#but that site is dead and I've never been this on main over there

[rocketlanterns]

Me: God gave the cutest girls the biggest dicks!

Lilla (my gf): My dick isn't very big :(

me: the estrogen will fix that! trans girls have big dicks, so the estrogen will make yours bigger :D

Lilla: I don't think that's how it works...

[judgeanon]

So about that DETECTIVE COMICS #1084...

As a big Shiva fan, I really, really liked that. Maybe my favorite issue with her since Hill's Outsiders run. I made a thread in another site about it but I liked that issue so much that I'm gonna take a sec to repost it here too, so hit that jump if you wanna read an in-depth analysis of 'Tec #1084... or at least, its backup feature!

I'm kinda kidding, I actually enjoyed the main story too. I liked seeing Bruce and Talia reunited in a very touching moment of romance that gives way to grim tension as the unfortunate complications of the strange and violent world they live being to slowly rip them apart once more... and then Shiva happens. For one panel and in a flashback but it was really fun to see Talia call her a friend for a bunch of reasons.

The most serious one is that I genuinely think that, given enough room to work with, Talia and Shiva could be a very compelling pair. Shiva is known to be interested in people who are in a state of flux, who find themselves in crossroads trying to figure out where their true path really lies. And Talia, for better or worse, has been there for, like... years now. I've always thought that Talia, endlessly torn between her love for Bruce, her love for her father, and her love for the world, might even find something tempting about Shiva's absolute detachment, about her comparative freedom from all connections. Which would be fun to explore.

The other reason comes from the issue's backup story by Alex Paknadel and Robbi Rodriguez, which I didn't expect at all but ended up being a huge treat for me, since it aligned so much with a lot of what I consider the most interesting elements and perspectives in Shiva and Cass' relationship.

Right from the start, we have Shiva being able to read Cass and figure out what's wrong with her just from a couple of fighting moves, which I absolutely adore. What looks like a fight is really just them having a conversation, at least for Shiva, who is very quickly able to get at the deeper emotions troubling Cass and holding her back.

(Also, that one panel of Snake Style ThodThodThod's really made me smile. I love the idea of Shiva using stranger, more exotic martial arts than anyone else, especially in Gotham)

On my first read I wasn't really onboard with Shiva's words about not killing Cass, like there was something about them that didn't quite click, but after mulling them over for a while I feel like they can be read as Shiva intentionally picking at Cass' perfectionist nature and competitive spirit. It's less "I spared you and now you owe me" and more "You trying to be Batman makes you suck, here's why, now be better." But I might be reaching a bit there.

Still, it does work, which I really enjoy. I like Shiva being able to prod Cass into reaching deep within her, figuring out what's wrong and improving herself. And we get a lot of that in the next couple of pages, where Cass grapples with the Azmer while also grappling with her own nature. Cass' training with David is an extremely defining element of her character. It's her instincts, her mother tongue, her main method of expression, but it's also something that causes her a ton of inner turmoil, due to the intentions of that training.

Cass is presented in this story as someone inwardly ashamed by her nature, worried of the assassin skills that are weaved into her very nature and what that may say about her. Of course, this is something that Cass has been through before and has developed quite a bit, maybe even outgrown but with Batman dead and gone, it probably makes sense for her to lapse a bit back into self-loathing without that symbol to guide her and with her failure at trying to emulate it. Which I think is a very human thing to happen. Your worst traits are never really gone, and tend to slip back into you when you're at a low point.

Which is why I really like the last few panels of this story.

Although first, Shiva calling Talia an "associate" makes me giggle a bit. C'mon Shivs, don't be so tsun-tsun... anyway.

On the most basic level, we have Shiva offering Cass some solid advice that ties the whole story in a neat bow. But it takes on an even stronger quality when you remember this is Lady Shiva talking here. Shiva, who we know wants Cass to be more than just a Bat. Shiva, who understands the strength that comes from finding your own path and following it. Shiva, who maybe more than anyone knows exactly how strong Cass can be once she embraces all aspects of her own nature and finds harmony in herself.

From almost any other character, that last phrase would just be a nice little canned moral. From Shiva's lips, it carries the weight of decades of character work for both Cass and Shiva. It's a solid ending that's elevated by the history between its characters. It hits SO many of the notes I want to see, the things that I think make Shiva's relationship with Cass genuinely compelling. Shiva being able to "read" Cass through a fight, her wanting Cass to be herself more than anything else, and all of it unhindered by any kind of easy moral judgment from Cass or the story itself.

Shiva is not presented as a monstrous villainess who Cass must reject, but as her own character with her own story that happpens to cross with Cass' for a moment. And from Shiva, there's no berating Cass for being a hero or choosing not to kill. There is berating, sure, but it works because it speaks to something a lot more personal for both characters than generic notions of good or evil. It speaks about Cass' need to find and be herself and stick with it no matter what.

(Which this arc also touched upon a couple months ago in 'Tec #1082, which very elegantly made it clear that Cass had the heart of a hero before she even knew what a Batman was -- an incredibly powerful statement made in just two captions)

So this is a story that hits pretty much all the right notes for me. I wish it would hit them a bit longer, or in a few different ways that didn't involve Batman, but it's just a perfect example of most of the elements that I think make this relationship worth exploring. Even the fact that this makes it the sixth major appearance of Lady Shiva in a row that is ultimately dedicated to her relationship with Cass doesn't bother me because this is precisely how I want this relationship to be written. If they were all this good, I wouldn't even mind.

And on top of all that, this issue is also a good example of something I'm always thinking about: tempting as it is, you don't need to make every Shiva appearance be huge and bombastic and lead to some massive story arc. It can be something small but meaningful, a quick appearance with some very choice words, Shiva walking into an ongoing story to, in her own way, help others get through an inflection point.

If I had to say something I disliked about it, I do think it's a little blunt in its themes and execution. Paknadel has Shiva quite literally spell out the problem for Cass, which I guess is fine given how short the story is, but it does lose a bit of elegance because of it. Still, it was a great little treat and while I know Ram's 'Tec run is coming to its end, I do hope he'll find a place for one last bit of Shiva in it.

And I also hope he gets to write her for more than just one wordless balloon because Ram V's Lady Shiva is a dream book in my book.

[deadpresidents]

What do you make of some of the tumblr presidential fan accounts and their activities? Shitposting, fanart, bizarre headcanons, etc?

There are A LOT of those fan sites about the Presidents and the Presidency on Tumblr! I'm shocked at the sheer number of them that have been popping up over the past few years. I don't follow very many other Tumblrs, but they are frequently recommended to me on my dashboard and I often see my stuff being reblogged by them, so I do notice them and know what you are referencing. I usually don't follow them, but it's not because I'm some sort of history snob. I've just never followed all that many blogs here on Tumblr. Some of those Presidential fan sites on Tumblr can be weird and seem to have some goofy posts and reblogs that I just don't "get", but that's normally just due to the fact that I'm old and boring and socially incompetent. Even though I'm probably one of the OGs of Presidential history blogs on Tumblr because I started Dead Presidents in 2008 (!!!), my site has always been pretty normal, straightforward history for those 15+ years. For the first few years, I even tried to steer away from being too political because I worried it would interfere with the credibility of the history writing I was publishing on Tumblr. That all changed in 2015 when I couldn't stay on the sidelines as Trumpism started taking over. But my Tumblr has always been mostly conventional, and a lot of those Presidential fan sites are very much unconventional.

I think because of that the assumption would be that I'm annoyed or dismissive of the Presidential fan Tumblrs that you mentioned because of how unconventional they can be. However, that's not the case at all. I actually think it's really fucking cool that so many young people -- and most of those Presidential fandom Tumblrs belong to really young people -- are into history, especially Presidential history, so much that they've shaped their own little universe about it. There's some really creative stuff that I've seen when sites are recommended and pop up on my dashboard. I'm particularly impressed by the Presidential fan art that a lot of these kids are posting. They are having fun and they are finding unique ways to expand history literacy, which has always been one of my main goals for creating Dead Presidents in the first place, posting original writing, and answering questions over the years.

Again, some of the stuff goes completely over my head and I don't understand the memes because I'm old, but I still think it's really cool that people are finding their own path into the field of Presidential history -- a subject I've spent most of my life interested in and hopeful that I might be able to interest others in. And, despite what a lot of those fan sites might look like at first-glance or appear to be while quickly skimming through dashboard recommendations, a lot of these kids who are curating the sites genuinely know their shit! It's great and I'm excited by the idea that there are creators finding new ways to introduce these subjects and these endlessly fascinating stories to diverse new audiences.

At its core, history is always just a collection of connected stories about people, and with so many talented young folks finding and creating original ways of telling those stories I want to support and encourage those efforts. From what I can tell, there are a lot of these Presidential fan sites that follow me on Tumblr because I've been around forever and it's pretty easy to remember that I write about the Presidency because of my blog's name. This might make me sound even more ancient than I already am and nobody needs my validation to keep doing what they are already doing well and successfully, but I'm proud to see the work that those young people are doing to further their own interests in Presidential history and inspire history literacy through their own creativity. Those memes and fan art can animate and energize far different -- and newer -- audiences than my 3,000-word essays about Presidential history and that's so important. They are appealing to demographics that I can't reach as easily and in ways that I never would have thought of, and I'm always going to be an advocate for that (even if I never understand the memes!). And the most important part is that they are having fun exploring history and making history fun for new explorers.

[scp-torment]

(Minor unreality warning, both for this post and this entire blog. Posts containing unreality will be tagging accordingly. Reminder that the SCP Foundation is not and has never been real, and all things covered on this blog are fictional.)

SCP Tournament

Welcome, agents, anomalies, civilians who's locations we are rapidly approaching on, and everything in between, to the SCP tournament! Where we will be competiting to see what scp the community decides is The Best. Sponsored directly by The Foundation and not at all a waste of funding.

"But wait, what does Best mean?" That is entirely up to you! It can be the one you think is best written, or most compelling. It could be most iconic, or the one that's just really fucking cool. It's entirely up to you.

Status: Tales focused mini bracket is over!

Full list of competitors and their links currently pending.

I'll be doing my best to read every article submitted, and all that make it into the final tournament will come with links to their pages. I encourage all people voting to go ahead and read them! There might be some hidden gems in there.

FAQ:

"But wait, what is an SCP?" (Newcomers can also start by simply going through the main site that this all originates from.)

"You've got a warning for unreality in your pinned post, should I be worried about that?" TLDR; it's infrequent and will be tagged accordingly.

"There's so many competitors here, where can I find their stories?" They're all listed right here! But that's just the contestants from the first tournament. The second tournament list is still pending.

"I submitted an SCP, and now I wanna know how popular they were, and your previous link didn't have vote totals." A list of all SCPs from the first tournament that were submitted more than once can be found here.

"Hey, a lot of the SCPs you're using don't have pictures, so what's up with that icon you're using for a lot of them?" That's the Anomaly Classification System (ACS). It's a tool to help enhance the already existing classification system, adding pictures and colors to each classification, as well as a danger and distribution class. It's used in a lot of the newer SCP files, so you've probably already seen it around! A lot of the SCPs didn't have pictures and I didn't want to use fanart without permission, so I scanned through their article and made them an ACS icon by what I felt was closest.

"Can I be rude to people?" Absolutely not. Playful joking is one thing, but I've seen too many tournament blogs have some nasty drama when people's fav have lost. I don't want that energy here, so please be kind to all, regardless of who they're supporting.

"One of your links isn't working! It says there's no post here :(" Sorry about that! I renamed the blog some months ago and it through off all the international navigation links since they don't auto update. I think I've fixed them all now, but if you find one that doesn't work please just send me an ask and I'll fix it!

"Do you allow propaganda?" Of course! Propaganda is not only accepted but encouraged. Go all out. Use memenics.

I believe that's all for now. If you've gotten to the end of this then congrats on surviving so long at the foundation. And if you're not an agent and you're reading this- Good luck with all that comes with the knowledge of these creatures. Happy voting!

Various blogs I was inspired by (for reach and appreciation of your own tournaments): @dead-character-showdown @fictional-disease-fight @mad-scientist-showdown @autismswagsummit @transgenderswagcompetition @pluralswagbracket @archivistsandlibrarians, and @mysterycharactercontest.

[ssaalexblake]

How would you respond to claims that 13's run feels a bit dodgy by having a cop travel with them?

You know, the other day while generally browsing the internet I happened across somebody complaining about this war movie. They were angry it was glorifying soldiers. Were anti-military themselves in general. You know what I mean. The thing is, though, the literature course I did in school had an entire unit and exam on war literature and I've read the book upon which the movie was based on and it has stuck with me as an incredible critique of war, conscription and the military by portraying those things in fiction. I would never pick it up again, not because it was bad, but because it was rough to 17yo me, but I am happy I've read it and other pieces of literature like it. I am happy I was taught to analyse and contextualise media with a serious subject such as that.

Now, this isn't the exact same thing as this. The BBC would legit never allow their lead children's show to Explicitly portray any acab message, like, ever, lets be true to reality here. But also, I genuinely think there is a fair amount of that puritanical black and white thinking going on here on the riff of Yaz working for the police being an immediate strike against the show because people think that portraying something is automatically lauding it because uh, the content of the story does Not track with the idea they're saying cop work is good work.

I have seen (on this site and many others) people say over and over again the only good cops are either dead or have quit bc they realised it was a crock of shit. In which case, the question becomes;

Did y'all miss the part where Yaz quit?

Yaz is not a cop anymore. Yaz quit. Yaz is portrayed as thinking it's frustrating bc because the helping people thing she was supposed to be doing isn't happening and we're shown this from literally the get go, her very first scene, and from there is only seen as trying A) to get work where she's actually helping somebody and totally failing to get it and B) straight up trying to get out of going to work by actually forging paperwork. S/O to her for that bit of illegality btw. Love that for her. She does not end the series employed by the police. Yaz found an actual way to help people and chose to do That instead.

Yaz's career arc is 'disillusioned teen signs up to be cop, realises it's bullshit and there are actual ways to help people and quits to go do that instead' which is, if i'm not mistaken, what we want actual real life cops to realise about their life choices.

I get it's a tetchy subject bc acab, i agree, and I get and agree and wish that this stuff could be more explicitly portrayed as well bc i'm sick of media or execs being too cowardly to be bold about messaging, but the insinuation that this portrayed the cops as systematically helpful or useful by having Yaz start out as a cop? No. Would I have liked it to be more explicit? Well yes, duh, but I cannot emphasise how that was literally never gonna happen. I can however emphasise how ideas like Yaz, whose main goal is to help, quitting being a cop bc she wasn't helping anybody beamed into impressionable young minds do, in fact, take root though.

Like, having a plucky teen hero character go through an arc of helping people and them Ending a cop to carry on the good work is Vastly different to a plucky teen starting out a cop bc they think that's how they get to help people then quitting bc they realised that's not true. One of these things is pro cop, the other is not.

I also hasten to mention again that there is a genuine conversation here abt the dodgy-ness cops being used in mental health emergencies. I wrote this out about it [Here].

On a personal note on this score, I, much like Sonya have been forced to deal with cops throughout somebody else's mental health emergency when I never should have had to and it fucking sucked. What an unempathetic bunch of rats who clearly haven't even done a google search's worth of research on how to discuss these things, let alone give it the gravity it deserves. That my choices were either cops or somebody dying is a travesty. And maybe this story speaks to me more personally as somebody who has had this experience and wants to throw hands over it still over a decade later, but that lady did not help Yaz, Yaz helped herself after a measly pep talk and the woman obviously never bothered to keep tabs and see if Yaz was okay afterwards either. Ryan helped his mate. Graham spreads good mental health advice that benefits others. The hospital in Syria was dealing in mental heath care by professionals of the time. Cop lady convinced Yaz to go home, succeeded, and Yaz gave her the credit when it was Her who dug herself out of that pit and not anybody else.

Like, genuinely this whole thing sets me off angry. And I could critique the execution if I wanted to but the bottom line is i've not actually seen anything else even go slightly Near where this plot went and I genuinely think it was something that should be said. As I said, a decade later and I still want to throw hands.

So basically like, I get the discomfort, I do, I get not wanting to see it as well, but Yaz grew OUT of this. Not the other way around. Portrayal is not endorsement. I do not personally find this era difficult to parse but people seem either unwilling or unable to do so on literally every theme addressed in it, but I am just back to being that 17yo in an english lit class being taught how to examine things through the vehicle of anti-war stories, ones that people are actually nowadays mad at for glorifying war just because they portray it when this couldn't be farther from the truth, and I cannot help but relate the situations a bit.

I mean, I don't think it's a 10/10 and I would tweak, but I am aware you won't be finding anything as bold as blatant acab on dw in this geopolitical climate and since that's endemic literally everywhere i'm not gonna single out This show for it when at least its trying (watching classic who and the things they just openly say and portray is soooooo eye opening. TV of the 21st century has no spine in general.) But the portrayal of something does not imply that said thing is positive. If real cops ditching the badge on principle is a good thing that we want to continue, I fail to see how fake ones portraying that said same thing is bad.

[illegal-heartbreaker]

Grave Therapy {Larissa Weems}

Headcannon: that Larissa’s grave was never not decorated in different colour flowers, teddy bears and cards. There would always be at least someone at her grave talking to her and Larissa from the other side would sit next to them and respond even though she knows they can’t hear her.

Relationship: Larissa Weems x Nevermore Students

Warnings: angst, death & light talk of depression

Extra: stay safe and keep your mental, physical, spiritual and sexual health safe!

____________________________________________

Each student of Nevermore held a special memory with the old Principal, Larissa Weems and each for a different reason. But Larissa knew and remembered all of them, just like she knew all of her students. But it became very hard to continue making those memories when Larissa had passed away, and a new Principal had taken her spot. Though she was gone physically, she was still with each and every student in their hearts, much to Principal Thornhills dismay.

It was forbidden to go to the grave that held her body, but somehow it was always decorated with a variety of flowers, teddy bears and cards. But other than the presents that laid there, you were almost bound to find a student there talking to Larissa about anything but it was mainly to vent about their new principal or mental health. The main visitor to her grave was Enid Sinclair, who other than talked to her she maintained the site by watering, replacing and organising it and perhaps it was because Enid was the most affected by the death.

"Principal Weems? I've come again." Enid had called that afternoon during her spare period.

"I know you can't hear but I just need to vent, and you told me that if I ever needed to, to come to you." Larissa had sat on the side of the dead, waiting for someone to come and talk to her but this wasn't what she was expecting, usually Enid would've come happy but clearly something had happened.

"It's Thornhill! No teachers nor authorities believe us students when we tell them that it was her that caused it last year." Enid sobbed leaning on the tombstone. Larissa moved closer to the young girl, wrapping her arm around her.

"Dear, Wednesday and you believing is all that matters. You're the only ones that have the most mental strength and endurance to defeat her" She sighed, Marilyn wasn't a normie after all, that suspicion was now fully confirmed.

"She's been going extra hard on Wednesday and I'm scared, what if something dangerous happens to Wednesday?? I wish you were still here.." Larissa knew she'd never let Thornhill hurt a student not even the most troublesome, she'd protect them from the dead, because thats where loyalty lay. Others before herself.

"We aren't even allowed to go to therapy anymore!" The young girl cried burying her head in her knees. "It's getting worse, I'm trying hard! But it's hard to be hopeful anymore, Principal Weems.."

Larissa closed her eyes, it seemed that everything she had built had been destroyed after she had died. The guilt was seeping into her slowly.

"My dear Enid, as long as I'm dead you will be alive. I won't let anyone get in the way of my Nevermore children because you are all mine to look after but for now stay strong, if not for you, for me.." She made a wish to the stars to look after her Nevermore children whilst she figured something out.

Enid looked over at the spot where the tombstone was and smiled slightly, "I'm glad we have you Principal Weems, I'm not sure what we would've done without, " She whispered getting up from her hunched position, stretching and looking down, "I love you nevermore mum."

"Love you too nevermore daughter, go show them what you're made of." Larissa laughed watching as Enid had returned to her 'happy, cheery' self before turning away to plan an intervention in Marilyn's works.

[notthestarwar]

Fic rec

Why do I hardly ever see lists of fic recs anymore?

I've decided I'm gonna be the change I want to see and make an effort to start listing fics I like on here cause I miss the days when we had to do that because Fic was like all over the Internet on custom sites and live journal and literally anywhere and you'd never find anything good just by searching

And so in no particular order here are some star wars recs:

End game Jango/ Obi Wan but focused more on Obi Wan and the journey.

Teen

Obi Wan chooses to stay in the agricorps at 12, he meets Jaster on bandomeer, Jaster offers to adopt him after antics but Obi Wan wants to stay a corpsman. However they stay friends and Obi Wan chooses to visit often. Obi Wan still ends up on Kamino. Overall its just great, Obi Wan has a unique perspective on the force thanks to his work and he uses that to try and save the clones and Mandalore. I love it!!

Obi-Wan meets Jaster Mereel and Jango Fett when he visits Bandomeer at age 12. He also joins the Agricorps. Jango still goes on to Kamino, but when Dooku is killed a few years early he finds an opportunity to save the clones from a life of senseless war.

And honestly, that's just where the story begins. Because anyone can raise an army, but you start to run into trouble around dinner time, and Mandalore's really not equipped to feed that many people.

Featuring Farmer!Obi-Wan, Working-on-himself!Jango, unimpressed clones, and a quest to save a planet.

Next up

Codywan cowboys!!!

Mature

This one is just beautiful. Cody loves his brothers so much. He is taking them on his search for work when they get caught by bandits. He's hoping to save enough money to buy them a home. It's lovely.

Or: While travelling with his brothers, Cody and his brothers run into trouble, and meet a sharp-eyed lawman. Plans go awry, a river diverges.

"He moved to push himself up, panting with the effort, pushing past the scream of his shoulder and the exhausted shaking of his good arm. But a hand pressed flat against his chest, another on the back of his head, and pushed him gently to lay back down. “You need to move slow,” the voice said, “or your stitches will open.”

Mature

Omg this is great. Boba is our main character and there is din/boba but my favourite part of this is Cody!!! This is post empire and includes academic!Cody accompanied by ghost Obi Wan so Cody/ Obi Wan for that. I love this Cody so much. He is an academic. He loves sarlaccs. It's just 💚💛💙🧡

Boba leaves Djarin to his tracking while he takes deep breaths and tries to convince himself that running screaming into the wastes is not how he is going to deal with all this. He needs to think smarter, not harder. The sarlacc is an enormous motherfucking terror dome. It cannot move far, and it cannot possibly move fast. If it moved, it has to be around here somewhere. Someone has to have felt it or seen it.

Someone has to know something about sarlaccs. Someone living. Someone dead.

(Boba sets out to hunt his white whale.)

Teen

This one has a pairing I'd never really considered before Luke/din/poe set in a modern au and I love it

Poe is a us marshall. Din and luke are living in witness protection with grogu but are overly capable of looking out for themselves. As with all spqr fics it is both beautiful and hilarious

As much as Poe is a method actor doing his best to inhabit the role of Pool Boy in the low-budget porno that is this assignment, he is also not and has never been a manwhore.

[rae-gar-targaryen]

I have a question about reblogging fics that I would love your opinion on as a writer… I admittedly rarely reblog fics, artwork or photos from the TGM fandom because it’s a side interest for me, and really doesn’t match the content on my blog. I hear you and many other fandom creators on this site talk about the importance of reblogging original content and I want to help by changing my behaviour. I’ve thought about creating a new blog to specifically support the TGM creators I love by reblogging their content, but worry that that isn’t a very helpful solution because the reblogs would probably go to a “dead end” and not be further shared past my blog. Does that seem like a reasonable solution to you, or is there a more helpful way I can take action? Thanks in advance for your guidance - I love your Mickey pieces and would hate to see you stop sharing your writing due to a perceived lack of interest!!

Hi, my darling! Thank you for this question, and for taking the time to write about this! I hope you didn't think I was ignoring you -- I've been thinking about how I want to answer and what I could suggest. I am by no means the premiere authority on this sort of thing, so I welcome my other writer friends to chime in. But here I go --

Firstly, thank you so much for your love of my content and wanting to help promote it/other writer's works. I also appreciate you being willing to step out of your comfort zone in order to benefit writers and creators on Tumblr. That's so kind and so important.

To some extent, I understand being known for certain content on your blog, and not wanting to disrupt your own content for your followers. I know some blogs are really fandom and aesthetically oriented. So I get that.

That said, one big point of reblogging is getting the material in front of new eyes, so if your OG blog has the numbers to help writers get seen, I can't express enough what that would mean to me, and to other writers to be shared to that forum.

It's no secret that one frustration I have with my own writing is that it never seems to "break through." I am fortunate to receive the positive feedback that I do, and one of the things I regularly hear is "this is so well-written!" And "why doesn't this have more notes?" I wish I knew -- the answer is that it could, if things didn't sit in the likes tab. And it sort of breaks my heart to read what is intended as a compliment that serves to remind me that my content is only reaching the eyes of whomever happens to be browsing the tag that day and few others.

That said, to your suggestion about creating a side blog/library blog and the concern that it would be a "dead end," you're right in that reblogging content into a dead blog or one that doesn't have many followers does not remediate the issue. So, my counter-question to you is -- are you willing to disrupt the flow/aesthetic of your main to either share fics, or to promote your side blog and encourage your followers to check it out/follow the writers you share to there? The latter may be more effort than you're willing to put in to the endeavor (and I certainly would never ask or expect anyone to bend over backward). And the former may not be what you're willing to do for the sake of what you're already sharing to your blog.

So -- if there's an answer, I'm not sure I have a clear one. I appreciate your willingness to share. And if you one day do, I know it would make that writer's day! It would certainly make mine.

And I'm not trying to guilt anything, but I can't tell you the number of times I've felt that looming cloud of discouragement because I look at the metrics and think, "well, that flopped." Because if people are silently reading and not saying anything, it may not be the case that my fics are flopping in that sense, but if that's true, I have no way of knowing. For me, an ask (I keep anon on for a reason), a comment reblog, tags, a comment, something that lets me know what someone enjoyed about my story?? Makes my entire day! I put so much thought into exactly how I want a sentence to sound. What I want the flow of a story to be. The vibe I want to convey. It's all intentional. And it can be heartbreaking when you feel like it resonated with no one.

If you're still reading this, thank you! Thank you for asking! Thank you for your patience and dedication to reading and hopefully sharing work! You have a few options, and I welcome others' suggestions. All my best to you, my love. And happy reading! I have so many fics planned for the coming months. 💜🌿☀️🌻✨

[tennythemany]

The Talk

Alright I've been dodging the topic for months now, and I did make this tumblr account to vent it out, but let's talk about why I've stopped posting on the tenpenny account

• Burnout, Identity, Elves vs Ducks

The slow but insidious reason. I've been gposing for about 2 years when I stopped in Feb, and I've been rummaging through my glam dresser everyday to make new outfits for my Elezen. It's what I started gposing for (making cute elf glams), and why I continue to play the game.

But sometime in 2022, that changed. Tried anam for the first time. Started making my own poses. Then I got a hit post. I saw more likes and views. I saw growth, and then I got ambitious. I tried making bigger posts, I read tutorials, I leveraged on my years of knowledge on memes, and I. Made. Memes. That's when things really took off.

That's also around the time I started noticing something. If I put the duck in my posts, I'd get more likes on that post. The duck became a recurring character in my posts. But then people started caring more about the duck than the elf, replies became more about the duck, and that was something I *really* didn't want. People wanted to see the duck. I put it in when I was having a hard time coming up with new ideas. Watch the duck post get more likes than the elf posts. Watch my heart sink.

While gposing would never not be fun for me, at some point I felt like I was posting more for likes than for myself. That feeling never really went away, and so it stayed long past Feb 2023

• The GShade incident

Y'all may remember a little incident at the start of 2023 that got the ffxiv community very plus not-good mad. Not going into details, but a small outcome of that incident resulted in some tangentially related creators to be lumped into that mess.

People wanted blood, and the creators basically got cancelled out of existence along with GShade's creator. Somewhere in that firing line, someone I supported and admired was targeted, and through some *very* shallow accusations, they were hit too.

(And no, I won't be naming anyone)

That event made me realize two very important things:

Years of goodwill and hard work can be undone in a single week if people believe you to be evil

I fucking hate X (formerly twitter)

So that was it. I didn't want to continuing doing something that can forever undermine my work in the heat of the moment, and I've developed a newfound hate for twitter and the mob justice the site perpetuated.

So I left.

(But just the main account, I do whatever I want on Tenny)

• Making a joke is hard when you're sad

So most of you might know me for my memes. A large part of me is driven by the positive reception you've given me, and I'll be eternally grateful for all your support, but that changed when all the above happened.

I've been agonizing over how I feel about all this, and scrolling through X (formerly twitter) just made me feel worse. I couldn't wring a good joke out of me. I couldn't make other people laugh when I couldn't make myself laugh. I didn't *want* to make when some of the people involved were my followers either.

So I stopped.

• The ever creeping shadow of age

I'm 34 this year. I've spent a lot of time on FFXIV, and to be honest, not much else. I don't have a significant other, and I don't do anything but play video games and occasionally hang out with friends for tabletop games. I've got a few projects outside of gposing, but they've been dead in the water for years.

Gposing and making memes take time. It's about 2-3 hours on average to make one, and that's if I already have a set piece ready. It's another hour to look around locations in-game, or who knows how many hours if I'm building my own. Because of work, that sometimes means I have to gpose late at night. Because of gaming, that means I *always* have to gpose late at night. I've been gposing late till 1-3am consistently in 2022, and my sleep schedule is all out of whack because of it.

I *really* don't want gposing to be my legacy.

Gposing comes to me at an opportunity cost. I've still got a few good years left in me, but at some point I need to start thinking about what I want to do, be it saving for retirement, pursuing a passion I've been putting off, or just any plan for the future at all. Maybe I'll finally put my gamedev knowledge to use, maybe I'll delve into the VR scene, maybe I'll learn how to make videos like the young me always wanted to.

But that meant I need to put less time into gposing.

So, the events of the points above was a good opportunity for me to suspend my activities and give myself some time to think about what I want to do in the future. It was clear I needed a break, and I needed a clear head to think things through. Come up with my five-year plan, so to speak. I'm thinking hard about what I want to do in the future.

I'm thinking real hard.

*Real* hard.

(Don't look at my playtime for Armored Core 6)

• Wow, video games are becoming really fun

I don't doubt ffxiv will be my forever game, and I'm glad YoshiP and team have made it so you don't have to play everyday, but holy hell have you seen how many good games have come out over the last 6 years I can't be playing ffxiv all the time you can't make me

Ehem.

Before gposing, video games will always be my main hobby. I have a vested interest in where video games are going, and ho boy are they getting interesting. I can't keep up with all the new terms we're coming up for them, from systemic games to survivor-likes, to Genshin clones being a thing. It's just an ever-changing landscape.

VR gaming is real, we're actually getting a full game from full-priced games, you don't even need to buy individual games anymore, you can play them on a game streaming service, and it's easier to make your own games now more than ever.

Just, wow.

I'd really like to experience all that for myself, so for the past 7 months, I've been playing other games.

A *lot* of other games.

And the biggest thing I've learned through all that is there's a vast and much wider world out there than just the ffxiv community and oh my god what the fuck is the gaming community outside of ffxiv why is it so toxic i can't even-

I'll still be playing ffxiv. Just a lot less. Some things are just irreplacable, y'know?

So there, if you've been wondering where I've been (or where all the memes are), that's the long and long of it. Thanks for reading, and I hope that gives you a sense of where I'm at. Hopefully that covers everything, so-

• CRIPPLING IMPOSTOR SYNDROME

Oh yeah, that.

Wow, I don't know how to tell you guys this, but I am inside a self-deprecating piece of shit who when exposed to other people's work would inadvertently compare myself to them and conclude that "wow, I'm garbage".

It's no secret that I have had no formal art training, or even photography training, or even gposing training if that's a thing, a lot of what I do is self-taught. Just years of trial and error, and mimicking scenes from shows or comic panels I've seen, but I don't have any technical knowledge to know if a picture is 'right' or not. Color theory is completely alien to me before I started learning about them, I was gposing with a blue light filter so everything looked yellow on my end. I don't use mods, so I had to rely on the default models for everything I do. Let's not even talk about photoshop.

And over the years, I've been looking for gpose communities to share my work and see what other people are cooking up. I see it all. Better composition, better colors, better post processing, better poses, better backgrounds, better editing, better...everything. In my mind, everything just looks better than anything I could have done. I know I shouldn't let that get to me, but, y'know

So part of me wanted a smaller audience, somewhere I could curl up in without needing to think to myself 'oh god 3000 people are going to see this post' and think insane things like 'this isn't a 100-likes post' or whatnot. Creator thoughts. Insane thoughts. It was driving me insane.

Some part of me just wanted to post elves. The other part wouldn't 'just' let me post elves. It had to live up to what I've done before, it had to be perfect.

Now I just want to post elves.

• Final (fantasy) thoughts

So barring that last point, that's the thick and thin of it. If you read this far, then wow maybe my composition skills haven't fallen off a cliff just yet. Thank you for reading my jumbled stream of consciousness, and while Tenpenny might not be around anymore, Tenny's always around to talk about elves.

This is me, this post is about why Tenpenny is dead, and this is why I've stepped away from making memes regularly, and content creation in general.

Elezen cute.

.

.

.

Also FUCK the X (formerly Twitter) word limit, I've always hated it omg

[crackinglamb]

WIP Wednesday Whenever

Tagged by @noire-pandora, thank you! 💕

Tagging @mogwaei, @bdafic, @shretl, @lilbittymonster, @ir0n-angel and @fiadhaisteach. No pressure!

I've reached the penultimate arc of WG, y'all. I'm both excited and overwhelmed to finally get to this point in the writing. From the very earliest parts of the draft (now going on two years old, holy crap), I knew I wanted the main storyline to end this way. Now all I have to do is not fall apart in the middle of it.

Imogen has reached the Western Approach...

(Under a cut for mention of dead bodies and Blight related existential dread. I've been told this scene is very evocative.)

---

In the distance the heat made the black patches shimmer and waver, but she could still find the places where the dead lay, desiccated into grotesque postures where they'd fallen. Their armor and weapons were as shiny and sharp as the day they died, nearly a thousand years ago. She remembered reading somewhere that the Second Blight had so thoroughly ravaged the Approach that the dead didn't even decompose, because nothing survived, not even bacteria. It was why this region was now a desert, in fact, although she had other theories on that, considering the rest of Thedas seemed to bounce back well enough from the Blights.

Mythal killed a Titan, she thought. Was this where it was when it lived? Is this why they call it the Abyss? The Void? For sure no one knows what lies at the bottom of this trench other than darkspawn.

She couldn't look away from the scene in front of her. No carrion birds flew overhead, nothing moved, it was silent enough to hear the sibilant whisper of sand on sand. There wasn't even a smell. Or at least, there wasn't the smell she would expect from such a battlefield. The back of her throat closed up, reminding her of how the air tasted and felt in the future Redcliffe. She'd thought then that it was because of the red lyrium. But no, it was the Blight that made each breath itch in her lungs.

The others caught up and Stroud dismounted next to her, looking at the other side of the canyon, his expression both bleak and knowing. He glanced at her in the saddle for a moment before his eyes returned inexorably to the vista. “You have the look of one who has never seen such a thing, Inquisitor.”

“I...haven't. There's really no way to prepare for it. Knowing isn't the same as seeing.”

“I suppose that is true.” His lilting voice seemed out of place, too gentle and soft for such a grisly location. “It is little comfort to know that this is victory.”

“Yeah...”

“Come, Inquisitor, let us make sure this ritual site is as empty as it should be, and then we can leave this place.”

Imogen watched him turn away from the view as if he was struggling to do it. She wondered how the physical presence of so much Blight affected him, a Warden who'd served long enough that his Calling could have been real. She turned Squirrel away and her gaze landed on Hawke, watching them from the meager shade of the tall stone columns that marked the site. Elly's eyes were sympathetic when they met hers as she dismounted.

“You all right, Genny?”

“Yeah, just...a little overwhelmed.”

“C'mon, the sooner we check this out, the sooner we can leave.”

“That's what Stroud said too.”

Hawke scoffed. “At last we agree on something.”

The trio walked along the bridge that suspended the ritual tower over the edge of the Reach. The site stood on a spur of rock that seemed to simply hang in the air. Imogen was sure that was an illusion, though. The ground itself was simply so saturated with the Blight that it absorbed all the light that shone on it. There was a lingering feeling of wrongness about the place, but it was empty and sand-swept. There was no blood, no demons, no Venatori. As she'd hoped.

Hawke shuddered. “This place is fucking awful.”

[portypaper]

My 10 favorite things of 2022

10 - mcdonald's fan owns burger king in epic video

Sometime in 2018 I discovered the comedian/actor/writer Connor O'Malley's youtube channel filled with some of the best cringe comedy vidz I've ever seen. One of my favorites being "mcdonald's fan owns burger king in epic video" a pretty self explanatory video where O'Malley plays an angry McDonald's fan trying to fuck over Burger King and try to convince the customers to go to McDonalds. Around the time I discovered the video my friends had a little get together and I made sure to show everyone there the video, shit was just that good dude.

Unfortunately because there is this little scene where just a little bit of king of the hill porn is shown, I think it was hank hill wackin' his willy silly or some shit and because of that those FUCKERS at YouTube took it down, basically destroying the Mona Lisa of cringe videos. Now normally a video uploaded by a notable person getting deleted would be no big deal, it's like I was told as a kid "stuff on the internet lives forever" so I could probably just find a reupload of it on another site right? I ended up not being able to find any reuploads dailymotion, vimeo, or even porn sites.

Every few months something would come up that would remind me of this masterpiece and I'd start searching again, of course never finding anything except dead links, a single clip, and posts asking what happened to the video. That was until 4 months ago when I found this, some mad man actually had the full video and shared a full download. After 4 years I was finally able to watch one of my favorite cringe videos and brother it was even better than I remembered it being, if you're a fan of cringe stuff please do yourself a favor and watch it.

9 - Showa-Era Godzilla

As a teenager I started to notice a handful of people that I looked up to and thought were really cool mostly had a lot of the same interests, one of them being kaiju films. So sometime during Q1 of 2022 when I found out that almost every showa-era godzilla film was free to watch on YouTube I binged em with some of my friends.

Honestly the whole thing was a bit of a blur, like we were doing 2 or 3 a day for a week but I can say (with the exception of Son of Godzilla) they were all a really great time. If I had to choose a favorite I think Invasion of Astro-Monster takes it easy, small part because MF DOOM sampled it in the greatest opening track ever but, also because everything about the film is just so cheesy and charming, the costumes the sets just looking at it all makes me want to finally bite the bullet and make a cool low budget sci-fi movie.

I feel like I should explain the appeal of Godzilla since as an outsider I never really got it but I still feel new to being a fan and might not explain it the right way so I'll just say to check the films out yourself, aside from Invasion of Astro-Monster I also really fucked with Godzilla vs. Megalon and Terror Of Mechagodzilla. Godzilla vs. Megalon has Mr. Zilla himself teaming up with a neat lookin' robot Jet Jaguar and Terror Of Mechagodzilla has a great mixture of main character doing shit and big monsters fighting so nothing really feels like it drags on for too long.

8 - Norm Macdonald - Nothing Special

It's been too long since I watched it for me to really remember anything other than how much I enjoyed it so I'll just write down how I felt instead.

One thing I'm sure you've worried about is legacy, how you'll be remembered or if anyone will even care about your leaving. Something that really felt good about this comedy special was after the jokes were over we got a half an hour of Norm's comedy peers looking back at just what a funny and great person he was, a person who would hide his battle with cancer just so no one would worry. I don't really know what people think of me but I hope I end up being looked at the same way people look at Norm.

Oh also if you've never heard any of Norm Macdonald's comedy there are a whole lot of compilations of his stuff on YouTube, and also obviously this comedy special but I'm a bit unsure if this would be a good first watch since it's the last we'll ever get.

7 - King of Fighters XV

I've had a small problem with fighting games for the last 10 years, I love em but since I started getting into them there always felt like there was something off to where I couldn't fully click with one, like I could still enjoy the games I played like Street Fighter V or Tekken 7 but I just never felt like I got into a nice flow with them or if it was a game I clicked with it wouldn't last very long (R.I.P. MvCI)

Then late last year some friends were hyping up the next KoF game to me, I'd been burned in the past by taking one of their recommendations before so I wasn't super interested at the time then fast forward to February 2022 I was feelin pretty bored and decided to just say fuck it and buy King of Fighters XV and brother this shit just clicked instantly, the execution is a bit tighter than what I've gotten used to from modern fighting games but it all just feels so good I don't even mind when I accidently drop a combo. Oh my god and the characters fucking rule there is this one dude who has the Android 16 dunk and MvC ironman's unibeam. My favorite dude is the one who looks like a phone game icon and has a shit ton of grabs

This is easily the best fighting game of 2022, sadly the only bad thing about this game is the online matchmaking is pretty broken like the game plays like a slideshow with my friend who lives down the street but it plays perfectly with my friend who lives a few miles away. This game is a hardcore recommend if you're willing to risk the possibility of the online being dogshit with one of your friends.

6 - Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Zero

I've never really been a visual novel guy, the whole genre just felt like reading a book with extra steps. Then after trying to watch some stupid ass death game anime that just wasn't clicking I said fuck it I'll just play this to get my death game fix.

I actually tried to get into this game about 7 year ago? I remembered reading about it in Nintendo Power back in the day and decided to pick it up, unfortunately I tried playing it during a very stressful time and after playing the tutorial I put the game down intending to come back once things started to feel normal, anyways 7 years later I started up the PC port and had a lot of fun. The puzzles were clever and I had a great time trying to figure out if one of the characters were working behind the scenes of this death game.

I'd like to share more but I also really don't want to spoil this game so I'll just say "Snake" is the best character in the game :)

5 - Wolfenstein: The New Order

At the end of 2021 I was looking back at the games that releasing during the year and got really bummed, it really started to feel like games were just getting worse. Either stuff was coming out blatantly unfinished like Battlefield 2042 or It was just a flash in the pan game like Back 4 Blood or Halo Infinite that I couldn't even run on my little 1060. Games just started to feel so disposable and greedy, what was the point in installing the hot new thing when it took over a hundred gigs of space and wouldn't even last long enough to even be remembered? So at the start of 2022 I said fuck it I'm done with video games until I realized how boring life was so I said alright fuck it if the new shit sucks I'll just play the old shit.

I randomly decided to play Wolfenstein: The New Order and dawg this shit is one of the finest single player first person shooters I've played, everything about it was just so perfectly crafted. It's a game you can beat in a day and 100% in two, the guns and ammo is perfectly paced where I felt like I was always getting a fun new weapon to use on the nazis, and the story has just the right amount of silliness to keep my attention the whole time. If you felt the same way as I did at the start of the year please play it, or check out your backlog to find a gem like this.

4 - The Rehearsal

Have you ever wished you could go back in time and fix a mistake you've made? Well Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal is sorta like that, Fielder being the absolute insane crazy person he is helps people rehearse things they're scared of doing, like in the first episode he meets a dude who lied about having a master's degree to his bar trivia friends and has him go through every possible scenario so he can confess to his one friend who he is certain will not take his lie well.

Some other stuff happens too, but this show left me fuckin' mouth agape in complete shock multiple times an episode and I don't want to spoil some of the absolute insane shit that happens in this show, so just trust me when I say this shit rules and you've gotta watch it, also watch Nathan for You if you haven't.

3 - Cyberpunk Edgerunners

Dawg, Edgerunners is the best animated project I watched in 2022. If you've watched it I don't need to say shit because you already know this shit rules, if you haven't watched it you should watch it. I think in the future when we look back at animation that dropped this decade we're gonna be remembering Edgerunners as one of the best of the 2020's. When I was watching there were just so many "holy shit this is so beautifully animated" moments, the story isn't anything super groundbreaking but god it's just so pretty and the characters are so charming.

2 - Pulp Fiction

Good Movie. Everything I want to say has been said by people way smarter than me so yeah, good movie is all that needs to be said from me.

1 - JPEGMAFIA

I'm no Fantano so I can't really properly explain what it is that made me love this dude's music so much but I randomly stumbled upon him in March and he's slowly been growing on me more and more til I eventually ended up just playing all his stuff on repeat for days without listening to anything else. Instead of going on and on I'll just list some of my favorite for you to check out.

BALD!

HAZARD DUTY PAY!

FREE THE FRAIL

THOT TACTICS

JESUS FORGIVE ME, I AM A THOT

I CANNOT FUCKING WAIT TIL MORRISEY DIES

1539 N. CALVERT

dude is just great and I wish I discovered him sooner.

Thanks for reading sorry if I explained myself poorly hopefully my writing will get better by doing this more alright I'm gonna go piss and play cyberpunk xoxoxo 😘😘

[grandhotelabyss]

One more video from the same channel, on the "Who follows Cormac McCarthy?" question.

(Sometimes formulated as the "Who follows Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison?" question—an uneasy literary truce in the culture war, where conservative white men and radical women of color each get a representative great novelist, thus missing the radicalism of McCarthy and the conservatism of Morrison. Philip Roth seems to have been forgotten entirely. But I digress.)

Of our YouTuber's candidates, I fully endorse DeLillo and Ishiguro, two of my all-time favorites, never mind "living."

(With a gun to my head, I might even choose DeLillo over McCarthy and Morrison, despite the potential Italian-American identity politics involved. Or at least, in those three oeuvres, of which DeLillo's is admittedly the most uneven, the single book I'd choose for the proverbial desert island is probably Underworld.)

I agree that Erdrich and Silko are in the running, especially for those interested in McCarthy's own subject matter and regional commitments, even if I have quarreled with Silko's politics and sometimes found Erdrich a bit, well, middlebrow. Except for the visionary Housekeeping, written before her puritan turn, I dislike the preachy Marilynne Robinson.

I've never read a word of James Ellroy; please let me know if I must. For other "genre" candidates—I dabble in science fiction and comics, not crime fiction—one might propose Samuel R. Delany or Alan Moore. I read one book of Murakami's, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, sometimes acclaimed his masterpiece; I liked it, didn't love it, and it did not and would not occur to me to rate him above DeLillo.

Our YouTuber flippantly dismisses Joyce Carol Oates. I've advanced only inches into her vast oeuvre—a handful of short stories and essays, one book on writing, two short novels, one long novel—but it was enough to convince me that she's serious, her admittedly discrediting late turn to the genre of the Twitter shitpost notwithstanding. His dismissal of Stephen King may go without saying; I hate George Saunders; I agree that Franzen, along with David Mitchell, Neil Gaiman, and even to some extent Louise Erdrich, failed to follow through on their early promise.

I insist on the inclusion of Cynthia Ozick, not least because she does something like Marilynne Robinson's project right, with a much fuller, more anguished, and more properly abrasive acknowledgement of what happens in the soul of the believer-artist when an iconoclastic faith confronts the artistic imagination. Now 95, she released her most recent novel at age 93; I thought it was excellent. I concede, though, that it's probably her body of work as a whole—encompassing essays, stories, and novels, and possibly giving essays and stories pride of place—that is great rather than any one novel, great as some of her novels (The Cannibal Galaxy, Foreign Bodies) are.

(For at least one essay of my own, and often multiple essays, on every writer named above save Ellroy, please see the REVIEW INDEX on my main site.)

All of these writers are elderly or near enough—the youngest are in their 60s—and greatness is perhaps not stirring as obviously as we'd like in the under-60 set. It's harder to identify, though, due to the diminution of mainstream publishing, the proliferation of self-published work, and everything's having moved online. The novel isn't dead, but it is elsewhere. Some of us are doing what we can, and I concede I am probably too immersed in my own vision to judge adequately my more exact contemporaries.

[o5-the-daughter]

Mod question time!

At what point in their life was your muse at their worst? Be it in terms of mental or physical health, emotional stability, general mindset? How do they look back on this era nowadays?

Bonus: what put them in this state and how did they get out of it again? What kind of lasting effects or habits still stick with them?

OOC:

Heed the tags, for obvious reasons!

Seven:

To no one's surprise, losing Mary and, soon after, Mirjam was when Seven was at her worst in just about every sense of the word. For weeks, even a few months after the breach that killed Mary, the responsible units were searching through the wreck that used to be Site-11 [new lore: where it happened lmao] to look for potential survivors and, after a while, bodies and body parts. Because of this, Seven/Clara did not get closure over what actually happened to Mary for quite a while, as the higher-ups refused to declare her dead without evidence. Because of this, the Foundation also didn't pay for a grave, which became an even bigger issue when no body was found and Mary was (and still is) declares missing in action instead. Clara ended up financing the grave mentioned in one memory herself because of this.

This alone was already insult to injury - she was heartbroken on an entirely new level, having never truly lost anyone before, while also trying to get used to the thought of having to raise her baby by herself. And then things got worse, of course.

I won't go into much detail towards the loss of Mirjam since I think I've already described this as best as I can here, but the aftermath.. didn't make things any better, to say the least. The miscarriage (or stillbirth, rather) happened fairly late into the pregnancy at approximately twenty-eight weeks, with no direct rhyme or reason behind it - other than that Clara's mother herself had faced similar struggles, meaning it was, without Clara's knowledge, a genetic risk. Life kind of just went "fuck you" at her. :/

Seven absolutely hates to look back at this time of her life, for obvious and understandable reasons and does her best not to think about these events. As for lasting effects, she developed PTSD from these events, which she only managed to deal with better around the 90s. She is still incredibly scared of losing the people she is close to to the point of occasional paranoia, and even more scared of falling in love again for the same reason. Even, or maybe especially now that she's finding herself slowly falling for Four, these fears are back, stronger than ever - after all, a relationship between them is forbidden and would very likely cost Four, as the newbie, his position.

Eight:

Eight was at his worst in a rather different way between approximately 1945 and 1953 - so including the downfall of The Lesser and Eight's own promotion to his current position. During this time, he was more under Ten's/the Foundation's control than ever before or since; and he came closest to being an actual monster as he has to this date.

It was mentioned once or twice in the past, but in the mid-40s, SCP-3000 and, with it, amnestics were first discovered in 565, with Two/Stefan being one of the main researchers to work on the project from then on. And Eight, relatively early on, took a dose against recommendation because he had been experiencing much greater distress (including nightmares) than before from his past, namely his childhood and the early years with the Foundation in which he was pretty greatly manipulated by Ten. The main cause of this episode was, ironically, that he was starting to realize how bad things actually were - the even greater irony is that Ten nudged him to pressure Stefan into giving him the amnestics.

Fast forward to the aftermath, it was.. not ideal. Due to how new amnestics were at the time, the dosage was higher than it should have been, and erased a very large majority of Eight's memories, including things he wanted to keep. This, of course, made far heavier manipulation on Ten's side (disguised as him 'reminding' Eight) very easy. He was somewhat kept away from Two as well to further help with this, too, and ended up becoming far, far colder than he was before, as well as straight-up cruel at some points. For a good few years, he didn't question a single order from Ten and even found a certain kind of joy in his position as one of the Foundation's henchmen.

Only after his promotion, after he finally became close with Two again, did Eight find back to his 'true self', so to say. While the worst was over by about '53, he was never the same, and a lot of the aftereffects of this time still linger to this day. This namely includes his heavy idealization of Two as his savior, pretty much, but also the way Eight views himself. He knows how he behaved back then was entirely inexcusable (which only gets made worse by the fact that he still struggles to realize just how badly Ten manipulated him) and he will see himself as a monster for the rest of his life because of it.

He also has, on multiple occasions, snapped at people who were close to him for a while and used this part of his past to scare them off from coming too close to him, out of pure fear that he could hurt them since he 'clearly' has this monster hidden inside him. This is why so few of his friendships last longer than a year or two.

[misireads]

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

[ physical book, read in english ]

set in a (post-apocalyptic??) world with nine planets, or "houses" that basically function like countries in this universe, gideon is a grumpy sword-wielding butch living as a servant on the ninth which is a dark planet inhabited by old people, animated skeletons, and some sort of skeleton cultists. gideon has tried to escape numerous times, but her attempts are always thwarted by her childhood nemesis, harrowhark, who is the princess of the planet and a necromancer with bone magic powers. this time harrowhark promises gideon her her freedom if only she accompanies harrow to the first planet to participate in some sort of intergalactic event where the heir of each planet has the opportunity to become a lyctor, i.e. some sort of immortal hero who serves the necrolord emperor of the whole universe, but the heirs are supposed to have cavaliers fighting for them so harrow wants gideon to be hers. gideon reluctantly agrees and they take a space shuttle to the event site on the first, along with the other necromancer&cavalier pairs from planets two to eight. all of them are strange characters, but gideon befriends a few. little by little, through some budding cooperative friendships, it's revealed that the trial they're supposed to conduct is made up of solving necromantic puzzles with the help of the cavaliers that then grant them keys to open doors to new spaces in the enormous delapitated mansion they're staying at where they find more clues to what they're actually there to do. it's all necrofun and swordgames until one heir&cav pair is found dead.

➕ this is like, the (gay) gothic body horror YA fantasy of my dreams. this book was made for me. i'm superglad for my habit of not reading the covers or nothin because all the contents came as a COMPLETE surprise to me. well i knew this was fantasy but other than that. nothing prepared me for the very first pages talking about gideon "walking down to her mother's nameless catacomb niche" and "skeletons going to pick at the snow leeks in the planter fields." i had to take a double take like wha wha WHAAAAT exactly did i read just now? but you get used to it. the whimsy never ends but you get used to skeletons cleaning houses and bones growing from unexpected places in this book

➕ the language. oh i am a lover of words. this book has so so many strange words, and strange ways of using those words. i didn't look all of them up because that would take forever, but i feel like every time i did look a word up, the meaning was somehow related to death, graves, or bones. delightful! also just a lot of looking up how something is pronounced because i need to be accurate for my audience (which is me)

➕ related but this is SO VISCERALLY VERBALLY VIOLENT, doesn't shy away at all from the main characters almost bleeding to death several times.

➕ what is there not to love about a setting with character pairs who work in tandem tbh. this also did everything right in this regard that fucking throne of glass did wrong lmao. even with the mild romance undertones. of which there weren't super much, mostly gideon being gay over some of the ladies. and gideon and harrowhark have a kind of an enemies-to-lovers thing going on which i am so fucking here for. the male characters really took a back seat here, it was all about the ladies. and the main ladies walk around in black robes and skeleton face paint. man. the aesthetics are so good. i don't think anything can top this anymore, i'll now forever be thinking "this is good but it's no locked tomb"

➕ although guys took the back seat i still managed to get a fucking cupid's arrow through my heart, i was so oooooooooo in love with palamedes, like, from the moment he and camilla first appeared, love love. i even managed to have dreams about him already i'm not joking, i fell hard, him and his beautiful eyes……… guh. i've never been so worried over a character's fate while reading a book!!!! [spoilers] but then i rather enjoyed how he went out anyway so.. i wasn't super mad… it was also becoming evident at that point that the rest of the trilogy does not feature this set of characters anyway so i knew he'd just fucking die any minute now so it wasn't so bad, i was emotionally prepared. writing love letters since he was a tiny little child tho. UGH I LOVE HIM!!!!!!! PLEASE WRITE ME A LETTER TOO I'm DYINGH

➕ gideon is so… like i just really enjoyed her being like this metal as fuck gal who's constantly cursing and goofing around and shit but then she surprises you by being so kind about other characters, mostly girls. she's surprisingly sentimental also. her characterisation is amazingly strong too for a story in third person instead of first, it's very effortless to be in her shoes here.

➖ the eccentric language wasn't just all positive, sometimes i didn't really follow what the dialogue was about. it all came together from context and just character actions in the end but i feel like a lot went over my head anyway. the beginning also confused me so much before i really grasped the vibe here. this prolly warrants a re-read

➖ relatedly a lot of this felt like... well basically the characters didn't really explain themselves much, which read a bit weirdly sometimes. like they just know things and that's it. there's almost under-exposition here, where things are just already known by the characters and the reader (and gideon) is always lagging a bit behind. it made me feel stupid

➖ i really became quite attached to the characters and was hoping the whole trilogy would be about them… alas……. they started dying

⭐ score: 5- -- VERY nearly a full five. but. i have this unspoken rule to myself that there needs to be a ship for a book to be a five to me. i mean, gideon and harrowhark… yes they are good. buuuuut… did i get The Doki Dokis? not really, more like i just, appreciated them? yes.

[okaydoll1301]

5. Meetings

As usual, Miles was able to walk another entrance designated specifically for people working there. He'd taken a ride since he couldn't exactly show up on his motorcycle. The temporary badge he wore allowed him access only to the main floor, but at least he didn't have to go through the main entrance.

He'd recalled another time he'd gone in and saw a young man coming through those doors. He looked disoriented and a bit hollow. There was paperwork and formalities, legal jargon no average person could possibly be expected to understand. He missed what happened after that since he had the meeting with the WRU Social Media Manager and the Digital Marketer. When he came back out the lobby was as quiet as ever and he was left to use his imagination as to what had happened to the guy. Today he sat off to a side, not intent on seeing another soul come in and sign their life away.

Yes, he was not the sweetest guy, not by a long shot. But he also knew that not everything companies did was legal, never mind ethical. His mind wandered to Catherine, growing frustrated as he thought of how vehemently she always denied the best parts of herself. Then again, he was biased. He enjoyed it when she hurt for him, but he needed her to do it willingly and on her own. It made it so much better than what he suspected was going on here at WRU.

"Mr. Vasiliev?" A man, Glen, as he'd introduced himself at the start of the project, approached Miles and he got up, waving off the thoughts in his head as they greeted each other. Formalities, formalities. They went to the conference room and set to work immediately. The better part of two hours was spent pouring over every last detail and prospects for changes in the future such as displays, discretion, security, options for certain clientele, etc. Miles noticed how occasionally he saw Glen pause listening to something through an earpiece. He never understood why they didn't conference them in, but the customer was always right. They started wrapping up and Miles was feeling more confident they would be all set. Very minor changes were needed, and they were purely aesthetic. Maybe he could finish tomorrow. Finally. He was already thinking of the way he'd make this all up to Cat.

Glen sat back in his chair then, a relaxed demeanor from a glance. Miles knew better with the micro expression Glen gave though. A small upturn of the lips, the tiniest raise of his brow. All dead giveaways. "So Mr. Vasiliev or…Miles? We've been working together some time now. Are you ok with me calling you that?"

"Of course," Miles mimicked his stance even if he didn't lounge quite as much as Glen did.

Glen grinned heartily though his eye didn't crinkle quite right. "I did notice the lack of a ring on your finger. You seem like a man with good taste. Have you ever thought of looking at one of our pets yourself?" Miles wanted to laugh. He'd seen plenty of married people beginning to take their pets out in the city. Good marketing, he supposed. Or maybe just human nature taking its course. There wasn't really ever a time in mankind's history where humans didn't serve other humans. Hierarchy and all that.

Miles really was trying not to grin. Catherine was one of the few things that evoked anything close to pure warmth and pleasure. "No, sir. I haven't. I have to admit I've browsed, but I have a lovely woman waiting for me at home. Although," Now or never. "I was a bit curious about the training aspect. My understanding is you only do this after some sort of memory wipe?"

Glen's grin grew, the wrinkles of his eyes now matching, "Not all ask for a memory wipe. Those tend to be walk-ins. Plenty also opt for the training without. Was there something you were seeking out in particular? Being so wrapped up in this site and seeing all our little details I imagine something caught your eye."

Miles shook his head. He knew exactly what he wanted from Cat. Otherwise, she was perfect. Sure a few tweaks here and there, but if she could just get over that hump… Miles could feel himself growing irritated and excited already. How he had managed to be so patient for so long he didn't know.

"Well, we do offer the training services if you'd be interested. Since we've worked together for some time, I'm sure we could work a deal out. The directors were just mentioning they would like to work with you further. They've been impressed with everything, and we'd enjoy a continued business relationship."

Inflections. A move forward in the seat. Miles didn't entirely mirror Glen, but he couldn't act entirely disinterested so he had to measure these things. "I'm only contracted with this company for another few weeks. If you'd be interested in continuing this outside of them, I'd be more than happy to have you take a deeper dive into my portfolio." This is when Miles cocked his head slightly a hand stretched out just slightly, almost graceful, "I can do nearly anything online, but I won't touch social media management. It's never been a thing I care for."

Glen grinned; this time his crow's feet creased making Miles wonder exactly how old he was. "I think we can work something out directly. And if you're curious about our training I'd be more than happy to show you around. After some concessions, of course…"

[alvisthefox]

My OC has a darkish backstory. As it's not finalised his age jumps alittle and stuff

He's more to existing after IDW ect

As time of birth. Stuck with new born during sonic forces or born after. (Father dies in the war. Hents why he isn't seen but can be in the spin off stories)

Born as a normal. Orange fox... with 2 tails.

In the comic or say. Story. He's when he is first shown or seen by sonic he's this mute, non vurble poncho wearing combat tech wiz (only talks when in discuses. "Cloak Tech" cloaking what alows him to look and feel like who hes discussed as)

Als attitude changes to situations. When around eggman he's quite and just a shadow. But when alone he's depressed and would walk in circles. But when alone with sonic. First he'd been angry and upset that the heros he looked up to never saved him how he was scerd and alone. Hurting. But would would become more friendly and gets over the anger eventually

Only thing what's not been moderfied into his DNA is his smarts. Like Tails and Eggman he's super smart what made him as a child idolise Tails as a child. Even as a child he went out his way to get Tails attention and would have a little bonding over the fact of being kinda alike with tails and smarts

Like like how a child is he'd say "when I'm older, I want to be juts like you!"

Shame what happened due to his mother having no love for him. Lead to him being toutcherd and experimented on

His purple fur is just a side affect of the experiments

As sonic to be 15 around the age Al is born. This all takes place (idk to chose his age. I'd go 9 years old but then I'm going with 12)

I'll age the charicters to age when the story would take place. Left be if Al is 9 and right be of he's 12

Sonic: 24-27

Tails: 17-20

Knuckles: 25-28

Shadow: don't matter. But. 59-62

Rouge: 27-30

Cream: 15-18

Al in the story would be more like how rouge was but is in eggmans contole. His poncho around his neck hides a collar what is fitted to shock him back to submission. He isnt a bad guy.

His gauntlet shock to make his punches hurt more (this is so he can pull his punches but still hurt but not actually hurt anyone to baddly) but can also just make hard punches sting more. Shock you so you pass out like a taser

His mental health isn't the best. From toutcher what gaves him his code name (113). To being unloved for years. Known the world things Alvis Winter is dead. He thinks the is no hope or future for him but he just can't give up and wants to know what he can do

Als redemption comes to after being abandoned by eggman after being defeated by super sonic and shadow and tails (Yeah ima go there). Eggman gives up on Al. Als fears and everything make him panic and as the 3 get closer he escapes

Stuff happens but tails as a idea where Al could of gone

(Moment of Al kidnaps Tails and well opens abit about him and Tails is thr first to fully know Al is forced to be bad)

They meet. Bring Al with them. The city and town folk hate him. Al runs off

Mimic and surge and kit kidnap sonic (FYI I've had this 3 team up for abit in my head for few month before the 3 actually did so. Cool)

(Al has a bounty on him)

Only Al can come and or sonic would die

Al stops them. Get bit of a hero scene of Al the hero. He was told to take his poncho off before any interaction in the bunker. so be a kinda first site of him doing his thing with no poncho

The news and live feed if this be seen by all and well this how he is from 113 the bad guy to 113. Good guy? Taken in by sonic and others but keeps inside and works on tech and only comes when asked or needed

Would wear the poncho but hood down there for but also gose around with hood up or no poncho at all

Kinda the run down and very simple missing load if detail of Als story and some facts. Main story

Hope it's okay and sorry if it's a mess to read

I missed out his powers. Would have to find out later