#also none of my posts recent posts are tagged so idk how you found me other than you were following me already. in which case:

[herearedragons]

Fan Work Friday

I was tagged for this by @greypetrel a While ago, so! Time to do another rec post.

Rules: If you’re tagged, MAKE A NEW POST and showcase one fanartist or fanfic you recommend (with links), and tag someone to give their recs next! Don’t forget to reblog the rec you were tagged in!

(I'm bending the rules again and doing A Bunch of fic recs instead of one)

Tagging: everyone tagged in this post, and also @solas-backpack-mug @layalu @ndostairlyrium @apeirotilio if any of you feel like making a rec post!

Fanartist: @bragganhyl (Pillars of Eternity fanart)

I found this piece again yesterday and I still think it's really cool. I haven't seen a lot of fanart of Maerwald, so it's cool to see him represented, and it's really cool to see all three Watchers lined up like that, with all of their respective Themes and Symbols. Just. Idk, Watchers are cool, and this art made me appreciate that a little more.

Fanfic #1: The Way The Story Goes by @dragonologist-phd (Pillars Of Eternity)

The prince was born with a dragon. Dragons and the reasoning behind them were something of a mystery in the kingdom. Nobody knew where they came from, or why the hatchlings only appeared in the company of newborn royalty. Nobody knew how they picked their companions. None of these questions were all that important, in the end. What mattered was that there were certain types of stories that started with a dragon, and there was a way these stories were supposed to go. The king and queen turned their backs for one minute, and suddenly there was a tiny, iridescent dragon curled up next to their son in his crib. That was the beginning of the story.

A Pillars of Eternity fairytale AU where Iselmyr is a dragon and Aloth is her prince. It's a cute take on these two and I had fun reading it, so now I'm inflicting this fic on you all! If you're in a mood for a fun one-shot, I definitely recommend it.

Fanfic #2: In Lothering by @heniareth (Dragon Age: Origins)

“Now, now, is that a way to answer a friendly greeting?” The bandit captain clicked his tongue as his men tightened their ranks behind him. “A simple ten silver and you’re free to move. Not so bad, eh?” Astala smiled. There was no way in the Void these shem would squeeze several months’ worth of rent out of them.

I'm slowly making my way through this fic!! I really like how it slows down and lingers on all the small problems the DA:O party faces in the early stages of their travel, and the different perspectives they all have on these problems. If you like stories that combine great characterization with attention to Logistics and the practical side of adventuring, you're going to have fun reading this one.

Fanfic #3: the cracked and the cared for by @curiouslavellan (Dragon Age: Inquisition)

Risk was mitigated through planning. He picked this room just for the fact that it had so many possible exits. He kept so many different weapons close to hand to give himself options. He had been trained to wake at the slightest indication of danger, and to respond in the same moment. No one would be sneaking up on him here and living through the attempt.  Bull knew all of this. None of it made him feel any better at the moment. None of it helped him sleep. He didn’t think he could bring himself to take up any of the weapons. He knew he wouldn’t be able to get his head around fighting hand-to-hand in time. Retreating would be easier to handle, mentally, but every time he moved more than an inch, Halveri made this pitiful little whimper that he couldn't stand. So he just went still again and tried not to think about the fact that the most magical person he had ever seen in his life was currently asleep on his chest.

I read this fic A While ago, but I reread it recently and, yup. It's still good. I don't know what is it, but the Bull POV in this fic is just really fun to read: it's the perfect balance of doubt and strategizing and picking his own brain apart and the vulnerability of being attached to the Inquisitor and. AAAAA. anyway, it's a good fic, I recommend it if you're in the mood for a character study that makes you Feel Things.

Fanfic #4: THE FURY OF A SHATTERED MIRROR by ASpooky (Disco Elysium x Slay The Princess)

YOU - How did I get here? THE NARRATOR - You walked, I presume. You've probably come a very long way and endured quite a number of trials to get here, but given the magnitude of the task still left before you, it won't do to get cold feet now. You can take a well-deserved rest after you slay her. ENDURANCE [Easy: Success] - You *aren't* tired. Not even a little. You could run a couple miles right now without breaking a sweat. PAIN THRESHOLD [Medium: Success] - Even at a jog, the worst you should feel through the thin haze of painkillers is a dull ache. It's probably not a good idea to start running on a bum leg, but when has that ever stopped you before? PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - There's still time. The sun hasn't risen yet, which means you can get in back-to-back morning jogs if you start *NOW*.

I actually don't know if this fanfic needs a recommendation because apparently it's so popular that at least one (1) youtube video was made about it, but I've been reading it and I want to talk about it, so in the rec list it goes.

If you have even a surface level familiarity with Disco Elysium and Slay The Princess, I recommend checking this out. The amount of attention of detail and effort that has gone into this fic is amazing and it's really clear why it's so beloved. The fic uses a CSS theme that looks like the Disco Elysium UI, and the author has gone the extra mile to play with the layout in pretty fun ways when it comes to the Disco Elysium voices-in-your-head and the StP voices-in-your-head interacting. And I haven't even said anything about the writing yet, but the writing is also really good. The character voices are great, the jokes land, and the story is really interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

[revvethasmythh]

i finally cracked and spent like half an hour tracking down that post you keep referencing because i had NO IDEA what you were talking about and i found it and........ my analysis is that its written by someone who really wanted their relationship to Be A Certain Way and projected that onto them and the depth and reveal of veth shattered that and created that very simplistic analysis. its coming from a place where nott and caleb were their one and only's, no question who each other's #1 Person was, but like OBVIOUSLY a husband and son interrupt that. and caleb was A priority for veth rather than The priority for nott.

which completely ignores her struggle to balance her radically different lives and caleb's constant compassion and struggle to protect her AND her family...... because he loves her so he loves them and became an integral part of their lives too...... idk it just struck me as coming from a very particular place

Oh anon, you should have spared yourself and just not looked it up. I don't want to harangue about the post too much because I did plenty of that last year (sorry I can't direct you to those posts, they're old and none of them were searchably tagged so it'd be a bitch and a half to find them), but like yeah I do think the take came from A Particular Place and that there's a lot of projection happening there, I agree with that. It's just that the post is basically only projection, and the place it comes from overlaps with the land of delusion where we never watched the show past episode 47, but yeah, that is A Place and apparently 1.5k other people have also visited this Place, which is one of my least favorite things I am burdened with knowing about.

Like, it's the gall to say that Caleb was looking at Veth and thinking "maybe she's as weird as I am" and things like that that get me because it's such a staggeringly ahistorical take, particularly considering Veth's backstory hinges on the fact that she was bullied her whole life for being WEIRD. And I recently happened upon a clip from the Talks for episode 50 where Liam was answering a question about how Caleb was taking the Veth reveal and his answer essentially boiled down to [paraphrased], "Caleb already loved Nott and thought they were similar--but now he knows they're even more alike than he could have guessed. And he loves her. He just loves her."

The idea that the Veth reveal shattered all of Caleb's visions and dreams of what their relationship was now that he knows who Nott "really" is (a "Happily Married Straight Woman" as OP so helpfully describes, in contrast to Caleb's newly listless and unmoored "Queer Neurodivergent Friend") is so ahistorical I need to go to a rage room about it. That did not happen. I have to believe the only way someone could agree with this is if they never watched past ep. 47, but considering how many people interacted positively with that post, I somewhat doubt that's the case, which makes it, like, the prime example of how Veth (a relatively unpopular character) seems to be thought of--and misinterpreted--by the wider fandom. And, in the words of Liam O'Brien himself: "That's a big matzo ball."

[wing-shot-first]

So, as I'm sure we all know, family is a very important thing when it comes to HIVE. It's the main theme, and there's all sorts of different families shown too. Found family, estranged family, family getting cut off (AKA getting murdered), and even a few healthier dynamics here and there.

With that being said, I recently discovered something that's actually very significant to a character and his connection with his family (or lack thereof I suppose) that I don't think I've seen anyone else talk about.

Before I get into this I do apologize if none of this makes sense. My thoughts are Everywhere and I'm writing this in one sitting so bear with me. I'll also be putting this under a read more bc idk if posts get condensed in tags and this will get Long.

We all know Wing is the only character actually born into the last name Fanchu, and likely the only person ever in-universe. The name is a mashup of two other Chinese surnames (Fan and Chu), and while this could just a creative choice on Mark's end to give a character an iconic name, I think it holds a lot of significance with the whole family and ESPECIALLY Wing.

One significant thing taken from this is that the last name being made up works so well with the family and how they came to be! Wu Zhang and Xiu Mei Chen never intended to start a family, they just happened to unfortunately be at the wrong place at the wrong time and needed to find safety. Fanchu could very easily just be a name made up on the spot by one of them (listen idk how practical that would be okay). Two characters come together to create a family that shouldn't exist, and the surname they use is one that doesn't exist!

Speaking of things that shouldn't exist, Wing was never meant to be born. If Project Overlord had gone as planned, he wouldn't have existed at all. Hell, it's very likely that his parents weren't even planning to have a kid (though you'd think these two geniuses would know about protection but hey whatever). Wing's birth was an accident, basically, in many ways.

So we have a kid who should've never existed, born into a last name that was likely completely made up! Symbolism, baby! Now yes, I could definitely be looking way too deep into this, but hey that's the fun of these books! It's not HIVE if there isn't an insignificant detail that's actually super interesting when you think too much about it.

Anyways that's all I can think about ATM when it comes to this topic but feel free to add on! I'm sure most of you know just how much I love this damn family and I am CRAVING content.

Okay anyways bye enjoy my rambling

[drampas-trainers]

Good morning to all you people out there in the world!

//current game, ruleset and overview here!

We are Laura and Solaria (you can call me Sol, i don't mind), and we are a retired couple from the sunny region of Alola! We both know we are old, you don't have to tell us! But in case you're wondering, we are both women and use she/her pronouns.

Now, let me tell you what is going on and why some old hags have infiltrated the youthful internet:

Laura has recently made the decision that she wants to become a trainer! She never had the opportunity during her childhood, and we don't get any younger, so we decided to just go and visit other regions and get to learn more about the world!

We do however already have two Pokémon:

Hugo, our very dear Drampa. He is sort of a Service Pokémon that we can ride when our legs don't want to carry us anymore, but he's not officially registered and more of a pet.

Galois, a very cute little Porygon that has been included with this Poryphone i bought. It has already been very helpful with explaining this device.

Oh by the way, this blog will be run by me, Sol. Laura has some troubles with these electronic devices.

//Sol is purple, tagging with #wifeposting, Laura is Green, tagging with #trainerposting, Galois is Yellow or Orange because idk desktop/mobile is weird, tagging with #poryposting, ooc is pink (tagging with #ooc)

(ooc info under the cut)

// Hi, hello. I run this blog as a side blog, so I'll like and follow from my main @kamataros. I also run @koffing-time, you probably know me from there, honestly. If you need to adress me (the player/mun), I'm okay with any pronouns, and if you need a name you can call me Kama, Nox or Cheese. (And please exuse me if i sound harsh sometimes, or ask stupid questions)

First, this is obviously a Pokemon irl rp blog. As I and the people I'll mostly interact with will pretend that Pokémon are real, this is a blanket #unreality warning. I'll usually tag with at least one of the following three tags: #pokemon irl, #pkmn irl or #pokeblogging. I will NOT tag everything with #unreality.

Second: I wil use this blog to talk about my experiences with the Pokémon games! That means, i will just play the games and talk about what happens and how it's going and stuff, but in character of Sol and Laura. Because of this, none of the events of the games have taken place in this universe yet.

Feel free to interact with them though, i really welcome it. Give them tips on battling, what pokémon can be found and whatever! I won't initiate much on my own though. Probably.

Third: i won't go too much into detail on my tags and interactions and stuff here. I will basically use the same format as on @koffing-time, read the pinned post there and you're good to go :)

Just one thing about tags that are exclusive (and important) to this blog: #lauras [region] adventure is for every post regarding the respective game/region. #lauras gym challenge: [region] is only for posts that detail important battles such as gym leaders (duh) but also rival battles or against evil team admins.

[saryasy]

Greetings! You’ve answered questions as a writer, so it’s now time to answer questions as a reader >:] (Feel free to only answer a few or none :])

1) What’s your favorite fanfic trope to read?

2) Multi chapter fanfics or oneshots?

3) Read a no dialogue story or only dialogue story?

4) What’s a thing that makes you happy when you see it in a fanfic?

5) Who’s your favorite author?

6) Recommend a fanfic! :D

7) Gush about a fanfic you read recently, if you want. Be free, lmao.

Okay byee I love your fanfics and gifs :))

hey anon!

omg thank you so much for the asks and lovely words 😭😭💖💖

okay here we go!

1) too many to count honestly. but fake dating is up up there. me and that tag are quite well acquainted at this point. I also really love childhood friends to lovers. something about the knowing each other through the good and bad, the "should we risk this beautiful friendship for something that not work" it's about the pining you see, the pining!!

2) I'm really not picky there! but if it's a longish story ~20k and more I'd probably prefer it to be multi chaptered. then again I know how tricky multi chapters can be so honestly, whatever works

3) no dialogue story for sure, I love the introspectiveness of it all. though I'm not totally opposed to an only dialogue story. it can be fun (though not a long one it can get old rather quickly)

4) yk I can't think of anything specific. lots of things make me happy in fanfic. and their absence isn't a big deal either

5) I have too many to count but I'll definitely take this opportunity to shout out some of my sambucky faves: bisamwilson, dharmainitiative, glittercake, livingincolors

6) rough surfaces by my dear friend @livingincolorsagain is a wonderful wonderful sambucky story that takes place right after their break up. it's a second chance romance sure, but it also takes a really great look at anxiety and Sam's internal struggles and mental health issues. and just, the love you thought would never die? was too strong and was going to survive whatever life threw at you? and the hopelessness of watching it die and wither, helpless to do anything about it. I really love her writing and how she writes all those characters with care and deep love. I can be found screaming about that story at any given moment btw

7) I have been reading some post-s1 good omens fic recently (still can't get myself to read post s2. the wound is too raw) and came across this very lovely story (Slow) in which Adam resets reality and makes a teany tiny assumptions about Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship status. I really loved how it was structured, idk what it's called but that sort of repeating the same sentence structure and offering a new piece of information, idk if that makes sense but yeah I love it. also it was really beautifully written, I love those pining fools

well that's it! again thank you so much nonnie for the lovely ask <33

[jovenshires]

Hey the new Ianthony edit? Made me emo as fuck it really had me in my feels very cool.

I didn't see it on the 'smosh' tag? Idk if that's intentional thought you should know if it's not <3 -dot hell anon

TYSM i had so much fun making that one so im glad <3333

ah yeah... that was intentional. old habits die hard i guess? this got a little away from me so i put my extremely long rant under the cut, but tlwr: i try not to tag a lot of shipping stuff as /smosh.

see, i'm not new to the smosh fandom, but i am relatively new to THIS version of the fandom. i came back a couple of months ago but my real heyday was in like. 2018-2020. and we had pretty set rules for how we went about things, and one of the BIG ones was to never put anything ship-related in the main tags (those tags being cast names and the main smosh tag itself).

this was for a couple different reasons; first of all, some of the actual smosh staff was on tumblr (the official smosh blog for one, and i think one of the cast used tumblr at the time?? not sure on that one though as i Cannot remember), and we didn't want them to have to view rpf of themselves in spaces just generally meant for posting about them/their company. like say courtney, for example, goes into the 'courtney miller' tag - there's a difference between seeing a post about her bit in the new tntl and a post about them. fucking ian nasty style. not that there's anything wrong with the latter, just that i am very conscientious about not showing the real person fiction to the real person(s) in question, as was a lot of the smosh fandom.

second of all, not every smosh fan is into rpf. our venn diagram is not a circle. there was a time when i was not a part of the venn diagram. it's why i try to tag every post with 'shipping' and/or 'rpf' when it even vaguely hints at the stuff, so that not everybody has to see it. this isn't exclusive to this topic - i would do that for anything divisive. so, yeah, casual smosh fans scrolling the main tag probably don't want to see my silly ship edits, and i get that!!

since i've returned we obviously have a much different fandom culture - the old smosh blog shut down years ago and i'm fairly certain none of the cast checks tumblr anymore (and if they do and they're reading this: i'd like to apologize and beg for them to block me for both of our sanities). i've also made a few exceptions to my own rule, such as with the incorrect tweets bc i think those can mostly be written off as jokes and the lil au edits though i regret that at times. (i've been considering un-tagging those for a while tbh.) i've also realized recently that the tag 'smosh fic' just gets sorted directly into the 'smosh' tag which is. a pain in the ass. that's not what i said tumblr and you know it. so some of my content has been filtered in there. but you'll notice with the lil clips and text posts i post and stuff i almost never tag it as 'smosh' because. i just don't need people to see it ya know. i've got my people here and that's enough for me <3

that is all to say by the way that the new fandom culture is not BAD. as we all know, i'm very pro-rpf, so seeing rpf out there is great (as long as you know it's not tinhatting etc etc). we also have a very diverse community now with a lot of interesting ships and great fics that i would never have found without casually scrolling through the smosh tag!! it's also easier nowadays to block tags than ever; casual fans can just block the 'shipping' tag and have (relatively) easy access to the smosh tag. so please all of you keep doing you - i'm not your mother and i don't expect you to listen to lil ole me where i live perched up on my soap box. BUT idk if i personally can get over my hang-ups about tags.

[norashelley]

2022 recap

i was tagged by @grusinskayas, thanks so much Mari! <3

top 3 films: this was not the best year for films for me, i watched the least i have in idk how long and enjoyed the least but there were a few bright spots, 3 being. -WolfWalkers (2020) -The Mating of Millie (1948) -The Sea Wolf (1941)

top 3 shows: wow actually came up with 3 I watched as they aired this year even. -All Creatures Great and Small -Around the World in 80 Days. -Call the Midwife

top 3 books: I really enjoyed reading the entire Kopp sisters series which was 7 books, and Hayley Mills autobiography was really good too, also reread Jean Arthur's biography around her birthday so I could post various quotes for her birthday this year so that was fun.

top 3 biggest improvements: -stopped feeling so guilty for staying offline when feeling too sick to be active. -saw some people in person a few times -one of my cats i got end of 2020 finally started coming up to lay on my bed with me, other cat still has a lot of work to go but even she comes up to me be pet sometimes which is a huge improvement for her.

Top 3 resolutions: as usual I made none, and kept none.

favorite song: I'm not really a single song type of person but one song I heard for the first time this year that really hit my emotions hard was Aurora's 'Why Did You Have To Go?' nothing describes the way grief and loss feels quite like this song and there were some days that felt extra hard that I found myself listening to it on repeat to help me process and cry things out.

favorite quote: nothing in particular but here's a quote from the movie 'The Mortal Storm' that I saved this year that really stood out to me.

"how soon will man find wisdom in his heart and build a lasting shelter against his ignorant fears" - The Mortal Storm, 1940

+ Mari's bonus question - top 3 mangas: well, I only read 1 series this year and it's one I read some before ages ago but my sister recently collected the entire series of ranma 1/2 books so I've been borrowing them from her to read. it's just wild stupid fun & sometimes, especially this year i really need that. I'll tag - @chantalstacys @screenclassics @jwclapton @nitrateglow @filminghere @picklesandolives @valancystirling48 @wickeddarlings idk who else to tag but if you want to be tagged i tag you!

[silver-horse]

I was tagged by @likeyua​

Share your wallpaper: I never bothered to change the default background 😭 

I’ve been thinking about changing it to a picture of my cat, I will select the picture any day now... my computer is only around 10 years old

The last song you listened to:  Missing You by All Time Low

Currently reading: dragon age books (I want to read them all before the next game comes out) also started looking into the comics, I found a link for Blue Wraith so I will start with that one. None of the books or comics are available in my country so I have to search all over the internet for links

Last Movie: The Duke of Burgundy (2014)  - I actually watched this at least a month ago but I haven’t been watching many movies recently so I think this was the last one

Craving: chocolate, sex (same as always I suppose LOL)

What are you wearing right now? warm sweatpants and jumper, double socks (it’s still cold where I live)

How tall are you: 168 cm (or 5′6″ for americans xD )

Piercings: None

Tattoos: None

Glasses? Contacts? None

Last drink: water (if that doesn’t count then Chivas Regal whiskey, I drank that yesterday)

Last show: second season of The Legend of Vox Machina

Last thing you ate: Speed chocolate bar from Aldi (it’s like Twix)

Favorite color: blue, black (occasionally purple, green, red)

Current obsession: I guess The Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age, not feeling particularly obsessed at the moment but I’ve spent most time playing or reading about those two fictional worlds recently

Unrelated obsession: going to the antique shop and looking at old brooches, tableware etc. silly household objects

Any pets: Two cats (one of them is new, I adopted him from the street 2 months ago)

+ forever missing my old (and first) cat who died 1,5 year ago at the age of 18  (I’ve had multiple other cats over the years but no other lived that long or was that important to me, ofc I loved them all, still...)

Do you have a crush on anyone? No, unfortunately I don’t know anyone likeable (or even single lol ) at the moment

Favorite fictional character: idk, so many !!! I guess I post about Anders from Dragon Age the most

The last place you traveled:  abroad? I don’t remember where my last vacation was, I haven’t really travelled recently. (maybe it was Florence I think) If local places, then I visited my grandmother’s home 2-3 weeks ago. Idk if I’ll ever see that village again, it might have been the last time. I was there because we sold the house, the new owners have now moved in.

Not tagging anyone right now, I don’t know who wants to do it so if any of my followers answer these questions, just tag me so that I can see your post. ;)

[kindlyfunkn]

in other news though this past month or so has been maybe the worst of my life, was already feeling down about everything but now my cars fucked up again. power steering pump is shot, terrified me driving to the garage the other day (for just an inspection, an inspection no repairs, so i can get my car re-registered. ffs.) bc it started blowing smoke out of the hood and the wheel suddenly locked up.

couldnt get a hold of anyone but idk none of my friends either have cars or are free during school/work hours this was maybe around 11. my first instinct was to call my mom but she was unavailable, shes been travelling bc of my cousins wedding in alberta and mightve still been on a plane maybe idk. but she would've probably called my dad anyway bc hes the one who could actually help me, i called him right after my mom didnt pick up.

he lives 2 hours away though, i was within walking distance to my house so i just called to ask what i should do. the switch in his voice from neutral to worried was funny, especially bc ive been giving him sort of the silent treatment since we got in a petty fight. he contemplated if he could come out to town to have a look but remembered his friend craig and told me to stay where i was to. his friend is someone ive met before and had look at my car before too, and he lives out in town.

so craig was really nice, got some power steering fluid for me, drove my car for me (bc he's used to driving junk) to the garage and spoke to the mechanic for me, vehemently denied my attempts to pay for the fluid and cab fees. he told me its really funny how similar i am to my dad when we need help. he said that he told me: "you're shy like him, you stutter like him, you're nervous like him... uh no offense."

anyway so the garage wasnt able to do anything for my car bc if they didnt have the parts to fix my steering then they couldnt complete the inspection, but he didnt charge me anything so that was cool.

gotta make another appointment at a different garage.

also, speaking to my mom last night i told her how awful thingsve been. headache almost every day, i cant sleep (other night only got to sleep after 7 am, then the next night only got 3 hours, as example), how when i got up i just started crying full waterworks and i wasnt even thinking about anything. didnt tell her how i keep wanting to get drunk at night bc my thoughts just run rampant, done it a few times now. the headaches come with or without a hangover though, i grind my teeth at night. my guard was missing for a while but recently ive found it i just havent been wearing it though i should.

i didnt mean to unload anything on her just give her an update how ive been feeling bc i havent had anyone to talk to really. dont really like to vent really seriously to my (twin) sister, and my older sister (whom i live with) doesnt ever really seem to care—i feel like i cant really be upset when im around her bc she always has something happening at work or whatever. plus she keeps saying things that make me feel worse or more worried and she doesnt realize how awful ive been feeling, a few times when expressing that my head or back hurts she offers nothing except "do you want to try my meds?" NO i dont want your prescription meds!! i did take one of her migraine meds once bc they wouldnt work for her so the last pill in the bottle she offered to me and i remarked that it worked a charm, but the new meds she has now are different and strong enough that apparently they are sometimes given post surgery. sure ibuprofen/naproxen and tylenol dont work more than half the time for me but im not going right into strong meds when im taking other things. my sister doesnt take any meds other than the migraine stuff, i do take meds, i dont want any interactions.

but anyway i got sidetracked, i'll tag with the sister vent tag too. anyway i kept what i said to my mom short and simple, didnt think much of it bc sure ive been stressed out and demotivated (what else is new) and just needed to get off my chest. hate complaining to my friends i feel i do it too much. mom gave me support words of encouragement stuff like that, but told me she'll look into therapy options for me if i want since im still under her and my step moms insurance while im a student (which i technically am, exams and classes are done but still need a workterm and we're only considered fully graduates until we complete a workterm). baffled me. i used to see a counsellor (not by choice to start and i got put in dbt which sucked but i could cancel so i did bc it wasnt going anywhere. dbt mightve helped but it was on a webcam and i leaned out of frame to grab my pencil once which dropped to the floor and i was scolded so i thought this sucks im dropping this lol) but it never did much for me, but i didnt expect my mom to bring up therapy outright. we dont really do/see stuff like that in our family.

but yknow a therapist may help me right now bc everythings going south and im not that smart with adult things yet so much that i think its detrimental, so i think i said yes. if it turns out i dont need it then i can just drop it, but i think somebody unbiased who knows how things work would be able to help me a lot. its just for figuring my life out.

woof this js a huge post. did not mean to write so much and meant to keep this simple and to the point, but yknow im incapable of being concise its a curse. wasnt even gonna talk about my car initially but just started rambling. anyway thats my shitty life update

[screaming-heart]

hello. i am an introject. this is a long ass ramble about my opinions surrounding the terms source-attached and source-separated, as well as what those words mean to me (and our system as a whole). This is, in fact, very long. Be warned.

Introduction and Rambling

so our host has been engaging with my source media recently (which consequently has made me more aware of its existence than i have been in maybe 2 years) and i've been thinking about the nature of my existence.

i saw lestat made a post on this account a while ago describing her experience with being a fictional introject, and while i agree with most of what it said, a lot of it didn't ring true for me.

like, she was explaining how he felt in between the terms source separated and source attached because she was still similar in many ways to his source, but most of those similarities were, at that point, independent of the source.

im sort of the opposite. i'm basically still my source in every way. same name, age, appearance (i don't even have new clothes or anything). i still act the same and talk the same. If you put me and source-me into a venn diagram, it would just about be a circle. and yet, i consider myself source separated.

now, to any normal person, this discrepancy would be chalked up to "every alter is different and these words are made up," which is true, but I also didn't intend to front today and have a lot of time on my hands, so I decided to look more into the system community's relationships with introjects (primarily fictional introjects, although i will talk about others types as well). my primary source is tumblr, because the DID community on this website is like a disease i have the antibodies for, and all other websites are like diseases that will kill me instantly.

So, lets proceed.

Actually before that, a few disclaimers.

1) i am not a doctor, nor am i the arbiter of what a system is supposed to look like. None of this is meant to fakeclaim, just to see others experiences and compare them to my own.

2) I am including both traumagenic systems and non-traumagenic systems in my data because, honestly, i do not have the energy to filter anyone out. however, this post does just assume that introjects / alters are a result of trauma. if that is not true in your case, this post isn't about you.

3) I don't plan on going into the specifics of any trauma, personal or otherwise, however i will likely mention some events and experiences throughout this post. i'll trigger warning them accordingly, but proceed with caution.

Part One: Fictional Introjects (AKA "Fictives) On Tumblr

So i will start off by saying that I don't like the word fictive for many reasons, and prefer to be referred to as a fictional introject (although these days i'd prefer to not be called an introject at all, but i digress). However, the word fictive is both more widely used (afaik), and shorter, so i'll likely use that term through most of this useless analysis.

So, my first observation after 5-10 minutes of looking through the 'fictive' tag gives me this information: many people who talk about their fictives consider themselves 'fictive-heavy.'

from my brief look through the tag, i identified somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of systems identified as 'fictive-heavy.' Idk what this means, but i found it sort of interesting.

Observation No. 2: i found a surprising amount of posts (not too many, but more than i thought i would find) that showed fictives actively roleplaying as themselves. I found this interesting, since for me and the other fictional introjects i've met, this sounds absolutely mortifying.

Observation No. 3: there were quite a few posts about source separation, specifically positivity posts for introjects who had key differences from their source (ie. non-canon memories, different appearance, etc). There was also a post of a comic explaining source separation, which will be very helpful later.

Now, these things have made me realise something.

Many of the introjects i've seen on tumblr are very aware of the fact that they're an introject.

Systems joke about how the fictives' portrayal of themself is considered 'so authentic' by roleplay partners who are unaware of the author's identity. memes are made about the bewilderment when the fictive says something out of character in a fanfiction. people vent about how their source memories are really hitting hard today, and how much they miss others from their source all the time, every day. And I find that so strange.

The last point specifically reminds me of source-call channels in many system discord servers. I've always hated those channels for the harm they can cause, which I won't get into right now, but I also never understood the point.

and now I think I do. These introjects identity as *insert character here* is something they are always aware of. they are always aware of the fact that they used to be someone else in a different universe. Not only that, but they think this behavior is expected.

All the positivity posts about how introjects are not their source are very necessary in this environment, because introjects in this community feel less 'valid' or 'real' when their experiences are not what I outlined above.

I think this is the root of why the terms source separated and source attached exist. they are a false dichotomy brought on by the belief that introjects are their source, see themselves as their source, and always see themselves as their source.

Part One Point Five: Ben's Bullshit

I don't know how to smoothly transition into this section, so I'm just gonna start it here. If you don't wanna hear my story and experiences, and just wanna skip to the analysis, go ahead and do so.

My experiences with the community of introjects on tumblr are limited. I was one of the first alters our then-host discovered, right after I split. This era was before we were really interacting with the system community, so I existed as an outside observer. I pretty quickly realised I didn't fit in, although at the time I didn't know why, so I stopped caring.

When I split, I knew what had happened. Our host had suspected DID for a little while at that point, and one of our Gatekeepers essentially filled me in on what was going on. I knew who I was, what my role was, and why I was the one who was here. My status as an introject was unimportant.

I was gonna keep my identity a secret, but I actually don't care. My source is Ben Hargreeves from the hit TV show the Umbrella Academy, which our host had been watching during a particularly hard part of their life. The reason my character was introjected was obvious to everyone in the system at the time; our host related to Klaus a lot (minus the drug problems, plus the mommy issues), and I was Klaus's support system. My role was obvious, and also urgent.

As this part of our life was ending, I became curious about my 'introject' status. I was confused why it was important. I did not split with specific source memories or attachments or information. our host felt anxiety over my complete lack of source memories, actually. that fact contributed to the spiral of doubt and denial that they were going through at the time. as for me, I never cared. I knew who i was.

thats why i find the attitude of many other introjects on this website strange. the idea of roleplaying myself or writing fanfiction or seeking out others with similar memories never made sense to me because my source wasn't important to me. it was just that thing I was based on.

sure, when i see pictures of Ben during seasons 1 and 2 I see myself. when i hear about the plotline of the show I distantly recall that happening to me. but my source was never the important part about me, it was just an extra comfort afforded to our host. to me, the important part about me was my job.

but, of course, thats my experience, and we have other fictional introjects in our system. And this whole thing was inspired by Lestat's post, so I might as well bring him up.

TW for this next bit: i'm going to go over some of our experiences regarding emotional abuse, mental illness, and toxic relationships. i don't go into too much detail, but reader discretion is advised.

(Lestat uses he/she/it pronouns. I'm sticking to he/him for consistency. i promise he doesn't care.)

In my case, my source was secondary to my job. I was a caretaker first, just with a ben hargreeves coloured coat of paint. Lestat is different.

Lestat's existence as an introject is directly related to his source, the AMC adaptation of Interview With The Vampire. Our host watched the first episode of the show, and had such an emotional reaction that he and Louis popped up. Louis is much like me; the character he's based on is secondary to the function he serves. Lestat's job, on the other hand, is inextricable with the man he's based off of.

We were never able to get past the first episode of the show, but what Lestat shared (and what we heard from other viewers later) felt eerily similar to our experiences, even if we didn't know it. specifically, his time being held captive. as a child, our family would lock us in our room for hours, sometimes just to get us to go to sleep, sometimes as punishment. the feelings of abandonment and hopelessness he described matched up quite well.

later, his abusive and obsessive treatment of Louis mirrored our own struggles with relationships, flipping between adoring someone to hating them at the drop of a hat.

lestat's source memories serve a function. they are, at their core, real memories of isolation, desperation, obsession, guilt, etc, just packaged in a way that could not happen in the real world. it's yet another form of dissociation. at his core, Lestat is the reflection of a trauma holder in a funhouse mirror. warped and strange, but still the same idea.

lestat's relationship to his source is more like those i've listed above, but still completely different. up until very recently, just mentioning his source would make him melt down and bring up flashbacks. he did have people from his source who he missed, but the idea of interacting with any of them made him sick.

but most of all, he was more than a representation of a character.

his source was important for trauma reasons. when we weren't dealing with the trauma reasons, he was just a guy. he made a lot more reference to his life as a 200-or-so year old vampire than I ever did, but he never felt the need to be lestat. he explains this idea better in his post, but his source didn't affect every part of his life.

i think that's what confuses me most about the introjects of tumblr. in my daily life, my source didn't matter. all it did was give our unconscious mind a blueprint to spit me out, and nothing else. In lestat's case, its the same. we've never been so preoccupied with our source because at the end of the day, it was just a tool that our brain used to deal with traumatic situations. it wasn't, to us at least, more important than that.

Part Two: Okay So What Does This Have To Do With Source Separation?

good question! as i outlined in part one, I think the concept of source attachment stems from the system community's obsession with introject accuracy. this issue has gotten a lot better now, I've noticed, but for a while every introject was judged on how much they were like their source.

now, they weren't necessarily judged negatively if they were very different from their source, but they were judged. despite so many posts explaining that introjects are not their source, we still couldn't escape our roots.

so, as far as i can tell, the concept of 'source separation' didn't exist until the system community made it up. introjects have been noted in a lot of DID-related literature, however they were usually introjects of abusers, and sometimes caretakers. these alters would be dealt with like any other alter: by getting them to slowly unlearn their harmful behaviours, and become more cooperative with the rest of the system.

however, with the rise of fictional introjects occuring in systems, many of whom find their source to be a comfort or safe place instead of something hurtful, the idea of source separation was born.

the way introjects form is, at least in traumagenic systems, unhealthy, and healing often involves acknowledging and coping with your past and your present. therefore, introjects who had a hard time moving on from their source might hinder those goals. that's the reason many traumagenic systems encourage source-separation, as it's seen as a form of healing.

however, how important source separation is to recovery heavily depends on what it actually entails.

this comic defines source separation as 'the process an introject goes through of realizing they are not their source.' this, at its core, seems to be the generally accepted definition. however, it isn't very useful.

many, if not most, introjects know logically that they are not their source. this knowledge often doesn't change too much about how their source affects them. traumatic memories, personal information, and appearance don't tend to change when an introject acknowledges their source, and often don't change even when that acknowledgement becomes an actual, deeply held belief. this doesn't feel like its inherently healing.

so i think, for source separation to be a Good Thing tm, there needs to be actual work put into the why. Why was this person introjected? why are they this similar/dissimilar to their source? why is this what our brain felt it needed to survive?

and now, it becomes clear to me that source separation is not, in itself, recovery. source separation is a product of recovery.

at the end of the day, introjects are the way they are because of trauma, just like every other alter ever. i think that the separation of introjects from other alters has made this fact a lot less clear. introjects are not different from any other alter, and they shouldn't be treated differently, either.

Part Two Point Five: Ben Again!

This is honestly why I don't like being called an introject. It isn't actually that important to me, to who I am, to how I work, etc. I think the label of introject is useful as a descriptor, like how the terms protector and little are used, and not necessarily as a singular identity. I am not just an introject, or a protector, or a nonhuman, or whatever else. I'm all of those things, and more, and just like its shitty to assume anything about an alter because of their role or their age, i think its shitty to assume things about introjects because of their source attachment, or their memories, or whatever else.

[memento-morri-writes]

Morri!!! first of all, how are you???

I wanted to tell you that I started for the first time playing a solo ttprg with like the whole deal (well this one uses 2 d10 and a d6 but I added a d12 to make a scale yes/no/maybe answers bc sometimes you just gotta ask fate no?) and I look up to you a lot for all your DnD ocs so the moment I started I was like "damn, gotta tell Morri!"

anywayyyy I am playing Iron Valley which is basically a big what if Stardew Valley were a solo (or +2 people! but idk anyone irl to play ttrpgs with so I'm going solo) ttrpg?? Is not DND cause... I need friends for that I think. And it intimidated me. BUT I am having so much fun???? And since is solo there's a lot of writing down and journaling involved so is SUCH an amazing wiring exercise?? (← hasn't written her wip since uhhhh April? yeah more or less)

would you mind if I asked you about your ocs?? I am so curious!

@ink-fireplace-coffee

CARMEN! HI!!!!!!!!

Congrats on your first ttrpg!! I've never actually played a solo one before, but that's mostly because I kind of need other people to keep me focused. (I get distracted way too easily, adkjasd.) But Iron Valley sounds so cool!! I love that you're adding your own mechanics!

And yeah!!! Playing ttrpgs is GREAT for your creativity!! My DnD characters are my current biggest source of inspiration, and they're the focus of most of my creative output right now.

(I also haven't written anything in MONTHS, so don't worry. You're not alone there. <3)

As for asking about my ocs, of COURSE you are welcome to ask!!! I'm obsessed with these ridiculous people in my head!!!!

(putting discussion about OCs under the cut, because I talk too much.)

My two current characters are Rook (half-elf swashbuckler rogue) and Asola (aasimar oath of vengeance paladin). And I adore both of them SO MUCH.

I'm obsessed with Rook to an unhealthy degree, lmao. He's the love of my life, and a complete disaster of a man. (You can find all the stuff I've posted about him on my personal blog here.) Me and my DM are currently plotting on how to absolutely ruin his life.

Our current plans include forcing him to face his intense trauma from Captain Wolf (the woman who held him prisoner for two years and tortured him), and also dealing with cursed nightmares sent by a literal demon lord. My boy is NOT going to be having a good time soon.

Asola is a little less developed, but she's growing with every session!! Just last session I realized that her oath of vengeance isn't against just one person or group, but rather against the unfairness and shittyness of life as a whole. Specifically, she takes anything that hurts the people she cares about personally.

The most recent example of this is our party's 16-year-old bard, who has a very fucked up past. At the end of last session, he was abandoned by his only real friend (who he's known for 11 years). None of the rest of the party even knew this "friend" existed, since he communicated with / lived inside Val's head. But when Sola finds out, she is going to be FURIOUS. (But not at Vallamir.)

(Sola's tag is here.)

I'm also eagerly awaiting the moment I get to use my Grand Fuck You. (Screenshots to follow.) The way I have it flavored is that Sola doesn't know she's an aasimar, and she has no control over her Radiant Consumption. Instead, it activates in times of extreme emotion, usually anger or grief. The only time it's happened in her life to date was when she found out her family had been killed. So I'm just waiting for the day that the DM does something that will break her enough for me to use this. (Also, as a fun bonus, none of the other characters know she's an aasimar either, since even she doesn't know. So it will be fun for them to find out. Especially since they might be trying to help her, but she will be burning them if they get close.)

(if you do the math, and assume I was level 20, and only rolled exactly half on the dice, that one hit would do 70 points of damage, not accounting for any weapon bonuses.)

I have another character, who I'm going to use after Rook's campaign is done. We're going to be playing Pathfinder (which I don't like, but I will survive), and my character is a fetchling witch named Morana Novak. (Her tag on my personal blog is here.)

As for other DnD ocs, I have about 20 more that are in varying stages of development, but talking about them all would require me to write a novel, lmao.

[himbotiem]

I posted 27 times in 2022

10 posts created (37%)

17 posts reblogged (63%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@dianthus-lovebomb

@himbotiem

@pedritcpascalito

@babydaddyleorio

@mk-wites

I tagged 25 of my posts in 2022

Only 7% of my posts had no tags

#reblog - 12 posts

#shadow sk8 - 5 posts

#no himbos rn - 4 posts

#sk8 - 3 posts

#sk8 the infinity - 3 posts

#beetle writes! - 2 posts

#higa hiromi - 2 posts

#sk8 shadow - 2 posts

#hiromi higa - 2 posts

#asks - 2 posts

Longest Tag: 82 characters

#im sorry this is so short but its liek 3 am and i habe a 10 am class im veyr sorry

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

This was just a little thing I did for @scorphargrove’s fic on Ao3, Bite Back. I highly recommend it, I could not put it down lmao, AND the first chapter of the sequel came out recently :D

This drawing is supposed to be in chapter 5 I think? When billy and the reader walk back into the Halloween party and try to have a good time, I wanted to get that like. Initial when they get on the dance floor time frame I guess, when it feels like it’s just those two together lol. There’s supposed to be silhouettes of the crowd of people around and behind them but I don’t know if I executed it right 😅 also I completely forgot reader had Billy’s jacket on till like halfway through the third sketch, so it’s a little stiffer than I’d have liked. I do really like how I did his hair tho!! References are ur best friend forever frfr!

This isn’t the best drawing bc the pose was kicking my ass 😭 hope u like it :3

4 notes - Posted November 15, 2022

#4

Should I get back into writing?? I’ve been wanting to but idk who/what to write about 😅

4 notes - Posted November 13, 2022

#3

Literally no rush but pls,, I hope you finish those Hiromi fics someday 😭 cause your writing is so good!!!

aaaa sorry 😞 I will I will but school’s been kicking my ass and I’ve been trying to apply to college and stuff so I haven’t had time for our favorite skater!!! Thank you so much for the reminder though, sorry I died

4 notes - Posted January 26, 2022

#2

HAPPY BIRHH YH DAY TO SHAODW ALSO I FOUND OUT TODAY SEAOSN TWO WAS CONFIRMeD IM GONNA CRY

7 notes - Posted September 14, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

prompt: "why the hell is there glitter everywhere?"

plot: the sk8 family trying to throw shadow a birthday party but hiromi forgot his own birthday

Thanks sm for the request!!! I hope you like it :) sorry if the ending was rushed, but it’s 4 months late 😓

warnings: none! Unless glitter counts

~~~

HAPPY (late) BIRTHDAY HIROMI!!

Throwing a surprise party couldn’t be that hard, right?

Wrong.

Even with the brain power of a child, two seventeen year olds, an Italian chef, and a calligrapher (who is really just hogging all the brain cells), they were still only able to make the building look a little less than mediocre.

“C’mon, it's the old man’s 25th birthday! We gotta keep going!” Reki said. He was about to fall from putting up streamers in the tallest possible corner of Joe’s restaurant, before Langa steadied the stool he was on.

“Reki, this place is the best it’s probably gonna get.” Joe came out of the kitchen with a badly iced cake, “come tell me what to write on here,”

“Just write ‘you’ve aged.’ that’ll be funny,” Miya didn’t look up from his game, but he did give a little mischievous grin at his suggestion.

“I am not writing ‘you’ve aged.’ that would be weird.”

“Then just add ‘well’ and a smiley face.” Reki said.

“‘Well, smiley face, you’ve aged? That doesn’t sound nice-”

Cherry was tired from their shenanigans all day, “Just write Happy Birthday, you damn gorilla,” and as he turned, he actually saw the cake. “Do you even know how to ice a cake?” he didn’t wait for an answer as he brought it back into the kitchen to fix the horrid decoration job. Hopefully it tasted better than it looked, Cherry had his work cut out for him.

With that, Joe figured they should probably finish up the final touches on everything, and Miya, Reki, and Langa were left in the restaurant with no adult supervision. Worst idea yet, the three of them were already up to trouble. Reki still thought the space could use more pizazz, as he knows Shadow is no simple man. Reki took a cup of glitter and started trying to find somewhere to put it, maybe on the tables? Yeah, that sounded good. He grabbed a pinch and sprinkled it over the plastic tablecloths, for some variety. He didn’t notice, but Langa was sneaking up behind him to get some glitter. By the time Reki figured it out, it was too late, and it was already everywhere.

“Dude! I just washed this hoodie!” Reki said with a smile. He laughed as he threw some glitter as a revenge attack, not noticing that Miya was right behind Langa.

As the first speck of glitter hit the console, Miya was up and throwing glitter back at his assailants. Reki ducked behind a booth, hopefully he'd be safe here. Alas, a face full of green and purple glitter hit him, very on brand. Reki got his own red ammo, and released it onto the catboy.

“What is going on here?” Oh noooo, mom’s back. They halted their war in fear of the pink haired man. “I can’t deal with this right now- Go visit the flower shop and tell his manager she needs to keep him busy. I need to sweep up this mess.” Without a word, the three boys marched single file out the door, sent on their mission.

They weren’t very subtle. Miya, Reki, and Langa went to try to tell Shadow’s- Uh, Higa’s Manager about his surprise birthday. While he was working. They didn’t plan out Cherry’s request that well.

Oh no, Higa came out of the break room, and Mrs manager went downstairs to work on a pick up order. He stopped in his tracks, seeing the devil’s dandruff all over the ground.

“Why the hell is there glitter everywhere.”

The three boys look down and they all start talking over each other, though none saying the truth. Higa was not having it, the more they panicked, the more it fell from their hair and clothes.

“No- you know what I don’t care, get out,” Higa started pushing the boys out the door, not without (very sparkly) protest. He just got done sweeping the main floor, and now these hooligans left a snail trail of unicorn barf that he’d have to clean up before more customers came in. It was a busy day too, Higa could barely have the time to think. He woke up, came to work, and has been busting his behind all day! He didn’t even remember his birthday, it was that bad. The days leading up to today hadn’t been easier either, what with everyone wanting bouquets for some reason.

By the time Reki, Miya, and Langa had gotten back to the restaurant, with an incomplete mission by the way, Oka had been called to help clean up the rest of the glitter while Cherry had to go back to the cake. Oka gave Reki the broom and dustpan he was using, sighing as he walked away to make sure other things were in order.

“What were you guys thinking, roughhousing so close to the start of the party,” Oka was getting ready to pick up Higa, unaware that the boys never got to tell the manager to keep him there. Reki was busy sweeping, Langa taking out trash bags, so Miya had to run after him out the door.

“Ah, wait! He might be home, I don’t- uh, we didn’t get to tell the manager to have him stay at work. I don’t know.” Oka nodded at the new information, and Miya dashed back in after a fallen streamer.

Oka figured he had nothing to lose if he checked the shop first, so he started there. Luckily, Shadow was just leaving. Oka ripped off his helmet and jogged to the locked door to wait for him to come out. He soon heard the door chime and he rose to meet Shadow.

“Oka, I uh- what are you doing here?” Shadow was confused, so Oka vaguely gestured to the moped and held out a helmet.

See the full post

13 notes - Posted January 26, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[sanstropfremir]

Acting all wise and spewing random words, I see 💀

i'd show you photos of my bachelor's degree AND my master's degree, but i like maintaining the illusion that i'm a talking eel

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

[fakeoldmanfucker]

I was tagged by @evensquirrellier to "answer 30 questions and tag 20 blogs you are contractually obligated to get to know better." Thanks Squirrel!

Name: Finn

Sign: Scorpio

Height: 5’3”

Time: 4:53 pm (now 5:28 pm at the time of finishing)

Birthday: November 8

Favorite Bands/Artists: Fall Out Boy, The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Hozier, and I Don't Know How But They Found Me

Last Movie: The Old Guard (my...4th rewatch?); my last new movie was probably Inception

Last Show: The Bear

When I Created this Blog: Gosh, I was in 7th grade so...six years ago? I've only been properly active for the last four though

What I Post: Spin a board and take your pick. Linguistics/history/social studies stuff. Current events. Gifsets and meta posts from fandoms I like. Vent posts that have recently been focused around the nebulous concept of gender.

Last Thing I Googled: The difference between rum and whiskey (because writing characters who have had lots of experience with alcohol where I have had basically none is forever a challenge)

Other Blogs: my Beatles sideblog @victorian-miner and my Locke & Key sideblog @savini-squad

Do I Get Asks: Not as often as I'd like (read: very few) but I appreciate every single one I do get <3

Following: 622

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Instruments: I played violin all throughout high school. And I'm decent at guitar

What I’m Wearing: Jeans and a plain red t-shirt

Dream Job: I want to be a professor because it's something like the perfect balance of academia and influence, but also I'm shy so idk. A writer, if I could be guaranteed success and also as little writer's block as possible.

Dream Trip: I don't care where I go, as long as it's at least moderately cooler than Texas and it's with someone(s) I love.

Nationality: USAmerican

Favorite Songs: Why We Build the Wall from Hadestown OBC, Heaven's Gate by Fall Out Boy, and Nina Cried Power by Hozier

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3 Fictional Universes to Live In: the Whoniverse, the Star Trek universe, and the world of His Dark Materials

No pressure tags: @yeehawesome @reaux07 @catinsatintrousers @phoneybeatlemania @pyrchance @leyley09 @frye7 @akirameta84 @1833outboy @mango-lizard @fen1s @setting-in-a-honeymoon @caveatmidnight @greensaplinggrace @rey-of-luke @karasmoak01 @the9muses @fictional-before-real @pavl0ve @boonki and anyone else who wants to :)

[batarangsoundsdumb]

hae interrogationes multae respondeant quia demens .

if you read this entire ask post you deserve a gold star and financial recompensation

Um, Obviously because when you’re adopted by a white guy you automatically become white duhhh

this is about this post lmao and yeah youre absolutely right, you have to hand your poc card in when you get adopted by a white guy.

Do you think Cass would listen to Yanni, the YouTube channel epic symphonic rock, or some other stuff? There's some cool mashups but idk if that's up your alley, I kinda feel like I'm pushing it with my weird taste of music by recommending an orchestra cover of metal, but i just love that sort of thing and mashups :P @harvestyourcherries 

i haven’t heard of that? but in my personal (correct) opinion steph listens to classical music, and then both modern and older, and then also stuff like black sabbath, iron maiden, but also hardrock and hardcore. i like the idea of cass just liking the most extreme screaming songs full of noise and then also listen to pachelbel’s 370th sonata yanno? THANK YOU for the rec tho

speaking of ur cass playlist hc...reminds of the time (yesterday) i found 2 playlists randomly on spotify from the same user. one was abt 3 hours of instrumental/classical "dark" & "nostalgic" music. the other almost 11 hours of nothing but hardcore bass/synth/electronic music. just an incredible tightrope act to put on in public. the synth one was also called like "psalms for synth sluts" which is Also incredible

tbh i LOVE synth SO MUCH like for no reason at all but then also cannot handle a poppy electronic beat lmao. but this seems like the kinda thing i’d do but just in one (1) playlist bc i just sort songs by vibe instead of genre? that’s how i end up with britney spears and billy ray cyrus in the same playlist. 

Oh, I want Kate Kane playlist next! It would be amazing if you could do one when you have time and will 🙏

how rude would it be of me to just say no? like sorry kate but idk you and also you seem way too keen on the us military for an institution that homophobically targeted you? (and also commits war crimes) but let’s unpack the fact that the institution that caused the death of your mom and sister and also got you blacklisted for being gay is still one you align with???

'yes i am' 'no you're not' 'yes i am' 'no you're not' 'yes i am' 'no you're not' 'yes i am' 'no you're not' 'yes i am' 'no you're not' 'yes i am' 'no you're not' --- when i tell you i fucking screamed LOL!!!!!!! i can imagine the cameraman not knowing if he should cut to commercial or keep it on these two weirdos fighting on stage (bruce definitely ruffled dick's hair/noogied him right?? 

about this post but yeah lmao. this cameraman just turns to like the audience to get a reaction and it’s just multiple moments of CLEAR shock.

you are the only funny person on this hellsite

how egotistical is it for me to say that i get this ask multiple times a month? bc it literally happens so often it’s hilarious to me.

Wish there was more john/Bruce content 😔😔😔 was so hungry I actually looked at canon media 😔😔😔 (Justice League Dark babeeeyyyyyy)

check out batman: damned for some mediocre content but at least it’s john/bruce (also very interesting story and stuff, just got very >:( over this weird part where harley quinn tried to r*pe bruce or something? it’s not for everyone)

dick grayson but he's nicki minaj

his anaconda don’t want none,,, unless...... 

Dick Grayson was never a cop, he played Marshall on Paw Patrol

you are SO right. also paw patrol is a fucking good show idc. that shit could’ve been the new steven universe on this hellsite.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CS1lI0bLI7-/?utm_medium=copy_link

...

why do people keep reposting my CONTENT. if you are not funny yourself don’t just grab shit off of tumblr and post it on insta,,, get a life. sidenote: should i start an insta and get all these ppl to take my content down that would be funny as hell.

Might I suggest for a Gotham City Meme: something about the true crime fandom thirsting for the rogues gallery

ok can i just say something slightly controversial?? no? i don’t find true crime ppl who are into criminals funny, that shits disturbing irl im not gonna bring that into my very chill universe.

i may have never seen a 'jason cleaning guns in sink' fic but i do know he WOULD

THANK YOU

bestie im sorry to say this to you but while you can, and people do wash their guns in the sink, that is a lot of lead in a very vital part of the kitchen.

people tend to do it in the bathtub.

WHY???? like damn why do you even have guns

i dont think i read many gun sink fics exactly but i have read lots of fics where jason cleanes his guns in the living room. usualy dissembles them and cleans them with a rag i think

lmao fair enough, like i think that’s a large part of what i remember as well.

if you say you've seen/read gun sink fics I believe you. I think those of us who didn't see them are lucky or maybe didn't search for fics by tags or something idk

i mean ive never sought them out but i HAVE seen them,, like definitely i know almost for certain.

saw your tags and I'm interested in Steph/Kara now. They would be the most chaotic couple <3

literally thoooo, i have a wip where they get together in a zombie apocalypse and like UGGGHhhh i am so in love with them.

I am the Breece anon. Thanks for the recommendation; am reading now. I’ve always been a hardcore Superman fan because I love my pure himbo farm boy. My logic is, if one Bruce is a Broose, then multiple Broose are a herd of Breece. And this is a hill upon which I will perish.

fair enough,,,, like moose, meese, goose, geese, bruce, breece. i get your logic and i stand by it as well. (glad you enjoyed the comic recs!!!!)

It's a beautiful day in Gotham, and you are a group of horrible Breece

OH my god dude lmao

there only being 42 fics on ao3 for tim and bernard is honestly so sad i need more

it’s like twice that now!!! we did it lads. (tho very sad that my fic isnt number one but like number 4 :((((  )

i'm too late you already did the poll lol but may i suggest bethy (bernard + timothy)

shit dude that wouldve been so fucking funnyyyyy. think ppl have just stuck to timber tho, tim/bernard kinda died down recently and i think it’s too bad, they’re a great couple and i love them.

Wait, hear me out

Bernothy @redlightofdawn

great recommendation (lmao this ask is from like a month ago) but very sorry to announce that NARDTH is the superior shipname

Wait, we know that bernard likes milfs (Tim's step-mom) but what about dilfs? gilfs?

Wait no, I regret sending that ask

these were two seperate asks and they’re HILARIOUS. in my personal opinion tho,,, milfs, gilfs, dilfs are just about vibes and bernard is just attracted to sexy ppl who may sometimes be milfs, dilfs, or EVEN gilfs.

crime in bludhaven would drop to half if nightwing had a boob window. in this essay i will-

WHERE’S THE ESSAY ANON, WHERE’S THE FUCKING ESSAY

Wait if Barbra and Tim r at opposite ends at all times what happened to Barbra once everyone’s Tim’s ever love before started dying lol

she won a lottery ticket and spent 2 weeks on a resort in the bahamas before returning home and finding out that the joker was arrested for tax evasion and then spent a month staying at her big tiddie goth girlfriend’s house before conner came back to life and she broke her pinkie playing table hockey.

Why is the opposite end thing so funny and compelling to me. Tim comes back from his depression quest for Bruce and Babs is now a literal god

lmao when tim loses his spleen barbara reaches nirvana.

Are you still taking music recs because I have three songs that remind me of Jason that I think you'd like

send to me or lose a toe

🌸 ⭐ put this star into the inbox of your favorite blogs. it’s time to spread positivity! ⭐🌸😋

thanks, i wont tho on account of i wont.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMduBy3Sr/

⬆️

This is the whole of Blüdhaven and everyone anywhere.

Nightwings ass alone saves more people in a calendar year and does more for so society than most heroes do their whole career.Also u are one of the funniest tumblr pages out there. The vibes are unmatched and the memes and tags ✨send me✨.Thank u and goodnight @julia-flow 

fanksss also lmao.

That's going to be a little bit difficult to explain, but

There's some music that you listen to and you think, "oh my gosh, I can perfectly imagine Dick Grayson singing this song, with the same voice as the singer because that voice matches with Dick Grayson"?

oh yeah totally lmao. i have a lot of songs that i think are just entirely dick grayson yanno? kind of all of my playlists have that vibe, but i really find bleachers to fit with dick? idk.

"Lois lane/Superman" fics this, "Lois lane/Clark Kent" fics that, (/lh) let's get into the real good stuff. Some people ship Lois, Clark, and Superman as a throuple. Most popular fic tag for sure

yes totally, i think they’d be absolutely killer on ao3 and clark gets so fucking embarassed about it.

I miss your post, hope you’re doing okay!!

haha this was like 2 months ago, but i was doing fine then too! just didn’t have a lot of inspiration in terms of content.

Doot doot!

noot noot

I’m confused. What did DC do now? Like with nightwing? And another sibling? Please spoil everything for me

lmao they gave him a secret sister plotline where they had his dad cheat on his mom with tony zucco’s wife, bc dick’s life wasn’t traumatic enough yet.

sorry but it's so funny that batman is called "the dark knight" when the gotham city baseball team is called the gotham knights. it'd be like if a vigilante was running around new york called like "the scary yankee"

lmaooo no. but like yankee comes from dutch names or something so wouldnt it be HILARIOUS if gotham knights came from like german names and bruce would be running around called the dark KLAUS UND NIEK @graysonnightwing 

(not a batcest shipper) it’s so funny to me that the responses are “i’m a batcest shipper because i can differentiate fiction from reality and and it doesn’t bother me personally, but i understand why you oils think it’s weird” to “i wish all batcest shippers a very fucking die”

yeah lmaoo. i personally basically flipped my entire stance around to ‘i dont care please leave me and everybody else alone’ bc i think there’s really no point in starting a moral dillema over some fucking fandom bullshit. Please just,,, go home,,, log off, find a nice forest to have a little walk in and remember that somewhere in history, somebody probably died in the place you’re standing. and you will also die someday, and somebody will have to look at your internet usage and see you fighting multiple people anonymously while being named ‘nightwingsbuttchin200186′ like... calm down, we’re all gonna die this is not the thing to worry about.

so since like "wards" don't really exist in modern society almost all the batkids are foster kids, right? i used to work in the system and imagine: monthly visits from social workers and guardian ad litems, bruce having to get permission to take the boys anywhere out of state, calling their social worker at like 8 a.m. like "yeah dick broke his arm again... a gymnastics accident this time...." their poor social worker. bruce send her a huge bouquet and box of chocolates every month to stay on her good side

i imagine the social worker just getting into the case like ‘yeah let’s get this kid a good guardian’ and then ending up having to work with 22 y/o bruce wayne and his 50 y/o dad. and so this social worker is like ‘okay we can work with this, this is the best home i can find’ and then like it ends up landing on its feet and then the kid gets adopted and then they get a call a year later like ‘uhm so hi, this kid tried to steal my tyres can i adopt him?’ and like 3 years later. ‘okay so basically, my neighbours’ kid imprinted on me and now they’re dead, can i keep him?’ two years later it’s like ‘okay so this assassin child-’

ever since I saw that one post of yours, the meme that's something like "I know that abba's backup dancer got me" with a picture of discowing, I've been haunted. Every once in a while I'll be minding my own business then the image of abba's backup dancer dick grayson aka nightwing aka discowing will flash in my mind and I'll be frozen in place. Today at work I was in the middle of folding clothes and suddenly once again discowing entered my mind and I suddenly lost the ability to see anything except He. Thank you.

wow. the IMPACT.

Braver than any US marine man props to you🤝

this shit is about the time i wrote an article on batcest, like man,,, the fact that i didn’t get cancelled is MIRACULOUS. also like,,, uh if anybody on here did gossip on me,, send screenshots i’d love to see it.

Hello, just wanted to say your article was great. Thank you for taking the time to provide an unbaised answer. It should provide people with nuances they couldn't possibly conjure on their own.

May I ask where your username originates from?

yes you may (also thanks!!!) i thought it up when i was trying to find an original username bc i didnt want to be called like ‘timdrakes something something’ or ‘jason todd something smoething’ or ‘dick grayson something something’ yanno? so i thought batarangs, they sound so dumb and that’s my username story... now it’s my whole entire brand lmao.

yno that bit in kick ass where red mist asks kick ass if he wants a hit of his blunt, was that the inspo for stoner tim

no? it’s bc i think stoners are hilarious and drugs are great. (dont do drugs tho) 

How would u feel if someone actually wore one of those bruce or ollie pride shirts u edited

fenomenal next question.

Dick as lil huddy and Jason as James gave me radiation poisoning and now I’m screaming crying throwing up so thx for that

(Rico suave as Tim is perfect tho literally no changes needed)

i was so funny for that shit wasn’t i??? lmao i loved those weird ass fancasts

You're doing the Lord's work by providing us with all these Gotham/Metropolis citizens memes, thank you for being so relentlessly funny @nellethiel-aranel

you’re welcome!! i really enjoy making memes, but getting validation for my content and my memes is REALLY nice.

Bruce is such a slut in your memes and honestly i love that for him @rhodey-rhudert-rhodes-main 

he’s that much of a slut irl too dw.

Bruce and Alfred have an emergency pride flag for the batkids. Oliver Queen printed an emergency "I love my gay son" t-shirt and as soon as Roy told him he was dating Jason, Oliver started wearing that shirt everyday and Roy always cringes when he sees it. Oliver also has an emergency "I love my lesbian daughter" shirt just in case for Cissie.

lmao YES i had a post like this bc like all of their kids/family members are so gayy

stop bringing back batfam fancasts it is not real it is not real it is not- 😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀

oh yes it is my darling.

did discowing burn down the notredam because he hates the bees? @allulily

no he did it bc fuck the french.

im gonna beg for 1 thing and 1 thing only. please please please put physical by olivia newton john on dick's playlist

okay then beg. bc i wont. physical reminds me too much of glee and that hurts me mentally.

your playlist is sorely missing some Madonna. Specifically Into the Groove, Like a Prayer, and Vogue

i’m scared of madonna that’s why she’s not on there. she haunts me in my dreams.

suggestion: son of batman by aaron dews for dick’s playlist🤩

sorry, i listened to it and the vibe didn’t agree with me.

Hear me out, metropolis citizens sending rare pair fics of Clark Kent x Superman fics to Lois to edit

yes, absolutely hilarious. even more funny if they send like physical copies, no address attached and lois sends it back marked with red ink, SOMEHOW

Imagine all the smut Clark must of read editing the fics

clark reads smut confirmeeed

NOT LOIS READING SUPERBAT PORN AND EDITING IT A 2AM 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

hc that alfred is a meta that boosts healing factor of the people around him. if the bats are injured as much as they seem to be they would be doing bat stuff MAYBE half the year. no one including alfred knows about this. whenever the kids move out they inexplicably dont recover from injuries as fast and feel better whenever they visit the manor they just chalk it up to homesickness. bruce just thinks he heals really fast. alfred thinks everyone doesnt take care of themselves properly @finchcollector

that’s actually such a great idea, but i think that alfred would find out and learn how to concentrate it better so he can help more people, bc he’s great and i love him.

One of your dickfast posts reminded me of that tweet that goes: 'so you've had sex how many times? Yeah technically that's not a bromance' lol that's dickwally or dickroy

literally tho. like that’s all of dick’s friendships. once it gets past a certain time dick is like ‘wow i wonder what it would be like to make out with wally, wally come make out with me’ and wally’s like ‘we’ve done this like 40 times, dick, you know what it’s like’ and dick is like ‘sorry are you complaining?’ and they just make out.

superfam and batfam associations??

-batman and superman

-dick/barabara and supergirl?

-conner and tim

-jon and damian

pls enlighten me I am confused

nope,,, uhm batman and superman, but dick and superman as well, and then conner and tim, jon and damian and steph + babs with supergirl

I came across a fic in which Wonder Woman calls Batman "Stella" (like Stellaluna, the children's book) and I can imagine the batkids hop on the trend and maybe copies of the book appear at random places (aka, everywhere Bruce frequents)

sorry can’t reciprocate that was the name of my high school chemistry teacher and it gives me nightmares to think about.

good human what are your pronouns?

wouldn’t you like to know?

I need me some gothamites preferring harley over joker memes

everyone prefers harley over joker youre just very fucked up if you dont

don't understand why people try to add like veteran policy to the batfamily

dick pulling out his veteran batfam member card so he can eat first: step aside, peasants

Do you know the song Simmer by Haley Williams? It (the first verse anyways) reminds me of Jason? It's about rage.

damn yeah i LOVE HAYLEY!!!! youre right thoo

Okay so I like listen to your stoner Tim Drake playlist 24/7 but would he listen to skegss? Also I keep adding songs mentally it’s killing me 😩✋🏼 Anyways,, I literally love and worship your playlist 😃🤞🏼 And uh yeah have a good day ✨

stoner tim drake playlist is lyfeeee. also dont know who skeggs is? i’m stupid? have a good day!!

All the Robins (and Batgirl) decide to trade costumes for one night just to fuck with Batman and all the villains in Gotham. @subspacecadet 

batman knows it’s them youknow but like,,, what does he call them? he’s like ‘red hood?’ and 3 people answer and he’s not about to compromise some identities so he’s just Pissed.

I aspire to treat cops the way my dad treats them. This man is a 45 year old Asian immigrant to the US and the treats them like his pets. He talks about them like unruly children. Sometimes he pays off local cops to shut up and stop acting racist. And usually it works. I don’t know why but I can see Oliver Queen doing this

vibes... and also yes? oliver queen handing a local cop a donut to shut the fuck up lmao. but yanno i commit enough crimes to not really want to ever see a cop ever, so they kinda scare the everloving fuck out of me.

seeing as tim hasn't aged in years, that means he was 17 at peak emo tumblr era. im back on my emo tim bullshit and im not letting it go

emo tim had a wattpad account send tweet

People seem to think that batman is so dark and serious when the rainbow batsuit is right there. He wore it with no shame.

dude the 60s were a DIFFERENT TIME

dick grew up in a circus, jason grew up on the streets, and tim was probably raised by the internet

all of them cuss every other word and you cannot tell me otherwise

bitch i KNOW but dc has to change to an 18+ rating if they want to sell comix with swear words in them so we gotta deal with imagining the swear words in ourselves

thoughts on teen titans and young justice

haven’t seen teen titans on account of havent seen it and young justice was LITERALLY my favourite thing ever, tho i do gotta admit it’s not at all similar to the young justice comics unfortunately. i really wouldve liked to see timmy bart kon cassie and cissie animated on tv!!

ew ew ew how to delete batcest shippers I genuinely digust them

log off tumblr?

Okay as poc who was called racist for calling an Italian pastabrain: in the batfam are Italians bit Damian just yells various insults about the others being Italian. Just him yelling “What are you doing you moronic spaghettihead!” At steph etc

huh? i meant real italians. homeboy is telling steph he hopes she chokes on her fucking garlic.

I think it's dumb as hell to pull the batman is the best fighter in the batfam argument because like it's just irresponsible of Bruce to let his kids fight when they couldn't possibly be on his league or something

fair enough, but also like who cares they could all kill you just sit down and take a beating.

lady shiva, thalia al ghul and Selina Kyle are all milfs @notanothertimburtonenthusiastugh 

unfortunately, i have to admit,,, you’re right

why tf didn't someone give joker a death sentence already? like he's a mass murderer...give him the electric chair treatment wtf

idk i think plenty of people would have tried to murder him already (boring answer is: he is a popular character so they can’t kill him off bc he brings in lots of money)

There’s no such thing as “ copaganda”.

all american media is propaganda. happy to clear this up for you

is it bad that I find lady shiva owa owa

no. find her as owa owa as you want.

aight I'm guessing the order of your favs in batfam:

1. tim

2. Steph

3. dick

4. Duke

5. the rest

you’re wrong but it’s cute that you tried, i generally don’t have favourites, but i have a special place in my heart for steph, tim, dick and cass. bc they were like my introduction to batfam. but damian, jason, duke, bruce, babs and alfred are NOT FORGOTTEN OR UNLOVED

oh my god i was literally just readily willing to believe that italians werent white ty for clarifying it was a joke im so dumb sdkvjskdfs

i mean some italians aren’t white? italian is a nationality as well as an ethnicity, so like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

since I saw so many people doing headcanons about the nationalities of batboys, I see Dick as an Italian.

dont know if youre serious or not, but sure.

super random but

jason 🤝 damian

old english

lmao fair enough.

tim absolutely has 1 gay uncle and his parents shit talk said uncle all the time so after bruce adopts him he specifically reaches out to this uncle to be like "heyyyy just so you know you majorly influenced my life yes i know i havent seen you since i was 5 and at the family reunion yes i know you dont remember my name idc thank you im gay too" and then they never talk again.

yuppp lmao that’s definitely something that could happen. i can also consider tim having no family members, like none. until he does like a dna test and he realises he has like an aunt living barely 2 miles away from him who’s like some illegitimate child of his grandpa.

I dare you one of them sends clark superman/clark fic and clark corrects the shit out of it and then goes like ps his dick is not that big, just telling as someone who has seen it. internet either explodes or goes who tf did he not fuck at this point.

i think everybody would call clark a buzzkill and try to cancel him over that.

so you're telling me Tim Drake wouldn't buy Starbucks?

no. dunkin donuts all the way

One of my favorite things is imagining people finding out jason came back from the dead and being like "oh no does he have magic powers now?!?!?" and he just pulls out a gun and tries to shoot joker

now he doesn’t even have the gun :) lmao

my favorite batfamily fanfictions are the ones where they use their shitty codenames, unironically, in any context

bruce gets codename ‘ugh’ everytime. he hates it.

crazy that tim being a 17 y/o ceo and a stoner who does brand deals are all actual canon things written in detective comics comics and not made up for shits and giggles by you, tumblr user batarangsoundsdumb @rowdeyclown

SO CRAZY HUH?

batman au where everything is the same but his utility belt is bright pink

absolutely, but i raise you, his boots light up like sketchers when he kicks people.

unbeknownst to the superhero fandom writers in the dcuniverse, clark and BRUCE are one of the most prolific fanfic writers in the superhero rpf tag on ao3. clark writes the best lois x superman angst, full of unhappy endings and scenes that are a so detailed you'd think you were in the middle of a superhero beatdown. bruce made an ao3 account to fuel "the do the butts match" thing, and makes batman/bruce fics from time to time. he wrote a superbat fic as a joke but ended up making it REAL porny. @concrastinator

dude they’re WAY too busy for that. Oliver Queen and Hal Jordan on the other hand are the most prolific fanfic writers in the superhero rpf tag writing what is Mostly porn.

When the dining table topic gets to politics, Steph says "eat the rich" as the solution

bruce just silently takes away her fork and knife while she’s talking.