#because I am at heart a horrible troll

[dravenxivuk]

lmao! I have made it in the Witcher fandom! I finally received a message from the Ciri/Roche shipper who's been harassing people (we all know the one), presumably because of the Iorveth/Roche art I've been reblogging recently.

Naturally I laughed, blocked them, and moved on with my evening.

But I have to admit that Iorveth/Roche is a very small ship in my very large armada, and it's looking a little lost, so naturally my horrible gremlin brain has suggested giving it some other Iorveth ships to keep it company.

Iorveth/Geralt? yup, read some really good fic.

Iorveth/Letho? the begrudging allies to enemies hate ship that just begs for more attention.

Iorveth/Saskia? I've seen surprisingly little of, but then again, I've never really looked, just stumbled over it in passing.

Iorveth/Ciaran? Yes! the potential for young lovers who are driven apart by differing world views but never stop loving each other.

Iorveth/Ves? new ship to me, started reading a fic the other day. Haven't finished it yet, but I can see the potential

Iorveth/Dandelion? fuck it, why not?! Dandy's a spy after all, he must get his information from somewhere

Oh oh! and I saw a post the other day saying Iorveth could easily have known Lara Dorren. So potential not only for a one-sided Lara crush, but also emotional whiplash on seeing Ciri

EDIT: Iorveth/Eskel? I read a really interesting fic about these 2 a while ago, really well done

[bogkeep]

Would you recommend the SSSS comic? I know little of it beside the very beautiful artstyle and premise

to answer the question of if i would recommend SSSS as a comic: yes, yes i would.

a description for those who don't know: Stand Still Stay Silent is a post-apocalyptic horror + adventure webcomic set in the nordics (norway, sweden, denmark, finland, iceland) that have been isolated from the rest of the world and gone back to their old gods. the the world outside of safe zones is full of trolls and beasts - humans and mammals that got infected by a horrible virus and turned into monsters. the story follows a ragtag crew that ventures into the old world (derelict denmark) on an expedition to collect books.

the comic updated every workday until it concluded in 2022, and consists of two Adventures. the creator had plans for many adventures with these characters in this world, but ended it after two when she wanted to take a new direction with her life.

what i love about it:

- the art is GORGEOUS. it's been a huge source of inspiration for me. open any page and it's a masterpiece, and you will ask yourself "how the FUCK did she update this FIVE DAYS A WEEK"

- the characters are wonderful and endearing. i just, i love them so much. i am so thankful lalli hotakainen exists he is one of my #1 blorbos forever

- the world is so cool. the blend of chunky sci-fi and norse mythology fantasy magic slaps. it goes so hard. i fell so hard for this comic when i got to the big ferry ship with a viking style dragon head prow added to it. it's everything

- it really really gets nordic cultures. it's difficult to explain all the dynamics and nuances but it just gets it. it brings me as a scandinavian a lot of joy to read a story that speaks to my heart this way. the attitudes, the language barriers, the cultural differences... it was so refreshing to me in a media landscape dominated by american stories. when the pandemic hit, i decided to reread the comic because i found such an odd comfort in seeing how it depicted the scandinavian countries reacting to, well, a pandemic.

- there's kittycats

what i don't like about it:

- the most glaring and obvious flaw is that everyone in the comic is white. there's not a single character of color anywhere, not even i background shots or the prologue. there's no mention of the saami people (the indigenous people of northern europe), either. i believe this was done in ignorance more than malicious intent, but the implications are Extremely Bad and it's been bothering me (AND MANY OTHERS) since day 1. that is the number one caveat i will give to anyone wanting to check this comic out. i've been in the discourse trenches and i am not going to excuse this. it's just bad!

- you can tell in the middle of adventure 2 that the creator has kind of lost interest in the work, around the time when she found jesus i guess. like, very few people can keep up work on the same creative project for years and years and years and i think it's fine that she wanted to drop it, but it's a bit sad to see the comic dragged to its end like a limp corpse, and feeling like the creator no longer really cares about the characters.

- minna sundberg has said and done some questionable things, presumably gotten somewhat radicalised over time, and has also converted to hardcore christianity which is what her new works are about. there's nothing about this in SSSS - there is a moment of christianity represented in the story in a sort of mythological sense, just like the other religions, but this was written before minna's conversion. her new works... are a Choice. i have much to say about them, and i have, and im not gonna rehash it now.

SO YEAH hopefully this will help you take an Informed Choice! i got into this comic in 2015 and was deep in the fandom and it's for better or for worse part of my soul foundation now.

i also recommend A Redtail's Dream, minna's "practice comic" before SSSS, based on finnish mythology and the kalevala.

[ninjaturtlemaniac]

Sable's Secret

Even with his eyes closed he could feel Sable freaking out.

Sable's voice shook. "Promise me you won't freak out."

"Sable, baby I promise."

He heard Sable try to control her breathing as she exhaled slowly and she placed something weighty in his hands.

"Okay, you can open your eyes now."

...

..

.

John Dory blinked in confusion at the object in his hand.

"Oh" he said softly as he recognised it.

Sable's heart dropped and her shoulders sagged.

"Is this pine?"

.......what?

"Eh?" Sable replied with the most elegance she could muster.

"You shouldn't be using pine that's just silly. Gets all bent all out of shape and cracks at the slightest breeze. Willow wood is where it's at! It more flexible."

Sable was utterly baffled by his reaction.

"It... you don't think it's weird?"

"That you have a wooden leg? Pffft noooo."

Sable's eyes darted around the room in confusion. Surely he's bluffing?

"Is this a joke?"

John Dory looked up from the leg to find Sable starting to visibly shake. He quickly placed the leg down on the table and held her hands.

"Sabe, I'm not joking...why would you think I'm joking?"

She couldn't look at him.

"You were really scared to tell me, weren't ya?"

She could only nod a little bit.

"What happened?"

She brought her gaze up to meet his but didn't reply.

"We were in the tunnels...."

***

Flashback to teenage Sable running through the tunnels with her parents. The Bergens had already discovered they'd escaped and were trying to dig them out.

Sable was running alongside her parents. The shaking from the Bergens footsteps and shovels cause the tunnel to rumble and Sable loses her footing and falls.

Just as a Bergen shovels through the dirt above her.

Right through her leg....

Flashforward a a year or two later

Sable is in a makeshift hospital in the forest. The Pop Trolls are trying to rebuild their society but she can't do much to help.

Only her parents visit her.

Not Summer

Not Sage

Not Sonnet

Not Scout

She fell into a dark place.

She was grey for a short time.

After that, the only thing she found herself being able to do was read. She found comfort in the books. She found an escape. This was her beginning towards her extensive education and her acting career.

***

"So when you didn't wanna go swimming?..."

"Yes"

"The long ass skirts?..."

"Yes"

"The 'always turnin up to stuff too early' thing?"

"I prefer not to have an audience if I am forced to use stairs."

"....No dancing?"

She turned to him sadly. Her ears drooped.

"That one hurt the most."

"So the reunion rumours...?"

"I did not refuse the reunion because I am, as they said, 'too good for my pop star past'. I physically cannot do the dances anymore!"

"Do the other Sugar Girls know?"

"No. You are now one of the very few who knows."

"I'm honoured."

Sable tried to smile but she really couldn't.

John noticed she had gone quiet in her thoughts.

"Babe, I've met Trolls with lost legs before. Heck, I've met Trolls with eyes made of glass, some with more scars than skin, one guy had half his stupid face missing, trust me it was an improvement! A wooden leg isn't scary."

"This-" she gestured to the leg "-Is an everlasting reminder of the most horrible time of my life. I was alone and afraid and-"

"-and you survived!"

Sable gasped. Tears began to formed.

"And you're here! You coulda thrown yourself in hole and never come out but you said 'not today' and look at you now! You're a smokeshow who kicks the ass of everything thrown her way. " He playfully punched her arm "Myself included!"

She wiped the tears before they had a chance to fall and leaned against his shoulder.

"Will you tell me what happened to your hand?"

John looked down to his glove. He sighed and slowly took it off.

"Well I guess you showed me yours, I gotta show you mine now huh?"

"Jonathan Dor-" she stopped short when she saw his exposed hand.

The hand did not look good at all. She felt like a hypocrite having thought that. At least her stump had been cared for and healed properly. John's hand looked like it had been crushed and had no care given to it at all.

"How?"

"For a while, folks from all over thought I was the last Pop Troll. They hadn't taken a liking to Pop yet so I had a bounty put on my head. They thought they could get ridda Pop for good. Some Yodeler was on my tail, got me with an ice pick."

Sable was shocked and blinked at him almost not believing him.

He tried to flex his hand, but not much happened. "This thing kinda reminds me of when I was alone too but-"

"-but you survived. Just like I did. And look at us now."

He used his now ungloved hand to grab hold of hers and bring it to his lips for a gentlemanly peck.

"So you really don't care about my leg?"

"Nah, makes me love you more."

"John?"

"Yah babe?"

"You realise that is the first time you've said that to me?"

"What?"

She looked at him waiting for him to connect the dots.

"........I said the L word?"

"You did."

"...No I didn't"

"I heard you"

"...I take it back"

"John Dory-"

"-Nononoono, nope it didn't happen." he covered his ears.

"John!"

"Nopenopenope, didn't happen!"

"I love you too, you moron!"

He stopped and uncovered his ears.

He smirked as he ran over and scooped her up bridal style.

"Leg, shmleg! What is so wrong with you that you somehow love me back?"

Sable could only laugh as he pulled her close.

Yeah

Leg shmleg

There is also an NSFW reason she was hesitant to tell him if anyone wants to know 😏

[calhanx]

Please let me make a fansession with these dumbasses. Do you have Dream moons or even classpects?

nothing official yet since im still in the process of adding more socials to the mix but for now my very rough draft is

tumblr — prospit (page of life)

4chan — prospit (prince of hope)

twitter — derse (thief of heart)

tiktok — derse (bard of time)

reddit — prospit (seer of rage)

instagram — prospit (maid of space)

deviantart — derse (heir of void)

youtube — derse (knight of light)

as for my reasoning, pages tend to suffer from their aspect being taken from them or suffering from other people's manifestation of the PAGE's aspect. tavros's agency was always taken away by vriska. jake was everyones crush in the alpha kids group (one of hopes domain is sexuality and crushes. so its like they had hopes for jake) and it ended horribly. and horuss was often told off by meulin to keep a facade of smiles and politeness (voiding him even FURTHER). or whatever i dont remember much.

and yknow tumblr is like. why the hell does everyone think this site is dead? its cause twitter got most of the userbase when the porn ban happened. then BAM suddenly folks wanna get a piece of tumblr cause theyre all suffering under annoying billionaires (luxury is a domain of life, but can also be a source for doom).

as for 4chan. well ok im not familiar with 4chan but their vibes pretty similar to eridan so lets go with that.

twitter is a thief of heart because they always steal content from other sites (technically most sites do this) and its got a culture of being mean all the damn time even to earnest (heart) things. and i guess because of the short shelf life of tweets and trends, its impossible for most of its userbase to really make an identity? excpet for the influencers on there lol idk. so theres this lack of their aspect, which is a thing thieves go through and is something that causes them to always seek said aspect. still tentative!

tiktok is a bard of time because they invite destruction to time. they waste your time. they waste other peoples time. thats literally how its built. even its trends and culture make ME (personal opinion) go "why am i being subjected to this i dont care stop wasting my time". they dont last long either or at least dont stay relevant (to ME)

reddit. idk thats the place where smarty know it alls go. and yknow the challenge for seers is that they have to learn how to be wrong and EFFECTIVELY communicate with their teammates (kankri failed on both accounts. kept shitting on porrim. pre retcon rose failed on the latter because yknow alcoholism. retcon rose eeeeeh didnt really have a choice in improving herself on her own cause vriska did it for her but hey if it works it works i guess). if you make reddit into a person, seer feels like an appropriate class. also i picked rage for them because rage = truth. also lots of trolls on there, both in provoking rage through silly funnies, real life stories, real life but Insane stories, or legit fucked up stuff.

instagram is the maid of space because idk its vibes make me think porrim would like it. tentative idk much about it. all i know is that its very prospit-y because it requires the user to have a looot of grit to maintain their acc because of their shitty "post regularly" algorithm. at least from what i remember.

deviantart is heir of void because they are like equius. i think you get it. horses. sweat.

youtube is a knight of light because its culture revolves around its content creators! and yknow ccs gotta put up a front to entertain ya. its light because of its content! they literally need and breathe your attention. sometimes has educational stuff (knowledge) sometimes is just shitposts (attention) sometimes its really cool impressive stuff like speedrunning and gaming (victory/luck) sometimes its just funny challenges (success over goals). so putting all this together and makin a person out of it its like oh! theyre going to be sooooooo dysfunctional

anyway lots of this is still not finalized but feel free to do what ya want! socialstuck is free to share and im always glad to find folks makin stuff about it :]

[once-upon-an-imagine]

Hi, I hope ur doing well bc I rlly love ur writing🥺anyway can u do a sweet boyfriend James scenario with a reader who’s been avoiding him because she suddenly broke out on her cheek and is self conscious about it😭I literally have the worst skin in the winter and I’m trying so hard not to cry but my skin is so important to me😭😭😭😭like I’ve never felt uglier and I know breakouts are normal but still🥺😭

Thank you so much for liking my writing, love! And I am so sorry! I totally get that and I hope you get well soon! I know how annoying skin things are! 🥺 sorry, this turned out to long for a dialogue so I made it a drabble, I hope you like it  😊 Warnings: reader feeling insecure about the breakouts on skin Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter 😊 gifs aren't mine 😁

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Unpretty

"Sweetheart?"

"Go away!" James heard on the other side of the door of your dorm.

"It's James" he tried again.

"I know! Please, go away!" he heard you again, feeling his heart shatter.

You always wanted to see him. He hadn't seen you all day. When you missed breakfast and he thought maybe you slept in and would be late. But you never came. If it wasn't because Remus forcing him to go to Potions, he would have gone straight to your dorm. You didn't come during first period. Or second period, making him worry. When he looked you on the Map, he saw you were still in your dorm and his worries lessened a little. He grew anxious because maybe you were sick. But none of your roommates had said anything to him, and they did whenever that was the case. He wanted to go look for you after Transfiguration was done but he had Quidditch practice and, being the captain with a match on Saturday, he couldn't really skip it. He hated it when he didn't see you there, waiting for him to go to lunch, as you always did. So, here he was with a basket full of food, waiting for you to open the door.

"Princess, you weren't at breakfast, or classes, or lunch" he insisted. "I'm starting to get worried. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Jamie, please just... go to lunch!"

"I'm not gonna go without you, love. What is going on?"

"Nothing! I'm just not feeling well!"

"But... I haven't seen you all day!" he whined. "Sweetheart, please just open the door. You know I'm not going to stop worrying until I see that you're okay" he told you.

You knew he was right. He wasn't going to leave until he saw you. You grabbed your wand and pointed it at the door so it would slightly open, but you remained on your bed underneath your blankets and comforters. James slowly entered your dorm and you could hear his footsteps approaching you until you felt a weight sitting at the end of your bed.

"You've seen me, Potter. Now you can go away" you mumbled, grumpily.

"No, what I see is my beautiful girlfriend wrapped in a cocoon of blankets" he said, trying to remove some from you but you pulled them tightly. "Love, what's going on? Do you have a fever? Do you need me to take you to Madam Pomfrey-?"

"No!" you quickly replied.

"Okay, fine. I guess, I'll just... eat all of these brownies by myself then" he said, grabbing the picnic basket and placing it on your bed. You slowly peeked a little from your blankets and James could only see your eyes, looking back at him. "Oh, there she is. There's my beautiful girlfriend" he smiled, trying to pull you to him but you pushed him away.

"I'm not beautiful today" you mumbled.

"Honey, what are you talking about? You're always beautiful!"

"No, not today! I have been really stressed because of exams and my period is coming next week and my stupid face decided to have a stupid breakout and I look horrible!" you said, pulling your blankets closer to you again and resuming your original position, away from James.

"Princess" he said, feeling his heart breaking a little at the pain in your voice. "Is that why you stayed here today?"

"Yes! I look like a troll!"

"Sweetheart, I seriously doubt that's true" James said, with a small chuckle.

"Easy for you to say! I bet there's not one day in your life when you haven't looked perfect!" you replied.

"What are you talking about? I don't look perfect!"

"James, I have seen you naked. You always look perfect!" you insisted.

"Oh, if you want to play that game, I have also seen you naked, my love, and if any one of us is perfect, it's you" he said, lying down next to you but you still didn't budge. "Fine, if you're not coming out, I guess I have to come in" he said.

"What-?" before you could continue, you felt the blankets around you fly away before it quickly placed James underneath them again. There was no way out now. Your boyfriend was facing you with the most enamored look on his face you had ever seen.

"Hello, gorgeous" he smiled goofily at you, wrapping his arms around your waist and you quickly buried your face in his chest, feeling tears in your eyes. "Hey, what's this for?" he said, stroking your back with his hands.

"I look h-hideous, Jamie" you said between sobs.

"Sweetheart, I know that you may feel that way because you don't feel comfortable right now, but I promise you could never look hideous" he insisted.

"Y-you have to say that because you're m-my boyfriend" you said, still not looking up at him.

"No, I say that because it's the truth" he said, kissing your temple. "Could you please let me look at you? I haven't seen you all day. You have been really mean to me" he pouted.

"I'm sorry" you murmured, still looking down.

"It's okay" he said, gently cupping your cheek and making you finally look up at him. "There's my beautiful girlfriend" he said, leaning down to give you a soft kiss on the lips and making the tiniest smile appear on your face.

"You're a dork" you said, trying not to laugh.

"I know, I have the thick ugly glasses to prove it and my dorky hair that goes everywhere" he told you, making you glare at him.

"I love your dorky glasses and your messy hair" you pouted, running a hand through his messy locks.

"See? So how come you don't believe me when I say you still look beautiful?"

"It's not the same thing!" you insisted.

"It's the exact same thing, love" he said, kissing you again. "Does it hurt?" he asked, his expression turning worried and you felt yourself smiling even brighter at him.

"A little" you told him. "It's more uncomfortable than painful" you assured him. "But I already took some meds so it should be gone in a few days" you instructed him.

"Wait a minute, were you planning on avoiding me FOR DAYS?!" he said, dramatically with a hurt look on his face.

"No" you assured him. "I was hoping that they wouldn't look as bad tomorrow" you said.

"Well, that is still just cruel, love!" he said, pulling you closer to him and peppering your face with kisses.

"Jamie!" you complained, giggling as he kissed you once more. "I believed you mentioned some brownies?"

"Is that all I am to you? Your brownie dispenser?"

"Of course, not!" you said, kissing him again. "You're also my personal teddy bear that I can cuddle any time I want" you said, laughing a little.

"You're lucky I love you" he said, sitting up, making the blankets into a fort above the two of you before he grabbed the picnic basket.

"I really am" you said, sitting up next to him and kissing his cheek. "I love you too" you said, as he kissed your temple.

The End

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

A/N: hope you liked it, loves :)

[sutherkins]

for the peter sutherland girlies 💌

people had always judged him. it came with having a father who was branded a traitor. he didn’t even care when people talked about him, but now the conspiracy nuts were targeting you. a completely innocent person, all because you had chosen to associate with him. he didn’t understand it, didn’t think he ever would. and to make it worse, you wouldn’t even let him defend you.

if you were being honest you didn’t really mind the rumors. at least, not the ones about you. the things people said about you bore no comparison to the horrible lies they spread about peter simply because of who his father was.

“why won’t you let me defend you?” peter asks one night when they’re in bed, some random show on the history channel playing in the background.

you sigh. “puppy, the things those people say about me are even close to as bad as the things people say about you.” shifting in bed slightly closer to him and taking his hand in yours. “besides, as stupid as it is, you have to keep your head down a little. if not for yourself then at least for me. you’ve worked so hard to get where you are and i don’t want some idiots on a the internet to ruin that.”

peter squeezes your hand and remains calm even though a fire was brewing inside when he thought of the things those people said about you. “you see the things they say about you, right?”

a moment passes. “yes.”

“the things they say about you aren’t just nothing. i can barely make it reading through a couple without wanting to punch someone. not that i go looking for them or anything, it’s just frustrating. at least the people talking about me have a story to run with about the son of a traitor. you haven’t done anything wrong. how do you deal with it? that kind of hate, specifically?”

you mute the tv now, being able to tell this was going to be a longer conversation than you anticipated. “you mean the misogyny?”

peter nods.

“i don’t know if what i do is dealing with it, really. none of the things they say are true. about you or me. i know who i am and i know who you are, too. of course it hurts that lies are being spread about me just because of who i love, and it hurts that there are people out there with so much hate in their heart that they feel the need to take it out on me. and on you. but they’re wrong. that’s enough for me.”

a couple seconds pass before you speak again, “i’ll still defend you from stupid trolls online though.”

“so you can do it but i can’t?” he smiles.

you love his smile and wished it was a permanent fixture on his face. “pretty much, bub. i know you don’t like talking about it too much but, you deserve it.”

“and you don’t?”

narrowing your eyes at him, you tell him, “that’s not what i’m saying, you dork. im saying you deserve to have someone looking out for you. i already have someone to look out for me no matter what. you’ve been doing it since we met.”

peters eyes haven’t moved from yours, and they’re full of love for you. “it’s weird.”

you tilt your head. “what is?”

“having someone look out for me. i haven’t had someone do that for me in a while. even when i was with zoe.” he meant it. you were always supportive of him and it never wavered, even when he told you who his father was. when he needed someone to lean on, he always knew you’d be there with open arms.

you smiled softly, your hand reaching up to touch his face. “i kinda figured. it’s not that i don’t want or appreciate your support, i promise. you give so much to me without even thinking about it and i wanted and still want to do the same for you. you’re a good man, peter. the best man i’ve ever known. it kills me knowing what you’ve been through and that no one even bothered to support you afterwards.”

a couple minutes pass, his eyes closed and your palm resting on his cheek. peter savors this moment of peace and unconditional love that he hasn’t known in a long time. soon his left hand was moving towards yours, gently grabbing it and giving it a short kiss. “i love you. you know that, right?”

“i do.” you lean forward to kiss his forehead, feeling the tension leave his body from just your touch. “you know i love you too, right? i know you sometimes have a hard time accepting it because it’s not what you’re used to, but i love you with everything i’ve got. nothing’ll ever change that and i mean it. you’re kinda stuck with me.”

peter lets out a small chuckle, bringing you close to press a chaste kiss onto your lips. “i know. i may not always understand it, but i know.”

[autisticsupervillain]

It's Fictional Throwdown Friday!

This Week's Fighters...

Karkat Vantas vs Tavros Nitram!

Conditions:

All "Post Canon" materials are ignored. Both characters have all of their knowns weapons and tools available to them, even if they no longer have them by the end of the story. Tavros is not Gcatavrosprite.

Scenario:

Karkat is both bored and stir crazy having nothing to do on Earth C, so when Tavros invites him to go FLARPing, Karkat accepts. Eventually, the plot of the roleplay contrives that Karkat and Tavros's characters must fight, with both boys getting just a bit too into it.

Analysis: Karkat Vantas

Ask yourself one very important question. A question that has plagued nearly all of mankind since its very inception. What does God, our omnipotent creator, look like?

Stop thinking, because you're wrong. Our God is just an internet troll from another universe who wears a massive sweater, pulls his pants up to his chest, and has a love for dumb rom coms.

Meet Karkat Vantas, a mutant blooded alien troll from the distant planet of Alternia. Born as a mutant with bright red blood, Karkat had no place in Alternia's dystopic blood-based caste system and, as such, his very existence was a crime punishable by death. As such, Karkat has lived his entire life in constant fear and paranoia that one day his blood would be discovered and he would be killed. Growing up as a born outlaw in a murderous dystopia did not do well for Karkat's psyche, resulting in him growing up into an abrasive asshole who was fully convinced he would die at any moment.

Little did he know until his 13th birthday (or 6.5th birthday going off Alternia's time measurement system), he had inherited a destiny, regarding both the future of his race and the future of his very universe.

See, Karkat wasn't any mutant. He was a direct descendant of the Signless. A troll who, many centuries ago, had rebelled in the name of trolls of every caste, seeking to bring peace to the horrific, bloodthirsty dystopia. He was executed for his efforts, but not before his genetic information was copied.... by Karkat himself. Technically.

Karkat's other destiny was his destiny as a SBURB Player. He and all his friends were destined to play a video game called SGRUB, which would bring about the end of their world. The game, if played right, would allow Karkat and friends to become the gods of the new world, but in order for that to happen at all, the game had to allow Karkat to ensure his own existence through time traveling clone science fuckery. It's complicated.

This gave Karkat a golden opportunity to both escape his horrible situation and rule as the leader of a pantheon of gods over his own personal universe. Namely, our universe. He kindly assures us that it would've been a horrific and brutal regime, but it never really got off the ground, as Karkat's victory was stolen from him at the last second by an invincible time demon and Karkat would up having to work with the humans he had intended to enslave for the sake of survival.

This is because Karkat is not even half the conquer he wants to be. He isn't even really the leader of his team. Despite all his bluster of being a God born from a superior warrior race, Karkat is a loud mouthed weakling when measured up to nearly anyone else on his team. He has no special powers, he's physically the weakest out of everyone, and he isn't even an actual God.

What Karkat does have... is heart. Much to his chagrin, Karkat's special power is basically friendship. As a Blood Player, Karkat is supernaturally predisposed to being really good at making friends and maintaining friendships... which turned out to be the very thing he needed to succeed as well as he did.

See, all of Karkat's friends have a very deep, bloody history. As in, "these people are personally responsible for the most traumatic and horrifying events in my life. Events that shape who I am as a person to this day" deep. They've killed each other before and they would again. However, thanks to Karkat's influence, they're able to not only work together but actually almost get along. Karkat had a genocidal highblood supremacist counting him as one of his best friends, that's how potent this guy's friendship power inexplicably is.

A lot of this can be chalked up to the Blood Aspect, sure, but a lot of it can also be chalked up to who Karkat is under all the paranoia and anger. He gets people, he understands their character flaws, their failings, their fears, and he sympathizes with them. He gets, probably better than anyone else, that everyone around him is effectively a terrified kid with boatloads of trauma. That's the real reason he could never by the bloodthirsty tyrant he dreamed of. It's not who he is, at his foundation. It just took a long time and a lot of bonding with the humans he supposedly despised for him to realize that.

That said, Karkat is only physically unimpressive by the standards of the literal gods that surround him. He's still a SBURB Player and he still grew up on an inhospitable hell planet. As such, he is much stronger than your ordinary human.

Notably, he should powerscale to the same kind of meteor trip that Rose survived, as all SBURB Players arrive on their home planets this way and all the Players are capable of surviving their meteor trips. Unless you want to suggest that Rose is thousands of time stronger than Karkat as an infant, Karkat should be roughly comparable.

From this point, Karkat has been getting stronger all of his life. Everyone and everything in Homestuck has an Echeladder, a video game style leveling system that continues to make them stronger as they accomplish random things throughout their life, ranging from opening a fridge to winning a fight.

On top of this, Karkat is certainly a much more skilled fighter than your average human being. His team was able to take in the armies of the Kingdom of Derse, which has been warring with its opposite Kingdom of Prospite for as long as its home reality has existed. Despite that, Karkat found himself being flat out disappointed by how easy they were to fight against, with only the King proving to be enough of a challenge to rally the whole team.

As with all Homestuck characters, Karkat also has a sylladex, a hammerspace inventory system where he can store objects much too big to carry on his person, allowing him to pull out his handy twin sickles whenever he needs them. Really, the fact that most of his friends can knock him out cold with a love tap says more about them than it does about him.

Despite that though, Karkat is still not a fighter and he possesses bad luck to a literally superhuman degree. In fact, his luck is so horrible that it completely counters out luck based superpowers, allowing him to beat Clover, whose luck is so supernaturally good that it made him completely untouchable to everyone else on the battlefield except for Karkat. Turning all your negatives into a positive. If that isn't just Karkat's entire character arc.

Karkat is not the conquerer he so desperately wanted to be. But he is a leader and he is a friend, and in the hands of a Blood Player, those two titles are far more powerful than a warrior ever could be.

Analysis: Tavros Nitram

Alternia. The world before humanity. A death world designed to create conquerors and killers. Only the mightiest of warriors could possibly survive to adulthood. Only the cruelest killers would live long enough to join the fleet of the Alternian Empire and conquer the galaxy.

Tavros Nitram.... is not one of those warriors. Yet, he survives anyway. And Vriska hates him for it.

Tavros is a simple dude. When he's not playing Fiduspawn, rather, Troll Pokemon, he's happily LARPing with his friends while cosplaying Pupa Pan, troll Peter Pan. He's a shy and awkward dork on a planet full of bloodthirsty killers, which you think would make him an easy target. His Lusus isn't even big enough to protect him and he's a bronze blood, the second lowest rung on Alternia's bloodcaste.

Normally, you'd be right, but Tavros has an ace up his sleeve. His unparalleled ability with animal communion. He can control the minds of any animal he can telepathically reach, with his range expanding across entire universes. And when everyone else on the planet has a giant animal parent, that's a very easy way to guarantee no one messes with you. His telepathic ability can even extend to the nigh-omniscient First Guardians, reality warping gods tasked with preparing planets for the apocalypse, so long as they have some kind of animal component to them.

So, Tavros was left well enough alone... until he met Vriska.

Vriska... has had the opposite life experience on Alternia. Even with her similarly powerful telepathic abilities, she lived under a cruel, indifferent Lusus that demanded she hunt down and murder other kids to feed them to it, less she get eaten herself. Vriska, more than anyone, internalized Alternia's philosophy of might makes right. After all, if that wasn't true, then everything bad that happened to her happened for no reason at all and she was just a helpless teenage girl being pointlessly victimized. And Vriska could never admit to that.

So, when she sees Tavros living his best life without a single mean bone in his body, she figures she has to "toughen him up". If she won't, then he'll just die, right? No way someone can be a weakling and live a happy, carefree life.

So begain Vriska's attempts to ruin Tavros's life. Starting with her mind controlling him into jumping off a cliff to shatter his own spine, confining him to a wheelchair that his hive was not built to accommodate. Vriska would continually harass and bully him even as the world burned down around them, all under the guise of toughening him up.

This created something of a misconception in the fandom that Tavros is a complete pushover who lets everyone walk over him. This isn't completely untrue. Tavros is a complete disaster in social skills and the less said about his disastrous attempts to flirt, the better. He's nice, shy, and naive enough to see the best in everyone, even Vriska, which makes him struggle to put his foot down. He's even one of the only people on his team who'd never willingly take a life, even when Vriska tried to force him to kill her with mind control, he instead broke down crying and fled.

But, on the other hand, he does snark back at Vriska for her abuse constantly. He doesn't take anything she does to him lying down, he's just physically powerless to do anything about it and gets humiliated every time he tries. Remember, Vriska is the one most pushing the idea that he needs to be confident to fix all his problems... and Vriska is wrong.

Tavros is more than capable of handling himself in a fight. He used to play Fatal Live Action Roleplay for fun frequently and was confident enough in his abilities to go up against Vriska in it in the first place. LARPing is a lot more immersive when the other players are actively trying to kill you. Tavros spent hours side questing in SGRUB without having to kill a single imp, despite their hardcoded hostility. Equipped with a rocket powered wheelchair, Tavros can easily soar through the skies, charging foes down with his heavy lance. He even survived being carried down to Alternia on the back of a flaming meteor, just like everyone else on his team.

With his Fiduspawn cards, Tavros can create monsters to assist him in combat or call on the nearby wildlife for aide, preferring to use large groups to outnumber his opponents. Tavros is not the dedicated fighter Vriska is and he doesn't have to be. He's perfectly effective as he is doing what he's good at.

Ultimately, Tavros's most impressive feat would come about after his death. After finally getting fed up with Vriska and ditching her, Tavros would help in the battle against Lord English in his own way. He'd gather an entire army of millions of ghosts, thousands of dead gods, to wage war against tge Lord of Time, persuading all of them to his side for the fate of all reality. Tavros would completely upstage Vriska's own plans to take the fight to Lord English and completely shatter her world view, just by being who he is. Just like he always had been from the start.

Alternia tried its damndest to beat the humanity out of every troll on the planet. It might have succeeded for awhile with Vriska, before her own character growth, but with Tavros... it never even came close.

Throwdown Breakdown:

Well, time to see who's actually the weakest troll on Alternia.

Again, not really diving into stats here because they both scale to about the same things. Both of them can survive their meteor trips as grubs and both can keep up with the rest of the group during the fight with the Black King. A lot of the most impressive things Karkat would scale to are also things that Tavros would scale to because they did them as a group.

As for whether Tavros would be willing to fight Karkat at all, I do think he could in this scenario. Fighting is not something Tavros enjoys and Karkat is a friend of his. A very close friend even, Karkat is the person Tavros calls when he first breaks his legs and Tavros goes to Karkat after Vriska kisses him for advice. But, Tavros spends a lot of time FLARPing with and against his friends before and nothing about this scenario mandates that this has to be a fight to the death. Tavros would under no circumstances be willing to kill Karkat and vice versa, but a friendly fight is doable.

I disagree with the notion that Karkat could just bully Tavros into not fighting at all. All of Tavros's most pathetic moments come from interactions with Vriska, someone he couldn't challenge even if he tried. In fact, he did try. He died. Karkat, meanwhile, has never been shown intimidating Tavros and Tavros has never been put down by his insults and tirades. If Karkat was capable of bullying him into submission, he probably wouldn't have been the first person Tav called when he broke his legs. It feels like flanderization to say Karkat could bully Tavros like Vriska could when he has nowhere near the same malicious grip on him that Vriska does.

Now, onto the actual fight. Karkat has a very solid advantage in physical mobility. Even if we're assuming this is a dreambubble ghost Tavros with his working legs, Tav has point blank never demonstrated the same acrobatics that Karkat has by himself. If we don't assume that, then Tavros is either wheelchair bound or using prosthetic legs he hasn't fully adapted to yet. Either way, Karkat backflips and youth rolls all over him.

Problem is, this is possibly Karkat's only advantage and Tavros has counters.

Skill wise, both are pretty on par. Both characters were able to coast through fights with their imps and Derse's armies with relative ease. Tavros was doing a pacifist run, sure, but he still had to defend himself and survive adequately in order to talk his enemies down to begin with. On Karkat's side, he managed to survive up until his thirteenth birthday without anyone ever seeing him bleed, which is very impressive considering what Alternia is like. But, his character introduction directly specifies how little combat experience he actually has prior to SGRUB, while Tavros was a frequent FLARPer prior to being paralyzed. Tav has experience, but logistically, Karkat has the better weapons. Lances can be stilted and awkward to use in close combat as they are built as charging weapons, so if Karkat can box Tav in, he'd be at an advantage. As a whole, I'd say it evens out.

Special abilities is about where this all swings in Tavros's corner. Karkat can't fly so Tavros's rocket chair provides a big advantage, easily getting out of his range and charging from a distance. Even with Karkat's acrobatics, he would need something to jump off of to reach Tav, while Tav could control where the fight takes place to an extent, either by flying off in that direction to lead Karkat there or taking him for a ride should he manage to latch on.

This plays into Tav's obvious trump card, animal communion. With Fiduspawn cards, Tavros is going to have loyal animals on hand to fight Karkat off with and his flight allows him to take the fight to locations where there are animals to get them into the fray too. Or just fly off, grab some animals, then fly back. The sheer range of his telepathic abilities means that, so long as this fight is set on a planet with sentient life (which Earth C definitely has), Tavros can call in animal friends.

Karkat can win if he manages to box Tavros in, but Tav's flight makes that nigh impossible. Even animals that Karkat can completely fodderize through sheer stats would at least serve to distract him and keep him from reaching Tavros, gradually wearing him down with ramming charges.

Karkat's best option is to latch onto Tavros's rocket chair during one of his charges (or latch on after getting hit) and trash it to leave him a sitting duck, seizing the advantage while he's boxed in. And while I do think he's capable of this, he's going to be hard pressed to do so when potentially any and every animal in a ten mile radius could run up and dog pile him at any time, with swarms of birds and bugs pestering him off the chair before can do much damage or leaving him open to get clubbed with a lance or horns while he tries.

Karkat can win, but Tavros has too many options to keep him at bay before he does.

This Throwdown's Winner is...

Tavros Nitram!

[clay-pidgeon]

post title pending. my weird swap au

this is the post im making for scratchswap, my au where i switch the post-scratch kids with the post-scratch trolls sharing their aspect (dirk-nepeta, roxy-equius, jake-eridan, and jane-feferi) and then the pre scratch dudes get swapped accordingly. yes this bc of the Parallels between feferi and jane and then i got a whole Thing out of it. im working on classpects/ages. characters under the cut

pre-scratch trolls

note for the record i did not think much about these guys

johune peixes: i have done 0 thinking on johune so sorry. theyre swapped w meenah and everyones really confused about how that funny little guy was a huge scary empress in every other universe

rozela zahhak: the sorcerer wooooo! pretty similar to canon rose shes just really fucking strong. good friends w aranea

dayves leijon: im still not 100% sure how to go about this one tbh but he does like romance in some form. also i got in in my head hes skittish. no idea where that came from. capitalizes b (glasses) and maybe something else?

jaidli ampora: oh i actually thought about this one a little! fashion is sorta fifties inspired like cronus but shes not a greaser thats his schtick. you dont steal a mans shtick. is there a c in that word or not

post scratch trolls

jaynce peixes: feels like i should work on that name huh. anyways jaynce does Not want to be the heiress (for reasons both transgender and not) at all and is in a little bit of denial about this. i lied actually a lot of denial. may or may not be moirails w jayque havent decided. replaces e and o with -E and -O forks and spoons!

roxxie zahhak: a little more into robots n shit than coding but still does that. bit of a jack of all trades! thinks deyirks lusus (its. kity) is the most special boy in the whole wide world. probably moirails w deyirk now that i think abt it but maybe not. im on the fence abt a lot of stuff here. uses some kind of prefix, emoticons have X for eyes, replaces x sounds with x, y (as a vowel) with ie, and s w z

deyirk leijon: WORLDS MOST NORMAL MAN (lying) lives in a cave in the middle of the woods not for catgirl reasons but because this guy is going insane in solitude works best when isolated. also uses some kind of prefix for a quirk. roxxie drops off robot parts at his house every few weeks and they make a day of it theyre Pals

jayque ampora: he helps feed gloybsub or whatever her name is and hes so normal about the deaths on his conscience. really hes so normal guys cmon. normal

pre scratch kids

mimi egbert: token cis friend sorry meenah. or not idc. more mellow because dad egbert is just a normal guy and isnt raising her to be the literal queen of the world. still meenah tho

hans lalonde: i am unsure about the name but i think its fine. the ultimate horse girl (therian). keeps maplehoof in the foyer. if he had to interact with his dad for more than 20 seconds they would both implode from the sheer awkwardness. the house is big as shit they just gesture to each other when they see each other and thats fine for both of them

manu strider: wears heart shades everywhere as a sort of joke. he doesnt actually know. caps lock is broken and refuses to fix it + uses kaomoji a lot. fujoshi to transmasc pipeline haha who said that

crow harley: im stilling working on which animal to furrify cronus with. watches a bunch of old movies and picked up those speaking habits. other shit pending

post scratch kids

fifi crocker: she wants to be crockercorps new ceo sosososo bad she would make up for all of their horrible crimes against humanity by uh. shes working on it ok?

neta strider: the she/her to she/they to they/them to he/they to he/him to he/they to she/he/they to The Creature pipeline. percentage of their diet that is fish he caught w her own bare hands has been steadily increasing. is trying to buff up on history but keeps on going down wikipedia rabbit holes and rereading the nyan cat article for the thousandth time. would still do the detective pony rewrite but would get sidetracked by the lolcat metaphor for way longer

eqis lalonde: do you know how hard it is to smush equius down to four letters? i just made this name up man. anyways i dunno what to do with her but shes a girl of the horse variety

dani english: diversity win this sickly victorian orphan child is genderfluid! fucking terrified of the lusi on the island. fancies herself sort of a romantic poet

the entirety of this was brainstormed while i was bored in class for the record. still brainstorming so im gonna edit this when more shit arises

[whentherewerebicycles]

okay. i promised myself i would do some long reflective journaling to sort through some Big Feelings and I keep kicking the can down the road because idk sometimes you don't want to sort through the Big Feelings in case you don't like what you find there. but I have a morning of uninterrupted time and I am in a good headspace and I think I will just write through some stuff under the cut.

it sure looks like i might be having a baby next summer, which means that things are moving out of the hypothetical realm and into the realm of being Very Real. so i am experiencing the expected levels of "oh shit oh shit oh shit i am about to be responsible for a living being???" that i imagine all prospective parents experience. more than that, though, i think i am having to confront the reality of single parenthood in a more emotional way than i was expecting! and this is partly because it might be about to become real for me, but also because some people i love very much who are very close to me are pregnant now too, and i am watching them live an experience of pregnancy that is very different from the one i've had thus far and much closer to the socially "normal" path. and i think that is surfacing some unexamined and semi-unexpected feelings of grief/loss for me as well as a complicated mix of horrible bridge troll jealousy feelings. i want to write through some of that so i can get a better handle on what i'm feeling instead of letting the big emotions unexpectedly avalanche over me at random times.

let me think first about my own experience of getting pregnant.

I'm glad I am pregnant and I am extra, extra grateful that things are going well thus far after experiencing a pregnancy loss this summer that kind of turned me inside out for a while. I also know that despite how excruciatingly drawn-out this process has felt, I was able to get pregnant a lot faster/easier than many people are and I don't take that for granted. but man oh man I think getting pregnant via assisted reproduction can really fuck with your head and heart in ways I wasn't anticipating when I started this process a little over a year ago. everything is so intensely medicalized. my life has just been going to appointments and getting ultrasounds and having blood drawn and giving myself hormone shots and undergoing painful medical procedures and healing from an emergency surgery and reading medical journals and swallowing pills and recording symptoms in a tracking journal. I don't feel like I've spent this year preparing for and then actively trying to conceive a child; i feel like I've spent this year receiving intensive treatment for a medical condition (not being pregnant) that requires obsessive anxious monitoring and might be rooted in some deeper flaw or failing in my body. almost no part of this experience has felt private, intimate, precious, spontaneous, joyful, sacred, sexy, or fun in any way. it's all felt mediated by doctors and by an incredibly expensive industry that jacks up the prices knowing most people going this route don't have an alternative (because they're gay or they're single or they have medical conditions that impact their ability to conceive naturally). and the ectopic pregnancy just like intensified and heightened all of that, because all of a sudden i DID have a life-threatening medical condition and all that obsessive monitoring WAS justified and my body HAD fucked up, and everyone afterwards spent a lot of time warning me i'd need to subject myself to even closer monitoring next time because i was at increased risk of it happening again.

idk man it's just been a lot!!!!!! and i think that even though early on I was like "i'm going to try to carve out some part of this experience that can be just mine, separate from the medical aspects of assisted conception," i just kind of failed at doing that. i don't think it's my "fault" or whatever, because idk, there's a lot of cultural pressure to medicalize and pathologize and turn our bodies over to doctors or whatever, and it's hard to swim against the current, especially when you are stressed and spending a lot of money and willing to do whatever an expert tells you to do if it'll get you the thing you want so badly. so i don't blame myself but i also have to acknowledge that i haven't had a very positive experience of trying to get pregnant and i think that the single precious, sacred moment of this whole entire year was when that very kind very gruff tech let me watch the heartbeat on the ultrasound right before the surgery and then went to get warm blankets from the dryer to wrap me in. and maybe also the night that my mom and i had the little burial in the woods. that was it, those were the only sacred moments, and they were moments of deep and wrenching grief, not of joy. even finding out i was pregnant again only a few months after the loss wasn't really a moment of uncomplicated joy, because i was so immediately consumed by anxiety and so instantly sucked back into the vortex of endless medical monitoring. so idk i think i have some unresolved grief around the experience of trying to conceive/early pregnancy i got compared to the one i might've hoped for.

when i found out my SIL was pregnant, in the immediate aftermath of my own loss and on the same timeline i would've been on, i just spent a long time feeling like the most horrible bridge troll version of myself i could possibly imagine. i was just eaten up inside with jealousy and it wasn't just that she was having a joyful, healthy, uncomplicated experience of pregnancy while i was healing from a very raw and painful loss. it was also this feeling that like, she was supposed to be pregnant, she was expected to be pregnant, and the whole world was smiling joyfully upon her pregnancy, and everything was unfolding smoothly for her in ways that it hadn't for me. they're young, they're married, they own a house, they have two good incomes and will easily be able to support a family, she's thin and blond and very pretty, and (while i don't know this for sure) it seemed like they got pregnant for free on almost the first attempt, on the exact schedule they'd decided they wanted to have their first baby. and idk just watching my parents excitedly prepare for their first grandkid and make all these plans for how they'd be involved and coming out to tour fancy daycares with them just sucked! you can be so happy and excited for someone you love and also you can feel like the bitterest, ugliest, most horrid little bridge troll inside. i just felt like, i'm going it alone, i'm older and i have fertility issues that might make it impossible for me to do this, i make less money, i'll never own a house, i don't have a partner, blah blah blah, and even though most of those things are choices i've made about the type of life i want to live, it just felt like... idk. i was just eaten up inside by jealousy!!!! like i know nothing about their experience of trying to conceive or what her experience of pregnancy has been like so far, but my ugly inner troll voice was like, why was it so easy for them and hard for me, why did i have to pour $15,000+ into this process, why did they get to have fun joyful let's-create-a-future-together sex while i had to go to a doctor every other week to get stuck with needles and prodded with ultrasound wands and have an insanely painful cramp-inducing dye injected into my fallopian tubes, and why, WHY did our babies conceived at almost exactly the same time have such different fates.

i mean the answer is just like, this is the world we live in! this is the reality of being a queer person and an unpartnered person who wants a family! these are the life choices we make! this is the randomness of conception outcomes and a healthy dose of plain bad luck! but it was hard (and is hard) to not internalize the differences as like, something is Wrong With Me and something is Right With Them. and i think on the most basic level i was just jealous of their shared joy, and was feeling the ache of, i'm in this by myself, i have to weather this loss by myself, i am the only person who cares about this as deeply as i do. and of course that wasn't wholly true, of course i had my mom and my sister and my closest friends who grieved with me and took such good care of me, but idk. i think it stirred up some feelings about being unpartnered for me that i hadn't really examined all that closely before.

and i think... like... i think that is probably the other big piece that i am going to have to spend time grappling with, maybe for a long time, maybe for the rest of my life! with my students, we often talk about the idea of animating questions, like the big preoccupations you find yourself wrestling with again and again, these questions that won't ever be resolved because they don't have a simple or straightforward answer. they are questions you don't ever answer once and for all, but wrestling with them over the years is what gives shape and meaning to your life as a person on a quest for purpose, for clarity, for deeper understanding. i am carving out a life path for myself that looks different from most of the people around me and i think that sometimes i really really wrestle with the question of, like, does this path represent a failure or a choice? and if i have chosen this path have i made that choice out of cowardice or from a place of strength?

i still have to untangle what i mean here or what i feel around this, but i think like... i don't know... i don't really crave partnership, i don't feel its absence in my adult life, i have cared deeply about past romantic partners as people but i have always felt immensely relieved when relationships end because i get my own space & life back, and i feel like almost all of my human emotional needs for connection are met through my friendships and my work. i like sex and i like the idea of a live-in best friend but i also feel pretty sure that modern dating on the apps is not the avenue through which i would find that person and i don't really know of other ways to go about building relationships like that at this stage in my life. but idk man the cultural PRESSURE you feel to do the expected life path thing is immense!!!! and i think that while most of the time i'm able to set that pressure aside and just live my life, the decision to have a child on my own suddenly reignites all of those uncertainties and some of that shame around like, why isn't this a thing i want, does it mean i am emotionally stunted in some way, will it impact my ability to parent well, blah blah blah.

i suspect i will spend a LOT of time in this next chapter of my life trying to untangle those feelings, so i am not going to put too much pressure on it now!! i just want to begin naming them so they aren't just like, swirling around in the back of my mind seeping into everything. i think what i can say definitively right now is this:

i have never felt a strong impulse towards or yearning for romantic partnership, and thinking about dating mostly just makes me feel tired and like i would be doing it for other people, not for myself. if i really think about it, i can imagine myself in a shared partnership with someone who shares my interests and values and sense of humor, but i truly can't imagine getting there through hinge or bumble or whatever. maybe that is where the sense of tiredness comes from when i think about dating, lol.

that said... i HAVE, for a very long time, felt a very strong impulse towards becoming a parent. i feel nervous about this (money! time! blowing up your life! being responsible for a small person!) but i feel no ambivalence towards it, you know? i want to be a parent and i think i'll be good at being a parent (i mean i am sure i will also feel like i am a Very Bad Parent for much of the time as that seems to be a feature of parenting, but on the whole i feel confident in my ability to provide the love and stability and structure necessary to raise a reasonably happy, well-adjusted kid). i have never been able to imagine a life where i do not become a parent by some route and i feel a deep, wrenching sadness when i imagine a life where i don't raise a family.

i think the sense of total clarity and joy i feel around the choice to parent vs. the profound ambivalence i feel around the idea of dating signals something important! but it is just challenging, you know, to carve out a life for yourself that goes a little or a lot against the grain of what other people's lives look like and what people think would make you happy. i know i am very VERY lucky that over the past five-ish years my parents have gone from being extremely skeptical or worried about my life path to 10000000% supportive and on board and ready to help me make it work. but i also just think i gotta wrestle with the cultural demons in my own head/heart you know!! i am going to have to work hard to get to the point where i feel really secure in my choices!! i know that the horrid bridge troll feelings about other people conceiving easily in the context of happy marriages are normal and okay to feel - it's just human to wish that your own journey was easier, simpler, cheaper, less painful. but i also think that, as liz says all the time, security (in yourself and in your choices) is a gift you give to yourself and everyone around you. i might not be there yet, but i want to work hard to get to a point where i am so secure in the choices i have made that i can experience other people's experiences and choices as simply theirs, not as a reflection or a shaming judgment on mine. i want to be able to say, i am so happy for you, and i am also so happy for me, because we have both worked hard to create the lives we needed and wanted for ourselves, and now we get to live in them. I want to know with total certainty that I, not other people, get to decide what my life means.

but also.... i want to think of this journey not just in terms of Struggling to Make Peace With My Choices but also in terms of like... sometimes taking a different path can produce unexpected joys that people on the regular path won't get to experience. for instance, i can already tell that my mom and my sister are going to be incredibly involved in raising my kid, and that my parents are going to feel an extra sense of responsibility to provide my child with a life that is incredibly rich and full of love. so i am going to have a life that is rich in family relationships, maybe richer than it would've been if i was part of a traditional nuclear family unit. i am going to have to learn to depend on and lean on other people in wholly new ways, which will challenge me (a person who tends towards insularity and independence) to really stretch and grow. i am also going to get to have a different experience of parenting in the home! i am going to have to learn to work things out with my kid without another adult there to help mediate conflicts. we are going to have to figure out how to be a good, functioning team because we are going to have to share responsibility differently than in a two-parent household. and i hope that through this experience i also get to meet and talk with other single parents (something tumblr has already allowed me to start doing!), and i get to develop a deeper, richer understanding of alternative family structures and life paths that don't look like other people's.

i want to be honest: there is some real grief there! i have chosen a life that is different than the one i hazily imagined for myself as a younger person... and already that has meant that i've had a very different experience of trying to conceive/being pregnant than the people closest to me, which has sometimes felt very painful and lonely. and i imagine that as i navigate parenting i will have to keep grappling with the grief of like, living in a culture where it's not "normal" to parent alone, where other people will judge the choices i make, and where i will be missing out on some of the joys of shared childraising i see other people around me experiencing. but i don't know i guess i just have faith in my ability to make meaning out of my life, and i think that the grief will be counterbalanced by joys i'm not able to anticipate from this vantage point because i haven't lived them yet.

and also if i stop for a second and think: would i rather not go down this path at all? the answer comes back to me so clearly and so immediately. of course not. i want you so badly, little seahorse. i'm so ready for you to come into my life. i'm ready to shed my old self, my old life, and become somebody wholly new, in a wholly new relationship with a wholly new human being. hey! i love you! come here and be my baby!

[kittyball23]

Out of the Zone (a Trolls fanfic)

Summary: A glimpse of BroZone’s final moments together

__________________________________________

"Why are you acting like this?" The question came out in a combination of frustration and exasperation, the teal Trolling in sunglasses who had uttered it flinging his arms out at his brothers. To him, they were being entirely unreasonable out of nowhere. To the others, this was not the case. "Because I'm tired of it, JD!" Spruce exclaimed. "You're always mentioning that you're the leader - " "Uh, that's because I am," John Dory cut in. He shut his mouth when Spruce held up a finger. "SHH! I'm not finished," the purple Trolling said harshly. "Like I said, you're always mentioning that you're the leader. Well, you know what? A 'leader' listens. A 'leader' lets the group make decisions to-ge-ther." He enunciated each syllable of the last word. "You're just one Troll, and you're not the boss of everything!" "Yeah?" JD said, getting annoyed. "Well, someone has to be the boss. Somebody's gotta remind you guys why we're in this band. Somebody's gotta show you the ropes!" "Yeah, well, if ya ask me, you're showing us more of your uptightropes," Clay said, snickering at his own joke and nudging Spruce so that he could laugh along with him. The purple Trolling did not find the joke funny, however, and whirled on the yellow Trolling. "You pick the worst times to joke about stuff, you know?" he grumbled. "Can't you take something serious for once?" Clay frowned, not appreciating his dismissal. "Wow, okay. As if you're Mr. Perfect. The guy who's more concerned about what girl's heart he's gonna break next!" Spruce glared at him. "No, I'm the guy who's more concerned about what the future of our band is. Maybe if you're not so busy with your silly pranks and actually got your head in the game, you'd see that!" Clay shook his head and crossed his arms, not liking how his usually chill brother was behaving. "Like you haven't laughed at some of them," he muttered, making note to get back at Spruce with one of his so-called 'silly pranks.' Unable to help himself, Floyd spoke up. "Well, some of them aren't really that funny. I hated that time you did what you did with my eyeliner." The magenta Troll shuddered to even recollect the horrible, bright neon green that had been on his eyelids. Clay rolled his eyes. "Whatever! It was funny to me. And as long as it's funny to someone is what counts." JD ignored the little scuffle between the Trollings, wanting to get clarification. "Why is it that you're backing out of the dream, bro?" "Dude, he never said that," Floyd piped up, trying to show support. It wasn't met positively however. "I can answer my own questions, thanks," Spruce said, a little annoyed at his brother's interference. "I'm just trying to help," Floyd said. "Well it's best you don't," Spruce snapped.

Floyd frowned. "This involves me just as much as you guys. I write a lot of the songs here, in case you forgot! Like you always like to forget about me," he said spitefully and crossing his arms. "Just because you're older doesn't mean you can think that you're better!"

"We don't think we're better," Clay said, "we know we're better!" Not at all meaning it, he laughed, hoping Floyd would laugh at this joke too, but the magenta Trolling shot him a dirty look. Clay rolled his eyes. When did his brothers become such party-poopers?

"Cry me a river, Floyd! You seem to be real good at that, too!" JD snapped, annoyed. "And if you're talking about that one song you showed me the other day, I already told ya we can't do it. Not all of us have that vocal range!"

"You mean you don't have that vocal range," Floyd muttered, knowing very well that he could hit the required notes, and knowing that JD likely didn’t want to feel like he was being upstaged.

"What does it matter if we're all singing songs and everyone likes them, anyway?" JD challenged. "As long as my band is popular, why does it really matter?" Spruce gawked at him. "YOUR band, huh?" The purple Trolling shook his head. "I knew it." "I mean our band, ours!" JD quickly tried to correct himself. "OURS. Geez, Spruce, I thought Floyd was the sensitive one here!"

"It has nothing to do with being sensitive," Spruce said. "It has to with the fact that I feel like I can't trust you anymore, JD!" he blurted before he could help himself. He instantly regretted it, however, noting how crushed the aquamarine Trolling looked as a result of his words. It felt like a harsh thing to say. But, the more he thought about it, the more the regret began to dwindle away. This really was the way that Spruce felt, and seeing that Clay and Floyd were not quick to jump in and protest, he knew that they likely felt the same way, too.

"Actions speak louder than words do, JD," Spruce said. "And so far, you've been doing a lot of talk and not coming through with any of the promises you've said."

JD swallowed, thinking hard. Had he... had he really been as blind to his brothers as Spruce was making it seem?

NO! His conscience nearly screamed at him. You're doing what is best for the band. And if Spruce, and Clay, and Floyd can't see that, well, then... then...

JD's face hardened. "All right then. Problem solved." He clapped his hands together once and plastered an insincere smile on his face. "I'm going to be removing myself from the equation, then. I say it's about time the world gets introduced to John Dory, the solo artist, anyhow, without anyone else holding me back. Don't you think?"

A part of Spruce wanted to stop his brother's train of thought. He did not like where the situation was heading, but at the same time the purple Trolling was angry. It wasn't an emotion he usually felt, his demeanor usually that of good vibes, but even he had his limits. This was one of those times that it couldn't be helped. He really had had enough of JD's controlling ways. And right now, he wasn't about to move over to stop his brother – his closest brother in bond amongst the bunch, admittedly – from walking out the door that he was making his way towards. "Agreed," he simply said. He knew the anger he felt would go away eventually. He wasn't the kind to hold much of a grudge, and perhaps one day he might even be happy to see JD again. But he also knew that it would likely not be for a long, long time.

JD glared at Spruce, his hard gaze drifting over to Clay and Floyd, too. He shook his head, that small part of him not really wanting to leave. But they had a lesson to learn. "Who knows," he said, his anger getting the best of him. "Maybe I'll even find better brothers than you guys."

"So you can treat them the same way you've been treating us?" Spruce asked, but JD didn't hear. The aquamarine Troll was already gone, sunglasses, teal vest and all.

A silence hung in the air for a moment.

Then, Floyd spoke.

"Guys, we can still make this work out," he said, hopefully, peering at his brothers. "Look, we can maybe be a quartet until JD decides to come back, and then we can be BroZone again, right?"

Clay scoffed. "And I thought I was the funny one," he muttered, starting to walk off.

"Yeah, who put you in charge now?" Spruce said, frowning at the magenta Trolling.

"I'm not trying to be in charge," Floyd said defensively. "I just don't want things to end like this for us." He sighed and rubbed an arm, unable to look his brother in the eyes.

Something flashed across Spruce's face. Perhaps regret? Floyd couldn't be sure, as it was gone the very next second and the purple Trolling frowned. "Cut the sap, Floyd. Can't you see it's over? Save your breath for your solo career."

With that, Spruce rolled his eyes and waved a dismissive hand at them as he walked off, muttering something under his breath about needing a vacation as he too walked out the door. Left alone in the silent pod were only Floyd and Branch now.

Branch had so far been a silent witness to everything, standing to the side and hovering by the magenta Trolling's legs. The baby stared wide-eyed after Clay and Spruce, not quite understanding things completely but knowing something was very, very wrong. Why were his brothers leaving? Why weren't they singing and dancing and hugging like they all usually did? Distress starting to prick at him, Branch peered up at Floyd, confiding in the magenta Trolling for some kind of answer.

Floyd stared down pitifully at his baby brother for a long moment and then sighed. "Branch," he began, trying to sound as gentle as he possibly could. "We're... out of sync."

Branch cocked his head, as if to say "Huh?"

Floyd nodded slowly. "You see, we've gone from boys to men, and now there's only one direction for us to go." He gestured out the front door. "The backstreets."

Branch blinked at him. What was Floyd talking about? Branch knew Floyd was poetic, but he wished that his brother wasn't talking in these confusing riddles right now.

Floyd seemed to get this vibe off of the little one and he kneeled down, putting a hand on his small blue shoulder. "It's time for us all to move on, Branch."

Branch whimpered at this, and Floyd patted him on the back. "I know it sounds a little scary. But it's really not. We all have to move on sometime. You'll understand someday." With that he stood up and began to make his way over to the door. But suddenly, he paused. The magenta Trolling then whirled around and knelt at Branch again, scooping the baby into a tight hug. Branch liked hugs from his brothers, but this one was a different kind of hug. He didn't know what exactly it was that made it different, but Floyd did, and it was tearing the magenta Trolling's heart apart. This was a goodbye hug.

"I'm going to miss you," Floyd whispered, his voice on the verge of breaking and the familiar sting of tears starting to pool in his eyes. "Please don't forget me." He held on a moment longer, his grip tightening slightly before it finally went slack and he released the baby. Then he shuffled off and began to move to the door. Branch began to toddle after him, but Floyd put a hand up and shook his head. "No, Branch. You have to stay. Someone has to be the man of the house." He forced a chuckle, but wasn't really feeling all that into it. "Take care of Grandma for us, okay?"

Branch glanced worriedly up at his brother, but did not put force any resistance. He stepped back, watching as Floyd shot him one last sad smile and then turned to leave.

It was only after he'd made sure that the pod was far behind him that Floyd allowed his tears to fall.

__________________________________________

A/N: I think there were multiple factors at play when it came to BroZone’s disbanding. This is just my wild guess 🤷

[dez-wade]

I'm feeling sad about how lonely Forever is lately so I'm thinking of this au to cope. I am well aware the dead eggs will never come back and if this particular egg did, she'd more than likely be under Roier and Jaiden's care. With that said it's a silly au I like because Forever is no longer as alone and Tilin has a very doting parental figure.

I think if Tilin came back to life, Forever's big big heart would adore her SO much. She was such a bratty child who liked trolling and being a menace to the people she cared for the most. Which I already think Forever would find so endearing but that's not even why I think he'd get attached.

He'd get attached because although she can misbehave and act like a brat, Tilin was quite sweet and horribly lonely as a direct result from how Q was kind of a shit dad before she died AND ElQ not really knowing or loving Tilin like Q did. Tilin herself wouldn't know ElQ isn't her dad so his indifference to her,,, would make her so sad :').

So the double combo of horribly lonely and sad child who feels unlovable on top of the menace /endearing behavior would hit him right in the heart. He wouldn't want to be a replacement father because he'd recognize only Quackity, the real one, could fill that role in her life and he himself already has a child but he'd resonate with her and want to help her feel cared for.

So he'd be quite doting on Tilin? Like he'd spend time with her, bring her to build with him and do fun things, he'd help her decorate her NINHO room which would also include giving her all of the building blocks she wants or needs because of COURSE he'd give her a NINHO room immediately. I think him and Bad would be the ones to give Tilin full 2 rows of hearts and good armour and totems so she's completely kitted out.

All in all, he'd just do his best to help Tilin feel cared for. He doesn't want to be her replacement dad and he doesn't want her to be a replacement child for him, he'd just like spending time with her and having an egg to just hang out with. He can be her rich tio you know? She's already adopted by the brazilians by proxy of Q being adopted by them anyways <3

I don't know how to end this off but if you made it all the way through, thank-you for listening to my rambles 💥🔥

I love this! And I think, if they somehow come back it wouldn't be impossible for it to happen in reality. I can definitely see Forever feeling responsible for Tilin, they're Quackity's kid and Richas' sibling, they're automatically part of his family. With Quackity not there, he'd definitely do ANYTHING to keep Tilin alive and to bring Quackity back so they could be reunited.

I won't dare to have my hopes up, but surely it would be nice if the last pictures they're posting on Twitter means the dead eggs are coming back...

[justamessedupdisneyprincess]

Bad memories part 1

This is a self indulgent short fanfic about my si x canon. WARNING! This will be dealing with trauma, bits of bullying (with d*ath threats), toxic fandoms and emotionally abusive friendships will be mentioned here and there. Truth is…well you probably already know but I have had it real rough. 2019 was like the worst year of my life honestly and to this day I still do have a lot of trauma behind it. I know in my heart that Barley would definitely be the kind of BF who would be kind and understanding about this sort of stuff. He would be there to support his lover if they went through any hardships. I was feeling it again so I wrote this to help make me feel better. It actually works pretty well for me personally I find. Again, TW about trauma, bullying, d*ath threats, manipulation and emotional abuse will be mentioned briefly.

Just ignore it. Just ignore it.

That is what Izzy kept telling herself over and over again as she tried to push herself to keep drawing. Just ignore it. Just ignore it. It echoed through her brain and then all of a sudden she felt a tear run down her cheek. ‘Damn it. Why am I like this?!’ She thought to herself. She closed clip studio down in frustration.

It had been almost a year now since she finally deactivated her old social media accounts. She couldn’t handle the crap she kept getting from haters and false friends online. One of her main reasons of deactivation was because she wanted to run away from a certain fandom that caused her nothing but horrible pain. There may be a few good memories sure but many of them have turned bitter after some falling outs with so called friends. Izzy is easy to manipulate and it seems like no matter how many times it happens she falls victim to it every time. Even if those memories did not turn bitter though she definitely had more bad memories by far, so much so it was not even a competition in the slightest. Ironically though if it wasn’t for the fandom she probably never would have met Barley for she wouldn’t be there that night. That painful and terrifying night.

She was still interested in one of her old interests and still drew for it from time to time, she had never been bullied once within that other fandom, perhaps she did encounter a troll or two but blocking them and moving on was simple, aside from that there was literally no drama. But her main old fandom was literally like hell. Death threats daily, manipulation, rumour spreading, name calling, black mail. It was all an endless madness and it was there where Izzy met some of her abusers as well. She used to love that show dearly and even made a self insert that was hated on constantly. She had a self ship that got constant hate before she met Barley. She now hates that show and the mere mention of it makes her sick. She had tried to rewatch it but it simply hurts too much. The fandom ruined it all for her. The fact that her friends who had the same interests turned out to be fake was her breaking point. She knew she did not matter and was only their friend for their own benefits. An object. A tool. Nothing more, nothing less.

She didn’t even care that she had over one thousand followers. She wanted to run as far away from that fandom as possible. She wasted her money on so much merch and it is now all packed away in boxes as she tries to forget.

Although she did miss sharing her ideas, even if she got endless harassment in her main fandom her ideas got much more praise and support regarding her other interests. She wanted to share that at least. Even if she barely interacts with social media she wanted to at least post every now and then. So she tried to slowly get back into life online. She started a new deviantart account and she had been slightly discouraged to not get much attention there at all, maybe people had trouble finding her? Who knows. Tumblr was a different story though but she did fear that website for it is where most of the torture took place. She was on high alert, waiting for things to go wrong. Yet oddly enough nothing happened. Not yet at least.

However there was something that did upset her. A trigger. Nothing happened, no hate or harassment at all. It just appeared on her dash without warning…content from her old abusive fandom. The mere mention of it was a trigger and the type of content she saw was extra triggering for it was something she had been bullied over horribly. There have been major shipping wars and people used to bash her for self shipping with a character they wanted to ship with some other canon character. As a result she has grown to hate that ship and even the mention of it makes her sick since its fanbase harassed her. She did not want to see anything to do with that show ever again! So she looked up the tag and proceeded to block every single blog that had to do with that fandom. She had to do it or else she won’t feel safe. Even if they do not seek her out and target her the sight of it still hurts her at this point. Her love for that show became something beyond hatred. A fear, a type of painful sensation. It was like a stab to the heart as god awful memories came flooding back to her.

Just ignore it. Just ignore it. She kept thinking. She tried so hard to get herself back into drawing but she couldn’t. She needed to cry or else her eyeballs will explode. She shut down her laptop and turned off her bedroom lights so it was dim. She usually takes plenty of depression naps, it helps at least a little bit. But right now she felt like she needed more than that. She needed help and desperately. Her boyfriend practically forced her into making an oath where she comes to him when upset like this. So she rang Barley up and he answered instantly. “Hey babe! What’s up?” He says cheerfully through the phone. “Did you feel like going on another adventure? It’s a bit late now but I’d be down for it.”

“B-Barley.” Izzy managed to choke out. He instantly knew something was wrong.

“Iz? What’s wrong? You don’t sound too good.” Barley says worriedly.

Izzy sniffles as she took in some deep breaths. This isn’t the first time she cried to him about things related to her trauma and it probably won’t be the last either. “I-it’s just- my trauma is acting up…”

“N-n-no! No one hurt me!” She blurted out forcefully. “I just- I just really do need you right now…I-I feel so thankful-“

Barley smiled weakly as he started up the van. “Of course, little imp. Y’know I will always be there to rescue you no matter what.”

Izzy sniffles a bit more, it was hard to talk given how much she was crying. “D-drive safely though. Don’t speed. I-I want you to be safe.”

“Oh babe, you know safety isn’t my thing.” Barley joked. “But if that is what my lady wishes then so be it. I’ll stay on the phone with you until I get there, ok? You’re on speaker now.”

“O-ok.” Izzy croaked out as she clenched her phone. She suddenly felt a bit stupid now for bugging him like this. Then again she did know that Barley would argue against her for belittling her own feelings like that.

“Alright, we are on our way, milady. Now did you wanna talk about it? Like did something prompt this or did it just suddenly hit you like a surprise sneak attack from a masterful rouge?” Barley says.

Izzy struggled to wipe the tears from her eyes, it felt like more and more kept coming. “I…I was browsing the internet and I saw…I didn’t even look it up! I-it just came to me.” She sniffled for a moment and took in a deep breath, her nose was completely blocked up now due to all the crying. It made it much more challenging to breathe and talk at the same time. “It was…stuff to do with that old fandom…t-the one where all those people d-did all those god awful things to me.” Another violent wave of sobbing occurred as her brain forcefully replayed the memories once more.

Barley was saddened to hear her cry like this but he had a great skill when it came to these things. He had some experience with emotions when taking care of Ian as his older brother and fatherly figure. He has learned to be patient and open minded with things regarding anxiety and mental health. He remained calm as he spoke, his voice gentle and caring. “I see. So it was a trigger.”

Izzy sniffled and nodded her head but was quick to realise how he wouldn’t be able to see her nodding. “Y-yes!”

“Oh sweetheart.” He says sadly. “Worry not though, I am almost there and I will do everything in my power to make you feel better. I will keep you safe always.”

A few more tears leaked out but this time they were tears of gratitude. “T-T-Thank you…a-are you sure you d-don’t mind?”

“I don’t mind at all! You’re my princess and I’m your knight who is there to recuse you. It’s my duty, y’know?” Barley says with another gentle smile to try and reassure her, even if she couldn’t see it now she could definitely hear it. That gentle expression that tells her everything is going to be alright.

Izzy was struggling to stop herself from crying so much. “Y-you’re literally the kindest person I’ve ever met.”

Barley frowned a little as he heard her cries but he was touched by her words. “Oh I’m the kind one? I dunno about that because you are definitely the kindest person I’ve ever known or met.”

Izzy was a bit surprised to hear him say that, even though he does mention her kindness often in his poems for her she is still shocked each time. “Are you really sure about that? Because sometimes I feel like I must be a monster and don’t realise it. Why else would so many people want me dead then?” She thought back to the way many people had treated her.

Barley was hurt when he heard of the way she doubted herself. “Don’t say that! Don’t ever say that…please.” He then took in a deep breath, but it didn’t seem to help much. Instead he could feel some anger rising up inside him. “The only monsters here are the ones who had hurt you like that. What kind of heartless witch would go out of their way to torment others online?!” He gripped his steering wheel angrily.

Izzy was taken aback to hear the rage in his voice at first. “A lot of people actually.” She said sadly after a pause.

Barley clenched his steering wheel some more. He knew there were horrible people out there but he never imagined any being as toxic and controlling as the people Izzy had to deal with. With the stories she shares it is no wonder why she is so traumatised. Abusive friends, hundreds of bullies, internet wars. He heard of some toxicity online before but nothing on that level. “Oh those aren’t people. Those are in fact, the monsters. I won’t ever let a single one of them touch you ever again, you have my word.” He sounded so serious as he said that.

Izzy sniffles, she was touched to hear how he was willing to protect her but deep down she knew no one can truely save her from the world online. “I…I don’t know, Barley. I mean that is very sweet! But it’s just…there’s so many of them out there. Even if I have nothing to do with that evil fandom…I still know they are out there laughing at the memory of me, looking back at me and feeling disgusted…I feel so scared…what if they find me and recognise me? What will they do to me then?!” Her fears grew stronger and stronger as she continued to dwell on it all.

Through the crying and rapid breathing though, Barley’s strong voice was able to cut through it all. “I don’t care how many of them there are.” Izzy went silent for a moment, confused as she continued to listen. “I will fight for you always and forever! I don’t care how many foes I will have to face or what dangers I may get into if it means you are safe! You could be the most wanted criminal in the entire universe and I wouldn’t give a damn. I love you, my princess and I always will.”

A few more soft sobs could be heard from Izzy’s end of the line. The mixture of pain from her past and gratitude to the present was an odd combination to feel. “God I love you…I love you so much….” She says suddenly.

Barley smiles sweetly. “I love you too, Isabel. I love you so so so much. I don’t want you to ever forget that.”

Izzy finally began to smile a little, there was no word that could possibly describe how blessed she had felt to have met Barley. To her he was like a light in the darkness, he came into her life after so much pain and despair. He saved her. “T-thank you…” she says softly.

The tender scene was cut short though as loud jostling could be heard. “W-what was that?!” Izzy cried out in a panic.

“Don’t worry, my love. Gweni and I are just traveling through the forest that shrouds your haven…I gotta admit though. I dunno how far this poor old girl can go through here. These roots aren’t too good for her tires.” Barley stated casually.

Izzy chuckled a little bit, this was music to Barley’s ears and an eager grin appeared on his face for a moment. “Yeeeeah, I don’t think it’s a good idea. You might have to walk the rest of the way like you usually do, sorry. Ummm…if it’s easier for you…did you want me to come to you?” Izzy asked politely, she was always so worried if she was a handful for anyone.

“Don’t be ridiculous. After crying like that I think you deserve plenty of rest. Besides I’m not that far now.” Barley says as he hoped out of Guinevere. “Thanks for the ride my mighty steed. Just rest here till I get back.”

Izzy couldn’t deny that she did already feel exhausted from all the crying. She sat in silence as she continued to listen to Barley.“Luckily I know this secret path like the back of my hand!” Barley said next, his voice broke the lonely silence instantly. Izzy lightly nodded, still very quiet. The silence made the elf worry. “You there?” He asked sweetly.

“Y-yeah! Yeah…I’m right here. Sorry I-I just…I am feeling pretty tired I will be honest.” She says.

Barley caressed his phone, he wanted to hold onto his girlfriend right now. “Then get plenty of rest my princess. Don’t worry, I’m almost there. And once I have arrived to rescue you from your despair we are free to do whatever you please.” He says heroically.

Izzy giggles a bit, she felt safer already when listening to his voice. “Just some cuddles while we watch some videos would be nice.”

[enfieldtennisacademy]

i have spent the last two weeks in my childhood bedroom where i was molested and i have grown so manic depressive that i seriously believe i could peel my skin off like a boiled apple. "honor leave ur room go do something" okaaaay i will and then i immediately face the bridge troll of this overblown doublewide trailer... the patron saint of hebephilia who wants to be my bestttt frieeendddd even though ive made it so fucking clear i want nothing to do with him. i am truthfully waiting for him to die. make it past that hurtle and then get in my car with my suspended license and then drive around aimlessly because i do not know one person in this town. sometimes i get a canned water or melatonin from the store. and then i return home and get high or drink

got insanely fucked up a few days ago to escape the fucking evil that plagues this house and my walls but the whole time my mind just tallied up every single horrible thing that's happened in my life. i was so scared shaking and shit but my brain couldn't stop. it was like a powerpoint presentation and each slide was increasingly more intense and i cant even remember it now as i sit here to ""blog"" about it. i think sometimes i daywalk as someone who is very normal but then i consider how upside down my entire life has been since i was a little blonde child. like how do i just push this aside and do normal things like spin classes and road trips and a 9 to 5 when the basis of my bones are made out of horrible freak show occurances that not even my brain can remember? how am i supposed to make dinner for my husband and kids one day when this is how my brain and body functions? ill be standing at the stove pondering every single time i was torn to shreds and then have to face some cute fat kids and try and separate their world from that one. like i dont even know if theres a book to help with that......

like im not shy about how fucking tortured i am. my friends know exactly who i am and what has made me into the strange erratic doll they know and love to kick. i dont know how many times i'm going to cry to the point im hyperventilating and vomiting while people stare at me like a horse with a broken leg. eventually i will grow tired of being a strange facet ppl need to avoid eye contact with. or worse......... a spectacle to gossip about for 2.0 seconds over white gay male brunch. i wear my heart on my sleeve, which can be VERY embarrassing sometimes, but my life isnt a secret. everyone knows ive been preyed on and touched on and beat down. but i think ppl are so afraid of it being "AWKWARD" that they avoid me. they dont want me to start crying or for there to be a lull in the conversation because they dont know what to say in response to my batshit. so they have normal lives and they go to spin class and road trips and 9 to 5s while i get way way worse waiting for someone to rescue me. (rescue me: Be a friend). (Be a friend = chill w me. Be forgiving with my neuroticisms. Hang out and be normal to someone who doesn't get a whole lot of that. You know.)

anyway.......... i am an inchworm away from a total religion-fueled meltdown and turning to the church because i feel so hopeless and i feel like they will coddle me like a powdered little baby. i will at the very least take a text from a school buddy or a walk around the block w someone who hasn't tried to kill me or get me to do it myself. but until then i will continue sprinting on the treadmill and scrolling gaga daily and being haunted by my past until its seriously too much to bare. im gonna jump off the spring breakers bridge fr

[chaoscheebs]

Still thinking about this post and Yugi being the Final Boss of Closing Off Your Heart to Protect from Being Hurt and his friends being the (mini)bosses you have to “defeat” to have a chance at “fighting” him, and now I wanna go into that more.

-Anzu: Possibly the easiest to win over, since she’s known Yugi the longest and, as that Duel Links post proved, is aware that Yugi is definitely an emotion bottler and could be convinced Seto’s clumsy but sincere approach might actually help, because  g o d ,  someone needs to stay on Yugi’s ass or he’ll retreat.  Again.  Probably ends with them sort of working together on it.

-Honda: Medium Tier Difficulty to win over.  On one hand, he’s a reasonable guy in general and has a little more distance from Yugi than the rest of the Nerd Herd(tm) to see things clearly.  On the other, he is ride or die for Jounouchi, who can’t fucking stand Kaiba and may side with him, not to mention Death-T was, y’know, unintentionally a threat to his lil’ nephew too.  Once won over, probably stays at a distance, but not too far in case he needs to run interference, because let’s face it, Anzu and Kaiba are a little too stubborn for their own good and may not realize when it’s time to back the fuck off.

-Jounouchi: That One Boss.  Is hardcore ride or die for Yugi and does not trust Kaiba any further than he can throw him.  Kaiba is gonna have to work to prove that no, he does not have any nefarious plans for Yugi, he is trying to help Yugi here, stop playing guard dog and let him fucking help.  The trick to doing that is not only showing he’s sincere, but also get Yugi to show he actually really wants Seto in his life, which ahahahaha since Yugi’s the Final Boss, will be.  A Trial.  May end up the most useful out of the three, but it’s sure as hell for Yugi’s sake, not Kaiba’s.

-Grandpa!: The hidden superboss he honestly didn’t expect, because, much like Yugi, he can forgive things done to him, you do not mess with his loved ones.  Much like a superboss, can be cheesed if you know the strategy.  Seto does not know the strategy, has to deal with protective and too clever for Seto’s own good grandpa until his sincerity can be proved.  Grandpa Muto is a wild card; he wants what’s best for his grandson but also probably enjoys trolling Seto and pretending the trolling is just him being a dotty but harmless old man.  \D

-Yugi: The Final Boss himself.  Absolutely will weaponize his cute and innocent appearance to try to get Seto to Back The Fuck Off, You Are Too Close To The Truth And He Does Not Want To Talk About It.  Also will pretend nothing’s wrong or literally, physically leave to avoid subjects he is metaphorically going “LALALALA TOTALLY NOT TRAUMATIZED BECAUSE OF THIS PLEASE IGNORE THIS BECAUSE I AM LALALALA” at.  Probably 10 seconds from exploding after the first serious attempt at getting him to open up.  Probably should have exploded.  The type to apologize for getting Seto’s shirt wet from tears and snot the first time he actually opens up and cries.  The most awkward hug ever probably took place during this event.  Eventually starts sharing when he’s having negative feelings...  to only Kaiba.  It’s progress, at least?

(Kaiba is kind of proud to be the only one who gets to see these sides of him, but Yugi.  Yugi plz.  You have ride or die friends.  Who know about the Horrible Possessed Traumamurder Gremlin Phase.  They aren’t leaving you because sometimes you want to vent and call someone else on your dev team an absolute shitweasel in private.)

[churro-lord]

*lays on tummy and kicks up legs* tell me about them

This is when I wish I had access to Discord emotes, but regardless thank you for enabling me and my horrible ocs >:]

Meet Sherri and Myntea! The main teal and goldblood characters in my batch of critters. Some context before I get into both of them individually: The story they're apart of is called Temporal Shuffle, and a running theme among their group is following in their ancestor's footsteps in one way or another, similar to the canon trolls symbolically paralleling their own. However here, it's more extreme. Like- think something along the lines of a session full of trolls who treat their ancestors as Eridan and Vriska did. It's a mess of children who don't know what the FUCK they're doing. Anyways, onto Sherri and Myntea themselves.

Sherri Asafer, Prospit dreamer, Mage of Life [She/They]- Assassin in training, though she has a disdain for it. She's only doing so to follow in her ancestor's footsteps who was a high ranking assassin herself, as they were hatched and raised to do so. In spite of this, Sherri has a prominent side gig online as an anonymous creator who promotes rather controversial ideas online [for alternia] and tries to spread positivity when she can [to mixed results], often getting away with a lot of it due to having connections. However, this has lead to her being subjected to physical danger on multiple occasions on the off chance someone is to figure out who she is. Still, this doesn't stop them as they have a strong belief that things can get better. Aside from that, their other main hobby is plush crafting.

Myntea Horrol, Derse dreamer, Knight of Heart [She/Her]- A psionic who once had rather impressive but destructive and hard to contain abilities, until an incident that greatly burnt out her abilities. She still can use them, however they are pretty weak and can cause strain if used too much. Very much so the edge to Sherri's fluff, Myntea is a reclusive and paranoid troll who works at a convenience store. Her ancestor was a warrior who fought in one of the rebellions against Condy, someone who Myntea admires and unfairly uses to compare herself to. Aside from that, Myntea has a fondness for science, and a curiosity that can make her quite nosy despite her better judgement.

Myn and Sherri met when Sherri had taken a particularly rough job as she ended up taking a beating before she finished the target off. Her body sore and her hive being too far away to walk all the way back without a rest, she decided to take her chances and rest up in a cave she had found hidden away by some boulders.

It was a lot larger than they expected, the entrance was so covered up it seemed like more of a crawlspace, except this cave was big enough to have a hive inside of it. With some consideration, they decided to risk the potential of the troll living there being hostile, eventually running into Myn.

I'm not gonna go into the whole thing here because I am tired and I honestly wasn't planning on typing this much, but hey! It is what it is and I'd love to talk about them more outside of this post. I will say as a fun fact! They are in my Pesterquest comic as side characters, so look out for them ^_^

[sburbian-sage]

HEY, not sure if you get a lot of cherubs so maybe you can’t answer, but I HAVE a problem.

CHERUBS are generally either destructively or creatively inclined, and that tends to correlate strongly with our morality. IT’S also impossible to hide, because it seems to also correlate with whether or not we’re DERSE or PROSPIT dreamers.

I AM a destructively-inclined, DERSE dreamer.

MY other half is of course a creatively-inclined PROSPIT dreamer.

BUT despite our differences, we pulled though our first session together. I THINK because we didn’t know we would be playing forever.

NOW however, it’s our second session.

WE’RE teamed up with humans in this session, and they hate me. THEY think I’M EVIL, and that my other half is good, just because of the creative/destructive distinction…

I GUESS that a lot of stuff on the networks corroborates that, and my other half is going full-throttle on turning them against me. BUT I DON’T think I’M THAT bad, and I THINK if they would just hear me out, they’d realize that my other half is horrible and delusional, even if they have a saccharine veneer to them.

HOW do I get them to stop judging me, and get them to listen? THEY all have me blocked now, so I CAN’T just message them, and I THINK they’ll attack me if I JUST show up… MAYBE not since it would hurt my other half as well, but I’M BAD at keeping my cool, and I’VE NEVER had to interact with anyone besides my other half before, I FEEL like I’LL JUST incriminate myself if I TRY to talk to anyone in person. THE only reason I’M ABLE to send you this message is because with text, I CAN spend hours wording everything exactly right, and even then I WORRY that I’VE SAID something wrong, or not been convincing enough…

MY classpect this session, in case it’s relevant, is MAGE of RAGE.

I am going to be real with you chief, I've never heard of a "Cherub" before. I know there's Humans, Trolls, and I think birds or psionic dog things as valid player species, but never a Cherub. I'm not gonna write you off as some sort of prankster, because dismissing inquiries out of hand discourages further inquiries, it would be a crime to deprive the world of my advice, and it's possible I have some network issues that has kept this information hidden from me (in which case this must be correct as soon as possible), so I'll operate as though everything said here is true.

First thing's first, given how your "destructive inclination" seems to be an inborn part of you as part of your species' weird dualism thing, and people are judging you based off that, I think it's safe to say that everyone here (but you) is kind of racist? This isn't part of my advice, because running up and saying "hey guys stop being racist" to the guys that hate you will be the opposite of helpful, but I'm just pointing it out and earning positive reputation online by denouncing bigotry because it's bad!

Another unfortunate piece of news is that your classpect this session is fucking you over. Rage gets a bad rap among players and is subject to lots of misconceptions, because people think it's about anger and hate and stuff, and your coplayers will probably say "oh so you ARE going to destroy everything, if not because of your weird Cherub thing but because of your aspect". It's not that, just to clarify, Rage is about authority, control, and influencing events and moods from the outside (as opposed to Heart which influences nature from the inside). And worse yet, Mages are Cryptical classes who are not meant to be direct or forthcoming, they complexify the situation in passive manner. This means that coming forward and having an honest conversation will be actively penalized by the game.

I guess the first thing you could do is try finding out what specifically they've been saying about you. The references to "other half" seems to imply that you share the same body, which, I have no idea how that works and I'm pretty sure it breaks several fundamental aspects of the game, but if you can "switch over" while they're with someone, you at least have a few seconds to ask around. I know you kids with your internet think that if you can't use Pesterchum then you can't talk at all, but you can just ask in person (as you said, they probably will not attack) or leave a message or something. Most people feel inclined to respond in those situations, shunning is pretty abnormal behavior. Messages are probably best considering your self-admitted lack of interpersonal skills, but if you do talk in person, keep what you want to say in mind but don't rehearse, because it's easy to come across as inauthentic and if they break the script, you'll flounder. As far as keeping your cool, this is a skill you'll have to learn yourself. When I talk with someone who's frustrating me, I usually calm myself by remembering that I'm right, they're not, and that if I don't give them a reaction they usually get worked up themselves.

While I said before that your classpect is hurting you in some respects, there might be ways it can help. Mages invite complexity and mystery to the session, and often operate by leaving "triggers" for other players to activate, and this is a good opportunity to leave behind those aforementioned messages. If one of said triggers really helps the player because it invites control over something they were having trouble with, and it's clear you left it, this does a lot to endear yourself to them (as well as disprove any "evil" allegations). If worst comes to worst, you can use the signature ability of Rage, issues commands to things, and command them to [tell me why you hate me] or [listen to me]. I would advise against commands like [stop believing my other half] or [stop believing I'm bad] because those sound suspicious and they aren't permanent, the former are just small "stops" where they'll be forced to hear you out. I would also try talking to your other half (if you can? how does that work???) and see if you can't convince them that this behavior is self-destructive bullshit that jeopardizes the success of the session and potentially their own life considering you two share a body.

My last pieces of advice is that if worst comes to worst, "saccharine veneers" never last long. The archetype of "is super sweet and kind but is actual an awful abuser" is pretty common on the internet, and it's only a matter of time until the jig is up. As long as you don't do anything incriminating, things should work themselves out. Also, you might be a bit too kind or otherwise aren't that familiar with your current aspect. It's impossible to block Rage players. People who have tried either have the messages come through anyways, or their chat clients open themselves up/the computer turns itself on to receive the message. So you can always use that. Just don't come across as too desperate.