#Isn't she neat? I think so ^^

[thesleeplessdream]

☠️ My Chosen ☠️ Name: Sif Race: Drow Age: 28 Class: Rogue Background: Noble

Sturdy and quiet till you get to know her, 'to the point' kinda girl and don't take shit from neither fiends nor ghouls

Her mother came from a House but choose to disown her family name in pursuit of 'greater purpose' and instead sought the aid and affection from a different god. (I don't wanna spoil for you but if you know what the Dark Urge is then you know which god I'm talking about ☠️)

She's currently bed/heart buddies with Astarion and plans to keep it that way. With them sharing similar backgrounds of trauma they can 'even compare notes' as Astarion once put it

Although not personally sworn to Lolth she decided to take in Minthara in her company/camp and is trying to grow a closer bond with her as well, Drow gotta stick together

She wields two weapons, preferring scimitars but currently being forced with a staff and longsword because the only good elegant weapons so far are 2 rapiers and Astarion has those -_-

[welcometogrouchland]

my Stephanie Brown hot take is that she should get mad bitches now that she's single in comics. Yes yes shipping BUT the one time she had sex she was punished by the narrative via teen pregnancy. I think she should be allowed to have as much sex as she wants with zero consequences. Could be a lot of sex, could be a little. Point is she should get to do it without getting narratively baby trapped this time. she should get them pregnant, actually.

[writeitinsharpie]

ever think about the great sect madams of the generation before?

about madam yu, the violet spider, one of few in her generation to earn a title (even her husband was only ever sect leader. even wen ruohan was never regarded by a title other than sect leader wen). about yu ziyuan, about what she was like before years of jealousy and envy twisted her to only her most bitter parts? about the girl who was the third daughter of a sect leader, and then the wife of another, and yet all of her immense martial power meant nothing to the society around her.

about madam jin, known only by her title and never given a name or a natal sect, who was still somehow the closest friend to yu ziyuan. the mother of the sect heir and yet a wife who can do nothing but stand by as her husband dishonors their marriage over and over again.

about madam lan, the murderess locked up for her crimes, never seeing a trial and dying alone, only allowed to see her children once a month. who was she before she was the wife of the lan sect leader? was there a reason she killed the lan elder? did she want that marriage to qingheng-jun? did she even want the children she was kept from?

about the madams nie and wen, who only exist by implication, by the knowledge that their children exist and therefore so must they. about how so little is even implied about them?

[royalarchivist]

Cellbit: You think the Cucurucho that likes you is the like, cheerleader one or is it the gun one?

Jaiden: Um, I- I'll be honest, I think both of them like me.

Cellbit: Wow, ok.

Jaiden: What can I say, I'm just super friendly.

Cellbit: Yeah...

Jaiden: [Laughs]

Cellbit: You know, Cucurucho liking you isn't that much of like, a good thing, ok? Just don't- don't get like, super–

Jaiden: No, I mean like, I'm not- I'm not saying that, you know, I like him back or anything, I'm just saying that they- they have a soft-spot for me. Whatever that means.

[ Full Transcript ↓ ]

—

Cellbit: How is your relation with Cucurucho going? Like, have you seen him recently?

Jaiden: Uhhh, what do you mean?

Cellbit: 'Cuz you have like, a rocky relationship with him, don't you?

Jaiden: Yeah, yeah, yeah, last- last time we- I– he took me away for a bit, but uh... It's been, you know, normal. I feel like he treats me the same as he does everyone else. Yeah, he gave me a task.

Cellbit: What's your task?

Jaiden: To research rhinos.

Cellbit: Oh, yeah, you told me about that! [...] You think the Cucurucho that likes you is the like, cheerleader one or is it the gun one?

Jaiden: Um, I- I'll be honest, I think both of them like me.

Cellbit: Wow, ok.

Jaiden: What can I say, I'm just super friendly.

Cellbit: Yeah...

Jaiden: [Laughs]

Cellbit: You know, Cucurucho liking you isn't that much of like, a good thing, ok? Just don't- don't get like, super–

Jaiden: No, I mean like, I'm not- I'm not saying that, you know, I like him back or anything, I'm just saying that they- they have a soft-spot for me. Whatever that means.

Cellbit: Yeah, when– like, if you ever see them with a chainsaw, you know, you probably want to go to the other direction, that's just like, an experienced hint I can give you.

Jaiden: Yeah, yeah, yeah...

Cellbit: But I don't think they would do that to you, they seem to have like, their own preferences and stuff.

Jaiden: Yeah, I mean, they've only done that to you, so they must– they just really don't like you.

Cellbit: Yeah, but they kinda like did some shtty things to other people, they shot Bagi, they shot- they shot most of the Island, at this point.

Jaiden: Yeah, they did, they did shoot Bagi. That's- that's not good.

Cellbit: Maybe they just like Hatsune Miku, and they- they confused stuff.

Jaiden: That is true! Actually, they're– I don't even know if this is like, who this is in the Federation, but someone um... Mouse was like, showing me a picture of– Sorry, I have to tab in. [She punches Cellbit] Um... [Laughs]

Cellbit: Ow, that was rude! [Chuckles]

Jaiden: I had to tab in! [Laughs] My Animal Crossing music had to restart!

Cellbit: [Laughs]

Jaiden: Mouse was saying that someone in the Federation uh, was placing tiny Hatsune Mikus in there, so someone in the Federation likes Hatsune Miku.

Cellbit: Hmm... That explains a lot, then.

Jaiden: [Laughs] What do you mean? No it doesn't!

Cellbit: No, no. Now I understand that it's a whole– it's a whole scheme, it's a whole corruption scheme, now I understand.

Jaiden: Ah no, it's not corruption–

[nocturusvulpus]

Ok so hear me out; Eternal Sugar x Golden Cheese

Also bonus doodle cuz these girlies for sure have a height difference <3

[iristial]

rider system album misora isurugi (build) | episode 4

[muninnhuginn]

Keep thinking about how time in Frieren is measured in years since Himmel's death. The fact that at this point in the anime, he's been dead far longer than Frieren travelled with him, and yet, that's still how she relates time to this world.

[heartbeatbookclub]

I was looking at a few posts about autism (as one does) and it just suddenly clicked into place a fundamental thing about Yuri's character that I'd been grasping at, but hadn't really been able to adequately identify. I still have a much longer and more thorough analysis going through a whole lot of my thoughts on Yuri's character and her experience of autism that i'm working on (of which this will likely be a component), but I thought I'd share this separately just to emphasize.

Post I saw which made this click for me was making fun of the fact that most media depicting impaired empathy in autistic characters explicitly depicts them with this unflappable confidence of never having been rejected by people they love. The crux of this is that in actual reality, autistic people almost always have that experience at some point, for some behavior, for reasons they don't really understand. "There is an invisible line where people will get sick of you, and you have no warning of when you're about to cross it." So frequently, autistic people attempt to ride a razor thin edge, walking on constant eggshells to desperately attempt to avoid crossing that line.

Very often autistic people will attempt to avoid doing anything at all which could be considered weird, or off-putting, and will try their absolute hardest to do things in a way that is acceptable to other people, sometimes to the point of outright suppressing their emotions, because they are afraid that they'll say something just wrong enough that the people they care about will push them away, and they don't understand WHY it happened, but they know it's THEIR fault. Sometimes masking is fighting to appear aloof all the time because you can't regulate your emotions in a way that is acceptable to other people.

And holy fucking Jesus, that fits the exact mold of what I've been trying to talk about with the particular way Yuri's anxieties manifest.

It really feels to me like Yuri has this constant fear of breaking the "rules" of socializing, despite not really understanding what those rules even are. She's constantly afraid of saying something wrong, when she doesn't even know what wrong would be, she's just sure everyone ELSE will know it when they hear it. I think a huge part of her social anxiety comes from her own understanding of herself as a very weird person who doesn't really get a lot of how to socialize, and it seems to me like she's probably dealt with her fair share of social rejection and isolation based on those traits. She then felt she had to take responsibility for those traits, probably because it's the one thing she can change, and she is the one common denominator in all of these bad situations (This is something which is pretty common, actually! "Everyone else can socialize just fine, and I have so much difficulty with it! I must just be broken in some way. I have to try super hard to be normal to make friends!")

I think a big part of why it's so apparent in the Literature Club is because she really thinks she's found a place where she can make friends in spite of all of her issues, so when she starts...being herself, and receives even the smallest HINT of pushback, she overcorrects and tries to rein all of herself in to fix her "mistake", because she really wants to make friends here, and doesn't want them to reject her as well.

She's had this experience of others pushing her away for being weird so often that, coupled with her acknowledged trouble for reading situations, when anybody responds poorly to something and she recognizes it, she immediately overcorrects out of fear of being an annoying burden to everyone around her, and that "correction" consists of suppressing herself into being "normal" (or at least "less weird"), because she believes nobody could actually like her just for being who she is. There's something wrong with her fundamentally, and to make friends, for people to like her and want to be around her, she has to "fix" herself.

it's just, like...

it's really hard for me to interpret Yuri's character that doesn't involve her being somewhere on the spectrum, bros. she's written with such delicately constructed autistic coding, despite the appearance of just being a hackneyed weird girl visual novel trope. she deserves the world.......

[imminent-danger-came]

So, this parallel, right.

That parallel and the 4x11 shadowpeach fight as a whole:

Macaque: "No that's YOU! You're the one always running off! Looking for more power, more sources of immortality—you're the one who wouldn't quit while were were ahead! Not the great sage, he's got to drag EVERYONE else into his mess!" Sun Wukong: "You're not in this mess, you're still free! Everything I did was for us!" Macaque: "You did it for yourself! You've become like this, obsessive demon! I told you going against the Jade Emperor was a bad idea, but no, Wukong doesn't listen to anyone! He just does whatever he wants! You put yourself here, not me."

(4x11 A Lifetime of Mistakes)

-

A large part of Wukong's motivation to keep getting more power was the freedom of it—the more power you have the easier it is to do whatever you want. It's easier to ignore everyone else and focus solely on yourself. It's also easier to ensure yourself and your loved one's are protected and have the ability to do what they want.

So, a punishment where the great Monkey King is imprisoned and trapped for hundreds of years? It's effective and tragic and fitting. Wukong wanted to have the freedom to protect the people he cared about, and in trying to reach for the power to do that, he completely had his freedom removed. He went from the mountain, to then the circlet, and then all of a sudden he had morals and was bound to those.

And then I think about his end of s3 choice to go face the Lady Bone Demon alone. Once again Wukong was trying to protect his loved ones (not to mention the whole reason he went after the Samadhi fire to begin with was to have the power, the freedom to stop LBD (which in itself is another case of SWK believing he needed to be stronger for such freedom)), but he also wanted to make sure MK and himself both had agency. He didn't want MK to have to fight LBD, and he didn't want LBD to end the world.

This is exactly the sentiment he tells Macaque in the 4x11 flashback:

Sun Wukong: "It's so we don't have to worry about anything or anyone ever again! Just living a lazy life, sitting in the sun, eatin' fruit, and doing whatever we want!"

But where does it all lead him?

To possession, imprisonment. Once again Wukong no longer had the freedom to do what he wanted (which is to protect the people he cares about). Once again in his attempts to help his loved one's, he only hurt them.

This can be applied to his relationship with Macaque, to MK in s2, hell, even Wukong trying to get the map in the first place left him powerless, which then led to him and the gang being imprisoned in 3x02. It's a familiar pattern, one we see with antagonist and protagonist alike.

MK in s2 trained to become more powerful, which in the end only strengthened LBD and forced him and his friends on the run. Mei in 3x12 protects MK by letting herself get captured and placed into LBD's crystal. Mei in 4x05 goes to protect MK, breaking her sword and leaving her vulnerable to being captured by Kui Mulang ("How am I supposed to protect everyone without my sword?"). DBK reached for more power and then became possessed by LBD, hurting his wife and son. Azure reached for the Jade Emperor's power and bound himself to that role, jeopardizing Peng and Yellowtusk in the process.

It's a cycle of reaching for power, endangering others, and then being imprisoned.

So anyways, here's why MK is going to lose control (his agency) next season and hurt his friends with his own- *get's shot*

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2025: WANDERLUST: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit.

The last chapter in this book is titled "Las Vegas, or the Longest Distance Between Two Points," so I had to bring it on our Las Vegas/Grand Canyon trip, obviously. And I did indeed start it in Vegas!

However! We got back from Vegas *checks wristwatch* a month and two days ago, and I just finished it. It was a much denser, chewier book than anticipated. Parts of it were super neat! But parts of it moved at, say, two or three miles per hour. Lotta focus on Romanticism as early origins (which. isn't really my wheelhouse). A little bit of biology in there, a little bit of nature writing, some feminism, etc.--I think she does a good job of qualifying that this is a history of walking, per her subtitle, and it's very much Hers. I busted out the flaggies for a few passages, and I'll probably reread those, but I doubt I'll reread the Whole Thing.

[swan2swan]

I still need to rank all of the Camp Cretaceous models in a tier list.

The main reason being because I need to put Sammy's pre-timeskip models in garbage tier. They were awful.

Except her black jacket look. That one ruled.

But there are SO MANY ISSUES with her other models. Hair length. Face.

[circlesthatyoufind]

i completely understand the bisexual headcanons but there is something so 👌👏👍🤌 about gay and lesbian steve and nancy. like...the comphet is brain deadening.

[akpaleyreblogs]

I love having roleplayed my way into putting a stupid fucked up love triangle into a game that didn't have one

[bisaster-energy]

can't believe i rewatched a movie i haven't seen since i was a child just to start shipping over a slightly more intimate than usual handshake

[skydrifter]

does anyone else get kinda annoyed when nonbinary characters are viewed as "whatever you want to see them as"? i'm not talking about self-inserts but actual characters who go by they/them for example, and are clearly intended to be nonbinary. I was watching an outer wilds playthrough where the person praised the game for letting you "choose how you interpret" the hearthians' genders and like idk. nonbinary genders and lack of gender shouldn't be something you can just choose to see as whichever binary gender you prefer.

[razzle-zazzle]

how does skylor feel about cole in eye for an eye?

902 Words

AO3 ver

Skylor made her way down the tunnel as casually as she could manage. There was hardly anyone here, in this particular corner of the maze, but that didn’t mean there was nobody. Patrols came through every so often, to say nothing of those who came out here to get away with things her father would not approve of. Already, she’d passed a pair making out in an alcove.

Another thing to be weary of here was Edengarde, but Skylor knew that the giant serpent’s feeding time was soon—and in another part of the maze entirely. With that in mind, it was easy for her to get to where she needed to be—but she couldn’t rush. Anything she did might end up reaching her father’s ears; best to act normal.

Skylor ducked into a crevice, slipping between the crack to reach her destination. The other end opened up into a small cavern used for storage—specifically, it opened up into the back end, in a little nook hidden within the crates. The nook was so small that Skylor had to crouch down, but there was still enough space for her and one other person to sit and chat.

And indeed, there he was, sitting in the shadows of the nook, arms crossed over his chest. “Took you long enough.” He muttered, reaching into the small satchel sitting in his lap.

“Can it, Cole.” Skylor huffed. “It’s not easy sneaking around when your every movement is recorded.” Cole didn’t have it easy in any sense of the word, but when it came to getting around unnoticed, he certainly had it easier than her. Nobody cared what he was up to if he looked like he was working, and hadn’t caught her father’s attention again. But there were eyes on Skylor nearly all the time. Even moments like these, hidden away in the cracks and crannies, seemed to somehow reach her father’s ears as absences from her usual duties, deviations from her schedule.

—Gray jumpsuit in the corners of the tunnels, tucked into the sides where nobody would notice him. Dark hair held back with old clips, white bandages wrapped around his hand.

A hand on her shoulder, guiding her back into the more ornate halls of her father’s palace, away from sharp glares and a single spot of gray in a sea of colors—

“Oh, touchy today, are we?” Cole snarked, pulling out a small bundle wrapped in cloth. “Are all your pretty princess dresses getting too tight for you?” He sneered, but allowed Skylor to swipe the bundle without protest.

Skylor rolled her eyes, but didn’t rise to the jab. Cole was all talk. Not once since he’d gotten here had he actually managed to do anything he aspired for—all his escape attempts ended in failure, and going against her father never ended well for anyone. All bark and no bite—the power of Earth in her father’s staff proved that.

—Meeting in an empty cell, sitting right below the window on the door and keeping their voices low.

“Oh, so the Princess finally came down from her tower.” Hackles raised, teeth bared, accusation in his whisper. “Finally get bored with being Daddy’s Favorite Circus Animal?”

A sharp kick to his shin, making him bite his tongue and hiss in pain. She had smirked, then, before leaning forwards to ask for her very first favor—help her get onto the factory floor.

Cole had been sold the moment she mentioned her father wouldn’t allow her in there—

But… he never really stopped fighting—he just got better at it. At finding places to hide away, at getting things he shouldn’t have and into places he shouldn’t be. For all that Cole was fighting a losing game, Skylor supposed there was something in how he kept fighting.

—Standing beside her father’s throne as a boy her age was forced to the ground, red-hot iron glowing above him.

Screams as she peeked through her fingers, unable to look away—

Skylor turned the bundle over in her hand. “For what it’s worth… thanks.” She pocketed the bundle, and moved to squeeze back out into the tunnels.

Cole snorted. “Don’t mention it, Princess.” He shrugged. “And don’t forget your end of things.” He reminded her, voice taking on a hard edge.

Skylor couldn’t help but turn back around to look him in the eyes. “Oh, you mean when I wipe the floor with you for an hour?”

“I’ll get you one day.” Cole retorted, and Skylor wasn’t sure if it was a promise or a threat. Maybe both. “Just you wait.”

Skylor turned back to the crevice, and started to squeeze her way through. “Sure you will.”

—”Oh, fuck you.” Words spat with a bitter tongue, frustration heavy in her chest.

A sneer, a response, a “sorry, princess, but you’re not my type.”

A kick to his shins to send him tumbling to the floor—

By all rights, Cole should hate her. And maybe he did. But if there was one thing Skylor could trust, it was that Cole hated her father more than he hated her. If there was something her father didn’t want her to have or to do, Cole would make it happen just to spite him. It was something Skylor could trust Cole on no matter what. The cloth-wrapped key in her pocket was proof enough of that.

Didn’t make him less of a failure jerk, though.