#because if he doesn't

[fearthhereaper]

i, for one, ADORE the fact that alicent uses aemond as her therapy child

yes, she's his parent and yes, she clings to him to stay sane, and yes, it's unhealthy to the point where you don't know who's parenting who

yes, she should be his support system instead of him being hers

how many nights did she spend "comforting" aemond when the situation was very much the opposite and aemond was the one feeling the burden of being solely responsible for your parent's wellbeing

how much of her love is pure love and not her desperate need to establish a human connection to someone

she has no husband to offer her support, she can't seek comfort in criston, her father offers no love without a motive, larys is using her and humiliating her....daeron is away and aegon is a monster

her relationship with rhaenyra is in shambles, helaena is too different for her to understand, she has no female friends at court

she is completely and utterly alone.... except she isn't. she has aemond. and all of that loneliness, that isolation, just accumulates until she suffocates aemond with it

he breathes and lives his mother's pain and yearning for support and love and he grew into it knowing his role is to lessen that pain

he is her son, her partner, her therapist, her protector; all those roles that other people in her life should have, aemond fulfills

[eidolons-stuff]

*Thing goes around Nevermore to look for Enid, but runs into Ajax & Xavier instead*

Xavier: "Oh hi Thing. How's Wednesday?"

Thing: *on a mission, doesn't have the time to talk* *signs* "She's fine"

Xavier: "Can I see her?"

Thing: *stops dead in his tracks* *signs* "No- It's probably best if she just gets some rest"

Xavier: *disappointed*

Ajax: "Woah, what happened to Wednesday?"

Xavier: "We found her unconscious in the woods"

Ajax: "Oh- Is Enid ok?"

Xavier: "Yeah. She ended up carrying Wednesday back to Nevermore, with my help of course"

Thing: *look of bitch really?*

Ajax: "Woah. Enid is really cool."

Thing: *signs* "speaking of Enid, have you seen her or know where she is?"

Xavier: "No. We were actually looking for her now because Ajax here wants to ask her out"

Ajax: "Dude, shut up! I don't want to jinx it"

Thing: *signs* "ask her out to study?"

Ajax: *embarrassed* "Ask her out on a date"

Thing: *oh shit*

Xavier: "So if you find her first, can you tell her that Ajax wants to talk to her? But if we find her first, we'll tell her that you're also looking for her"

Thing: *now desperately needs to find Enid before them* *signs* "yeah sure. I better hurry so I can find her quicker. bye"

[millidew]

his change in career has captivated me

bonus:

[littlefankingdom]

Dick who climbed on anything as a child. Even in public, especially in public. The moment Bruce looks away, he is climbing something to get as high as possible. The first times, it gave Bruce an heart attack. Now, it's just a headache.

People pass by and ask if they should call the firefighters, and Bruce tiredly tell them "He is fine, he can get down on his own.", like people with cats.

Imagine, you're walking out of some building, only to see a 10 years old standing on top of a lamppost, having a discussion with his dad guardian at the bottom.

"Dick, get down."

"Make me."

"Get down or you're grounded."

[bunnieswithsunglasses]

When Lucifer is hanging out at his palace and can't get a moment's peace...

[lgbtlunaverse]

"How did Shuro think he could marry Falin when he hated her brother?" you have to understand. Toshiro is from a whole different country. In his head he and Falin would move back to the Eastern Archipelago and they'd see Laios twice a year tops. You can pretend to get along with in-laws you don't like for a few days a year, people do that all the time.

The actual flaw in his plan– which shows he doesn't really understand either of the Touden siblings– is the fact that if the plot hadn't happened and Falin had for some reason said yes to his proposal, Laios would have packed his bags and moved away with them instantly.

[n4rval]

i lied. here's a bonus.

[brucie-baby]

the fact that alfred was the one to put up jason's memorial is so important to me

[icestorming]

- oh.

[gingermintpepper]

I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.

(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)

Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.

(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)

I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.

[z13lovebot]

More fishputer 🤲

[inkskinned]

the thing is that they're so fascinated by sex, they love sex, they can't imagine a world without sex - they need sex to sell things, they need sex to be part of their personality, they need sex to prove their power - but they hate sex. they are disgusted by it.

sex is the only thing that holds their attention, and it is also the thing that can never be discussed directly.

you can't tell a child the normal names for parts of their body, that's sexual in nature, because the body isn't a body, it's a vessel of sex. it doesn't matter that it's been proven in studies (over and over) that kids need to know the names of their genitals; that they internalize sexual shame at a very young age and know it's 'dirty' to have a body; that it overwhelmingly protects children for them to have the correct words to communicate with. what matters is that they're sexual organs. what matters is that it freaks them out to think about kids having body parts - which only exist in the context of sex.

it's gross to talk about a period or how to check for cancer in a testicle or breast. that is nasty, illicit. there will be no pain meds for harsh medical procedures, just because they feature a cervix.

but they will put out an ad of you scantily-clad. you will sell their cars for them, because you have abs, a body. you will drip sex. you will ooze it, like a goo. like you were put on this planet to secrete wealth into their open palms.

they will hit you with that same palm. it will be disgusting that you like leather or leashes, but they will put their movie characters in leather and latex. it will be wrong of you to want sexual freedom, but they will mark their success in the number of people they bed.

they will crow that it's inappropriate for children so there will be no lessons on how to properly apply a condom, even to teens. it's teaching them the wrong things. no lessons on the diversity of sexual organ growth, none on how to obtain consent properly, none on how to recognize when you feel unsafe in your body. if you are a teenager, you have probably already been sexualized at some point in your life. you will have seen someone also-your-age who is splashed across a tv screen or a magazine or married to someone three times your age. you will watch people pull their hair into pigtails so they look like you. so that they can be sexy because of youth. one of the most common pornography searches involves newly-18 young women. girls. the words "barely legal," a hiss of glass sand over your skin.

barely legal. there are bills in place that will not allow people to feel safe in their own bodies. there are people working so hard to punish any person for having sex in a way that isn't god-fearing and submissive. heteronormative. the sex has to be at their feet, on your knees, your eyes wet. when was the first time you saw another person crying in pornography and thought - okay but for real. she looks super unhappy. later, when you are unhappy, you will close your eyes and ignore the feeling and act the role you have been taught to keep playing. they will punish the sex workers, remove the places they can practice their trade safely. they will then make casual jokes about how they sexually harass their nanny.

and they love sex but they hate that you're having sex. you need to have their ornamental, perfunctory, dispassionate sex. so you can't kiss your girlfriend in the bible belt because it is gross to have sex with someone of the same gender. so you can't get your tubes tied in new england because you might change your mind. so you can't admit you were sexually assaulted because real men don't get hurt, you should be grateful. you cannot handle your own body, you cannot handle the risks involved, let other people decide that for you. you aren't ready yet.

but they need you to have sex because you need to have kids. at 15, you are old enough to parent. you are not old enough to hear the word fuck too many times on television.

they are horrified by sex and they never stop talking about it, thinking about it, making everything unnecessarily preverted. the saying - a thief thinks everyone steals. they stand up at their podiums and they look out at the crowd and they sign a bill into place that makes sexwork even more unsafe and they stand up and smile and sign a bill that makes gender-affirming care illegal and they get up and they shrug their shoulders and write don't say gay and they get up, and they make the world about sex, but this horrible, plastic vision of it that they have. this wretched, emotionless thing that holds so much weight it's staggering. they put their whole spine behind it and they push and they say it's normal!

this horrible world they live in. disgusted and also obsessed.

[shirecorn]

Monsters

Bittersweet Dreams || Perspective || Evil || Fighter

[bet-on-me-13]

Danny is a Fae at Starbucks

So! Danny works by Fae Rules, Names and all, but he has no idea about that because he was forced to run away from Home (and the Ghost portal) before his Ghostly Education could be completed.

He runs to Gotham and eventually gets a job at Starbucks, or some other Cafe.

He has to ask the question "Could I get your name please?" A LOT while working there. And unintentionally steals hundreds of Names by the end of his first day, much less a week or a month into his job.

One day, Constantine visits Gotham for a Meeting with Batman, but by the time he gets to the Meeting Point he has bigger issues to discuss.

"Why the hell does half of your City belong to a Fae Lord?!"

[sad-littletalker]

If Bruce is covering as Nightwing right now, who's acting as Batman in Gotham?

Tim: ok so any takers for the cowl?

*everyone looks at Jason as he is the second oldest*

Jason: oh no way. Absolutely not. Tim?

Tim: after evil gun Batman? ha. Nope. Plus DC doesn't pay much attention to me to make a good story about that.

Damian: may I-

Everyone: no.

Stephanie: OH I COULD BE PURPLE BATMAN!

Cassandra: I want to be Batman if Steph is my Robin

*everyone considers it*

Tim: that... isn't a bad idea actually. I like it.

[sunderwight]

Scenario where cumplane become friends before the Abyss, and Luo Binghe determines that actually, Shang Qinghua is potentially his biggest romantic rival.

Not because Shang Qinghua is particularly seductive, and not even because of their friendship, but because Shang Qinghua actually seems to be fluent in Shen Qingqiu's weird and at times contradictory signals.

Liu Qingge and Yue Qingyuan can yearn and pine all they want, but they can't even convey romantic interest in a format Shen Qingqiu can or will recognize, so at the end of the day they're making all of these overtures and Shen Qingqiu is just like oh what nice friends :) about it. There's way less risk of him ever accepting their suits when he can't recognize them as such, and when neither of the other guys even realize he can't recognize them as such!

But Shang Qinghua...

Shang Qinghua knows that Shen Qingqiu is unaware, too. And he knows how to make him aware. He knows how to parse Shen Qingqiu's odd double-speak and mixed signals maybe even better than Luo Binghe himself. Plus he can anticipate what things Shen Qingqiu is liable to react strangely or inconsistently towards, when again, even Binghe struggles to do that sometimes!

If Shang Qinghua ever made a move on Shen Qingqiu, he would be able to convey his intentions clearly. And before Binghe has the social standing to actually present himself as a viable alternative, he wouldn't even be able to argue against the match! It would be totally dependent on whether or not Shen Qingqiu was interested, and Luo Binghe cannot say with confidence that he actually wouldn't be? Shang Qinghua may be the weakest and least dashing of the peak lords, but he's not bad looking. He even has certain traits which Luo Binghe himself shares, traits Binghe's deliberately tried to emphasize because he knows Shizun responds to them, like being pathetic, and clingy, and clumsy, and having big eyes and curls in his hair and doing important work that helps make Shen Qingqiu's life more comfortable...!

Luo Binghe starts spying on Shang Qinghua. He is going to get dirt on him, and he is going to blackmail him into swearing that he will never ever attempt to court Shen Qingqiu! At least not until after Binghe has reached his majority and can fairly compete with him for his master's affections!

Of course, this is how Luo Binghe discovers that Shang Qinghua is a spy for Mobei Jun, and is plotting to assist in an attack on the Immortal Alliance Conference.

A revelation which accidentally creates such an untenable situation that the plot shifts irrevocably. All Shen Qingqiu knows about it is that out of nowhere the System has offered to remove the Endless Abyss mandatory plot point but only if Shen Qingqiu agrees to purchase something it's calling The Espionage Path...?