#both are true it depends on the culture

[piplupod]

any post mentioning that one streamer who dresses "girl-mode" always turns out to be crawling with shitty takes or shitty people and then i inevitably see a post later on referencing the first post and that post ALSO is crawling with shitty takes and shitty people and i think maybe i will just blacklist the guy's name finally but damn sometimes the posts make a good point and then i find out later it wasn't making the point that /i/ got out of it but was actually making a different point somehow (or at least some popular blog interpreted it differently and now apparently their interpretation is the One Correct one and i am TIREDDD)

so. blacklisting that streamer's name now bc i am so tired of being stressed out every time i see or rb a post that even vaguely mentions him fdsjfkl i always end up feeling like i've done something horribly wrong or misinterpreted it heinously and i think i am just. going to sidestep all that now

also reminder that if u see me rb smth shitty or whatnot u can lmk and i'll look into it and deal w it !!

[rithmeres]

i don’t think i’ve rewatched atla since becoming a committed pacifist and i just finished what was probably my tenth rewatch and i have never loved aang more. i've seen it so many times but i still came away with a new appreciation for the way the end of the story was handled. aang is the only survivor of a genocide and he is clinging to the last remnants of his culture and religion, and everyone is telling him the only way to save the world is to kill the dictator whose regime is responsible for the genocide, but to do so would abandon the deeply held beliefs of his people. if aang goes against his beliefs and kills ozai, his people's way of life dies completely and sozin wins.

aang knows it would be wrong but he can't see another way out so he prays for an answer, and the universe hears him and the spirits send out the lion turtle, and the creator answers him. and here's the thing that i never put together before today: aang would not have been able to energybend ozai if he had given in and wanted to kill him. the lion turtle tells aang that only the incorruptible can bend another’s energy, or else they will become corrupted themselves. and i think that aang, because of his love for the fire nation as he had once known it, was never corrupted by personal hatred for the fire lord or the fire nation. he was able to expertly hold two conflicting beliefs in harmony better than any adult could, the belief that ozai is a horrible person and the world would be better off without him and that he's still a human being with a life that is sacred.

and i don't think it's a matter of selfishness like some people make it out to be. aang is not some immature little kid who doesn't want to kill because killing is for bad guys. he's an incredibly wise and spiritual person who was shaped by airbender beliefs and upholds airbender beliefs, and he can see beyond the scope of this war. the balance of the world depends on the existence of the four nations, and aang does not just represent the air nomads, he IS the air nomads. he's all that's left.

despite many people’s interpretation of the four past avatars’ advice, none of the past avatars outright tell him to kill ozai. they tell him to be decisive, to bring justice, to be proactive, to be sacrificial. but none of them tells him definitively to kill him. he doesn't disobey or ignore their advice, he follows their ancient wisdom while still staying true to his beliefs. yangchen actually comes the closest to outright telling him to kill ozai (even more than kiyoshi, surprisingly) but what she fails to account for is that aang is not just the avatar, he is the last airbender, and being the last airbender is far greater a burden than being the avatar. no matter what happens, once he dies, there will always be another avatar. but if he is not careful to preserve the airbender way of life, there will be no more airbenders. yangchen could sacrifice her air nomad way of life for the sake of her duty to the world because there were thousands of other air nomads to continue their traditions. aang has no such privilege.

and it's not that he doesn't want to kill, it's that he actually doesn't think he can do it -- both that he won't be able to emotionally bring himself to kili someone, and, prodigy that he is, he doesn't have the raw bending skill to overcome a comet-powered master firebender. and then it turns from 'i don't think i can do it' into ‘i can’t do it.’ and when the avatar state gives him enough power to actually do it, he changes the answer to ‘i won’t do it.’ he overcomes all the combined power of his past lives to say no, i have found another answer and i will remain incorruptible. to kill is to maintain the power struggle of the fire nation and to reject air nomad wisdom and without airbenders the world CANNOT be brought into balance.

the only thing ozai cares about is power, and that's what the entire fight with ozai is about, physically and ideologically, because ozai only sees power in terms of force, fear, threats, and violence. to ozai, aang (and his entire people) are weak and undeserving of life because they are largely pacifists, but he fails to see the magnificent power that the airbenders do hold, spiritual wisdom and mastery of the self and contentment and joy and harmony and a deep understanding of the world that a man like ozai could never obtain. to kill ozai would ratify ozai’s worldview that power as he defines it is the most important pursuit in the world and the only way to assert one's right to be in the world is to be cruel and violent like him. i think to ozai, becoming powerless might be worse than being dead. he wants power, or he wants death, and aang gives him neither. it upends everything he believed in. aang, the avatar, but more importantly, the last airbender, armed by his past lives' power and his people's love and the spirit world's blessing and the lion turtle's omniscience (and toph's mastery of true sight through neutral jing), ends the war 100 years to the day after the air nomad genocide, in the way that his people taught him, with power that goes beyond force and violence, with spiritual wisdom, with an incorruptible soul, with mercy -- mercy that is not weakness, mercy that brings justice.

[thejoyofseax]

Why We Can't Have Medieval Food

I noted in a previous post that I'd "expand on my thinking on efforts to reproduce period food and how we’re just never going to know if we have it right or not." Well, now I have 2am sleep?-never-heard-of-it insomnia, so let's go.

At the fundamental level, this is the idea that you can't step in the same river twice. You can put your foot down at the same point in space, and it'll go into water, but that's different water, and the bed of the river has inevitably changed, even a little, from the last time you did so.

Our ingredients have changed. This is not just because we can't get the fat from fat-tailed sheep in Ireland, or silphium at all anywhere, although both of those are true. But the aubergine you buy today is markedly different to the aubergine that was available even 40 years ago. You no longer need to salt aubergine slices and draw out the bitter fluids, which was necessary for pretty much all of the thing's existence before (except in those cultures that liked the bitter taste). The bitterness has been bred out of them. And the old bitter aubergine is gone. Possibly there are a few plants of it preserved in some archive garden, or a seed bank, or something, but I can't get to those.

We don't really have a good idea of the plant called worts in medieval English recipes. I mean, we know (or we're fairly sure) it was brassica oleracea. But that one species has cultivars as distinct as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, Savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, and gai lan (list swiped from Wikipedia). And even within "cabbage" or "kale", you have literally dozens of varieties. If you plant the seeds from a brassica, unless you've been moderately careful with pollination, you won't get the same plant as the seeds are from. You can crossbreed brassicas just by planting them near each other and letting them flower. And of course there is no way to determine what varietal any medieval village had, a very high likelihood that it was different to the village next door, and an exceedingly high chance that that varietal no longer exists. Further, it only ever existed for a few tens of years - before it went on cross-breeding into something different. So our access to medieval worts (or indeed, cabbage, kale, etc) is just non-existant.

Some other species within the brassica genus are as varied. Brassica rapa includes oilseed rape, field mustard, turnip, Chinese cabbage, and pak choi.

We have an off-chance, as it happens, of getting almost the same kind of apple as some medieval varieties, because apples can only be reproduced for orchard use by grafting, which is essentially cloning. Identification through paintings, DNA analysis, and archaeobotany sometimes let us pin down exactly which apple was there. But the conditions under which we grow those apples are probably not the same as the medieval orchard. Were they thinned? When were they harvested? How were they stored? And apples are pretty much the best case.

Medieval wheat was practically a different plant. It was far pickier about where it would grow, and frequently produced 2-4 grains per stalk. A really good year had 6-8. In modern conditions, any wheat variety with less than 30 grains per stalk would be considered a flop.

Meats are worse. Selective breeding in the last century has absolutely and completely changed every single species of livestock, and if you follow that back another five centuries, some of them would be almost unrecognisable. Even our heritage breeds are mostly only about 200 years old.

Cheese, well. Cheese is dependent on very specific bacteria, and there are plenty of conditions where the resulting cheese is different depending on whether it was stored at the back or front of the cave. Yogurts, quarks, skyrs, etc, are also live cultures, and almost certainly vary massively. (I have a theory about British cheese here, too, which I'll expand on in a future post)

So, even before you go near the different cooking conditions (wood, burnables like camel and cow dung, smoke, the material and condition of cooking pots), we just can't say with any reliability that the food we're making now is anything like medieval people produced from the same recipe. We can't even say that with much reliability over a century.

Under very controlled conditions, you could make an argument for very specific dishes. If you track down a wild mountain sheep in Afghanistan, and use water from a local spring, and salt from some local salt mine, then you can make a case that you can produce something fairly close to the original ma wa milh, the water-and-salt stew that forms the most basic dish in Arabic cookery. But once you start introducing domestic livestock, vegetables, or even water from newer wells, you're now adrift.

It is possible that some dishes taste exactly the same, by coincidence. But we can't determine that. We can't compare the taste of a dish from five years ago, let alone five hundred, because we're only just getting to a state where we can "record" a taste accurately. Otherwise it's memory and chance.

We've got to be at peace with this. We can put in the best efforts we can, and produce things that are, in spirit, like the medieval dishes we're reading about. But that's as good as it gets.

[howtofightwrite]

I'm writing a scene where a cultivater (chinese martial artists who fights ghosts) falls in a forest and I'm trying to figure out how someone who fights on rough terrain would train to fall. I tried looking at martial art/parkour/stunt man tutorials, but I feel like a lot of the basic techniques (rolling, and slapping the ground to distribute weight) wouldn't work well on uneven ground. I also tried looking at hiking advice but they just say to fall on your pack. Any insight?

Chinese cultivators don’t fall, they choose to reacquaint themselves with the ground.

That sounds like a joke, but the best way to understand Chinese cultivators and Chinese fantasy media is to realize that martial arts are the gateway drug to magic. And that will get you into a lot of trouble if you follow that all the way into Martial Arts Give You Superpowers, which is both the outgrowth of the western understanding of Chinese culture and a trope rife with orientalism. Cultivation seems simple on the surface when you’re watching Chinese media, but it’s more than martial arts, it’s more than religion, it’s more than mythology, (though it is all of those too) it’s a genuine transition into metaphysics that reorients how we understand and interact with the world around us. The concepts we see in cultivation come from real martial arts philosophy that you find in Tai Chi, Shaolin, and most other Chinese martial arts. They come from real religions including Daoism, Buddhism, a healthy dose of Confucianism, general mythology and mysticism from a wide range of subcultures, and, to an extent, Animism. If you aren’t doing your reading with the Eight Immortals, Journey to the West, The Legend of the White Snake, and others then you should dig in. I also really suggest watching the live action C-Dramas whether they’re true Wuxia or more Xianxia idol dramas (and in this case the idol dramas are better because the action is slower) so you can acquaint yourself with the stylized martial arts portrayals, a wide variety of choreography, character archetypes essential to motif based storytelling, and the most important aspect of all—wire work.

Understanding and conceptualizing stunt action done on wires is essential when you’re trying to visualize and create action scenes in any East Asian genre. Your first instinct might be to dismiss the stylized movement as unrealistic (it is) but remember that it’s also genre essential. Hong Kong action cinema has a very specific feel to it that’s very different from the way Western cinema structures and films their fight scenes. Even when you’re writing, you’ll want to find ways to imitate it through your visual imagery on the page.

Probably the best way to contextualize cultivators is that they’re wizards who do martial arts. They’ve learned to transcend the limitations in our understanding of reality through knowledge and study to perform superhuman feats. How superhuman? Well, it gets wild. They can be anywhere from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon/Who Rules the World fly through the trees levels to Shang Tsung’s “I’m going to slam my hell reality into your normal reality because commuting to work is too much of an inconvenience.”

Which is to say, they don’t always fight ghosts. Sometimes they fight other martial artists, sometimes they fight other cultivators, sometimes they fight demons, sometimes they fight gods, and sometimes they fight incredibly overpowered monkeys. They’re often monks living in seclusion on a mountaintop, but not always. Cultivation is more of a state of mind. Anyone can do it if they learn how to absorb spiritual energy from the world around them through meditation and breathing exercises. Gods cultivate. Humans cultivate. Animals cultivate. Remember, the demons and the ghosts cultivate too. Sometimes, your master gets reincarnated as a demon. Sometimes, you do. The amount of wacky spellcasting you can do is dependent on how much energy you’ve cultivated, which is dependent on how old you are and how good at cultivation you are. Using the power means you need to cultivate more energy, the greater the spell or difficult the battle then the more energy is lost.

This is important to the question of: how does a cultivator fall?

Metaphorically? Existentially? Physically?

When we’re talking physically, wire work becomes very important. Think of your cultivator as being on wires. If they have the knowledge and understanding to do it, they can slow their own fall through the air to land harmlessly on the ground or twist over like a cat and launch themselves back off the ground to fly at their opponent in a counter attack. If they have the knowledge and understanding, they can teleport. If they lack the knowledge and understanding or want to trick their opponent, they can hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. If they’re relying on basics, they can also smack the ground to counter and spread out the impact then use the momentum from that fall to roll back onto their feet. They’ll do it no matter what terrain they’re on because it’s a basic technique that’s trained into their foundation to the point it’s a reflexive action. Any force distributed away from, and reducing impact on, important body parts like your spine is better than nothing. It’s better to sacrifice your arm than be paralyzed. At its heart, that’s the point of the technique. If you’re able to walk away with a functioning spine, it’s done its job. Your shoulder hurts? That’s normal. Your arm is sprained or broken? Sucks, but that’s better than the alternative that is paralysis and death. For reference, learning to fall was the first lesson my Wushu instructor ever taught me. It is that basic.

A lot of the time when portraying cultivators in media, the goal is to show them as being beyond the limitations of standard martial artists. How vast the gap is between the cultivator and the average human is dependent on both the setting and the cultivator. So, the average martial artist who possesses superhuman talents but hasn’t dedicated themselves to a life of cultivation and cultivators who are new to the path are going to be on the rung below and more likely to be knocked on their ass. Cultivators in the mid-range are more likely to have crafted or trained in solutions to being knocked on their ass which put them in a less vulnerable position while recovering and empowered/enhanced their martial arts. Cultivators in the top tier are usually straight up masters at spellcasting, if they deign to fight at all. Gravity need not apply. Rember, the time it takes you to hit the ground and roll to your feet is time your opponent has to launch a counter attack or move to a better position. Also, it means you’ve taken your eyes off your opponent. This is bad enough against a normal human opponent. Against another mostly immortal or ancient magic user this risks a terrible outcome.

Cunning and strategy are both as important as skill. Wisdom, knowledge, and hard work outweigh talent and raw potential. You’ll have to decide how esoteric you want to be and what limits you want to set. I really urge you to do this because the danger of power creep is real and especially prominent here. A character’s growth in power is often linked to their growth in character or their arc, as they gain a greater understanding of themselves and the world around them their skill increases. The self-discovery/self-reflection/self-interrogation/intense suffering to reach enlightenment portion is just as important and intrinsic to the martial arts portion of Martial Arts Give You Superpowers. It’s easy to focus on the Superpowers or the Martial Arts parts of the equation and miss the genre necessity of character growth. This growth often happens through heaps of steadily increasing trauma. Or, failing to undergo that by being too powerful and thus unable to progress is the joke like it is in Qi Refining for 3000 Years. (Go to hell, Bai Qiuran, you hilariously overpowered monstrosity.)

The irony is that the trajectory in character growth is the same trajectory the average student experiences when practicing martial arts. The only difference is that the power arc is inflated. This includes overcoming ingrained truths that you believe about yourself, about your own abilities, what you believe yourself to be capable of (both good and bad,) about your biases toward yourself and other people, your biases about reality in general, your understanding of good and evil, the potential upending of right and wrong, and facing the greater complexity found in the world at large. The stripping away of these illusions, coming to terms with uncomfortable realizations in a more complicated world, and the gaining of new understanding and confidence are vital to that growth.

Skill isn’t just represented in the power creep, it’s also found in a character’s sophistication and complexity in their approach to combat and life in general. Their awareness both of themselves and of other people, their ability to read intentions, their predictive abilities, their complexity in initiating their own strategy and tactics while also recognizing and countering the plans of others. It’s their insight into human nature and their cunning. It’s not enough to be powerful. The world is full of powerful people and not so powerful people who have the capacity to be just as dangerous. This isn’t Goku and Freeza slamming into each other while the planet explodes in nine minutes. You also need to be smart. It’s also not about being a better person. It’s about being a self-aware person. A person who is self-actualized. Monkey’s growth is in his awareness of the world around him through his experiences and in approaching problems differently rather than becoming less of a little shit. If you grow up in the West, one of the issues you’re going to face is thinking of these hurdles as materialistic rather than emotional or intellectual.

A lot of Western media misinterprets the concepts of “giving up” as physical sacrifice. One of the popular examples is physically sacrificing the person we love. In order to have enlightenment, we must be separated from them. We can’t physically be with them anymore. Whereas under a Buddhist structure, what we are actually sacrificing is our own ignorance, our own preconceptions, and beliefs that keep the world comfortable. Under this structure, we’re sacrificing our preconceived notions of who our loved one is. The person that we invented when we first met and we must force ourselves to come to terms with who they really are. The outcome of this isn’t necessarily going to be bad, but it’s still painful. The person we think we love could be perfectly wonderful. However, they’re not who we imagined. If we choose to hold onto the illusion we created, to ignore the realization that the illusion is the person that we love, we’ll only end up causing ourselves and our loved one more pain. We must fall in love with them all over again. Coming to terms with that is painful. All pain comes from ignorance. In sacrificing, letting go of, or overcoming our ignorance, we grow.

These are the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual challenges necessary for a cultivator because they allow the cultivator to level up. Yes, level up. Whether this is coming from the influx of gaming culture into media at large or because the concept synergizes with the Buddhist goal of progressing through the Six Realms toward nirvana, leveling up is how a cultivator’s increasing power is often depicted. Of course, once we reach the next level we can’t go back except by falling or failing and are no longer the person we once were. This then gets mixed in with Daoist principles of finding divine understanding by living in harmony with the universe. The more understanding we gain of the world, the more energy we can absorb as a result, but our original goals may be lost or changed in the process. If a character begins their journey on the path of revenge, their newfound contextualization of the situation that caused them immense pain may force them to give that revenge up or find they don’t want revenge anymore.

Failure is also an option and often a common part of the story. These stories usually follow characters through multiple lives and rebirths over hundreds and even thousands of years, especially if they’re also gods. This is the existential fall. The fall to the Dark Side. All our heroes are going to go through it at least once. This is also why a lot of Chinese media ends in tragedy with hope for the next round.

-Michi

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[maniacwatchestheworld]

We Need To Talk About Danny's Power Level.

I was hesitant to make this post, but the more I think about it and the more I see... We really HAVE to discuss this. Generally speaking, I really don't want to be seen as someone who is trying to ruin people's fun within this fandom. I want to inform, and while I have issues with some of the very prevalent ideas in this fandom, I don't want to tell people what they should or should not be making! I want people to follow what they find fun to create! But this power level thing...? I think that it has some rather concerning implications to it that need to be examined and discussed! This is an actual, decently serious problem, and after considering it for a time, it occurs to me that I may be one of the few people in this community that recognizes this issue as an actual issue and has the authority to speak on it...

You NEED to stop making Danny so incredibly overpowered in the DPxDC space.

Now please don't misunderstand me. I understand the value of a good fun power fantasy and making Danny more powerful than God can be fun and cathartic if you have a negative history with the Christian faith. But this insistence on the Ghost Zone being The Most Important Thing Ever and Danny being The Most Powerful Entity Within It is actually actively warping how people interpret and think about DC canon as well as certain characters within its canon to the point of unrecognizability as well as robbing characters of what makes them interesting, the point of their stories, and their agency within it. But most importantly of all, all of this is just... Generally, genuinely dismissive and shitty towards most religions, cultures, beliefs, and faiths that people practice, ESPECIALLY the faiths of POC and other minorities. And this is specifically an issue that DC does not have and that people within this space are making an issue by refusing to let the Ghost Zone and Danny have some limitations.

So that you understand where I'm coming from, please understand that I'm a person of color (I'm half Filipino) and that I'm Buddhist (a religion that I decided to convert to and embrace after a lot of thought and soul-searching, even if I'm not very good at practicing it). It also needs to be stated that in the DC universe, all religions and faiths are true and real at the same time, and they all have more or less equal footing as any other faith or religion or mythology explored in this multiverse. Christian heaven and hell are real. Reincarnation is canonical to the DCU. The Greek Pantheon is real and they are just as real and powerful as the Norse Pantheon. (By the by, just to let you know, yes, people in the real life modern day do actually actively worship both of these pantheons today.) Different alien planets have different faiths, and there is precedent for them being real as well. (Hey! Fun fact! Kryptonians are polytheistic!) It does seem that some form of animism is real within the DCU (within concepts of The Red and The Green)! And there is even representation for indigenous African faiths and beliefs within this shared universe! One of the genuinely wonderful things about the DC universe is that all of these faiths are real, they're all valid, and they are all more or less on equal footing to one another! If all the religions and afterlives and gods of each pantheon went to war with one another, it would genuinely be difficult to know who would win, or who would even stand a chance of coming out of this conflict alive!

In fact, a lot of characters and storylines within the DC universe are actually DEPENDENT on all of these faiths existing and being equally valid at the same time. Do you know where Billy Batson gets his powers from? The phrase "SHAZAM," if you didn't know, is actually an acronym for the names of the gods and heroes that he derives his powers from. (Solomon, Heracles, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury.) And it's implied that each person with SHAZAM powers has different heroes and gods that they derive their power from! (Black Adam derives all of his powers from the Egyptian Pantheon. Mary Marvel derives all of her powers from female gods and heroic figures.) Many of Wonder Woman's stories involve her interacting with various different pantheons. Xanthe Zhou gets their powers from traditional Chinese folk ancestor-worshiping practices. Ragman is a Jewish character whose suit is a powerful Jewish artifact- a suit made out of the souls of sinners that was created to protect the Jewish community. Sun Wukong is an actual character in the DCU and he is JUST as overpowered and immortal ×500 as he should be! And there are like... At least 3 entirely different characters that either are iterations of, claim to be, or pull their powers/inspiration from Anansi! DC celebrates a lot of faiths and religions and are bringing in more beliefs and faiths into their universe all the time! TONS of characters derive their powers from their religions, faiths, and beliefs! And DC celebrates them all as being real and valid to all who practice them! ... And you want them all to be forced to be under the same umbrella and less important and powerful as Danny and the Ghost Zone...

Bringing up ideas of ghosts and afterlives are always going to be loaded subjects because they often inherently rub up against actual living people's practiced religions and beliefs. But a belief in ghosts and dimensions better suited for them is also a valid belief that real life people have. And there is precedent for these beliefs also being real within DC canon. But DC only manages to get away with crossing over as many faiths as it does by saying that they are all real, valid, and while you might see less of some pantheons and more of others, they all exist and are doing their own thing just like they do in real life, just off panel... Are you beginning to see what the problem is...?

In the DPxDC fandom's eagerness to incorporate Danny into the DC universe and to make him powerful enough to go toe to toe with the likes of Superman, it seems that most people immediately overcompensated and that no one has really thought to slow down, stop, and actually think about what they are implying. Because the most common headcanons that I have seen regarding the Ghost Zone and other afterlives and religions? It's that they are all parts of the Ghost Zone, but are all ultimately subordinate to it. And since Danny is the Most Powerful and Important Person in the Ghost Zone... This implies that all religions, faiths and beliefs are less important and are indeed subordinate to the Almighty Danny. That all deities and the people following them should just bow down to Danny's might. This is something that DC, in spite of all of its flaws, has managed to avoid. These religions are REAL religions! Actual faiths practiced by actual people! We are NOT talking about dead, irrelevant pantheons that no one alive worship anymore! We are talking about living, active faiths and religions, some of which colonizers have tried to eradicate from the world! Some of these faiths have been suppressed! Some of the people who practice these beliefs have faced genocide for them! And so saying that the Ghost Zone is bigger, better, and that Danny is more important than any single other faith and afterlife...? THAT'S A SHITTY THING TO DO! You are literally doing the shitty Christian missionary thing, but with a fictional afterlife that consists of fictional characters that you know are not actual religious beliefs! You're landing on the sandy polytheistic shores of the DCU and declaring that the Ghost Zone is actually vaster than every faith already in the DCU and that Danny is more powerful and has authority over your gods! That your beliefs and faith and religion should just take a backseat to the Danny power fantasy! That your real, lived religion is not more important nor should it be respected when Danny is in the room! Of course the Buddha should bow down to Danny! Of course the Jewish people should renounce their faith and worship Danny instead because he's better and more powerful than the Jewish God! Why should people pray to their ancestors when Danny ultimately gets to decide what happens to everyone's ancestors!? If they want good things to happen to their ancestors in the afterlife, they should pray to Danny instead! Not like any form of prayer works or matters in this universe anyway because Danny is Almighty! And he doesn't hear the prayers! By making all faiths subordinate to Danny within these stories, you are saying that anyone who practices these beliefs and faiths within these stories are not valid in their beliefs. The only belief that matters and is real in this universe is the Ghost Zone and whatever will appease Danny the most. And while the characters in these stories are not real, the religions, beliefs, and practices they engage in ARE. And so you are implying that real people's faiths and religions don't matter. You are just dismissing real faiths and beliefs as not something worth thinking about or respecting within your works! You are saying that this fictional American white teenage boy and his goopy green land is more important to you than just being respectful of real people's faiths, beliefs, and religions. That your power fantasy is more important than saying that a person is valid for holding on to their beliefs. That when it comes down to it, that you would rather people choose your Danny power fantasy over their religion being portrayed as important and valid. That is honestly insulting. And really alls that you've done is impose monotheism onto the DC universe. You're just enforcing monotheism on people with extra steps. But instead of it being the Christian God, you've put Danny in that position. THIS IS A SHITTY THING TO DO! THIS SHOULD NOT BE THE DEFAULT HEADCANON THAT PEOPLE HAVE IN THIS FANDOM! PLEASE STOP!

Please understand. I know that you didn't do this on purpose or mean to imply this intentionally. I know that you didn't realize that you were insulting and undermining actual faiths and religions by pushing these ideas on the fandom. If one or two people had these thoughts and headcanons and didn't think very much about what they are implying, this would not be a problem. But for this to be the default is VERY disconcerting! As a Buddhist, it does feel genuinely shitty and insulting to imply that Danny has authority over the Buddha and that he outranks and is more powerful than Sun Wukong. It's not fun to think that my beliefs matter to you less than continuing to play with your Danny power fantasy. That you don't think that the pursuit for enlightenment and inner peace is real or worthwhile. That you would find my pursuit of compassion over everything else to be silly, stupid, and laughable when stood next to Danny. I know that you don't mean it. I know that's not what you meant to imply. But it is what you imply by making every faith subordinate to the Ghost Zone. And as someone who has a faith that is so often seen as subordinate to others and just a silly little play fantasy that doesn't matter and isn't real, it's depressing and uncomfortable to see this community as a whole unknowingly echo these sentiments. People in real life don't think that my faith is valid. People don't believe me when I say that I'm Buddhist. And as someone who is Filipino on top of that, I can't help but to think about the utter tragedy of my ancestors being forced to convert to Christianity or die. To forget their beliefs, pretend they never mattered, and embrace Jesus. To be forced to believe that their indigenous beliefs didn't matter. And so many of those indigenous beliefs are now lost and forgotten to their living ancestors (including myself) for it because to the Christians, their belief in Jesus was ultimately more important to them than just letting the Filipino beliefs and religions peacefully exist as they were. It's uncomfortable to me that you would rather I just embrace this view of Danny and let him be more important than and be an authority over my religion. That I should just be comfortable in Danny being more important and better than every religion that people actually practice in real life. That I should just forget the insult to my and any other religion that you make by placing Danny as more important than, and to "just have fun." But I can't. And these ideas are everywhere in this fandom. Even in stories where it shouldn't matter or doesn't need to be present, it's there. This reminder that you don't take my faith seriously- these ideas that Danny is more important than my faith are ubiquitous to this community. An issue that wasn't present in either of the original source materials. Because they thought about it and so went out of their way to not imply it. But here, people are just not willing to make that courtesy for even a second.

But it doesn't have to be this way. You can do better! I know that you can do better. And it isn't even difficult to do! All that you need to do better is to simply... Just... Think about it. When you imply or say "all afterlives are part of the Ghost Zone" actually think about ALL afterlives! Christian and Atheist and Greek ones, yes. But also Asian and Native American and African and South American ones too! Is that kind of thought fair towards Native American faiths, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, Palestinians, Hellenists, Animists, and every other person and group that practices a faith? Or does this have majorly fucked up implications towards some or all of these people? If the answer is yes, you can proceed, but you need to be mindful of that fact and just think about it, even if only a little. Even if it's just a small acknowledgement that you don't know what you're talking about or that you are choosing to ignore some of the fucked up implications you're making here for the sake of the story in the tags. I just want you to take a moment and think through the implications of what you are making, and to make a choice on whether you should proceed or reconsider things. If you choose to proceed with the fucked up implications, that's fine. It means that you can do so with other mindsets in mind and can possibly use these ideas in interesting ways! At least you made a stance to possibly be shitty towards some people for the sake of your fun. At least you made the choice to say that some people's beliefs just don't matter to your story. This is a neutral statement. Some works of art are just not made for some kinds of people. And that's fine. But it is always better to knowingly acknowledge and make that choice than to pretend that it isn't there. And if you didn't realize that's what you were doing? If you reconsider and choose to turn back on this idea? At least you made that choice and didn't just passively follow the rest of the crowd to get here. Hopefully, thinking about it will make you more mindful about your art in the future and therefore make it better! The only thing to do about it is to acknowledge that you weren't thinking about the implications, but that you changed your mind, and move forwards with your life.

Now just to be entirely clear, I'm not telling you that I want you to feel guilty about being inconsiderate towards other faiths. That doesn't really do anyone any good. I won't get any satisfaction from you feeling guilty about it or internally punishing yourself for it. Just actually give what you might be implying more thought in terms of religion next time and do better. It's alright to make mistakes. We are all just human and we all make mistakes. Sometimes we don't even realize when we've made a mistake. Just strive to do better next time, be more willing to let go of these ideas that you're so attached to, allow yourself to see things from another perspective, and move on. Sometimes, it's better to just leave things alone. Sometimes you shouldn't meddle and try to rework ideas that were perfectly good on their own to begin with. Sometimes nothing that you personally can add will be a positive contribution. Sometimes the only thing that interfering will do is over-complicate things and rob the idea of what made it so interesting and powerful in the first place. But it's okay to leave it alone. It's going to be okay. I'm not angry. Just disappointed and a little frustrated. But it's better if you are able to just drop these things and move forwards with mindfulness in the future.

As an alternative, I think that it would generally be better for the Ghost Zone to just be its own thing separate from the other afterlives. Equal to other afterlives and not all-encompassing of them. It can be connected or related to other afterlives, but being greater than them as a whole is just a very uncomfortable and cruel implication. You don't need the Ghost Zone to be the most important thing in the multiverse. And Danny does not need to be the most powerful thing in existence. Please. It's okay to have power fantasies. But the invincible overpowered stronger than all Gods Danny should not be the overwhelming norm here to the detriment of everything else. It's only when you let go of Danny NEEDING to be the MOST important thing in the multiverse can you start to really dive into some of the more interesting sides of characters on their own terms and not on yours! Like... Did you know that there is one ghost character in DC called The Spectre and that he's the literal personification of the wrath of God? Did you know that Xanthe Zhou as a spirit envoy is actually half dead and half alive? Did you know that The Wizard Shazam is actually, secretly an aboriginal god? Did you know that in the DC universe that Judas Iscariot still walks the Earth to this day, doing vigilante work to atone for his betrayal of Jesus? Did you know that Ra's Al Ghul's mom has met and hung out with some of the demons that Sun Wukong fought against in Journey to the West? Hell, did you know that Damian is Buddhist!? Imagine that. Danny coming in and telling Damian that he's more important and more powerful than Damian's entire religion. That the Buddha is just a lackey of his and that he rules over all afterlives, including nirvana and cycles of reincarnation. I'm certain that Damian would take that very well and accept it wholeheartedly! Don't you agree with me?!!?!???!

I personally think that all of this is better and more interesting if characters, their religions, and ideas in general are able to interact with Danny's world on their own terms without being forced to fit within Danny's box! You don't need to try to force everything within DC's universe to fit inside Danny's. DC wouldn't ask for Danny's universe to conform to theirs! They would just add everything that Danny's universe has to offer on top of everything else they already have! And trying to fit the entire DC multiverse within the scope of Danny's universe... It's too small a box for too large of a universe! Sometimes you can just let things not be deeply connected. And sometimes things don't need a complicated explanation and it can literally just be magic. There's nothing wrong with trying to tie everything together in a neat and succinct way. But sometimes you need to pull your view out a little and look at what you're doing and genuinely ask yourself if what you're doing actually adds depth, or if it does more harm than good and makes everything worse, make less sense, and more complicated or not. It's okay to fall down the rabbit hole sometimes. I completely understand that happening and do it all the time! Just remember to be mindful about it!

Either way, if you're going to insist on desperately clinging onto these ideas of Danny being the Most Important and Powerful Thing in the Multiverse to the detriment of literally everything else, that's fine. But just be honest with what you're doing and why. This isn't a Ghost King Danny AU. Kingdoms don't have unequivocal power over other and all kingdoms. It's a God Emperor over all Gods Danny AU. Nothing wrong with that concept in of itself. Just tag it properly as something like "God King Danny" so that I don't have to deal with it and the implications you're making about my religion with it. That would be enough! I would be happy with that! Just make your choice. Think about what you're doing, why you're doing it and choose. If you choose to keep going, that's fine! All the more power to you! Have fun! But be honest about what you're making. I may not like it and think that it's an overdone, overplayed idea at this point, but you're free to do it! So go forwards and make what will bring you joy! But now that you've thought about it a little, hopefully you'll continue with a little more knowledge and foresight. And hopefully that will make your work even more interesting and better for it! And if you decide to change course, I'm glad that I was able to sway you and get you to see things from my perspective and come to my side on this. At the very least, hopefully this will help to vary up ideas within the fandom a bit and you won't just take ideas that are happening in this space entirely for granted and as givens! I have so many ideas on interesting ways that these intersections can go and characters that you can use, and ways to look at this community that offer so so SO many interesting story directions! I'm so happy that you've decided to come with me on this journey! You're going to make something great, I'm certain of it! So let's make something wonderful together! I believe in you! There's a lot of fun to be had! ^.^

[hyperlexichypatia]

One time I asked my mom (in her 70s) whether she, personally, knew any people in so-called "traditional marriages." I defined a "traditional marriage" as follows:

A man and a woman, married to each other

They are both each other's first and only spouse, neither has been married before

Neither of them has any children with any other partner

Any children they have were born after the couple was married.

After thinking about it, my mom was able to come up with a few examples of such couples. But only a few. And she had to think about it.

Yet we still live in a society where this type of family is considered "the norm" and the much more common types (blended families, single parents, divorced people) are considered "exceptions."

And this is not the only thing like this! There are many experiences/lifestyles/family types that are treated as The Default or The Norm that, in fact, may not apply to a majority at all!

Even in discussions like "We should remember that not everyone has [normative experience]," it's still framed as though the normative experience is, of course, still the statistical norm. It might not be at all! Or maybe it is the statistical norm worldwide, or nationwide, but not in your particular community, or your social circle.

Sometimes it's necessary to look at global or national statistics to correct your bias of extrapolating from your social circle. Social bubbles are a real problem. But. But. Other times. It's useful to just look at your social circle and ask yourself "Do these population-wide statistics really apply here? Should I be looking at them to determine what's 'normal' instead of just looking around me?"

So here are some things that are culturally assumed in the U.S. to be "the norm", that you might want to ask yourself: How many people do I know personally that this is actually true of? (Other countries have their own maybe-not-that-normal norms that I'm not as familiar with, but feel free to weigh in on).

How many people do you know personally who:

Have a "traditional marriage" as described above?

Have a work schedule of Monday through Friday, ending at 5:00 p.m.? i.e. for whom Saturdays, Sundays, and evenings after 5:00 are "not at work" time?

Attended residential college from ages 18 to 22, and graduated with a bachelor's degree by age 23?

Had most or all of their college tuition and living expenses paid for by their parents?

Have, as an adult, the same surname as both of their parents, who were and still are, married to each other? Which was their father's surname which their mother took at marriage? i.e. whose parents could accurately be referred to as "Mr. and Mrs. [that persons' same surname]"?

Don't take any regular daily medicine?

Depending on your social circle, you might know very few people in these categories! But you probably still hear people say unquestioned, taken-for-granted things like "We should have the meeting at 6:00, so people can come after work," or "Of course parents of college students should have a say, since they're paying for it."

In many demographics, these things aren't just "not always true"; they're hardly if ever true. I wrote here about the false assumption that college students are uniformly single, childless young adults. Are you scheduling your events on the assumption that evenings and weekends are free time? For that matter, how many child care providers serve families during the hours that most parents actually work? Are we ready to admit that these things aren't the norm yet?

[strong-with-the-sarcasm]

DP x DC AU idea:

Regent!Jazz

Having been ecto-contaminated since conception, Jazz is the most Liminal being in the world, which has her develop a proto-core. As in, death has about 30% claim on Jazz and every year it grows stronger the longer she lives above the portal.

Can Jazz walk through walls, disappear and fly? Sorta, occasionally, and no. It depends on how much Ecto she has in her system, otherwise she’s just got her inherent strength.

Jazz inherited the Fenton Law Loophole tendency.

She swaps out her psychology books for books on Realms Law, spends a week locked in her room with them in fact. It concerns Danny and co., because what is Jazz up to?

Jazz claims regency thanks to three factors:

1: Danny unconsciously views her as a third parent thanks to her raising him in a neglected household. She got him to fourteen before she looked away for a minute, ok?

2: Danny is a minor in both human and ghost culture, therefore he’s baby and needs time to grow up without bearing kingly responsibilities, right?

3: As mentioned before, Jazz is the most Liminal being in the modern age, with a slowly developing proto-core. This allows her to be able to not only survive the Infinite Realms on a long-term basis, but able to step up as Regent at all.

————

Sam and Tucker, while Liminal too (thanks to them getting flooded with it with Danny’s death) still have a ways to go in terms of contamination- give it a few more years in Amity Park and they’ll start to show more symptoms of death-claimed, though they’ll never be able to surpass Jazz. Not even Jack and Maddie Fenton could ever say that, considering they wear Hazmat suits daily that has limited exposure, but were also adults when first contaminated- the ecto would take a lot longer to bond to adult molecules than that of a just-conceived child.

Maybe Jazz even leeched off some of Maddie’s contamination in the womb? Whose to say.

Where does DC come in?

Perhaps the vivisection route? It’s a tried and true method of getting Danny to Gotham, but I raise you- Jazz essentially “kidnaps” Danny, taking him away from his haunt once she is Regent.

Gotham is a city drenched, drowning, in tragedy and therefore natural ectoplasm for a powerful Liminal and Halfa to survive on.

Lady Gotham welcomes the two eagerly into her city and directs Jazz to the soon-to-form Lazarus pit- corrupted ectoplasm, but nothing Danny can’t filter out with time, it’ll heal him and whatever happened to his core after being ripped away from his haunt.

It does cause a rift to form between the two, but Jazz is firm in staying in Gotham. Right on the edge of Crime Alley to be specific.

Here we can slide in Vigilante!Jazz, who is pissed off at the world and needs to work out some excess energy. Enhanced bone density means that Jazz doesn’t have to worry about screwing up her knees with a few ‘superhero landings’.

Liminalality means that she can sense the weird guy in the Red Hood whose territory she keeps crossing into while beating the crap out of some criminals and escorting the night workers home.

Revenant!Jason…

….possible Anger Management/Hardcover pairing?

[Im thinking about continuing this, but idk. I do have like a page written out with Regent!Jazz]

Masterlist

[celluloidbroomcloset]

It bothers me to see folks complaining that Ed can’t possibly be abused or feel fear or make mistakes because that would make him weak, and obviously he is not weak.

Ed is the big, tattooed, badass pirate. That’s a part of who he is. He’s a brilliant sailor and tactician; he understands drama and how to use fear. He can put on his armor and emerge from the sea and use the violence that he understands intimately to fight for the people he loves.

He has also been craving softness and tenderness for years. That’s what his story is about—he's been trapped in this hypermasculine role, likely originally to protect himself and to fit into the society that would absolutely break him if he was anything else. But from the moment we see him as a child, he's wanted the silk. He wants that gentle hand that will touch his heart and tell him that fine things belong to him, and that those fine things are not shameful or embarrassing. He’s scared of becoming the Kraken; he’s traumatized, he’s afraid of being killed or hurt, and the only way he knows to stop that is to be the meanest, biggest, baddest pirate he can be. He flinches when people get too close to his face. He’s afraid to show his emotions because what if others think he’s weak and use that against him?

Ed's softness is right below the surface. Stede just has to talk to him for half an hour to bring it out—hell, the gentleness with which Ed treats Stede even before that reveals his softness. And that's not "weakness"—that’s care and compassion that toxic masculinity tries to couch as weakness.

Ed’s entire arc uses the concept of how exhausting it is being constantly STRONG, when strength means not having emotions other than anger or showing any sign of vulnerability. He shows that exhaustion the first time we meet him. Everyone depends on him; he can't show fear because then everyone else will be scared too. Not even being able to talk about your fears or even the things that make you happy. He can’t even be joyful! That just shows that he’s crazy!

He and Stede become co-captains almost immediately, even if they don’t call themselves that, because suddenly the weight can come off of Ed and he can indeed be creative and let his mind work again.

Ed is told that all the things he wants are weakness, and all the things that Stede represents are weakness. He has to be violent. He has to destroy the things he loves. And he has, in the past. He’s hurt people and he’s been cruel to people and he’s destroyed things and other people. He’s been shaped by violence and told that’s all he is. He can’t be in love and he can’t be soft and he can’t even have fun—having fun is weakness too.

And the show clearly develops that the things he’s told about strength, about what "being a man" means, is abuse! He’s being abused—both by a culture and by an individual (yes, by Izzy) who is himself trapped in that culture. He can’t love anything; he has to kill it, to show that he’s still Blackbeard. And constantly having to kill those things is destroying him bit by bit because he thinks that’s all he is and all he deserves.

Ed is not "weak." Ed has survived in a world where he's been told everything gentle in him is a weakness and that world has still failed to kill those things. It takes a few minutes of conversation with a man who understands that experience to bring those things out and for him to see that he might be safe with this person.

Ed decides to live. He decides to overcome all the bullshit that has been thrown at him, including by people who claim to love him, and to say that it's not true he's a monster and he's unlovable. He decides to shed the persona that has shielded him because it's now trapping him, and to put it on again in order to protect the man he loves. He decides to trust Stede again. He decides to tell Stede he loves him.

He's exceptionally brave.

[weepingchronicles]

yandere azula x reader headcanons this could be read as either romantic or platonic, whatever you wish! tw: yandere, violence, mentions of death, torture, manipulative and controlling behavior, degradation (also maybe a smidge of yandere aang??)

when I say you are fucked if you have this girl yandere for you, you are FUCKED

you are one of the last remaining air nomads, except for aang who is unknown to the world right now and presumed dead

the troubling part is that you have no bending abilities, you were practically raised in the fire nation belonging to azula

you have no spirituality connecting you to your tribe because you know nothing about your culture thus making it hard for you to bend

fire lord ozai had gifted you to azula to keep as a pet basically, only after ensuring you were not the avatar.

growing up with azula has its moments..

azula treats you as bad as zuko, perhaps even worse. she regularly mocks your deceased parents and tribe and knowingly withholds info on your culture in order to keep you dependent on her

you're also not allowed to speak to anyone but azula or a higher rank person.

once ty lee tried to play a game with you since you're both naturally agile people, the outcome was your hair almost catching on fire

as a result, you grew up very fearful of azula but naïve of any outside influence.

the only bright side in your childhood was that you got to keep your life while your parents didn't, and that you somewhat live safely in the palace.

azula likes to keep you on a tight leash, metaphorically (although she wouldn't be against actually doing so-) she has you sleep in your obviously smaller room just across from hers

she doesn't worry about you ever escaping because she has engrained in you that it's impossible, and why bother when you have no family to turn back to, except her? where you get fed pretty well, have a good place to sleep, etc

of course she doesn't mention how she likes to torture you daily

most torture games with azula are psychological, she likes to see you be manipulated to her side and cry but knowing no one else can do that but her

but sometimes her games do get violent

one time she handcuffs your hand to a table, and plays pinfinger on you, enjoying your expression as she pretends to "slip up" and accidentally cut you.

she never majorly hurts you though, she doesn't want her pet to be broken!

you may be thinking that azula doesn't even care for reader! she sees her as only a pet

while that is half true, she cares for you probably more than her own father.

when aang hears one of his last remaining relatives is being held captive, he has no other choice but to save you

when you're greeted by a 12 year old boy who is claiming to be your family and the avatar, you are wary. azula has always said your family is dead, wiped out so how can this be?

it doesn't take much to convince you though after he says he can help you escape.

together you fly away on aang's glider, and for once you feel hope and freedom.

when azula finds out you've been taken by the avatar, she practically breaks

the only thing that stops her from breaking havoc across the nation, is her dad appointing her to capture the avatar

oh she'll capture him alright, and make sure no one puts their hands on you again.

[onedayimgonnasnap]

How about dating hcs for Solomon, Simeon, Diavolo, and Barbatos?

Obey Me Dateable HC!!

He’s extremely clingy and self conscious, he was a sheltered child when he was younger only really knowing Barbatos.

Meeting Lucifer got him a new friend, however when you came into his life, he first wanted to selfishly use you as a way to get peace in the Devildom.

He really likes inviting you over to his castle with random excuses just to hang out and spend time with you.

He likes to solve puzzles with you in general. The puzzles you both solve can range between Minions, Garfield and actual realism 1,000 pieces

Depending on your race and culture he wants to know a lot about it specifically. He wants to eat food from your culture, know the history, the major religion, etc.

He also likes to ask you random things about humans like; “What colors can you humans see?”

Or “Is it true all humans believe depending on the day they were born it affects their personality by the stars? How romantic”

It’s really cute-

He also gets extremely jealous knowing you’re having so much fun with the demon brothers while he’s stuck doing paperwork. He’s so close to throwing a tantrum in front of Barbatos.

You both def have sleep over often-

He also uses human world Gen Z TikTok slang so beware of that in general it can be extremely scary to see.

Another thing about him is that You, him and Lucifer hang out a lot whether you like it or not because he likes it when his closest and favorite people hang out together.

It’s really embarrassing when Diavolo is linking arms with both you and Lucifer skipping around the human world.

You’re not even waking, with how tall and strong he is you’re being dragged.

There are tears in your eyes from how fast you’re going.

Lucifer and you both be fighting and brawling in general.

With Barbatos, it’s really hard to find time to hang out with him. However he does try to make time to hang out with you.

If you’re ever feeling insecure he’ll correct it immediately, he knows when you’re feeling sad like an alarm.

It’s his 7th sense.

Also you’re gonna come second after Diavolo whether you like it or not.

If you and Barbatos are getting all romantic, cuddly or even hot and heavy just a reminder there’s always gonna be a Diavolo who may cockblock anytime and Barbatos won’t get seemingly mad.

He will get frustrated and sad though.

He likes to sit in the shower after a long day of dealing with Diavolo and Solomon’s bullshit.

He does enjoy cuddling and he loves it when you play with his hair. It de-stresses him a lot and makes him happy.

He often invites you grocery shopping in general, it’s basically like a date whether it’s romantic enough or not.

He can be romantic, sometimes you wake up to find a bunch of gifts, especially if you’re having a rough day or you’re about to.

If someone has hurt you in the past- oh boy Barbatos will make them wish that they were never born. The most sadistic ass you’ve ever met.

Once you got jumped by a couple of bullies, before you could do something Barbatos was right behind them smiling scarily.

You’ve never seen them again. However lil D No. 2 said he’s heard a lot more screaming in the dungeon lately.

These demons might be kind however they’re still demons and won’t hesitate to cut a bitch.

He also loves to make you breakfast in bed when you’re sleeping, it’s one of the most romantic shit you’ve ever experienced. It’s a whole 5 star meal, there’s chocolate chip fluffy pancakes, bacon, eggs, some chopped up strawberries shaped into a heart and either orange juice or hot chocolate depending on the weather.

Over all busy, but will never let you forget his love towards you.

Even though you’re both in the relationship he makes you second guess dating him sometimes.

Whether it’s through pranks or just him cooking you up a meal.

You learned to turn off your taste buds. You don’t know how you learned this unique skill but you now have it when he makes you the most disgusting food ever known to mankind.

Depending on your culture, make food to please you depending on where you’re from on what’s common.

You cried while eating it-

He’s also a very sweet but it feels scary for no reason when he’s doing something nice for you, you know it’s not fake but it’s a feeling-

You and him both like to have extremely deep conversations of society, religion, and social normalities.

You and him both enjoy it in general talking about it randomly.

You both also visit the human world often. He’s met your parents, your parents saw this snowball of a fucker walk in their house holding your hand acting like it owns the place.

Sometimes he’s at the house of Lametation randomly, he’s getting a glass of water and leaving.

Asmo cried because he caught you both making out and Asmo wasn’t invited into a three way with his two favorite people.

Because he’s immortal he tends to zone out a lot, especially when you’re both cuddling. It can get depressing because he knows someday he might lose you.

He wants to keep you forever but he knows that it’s selfish and wrong to do so, since you shouldn’t have to suffer like he is.

Who knows maybe you’ll join him/j Unless?

He’s spending as much time with you as possible and is extremely careful with what he says because words can hurt.

However once you both started fighting over which side the toilet paper should go on.

He also likes to invite you over and use you as an experiment for many magic spells, and potions. Don’t worry all of them are safe, but he’s just curious since you love him you’ll let him right?

Simeon is probably the most romantic mother fucker you’ll ever be with.

He loves to write you love letters, sometimes you’re minding your own business in your bed, studying or just watching a movie when you look out to see a dove carrying a letting pecking the window.

It doesn’t matter the day, he loves to write them to you, he’s not expecting one back but if you do write one back he’ll take care of it and never lose it.

If you do? He's blushing, giggling, twirling his hair around his finger, kicking his feet and fangirling in general.

It doesn’t matter if the love letter you feel like is utter shit and has the worst handwriting known to mankind Simeon eats that shit up.

However, if you’re writing a story, fanfiction, novel, play? He’s gonna criticize you in the most annoying and professional way possible. He loves you, however his writing author instincts get the best of him.

One thing about him is that he appreciates any form of art whether it be writing, painting, making sculptures or acting. He loves it.

If you have any hobbies like those he’ll love to see your creativity in general.

If you don’t have any hobbies or interest in those however that’s ok he loves you the same regardless. He will also love to see your other hobbies though, he likes to spend time with you exploring new things.

You’re also his first romantic relationship. I feel like you're his first lover so he wants to try his best because he feels like he’s not your first lover.

Something you and him both do is basically sit in silence doing your own thing, it’s extremely relaxing to you both.

Especially after a long day.

He tends to mother you a lot, if you have been studying too much? He’ll make sure to walk you outside and get some fresh air. Hungry? He and Luke will shove food down your throat.

He loves to spoon feed you, he has his head learning over on one of his hands while his other hand is feeding you.

A date you and him had once was of him bringing you into a garden with a bunch of flowers while some music played in the background while you both started dancing and a bunch of fireflies started flying around you.

You and him officially adopted Luke by the way. There’s no getting around that. You three are a big happy family, and you will take many family pictures.

You and him definitely tease Luke a lot, but at the end of the day Simeon is a little overprotective of Luke.

You’ve walked into the room so many times while Simeon lectured Luke for being closed minded.

But you’re both proud at how much Luke has grown mentally over the years he’s been at the Devildom.

[johannestevans]

sorry i finished new episode and i'm obsessed as ever

kabru clasping hold of laios' hands is so insane. laios doesn't remember this little twink's name, all he remembers is that this guy ate monster food with him and showed a slight enthusiasm for him, which to laios is unthinkable

it's hilarious seeing kabru's fervent obsession with and manipulation of laios' feelings and priorities contrasted with laios' depths of pain and distress at shuro's rejection of him and how that was borne of shuro hiding his true feelings

obvs for shuro like. he's explicitly introduced with a level of politeness and also emotional repression that's linked not only to his cultural upbringing in the east but is obviously related to his class position, esp bc the dungeon was meant to serve as his coming of age

or to hone his experiences for a return to rule as lord - and with his proposal to falin like. it's so interesting to me that shuro finds so many of falin's traits so desirable when she and laios genuinely are so similar

falin IS extremely high-empathy whereas laios is very low-empathy, but they find pleasure and joy and intrigue in similar things, they have similar senses of humour, they're similarly inexpressive or overly expressive depending on the moment

at the end of the day like, if you're going to propose to that girl and ask her to come back to your home country and marry you despite the fact that she's so obviously a lesbian, at the very least you have to pretend to like her brother

but like. she's quite LIKE her brother. they have the same broad frame, if laios gained a bit of weight i bet he'd have a similarly luxurious bust, they're both a bit clueless. she's just a woman and laios is just a man

but yeah sorry to move on from shuro's deep and seemingly inherent distrust, nay disgust, of other men that is no doubt informed by the extent to which he's been raised wholly by legions of women vs his inclination to see other men as rivals or opponents

(worsened by the extent to which he sees laios as naive and is offset by the extent of laios' earnestness)

but here you see the EXACT SAME THING happening to laios again in REAL TIME. someone else needs to keep him on side and so they're being polite

kabru is going beyond politeness and is outright lying and manipulating because he's just a delicious bitch that way, but like. the exact same thing is happening to laios - he thinks he's making a new friend and he is LATCHING ONTO kabru just like he did to shuro

is he being intelligent or tactful about it? no. god no. he's infodumping eagerly about monster food, he's answering all of kabru's questions - and!!! kabru is asking him QUESTIONS! he's being so ENTHUSIASTIC!!! and so laios rushes to cook for this new friend, this stranger

and inwardly kabru is horrified because jesus fuck, is this guy SERIOUS? and yeah he's serious about everything, he's earnest and eager about absolutely everything, and kabru is fascinated with this new variety of man but also... fucking hell

i think it's vital that they're introduced to one another initially in this group setting, because i think marcille, who is much naturally more distrustful, would ask more questions of kabru - and falin is very trusting but also would. twig something off about everything

i die because like. falin left home because she couldn't handle people's issues with magic and also because like. she was constantly in the position, i would have no doubt, of trying to explain laios to their family and friends, whilst also being beset by spirits

like obviously she wanted to go to magic school, but it was more than that - she needed to go out and grow and become an adult, and not do so in her brother's shadow and laios went off on his own, haplessly, and they end up together again bc they take care of each other

falin is a weird girl, she likes to play in the dirt, she accidentally does all this genius stuff, she's a little clueless and a little out of it, but to marcille and shuro, this is desperately desirable - she's beautiful, she's a genius, she's so loving

they see those things in her because they shine out of her like sunshine - especially because she's not intimidating, you know? whereas laios, blundering, autistic, selfish, obsessive laios, who talks a mile a minute and is so tall and broad, people find him to be too much

idk i just. i think for falin a big difficulty she has is actually in setting boundaries - she's always rushing to take care of laios even though it's not her job, she holds back on saying no to shuro because she hates to say no

marcille touches falin ALL over, touches her hair, scrubs her clean, holds her TIT while channelling magic, and falin is overwhelmed by it and you can see it in her face, but saying no is so hard for her - no to spirits, to strangers, to her friends, to her brother

i say this because like. they really don't interact much at all in the course of the manga but i think that kabru and falin actually have so much in common, both of them haunted by ghosts and both of them fixated more than they mean to be on laios

falin because to some extent i think she feels guilty about abandoning him to go to school even though she NEEDED that, and kabru because he's just an obsessive little homo and he can't cope with his need for laios' massive dick

[thevviitchinghour]

Astrology Observations

DISCLAIMER: This is based on my own experiences and research it does not mean it's inherently true!! Pisces Placements aren't intentionally fake but switch up so quick. I have had so many pisces placement friends that r just so wishy washy. Pisces Venus depending on the person will literally choose shitty partners over even their closest friends! They just want to fit into the mold their partners create for them so bad u won't even recognize their personalities sometimes in certain relationships smfh. Taurus Placements get just as jealous as scorpio and can be JUST as bad about it. Have you ever dealt with a Taurus who felt lesser than you? just terrible. Pluto in sag is an interesting generational placement. It's cool to look at how it shows up. The way ppl are so self righteous and like to flaunt how their life philosophy is best. Going on social media spreading dogmatic beliefs and wanting to be a teacher but actually guiding people into the dark. Unrealistic morals & ideas that are half-baked and rooted in egotistical projections of what people deem correct. Even if the legitimacy is questionable at best. The way there is an excess of waste, consumerism, and lack of appreciation of it. The rise of fake spiritual influencers & conversations being hd around xenophobia, racism, religious beliefs & cultural appropriation. Pluto - Mercury people seem to be able to develop telepathy fairly easy or have a natural predisposition towards it? A lot of my friends who are clairaudient or sometimes hear other ppls thoughts have Pluto - Mercury aspects. Gemini Moons are actually very emotionally nuanced and understanding, I feel like Aquarius is the main air sign who tries to rationalize the emotions of OTHERS. I feel like Gemini moreso tries to understand every aspect of something. The emotional and logic, the dynamics of it all, the duality. Libra Moons seem to be more selfish than both Aquarius AND Gemini moons. It's not that they don't care about others, but the way they think/feel (which isn't surprising considering they're aries sister sign) is usually in relation to how people feel about THEM. What people think of them, how they are being perceived. How they can be liked more, etc. That's not to say Libras are not caring about others because they are!! I honestly like Libra Moons, I find them to be very sweet and considerate and if they really love you they are super giving and chill.

Aquarius Moons are solution oriented, they want to figure out how to solve or understand the root of an issue so it can be done and over with. This can cause them to come off as emotionless, dull, and unempathetic. I notice though that immature Aquarius moons are very selfish & think they're the only ones who suffer. I see that in immature capricorn moons as well. I believe it has to do with saturn. Libra Mercuries are so poetic imo Virgo is literally ruled by mercury, the only way you're going to find them boring is if they don't trust you enough to open up to you or converse with you. They are extremely intuitive & pick up on the patterns of others easily. More often than not it usually only takes a virgo a small period of time whether it be minutes or days to decide they actually just don't like you and don't want to engage with you. They also tend to mirror, so if you're boring maybe that's why you think they're boring.

[concreteburialplot]

Delicate Beginning Rush

pairing: nicholas ruffilo x fem!reader

masterlist: here | crossposted; ao3 | word count: 4.8k

warnings: alcohol, fluff??? who am i ????¿, shy nerdy nicholas, awkward fumbling drunk sex, oral (f receiving), mutual masturbation, nick has a big massive fat-, cum play ??, subby nick if you squint, reader doesn’t know anything about star wars / pop culture ? lol, au; college omens, 18+ MDNI

summary; your friend drags you to a house party you never wanted to be at but end up being grateful when a cute shy boy changes the course of your night

a/n: this is a work of fiction, don't like it don't read it. don’t be mean for no reason & let others enjoy things thnx :)

Around you rages a random college house party that your roommate dragged you to. The house itself was huge and almost dollhouse-like. You weren’t sure who’s party it was or who all lived there, all you did know was that your friend was on a mission. You’ve met the group of boys your friend was interested in a couple times. She’s been trying to get with one… or two of them? You aren’t quite sure anymore. But they were some boys from your English class that happened to be in a band – at least that’s what you’d gathered with various random study dates with them. They were chill, but you could tell that they were mostly interested in your roommate. At least that’s what it seemed like, with the way they’d usually only pay mind to her while you’d be working on assignments.

But now, you sit on the kitchen counter of this giant house with a raven-haired tattooed boy standing between your legs. You both are tipsy, giggly messes.

Your hands intertwined with his and playfully sway back and forth at his sides; the warm alcohol running through your veins makes you both more touchy-feely than normal. The drink coats your body in a tingly warmth.

“How come I didn’t know you were so funny huh?” You nudge his shoulder with the right set of your connected hands. Your fingers slip from the hold and brings the plastic cup full of neon blue to your lips. You take a sip looking up at him through glassy eyes over the white ridge of the cup. The sickeningly sweet beverage burns your throat with at least 3 different liquors mixed.

His tan cheeks are tinted peachy pink from the alcohol and a sweet smile tugs at his lips. “I don’t know.” He shrugs and takes a sip of his own drink. “I don’t really talk much I guess.”

Which was true. Now thinking about it, in all your group hangouts he was mostly silent, only speaking when spoken to. The other three boys were loud and quite talkative. Especially the two your roommate was pining after, both with long hair and one with an accent. It really depended on the day which she was leaning towards more. Tonight, it was Jolly, the one with the accent.

“Yeah, I noticed that.” You say softly, “But you seem much more talkative now with some of…” You hold up the horrid concoction you were given, “Whatever this is.”

He smiles, “Yeah, I guess it helps me out of my shell a little.”

It seemed to help him out of his shell a lot, with him talking to you for the past hour and making you laugh harder than you had in a while. You barely even knew what his voice sounded like before tonight. But you found that you really enjoyed it, it was deep and raspy but upticks when he’s excited about something. It swirls a flurry of butterflies in your tummy that you write off as just the alcohol’s doing.

“Well, I quite like you out of your shell Nicholas.” You beam sitting up. One arm wrapping around your own midsection and the other feeding more sips of drink to your mouth. You find the edges of your lips curling at how the blue liquid tinted the inside of his lips. You wonder if the stain on his mouth tastes just as sweet as the drink.

A blush coats his cheeks, and his eyes fall to his cup, “Oh, you can call me Nick.”

“Alright, Nick.” You grin and take the last sip of your drink. “You know it’s awfully loud in here.” You use a tried-and-true line.

“Oh, well, we could um,” He knocks back the last of his own drink. “We could go up to my room?” He offers kindly.

Hook.

Line.

Sinker.

“Sure, I think that’s a great idea.”

You hop off the counter and he takes your hand, weaving you through the crowded party and up the stairs. He pulls you into his room, the second door to the right. The room was cleaner and more decorated than you’d expect from a random college boy.

Your eyes wander across the shelves of figurines, books, and posters on the walls. It was all quite… “nerdy”, the only thing you could really recognize was Star Wars while the rest just seemed like miscellaneous anime memorabilia. It didn’t make it any less pretty or interesting, quite the opposite, you were awestruck.

Another wall was covered in framed records that hung above a bookshelf filled with vinyls and topped with a record player. Your gaze flows down to where propped guitars litter the floor.

“It’s lame I know.” He scratches the back of his neck with a subtle embarrassment on his face.

The mandatory college boy light strips around the room were set to purple and moving the light in a pattern – alternating between blocks of bright violent and dim violet. Your eyes followed the blocks as they trailed along the ceiling. The light strips and a warm yellow lamp on his night were the only sources of illumination.  

“No, no.” Your eyes finally land on Nick again. “I think it’s really cool.”

He chuckles and shakes his head, “No, it’s definitely not that.”

“Most boys’ rooms are bare with a mattress on the floor. Your room is so full of personality… and you have a bed frame.” You laugh. “It’s cool. I promise.”

The more you looked at his personality-filled room, the more you wondered how he kept all of this contained. You would’ve never guessed this is what his room would look like. But you sure were happy you were found out.

“Well, I’m glad you think so.” He says and sort of shifts on his heels. He picks up some random fidget toy and begins playing with it, it’s obvious he’s a little nervous.

You carefully sat on the bed, making sure not to disrupt the nicely made sheets.

“I don’t know anything about that stuff.” You say naively. You’ve been around enough nerdy boys to know that always gets them going.

“Of what? Star Wars?” His glassy eyes grow wide and shocked.

You giggle at his reaction, “Yeah, any of it really. Like all this stuff in here. Except the music, obviously.”

“No way.” He scoffs. “There’s no way you’ve never even seen one Star Wars movie?”

“Nope.” You lift your shoulders to a shrug, “But I’m sure you’re about to tell me about it.”

“Well, I mean, it’s only my civil duty to inform you about them.” The edge of his mouth pulls into a playful grin.

You bite down on your lip to stifle another liquor-soaked giggle. “Alright. Well, let’s hear it then.”

The way the corners of his lips curl directly into his cheekbones is so adorable you don’t even mind that he’s derailed your mission of hooking up.  You pull yourself further back into his bed making room for him.

“Okay, so.” He says excitedly with an uptick in his voice and scrambles to sit next to you on the bed. He takes an inhale before beginning to speak, almost like he doesn’t even know where to start.

Even though you were originally in this for something completely different, now you don’t mind just sitting here and listening to him excitedly talk about … whatever he’s talking about.

You let him drunkenly ramble without interrupting him, nodding at any points he was making. He lost you fairly early on, when he started to explain how the movies are chronologically not in order or something along those lines. But that didn’t stop you from just listening to him speak or admire how animated he got with his hands while explaining things.

He was just so cute – the way when he smiled, really smiled, it lit up his whole face. This smile reached his eyes, lighting them up with so much life. This was the first time you really noticed his eyes, with the purple lights reflecting in them you couldn’t even tell what color they truly were – they looked grey, then blue, then green all at once. When you were really lost in them is when he caught you.

He reeled his arms back to his body, giving you a little embarrassed smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to talk so much.” His gaze fell before bashfully meeting you again.

“No, no, no.” You quickly answer, immediately feeling guilty for not paying enough attention. “I liked listening to you.”

“Oh, you don’t gotta say that.” A light pink coats his cheeks before his eyes fall to his fiddling fingers. “I’m used to it. Most people don’t tend to listen to me anyway.”

Your chest twists at the thought of anyone ever making him feel unheard or ignored.

“Hey, no.” You reach between you and grab his wrist, then meet his eyes. “I was listening to you. I really like hearing you talk. Okay? You can keep going if you want.”

He blushes a little more and gives a small nod. “Okay.”

He continues on some tangent he left hanging, and you return to your place with your chin on your palm supported by an elbow to your knee.

You didn’t lie, you really do like listening to him – you said nothing about understanding anything he said. Especially with how fuzzy your head is right now, you don’t understand a single word he’s saying. All you can pay attention to is the smooth waves of his cadence and his adorable mannerisms.

He pauses and chuckles nervously, “What? Did I lose you again?”

The edges of your lips curl up, and you shake your head.

“No.” You hum and press your lips together as you reach up to tuck some hair behind his ear. “I’m just wondering if you tell every girl you bring up here about Star Wars.” You giggle.

He nearly scoffs at even the idea. “No, definitely not.” He reaches up to scratch his arm “Mostly because I never really bring anyone up here. I usually stay here during their parties. They’re not really my thing.” He shrugs and fidgets with his thumbs as he speaks, transfixed on them while occasionally looking up to meet your eyes. “I don’t really like the loud music, or the people… or the alcohol usually. Really none of it is for me.”

“Well, I’m really glad you were down there tonight.” You smile sweetly, just admiring how pretty and delicate he is. You move your hand just a bit forward so that the tips of your fingers interlace with his and lean towards him.

A shy grin spreads across his lips, “Yeah me too.” He replies softly while matching your actions and moving closer to you. His eyes dart from your eyes to your lips and you can’t help but mirror it. His lips were perfect and plump and all you wanted to do was be on them.

From all the pieces of him you’ve gathered tonight, it’s easy to assume that he’s probably pretty anxious and can’t read social cues that well. So, you decide to spell it out for him.

“I want you to kiss me, Nick.” You breathe into the gap between your lips.

He gives you a quick but urgent nod before softly crashing his lips into yours.

The kiss ignites sparks all over your body, firecrackers exploding within each cell. Your hand finds his cheek to pull him in closer. His tongue swipes across your bottom lip asking for entrance and you oblige without a second thought.

His tongue hesitantly flicks at yours which begins a playful dance between them. It’s not rough or dominance-seeking, it’s needy and soft.

You tangle both hands into his long long locks and lean back on his bed, pulling him on top of you between your legs without ever breaking the kiss.

He’s so gentle with you. His hands stationed at each end of your body, one soft on your face and the other resting tenderly on your side. His tongue was skillful but mellow, just enjoying the kiss with you. It’s not often a guy wants to take his time and not rush, but he didn’t seem to mind, in fact, he was setting the pace.

It’s exciting and delicious all at once.

Your hand meets his face to bring him even closer before reaching up and tangling your fingers into his dark hair again. His scent fills your nostrils and it’s something woodsy and… spicy? Sweet, but peppery. The smell of his cologne goes straight down between your legs and worsens the throbbing there.

You continue the lazy kissing but take the lead again and slowly guide his hand to your tit, letting him know that it’s okay to touch you. He doesn’t need much convincing; his hand begins needing the soft tissue of your breast over thin t-shirt fabric. His fingertips lightly pinch your pebbled nipple. You can’t help but let out a tiny whine into his mouth.

You’re reminded of just how drunk you are when your numbed fingertips trail down his shirt to his belt and fumble with it. You struggle with the button and the zipper, but you finally reach his hardening cock. He lets out a small groan once you start palming him over his boxers. While you can’t even see it, you can tell it’s big – which surprises you, especially with his shy demeanor and the tight-ass pants he usually wears.

He follows suit, letting his hand trail down your side until it’s between your thighs beneath your skirt, running a finger between your panty-covered lips. You moan into the kiss; you need him like air – more than just his finger over cotton.

Since he seems to base his actions and pace on yours, probably out of courtesy to make sure he’s not crossing any lines, you dip your hand past the wide band of his boxer briefs. His cock is thick and heavy in your hand as you begin pumping him within his boxers.

It works, he dips into your panties and lets his fingers explore you. He rounds your clit nearly causing your entire body to convulse. Then he slowly brings them down to your entrance which makes you immediately roll your hips up towards his hand – your core aching to have something, anything inside you. A louder moan escapes once you feel two fingers slip inside you.

You pump his large member in your hand, and you can feel his pulse in it. The walls around his fingers tighten once he starts rutting into your fist – he needs you just as badly. You break the kiss, and your chests rise and fall rapidly together. He doesn’t pull away, instead, he presses his forehead against yours.

“Jesus fucking christ you’re so fucking big.” You breathe out heavily between you two.

Pink flushes across his cheeks in the cutest way. “Thanks.” He replies shortly almost as if he’s ashamed to receive the compliment.

Your brows knit together and your head tilts to the side. “What’s wrong? I’m sorry if I-”

“No, no, it’s not that it’s just…” He presses his lips together for a moment. “It’s big.”

You chuckle, “I mean yeah, every guy says that right?”

“It’s just… I just don’t wanna hurt you.” He says sheepishly. “If you want to go further that is, of course.”

You watch him with a skeptical gaze trying to analyze his features to see if he’s joking but, he seems serious. Of course, he feels big in your hand, but you don’t have a full gauge of it – you can’t see it. Surely it can’t be that big. He’s probably just exaggerating. Regardless, you find it endearing that he’s so concerned about hurting you.

“I’m sure it’s fine.” You wave off the conversation because you enthusiastically want to get back to the journey you were on before.

His lips urgently find yours again and his fingers continue their plight inside you – two curling right into your sweet spot and his thumb rolling small circles into your swollen clit. You’re grateful for the loud party downstairs that masks some of the noises you’re making.

Your hand works on him at the same pace as his fingers do on you. Deep groans rumble in his chest and in the back of his throat.

Breathlessly, you pull from the kiss looking up at him like he’s a glass of water after a trek through the desert. “Fuck- I” A moan slips from you. “Fuck I need you. I need your cock.”

“Are you sure?” He asks and pulls away, “Because I–“

The pulsing in your core outweighs your patience and you hastily tug down his pants, letting his cock spring out fully.

Your eyes widen at his size. He wasn’t joking - he’s fucking massive. So massive in fact that it almost terrifies you and makes you question if it could even fit inside you. It’s almost as long as your arm and thicker than a can of RedBull.

Nick must’ve picked up on your fear because his cheeks grow rosy in embarrassment. “See. I told you.” He says dishearteningly. “It’s okay if you don’t want to try, I really understand. Just let me eat you instead?”

You blink at him, somewhat taken aback by the whole situation. As much as you wanted to try – and you really wanted to try, the worry of you both being too drunk to properly prep you was imminent and you really didn’t want to risk him hurting you.

“Okay…” You agree timidly. “Sure.”

He smiles seeming happy to just be able to make you feel good regardless. His lips meet yours again and repeat the same soft dance as earlier for a moment before beginning to pepper kisses down your body. First, your neck, giving you open-mouth kisses with an occasional suck. Then, down your torso and tummy until he’s finally between your legs. He swiftly slips your panties off.

His inked fingers help to spread you open, using your own arousal to easily slide between your lips.

“So pretty.” He mumbles before diving in causing an abrupt whine from you at the sudden stimulation.

His lips and tongue work as delicately and meticulously between your folds as they did with your mouth. You could swear his tongue was made of some sort of magic from how good he was making you feel already. His tongue was masterful in how it would flatten and then curve around your swollen clit.

You peer down at him at work, and he was so beautiful, eating you like it was the only thing in the world that mattered. He must’ve felt your gaze on him because he looks up at you with lustful but sweet green-grey eyes. They make your breath hitch in your throat.

It was artistic how he’d move his tongue up and down in swirly wavy patterns serving you a perfect rhythm of stimulation then rest then repeat. Not too fast, not too slow, not too hard, not too light. His tongue was immaculate.

“Fuck Nick,” You groan, letting your head fall harshly back on the pillow and your hand dives into his hair again. “Fuck don’t stop, that feels so fucking good- Fuck.”

The knot in your tummy grew more with each twist of his tongue and when he started incorporating his fingers again, hitting just the right spot, you knew you were done for.

“God, fuck!” You moan out loudly, tugging at his roots and rutting your hips up into his mouth. The knot threatening to snap at any given flick of his tongue. “Fuck, fuck, Nick, fuck I’m gonna cum!”

He speeds his pace up ever so slightly, not enough to ruin your ride but just enough to push you over the edge. He even lets out a moan against your cunt letting you know that really fucking likes the way you’re reacting to him.

Your grip on his hair is tight and probably painful but the screams that leave your throat distract you from staying gentle. Your legs clamp around his head and your back arches from the bed as you release fully onto him. He groans deeply against you again, seemingly even more turned on than before.

He doesn’t stop, no matter how tight your legs suffocate him or how hard you pull at his hair. He doesn’t stop for a second. His speed is perfect, enough to keep you going but not enough to overstimulate you. He keeps you riding a delicate tightrope, stretching your climax out as far as he can.

Your tummy fills with rampant butterflies and a buzzing spreads across your skin as he gently carries you into another orgasm. Pleasure crashes into you like a tidal wave to shore. Every inch of your body reacts to him, bending to his skillful craft.

Screams erupt from the base of your throat, your body not able to contain the rush of euphoria that he’s sent you into. Your hips rut up into his mouth and your walls spasm around his fingers but he keeps his actions steady and consistent. His fingers curl and thrust into you harmoniously with his tongue, letting you ride out your high on his face.

You pat his head a bit to indicate you were done. He looks up at you so happy, so grateful to serve you. His eyes are bright and full of pride that he was able to make you feel that good.

He pulls away, revealing him working his still-hard cock in his hand. Watching him move his fist up and down his veiny shaft and roll around his head has you buzzing again. He slips his fingers from you and replaces his working hand with the one covered in your juices, using your orgasm as lubricant.

“Fuck.” He mumbles, his eyes still fixated on your dripping cunt.

Your hand slithers down between your legs and use two fingers to spread yourself open for him. His tongue swipes between his lips as you begin playing with yourself – dipping into your entrance to gather some arousal to bring up to your pulsing clit.

You bite down on your bottom lip while his hand speeds up on his member, the sight of it turning you on beyond belief – especially since he was using your slick to work himself. He pumps his member faster and faster, his chest heaving accordingly. You’re both transfixed on each other’s actions, just getting off at the sight of the other fucking themselves.

The head of his cock is so swollen and dark red and leaking precum. It’s massive and could probably fill your entire mouth if you were to suck him off. His hand grows erratic and sloppy as his other keeps him propped up on the bed.  

You feel a 3rd climax creeping up on you, filling your bud with nerves begging for relief again. Your free hand slides up your torso to squeeze your breast, watching him start to unravel. Your fingers work precise circles around your nub, occasionally moving down into your entrance. You never knew how powerful it could feel watching a man get off on just the sight of you. You loved the way his eyes tracked your fingers, how they’d widen if you spread your folds for him, how his hand would speed up if you fucked yourself.

“F-fuck.” He mutters, letting himself rest down on his elbow. “Ah-uh- fuck, I’m gonna cum.”

He quickly lifts his shirt to reveal his tummy just before milky white ribbons decorate the tattoos there. His eyes flutter close, and his head lulls back as he works every bit of cum out of himself. His lips part slightly, letting delicious groans and whimpers pour from his mouth.

Thankfully, you’re just as close and his moans along with the sight of him coating himself in cum push you over the edge. Flashing white blinds your sight and your thighs clamp around your hand. Your fingers don’t stop moving until his hand does.

You ride out your highs together before your bodies relax back into the bed. You lay there breathless beside him, your chests rising and falling rhythmically. He hadn’t even fucked you but that was still some of the hottest sex you’d ever had. God, his tongue was nothing short of magical.

The silence between you both is awkward but endearing, unfamiliar but delicate. Your tummy fills with fluttering butterflies just at his proximity. Finding a guy who made you feel like this was the last thing you expected to happen tonight.

A chill from the air conditioning reminds you that you’re still bare from the waist down. Strawberry pink flushes your cheeks as you lower your skirt back down. He follows suit and tucks himself back into his boxers.

You nervously chuckle and go to speak but he starts at the same time as you. The blush on your cheek only worsens.

“Oh sorry I-“ You both fumble over each other’s words again.

“You go.” He offers.

“No, no you go.” You reply, motioning for him to speak.

He chuckles with his eyes adverting yours. “Um, sorry if – if, you didn’t want, erm, this.” Referencing his jerking off.

“No – no it was –“

“You just – you sounded so pretty.” He blurts out. “And you tasted so good… I just, got worked up.” His cheeks and the tip of his nose coated in a deep pink. “Sorry.”

You try to keep yourself from smiling too big because you find his embarrassment so cute.

“It’s okay. I liked it.” You reassure, and for some reason, it tints your cheeks too.

“You did?” He asks almost shocked.

“Mhm.” You reply, digging your teeth into your lip and nod. You liked it more than wanted to admit. “A lot.”

“Okay.” He nods bashfully. “I, um, I’m gonna clean up now. Can I get you anything?”

“Hmm, maybe a water when you’re done?”

“Okay.” He sits up a bit. “Um, do you mind just kind of, looking away?”

Your eyes furrow and your head tilts at him in confusion but you comply. “Sure.” You cover your eyes with your hands. “Why am I looking away?” You question, seeing as you just saw a lot of him.

He shifts in the bed, and you hear him slip his shirt off, probably to use it to clean up his mess.

“I don’t know. I just don’t like to be shirtless around people, I guess.” He answers shyly.

“Oh, I’m sure you look good!”

“No.” He scoffs adamantly, “Definitely not.”

“I don’t believe you.” You hum, wiggling a bit while still covering your eyes. “But I’ll take your word for… for now.”

You sense him get off the bed and open some drawers. After a few moments, he lets you know it’s okay to look again. You open your eyes to see that he’s changed into a graphic tee and a pair of shorts that have some kind of wolf design on them. He somehow looks even better than before.

He returns with two bottles of water, one for you and one for him. He shuts the bedroom door so gently like he’s trying not to wake anyone, as if there isn’t a raging party downstairs. He hands you a water bottle before he cracks his own open and takes a gulp.

“Thanks.” You say with a small smile. As you steal your first sip, you take note of his shirt. “Deft-tones?” You sound out the word trying to make out what it means. “Is that a band or something?”

The look that washes over his face as he’s drinking is pure shock and confusion. You may as well have told him you didn’t know who Mickey Mouse was. He abruptly pulls the bottle from his lips with furrowed brows, “You’ve never heard of Deftones?”

You press your lips together and shake your head, “Nope.”

“You’ve never watched Star Wars and you’ve never listened to Deftones? What rock have you been hiding under?” He teases.

“I don’t know, a heavy one I guess.” You giggle and give him a shrug.

“Oh man. If I wasn’t still so drunk right now, I’d play you something.” He laughs and sits on the bed beside you. “But anything I play right now is gonna sound like ass.”

“Oh, I highly doubt that.” You smirk and shake your head. You hadn’t heard his band play, but judging by how skilled his fingers were, he had to be good.

“No, no. It’s true. But you’ve gotta let me play something for you sometime.” His grin begins wide then shortens. “If you want that is.”

Right then, you couldn’t imagine anything you wanted more.

“I’d love that.”

tag list; i don't currently have a general tag list for all my fics so if you'd like to be added to that pls lmk!

a/n; thank you for reading if you did! i'm not that good at writing smut so sorry if it wasn't that great! i really enjoyed writing this one bc was just so fluffy and awkward and sweet, which is so different than anything else that i normally ever write LOL

Thank you for any support you guys ever give me on any of my works, it truly means the world to me that you guys enjoy my words and lil plots.

let me know if you liked it! i love hearing your thoughts 🩷

[max1461]

The meaning of an utterance is dependent on context and shared knowledge. This is true in a weak sense and in a strong sense. The weak sense has traditionally more interested philosophers, while the strong sense has more interested linguists.

The weak sense is this:

You and I both learned the words we know through exposure to them in context. Because our life experiences have been slightly different, the meanings we have picked up for these words will differ slightly. So, for instance, when I hear the word "tree", I picture in my mind a certain thing, and when you hear the word "tree", you picture a slightly different thing. And so when someone says "there's a tree outside", the image you get in your mind will be slightly different than the one I get in mine. This doesn't so much matter with "tree", but with subtler ideas like "responsibility" or "inherent" or "help" or so on, this can be a significant impediment to communication.

The strong sense is this:

Contained within the grammar of every human language are explicit references to context, which directly affect the semantics of sentences. The most obvious examples are deictics: words whose referent is contextually determined. English deictics include words like this, that, here, there, etc. The place to which "here" refers is not an absolute, it varies on a sentence-to-sentence basis in response to context. If I am in Munich and I say "this here is a lovely city", I am making a different claim than if I said the exact same words while standing in Paris. This is not a subtlety in the process of interpretation generally, it is an explicit element of English grammar. Every known language has deictics, and languages have subtler grammatical references to context, too.

Another place where this manifests is in the referent tracking of pronouns. Imagine the following exchange:

Alice: "I met my new neighbor yesterday. Interesting guy. And he a dog named Bertrand, which is kinda funny." Bob: "Yeah that is kinda funny. So what's he do, what's his job?"

In this exchange, "he" in the second sentence refers to the neighbor. Of course you can intentionally interpret it as referring to the dog instead, and this is a common way to make a joke:

Alice: "I met my new neighbor yesterday. Interesting guy. And he a dog named Bertrand, which is kinda funny." Bob: "Yeah that is kinda funny. So what's he do, what's his job?" Alice: "He's the world's first canine philosopher!"

Ba-dum-tss.

But this interpretation is not the default one. However, you can shift the default interpretation by changing the context a little, for instance like this:

Alice: "I love dogs with jobs—you know, guide dogs, sled dogs, that kinda thing. I think that's so cute. So anyway, I met my new neighbor yesterday. Interesting guy. And he a dog named Bertrand, which is kinda funny." Bob: "Yeah that is kinda funny. So what's he do, what's his job?"

These examples pull on shared context in different ways. The first exchange uses general knowledge about the world to disambiguate pronoun referents: people have jobs and dogs don't. In the third example, immediate conversational context overrides this general context: we're talking about dogs with jobs, so "he" probably refers to the dog here.

There are even subtler cases of interpretation determined by context in these examples that you might have missed. For instance:

Alice: "I met my new neighbor yesterday. Interesting guy. And he a dog named Bertrand, which is kinda funny."

What's funny? That your neighbor has a dog? No, that's not it. It's that the dog's name is Bertrand. Why? Because we know Bertrand isn't a common dog name. Someone from a culture where, say, dogs are usually kept in zoos rather than owned as pets, but where Bertrand is a perfectly common name for one, might interpret this sentence in the opposite way.

Language is absolutely rich with this kind of context dependent semantics. And I mean basic, everyday language, too—not just literature or poetry or places where metaphor and linguistic ambiguity are employed intentionally.

There are basically three points I want to make here:

For the linguists: world knowledge is part of linguistic competence, or is at least a load-bearing pillar on which linguistic competence depends. Much of language can be characterized formally, in a way that a computer can understand. Indeed, large fragments of the referent tracking of pronouns can be formally described. But there are places where these formal systems abdicate responsibility; they defer to the speaker's world-model and say "you figure it out". Modeling these situations is very hard.

For the historian or the reader of history: you're screwed. Ok, that's an exaggeration. But when the basic structure of a sentence can often only be disambiguated using contextual information, much less the subtleties of the meaning of words, parsing ancient texts whose contexts you lack can be a very fraught affair. This opens up the door both for misinterpretation and for bad-faith reinterpretation, where someone comes along and supplies spurious or spuriously-relevant "contextualization" that actually does not bring you closer to the intended meaning. Cf. the Sumerian bar joke that no one understands.

For those who treat language as basically transparent (that is to say, those who think they can be confident in what things mean without devoting any meta-thinking to the question): this will probably not be a consistently successful strategy.

[astaroth1357]

Showing the OM Cast Trashy Reality TV Shows

We all have our weaknesses. Mine is called "Watching People Who Watch Reality Shows Talk About Reality Shows I'll Never Actually Watch."

Contents: Well I mean. Reality TV if that spooks you.

~♡♡♡~

Lucifer

You cannot convince me this isn't a guilty pleasure of his. I can absolutely see him pulling on some sweatpants and watching Love Island with MC on lazy day.

Sometimes, when your life is stressful, you just want to sit down and watch the DUMBEST thing possible. Pure junk food for the gray matter, you know? Can't get enough of the trashy romance shows in particular.

He gets pretty invested, even if he denies it. He'll usually pick out a favorite person or favorite couple and gets PISSED if anything happens to them. Everyone else, he couldn’t care less about.

If he misses a week, he'll get a text from MC asking if his favorite person/couple is still doing okay and nothing more. If something big happened though, he'll secretly clear his schedule so he has time to watch it with them as soon as possible.

Very "husband who says he doesn't care but the second you mention the name of a person he doesn't like, he'll go on a 20 minute tirade" sorta vibe.

Mammon

A very enthusiastic enjoyer of these kinds of shows. He loves the drama!

Definitely has one of the long running-types (like Vanderpump Rules) like a comfort show, though he mostly sticks to Demon RTV. MC isn't going to have a CLUE what 2nd Circle Beats or Devildom Dynasty is all about...

Mammon strikes me as someone who either has been on or auditioned for a reality show in the past. Just... look at him. Tell me he hasn't!

His modeling agent probably told him to so he could get better shoots... But I'll guess he was pretty popular on whatever he showed up on. Fan favorite for sure!

Would definitely show MC some of his favorite shows if they're into that short of thing. Demon RTV is.... edgier (the violence gets pretty heated) but the causes are all the same. They should be in for a good time!

Leviathan

Reality TV is for normies!! Why would he want to watch that???

The very thought of watching attractive people go on and on about their love lives makes him physically ill... Like he doesn't get enough of that stuff from Asmo and Mammon already!!

If MC is going to try and get him to watch ANY of them, it has to be a show that's almost guaranteed to be a mess from the outset like Love After Lockup or MILF Manor (which is a crime against humanity, btw. Sigmund Freud haunts us all.)

Make him sit through a second of Too Hot to Handle or F-Boy Island and he may straight up dump them. Or melt into a smoldering pile of envious goo.

If easy-watching is what they want, why can't they watch something else? Like a cuddly Slice-of-Life or some dumb card game anime?? There's even sports anime FAR more worth their investment with a billion times the substance!!

Not a reality TV fan. Keep it away from him. He'll whine, mope, or go ballistic if he has to see it.

Satan

Approaches human reality shows kind of like he's watching a nature documentary... but still laughs at the stupid bits.

Watching a trashy reality show with Satan can be pretty entertaining because he'll spend the whole time trying to grasp "human culture" from all the chaos. Or try to deconstruct why anyone would want to what these shows AS one is playing.

What's even funnier is when he makes comparisons between how things happen in the show and how they would play out in Devildom instead. Like, if a succubus catches their SO cheating, they'll either add the new partner into the relationship or behead them both. Depends on the day.

Particularly fond of one's that follow around bombastic families because then he also gets to pick apart human family dynamics in the process.

MC has to constantly remind him that a lot of it is staged and not EVERYTHING he sees to true to human life.... but it is true to human entertainment.

Asmodeus

Keeps up with both human AND demon reality shows and has even hosted a couple in the past!

He LIVES for the tea! He BREATHES in the drama! Man can't get enough!! He'll even skim through the tabloids and keeps up with any feuds like he's following genuine war updates.

Since Asmo is such a popular figure in Devildom public life, it isn't even surprising for the paparazzi to stop HIM to get a few photos and ask him his opinions on any fights or scandals.

Unlike Mammon, he's never been in one himself (MC has no idea how bloody Demon RTV can get and does he want to ruin his skin like that?? Hell no!). He doew hang out with the stars of shows he likes all of the time, though.

He sometimes has watch parties with Mammon and MC gets invited along now. Being in the middle of those two is insane because it's like getting to know ALL of the dirty laundry of the kingdom's elite at every get together. Gossipy bitches be chattin' fr.

Beelzebub

Man will watch anything as long as they supply the snacks.

Does Beel care about reality shows? No. Not even a little bit. Will he watch all 16 seasons of Married at First Sight as long as MC refills his popcorn bowl? Absolutely!

Honestly, poor Beel can hardly keep up with the drama anyway... If a show has too many love triangles, he'll lose track of who's dating who and sit there lost for an excruciating amount of time.

Was even more confused about why anyone would watch these shows after MC told them they were staged. All that shouting is over nothing...?? This is a really weird genre...

MC would have an easier time getting him invested in like... I dunno a cooking game show than anything having to do with relationship drama. Though they would run the risk of soaking the couch in drool if they try...

Belphegor

Not super into them or super against them. He'll watch one in the background until he inevitably falls asleep.

Belphie is probably one of the brothers most likely to agree to watch any reality show MC wants with them, but with the understanding that's he's only using it as an excuse for cuddle time.

Belphie weirdly has both zero emotional investment in anything happening on the screen but also a frighteningly good memory for what actually happens per episode... MC could quiz him on actor personalities, timelines, scandals, or relationships and he'll somehow always get it right.

He can tell you that Vassago and Sitri from 2nd Circle Beats are having a feud over who sent the succubus to crash Baal's birthday party, but seriously don't expect him to care. He wants soft blankets and warm bodies to nap to. Give him that and he's happy.

Part of it is just learned behavior. Belphie was Asmo's go-to watch buddy for the longest time. Whatever part of his brain that soaks up class lessons in his sleep seems to work just as well for the dramatic minutiae of a reality show, so he's like a walking DVR.

Diavolo

Thinks that all reality shows are so quaint and amusing, but they definitely skew his impression on everyday human life...

After being exposed to some of the longer running shows, he was really surprised that MC and Solomon are so... chill with each other?

I mean. They weren't throwing drinks, talking shit, or stabbing each other in the back every second of day, right? Obviously they must be quite close!

He even comments on how truly well they must get along as Master and Apprentice! Such a beautiful bond... Stronger than their natural human impulse for complete social and emotional disorder!!

(Please educate him on actual human dynamics and NOT just the ones that get dramatized for TV. We're not that bad, Dia, promise.)

Barbatos

Doesn't exactly like the shows, nor does he have time for them, but if MC likes them then he'll swallow his distain.

Honestly, Barbs looks down on the humans in reality shows even more than he does most of humanity in general. The things some of them would do to chase fame is simply... Well. He looks forward to seeing certain individuals among damned one day.

He probably busies himself by giving MC a foot rub or caring for their nails while they watch their shows. Anything that can keep his eyes off the screen.

Occasionally, something OUTRAGEOUS will happen and MC will hear him make a small scoff of disapproval, but that's about it.

He's well aware that a portion of what is presented is fake or at least staged to some degree, so he doesn't let it paint his perception of human culture. That said, he thinks that anyone who's willing to make a spectacle of themselves for a public audience speaks quite enough on its own. (And seriously don't get him started on the demon variety of these shows unless you want to seem him get grouchy).

Simeon

Also not the biggest fan, but he does enjoy getting to guiltlessly throw shade from time to time.

At some level, Simeon thinks it's a little impolite to gawk at total strangers and judge how they handle their relationships... butvon the other hand, they ARE the ones who agreed to the cameras so...

Has a strict policy to never watch reality shows in front of Luke so he doesn't get a bad influence. But also, so the little angel doesn't end up hearing the absolute INFERNO that Simeon roasts the actors with.

"Ah... So naturally gifted in all but wits!" "I do believe that young man is quite familiar... I think I once saw something much like him at the bottom of my shoe." "Mm? MC? Are you sitting on the remote? I think you may have changed the channel to Devildom TV... No? Oh. My mistake. They just seemed so heartless that I thought they'd fit in well here..."

Tearing. Scathing. His contempt cannot be contained. It is, however, a good outlet for him so please let him roast away!

Solomon

Guy is so out of touch with the modern era that watching these shows is just as bizarre to him as watching a viewing screen into a Victorian ballroom would be to us. Who keeps creating these strange words every other month...?

Reality dating shows give him whiplash. People get married now after 90 days? Or at first sight?? Or before they even SEE each other at all??? The last time he ever thought of courtship, it was still mostly arranged by the couple's families... Things have really sped up.

Not that he's complaining too much, because that gives him all the more reason to go through with his fantasy of proposing to then marry the MC in less than 12 hours (or however long before the brothers notice he's attempting to steal them away).

He feels like he has a leg up on the angels and demons around them for once because at least MC doesn't have to stop and explain human customs to him every five seconds. ... Just the modern ones.

I feel like watching Reality TV with Solomon is a very, "Let's get a little drunk and laugh at the screen" sort of affair. Very loose with a lot of jokes flying at the actors expense. He may or may not remember what all happens in the show, but hey, it's good fun!