#I'm getting older too

[egophiliac]

Since book 7 part 5 (the part where we meet Meleanor/Maleanor 👀) is coming to EN this month, i would love to see your take on lilia’s proposal to meleanor! i mean they were like little kids right? it couldn’t have been that serious…i think the only reason she even brought it up again is because she could tell lilia still genuinely loved her…(even if he didn’t realize it himself?) but, oh well! Let’s think about silly childhood shenanigans to numb the pain! ^_^ (orz)

oh shit?! get ready for a doozy guys, it's comiiiiiing ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

I chickened out of posting the whole thing (look, I get VERY carried away when it comes to these wacky kids and their Tragedy), but I do believe that it probably ended with Lilia getting embarrassed and just shoving the first thing he sees into his mouth to try and cover for it.

(we're just lucky it wasn't a frog this time)

[meii-jasmine]

We stan Filipino Miku! 🇵🇭

She has her own Mikutoda tricycle, eating kwek kwek before the rush hour

[inkskinned]

you're grabbing lunch with a nice man and he gives you that strange grimace-smile that's popular right now; an almost sardonic "twist" of his mouth while he looks literally down on you. it looks like he practiced the move as he leans back, arms folded. he just finished reciting the details of NFTs to you and explaining Oppenheimer even though he only watched a youtube about it and hasn't actually seen it. you are at the bottom of your wine glass.

you ask the man across from you if he has siblings, desperately looking for a topic. literally anything else.

he says i don't like small talk. and then he smiles again, watching you.

a few years ago, you probably would have said you're above celebrity gossip, but honestly, you've been kind of enjoying the dumb shit of it these days. with the rest of the earth burning, there's something familiar and banal about dragging ariana grande through the mud. you think about jeanette mccurdy, who has often times gently warned the world she's not as nice as she appears. you liked i'm glad my mom died but it made you cry a lot.

he doesn't like small talk, figure out something to say.

you want to talk about responsibility, and how ariana grande is only like 6 days older than you are - which means she just turned 30 and still dresses and acts like a 13 year old, but like sexy. there's something in there about the whole thing - about insecurity, and never growing up, and being sexualized from a young age.

people have been saying that gay people are groomers. like, that's something that's come back into the public. you have even said yourself that it's just ... easier to date men sometimes. you would identify as whatever the opposite of "heteroflexible" is, but here you are again, across from a man. you like every woman, and 3 people on tv. and not this guy. but you're trying. your mother is worried about you. she thinks it's not okay you're single. and honestly this guy was better before you met, back when you were just texting.

wait, shit. are you doing the same thing as ariana grande? are you looking for male validation in order to appease some internalized promise of heteronormativity? do you conform to the idea that your happiness must result in heterosexuality? do you believe that you can resolve your internal loneliness by being accepted into the patriarchy? is there a reason dating men is easier? why are you so scared of fucking it up with women? why don't you reach out to more of them? you have a good sense of humor and a big ol' brain, you could have done a better job at online dating.

also. jesus christ. why can't you just get a drink with somebody without your internal feminism meter pinging. although - in your favor (and judgement aside) in the case of your ariana grande deposition: you have been in enough therapy you probably wouldn't date anyone who had just broken up with their wife of many years (and who has a young child). you'd be like - maybe take some personal time before you begin this journey. like, grande has been on broadway, you'd think she would have heard of the plot of hamlet.

he leans forward and taps two fingers to the table. "i'm not, like an andrew tate guy," he's saying, "but i do think partnership is about two people knowing their place. i like order."

you knew it was going to be hard. being non-straight in any particular way is like, always hard. these days you kind of like answering the question what's your sexuality? with a shrug and a smile - it's fine - is your most common response. like they asked you how your life is going and not to reveal your identity. you like not being straight. you like kissing girls. some days you know you're into men, and sometimes you're sitting across from a man, and you're thinking about the power of compulsory heterosexuality. are you into men, or are you just into the safety that comes from being seen with them? after all, everyone knows you're failing in life unless you have a husband. it almost feels like a gradebook - people see "straight married" as being "all A's", and anything else even vaguely noncompliant as being ... like you dropped out of the school system. you cannot just ignore years of that kind of conditioning, of course you like attention from men.

"so let's talk boundaries." he orders more wine for you, gesturing with one hand like he's rousing an orchestra. sir, this is a fucking chain restaurant. "I am not gonna date someone who still has male friends. also, i don't care about your little friends, i care about me. whatever stupid girls night things - those are lower priority. if i want you there, you're there."

he wasn't like this over text, right? you wouldn't have been even in the building if he was like this. you squint at him. in another version of yourself, you'd be running. you'd just get up and go. that's what happens on the internet - people get annoyed, and they just leave. you are locked in place, almost frozen. you need to go to the bathroom and text someone to call you so you have an excuse, like it's rude to just-leave. like he already kind of owns you. rudeness implies a power paradigm, though. see, even your social anxiety allows the patriarchy to get to you.

you take a sip of the new glass of wine. maybe this will be a funny story. maybe you can write about it on your blog. maybe you can meet ariana grande and ask her if she just maybe needs to take some time to sit and think about her happiness and how she measures her own success.

is this settling down? is this all that's left in your dating pool? just accepting that someone will eventually love you, and you have to stop being picky about who "makes" you a wife?

you look down to your hand, clutching the knife.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt in Memes 4

Another prompt, but in memes because trying to gather my thoughts is hard sometimes lol.

[somnimagus]

My page for @destinytriofanzine! I drew something about kids always dreaming of far off places

[id in alt!]

[genericpuff]

say sike right now, she's actually going back to The Doctor Pepper Show-

Like, this is just "What if The Doctor Pepper Show and LO had a baby?" Because at this point it's very clear Rachel only knows how to write from inside her own head, which is full of unresolved salt towards her childhood and medical fetish shit. The imagery in the first panel is very LO, and the imagery in the second is literally The Doctor Foxglove Show-

Evidently she's been reskinning the same shit for years-

Listen, I've been, for the most part, keeping my lips sealed on a lot of Rachel's old projects and what I've dug up on her previous works, for a few reasons:

1.) We were all cringe on the Internet at some point in time and a lot of these older works, such as Freak Scene Surgery and The Doctor Pepper Show, would have been from when she was in her late teens / early 20's. I'm not here to judge Rachel's personal preferences or whatever kind of fetishes she's into. It's totally normal, expected even, for a lot of creators to have older works they're trying to bury or disconnect themselves from because it's simply not them anymore.

2.) Ultimately I've been focused on discussion around Lore Olympus and Rachel as she currently operates as a creator, so I don't want to go digging up her old skeletons as any sort of "gotcha" towards LO today. Ultimately a lot of these works don't have anything to really 'do' with LO as it exists today.

That said, the reason I'm bringing it up now is because these new series... are bridging that gap that I've been avoiding for ages now. The gap that's filled with skeletons of Rachel's past that she's trying to both disconnect herself from but now fall back on with LO come and gone. It almost goes to show that her being a one-note pony goes back since far before LO - these are literally the only ideas she's able to come up with at this point, and it's painfully obvious in how both these new "graphic novel pitches" are pretty much the exact same and could apply to the same character, and that character may as well just be Persephone, i.e. Rachel, all over again.

Like, I'm calling it now, Patients in the Dark is just gonna be more "moms are bad" rhetoric, and Eleanor's Deathbed is gonna be Hades and Persephone, but replace Hades with some death god and Persephone with a training mortician, which is basically also still just Foxglove training to be a doctor, and Icy Shaw bragging about fondling corpses.

If anything, now that Webtoons is no longer carrying her around on their shoulders, this is gonna be Rachel's moment of "put up or shut up". She can either actually put in an active effort to write something that's decent, or she can flounder under the weight of her own tired mediocrity that's been knocking at her door for years now. As much as she's using her labels that were bought for her to sell these books which aren't even in real development yet-

-Webtoons isn't gonna be there to buy her Eisners forever. This is entirely on her and the imprint that Webtoons shoved her into. Her process is still the same, she's learned nothing from the experience of making LO, she's just got the money and awards now and is trying to run with it, but all she has are the same tired pitch lines that she's been using for decades now and just so happened to work with LO because LO had both Webtoons and the appeal of it being a Greek myth "retelling" to carry it into fame.

I'm gonna go into a bit of a tangent here, but it's been weighing on my mind since I found out this news and have been discussing it with pals within the ULO circle. Rachel once said in an interview that she wanted to use her platform to raise awareness of issues regarding sexual assault, mental health, and "the patriarchy":

"Who do you know that hasn’t been sexually assaulted? The number is depressingly low, right? Why is that? There is no short answer or an easy fix. I have a platform. I can tell a story that will hopefully educate and help others feel acknowledged and vindicated." - Rachel Smythe, Interview with Gossamer Rainbow

"...obviously I'm very feminist, and that sort of stuff really matters to me, um, the best way to approach this question is… I began, the pilot was written in sort of mid-2017, and I think what I wanted, what I wanted to achieve, and I don't even know… probably in 5 years time I don't know how I'm going to feel about this but I'm taking the risk, I really wanted to write a story where, uh…this female character goes through these things and I think what I wanted to do, what I wanted to achieve, was like a really common, I can't speak for like, men, but I can definitely speak for like, you know, if you're sitting in a group of your female friends and you're like "Hey! Who's been sexually assaulted?" … The response is going to be really depressing… Most female people that you know have probably experienced sexual assault to, on one level or another, and I'm like, for me I'm like "Why is that? Why?" And is it because there is a lack of information, lack of education, like what is it? And I'm lucky enough to have a platform and I'm like, if I could just provide some information in story format, would that help? Is this what I can contribute? So I feel like, especially, when writing sexual assault in media often it's… it's a way for the main male character to be, like, uplifted to hero-ness by, usually like, violence is the way to fix the problem, and that's not the approach that I want to take… um, I think [sighs], oh god, sorry I've lost my train of thought, [sighs], yeah, I think a lot of the time in movies when they, like, show rapists or something it's generally someone who's jumped out from behind the tree at a lady in a park and it's not really how it is like 90% of the time [laughs], so I just wanted to make something realistic where people could at it and be, like, "hey, nagging someone into sex isn't cool" or like removing all of their opportunities to say no isn't cool, or for someone to look at it, and just like feel validation, this is me trying, trying my best to make a difference with the platform that I have, and yeah, this is my roundabout answer for it" - Rachel Smythe, Interview with The Comic Source

And yet not once has Rachel actually used her platform for good outside of herself. She just asks the question, "Sexual assault?" and then writes off the answer "yes, it's bad!" and it especially shows in LO where the resolution to the one plotline she kept around to draw in readers was "assaulters are sent to the timeout corner!" Sure, it works for the readers who are simply seeking validation that their experiences aren't unique to themselves, but is it actually doing any real work to talk about the systems in place that leads to people like Apollo being created? Is it doing anything to address purity culture as it exists and the double standards that exist for women who are navigating sexual relationships? Is it doing anything to take the discussion outside of the narrative and put it into action through support of women's shelters, charities, mental health support for men, etc.? Not really. Like many of Rachel's ideas throughout LO, she simply goes, "Men, amirite?" and the answer is "yeah men suck!" and nothing more. The answer to the entire SA plotline is "rape is bad, don't do it" when anyone who could even relate to that conclusion in the first place already knows that.

Ultimately the activism she claims she's trying to do doesn't actually service the issue at hand - it just services herself and her own insecurities, her own unresolved trauma, her own need for validation through Eisners and merch sales. She asks the question, "Who hasn't been assaulted?" so that when she responds to the women who come forward and relate to Persephone, it's with the intent of getting them to read LO and buy her merchandise. She winds up making herself the center of other people's experiences, even ones that she cannot relate to. At BEST her attempts to "use her platform" as a means of starting discussion around ongoing societal issues like the patriarchy and sexual assault towards women is about as effective as Bell #LetsTalk, it's purely performative, self-profiting, and offers nothing of real tangibility.

If she just wants to write her own self-empowering personal works, that would be fine. Plenty of creators do it. Art is, at its core, self-expression. But it's extremely telling that she's built a platform off her self-expression, and twisted it into what she believes to be "activism" and "feminism", so that she can continue to profit off it in her future works such as this, which, again, are just reskins of her previous projects which were largely centered around the fetishizing of abuse towards women.

I don't want to claim that this is what it is, but... how much of the "feminism" in LO is done purely through the lens of victimizing women? Why is there more effort put into torturing female characters like Hera, and Demeter, and Minthe, and even Persephone to a certain degree, than there is into actually addressing the larger issue that she's claiming she wants to shed light on and resolving her questions with actionable answers?

That is the only question I will leave you all with. I am absolutely 100% not planning on touching these works with a ten foot pole, even if they should come to fruition. With the recent realization that she was into artists like Trevor Brown, alongside the fact that we've known for a long time she's into Lolita and there are very clear parallels to draw between it and LO, I think it's safe to say at this point that Rachel's work is not something I want to continue to support even when it's "hate reading". Again, I'm not going to outright accuse her of anything, but I feel like the writing is clearly on the wall here and I'm taking that writing as my warning to steer clear.

I didn't want to discuss the elephant in the room - her older works as they exist in the distant past of the early 2000's - but she's now riding the elephant.

[ravene]

Part 1 Chapter 2 be like

[varpusvaras]

I really need to go to sleep but I also really need to get this out of my mind

Force Ghost Fox, wandering around the Galaxy. His brothers cannot see him. There aren't left any people who could see him, anymore.

He visits Bail and Breha, too, and sits with them and wishes that he could reach out, that he could tell them that he is right there.

He watches their daughter as well. A cute, tiny little thing. He sits besides her cot at nights and hums at her, even though he knows she cannot hear him. He watches her sleep as he does so, and he wishes that she was his, too.

One night, she awakens, and her little face scrunches up like she's going to cry. Fox shushes her, out of instinct, no matter how little it will be of help-

She stops, and looks up, and Fox swears that she is looking straight at him.

No, no, she cannot be. He is just imagining it.

Then she smiles, and reaches towards Fox.

[hamartia-grander]

This definitely won't happen but it would be so fucking funny if they arrive at the planet Thrawn and Ezra were stranded on and it turns out that these two are best friends now and Thrawn is completely on Ezra's side. Morgan Elsbeth pleads for Thrawn to return and reignite the Empire and he's just like "those bitches? Fuck em. Ezzie and I started a band, we play Jizz music on Wednesdays. Here's my wallet pictures of us hanging out."

[juustozzi]

break trio coffee headcanons (because why not):

Kidou kinda gets deeper into hand-brewing, quite to the nerd depths but instead of making it his personality he just enjoys the meticulous preparation process. he probably has an app to follow the flow rate... and of course he has a chemex. in two sizes, most likely. he still does drink all kinds of coffee, but only in the morning, to not overcaffeinate.

Endou doesn't really drink coffee but he likes sweet coffee drinks and coffee flavored things. he has the adhd brain where caffeine makes him sleepy, so he doesn't really get people who use it to energize.

Gouenji doesn't like the coffee flavor that much, and prefers energy drinks for caffeine boost. though, he's the kind of guy who takes a cup if everyone else's having, more for the social experience than the drink itself. I think he enjoys chai a lot more.

[cerise-on-top]

hi! how would Valeria and Kate react if their wife’s got hurt because of their work, both of them working highly jobs and it ended up catching up to their s/o. hoe you are doing well and drink plenty of water! thank you!

-🍒

Hello! Both of them would be absolutely distraught, but would go about it in different ways!

Valeria’s and Laswell’s Wife Gets Hurt Because of their Job

Valeria: Whoever hurt you will wind up tortured and eventually, once she thinks they’ve had enough of their miserable life, will wind up dead. Naturally, the first thing she does is check up on you, see if you’re alright and well, that’s her priority. You’re the love of her life, there’s no one else in this world she wants to see do well. You’ll be admitted to the best hospital nearby and will only get the finest treatment. Once you’re stabilized, that’s when the hunt begins. Whoever hurt you won’t get too far since that bastard’s life will be on the line. Regardless of where they might be hiding, Valeria will find them and show them that death is actually a kind of mercy. She has pretty much everything at her disposal, everything money can buy, this sucker won’t know what hit them. If it’s revenge they want, then revenge they’ll get. Valeria promises you that their head will be on a silver plate. She’s not very good with words when it comes to comforting someone, but she will have that person killed in the most cruel ways she can imagine. In fact, she’ll take the pleasure of torturing them upon herself. Once she’s done, she’ll take some days off, which is surprising since she usually can’t afford that at all. You’ll be under her direct care for those days. Anything you want you’ll get. Afterwards there will be a slight shift in her demeanor, Valeria becomes more protective over you. Sometimes she might even assign some trusted people of hers to watch over you since she can’t afford something like that happening again. While she can’t always take some days off, she’ll try to be closer to you anyway. Always texting you, finding excuses to come home for a day maybe. She just really needs to make sure you’re okay, she wouldn’t know what to do with herself if you died.

Laswell: Laswell will try to be a bit more diplomatic about it at first, trying to coax whoever hurt you out of hiding. This person will be held accountable for their crimes against her world. Naturally, she rescues you first, gets you to the nearest hospital and won’t leave your side until you’re stable again. If it takes you a while to wake up again, she’ll leave to find the fucker and make sure they swim with the fishes. She has a pretty large, efficient network and will find out who it was fairly easily. Once she knows who they are, she won’t hesitate to find out all their past crimes as well, if they hurt you then they must have done some other awful things as well. Once that phase is over, she’ll go to their home herself and have them arrested, put in the worst prison imaginable where the inmates are treated especially badly. She won’t kill them, but she wouldn’t be surprised if they wind up dead anyway. Laswell usually isn’t an evil person, but she does hope that person dies during their time. Their sentence will be as long as possible so there’s no chance of them ever seeing the sunlight again either. Once all of this is over, she, too, would take some days off to spend with you. You’re a priority above all else, so Laswell will want to be there for you, no matter the cost. While she usually isn’t, depending on how severely you got hurt she might become a bit overbearing, a bit overprotective. That overprotectiveness will last for a few months, afterwards she’ll try to give you some space again. However, she’ll always be keeping a closer eye on you, always texting or calling you every once in a while to make sure you’re okay. If she needs to, she’ll put you under her protection officially, but the situation needs to be dire for that to happen. Either way, she’ll be keeping you safe.

[feroluce]

Me: I wonder what Hook calls Sampo in the Japanese dub? Probably oji-san, since it's shushu in the original Chinese?

Hook: Sampo-ojichan!!

Oji is "uncle," which is hilarious because Hook calls Natasha by "older sister" when she wants something. So Hook either just really wants to get on Natasha's good side, or she takes Sampo at face value when he refers to himself as an old man. She trusts him a lot and takes him at his word and she calls him as such!

And Sampo calls Hook either ojou-san or oujo-san (I can't find the Japanese sub to see the spelling, and I can't tell them apart by ear)!

One spelling, oujo, means "princess," it's how you would refer to royalty. The other, ojou, (which I assume is what he's actually saying) is something you call the young lady of a high-class family with a high social standing. In Genshin Impact, the intro scene for a popular ship, chilumi, shows Childe calling Lumine ojou-chan, which the English dub translated as "girlie." Since Sampo uses -san instead of -chan, his is more formal and respectful, it's more like "young lady."

...It's also how you would refer to the daughter of a yakuza leader, which I love, since Hook leads her own little gang (the Moles) skzhkskdkd

But it really gets me in the heart, because! Hook is generally looked at as a delinquent by most adults. Which I mean. Not without good reason, she

calls Natasha an old witch

frequently sneaks out into the Fragmentum

has left graffiti all over the side of the orphanage

was constantly picking fights with other kids

beat a man unconscious for stealing from her dad

and has already picked up on how business gets done in the Underworld, and uses/actively participates in it to get what she wants- she basically acts an information broker

like Hook earns her reputation haha. The Underground is lucky that what Hook wants is just like. Candy and toys and to play hide-and-seek. I'm sure she'll have the capability to raise all kinds of hell and be more like an actual gang leader when she's older, even if she chooses not to act on it.

So Sampo calling her so politely and respectfully is really sweet and cute! Yes, he's polite and respectful with everyone, but that's just it- he treats Hook much like he does everyone else. He doesn't tell her to buzz off because she's a kid. He doesn't lie or try to cheat her or assume she's naive because of her age. He never talks down to her. He really does just treat her like a respected business partner and he takes her seriously, which Hook really seems to appreciate. And even when Sampo does treat her like a kid, it's not in a negative way; he guides her on little adventures and chats with her and takes her for joy rides on his moped. All of which Hook also really appreciates, since everyone else is too busy trying to get by to make time to play with her. She absolutely adores him.

I hope they officially join forces someday and terrorize all of Belobog with their shenanigans JSKJZNDKSJ

So Hook calls Sampo "Uncle Sampo" in a particularly affectionate/endeared tone, and Sampo calls Hook "Young Miss Hook" in a very respectful tone! And to reiterate:

[front-facing-pokemon]

[sparkleresthold]

Brothers from another batch

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 84

Amity Park absolutely adores her little ghostling, her little Gatekeeper who was of her own ectoplasm, reborn from her own blood in the center of her new heart. She absolutely adores her baby, practically a newborn, being only a year dead! 

So of course she had to gush and boast about her little phantom to the other city spirits! They all got together to gossip sometimes after all. And both Smallville and Fawcett started to gush about their own little ones back! 

Gosh they should set up a playdate at some point, her little phantom could use some friends in the mortal realm. Well some more friends, three is obviously not enough. Oh, Gotham and Bludhaven have come over as well! It’s a playdate then! 

Now if only each of their world’s timelines were synced up, but at least everyone is around the same age! 

[illir]

some holmes bros arts that i've done until now bc they're so funny together (also canon never shows us how they looked like when they were younger i had to be delusional and do it myself) (ft. sherliam)

(i drew these three above last year before they revealed mycroft's hair is actually curlier than sherlock's, so.)

bonus: modern au

bonus: sherliam

(i drew this in 2021 way before we even knew sherlock disliked getting compared to mycroft, that scene makes me so happy he got so offended LMFAO 😭)

(i drew this after william and mycroft won the 2022 valentine's day voting!! (it's not voting))