#Tell me if I'm close

[inkskinned]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

you look down to your hand, clutching the knife.

[lazylittledragon]

ok i swear i'm not going to talk about my breakup forever but the thing that just keeps bothering me:

i know that not getting what you need in a relationship is a COMPLETELY valid reason to end it but also. i feel like having a very vulnerable moment where i opened up about my struggles with intimacy and being relieved that i didn't have to keep doing things i wasn't comfortable with, then being dumped a YEAR later because of my lack of intimacy. is something i should be allowed to be very hurt by???

[vaguely-concerned]

there's this borderline hysterical laugh garak breaks into a couple of times during the early seasons that is so special to me. like. this man. this man is so high (constantly) and probably drunk (frequently) and he's at all times teetering on the very brink of despair that only pure spite, immense stubbornness, and getting to gaze at julian bashir's smiling face across the lunch table once a week is holding him back from tipping over. and then he has to deal with people like skrain dukat and gul toran on top of that and you can practically hear the cracks forming as he's barely holding on to whatever remains of his sanity by the skin of his teeth

[egophiliac]

ten minutes into the trip and already Leona's elaborate get-out-of-work-free plan has gone wildly off the rails. off to a great start!

[accirax]

(Whit did, in fact, gaf, but he wasn't about to let anyone know that.)

[fbfh]

leo with baby fever? 🥹

i've always wondered what would he be like with babies of his own? 🥹💞

AAAAUGH. thank you for this one my dearest darlingest tumblr user pdlrnjlm. I'm violently sobbing over this one /pos. also excuse any egregious typos, I just woke up from a dream where my dyslexic ass couldn't spell "chris evans fine" to the point that autocorrect was beyond useless (and probably laughing at me).

ANYWAY. Leo with baby fever is... lethal. as previously stated, Leo is the motherfucking ceo of "one wouldn't hurt" but he sounds so... convincing when he says it. he says it so sweetly you start to think huh. maybe one wouldn't hurt. within a day or two his fyp is just cute baby fever inducing videos. he casually learns everything there is to know about child development and parenting in a matter of days. he starts treating your cat like a baby, talking to them and holding them on his lap while he works and good GOD if it doesn't start to hit you too. The tension and soul aching need to see you all big and preggers with his baby, your baby that you made together is almost too much. Then one fatal day, you run out of clean pajamas. It’s laundry day, and the only comfy thing you have on hand is a floral mumu from walmart that looks like something a grandma would wear, but you’re desperate and it’s soft and loose and comfy. So Leo, after spending hours rotting his brain with baby thoughts and thinking about how nice it’ll be to be a dad and how fulfilling it’ll be to come home and see a wrinkly little newborn having tummy time on your chest while you’re both half asleep to barrio sesamo playing on the tv. After a full day of ruminating on that, he comes home and sees you in your floral lil granny nightgown and good GOD something inside him snaps. You have this man feeling you up, snarling and growling, purring in you ear before he bites it. Something has gotten into him and taken full control of the primal part of his brain. And let’s be real here. You might as well consider yourself pregnant from the first “c’mon estrella, one or two couldn’t hurt… they’re so little, you won’t even notice them.” into your neck while he hugs you from behind. But yeah. Leo with baby fever is so simultaneously sweet cute fluffy domestic and rearrange your guts at the same time that it’s kind of inevitable. If Leo kisses your neck and rubs your tummy and says “you’d look so cute pregnant, baby…” you’re gonna fold. You have to. No one can resist that. And who would want to????

[fuzzybirdie]

Hero of Changing Faces

Warning, 'tis a bit sweary. Enjoy!

Ch.2 The MOTHERFUCKER Of All Time

The GODDAMN Joker was attacking the GODDAMN ammusement park in the middle of the GODDAMN school holidays! So Duke was a teensy bit pissed.

Today was supposed to be fun! Everyone, including Tim and Alfred, had made sure to clean up their scheduals enough for a family outing, and they managed to pull steph along as well!

Everything was going well so far too! Sure, Damian couldn't stop scoffing at this couple yelling 'Ghost!' All the time, and Tim and Jason were trying to one-up eachother at all the carnival games, (before being absoloutley demolished by cass), but it was fun! They Were having fun.

And then the motherfucker of all time hijacked the roller coaster.

Alfred had managed to sneak everyone's costumes into their day packs, probably foreseeing something going wrong. Either way, this meant that everyone could sneak away and change to fight the Joker.

After getting changed, Signal charged towards the announcer's booth, running into Nightwing on the way. Nightwing who looked pale and terrified. "B went ahead to the roller coaster!" Nightwing called. Ah, Signal's question must've been obvious.

"Isn't that a good thing?" Signal called back,

"Not as a civillian! He went in before it got hijacked!"

"Fuck!"

"Red, Orphan, and I are en route to the rollercoaster" Red Hood interupted "Robin's on his way to the announcer booth, and Spoiler is on evac duty,"

"Roger," Nightwing grappeled past a group escaping one of the rides, "Signal and I will randevous with robin. B is among the civillians on the roller coaster."

"Understood. We'll be in touch once the civvies are safe. Over and Out."

The announcer booth was surrounded by goons, who were taken care of easily enough. (Thank you, pepper spray bottles of sleeping gas!) Leaving the door wide open. Nightwing and Signal crept in, the only hint of their (re: Signal's) presence was the lights dimming and the shadows growing.

The Joker had set himself in the middle of the moniter room. He'd somehow found the time to inflate an air matress and was now lying down, eating popcorn, and kicking his legs like a schoolchild.

"Oh boo!" The Joker cried as the rollercoaster judded to a stop "they didn't even get halfway up! This show sucks!"

Robin took this moment to reveal himself both to his brothers and the Joker by attempting to skewer the latter through the arm. "Oh hi, little Robin!" Joker cackled as Robin missed "Come to watch the show? Though," he looked at where Robin's sword had punctured his matress "That was really rude. Guess I can kill you now!"

As Joker pulled out a gun to shoot at Robin, Signal manipulated the light of the moniters to blind him. Nightwing's escrima crackled into his exposed back, and he was down.

Something clattered out of the Joker's hands along with the gun. Signal had a closer look at it while Nightwing cuffed Joker and Robin shut down all the rides.

"Joker had a deadman trigger!" He practically shrieked into the comms "Get everyone out of there now!" Looking closer at the moniters, it was easy to see the bombs at the bottom of every other support. Thankfully, with Robin having turned off the rides, the safety bar had let go, and the other bats had gotten all the civillians off the ride. Unfortunately, they were still in the blast zone.

Red Robin turned to say something to the civillians. Then this white haired kid practically threw Red Hood into Orphan, who was checking someone for injuries. With everyone behind him, the kid threw out his hands, as a sheet of ice grew from them. The ice seemed to thin to stop anything, but it covered everyone quickly. Once a dome had formed the ice began to thicken.

Then the bombs detonated.

~~~~~~

first / prev / next

It was under the word limit!

So, how many of you got the cameo last chapter? :)

As always, this was inspired by @freedomanddisorder's art and the following prompt chain. Please check out both, they are So cool,

[canisalbus]

I want you to know that your art is very important to me, and I'm very invested in all of the characters I have seen from you. Also, the discussion about Finnish and other languages having gendered words or not has been the last little push to get me to start learning Finnish which I think is fun.

I'm making this a little compilation post of all the language asks I got. Thank you for sharing, this was genuinely really interesting!

[coquelicoq]

what i like especially about the pronouns in the goblin emperor is that this language doesn't just have the T-V distinction (aka informal vs. formal second-person pronouns, in this case 'thou' vs. 'you'), it also has informal and formal first-person pronouns. having BOTH of these distinctions in the same language lets you fine-tune your tone by mixing and matching. with only one axis of formality, when you use informal pronouns, are you being familiar in an intimate way, or in an insolent or dismissive way? when you use formal pronouns, are you being polite or standoffish? you can't tell just from the pronouns; there's ambiguity. but a language where you can use a formal first-person pronoun in the same sentence as an informal second-person pronoun allows you to distance yourself (via the formal first) while also being familiar (via the informal second), thereby achieving the conversational tenor known to linguists as Fuck Thee Specifically.

[saltpepperbeard]

oh, don’t mind me, just thinking about-

-how stede tends to sleep on his back, which i’m pretty sure is just the biggest open invitation for ed to sleep cuddled up on his chest, snuggled impossibly close

[spotlightstudios]

The Sleepyhead!!! <3 Had to get this one out of my system, I love this guy so much.

[bonefall]

I understand being upset by the moonpaw dog post but i dont think talking about some random teen publicly (on a pretty big fandom blog) as opposed to like, dming them about it, is a very nice thing to do? Would recommend keeping that kinda gossip in dms going forward personally.

??????? "That kinda gossip???"

Saying that it's fucked up that a publicly posted incest joke about how deformed she should look went to the top of the Warrior Cats and Moonpaw tags, is gossip???

TRENDING TAGS?? GOSSIP?

I'm not talking about "some random teen," I have not even dropped a username and been VERY clear I don't want harassment of anyone. During this discussion about wider ableism against Moonpaw, I've directly answered two anons about the contents of a post that was/IS extremely popular to the tune of nearly a thousand notes.

One of those two asks was an anon who only stumbled in to say that the post was funny in a display of SHOCKING tonedeafness, while I was talking about how shitty it is to compare people who are the products of incest to unethical dog breeds, especially in the context of WC. The other was an actual XX/XY chimera who expressed that the extremely popular post hurt their feelings, and when they tried to express discomfort to someone, got told they "probably killed their twin in the womb."

It's not just one rando weenie little blog the minute half of the Tumblr space is openly laughing at a joke about deformed incest kids and hoping Moonpaw dies because she's so "gross." Not nice?? Your feelings are hurt? OTHER people's feelings were ALREADY hurt.

NOTHING about this was "nice" to begin with!

Difference is, when YOU cry me a river, you can build me a bridge, and get right the fuck over it. A person who's the product of incest cries and has to go right back to every shitty banjo-hunchback-hapsburg joke they've heard before, just feeling more unsafe about a space that PRETENDS to care about the abuse they experienced. If you feel guilty about that, maybe you should!

If you were under the impression I was ever "nice" about bigotry, you were mistaken. I don't appreciate calls for ME to be more polite when I'm at a trend of fandom ableism and calling it fucked up. I've named NO names. Sounds like what you ACTUALLY want is for people like me who have a platform to shut up.

[gynoidgearhead]

tradwife is a neogender for mostly cis people. change my mind

[okidraw]

i wanted to show them the stars.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[raayllum]

RAYLLUM S5 MEME:  quotes [3/4] 5x01, “domina profundis”

To love is simply to know this... What does that mean, Prince Callum? It means I trust her. Unconditionally. Let her go. Now.