care.

He shoved down every bit of laughter clawing up his throat, because he knew if he let even one chuckle slip, they’d all give him that look. The one they always did. Disapproval masked as concern. They didn’t like Junior. They didn’t want to believe Junior was still in there, clawing his way up every time Tim breathed.

It didn’t matter that no one ever asked him how he was doing. They didn’t want to talk about it. Because talking about it would make it real, and they preferred pretending it wasn’t. They expected him to be fine, to push it down, to carry on like nothing happened. If he tried to bring it up, they’d say he was being insensitive—insensitive to Jason's trauma. What fucking irony, he thought bitterly. As if it wasn’t insensitive to be stepping all over his by not letting him speak.

It didn’t matter that he caught them glancing at him sometimes, like they were waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for him to snap, waiting for Junior to come out again. But they never asked. No one asked what was going on in his head. No one fucking asked.

It didn’t matter that when he finally snapped, when he finally screamed at them, sick and tired of pretending, they had the nerve to act clueless. As if they didn’t know.

It didn’t matter that Dick, of all people, screamed back. Yelling like he was being unreasonable. Like he was the problem. He screamed at Tim, demanding answers, to ask what the hell he meant by Joker Junior, as if—

As if they didn’t know.

They didn’t fucking know.

This whole time, they hadn’t known.

They didn’t know Tim had been taken. They didn’t know Tim had been missing. They didn’t know Tim had been held prisoner at the hand of the Joker for months, tearing him apart, piece by piece, until Junior was the only thing left of him. They didn’t know he had screamed for them, begged for someone to find him, but no one ever did.

They didn’t know how much he had suffered. Alone. They didn’t know how much he had changed. They didn’t know that every time he woke up now, it felt like he was still Joker Junior, just wearing Tim’s skin.

And they didn’t know how much it hurt—how much it broke him—to realize that they had never known.

Tim wasn’t fucking okay. And it mattered—oh, it mattered—that they didn’t fucking know.

Because if they didn’t know, it meant no one ever bothered to look. It meant no one ever cared enough to notice.

[poobirdy]

happy bingge for gibsonrae1's donation to svsssaction! instead of amassing a harem, bingge becomes a cat dad bc happy cats make happy people! (even though the event is no longer accepting donations, perhaps consider donating to fundraisers vetted by gaza funds / gaza esims as supplies are very low!)

[ofswordsandpens]

I rewatched Zuko and Azula's Agni Kai recently and it's left me wondering – when Zuko begins to goad Azula into striking him with lightning, was he making the decision to kill her?

Because had Azula shot lightning directly at him like he planned and not at Katara, the most forthright implication to me is that he was intending to strike Azula with her own lightning. And Azula, for all her mastery, would not have been able to counter that.

On the other hand, maybe he wasn't planning to kill her at all and was simply planning to redirect it elsewhere (similar to what he did with Ozai). But given the tone of tragedy throughout the Agni Kai, the fact that they both acknowledge that this fight will be "the end" to them, I don't think it's inaccurate to read Zuko's actions as him preparing to kill Azula, even though an Agni Kai doesn't have to end with death (and in canon it didn't). Also, why goad her into striking him with lightning if he wasn't planning on doing something intentional with it? If anything, it adds another layer to the tragedy to me, because I don't believe Zuko wants to kill her. And it stands in such contrast to the way that Azula desperately wants to kill him.

I also think that there would have even been something sadly poetic in that sort of demise for Azula should the Agni Kai had gone this direction: Azula, struck down by her preferred sub-skill. Azula, struck down by the very bolt of lightning that she intended to kill her brother with. Azula, struck down by her own power.

[simcardiac-arrested]

ATTENTION: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS TREE? IF YOU HAVE, YOU MIGHT HAVE FALLEN INTO SOME SORT OF RIP IN THE FABRIC OF TIME

alt version because i also liek it :)

[solanumflare]

most FERAL noises any human being is capable of making

[bubblybloob]

The moment I realized Scarlet Hollow had romance options after thinking the flirting stuff was just for shits and giggles and I had flirted with everyone at least once without realizing it could lead to something more until Stella invited me into her house on day four, that was the funniest shit ever and I’m a colossal dumbass.

[momentomori24]

I may just be insane about this but does this feel like foreshadowing to anyone else. In this scene we see her trying to replicate the skill of someone else (her mother) and failing to achieve the same results that they would. That feels really specific and it's driving me insane.

Like, we see this come back again in the aftermath of the trial. Diana has repeatedly voiced her admiration for Wolfgang's ability to speak and inspire those around him in the darkest of times, saying she wished she could do the same. We see her pour her heart out and give her own speech to inspire the others-- except the reaction that she receives is cold and miserable, far from the newly kindled warmth and hope Wolfgang was able to create every time.

Diana is a chameleon. Her whole thing is to reflect, to replicate and to adapt. Do you think that this small scene where she tries to make a butterfly out of her hairclips-- a butterfly, an animal associated with transformation and change-- and the end result looking nothing like what she wanted it to be is a metaphor for her future character arc? She has declared that she wants to follow in Wolfgang's footsteps, wants to become something new, but do you think that by the end she ends up being the furthest thing from him? Do you think that by the end she will be left distorted, fundamentally wrong? Do you think that if she could see what she will become in the future, the only emotion that she can muster is horror as she gazes at a stranger that's supposed to be herself? That by the end, she won't be able to recognise herself, because there's no "her" left anymore?

[solifloris]

"even if he's the worst version of all the calebs from then to now, you still want him?"

lvl 51 affinity call — i still think about this call a lot not just because i have nightmares often too and i definitely would have called him too LMAO 😭 but because. this line... there's something so heartfelt about this exchange that i just 😭 my heart feels like it's twisting but /pos 😭

you can just. you can see how much he always wants to do for her, how much he's always wanted to do for her, even through everything that he has been doing already. bec he's been doing a lot!! so much!! it's how he's been trying to show love bc that's how it used to be!!

yet... the reality remains that things aren't how they used to be. and then he calls the him now the "worst version".

he knows. he knows that the person he is in the present isn't the person she's always had in the back of her mind, isn't the person she's familiar with, isn't the person she's the most fond of... is the person that has hurt her. he knows that she's been sensitive about the way he's been doing things, knows that sometimes the things he does doesn't make her happy.... and i think he really just... he sees it, you know? it's not something he just notices and then does nothing about... he's aware. aware that, making her happy, taking care of her like he used to... he doesn't know how to do it properly, doesn't know if he even can anymore. things are different this time. he's still learning to come to terms with that... still trying to deal with the struggles of presenting this whole self that he's very much aware of—without hurting her this time. and i think that a lot of the times :( like in this call :( he just really wants a certain reassurance from mc that he's doing something a little better...........

:( just :( the vulnerability jumps out so much here :( i really want to give him the biggest hug :(

it's such a myth callback... :( he makes me so ill i'm so sick to my stomach 😭 (/pos)

[sidethatyoudontknow]

In the middle of all this 457 chaos there's me that lowkey ships junho and the salesman/ the recruiter/ddakji guy or whatever you're calling him

I mean have you look at them, imagine the banter we could've got

Like there's junho, a detective who's been trying to find his brother only to be led up to a brutal kids game competition in some sketchy island and also finds out the person who controls the said game is his very own brother that he's been searching for a long time that is also a previous winner in the game

And then there's the salesman (some people call him ddakji or dak ho) who's been trained to kill, to see people that played the games is lower than him like a trash since he was a teenager probably, who doesn't even know the purpose of life anymore, a literal mess, a maniac. That's also probably the one that recruit junho's brother into playing the games(a theory not sure if that would makes sense)

Just imagine that, I could write a few headcanons if anyone interested

And yes yes I know they didn't even interacted once for SHIT(and the only time they ever see one another was when one of them already died and the one died never also see him or does he?)

[vaguely-concerned]

lucanis reading romance novels out loud to spite in the seventh attempt to explain to him what sex is and spite bemusedly being like 'wow you people really get up to that shit I thought that was just a bit mortals did or something'