#I've already seen at least 2 posts in here that suggest (in a way) that Sasuke calls nart babygirl

[wingsofachampion]

OOC

I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm not mad at anyone. I love the Pokemon IRL community, and I'm so so happy to be a part of it. And I don't plan on leaving for good anytime soon.

But. Look.

This is getting out of hand.

I've been here since November of 2022, and I haven't seen things being this bad in the community since The Incident.

I'm trying as hard as I can to hold things together, even when it seems like everything's falling apart. But it's getting really exhausting.

So that's why I'm making this post.

There's a lot of problems happening in this community, and I'm going to try to address at least a few of them in this post.

So, here we go.

Part 1: Anon Hate & Other Harassment

There's unfortunately a lot of this in the community. I've been a victim of it myself.

Anon hate is a serious problem that has led several pokebloggers to completely disable anon asks or even leave the community entirely.

I'm not sure how to combat this, unfortunately, other than blocking them as they come, but that's an imperfect solution.

There's also been direct harassment, too, not just through anon asks. I'm unsure how to tackle that either, but I'm spreading awareness just in case.

Part 2: Lack of Engagement

There's a ton of blogs that get little to no engagement, and not for a lack of trying. Pixelated made a great post on this already, so I won't rehash it much.

My main advice is to send asks. That goes both ways. If you see someone struggling to get engagement, send them an ask, brighten their day!

And if you're struggling to get engagement, send asks to as many blogs as you feel comfortable. That way, you put your name out there.

I know it can be scary to send asks, but if it helps, you can send one to me! I won't bite!

Part 3: "Cliques"

There's a lot of subcommunities in the Pokemon IRL community. Eebydeebies, Fallers, Blueberry Academy, and so on. And that's great! What's not so great, though, is how some of these can be rather cliquey.

Sometimes, it's hard to join a subcommunity. Sometimes they push you away, are just difficult to fit in a new blog, or something else.

I've been trying to remedy this in the eebydeeby subcommunity by having Gen send asks to every new eeby blog I can find, but I'm not in every subcommunity, so I can't do this for all of them.

What I suggest to remedy this is, those in subcommunities, reach out! If you see someone trying to join, reach out and welcome them in! Send them asks! Tell other people in the subcommunity about them! Let them know that they're welcome there.

Part 4: Lack of Warnings During MMM

This one is something that mostly just affects me personally, but Muse Mixup Madness has been extremely stressful for me because people keep completely changing up their blogs with little to no warning.

One of my worst triggers is post-apocalypse, and I've been jumpscared by this several times during Muse Mixup Madness by blogs that were previously safe.

Please warn what your Muse Mixup Madness stuff will contain, and please use content warnings, too.

Part 5: New Blogs Dying

This is one of the ones I'm saddest about. Almost every day, there's at least one new person trying to join Pokemon IRL, but 75% of the time their blog dies within a week.

I recommend supporting newcomers as much as you can. If you see a newcomer, send them an ask! Interact with them! Boost them if you feel comfortable with it! Don't let them feel so discouraged that they leave so soon.

I recommend checking the reblogs on realpokemon's pinned post every so often. It's a fantastic way to find new blogs.

Part 6: Exhaustion & A Call for Help

I've been trying very very hard to fix things, but I'm only human (as much as I wish I was a Meganium). I can't do everything by myself.

So I'm asking for help.

I have two blogs primarily made for boosting. @pkmnirlblogboosting and @tacklrnews. Former is OOC, while the latter is IC.

Pkmnirlblogboosting is for boosting blogs that either have less than 75 followers, or are less than a month old. If anyone wants to help me run it and boost blogs, feel free to send me a message asking if you can be added to pkmnirlblogboosting.

Tacklrnews is for reporting on events that are happening in-character. Its primary purpose is to boost stuff happening on people's blogs that they want more people to see and interact with. If anyone wants to help me with this, feel free to send me a message asking if you can be added to tacklrnews.

A caveat with tacklrnews: It's fully in-character, so you'll need to create a character for it to be a part of Pelipper's little news agency. It also writes articles on Pokemon RPC and Pokeask blogs, so to people in those communities, this offer is open to you all, too.

I hope these will both be helpful in revitalizing the Pokemon IRL community.

Part 7: Moving Forward

So, how do we move forward?

I think we should be more supportive towards others in this community. Less OOC anon hate and harassment, more engagement and boosting. Tell your fellow blogrunners how much you appreciate their blogs! Let them know they have people who care about them.

I love this community so, so much. I don't want it to fall apart and die. I'm doing everything in my power to keep it standing, but I'm just one person. I need your help, too.

Together, we can make this community better.

That's about all I had to say.

If you've read this far, thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time to read through this.

I'd appreciate any reblogs to spread this around, but don't feel pressured to if you don't want to.

I hope you all have a wonderful Pride Month.

-Bench

[where-theres-smoak-2]

So I am still stuck here: 'She'll come to understand. I've seen it.' Because like how Paul? How is Chani possible going to come to understand after everything that happened in Dune part 2?

Like she is so angry at the end of the film and it really does make me curious as to how Denis is going to bring her to a place where she understands and is ok with Paul's actions in Dune 3. So I have been having a think about it and I have a few theories on what I think could potentially happen with Chani's character and her relationship with Paul in the third film.

To be clear, I haven't read the books, I know a couple of details from dune messiah that were told to me, but I've mostly managed to avoid spoilers, so this isn't based off clues from the book and is very unlikely to be book accurate, but then I figure Chani not being a believer and choosing to leave at the end wasn't book accurate either so it would make sense that how she comes back to Paul wouldn't be either. Also these theories aren't necessarily things I want to happen more directions I think they could go in. Some have similar ideas and themes but with variations, I think how likely they are to happen is going to depend on just how messed up and tragic they want to go with it.

All of them do have one thing in common though, close proximity. I really do think the only way Chani is ever going to understand is for her to physically be around Paul and see him using his new abilities as the kwisatz haderach and then realising that Paul's motivations are still in the best interests of her and the fremen and that he's trying to lead them down the best path to achieve that. They need to rebuild the love and trust between them through having intimate and emotionally vulnerable moments together as well. So these are more theories on how she'll be brought back into close proximity to him more than anything else. But without further ado lets jump into it.

Chani is Pregnant.

So these first couple of theories centre around the idea that Chani may be pregnant with Paul's baby when she leaves at the end. This is a theory that I've already talked about in this post. As a summary, Chani finds out she is pregnant and not wanting to raise the child alone or for her child to not know their father returns to Paul. Or alternatively Paul finds out she is pregnant and uses it to convince her to come back, its possible Jessica may try and manipulate her into returning as well as she'll see Chani's baby as the future of house atriedes.

But I also had another idea playing into this idea of Chani being pregnant and its a little wacky but could be interesting to play with. For me the interesting part of Paul's line isn't the implication that Chani will return but that she will 'come to understand', suggesting she gets on board with Paul's actions, she fully jumps on the bandwagon so to speak. We know that Paul could dream the future and that these dreams were often vague and full of terror. What if Paul's child can also have these prophetic dreams and through some weird bond between her and the baby that allows Chani to start having these dreams. Seeing all these horrors of possible unclear futures she realises the potential cost of choosing the wrong path and in her fear of these dreams combined with the conflicting feelings of being pregnant with Paul's child, she chooses to return to him now believing that he is at least trying to choose the path that will be best for them all. I also think this could create an interesting parallel between Chani and Jessica in that they both had kind of mystical pregnancies. Obviously it wouldn't be exactly the same because Chani's child wouldn't have awareness more just the link between mother and child in pregnancy allows Chani to take on some of the child's abilities as the offspring of the kwisatz haderach.

So I am going to put a dune messiah book spoiler warning here because I am going to mention something from the books that I learned, so if you don't want to be spoiled skip to the next paragraph. But I just want to be clear to those who read the book that when I say I think Chani might be pregnant I don't mean with the twins who I think will be born but later in the film, I mean with their first son who was born in the first book who is killed in the sietch tabr attack. They took it out of dune part two, which makes sense as they changed the timeline drastically, so I think its possible that they'll instead move this plot line into Dune 3 as an explanation as to why Chani comes back. I think their child will die in some attack or assassination attempt and this will make Chani angry enough to want revenge and their joint grief keeps her at his side.

Chani the Manipulator

So two important details make up this theory, one is that Chani's main resistance to the prophecy is that she believes that the fremen should free themselves and not an outsider, the second important detail is that whilst many will think the emperor is the most powerful person in the universe, the bene gesserit gained a lot of power because they had the emperor's ear. It can be argued that the true most powerful being is the one who can influence the one people think is the most powerful. So here's my theory, what if after some time away and after her anger has simmered down a bit she comes to realise that she could have a lot of power in being the one at Paul's side, the one to have his ear. Maybe being unhappy with some choices he is making in the holy war when it comes to her people she has this epiphany of, I can't change what has happened, I can't change the minds of the fundamentalists who are lost to this prophecy, and I can't stop Jessica's or Gurney's schemes/motivations, but I can manipulate/guide Paul. So she pretends to forgive him and goes back, puts herself close to him and sits in on the councils and when discussing decisions etc she nudges him into the direction she wants him to take, essential becoming the fremen that will help free them by working in the shadows. As I said above any reconciliation I think is going to come down to close proximity and I think as Chani is around Paul as she sees that he really can see different futures she is going to be more understanding and more trusting in Paul when he says he is doing necessary evils to ensure the best outcome for Arrakis and the fremen. I won't lie but I would kind of love this one to happen. Not only would I love seeing Chani embrace her own power and still stay true to her goals of putting her people's freedom first, I think it would be an interesting parallel to Paul in Dune part 2 where at first he works to be accepted by the non believers because he wants to use them as a way to get to the emperor but along the way he comes to genuinely love these people and feel like he's one of them leading to him choosing to abandon his previous path of revenge. I could see this going the same way, Chani at first sets out to manipulate Paul for her own motivations but in being around him begins to understand exactly what happened to him when he drunk the waters and what his motivations are now and decides that actually maybe Paul is what's best for her people and maybe her role/place is to be at his side and help him guide them to that green paradise.

Chani the Spy

These next few theories are going to centre around the idea of Chani either being a part of some kind of resistance against Paul or being the leader of a resistance. I could see Chani not being willing to give up the fight that easily and see her finding others who also still don't believe Paul is the Lisan al Gaib and who aren't happy with their people taking part in a holy war. I could see her using this resistance to become a real political pain in the ass for Paul. Maybe even using his own tactics of disrupting spice production against him, or undermining him in other ways. In a theory similar to the one above I could then see her fake forgiving Paul but to spy on him and feed information to the resistance. But again being in close proximity to him makes her feelings more complicated and she becomes less and less sure about what she is doing and whose side she is really on as time goes by and she realises it isn't as black and white as she first thought, I could see maybe the resistance deciding to plot an assassination attempt and this making Chani more conflicted as I don't think she wants Paul to die.

Let's Beauty and the Beast it.

This one again is based on the idea of Chani being part of/ leading the resistance. Maybe the resistance gets into a fight with Paul's forces and it results in this particular faction of the resistance losing and being taken as prisoners of war. Chani is captured amongst them and Gurney upon recognising her takes her to Paul instead of prison. Then we get a kind of beauty and the beast scenario except this ain't no fairy-tale its much darker. Essentially Chani is Paul's prisoner, but he gives her fancy quarters, real close to his obviously, and he makes a few demands like insisting she must eat her meals with him every day, take walks with him etc. You know forced proximity, she agrees to keep her fellow resistance fighters safe, the promise being they won't be harmed if she complies. Again its her being around him, being reminded of how things used to be between them, maybe she also sees glimpses of the Usul she fell in love with during these meals and walks and ends up falling in love with him all over again. That combined with, as said before, her realisation that he can see the future, him convincing her that he is doing it to prevent the fremen suffering a worse fate etc, keeps her at his side.

Green Green Paradise

So this one isn't particularly well thought out more of a vague idea that past through my head, but it was confirmed in an interview that Liet Kynes from Dune part 1 is Chani's mother. This isn't something that they have actually brought up in the films though, yet. But Dr Liet was a ecologist and was all about terraforming Arrakis and bringing water and greenery, which is very similar to the whole prophecy that the Lisan al Gaib will bring a green paradise.

Whilst Chani may not believe in the prophecy I could understand if she still had a dream of Arrakis becoming a green paradise because of her mother's own dream and her mother's background as a ecologist. Paul tells Liet in part 1 that as emperor he could turn Arrakis into a green paradise with a wave of his hand, well he's emperor now, so maybe he'll begin to deliver own this promise and maybe seeing the way he is changing Arrakis so that it has water and greenery makes Chani go back as she wants to be apart of helping build her mother's dream for Arrakis.

Denial

So another option is Denis could throw us a complete curve ball of a plot twist and actually Chani doesn't come back to Paul. Maybe it was only one, or a few possible futures where Chani came back and Paul was just in denial that it wouldn't happen, he thinks that as he can see multiple futures now he can definitely manipulate the events into ensuring she does come back, only he fails and the Dune 3 we get is one where Chani instead is full on resistance leader, fighting against Paul with all she's got. Maybe she even ends up killing him in the end. I have seen this outcome suggested quite a bit and comments like 'I'd love that for her' which whilst I understand the sentiment, no judgements here, personally I wouldn't love that for her. I think as betrayed as she feels, as angry as she is, it is clear that she still deeply loves Paul and I think sadly she always will, that's the true tragedy of their love story, they're on opposite sides/views but still love each other. I think it was clear from her reactions when she thought Paul was dead after drinking the wol and when he was stabbed during the duel with Feyd that Paul dying is her worst nightmare. I can't imagine how heartbreaking it would be for her to be the one to kill him herself, I think it would destroy her, so its not something I would want for her. But I also can't argue that it is a fairly common troupe, the whole love interests where one goes to the dark side, and it ends with one having to kill the other. I'm personally still traumatised from when Buffy was forced to kill Angel in BTVS and don't know if I could take it again.

I Guess We'll Never Know

This is kind of a theory but also more like my worst fear. So another mild spoiler alert for Dune messiah, but the book actually takes place 12 years after the events of Dune part 2. I did put forward a theory that maybe what they'll do for the third film is spend the beginning part showing what happened right after Dune 2, showing the holy war and what happens with Chani etc and then have the time skip a little later in the film and cover the events from the dune messiah book. But my biggest fear is that they will just stick with the time skip and Chani will just be there and we won't really get any explanation as to why she returned to Paul. Maybe they'll just decide that Paul's one line of 'she'll come to understand' is enough of an explanation. I mean I personally would consider this a huge detriment to Chani's character so I am really hoping this doesn't happen, but I'll guess we'll just have to wait and see.

So those are all the theories I have for now. I would love to know what other theories people have but until next time thanks for reading.

[breezybeej]

The Verity by Colleen Hoover Post

I want to put some of my highlights and notes here so I can reference them without needing the images on my phone. Warning: this book sucks and you will see some really stupid and weird shit in here.

This is the description of blood splashing on Lowen (the main character) after she witnessed a man get run over. I've seen some car accidents. I don't think it's very common at all for someone's head to pop like a water balloon in these circumstances.

What is cryptic here? He (Jeremy, the romance option) has seen worse than a man getting run over. I think it's pretty straight forward, babe.

This is from Verity (jeremy's wife, a comatose woman). Most of her stuff should be taken with a grain of salt for plot reasons but some of these are so ridiculous on their face that you can't really save them

Unlikely.

Licking someone's thumb like a postage stamp is just so FUCKing SExy

I cared, I heard, and I minded. Please don't talk about getting fingered at steak 'n shake

Meeting Jeremy makes you want to jump off a cliff????? Well, to be fair, me too, girl

Why is this how you describe it, Lowen. You are reading her autobiography but you are thinking about her underwear.

Okay, I love this one because there's a lot happening. 1. He walks backwards A LOT in the first half of this book and I don't know why. 2. He was on his way to the kitchen to heat up leftovers but they were already done when they arrived? 3. He pulls out a plate of pizza. So in one very short paragraph we have pizza said three times. I think this book wasn't carefully edited.

So what does that mean. If someone has a plate of peas and they do this, I imagine them poking and prodding and scooping but pizza? Is he like... picking it up and putting it down? Sliding it around the plate?

It's just SO weird to go with your wife to her first pregnancy appointment for the baby you squirted into her, isn't it.

So this is again Verity writing from opposite land but like. They very much do have sex constantly so does she feel this way or not.

This one really bugs me just because she flubbed the parallel structure on "with a broken wrist" and "covered in blood" like the reason we have mechanics for parallel structure is that the sentences feel clunky without it.

I lost count, I didn't highlight every one, but I think this is in the book at least 10 times. Colleen does NOT trust you to remember this.

Lowen, why is this a dammit. Why is that messed up. What.

Just like Layla in the other book, Layla, Lowen is a girl who knows how to eat and she's quirky for eating tacos

So why didn't she just list the vegetables. It would be faster. "He grabbed cilantro and onions." or "He grabbed onions and peppers." Like... Colleen, you live in texas and you write about tacos in your books more than once.

People hate me for suggesting Lowen is bi but..... i mean.... she was diggin through Verity's drawers too, you remember.

Why did anyone let her say epic burn in a book. Why does she use epic again moments later.

Ope, I got this one though.

Thankfully Verity has two breasts.

That's how I felt reading this book. You DO get a feeling that Colleen partially wrote this to call out her haters.

Don't say that

Here's another line that gets repeated like 6 times. I don't even know why. It doesn't play into the plot or the themes really.

God isn't that insane. Who does that. Also this is Verity Opposite land so... does she wear lingerie often?

Babe. What.

Someone pointed out that license picture are usually the worst pictures of you possible. That makes this so much funnier imo

When you say "He groans" as a single clause, it makes it sound like he's disappointed. "Ugh, babe you forgot your bra AGAIN?"

[thelordofgifs]

A Completely Objective Rating of Gil-galad Origin Theories

So! My Research(tm) has informed me that Tolkien conceived of at least four potential parentages for Gil-galad, last High King of the Noldor, at various points. This plothole/controversy/mystery is deeply, deeply funny to me, so I decided to make a post arbitrarily rating various Gil-galad theories and providing examples of fics where they appear.

Some disclaimers:

I am very very new to the silm fandom and also tumblr and don't actually know anything! so there is a very high chance something will go wrong here

in compiling this I was very much indebted to this post by @sweetteaanddragons and this one by @tanoraqui

your headcanons, of course, are extremely valid! no shade at all to anyone who likes one of the theories I’ve rated a bit lower, and thank you for doing your bit to deepen the controversy. the more Gil-galad theories the better

Unsurprisingly, this turned out LONG. I split the parentages into four sections: Part 1 covers supposedly canon/canon-adjacent Gil-galad theories; Part 2, popular fanon theories that I've seen in a variety of places; Part 3 will cover rare fanon theories that I've only seen basically once, and ideas I literally just made up myself.

Baseline assumptions I'm using:

The "historical record", in-universe, is primarily the Quenta Silmarillion which states that Ereinion Gil-galad was the son of Fingon; and other documents variously suggesting that he was the son of Orodreth or Finrod, or a descendant of Fëanor. Sources give him the additional names Finellach and Artanáro/Rodnor.

It's fairly widely agreed-upon that Gil-galad was an adult and the High King by the time of the Third Kinslaying, when he was based on Balar and came too late to Elwing's aid.

(This means I won't further consider some rather fun, cracky theories that are based on the argument that Gil-galad only became the High King after the War of Wrath. That seems like a slightly excessive amount of historical revisionism for my taste, when he's named as the High King well before the WoW.)

So, with those established, what makes for a good Gil-galad parentage theory?

It has to make the confusion in the historical record, in-universe, make some sort of sense. Would someone with this parentage have a claim to the crown? If not, do they have a solid motivation to lie about it? Providing a neat explanation for other aspects of Gil-galad's characterisation and the way he rules would also be a bonus.

A storytelling concept I call weird questions must have weird answers. Neat origin theories that "make sense" tend to score low on this metric. The Gil-galad controversy is funny and needs to be kept that way.

How narratively satisfying is the theory? Does it ruin anyone else's arc, or fanon I personally like? Then it's scoring low.

This is already so long-

Time for looking at the four canon-ish Gil-galad parentages!

Gil-galad son of Fingon and, presumably, some unnamed wife. This is rubbish. Makes no sense. Not a fan. No. Primarily, it is boring, the death knell to any Gil-galad theory. Also, Fingon is never actually mentioned to have a wife because he's married to Maedhros and, while textual ghosts are obviously common in the Silm, I find it slightly harder to believe that a High Queen of the Noldor managed to escape being named anywhere. You could, I suppose, argue that she died before Fingon became King, but I don't want to. The confusion in the historical record also seems unnecessary here, because Fingon's son would presumably have a pretty ironclad claim to the crown after his death and certainly after Turgon's. No fic recs here, I don't like this theory. 2/10.

Gil-galad son of Orodreth and brother of Finduilas. Even more boring, and also makes less sense. Was Gil-galad in Nargothrond during Leithian and up to its fall? In that case, why wasn't he mentioned at any point, and if he survived the fall of Nargothrond and escaped, why didn't he go after Finduilas? If he wasn't in Nargothrond by the time of Turin, we can at least forgive his failure to rescue his sister, but why was he sent away from Nargothrond when, prior to the building of the bridge, everyone believed it was safe - and why wasn't Finduilas sent away with him? Again, there's no particular reason for obfuscating this parentage, so it fails on that metric too. At least Artanáro/Rodnor is a good Finarfinion name. Fics which use this theory: What is Wrought Between Us by @nikosheba, which voids all these objections of mine quite nicely - Gil-galad son of Orodreth, adopted by Fingon and Maedhros! Also it's one of the most heart-breaking, beautiful, canon-compliant Russingon series around, go and read it. That excellent example aside, 3/10.

Gil-galad son of Finrod and (iirc) a wife called Meril. An earlier version of the legendarium discarded when Finrod was made childless. This is potentially my least favourite of the four canon-esque theories, because Finrod's childlessness is imo a fairly important part of his arc, and Meril was replaced by Amarië, to whom Finrod was very much not married at the time of his death. Pretty much the only positive is that, again, Artanáro/Rodnor suits well as a name for Finrod's son. I don't think many people like this theory - we need not consider it further here. No fic recs. 2/10.

Gil-galad descendant of Fëanor. By far the most intriguing and also most implausible canon-esque theory, and as I understand only from one early draft of the legendarium. But there is so much to play with here. If Gil-galad's father is one of the sons of Fëanor, he has a rock-solid reason to lie about his parentage. His claim to the throne is also dubious, because Maedhros abdicated on behalf of the entire house. This gives excellent con-artist Gil-galad flavours to play with. On the narrative/emotional arc metric, this one falls a little short, though. We don't need another descendant of Fëanor in the Second Age struggling with the dark and messy legacy of their family - we have Celebrimbor! And Celebrimbor's status as the last scion of his house, and how his eventual tragedy owes so much to his heritage, is very important to me. Besides, the house of Fëanor going from 7 sons in the first generation to literally just one grandchild is so haunting. On a more practical level, I also don't think Gil-galad reads as particularly close to Celebrimbor? They seem more "distant relations" than first cousins. On the other hand, if Gil-galad simply doesn't know who his parents are, a lot of these problems disappear. We can also double up a few textual ghosts by making his mother one of the unnamed wives - preferably Maglor's or Caranthir's, because Gil-galad son of Curufin feels. doubtful. Fics which use this theory: A Gift from Father to Son by @amethysttribble explores every single potential Fëanorian parentage which is very fun, for a value of "fun" involving "sobbing on the floor about how terrible all these people are". Check it out! Theory as a whole gets 5/10.

[drconstellation]

More Half-and-Half-A-Miracle Thoughts

Part 3: The Third Archangel

Updated 10 Nov 2023

Part 1: Miracle Power Ranking is here Part 2: The Dark side of Aziraphale is here.

Before I try to put the full picture of the mighty miracle together, there is one other Archangel I want to talk about first, because yeah, if the "little" miracle had an Archangel x an Archangel x (ex-)Archangel in the equation, all working in synergy, that's some pretty serious potential power right there.

S2 has given us much to discuss about Crowley and his past. We know he is different in that he has an imagination. We know he is the only ethereal entity, angelic or demonic, who can stop time, which is no mean feat. I have a list of at least nine, possibly thirteen clues (it keeps growing! 21 clues And yes, I'm counting,) that he was once a

senior Archangel, one of the seraphim, before his Fall (but not which one in particular, for sure, alas. We can debate that later, its not important here. Really. Don't @ me about it, I'm not going to engage in this post.) They (updated link to a new discussion: the idea of Crowley previously being a very powerful angel) have all been mentioned already, none of them are new. This implies there is a huge amount of potential power that Crowley could pull upon to put into the miracle performed on Gabriel. So he is our obvious ex-Archangel in the equation.

And we already have Gabriel, in the middle.

Which just leaves us with Aziraphale, and his green-paneled waistcoat...

I've led you all on thinking he's somehow connected to Hell? Or been associating too long with Crowley? No. (Or maybe, yes? To hanging around a demon, I mean.) On one hand it does show us he is not like the other angels. On the other, it tells us something else altogether.

For all that I've been recently rabbiting on about dark horses pointing mainly to Crowley and Saraqael, we have perhaps been deftly misdirected from the biggest dark horse of all: Aziraphale as our 'missing" seraphim, Archangel Raphael, incognito.

Now, I'm certainly not the first person to suggest this at all. There have been multiple metas about it, even way back from S1. I agree with them, fwiw.

Why am I saying this now? I think this recent post about Aziraphale being present at Sodom and Gomorrah sealed it for me, especially since I had made a recent note about Raphael being the one to be assigned to escort Lot from Gomorrah. And for all that I've just discussed how dark Aziraphale can be, he is still clearly affected by what he witnessed that night, so long, long ago.

"Oh Lord, heal this bike."

Green is also the color primarily associated with Raphael, the healer. I've seen a few other colors mentioned as well (in fact, the more you search, the more confusing it gets) but mostly the color you'll see mentioned is green. And its the color Aziraphale conceals on the back side of his waistcoat. Plus he did heal Anathema (and her velocipede) back in S1 after they collided with the Bentley.

Finally, in the Islamic tradition, Raphael is known as Israfil, and he is essential to announcing the Day of Judgement, with a trumpet constantly poised at his lips, ready to blown when God so orders.

Guess who just got taken back to Heaven to start the Second Coming?

Edit: Since I first posted this, some additional information has come along to add to this. I finally bumped into a post about the wonderful golden collars in the Job minisode (It's so, so important to put at least one or two relevant tags for meta-writers like me to help find your posts readers! Then you can shit-talk in the tags all you like.) and that lead me to a webpage on basic angel symbology and the major angels, which helped to firm up a few things I'd been wondering about. One observation is angels usually go about bare-footed, but Raphael wears sandals when on Earth, as he is chief of the guarding angels, and is the guardian of the young, and watches over pilgrims and travelers. And who was wearing golden sandals during the Job minisode?

Doing some guarding of the young as well...

And Raphael is assigned to the direction of the East.

Now we have three Archangels, three seraphim, no less, side by side.

That's a mighty shitload of potential miracle power, whichever way you want to look at it. No wonder the ol' Metatrash got a bit nervous about what happened and decided to take a personal hand in things.

If your sitting there going "'Hang on, op, hang on just a darned minute - Aziraphale hasn't even been promoted to Supreme Archangel yet and Crowley could just be a Dominion, you don't know, and Gabriel's a drooling idiot, how could he contribute to it - " Just stop. Take a breath. Go back to Part 1 where I discuss the problems with our knowledge about miracle powers and their potential. Their potential. And its frustrating that in the end we just don't have enough knowledge to be certain.

So take this as my personal head-canon. I may not have really answered why the miracle was so strong. But as I said at the start, I don't think we can. Too many factors involved, too many unknowns. Too much hidden.

Bring on S3, I say!

[synesindri]

so admittedly i did think it was a little bit random when they started calling the mutineers a coven but i've seen the light now so here are my thoughts on this kickstarted by this description of a common 19th century british witch archetype:

literary representations of witches would also be underpinned by popular tales recorded by folklore collectors in most parts of Britain, which portrayed such people as utterly wicked, possessed of all too effective magical powers, and ending up brutally punished by death or injury

— ronald hutton, "Witches and Cunning Folk in British Literature 1800–1940," p29

1. "utterly wicked." i mean. no justification needed for this one probably.

2. "possessed of all too effective magical powers." not directly, but hickey is weirdly unaffected by sickness and starvation and exposure and exhaustion compared to the others (a lot of his off-the-rails behaviors/mentalities later on do map on reasonably well to symptoms of lead poisoning and other things going on, but like, he isn't bleeding or losing teeth and i would sell my soul for my skin to look the way his does even during the very worst of everything, so). he also clearly has a lot of power over many of the men, in an understandable leadership way that is more reliant on charisma, bribery, planfulness, and situations than magic, but it does seem kind of magical at times

3. "ending up brutally punished by death or injury." hard to get more brutally punished than literal bodily bifurcation. the rest of the "coven" likewise meet brutal ends.

4. devil shenanigans. lots of focus during this time period in british lore on witches and devil worship. obviously the tuunbaq is not a or the devil and it is troubling to suggest as much (even in its role as a fabricated entity that does not actually belong to the culture it has been inserted into). nonetheless, it is presented fearsomely in a way that seems likely to be understood as demonic or hellish by a christian crew such as the men of terror and erebus (it might even be described as such canonically? i don't remember specific examples and i haven't checked). certainly everyone has a good christian "avoid that thing" reaction to the tuunbaq — everyone except hickey, who finds it appealing and sees an opportunity to seek power through it, much as folkloric and literary witches of the era were depicted as doing through the devil.

5. christian inversions and rejections. the mutiny arguably really kicks off with the murder of lt. irving, the most outspokenly christian person in the group. christ symbolism through the "punished as a boy" scene through framing and posture. as lt hodgson so kindly spells out for us, cannibalism and (catholic) communion both involve the consumption of human blood and flesh. at mutineer supper time i was briefly convinced they were about to say grace (totally subjective on that one but whatev). hickey going up the hill to listen to his thoughts was very prophet-like imagery. hickey's final speech rejects god and religion. probably there are more examples but i think that's enough for this post that is already longer than i planned for it to be.

6. sexuality part 1. witches of the time and place were associated with non-normative sexual practices (including homosexuality, promiscuity, femdom, sexual coersion, so on and so forth). hickey is directly depicted in a sexual and romantic relationship with another man (who is also the one who first suggested mutiny in the first place, solidifying the narrative importance of the connection between gay people and mutiny. be gay do crimes but for serious). idk what the stance in general fandom scholarship is about the hickey-tozer dynamic, but i would say that is plausibly depicted as at least being implied to be not 100% heterosexual, which is particularly notable because that has important potential effects on how the power structure of the mutineer camp works — a chaste rank-based collegiality has a very different vibe than a situation where the main guy in charge and his second in command might be fucking (or kissing, or holding each other's faces in a sort of tender pseudo-religious way, or whatever else they might have been getting up to together) — this is getting a bit off from witchcraft but certainly there are many comparable depictions of witches coercing powerful men to do their bidding by using sexuality (see my non-existent au i just thought of just now that's based on lewis's the monk, i guess???)

7. sexuality part 2. witches also were notorious for doing castration to people. sorry, irving.

8. sexuality part 3. perhaps most notably witches were regarded as having sexual relationships with the devil. none of the mutineers ever gets it on with the tuunbaq obviously (although i feel confident that some adventurous fic writers out there have probably made this a subject of their study), but it is KIND of attempted symbolically. i talked about this already but it bears repeating here that the tongue is an erogenous body part generally, and there is possibly some mild extra narrative emphasis on that symbolism for hickey specifically, so the metaphorical self-castration of him cutting out his own tongue and offering it to the tuunbaq is a little bit giving weird sex. it's also giving nun/priest/monk-like disavowal of the potential for (at least a few types of) sex with human beings in favor of pledging oneself to a deity.

9. human sacrifice. common trope with witches, and the clear point of hickey's dragging everybody up that hill with him when he goes also to attempt to sacrifice part of his own human self to the tuunbaq.

10. identity. this is a little less solid but there's often kind of a sense that witches aren't who they claim to be? see lewis's the monk again, with (spoilers, i guess) the character of monk rosario revealing himself actually to be matilda, a seductive witch, who eventually does a double reveal that she's a demon. the "i'm not really cornelius hickey" reveal is giving that, a bit.

[smoshpostiing]

for me, it isn't really about "shipping" them. based on how much we see the whole cast on camera and the nature of the videos, it's almost like a big second friend group for us and a place to hang out with them. for me at least, that is the relationship that is presented for me as the audience; as one of them in a way since there are a lot of ways to interact like comments and suggestions.

with all of that and the years we've all watched them, for me it just feels like rooting for two of my friends to go for a relationship, which is in itself harmless, whether or not they go through with it it isn't up to us just like if they were in our friend groups in person.

it feels like i've seen two friends almost grow up (as young adults) together, have amazing chemistry, care for each other, and become true best friends, but also share how they've struggled with relationships in the past. if they can struggle to find a partner outside and are already such a good match, it seems too good to pass up. i want two of my "friends" to be happy regardless of the risks they might have with working together. if i were ian and anthony they would already have my blessing, but the decision is truly only up to both of them.

i also don't believe we should ever 1) use the word "proof" and 2) go through things they haven't openly shared with us in the same way we'd never do that to our other friends in real life. just because there are two screens between us, doesn't make it ok for that to happen. if it isn't something we wouldn't do to our other friends, we especially shouldn't do it with them. i think the more we go over that boundary, the farther they pull back from it.

we do owe them a little better. anything we would do with friends in real life is completely valid, and fun, and comes from a place of wanting people to be happy while 100% not having the pressure on them to do so. anything we wouldn't do in person just pulls them closer against their chests.

the more we are willing to take from their personal lives, the less they are willing to share from their personal lives because people will keep trying to take more.

they've shared in the past they are ok with people shipping them all in good fun, but i just get a little sad sometimes thinking about how they must feel when we do step over that line. i think when courtney said "guys, don't speculate online about other people's relationships online" in the recent get 7th video, i think this is what they were referring to. when we go further than what they previously said they were comfortable with.

i hope this was well put and doesn't come across as antagonistic toward the community because i mean it in the exact opposite way.

(i really like how respectful you are in these responses and posts, keep it up!)

hey anon thank you so much for this!! its super insightful and i would love to discuss. you raise a lot of important and true points and i think its very important to think about this stuff from time to time!!!

for me at least, that is the relationship that is presented for me as the audience

i agree! smosh has built an excellent rapport with their audience and have such an intricate and unique business/brand model that can be personal to audience and to the company whilst still accommodating boundaries and maintaining respect!! i could honestly go on about it for pages and pages but i wont right now because theres much more to discuss here!!

whether or not they go through with it it isn't up to us

i am on the same page 10000% and it's likely you've seen me post about this on here before. as much as we are fans and part of a community where we can ship and make fanart and rpf and theorise and discuss, we are also smosh's AUDIENCE. not to mention that shayne and court's relationship (romantic or otherwise) is a very real part of their personal lives away from smosh and we do not get to decide what they do or don't share with us.

it feels like i've seen them almost grow up (as young adults) together, have amazing chemistry, care for each other, and become true best friends

absolutely 🥹 i think a lot of you will agree with me or relate in the sense that i have been able to grow up with smosh, and watched them grow and become who they are all whilst figuring that stuff out for myself!! its no wonder people are excited and curious about them, when we have been the audience there with them watching them grow through the many years!!

also don't believe we should ever 1) use the word "proof" and 2) go through things they haven't openly shared with us in the same way we'd never do that to our other friends in real life. just because there are two screens between us, doesn't make it ok for that to happen. if it isn't something we wouldn't do to our other friends, we especially shouldn't do it with them. i think the more we go over that boundary, the farther they pull back from it.

THIS IS THE EXACT POINT I TRY TO MAKE VERY CLEAR ON MY BLOG!! personally, i believe not only that it violates their boundaries and privacy and disrespects them, but it is dehumanising and almost treats S+C as characters rather than real people.

the golden rules of my blog are

1)to never mention "proofs" or "evidence"(i will send a warning just in case someone wasnt aware of the harm it can cause, after that if it happens again, blocked)

2) it's not okay to try and discuss moments or images that aren't specifically shared by either of their personal social media accounts or on smosh (or any channel they appear on as work). anything not shared from these cannot guarantee that it had s or c's consent to be shared and can risk violating their privacy.

and 3) to never bother s or c or anyone associated with them by trying to speculate about the relationship they have. again, boundaries, privacy, comfort and respect. pretty simple.

the more we are willing to take from their personal lives, the less they are willing to share from their personal lives because people will keep trying to take more.

this is such a fantastic point anon. i wish i could show everyone in the smoshblr community and particularly shourtney shippers this. (and again, it all comes back to s+c's comfort when it comes to sharing. the only way we can guarantee they are comfortable is by showing them that we respect their boundaries and privacy.)

(i really like how respectful you are in these responses and posts, keep it up!)

thank you anon! i think its really important to just be as transparent as possible when it comes to these discussions about shourtney. thank you for your ask!! im glad i had an opportunity to discuss these topics in depth.

[somethingblu3]

Birthday Song | Luke Davenport (Part 1)

Read on Ao3 Here.

18+ minors dni.

Masterlist

Fandom: Dream Team

Summary:

Luke needs his nightly eye drops especially on his birthday but he can't stand him. He knows there's only one way you could give him comfort.

TW: Eye drops, grumpy Luke davenport, hurt/comfort, birthday, fluffy, medicine, birthday fic, restrained, fussy Luke, established relationship, cuddling & snuggling, medicine, rejection, anxiety, angst and feels.

Pairing: Luke Davenport x Female Reader.

Word Count: 2,332 Words

Note:

Finally a late post to Tumblr! also gonna remind you guys of my fics for Gaza post. Part 2 will include smut.

"Luke. Hold Still,"  You order through gritted teeth. You towered over him as your hand gripped the white bottle of eye drops.

At least he was complying  somewhat this time; he was still kicking and screaming, of course, but it wasn't as bad as the other night that night, which made you lose countless hours of sleep. 

This was the closest you had ever gotten the medication to his eyes. Luke was bigger than you, of course, and meatier, too. He could easily force you into a chokehold if his arms were free, but they weren't. You had haphazardly tied them to the headboard with his sweatband. He had some wiggle room, but certainly not enough to break free, at least not as easily as you had hoped.

"Come on, Luke, stop being such a big baby. I know you hate it, but I don't know. Remember what will happen if you lose your sight for good?" You didn't want to taunt him, but you needed to shake him up a little—not striking the fear of God into him ultimately, but enough for him to want and need to take the medicine in the first place.

"I know, I know, Love...it's just my birthday", he sighs as he stops his wrists from fighting against the blue sweaty restraints. "I just thought I'd have a day off. That I could be 'normal' again, back to the way things were before my bloody sight-"

You sigh as you set the bottle on the bed and cup his cheek "Luke, Honey. You were born with this condition. Your father had it, too...it was inevitable. You can't change how it was written or meant to be."

Luke gives you a small nod in return. "I know...I just thought you'd let me off. It's my birthday. I'm not going to be this young and handsome forever," he tells you, which makes you shake your head and chuckle.

"Luke-"

"But I'm not! I'm already ageing. I've seen signs, Sweetheart. Don't tell me you haven't seen my grey while we've been showering and how slow I've been getting during practice. My back pain, my tiredness-"

"Luke", You cut him off. "You're not even in your 30s yet. Relax, love," you tell him as you move the stands of his hair out of his eyes like you always did. His hair had always been so untamed you didn't understand how he could see a single thing or even kick the ball with his hair in a way like that. Some days, you wanted to get out a pair of succours and cut it for him, but with his sensory issues, you knew that would be another tantrum in the making.

"It's only two drops, Sweetheart. It'll only take a couple of seconds. Your vision might be blurry, and your head might hurt," you remind him as you stroke his arm, but he jerks it away. But then you'll be back to normal. We can cuddle and watch some Match Of The Day if you'd like," you suggest in a smooth tone.

Luke sighs as he scrunches his brows. "But that's exactly the problem! The burning as well as the itching from the dryness of my headaches afterwards! you know how bad they are! it takes hours to recover. Love. I can't do this every night or for the rest of my life. You should be living your best life out there, not looking after me. I'm so hopeless I can't even bear to be in the same room as a flashing camera," he groans. You knew if he was free from his restraints, he would be covering his face with his hands weeping .

Poor Luke.

Ever since you'd met him before you started dating, he was a sensitive soul. Sometimes, he'd crack over nothing and lose his temper if what he wanted wasn't going his way. You had learned to deal with this over the years, even if it made the two of you part ways occasionally.

"Is there something? anything I can do to help you through this?" you ask.

You weren't willing to loosen the restraints—at least not now—but there had to be something—anything you could do to ease the pain of the drops.

Luke lets out a breath he didn't even know he was holding "Not unless you could somehow convince the Doctors not to give me this shit-" he grumbles.

"Luke, you know I can't do that. Even with all the money in the world-"

"I know" Luke nods as he sulks, slouching into the bed. "I was just saying, you know what? never mind-"

He's quiet for a while as he looks away from the distance.

"There is something you could do-" As he tells you this, your eyes fall to his plump, kissable lips. He was such a damn distraction. How did he look like that? So drop-dead gorgeous and handsome all the time? while you always looked like a mess? Although he'd tell you the opposite, sometimes, you couldn't help but wonder if Luke was just trying to be nice . What would a guy like him do? Luke Davenport want with a girl like you? You were so out of his league. 

He purses his lips "Your voice-" he says "It soothes me"

You frown as you inch closer "Soothes you?"

He nods hesitantly, not wanting to offend. "Yes, I love hearing it. I don't know what it is, but it calms me down," he says sincerely. It's the first serious moment you've had with Luke for a while between all of the tantrums and hassle of trying to get him to take the damn medication.

"So what do you want me to do? Read you a story?" you suggest, which makes him shake his head and scoff in response.

"No, no, I'm not a child," he warns, and then he pauses. "But... could you sing me a song?" he asks as he brushes his legs against yours.

Cheeky.

"A song? Luke, I can't sing. I sound like Rebecca Black. I'm so whiney," You groan as you throw a pillow at him.

"Hey, hey! No, you're way better than her," he chuckles, shaking his head. "I've heard you in the shower, babe. You're gonna be like the next Kelly Clarkson," he swears as he tries to dodge the pillow.

You roll your eyes as you lean forward, staring into his deep sapphire eyes, forgetting about the small white bottle of eye drops almost entirely. "Kelly Clarkson, huh?" you taunt as you lick your lips.

"Yeah...her", he nods, but you know he's not paying any attention as he swallows hard.

"So what do you want me to sing?" you ask as you run a hand over his thigh.

Luke gasps, surprised by the unexpected electric touch. "Anything—anything," he begs. He's whining like a child. He always went into a childlike state when he begged for whatever it was he wanted, and all he wanted was to hear your voice to calm him as you forced the eye drops into him.

"How about a happy birthday? since it's my birthday after all?" he shrugs lightly, moving the restraints

You nod, considering it. "And you promise you'll take the drops?" you ask.

He flinches as you open the cap. His heart beats a steady rhythm in his eardrums, and you watch as his lips part. Even with the promise of a sweet song, almost a lullaby, he was still nervous about the side effects of the drops. He swore his eyes were dry already, but perhaps that was because of the fear of what was to come. He knew the first thing he would feel would be sitting almost instantly each time. It was even more uncomfortable than the last.

"I promise, " Luke nods. He watches you as you reach out your hand. At first, he wonders if you are going to free him, but he quickly doubts it as soon as you grab the full cup of water from the nightstand instead.

"I think you're the one who needs to freshen up your pipes, aren't you, love?" He asks with a small smile as you force the drink down his throat. After he's finished, he licks his lips and takes a moment to close his eyes and blink like it's his last time.

"Alright, love", he nods determinedly.

He couldn't believe that this was something he had to do now for the rest of your life. Or, as you said, it was written in the stars.

He was sick, and he needed medicine, especially if he wanted to get better and keep his number 11 position on the team.

Luke had to do this for him, for you. Surely, he could face a couple of eye drops, especially if he always got tackled every night on the pitch. Couldn't he?

Luke took a finally shaky breath, but there were no eye drops to follow. Instead, you leaned closer. You reached forward, cupping his cheek, and you began to sing slowly. He didn't know why, but he didn't expect you to actually do it—to follow through to sing the song.

Were you doing it just because it was his birthday?

or because you generally loved him?

Either way, Luke was blown away by how much you cared about him. He wasn't Luke Davenport, the famous football player in your eyes.

He was just Luke.

Lucas.

That was all he was to you. Just a simple boy with a heart too big for his chest that grew to size every time he saw you. The boy, that was messy and complicated, needed help every now and then, even if it was just for some damn eye drops. He needed someone in his life to have and to hold.

And then, sitting there in the bed, Luke realised something: that person was you.

"Happy birthday to you—" Your lips brushed against his skin ever so delicately. He could have reached out and touched, brushed his plump ones against your own. Instead, he didn't. With much restraint, he held himself back from locking his with yours and from battling your tongue with his overdominance.

It felt like the slowest moment in existence as you removed the bottle cap, but your patience, at least on the surface, was unwavering. With your free hand, you traced his face delicately, making delicate little circles that made him melt. It was so tempting to draw his eyes close, but he didn't. He kept them sharp and open just for you, just for his love.

"Happy birthday, dear Lucas-" And just like that, as you uttered his name's final 'S', you delicately dropped the medicine in just as much as you could, even with him flinching.

"Happy birthday to you...."

He thought he ruined it. He thought he'd blinked his eyes and then made a mess of it all, but instead, you patted him on his shoulder, which was still tied up by the restraints, and you gave him a small kiss on the cheek. 

"All done. Good job," you tell Luke.

Luke smiles. That was it?

He knew the side effects would kick in soon, especially the dizziness, once you were both finished. He watched as you put the drops away while he blinked like crazy, and then you finally freed him. His wrists ached as he flung the sweatbands across the room, and you instantly hugged him.

"I need to hear your voice again, love. I need to hear more," he tells you in a sleepy, drowsy state as he lies on your lap.

You instantly reach for the remote and begin flicking through to find the sports channel, but they all make Luke's head pound as you flicker behind the channels—the changing description every two seconds, the small text, and the flashing images. His head was hot like it was seconds away from exploding.

"My voice is nothing special," you say as you comb through his hair with your angelic touch.

"Nonsense", Luke tells you firmly. He would look at you into your eyes at that moment if it wasn't for the headache about to set in, and if anything, the TV screen was making it worse. He knew from the medication that he couldn't close his eyes entirely, so instead of heading in your lap, he just focused on the ground.

"I need to hear your voice, sweetheart," he calls out like a prayer, a desperate plea.

you sigh as you give in. "Do you really want me to sing Happy Birthday again?" you ask with a frown.

"Yes," he nods instantly.

You sigh as you relax your shoulders. "Alright then," you tell him, and then an instant smirk appears across his lips.

"It is my birthday, after all, and I can have anything I want", he teases.

"And what you want is to hear me sing happy birthday over and over again? Have you lost your mind?" you tease, making him stifle a laugh.

"Yes- there's nothing wrong with your voice love you'd make it I'm serious"

"Yeah, maybe with your money", you tease him, having heard all the rumours.

"Oh, don't listen to them, love," he says, knowing he's read the same articles as you. "They have no idea who we are or what we're capable of," he tells you as he interlocks his fingers with yours and kisses your knuckles.

"So...you want me to sing Happy Birthday again? Is that really your birthday wish?" you ask, hoping it won't be.

"Do I only get one gift on this special day?" he teases as you nod.

"Yes, of course, you spoiled boy. Didn't your mother get you brand new Calvin Klein?" You ask him, and he nods defeatedly 

"Yes, she did, and I'm grateful I never ask for any of that stuff..." he sighs. 

"I know love...well. Should I start now?" 

"Preferably" he smiles softly.

[hibernationsuit-remade]

25 for the micro story :3c

THANK UUUUU and sorry for taking so long sjfknfjgjgk

senseless Do you ever get a feeling that you made a wrong choice? That's what Tobias thinks about choosing Frank to advertise their skincare start up's products. Clearly Frank's taking it as a way to advertise himself. Or was joining the whole start up a wrong choice? Nah, it's probably Frank. tws: suggestive/nsft-ish talk

"Toby, my guy, I thought your knee has healed already..."

Frank's voice half startled, half woke Tobias up. It took him a few moments to realize that 1) he was in his office, 2) he had fallen asleep at his desk at some point, when?, and 3) that Frank somehow made it in without keys, which meant that Tobias forgot to lock the door. Again.

"I- um. What?"

"Saw you walking slowly yesterday and avoiding going downstairs," Frank said quickly while sitting down into the leather chair in front of the desk, "Been in our field long enough to know what that means."

"Okay, well," Toby was still barely functioning after the unexpected nap, which made it difficult to keep up with Frank, "First off... your field, not 'our'," he paused, trying to formulate his reply, and second, no it's not the injury you're thinking off. Played basketball with Aleena two days ago."

"Wow, you must look amazing in basketball shorts."

"Law, shut the fuck up."

"Aren't you just hard to talk to today...You have a post-it note on your forehead, by the way." Frank leaned over the desk and took it off the man's face before he could even react. "It says 'Message Frank', would you look at that. Well, I'm here now, go on."

Tobias sighed and looked at the papers laying in front of him, trying to remember what he need to message Frank about.

"Take as much time as you need, Toby," Frank leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the corner of the desk, "I've got lots of time... Do you have a minibar in your office?"

"I don't drink", Tobias mumbled, "There's a bottle of champagne somewhere though, if you're interested in killing time by playing treasure hunt. Some big corporation guys brought one for both me & Aleena. You can have it."

"Maybe later."

"Whatever."

"You okay?"

"No- I mean, yeah I guess. A bit tired and all, too many meetings and tasks, too little time," Tobias said and leaned back in his chair, "I wanted to talk about these photos they took of you a week ago." He pulled three images from a brown envelope and placed them in front of Frank. "I think that you're, well... Law, how should I say this."

Frank didn't even pay attention on the images. "You really need a break. Or at least do something that will help you relax."

"...Can you please concentrate?"

"Can you?"

Tobias rolled his eyes and said calmly, "What I want to say is that clearly you read the instructions wrong or something. You were invited to advertise the products, not yourself. And what do these images have? Your overly attractive smile that only tells people to remember to cheer for you in the next season of some competition. Or even something that could be on a corporate elections, 'Vote Frank!'" he sighed and continued, "Should've went with some cartoonish drawings instead..."

"You're so cute when you try to hide you being angry and disappointed."

"What."

"Remember when you heard you got to the fourth place in short program? Should've seen your face at that moment."

"Frank, I am serious, you-"

"Are you sure your exhaustion does not affect how you look at these photos?" Frank stood up and walked to the other side of the desk, and sat on it right in front of Tobias. "Look at you. Sleeping at your desk? Do you even remember what you were doing before? You need a break."

"That's a lot coming from a guy who's only into sports."

"Am I wrong though?" Frank leaned closer, "You should take a small vacation, or at least two days off. Go do something fun. Or someone."

"What's that last one supposed to mean."

"Well," Frank placed his hand gently on Tobias's cheek and whispered, "I could...kiss you senseless just to bring that relaxation, watch you smile from all those nice brain hormones, or whatever. You're the specialist."

"I don't think a sudden spike in oxytocin will do any good in a long run."

"I'm not saying it could only happen once."

"...Tempting, do tell me more."

[araneitela]

❀ What has made you completely lose your chill?

Prompt: The salty munday meme // @resolutepath

❀ What has made you completely lose your chill? (Skip to paragraph 2 if you want the salt) I don't know if it would count as it being called 'losing my chill', but I get pretty Tinkerbell footstomp-y over specific issues. And as of late the whole 'women empowerment' has driven me absolutely up the wall as if I bit into 5 Jueyun Chilis and then smoked some crack during the moment of 'no brain' that came as a result. I've raged about it in DMs, I've also rambled about it twice over now in posts, and I guess I'm about to do it again here in some capacity. I think it's lasted long enough, this silence from the other side that counters the loud voices. Any society functions best when it practices the art of conversation, debate and discussion between those who disagree, but that seems like it got buried (hopefully only temporarily) by Tumblr numerous years ago, and instead we're now caught in an environment where people yell at each other, and then also make claims that some have 'no right to talk back about [topic in question]'. And I can only take so much of that. For starters, I already don't believe that the concept of people having 'no right to discuss about things' is good or healthy, because half of the experience of learning about things that are unfamiliar to you, is actively getting involved and informed about it (oh hey, I wonder who's at door; oh hello, art of conversation). Any way, I digress, but the amount of times that I see 'you're not a woman, so you can't talk about this', alright great— I'm a woman, so my voice counts when it comes to the topic of women, right? Great. So hear me: the opinion of the (female) masses blows. Sure, this whole concept of 'you have a right to your opinion' is great and I agree, but that doesn't mean that I can't call it the stupidest and most frustrating opinion that I've ever heard (and yes, you have the right to think the same of mine). God.

Any way, to the topic: sexualization of women and how apparently, cishet men are the ones responsible for it. Yeah, okay, and I'm Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, honk honk my bright red nose! Have you seen yourselves on X and Tumblr and wherever else? Sure, one can argue that HYV gave Kafka rather large breasts, sure, and you can condemn them for it, knock yourselves out. And you do, okay, great, and then, ladies, guess what I find scrolling through fanarts on any site? Kafka, drawn with the same large breasts IF. NOT. BIGGER. So okay, yeah, you can tell me these may be men, alright, so then what's your counter to me when I see in the bios of these artists, that they're women or female-identifying? Hmm? Go ahead, I'll wait, I'll be patient. Honestly, I need you to take your accusatory little fingers and point them at yourselves, because a huge part of this problem? Lies with you. Do you need me to say it again? It lies with you. But hey, at least you're consistent, for you don't sexualize just women, you also sexualize the hell out of men.

It's the same in RP in so many cases. There's so many complaints about 'my female muse gets no attention' combined with 'I can't believe I'm only approached for ships', I'm sorry, hold up— what are those shipping memes I see reblogged? The NSFW-tinted ones? What are these suggestive memes in my inbox? And again, it's not just female muses. Because that's the part of the problem that I think people aren't looking at: the exact same is done with male muses, except for some reason, women have a hard-on for M/M ships in writing, and graphical art, as much as we say that men have a thing for F/F porn. But it's okay, we'll condemn one and forgive the other, because one of those objectifies women. Yep, I got it. As a fellow woman, I'm here to say that you're doing good, girls, keep up the sisterhood, I'm proud of you.

... I lied, it makes me lose my damn chill.

[ghostofacrow]

Crow plays Gubat Banwa Part 2.5: Well, this went poorly

Before I dig into this, I want to state that I was still having a lot of fun and the balance issues were (mostly) my own fault, but the battle was absolutely fucked up - to the point were I'll have to partially retcon it.

There were mainly three reasons for this:

I'm very used to ttrpgs being very hesitant to kill characters, or even put them into mortal danger that frequently. We all know how rare deaths are in 5e, but the main combat game I've been running on and off over the last few years has been Lancer, where throwing twice the suggested enemy budgets at the players is completely fine and they'll come out of it with only a few scraps. These games are generally also balanced around multiple encounters draining your resources, so I wasn't fully prepared for the hard battle actually being this hard as a single encounter, but now that I know that, I think this is good. There isn't really a reliable way to balance a game around attrition without including some fights with weak narrative justifications and forgettable or reused encounter design, and especially for how long the battles can take, I really prefer them being more meaningful.

I noticed the issues before I started the fight but just decided to do it anyway, knowing that it was probably going to be a meatgrinder, because I was curious. If I had been playing with other people who all had to clear their schedule for the evening and prepare, I would have been more careful here, but since I'm alone it really doesn't matter.

You are supposed to gain thunderbolts when you describe an action you take in battle in a really cool or stylish way. This is a GREAT rule and probably my favorite version of an inspiration/hero points-like mechanic I've seen, but since I'm alone, awarding them to myself has a bit of a

vibe to it, so I didn't do it. THIS WAS VERY BAD. I just thought of cool pictures in my head without really trying to describe them in words since I wasn't talking to anyone (and the previous post I made here was already so long that I didn't include narrative descriptions there either). It even happened a bunch of times that I thought "oh that was cool I should try drawing that later", knowing full well I wouldn't have time to actually do that. If you're playing solo and you also feel awkward about awarding yourself style points, you absolutely have to either get over yourself or take the lack of thunderbolts into account when balancing encounters.

Anyway, this was a great learning opportunity.

Other things I noticed that I liked:

Very little that takes away actions from players. "You gain three beats per riff" sounds very similar to Pf2e's "You get three actions per turn", and it is, but actions that take 2 beats are very rare and there aren't any action taxes like reloading or swapping your held items, at least none that I've seen. One of the enemies had an Aim Technique that grants Merit to their next attack, but that's offering a tradeoff between attacking twice, with the second one at demerit, or once with merit. It doesn't make "shooting a guy" take up more then one action. The Stunned condition only takes away 1 beat, which is especially comforting after playing with/against a Horus Gorgon for the last three months

And that's without accounting for thunderbolts letting you do even more things that don't cost beats, or trading thunderbolts for more beats directly. I don't think it's possible to completely loose a turn unless you get messed up by the terrain like the enemy guard in my battle or just straight up die.

I've slightly come around on the "lower damage dice also means it's less likely to hit" thing, because that also means that critical hits are more likely. It's stills something you need to keep in mind, especially with attacks that set up important effects like the Flower Balyan's fields, but this is probably fine once you get used to planing around it.

The Gambit tables/the enemy "AI" was very helpful to speed up enemy turns. I adjusted a lot of their riffs based on what made the more sense (like a ranged enemy already starting out in an advantageous position, so they have no reason to move and can spend the beat on something else like the Aim technique I mentioned before), but starting out with a random suggestion for what they would do helped a ton to shorten the time I spend thinking about enemy turns, and made it feel less like I was fighting my own reflection. I think if you follow the instructions as written directly, it's going to make the enemies act a bit stupid (ymmv on how big of a problem this is), but treating them as suggestions works well.

Anything I'd broadly classify as positioning and crowd control is really fun. You have so many ways to move enemies around, and because the terrain height, wall collisions, and ability interactions all play into it, it's mechanically very rewarding to do. Reminds me of earlier this year when everyone was playing Baldur's Gate 3 and realised how much varied intricate terrain adds to D&D combat, but once gain, making complex terrain isn't really feasible for most GMs if you have to balance around 3+ fights between every rest. But if you plan around every encounter being a meaningful step forward, it takes a lot longer to run out of ideas. Letting the players have input on the map creation also makes this a less one sided task, and there's a lot of player abilities that create terrain or objects during the fight, so the starting terrain doesn't have to be super unique.

So how did the fight actually go?

Getting into position and getting rid of the first few demons was the hardest part, and moving Haraw out into the open that early was a huge mistake I didn't fully recover from. The demon warrior applied Bleeding to her, so I didn't move out of the way during her next riff either.

She hang in there well, but it was a steady path downwards from that initial mistake, and she hit 5 Wounds (the death threshold) eventually. You can gain a second wind and ignore the fifth wound if you can justify narratively how your conviction lets you hold on to life, and that makes both for some very hype moments during the battle and having to change the conviction afterwards turns near losses into story telling impulses.

I know based on my notifications that everyone only reads these posts because Waks reblogs them (hi), so I'm assuming you've read the Posture post (this one: https://www.tumblr.com/makapatag/737233117904076801/on-posture-in-gubat-banwa) because I did and it was sitting in the back of my mind while I was playing. I think Waks is completely right that the change in terminology does influence how the fiction feels, but it also has interesting effects on the mechanical space (which in turn effects the fiction as well). Player characters going from Posture, which basically works like Hit Points mechanically, to Wounds, where every single hit brings you one step closer to death, regardless of how strong it is, means that catching stray area effects that don't normally do a lot of damage becomes really dangerous, but dueling a single foe to the death while you're bleeding out is comparatively viable because even a massive single target attack will still only cause 1 wound. It changes your threat assessment, and that is, at the very least, an interesting thing to have happen that wouldn't have occurred with a hit point system.

It's worth it to question how something as fundamental as hit points effects how a game functions, even if you ultimately come to the conclusion that hit points or a hit points-like mechanic function the best for what you're trying to accomplish. Hit points might be the single most ingrained game mechanic due to how common they are in both tabletop and video games, and seeing how the different damage systems effected the game was a really interesting experience. When people tell you to play more games then dnd this is part of why, it actually makes you understand dnd better to see how different systems work.

Tangent over - Haraw's conviction was about getting her body back from the demon that stole it, specifically she held on because she's inhabiting Pilakan's body and can't let them die. Her new conviction is to get rid of the demons. This was definitively one of the highlights of the fight, alongside the cliff maneuver from the last post and a particularly good 360 no scope roll Nasirakna got, but unfortunately Haraw still died to a crit on an enemy aoe attack later anyway (this death is the part I'm retconning, the rest is fine). Dranreb also got beaten up pretty badly and got 2 wounds but Nasirakna was relatively fine - who could have guessed that staying behind the frontline would be a good idea for a ranged attacker.

I eventually got into a pretty good rythm of letting Dranreb and Haraw soften the enemies up and knock them around while Nasirakna finished them off. Like I pointed out at the start, the fire resistance of the demons meant they didn't have a lot of options - this also contributed to the fight being as hard as it was, I'm sure - but they did still do a ton of damage. Their massive range also meant that it was impossible for the enemies to get away without fleeing the battle. Sidenote: diagonals counting as 1 range step and the 3D tiles looking fairly large compared to VTT maps meant that my eyeball estimates for ranges were often off, but it does make the counting easier then diagonal steps being 1.5.

I'll cover the story developments in another post, I just wanted to get my first thoughts on the battle experience out while they're still fresh in my mind, and then take my time to journal the story scenes.

[novelcain]

Hi, it’s me again, I had a couple of ideas, a couple are about possible bard reader, another is a musing for any reader, and the last is a general question.

1. Bards aren’t solely musicians, (from my dnd experience,) they also recite poems, ballads, and stories. So what if Reader tries to keep some of the more prone to boredom pilgrims by talking about various other myths and stories she might know? For example, she might’ve had an ancient Egypt or Greek mythology phase and still remembers a lot of those stories and when things are getting dull, she just goes like “Hey, wanna hear a funny story?” And then talk about Midas getting cursed with donkey ears. It manages to occupy the silence with something more interesting.

2. I’ve seen the Ruan being suggested as Reader’s instrument, but I wonder if anyone has considered the Xun. A xun is basically a small ceramic or wood instrument in the same family as the ocarina, but played slightly differently. They’re quite portable, and they could also make for a convenient “which one of these identical monkeys is Six Eared Macaque,” test. Nothing against the Ruan, just wanted to share. (Bonus: if the Reader likes the Zelda games, she could play some of those songs and most of them are either soothing or fun to dance to.)

2.5. Personally, I am an edgy girl, so if I chose to sing, it’d be like the early 2000s nu-metal songs from groups like Evanescence, Breaking Benjamin, Three Days Grace, and all of that other stuff, so that’d be embarrassing.

3. How are she and Tripitaka going to stay warm in the winter? There were points in the book where it was stated to be snowing or at least very cold, and idk if Guanyin would give them coats or if they’d have to get one of the other pilgrims to beg for a couple of used old coats. If Guanyin did give them some, it’d be neat to see like a feather cloak or something along those lines as feathers (down) are very good at insulating and keeping one warm.

4. Given all of the times when Tripitaka either punishes Monkey too severely and/or kicks him out, I can imagine the Six Eared Macaque arc being the one where reader genuinely loses her patience and slaps the monk across the face. She doesn’t really even say anything, just turns to leave and if they say anything about how they need her to guide them, “well, you can figure it out for yourself, because I’m done putting up with your ‘holier than thou’ bullshit.” Then goes to find Wukong. Depends on if you want the one she finds to be the real one, trying not to cry, or if she runs into his doppelgänger. (Suppose we’ll have to wait and see.)

Have a good Sunday, Skittle!

-🌺 Anon

Hello again~

ok soooo i'm gonna admit that at first I had no idea what you were talking about but then I remembered that one of my followers did fanart with their version of Reader using a Ruan and I just wanna say that isn't canon it was just someone's art. anything that i post about ittw on here should be considered specifically not canon just for fun. i also won't answer any questions about what will happen in the future of any of my fics or au's (i know i'm a meanie😋). you can find all my ask rules on my pinned post 😊 (tho i might update them soon)

also everything about ittw was set in stone before i even began writing. nothing will change the plot even if i find an idea that i like (there was one idea from someone's fanart that i liked and i was thinking about using since it wouldn't effect the plot [after getting their permission] but i won't be doing that now because i don't want anyone to think i'm playing favorites or have a bunch of people try to get me to add their ideas as well. i've already had a bunch of people try to do that and it really stresses me out cause it's hard to stay nice in those situations) because of that (and i mean this in the nicest way possible i promise i'm not trying to sound like a jerk) i won't be taking any suggestions for plots unless i specifically ask for them🤗

I hope you have a great Sunday too, 🌺 Anon!

[faerywhimsy]

All I really have to offer right now is my headcanon that Daniel is an Elvis fan to some extent (specifically I like to think he grew up listening to Elvis because his mother was a fan, and it's just kind of stuck with him in the way that music from your childhood does).

From this I would like to suggest a few things:

1. Many of Daniel's go to karaoke songs are Elvis songs. Specifically 'Devil in Disguise' if Armand is present as an inside joke (do you have any vc character karaoke headcanons?)

2. Daniel went to at least one costume party in the late 70s/early 80s dressed as Elvis, though Armand kept taking the wig away as he doesn't think Daniel suits dark hair (he has a thing for blondes okay)

3. You know how in the wwdits universe Elvis is a vampire? Well Lestat decides to mess with Daniel by occasionally implying that Elvis was turned and is still around somewhere, and Daniel is like... 99% sure he's just kidding him on? But it's hard to tell with him sometimes

4. Just simply the fact that 'Suspicious Minds' makes me cry thinking about the post-Daniel becoming a vampire breakup, and 'Can't help falling in love' is the perfect slow dancing song for any ship, but come on? "Take my hand, take my whole life to" to a lover who literally ended and gave you your life? 😫

Anyway this was a stream of Elvis related Daniel thoughts that no one asked for, but I hope you feel better soon 🩵

The kindness of you taking time to write this beautiful ask made me laugh through tears. Thank you so much, friend.

I love the details of Daniel as an Elvis fan, and especially how he comes to that fandom through nostalgia.

Do I have any VC karaoke head canons? I didn't before, but you wouldn't believe how quickly Lestat showing off and basically booking out an entire hour for a combination of original songs and covers came to my head. Now I'm trying to think of an appropriate song that becomes the go-to song Daniel, Armand and Louis all chorus together in response. Something to the theme of, 'All right, all right already, shut up about your short lived rockstar phase!'

If Elvis was turned into a vampire, you just KNOW it was Lestat who did it. So, I mean, he really would know best here, joking or otherwise. ^.^ (Oop, or maybe Lestat just killed him because he was jealous)

Ahh no I've ended up with more tears now, but I'm also feeling very loved and seen. This was exactly what I needed, ty <3

[coolcattime]

Heyo it's the usual anon here.

A while ago i sent a 6 part series on my headcanon set up to the backstories of the characters of mianite. (Tom, Tucker, Sonja, Jordan,Capsize, Nade)

I was thinking of continuing it but honestly i dont know who to i should start with any suggestions.

Hi hi!

Doing more of the headcanon backgrpund pieces sounds great cause they were awesome!!

For suggestions: I'm always into seeing people's takes on Redbeard because I got way too invested in a minor largely in existence for comic relief.

(I have a very deep love for the dynamic of one sibling caring so much for the other that they literally value their own life as lesser, but the other piece of media where I've seen this dynamic explores it and I really want that done more for the pirates)

Waglington and also all the other wizards definitely could be interesting seeing that (at least the season 1 group) killed a god at some point.

I also think Dec could be interesting, but for no other reason than I think there's something there.

I'm also sure other people have suggestions about what they wanna see! (And obviously there's all the casts of the other seasons but I still have not watched Isle so cannot tell you the new characters beyond Karl, and everyone in season 2 already at least some backstory and I have no idea if that will be too limiting)

Original Posts:

Tom Tucker Sonja Jordan Capsize Nade

[mx-t4t0]

I posted 13,046 times in 2022

That's 9,291 more posts than 2021!

1,373 posts created (11%)

11,673 posts reblogged (89%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

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I tagged 5,735 of my posts in 2022

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Longest Tag: 140 characters

#combinations of words already exist anyways and most applications for ai writing are actually useful (like uhh better translation softwares)

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

huge L for the quackcicle community unless you love lovers to enemies in which case it's a huge W

84 notes - Posted September 11, 2022

#4

oh my fucking gods.

99 notes - Posted April 3, 2022

#3

i'll be completely honest here guys i don't fucking know what happened but uh. i think i did photorealism on accident.

this was just supposed to be a quick study for me to figure out how the fuck opals work (specifically black opals) and then it turned out to be one of the most penis slaying pieces i've done this year. whoopsies <3 at least it looks dope

Check my linktree to see all of my stuff!

See the full post

122 notes - Posted December 2, 2022

#2

i love that jimmy complained about being called a toy and everyone ran with it in their s2 designs. like yeah that man is made of yarn and porcelain have you seen him. when he walks he makes the same noise as calcite i think. little scrunkly scrimblo ball-jointed meow meow.

129 notes - Posted August 2, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

love that romo aro as a label can fit both aros who don't want romance for themselves but like the general idea of it, but also aros who do want romance for themselves, maybe even experience romantic attraction, but just in A Fundamentally Different Way. romo aro experiences are beautiful

161 notes - Posted July 19, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[be4tmblr]

Totally off topic

As I've stated previously...normally I blog about Rob and Kristen, and that if I had anything else I felt the need to post about that's not related to either of them, I'd post it. This is one of those times.

Do any of you know who this is?

For those of you who don't have a clue, this is Farrah Abraham, and her daughter, Sophia. Farrah was featured on the MTV reality series, 16 & Pregnant, and continued into the spin-off series Teen Mom.

Here's the link to Farrah's episode of 16 & Pregnant...

http://www.mtv.com/videos/16-and-pregnant-ep2-farrah/1613626/playlist.jhtml#series=2211&seriesId=629&channelId=1

The above picture was taken sometime in 2012...and personally, I think she's a beautiful girl in it. The next photo is what Farrah looks like now...

What...the...hell...

Really...do you NEED all this plastic surgery?

This girl has SO many issues. And now on top of them she looks like crap. Kudos, Farrah!

I suggest any of you who are interested in this girl's situation, continue navigating through the MTV site and watch her season of Teen Mom...if you haven't seen it already. Any time I watch her on that show, it makes me feel so sorry for her family...mostly her daughter. I have to give her credit, though, for all the times throughout the show that she did seem to love and care about Sophia, and spent so much time with her. But since the show things have seemed to change.

First being all the drama about the porn tape that was released. When the tape was discovered she said it wasn't a "porn tape" but a personal sex tape that was never to be seen by the public. She also said she'd never sell it, and she ridiculed her "co-star" James Dean publicly about the things he was saying regarding her and said tape.

Then she went on to say that the only way she'd sell the tape was if she was offered at least $2 million for the rights to it. In the end, the tape was sold for $1 million. What happened to the other million, Farrah?

My opinion...she was desperate for money, made the tape on purpose to be released...even though she denied it...and took what she could get from it simply because she wanted the money and she also wanted to remain in the spotlight. Since her season of Teen Mom ended, she didn't have any other way to stay in the limelight.

So...porn is the way she chose to go? What's wrong with this girl?

I'm not judging others in that industry...I just don't understand why they choose to do it. I've heard the money is good, but...is it really worth what you're giving away? Selling your body? I just don't agree with it.

Now, if you're the type of person that's doing it because you're struggling with money to raise your family, then I feel that's a different story. If you need money, then I can understand that. Just keep in mind that, once you do manage to get back on your feet, there are other options to financially support yourselves and your families. And there are places out there that can help you. Don't be afraid to ask for help.

What I don't get about Farrah's decision with this is...she had other aspiring goals. Farrah was a model...had she stuck with that, maybe she could've climbed the success ladder in that occupation and become something she and her family could be proud of her for. She even got a culinary arts degree...she could've become a famous chef. She said in a Teen Mom episode that her dream was to open her own restaurant. Instead, she chose to go the porn route to stay in the spotlight and make "fast money."

In the meantime, what will this do to her daughter? Was she thinking about Sophia's interests at all when she did this? I don't believe she was. And from what I've seen with her attitude and demeanor...Farrah doesn't care about anyone but Farrah. I feel so bad for her little girl.

When I first watched her on 16 & Pregnant and Teen Mom, I somewhat felt bad for her, based on the way her mom was portrayed toward her...the way she treated her. But, the more I saw Farrah's nasty attitude, selfishness, and childish ways, I started to feel bad for her mom instead of her. Sure, her mom was overbearing at times, but Farrah was downright nasty to her, and to her father. There was no need of any of it.

The most recent thing I've read about this girl is that she's apparently selling a line of sex toys. And that she's celebrated the success of her porn video...the same porn video that, at first, she stated was NOT to be seen by the public, and that she'd never sell.

Keep in mind, Farrah...the more lies you tell, the more negativity you'll get in your life. Why not try telling the truth? You wanted the fame and the fortune...and in your opinion, everything should be all about you.

When you have a child, it can't be that way. IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU. GROW UP AND THINK OF YOUR LITTLE GIRL!

And that is my rant for the day...I feel somewhat better now. Have a good day everyone!