#and we're /operations/

[stil-lindigo]

ARTISTS FOR PALESTINE 🇵🇸 - On the 6th and 9th of March, I'll be doing art requests on stream with other notable artists to raise money for Operation Olive Branch and the PCRF.

I'm incredibly lucky to be counting quite a few big names in the roster, including known Jesus and Odysseus enthusiast @wolfythewitch, the extraordinary fanartist @denimcatfish, and the incredibly talented @troubledminnesotan, as well as Lilypichu from OfflineTV.

You'll be able to watch the streams on the day of the event either on my twitch channel here, or via the links provided by the artists below.

Lilypichu

Cuptoast

Akairosu_

Sevvanto

Wolfythewitch

[disgracefulthings]

Modern Day Platonic Cumplane AU where Shen Yuan meets struggling author, Shang Qinghua. He realizes that Shang Qinghua is the author of his most hated story, and rips into him. After he is done, Shang Qinghua explains how he currently can't afford to write a good story, and Shen Yuan, a rich kid who has done nothing with his life at this point, decides to help fund his story in exchange for being his editor, and Shang Qinghua agrees

After seeing the state of Shang Qinghua's apartment and all of his possessions, Shen Yuan decides 'hell naw', and has Shang Qinghua move in with him (he had an extra room) and replaces all his stuff. They end up becoming close friends, and Shen Yuan learns that being an editor is fulfilling for him

While those two get along, their friends think something else is happening. They believe that Shen Yuan has become a Sugar Daddy, and Shang Qinghua is his Sugar Baby, and they are NOT happy about that

It does not help when they go to Shen Yuan and tell him that Shang Qinghua wants his money, Shen Yuan replies 'I know, that was part of our arrangement'

Hearts are broken and many people want to break them up for their own selfish reasons (whether because they want to be with Shen Yuan or Shang Qinghua, or in Shen Jiu's case, doesn't want his baby brother to date a freeloader)

Meanwhile Shang Qinghua and Shen Yuan are oblivious and are having the time of their lives working on their masterpiece

[sunshinem0ths]

playing 999 with my friend currently and this is my understanding of the plot so far

[caluette]

sometimes i draw stupid things on twitter and forget to post them here.. soo, doodle dump! also ft. the first time i ever attempted to draw monty and charlie (last image)- monty hasn't changed much, but i don't think i've drawn charlie with actual eyes more than maybe twice since that first sketch

[the-mpreg-guy]

read someone say something along the lines of "why would dean presume castiel wouldn't be down for a relationship especially after meeting multiple angels that desire relationships" while examining why dean never acted on his feelings for cas. and i think the answer is that i think "the end" and hester's dialogue about him corrupting castiel, might lead to him believing (someone who truly believes that he's poison to everyone around him) that castiel becoming human-like would be devastating to castiel (this is wrong, cas loves humanity! and as long as he's still got some mojo he seems fine with becoming more and more human emotionally. at least imo).

and there's the fact that the only time castiel seems to desire sex is when he's human and afterwards he shows very little interest in any sex, so i dont blame dean for presuming that castiel's desire for a romantic relationship was only a result of him being "corrupted" with humanity.

also like. dean said "i need you" and castiel left immediately on his own and implied/outright stated he didn't trust dean. idk man if i was dean i'd assume castiel wouldn't desire a relationship but would be happy to still be his friend.

like am i making sense

Oh, great observations here.

Like, Dean's best friend is an angel. Which is a species which Dean has observed being either incredibly adverse to having sexual/romantic relations with humans, or break their own minds and/or die trying to have sex/romantic relations with humans. The first angel he had a good interaction with was Anna, and then a few months later she was trying to kill Sam and his parents. And this is before we even get into the Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets.

So there's the whole angel-shapedness of it all, but then there's the whole "what does Dean and Cas' relationship actually look like" of it all. From Dean's perspective, caring about Dean breaks Cas. Hester saying that he corrupted him, Cas rebelling for him, etc etc. Also assuming Endverse was real (or at least a plausible future), then being loyal and staying with Dean pretty much guarantees Cas going off the rails and dying. And Honeybee Cas is just Endverse Cas repackaged, confirming these fears.

And then there's the fact that Cas never once indicates that he's sexually interested in Dean. Or men in general. There is not indication from Cas's end that sex with Dean is something that he wants, or a romantic relationship for that matter. And sure, you could put some of that on Dean for brother-zoning him at the end of S12 (I have my own thoughts about why that conversation occurred and why Dean repackaged their relationship in a brotherly context), but even before that conversation took place Cas hadn't shown an interest in men, or Dean.

So that pretty much covers the whole "will Cas have sex with me" portion of Dean's observations, which pretty much seems like a resounding no. But I really think that the reason Dean assumes that Cas doesn't want him that way has to do with Cas' lone wolf behavior. Because the way Dean shows love is to grab onto the people he cares about and never let go and be around them as much as possible and always be within arms-reach. But how Cas shows love is by excluding the people he loves from difficult choices to protect their peace. Neither of these actions are compatible with each other.

Dean gets vulnerable with Cas, and Cas unpacks that by deciding that Dean needs protected in a specific way. Dean has horrific trauma from hell and the apocalypse? Great, Cas is just never gonna ask Dean for help with the civil war in heaven. Dean is trapped in purgatory with him right after he tells Cas that he needs him to "nut up" and have his back? Perfect, Cas is going to lead all the monsters away from Dean so that Dean will be safe (mind you Cas does not know about the portal). Honestly I could sit here and list every single instance in s9, s10, s11 and so forth where Cas leaves Dean or makes choices without Dean to protect him, but we'd be here all day. And Metatron phrased it better with his "you draped yourself in the flag of heaven to save one man" iconic speech.

From Cas' perspective, all of these decisions make sense, but from Dean's? All Cas does is leave him. He knows that Cas cares about him, and even though Cas never calls him his best friend, he knows that he's that to Cas. Like there's just no question there. But from the way Cas never hangs around or asks Dean for help, he just has no way of assuming that Cas wants him the way he wants Cas.

I don't blame either character for the miscommunication. If they had less on their plates, maybe it would be less understandable, but given they're juggling back to back apocalypses and Lucifer plot armor every other day, it's not like getting into a relationship with the other is their main priority. They just want each other to make it to the next day.

[ohgreat-moretapes]

Tim I noticed a lot of indigenous patches on your jacket, are you Native?

Idk what my dad was 'cause I never knew him, but yeah my mom is (or... Was.. I guess..) Muscogee, the tribe native to the part of Alabama I'm in.

If I remember correctly she came to Alabama from Oklahoma (where a lot of Natives were displaced to in the 1800s) to "get back to her roots."

But yknow, I was separated from her in childhood (which tbh is upsettingly common for Native families) and I was raised in a very white very Catholic asylum so I'm not as connected to the culture as I'd like to be.

-Tim

[starcurtain]

your phaidei essay....chef's kiss so good!!! amazing read, thank u.

I just wanted to say stuff about the part in the end: there is lore reason for mydei to leave - 3.1 established nikador was taking huge part of black tide monsters and without them we're having grove catastrophe. my question is why they aren't even trying to get some sort of connection with mydei (hello trailblazers? teleports? after we make a deal of them when we arrived in 3.0?) but suspension of disbelief and drama for story purposes are a must

also about queer-bating and queer-codding part also, 100% agree that cautiously optimism and let hoyo cook best way forward. there is one more chapter in the book for mydei, so he certainly comes back one more time at least (hopefully more).

(also like you said, there is anaxa and I woudn't be surprised if they decide to maximize fujo involvement and bait with him and hi3 feels another part of fujo audience 😂 if thats a case i will watch with curiosity but honestly after this patch my interest is set)

See, I agree that they tried to give a reason for Mydei having to go off to Castrum Kremnos to fight the black tide, except they didn't take the time to provide enough explanation there to close the obvious plotholes:

We're told Mydei needs to go back to Castrum Kremnos because he has a duty to hold off the black tide, which is what Castorice told Gnaeus they would do with his coreflame. Cool, theoretically Mydei taking on that specific duty makes perfect sense.

...Except that they never bothered to explain why literally being in Castrum Kremnos is necessary to do that. Tribbie doesn't have to stay in Janusopolis to open Century Gates. Aglaea doesn't have to stay in the Grove to maintain Mnestia's golden webs. Why would Mydei have to stay inside the literal Blade of Fury to wield Nikador's power? Is he actively hunting the blade tide using a psychic connection that can only be accomplished by staying in the vicinity of the Blade of Fury at all times? The game never bothers to explain this, making it look like there's no valid plot explanation for Mydei's sudden need to depart.

All it would have taken to solve this issue is to throw in a brief scene where Mydei discusses with Gnaeus exactly what it will mean for him to take on Nikador's duties. All they had to do was add one line: "In order to stave off the black tide, you will need to inhabit the Blade of Fury." Like, just a single line could have done the trick to at least lend some tiny plot credence to Mydei not being able to ever return to Okhema.

There wasn't even remotely any foreshadowing to this in 3.0 either. What would Aglaea have done if Phainon beat Nikador's trial? "Oh, okay, bye Phainon, guess you have to go live in Castrum Kremnos all by yourself now!" Why wasn't there a single discussion in 3.0 that taking on Nikador's power would mean leaving Okhema forever? Why let that plot point just swerve in out of nowhere in 3.1?

However, even if they had managed to explain why Mydei needed to stay in Castrum Kremnos permanently... I think the dev team forgot the entire point of Castrum Kremnos in the first place.

It's both a city-state... and a mobile war machine. That's literally what made the Kremnoans such effective conquerors: They didn't have to string out massive supply lines to fuel their armies; they literally just picked up their entire nation and moved to wherever they wanted to conquer!

The entire reason that Aglaea and Tribbie had so much trouble finding Castrum Kremnos prior to the events of 3.0 was because it had floated away.

So... What is the lore-related reason Mydei can't just... move Castrum Kremnos to the sky over Okhema?

The devs didn't even bother to put in the slightest hand wave, another thing that wouldn't have been too hard to do: "Castrum Kremnos's machina have been dormant for years. It may not be possible to move the fortress freely anymore. I'll search for a way, but until then, I won't be able to return to Okhema."

So... While I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say "Perhaps they have some plot-related reason they need Mydei to go stay in Castrum Kremnos. I'm willing to give them at least a little wiggle room and not claim immediately that this was 100% bury-your-gays to get rid of him after 3.1..." I'm not willing to say they did it well at all. 😂

The fact that they didn't even bother to add a hand-wavey lore explanation does make Mydei's departure look worse than it is. Since they never bothered to explain why it was necessary and never bothered to explain why they couldn't take advantage of their own world-building to avoid the separation, the whole "I will never return" plot looks especially egregious. The timing is just insanely suspicious and lines up unfortunately well with the notion "write the gay romantic interest out of the main plot as soon as his banner ends."

All that said, I'm not a downer on Amphoreus's plot. At the very least, I have a feeling we'll see some kind of payout to the "in another life" concept. And we already know Mydei will still have some role in the plot.

I'm letting the devs cook... but still side-eying their writing decisions, lol.

[redgoldblue]

sell your fear and leave me standing here

buck/tommy, 12.9k, T, triple pov (Buck; Tommy; Eddie). yet another 8x06 fix-it, featuring gay bingo, firefam input, and bonus Lucy Donato

The first Eddie hears of the breakup is, “Eddie, what the fuck just happened?”

Eddie’s finished his beer and is still basking in a post-Risky Business glow, and for a moment he thinks Buck’s talking about the fact that he’s not wearing pants.

“I don’t know, Buck,” he replies, just for fun. “You tell me.”

“Eddie,” he repeats. That makes Eddie sit up straighter, except that his shirt is way slipperier than he thought and his legs are stuck to the couch, and the combination somehow leads to him half-sliding half-falling off the couch as Buck continues, “I think Tommy just dumped me.”

It also mean his initial response is, “Ow!”

Buck peers down at him. “Yeah. Want a hand up?”

“I got it.” He pushes himself back up and collapses back on the couch. “You think?” he asks.

“No, he definitely did. I checked.”

“What the fuck?”

“That’s what I said!”

“That’s-” Well, the glow is abating now. If the fall hadn’t done it already. “Okay, tell me what happened.”

“It was great. We were great. And I scared him off. I think. Maybe. We were going to a movie. And then he called me Buck.”

Eddie bites back on his first response of ‘that’s your name’, because after a few seconds considering it he does get how that would seem weird after six months of ‘Evan’. Instead, he makes a ‘go on’ gesture.

“I told him about Abby. And I’d talked to Josh. I didn’t tell him that, that happened before, but Josh talked to me.”

“Hang on, hang on, rewind,” Eddie says. At this rate it might take him until tomorrow’s shift to get the full story, but he needs to clarify something here. “What about Abby?”

“Oh, right, I only told Maddie. Yeah, he was engaged to Abby. And I didn’t tell him that was my Abby when he told me, because, I mean-”

“What the fuck,” Eddie supplies. It seems to be the phrase of the moment.

“Yeah,” Buck agrees. He’d emptied his beer bottle about a minute after sitting down, and rather than reaching for another one he’s just been turning it round and round in his hands. He stops, now, and starts picking at the corner of the label instead. “And I talked to Josh about it, because I was talking to Maddie about it and he was there, and he- he gave me a speech about Glee, and it made me think, I guess, so then before we went to the movie I told Tommy-”

“Oh, god, Buck,” Eddie interrupts, because there’s so much happening here and it’s all heading in a truly terrible direction, and maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they started work before he has to hear the end of it. “Did you tell him you love him? Before he broke up with you?”

“I mean, no,” Buck says, but it’s completely unconvincing and he’s drooped even further into the couch. “Worse.”

“Worse?”

Buck’s next words are mumbled under his breath, and it genuinely takes Eddie a moment to figure out what they are. “I-asked-him-to-move-in.”

Eddie blinks, processes that, then reaches over to grab another beer bottle. He gently pulls the now thoroughly de-labelled one from Buck’s hands and replaces it with good hard alcohol. Then he says, “So just to be clear, you asked him to move in with you after six months, and he dumped you for it? Do you want me to kick his ass? I absolutely can, he’s not as good at Muay Thai as he thinks he is.”

Buck chuckles. It sounds a little like a dying frog. “No. He said- I don’t know, I went too fast. He didn’t say that. He said he wasn’t going to be my last.”

“Dick,” Eddie says, because Tommy is his friend and he’s sure there was more going on, but Buck is his best friend who just got dumped, and that requires a little name-calling.

Buck’s face scrunches up, eyes closed, as he says, “He said I was going to break his heart.”

“So he broke yours first?”

“Yeah,” Buck says, and it sounds strained enough that Eddie slips closer on instinct. It’s a good thing he did, because Buck continues, “I guess so,” then turns towards him, and suddenly there’s the weight of a Buck against him and a wet feeling on his shoulder. “Oh, fuck, Eddie,” and the next words come out on a whole-hearted sob, “I loved him.”

~

The second thing Eddie hears about the breakup is, “Eddie, what the fuck happened, man?”

keep reading on ao3

[tricitymonsters]

Fellow USAmericans, remember that today (Feb 28) is economic blackout day! Do your best to spend Zero Dollars! Int'l friends, please back us up by avoiding American companies!

Thanks!

[sirsparklepants]

Listen. I love all the Honda Odyssey porn as much as the next bitch but I think I'm potentially the only one who DOESN'T think they fucked then. Hear me out! I think it's SO much funnier if they literally fought until Wade passed out and then Logan took the time to tie him up so tightly it's like he was tucking him in for bed and then laid down to sleep next to him and they didn't even fuck first. Also, it's more fun for me personally if the sexual tension is just sublimated the whole movie. You kidnap a guy, let him intimately get to know your insides, literally combine atoms with him while a song about blowjobs plays, and take him home to meet your family and you STILL haven't fucked yet. It's hilarious.

[chaikachi]

A sketch I've had lying around for months but decided to finish after @sakuranights1 managed to write a fic that goes with it SUSPICIOUSLY well.

You can read it here, it's delightful!!

[arkiwii]

Liberi head-wings. We can call those "feathears". Feather ears.

Coined by redditor Vthesage.

this is awful whoever came up with this deserves to eat only seeds for a whole week as punishment

[saintmelangell]

i think a lot about how christians use the akedah as a foreshadowing of the crucifixion because god offers his son for a sacrifice as abraham does isaac. the problem with this idea is that its completely detached from its source material. i think the popular reading remains that abraham's faith in god was so complete that he would have killed isaac if it came to that, but there are some rabbinic readings that suggest abraham and isaac both knew god wouldn't follow through demanding isaac as a sacrifice. this is why abraham goes through with it up to the point that he does.

i think a lot about how christians use the akedah as a foreshadowing of the crucifixion because god offers his son for a sacrifice as abraham does isaac. the problem with this idea is that its completely detached from its source material. i think the popular reading remains that abraham's faith in god was so complete that he would have killed isaac if it came to that, but there are some rabbinic readings that suggest abraham and isaac both knew god wouldn't follow through demanding isaac as a sacrifice. this is why abraham goes through with it up to the point that he does.

i find this to not be as present in the paschal narrative. jesus does not seem aware of his resurrection. he speaks about glorification prior to the paschal narrative but seems unaware of how this will play out for him personally. nothing in his dialogues on the mount of olives or on the cross suggest to me someone who was aware that he was going to be resurrected. my caveat here is that both mark 8:31-33 and matthew 16:21 are obviously later redactions and i find it extremely doubtful that jesus ever said he would be raised in three days verbatim, especially since these verses are not spoken quotations from jesus.

my other caveat is that the notion of "complete faith" is deeply warped. jesus may have had complete faith in god, but this does not automatically signify that he understood the exact means of his glorification. (i also caution any christian from allegorizing his statement about the temple being rebuilt in three days given the problematic and antismeitic history of the book of hebrews.)

if we compare abraham and jesus' reactions to what god asks of them: abraham is calm and he isn't panicked. when isaac questions where they will get the sacrifice, abraham answers with certainty. jesus is far less composed even among his friends. he is deeply distressed throughout his experience, culminating in his dying statement: אֵלִ֣י אֵ֖לִי לָמָ֣ה עֲזַבְתָּ֑נִי, my god, my god, why have you foresaken me? interestingly, midrash on psalm 22 says that esther uttered the same thing when facing king xerxes to intervene on behalf of the jews in babylon, because she felt the shekinah disappear. to my mind in addition to a further feminization of christ, this also implies that jesus may only have thought that he was intervening on behalf of the jews in captivity, like esther, rather than on behalf of the world, an idea supported by statements such as matthew 15:26, matthew 10:5, and matthew 5:7.

the main issue that i have with the linking of the pashal narrative with the akedah is one of intervention: the climax of the akedah is that god intervenes on behalf of those he loves so that no blood needs to be shed. a consistent motif in god's covenants is creativity, to negate destruction: first the noahide covenant, then the abrahamic (note that this takes place during a famine, when abraham is in a strange land, on a knife's edge; it is under this covenant that isaac is not killed) and then the law passed down on sinai. the institution of mosaic law systematized sacrifice so that through right adherence to the law, bloodshed would be controlled and the people saved from harm. where the law is contravened- when one steps out of the safety which the shadow of god's word, like the wings of a mother bird, provides to her children- there is danger.

these covenants are not vertical outpourings of divine grace on humanity: they are wholly reciprocal. in leviticus 22, for instance, the lord states: it is i the lord who makes them sacred" and again at the end of the chapter: "you shall not profane my holy name, that i may be sanctified in the midst of the israelite people- i the lord who sanctify you." notice the reciprocity with rings from this second verse. the lord is sanctified by the people: the lord sanctifies the people. one cannot exist without the other. this reciprocal relationship is arguably the central tent of jewish law. micah 6:8, which to many rabbis is the single verse which best summarizes the law, also rings of this idea: to do the activity of מִשְׁפָּט֙ (justice), to love חֶ֔סֶד (mercy), and walk with god with צנַע, humbly, with modesty. the two main attributes of god are justice and mercy: thus we are asked to model ourselves after him in our behaviour, and to do so with humility.

god's relationship with his people moves continually nearer and nearer the prevention of destruction. whether you read the story of jesus as messianic or not (and i no longer do), the only way in which this story makes sense to me if i am to place it as part of a continual tradition with the jewish tradition of which jesus himself is part is to assume that that the actual crux of this story was one of intervention. if jesus is indeed the second isaac the way christianity cliams, it makes no sense for god to have intended him to be killed if isaac was never intended to be killed. if god provided the sacrifice for abraham, and his relationship with the world is reciprocal, then if jesus is the son of god it would stand to reason that the world would provide the replacement sacrifice for god's son in return.

abraham's faith that god would provide a sacrifice is very different from the type of faith often modelled in christianity, where you have faith in your suffering up to and through that suffering even to your own destruction. and this model of faith, which i do hold to be at best destructive and at worst incorrect, continually enables suffering both created and perpetuated by christianity as an institution. if god's mercy is the defining trait of every covenant up to christ, and we are expected to act with mercy in kind, shouldn't the aim of christianity be not the transformation of suffering (not to glorify the crucifixion of jesus, not to ensure that it goes unwasted,) but to live in the knowledge that the suffering of jesus, like all suffering, has the capacity to be prevented? is eschatology gesturing towards a new heaven and a new earth without suffering, or is it more likely that god (who made the world and saw that it is good) is aware that we have the capacity to prevent suffering in this world, here and now, by doing what we are asked by god?

we are asked to have abraham's faith: but we are also asked to, like abraham, seize the opportunity to alleviate someone else's suffering (including our own) when god presents it to us. more than mercy, that is the mark of a just god.

[gwandas]

do you guys ever think about how crazy it’s gonna be reading about n*ssian in the background of the next acotar and they’re just chilling and happy as if acosf wasn’t a psychological horror story

[kayvalencourt]

Happy 4 year anniversary to @doctorsiren 's snapshot au :3

They take up 40% of my brain