#but u also need to come to terms with the fact that the way twitter works is fucking AWFUL for fandom culture

[lightningbig]

I think the slow ego death of fandom can be pin pointed directly to the first use of the term stantwt actually

[caparrucia]

trauma dumping is simply mentioning having experiences with sexual violence? i literally gave no details to you. & i was not yelling at you, i never used caps lock. you also insulted me multiple times and called me “emotionally constipated”. in what way am i promoting genocide? also if you truly believe everyone is considered equal and that these conversations are important to have, you would have them with people that aren’t necessarily friends or in your circle or whatever. and people with whom have not come across these ideas. also how is telling me to get therapy helpful? people don’t have to be sane or healed or whatever u think in order to be full people. the entire psychiatric system is fucked and therapists are literally just normal people. i’ve been in therapy for years and i’m still not healed or a “normal person”. who knows if i ever will be.

You're doing it again, though. And this is strike two. So you do it again and I will stop responding.

Because you're not talking to me, you're talking at me. I didn't start talking to you, you started talking to me. So the onus of actually engaging with me and what I actually said is on you, not on me.

You're the one who's escalating. You're trying to get me to play on the defensive and I keep not playing ball, by instead responding in a different register than you're used to. I'm sorry, I don't roll with that fallacy. I've been on the internet since 1997, I've done this song and dance long enough to know playing ball with someone who wants to put you on the defensive isn't a productive use of my time.

You escalated a milquetoast post about community management and why othering behavior is dangerous and unacceptable and brought it into the realm of sexual violence. We were not talking about sexual violence or genocide, you brought in the genocidal rhetoric. And you need to understand, yes, "do rapists not deserve to be unpersoned?" is in fact genocidal rhetoric. It's a permutation of the "universal human rights should be conditional, actually" talking point, which is a necessary step in the process of getting people to agree to a genocide.

I don't fuck with genocide rhetoric. I point it out and call it out for what it is when I see it. Because I don't fuck with genocide rhetoric and I curate my spaces accordingly.

You came into my inbox with your baby's first genocidal ideation talk, trying to play a gotcha, and then tried to use your sexual trauma as an argument, like you're a two bit villain from a 90s yu-gi-oh episode. So yes, I did in fact insult you. Repeatedly. I will do it again: I think you're a fucking idiot if you think human rights should be conditional. Here's another one: you have the rhetoric abilities of an outstandingly slow snail. Again, you came into my inbox swinging your hyper aggressive gotcha, I don't owe you shit. You're the one who started the conversation, and you did so in a disrespectful, stupid way. I don't owe you jackshit, my dude.

You keep putting words in my mouth because it would be nice for you if I had actually said that, but again, you're clearly not having a conversation with me, you're having a hallucinatory thought exercise with the made up version of me you're RPing inside your head. Either engage with what I'm actually saying, or GTFO. You keep being an idiot about things, I will make you a teachable moment for my audience.

Whatever the fuck that tirade of yours about therapy is about is misunderstanding what I said, so I will give you a freeby and clarify:

When I tell you "go to therapy," I don't mean it in a gotcha, braindead twitter way. I mean it in a "therapy is a space where people consent to hear about your trauma and engage with it on your terms, a random fucking stranger's inbox on tumblr dot com is not the space to swing around your damage and pretend that makes it a good argument."

I'm not here to be held responsible for whatever stupid cocktail of reactionary talking points you've cooked up in your head. I am responsible for my own words, but if you're incapable of engaging with those directly, the least you can do is at least pretend to be funny.

[dccscotlandltd]

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[betaoctillery]

its really weird how queer communities on twitter have become more inclusive of queer identities than on tumblr? like im so glad the ones i involve myself in dont treat labels like fandoms or saying that certain identities can be "contradictory" while in the process erasing enormous chunks of the overall queer community. if theres one thing tumblr desperately needs to understand is that no one else gets to decide ur identity for u, ESPECIALLY if its bcus they dont understand how u actually identify or why.

since i know a lot of u are probably itching to know, yes im referring to bi lesbians. its no fucking coincidence that almost every single bi lesbian ive met have been a trans woman or nonbinary & yet its the identity that receives some of the nastiest backlash despite being an identity decades older than the average userbase on tumblr lmfao.

no, cis men arent pretending to be lesbians bcus of this label. they do that anyways bcus theyre lesbophobic. no, cis men are not going to think its okay to hit on lesbians bcus of this label. they do that anyways bcus theyre lesbophobic & biphobic to blame queer ppl for the queerphobia of cis men. full stop.

learn ur queer history guys im not fucking joking its really embarrassing watching you all parrot dog whistles from 80s political lesbian talking points ("lesbian means doesnt like men" is probably the one yall the say most until ur blue in the face, even though historically it had always meant "likes women" UNTIL political lesbian separatists started attacking, policing, and excluding members of the lesbian community that had always been a huge integral part of their community.) by redefining lesbian to mean "doesnt like men" they could use transphobia & biphobia to push out trans & bi women, as well as butches, all for having a "relationship to masculinity" (a huge reason why many butch lesbian bars disappeared around that time & immediately after). its why it will never be a equitable or historically accurate definition of lesbian. especially when lesbian is already an m-spec term, unless youre implying all nonbinary ppl can be lumped with all women, which i really shouldnt have to say is nby/transphobic as fuck.

please use critical thinking & stop attacking other queers who arent doing anything but identifying in a way that offends ur ignorant, bigoted sensitivities

also dont message me about this bcus its exhausting trying to talk to ppl who cant use google at all apparently. i cant tell yall the number of ppl who only try to "talk" to me about this so they can impose their (morally and historically wrong) opinions on me when i know for a fucking fact ive read & learned more about bi lesbianism from actual historical sources than they have, or are willing to (lavender woman comes to mind off the top of my head, & no, random carrds with unsourced info dont count as historical sources)

[sazandorable]

About moderating and banning content on AO3!

Okay so! I haven’t had the spoons to do this for a while but I cracked and ranted about it on twitter which is... not... conducive to long rants, so!

This is a h u g e discussion part of the l o n g history that led to the creation of AO3, which older, more informed, and more articulate people have talked about at length and can be found around if you look (I reblog some of it in my AO3 and fandom history tags for the curious). So I won’t go into that here, nor into the practical reasons why it’s not even possible to put that system in place anyway.

Arbitrarily, or the purpose of this post, because it’s the biggest topic I’ve seen brought up lately, I’ll be talking about fic depicting underage characters in se*ual situations, but honestly I could hold the exact same conversation on literally any controversial content.

This is about why you, specifically, if you are a content creator and especially if you are marginalised and especially if you are queer and especially especially if you are sensitive to fiction depicting certain things... do not, actually, want a banning system on AO3.

What? Of course we do. There’s a lot of p*do shit on AO3 and p*do shit is gross. No one should condone that, wtf? It would be easy to do — just periodically delete the entire Underage tag!

What will happen if that is done is that people will re-upload and continue to write it, they’ll just stop tagging and you will run into it with zero warning nor ability to filter it out. Again, this is not a theoretical — we know this is what happens. When I was a teen, adult content (all adult content) was not allowed on FF.NET; it was everywhere regardless, and without tags. The exact same thing happened on tumblr when adult content was banned as well. It’s not a matter of “staff not handling it well” — it just doesn’t work.

To keep safe the people who need to be able to exclude that tag, that tag needs to exist and be used.

Well, shucks. A reporting system then?

A reporting system would operate in one of two ways:

-an algorithm, which would delete a lot of stuff we wouldn’t want it to delete.

-humans, which is... the bigger problem.

An algorithm sounds great. We do want it to delete everything.

Okay. What about the daddy k*nk fics between consenting adult characters? What about the fics featuring characters that are children in the canon but are adults in the fic? What about the fics about teenagers exploring their se*uality together, written by adults about the experiences they remember having or wish they could have had? What about the thousands of SasuNaru and Drarry and other shounen and YA fics that will get written, by teens or by people who remember being teens? What about the se*ually explicit fic written by teens who are se*ually active in real life? What about the fics about CSA as trauma, about healing from it? What about the fics written by survivors of CSA to cope about their trauma? What about the fics that clearly show that it’s evil and traumatic? What about the super dark, harrowing, but beautiful and artistic that I’m glad I read even though it fucked me up for days? What about the ones that were really shitty but also horribly hot?

Well, some of these are still not okay, but maybe some might be. It depends on how it’s written. We’ll have humans moderating content and deciding, then.

Okay.

The thing is, I don’t know which of the things I just listed were okay for you to be depicted in fiction and which were too much. Odds are I don’t agree with you. Odds are if I asked 10 people randomly picked off the street, not everyone would agree.

Odds are, even if AO3 arbitrarily decided on which of those are allowed and which are not, you would not agree with their choice, and you would still be unhappy with the decision. (Or you would be happy, but your friends wouldn’t.)

Odds are, different AO3 content moderators might not agree on whether a given fic qualifies or not — is it artistic enough? Does it show enough that these actions are evil and wrong? Can the author prove they’re a teenager? Can the author prove they are a CSA victim? Can the author prove that this is to help them cope with their trauma? The author seem to be functioning alright, they mustn’t really be traumatised!

You know what I mean! There’s absolute, objectively gross shit out there that is not artistic and should not be published.

I agree that there’s vile stuff out there that makes me sick and that I think is very clearly just ped*philic trash. But there is no way to, 1) stop those from getting published anyway, 2) take those down and preserve the safety of everything else.

If we start forbidding some things, there’s two ways to go about it.

One single, clear, arbitrary rule — for instance, absolutely no adult content featuring characters under 18 (leaving aside the fact that this would not even work for the reason cited above). So we lose all the stuff from teenagers, all the coming of age stories about adolescence, all the stuff from CSA survivors; people who need to write it can’t publish it anymore, and people who need to read it can’t anymore either (and as a cool bonus, they’re told it’s wrong and made to feel bad about it). Depending on whether the rules applies to characters that are under 18 in the canon, we lose entire fandoms.

Or, subjective moderation by humans, according to what they estimate to be gross.

Let’s assume all moderators can agree on what’s gross or not.

If there is a system in place to ban some underage works because “gross shit”, then that means other gross stuff can be taken down on account of being gross and harmful.

Yeah! Gross stuff should be taken down! Come on, surely everyone agrees on what’s gross and harmful.

Ah.

But the problem is.

Here is a list of things I have seen — with my eyes seen — called harmful to be depicted in fiction:

Murder

Non-con

Inc*st

Cannibalism

Torture

Self-harm

Mental illness

Drugs

Racism

K*nk

Non-negotiated k*nk, but healthy k*nk is ok

Spanking k*nk

BDSM where the woman is a bottom, but woman top is ok

Healthy depictions of BDSM

Unhealthy depictions of BDSM

Queer people doing bad things

Abusive relationships

Rival/Enemies to lovers

Redemption stories

A happy relationship between a 17 yo and an 18 yo

A happy relationship between a 20 yo and a 60 yo

A happy relationship between a boss and their employee, or a college teacher and a student

A happy relationship between a 14 yo boy and an older teenage boy, because that’s reminiscent of older men preying on younger gay boys IRL

Se*ual content featuring a character whose age is unclear in canon and some people headcanon them as being underage, some as being a young adult

Loving, consensual fluff between characters that are evil villains, because it romanticises them and their actions

Dark content shipping female characters

Fluffy content shipping female characters, because it’s misogynistic to act like lesbians are only soft all the time

Consensual s*x featuring a canonically asexual character, because it implies that all aces can and should still have se*

Fics about the same canonically asexual character hating s*x, because that erases the experience of s*x-positive aces

Shipping a character who is perceived by some fans as queer-coded with a character of a different s*x

The tendency to ship a black character with white characters

Fluffy drunk s*x, because that’s not actually consensual

Sleep s*x, because that’s not actually consensual

Trans characters not experiencing dysphoria, because that idealises the trans experience

Consensual s*x between adults that are not married

LGBT+ content, because kids shouldn’t see that.

I guarantee you: you, I, and 10 random people plucked from the street will not agree on what, in that list, is and isn’t okay to publish and consume fiction of.

So why should your taste be the one followed? Why should it be the taste of mods you don’t know? Why should anyone get to dictate? What if the mods think your OTP is gross and your NOTP is fine?

This is the slippery slope argument.

Yes, it is the slippery slope argument. Because we know it happens. Because we’ve been there, because I’ve seen it happen myself twice already and I’m not even thirty. Because we know people do complain loudly about all of these things.

And because the second there is a banning system in place, assholes will use the system to abuse it and get stuff they just don’t like taken down using the “it is gross” argument, and one day you’ll wake up and the beautiful fic that helped you come to terms with your abuse/trauma/identity/orientation/k*nk for feet will be taken down and wonderful vulnerable creative people will have been harassed out of fandom because they argued with 1 person who didn’t like their foot k*nk fic that happened to also feature, for instance, a CSA trauma backstory.

Again: not exaggerating. Not theoretical. It happens, we know it happens, AO3 was created literally because it happens.

I still fucking hate that stuff.

That is completely fine and normal. No one likes everything. Me too! Most of the dark stuff is niche and the creators know only few people will like it the same way they do.

(For the record, I get grossed out and triggered by fics about an asexual character who does not like s*x having s*x with their partner to make them happy. Deep in my gut everything screams that that’s fucked up, terrifying and harmful, how can people write that. But I recognise that there are people who love and need that, and I leave those people and their content alone.

OTOH, I read a lot of otherwise dark shit and I enjoy it in the same way I enjoyed, say, Hannibal, in the same way some people enjoy true crime documentaries, horror movies or r*pe fantasy k*nk. It helps me explore stuff that I like to see in fiction, in a safe, controlled way. I’m also asexual, 90% s*x-repulsed IRL, and, obviously, I would never abuse a child. For that matter, I wouldn’t kill and eat people, either, nor would I do 90% of the tamer k*nky stuff I read.

Of course, Hannibal was fucked up and lots of people probably think Hannibal was gross and should not have been aired — but as exemplified by the fact that it was created, aired and watched, lots of people thought it was fine, interesting and even fun to watch.)

You can and should curate your experience and protect yourself. The AO3 website now allows you to exclude certain tags, and people have developed tools to help with that such as plugins that save your filters or hide fics that contain certain words.

But no, it isn’t going to, and it shouldn’t, get banned.

[prelude-numero-2]

What do u think of kamilla

As a skater : For her jumps idk if she will can keep them on the long term, I'm not an expert but she scary me with her prerotation and her axis who doesn't seems really stable. Maybe she will have to change her jump technic idk. For all the rest ? Beleive me I have rarely seen a 15 year old dancing like that. In theory the way a teenager dances is mechanical. And when you watch the old videos of Kami dancing, she almost dances like an adult . Her spins and her flexibility are also completely crazy. However, I think that artistically she would benefit from working with another choreographer than Gleikh who has been making her do the same thing for 2 years. With her potential and the fact that she is 15 (so artistically in training), she needs to discover new things!). She was very well packaged for the 2019-2020 season with nice programs and costumes that fit her very well !

As a person : There's no denying that she's adorable! She has a soft spot for me after the Rostelocom press conference when she talked about her short program. And come on even if she would have ever (very unlikely in my opinion) said or done anything I didn't like... she's fifteen, she's a kid...

For what's happening now : It's not her fault, I'm 100% sure it's their coaches, and this is absolutely horrendous for her. I'm really worried for her. I don't know how the press in all around the world will present it, I'm afraid it will become political. But from what I've seen in my country for the reaction in the headlines, on twitter, people are not accusing her and denouncing Eteri's methods. And are completely shocked by his young age.

As for what happens next, if the doping is official, she must of course be sanctioned (temporary ban from competition I think). If the doping is confirmed before the IE, I will be very annoyed that she is there. Unfortunately it is her who will pay and not Eteri, which is the most tragic thing.

And now I'm watching the official news and there is nothing. absolutely nothing. The IE for women is in a few days, and the longer it goes on the more I can see them sending Kamila and she's going to get a terrible wave of hate. Anyway, blame Eteri the ISU, Rusfed, ROC, the Olympics. And it's a real tragedy for Kamila, it's absolutely awful what's happening to her.

[theunconcernedembalmer]

ok i got the aesvic out of my system now time to pick apart the letter n why i wont really be following aesops diary exactly here. literally no one asked but i wanted to get my thoughts down somewhere cos i have. a lot

just gonna put a quick rundown of aesops diary entry as a refresher (mostly for myself so i dont miss anything): he dreamt that he was helping jerry with what was probably a murder n was affirmed n he thinks its a sign congratulating him on carrying out his duty. over the years, he carries out his duties as an undertaker n comes to the manor looking for a “fresh start” aka what sounds like his first victim. according to aesop, said victim should be quiet, n potential victim number 1 is victor. something about badly needing him to become his “silent friend” n he mentions he’ll get to wick n the 2 other survivors in due time, but for now he’s very eager to start his “mission”.

im generally okay with the letter (i have seen so many fights over this aha) cos there is no surprise he wants to kill ppl (ppl who r fighting over this point. did u even read his deductions?? guy happily killed his mentor??). but i didnt quite like the fact that he still looks up to jerry (although. i guess thats valid i just. dont like it). i was also initially kind of confused about the real reason why he would want to kill ppl since as u progress through the letter it sounds less like he kills for duty (cos of the whole dream thing at the start) but more “because i want to :)”, which is an okayish edgy kinda take imo. like not that u cant characterize aesop as Kill Kill Murder Die, but i kinda find that. pretty boring in the long term.

im just gonna put what my original take on aesop was, like all of it. first off, he hates jerry. u cannot tell me a psychotic serial killer like that can raise a child without emotional trauma. like any child, this isnt even counting the extra damage done because hes autistic. (n i also hc that aesop has read his moms letter to him at some point, n he should have come to the conclusion that it was somewhat also jerrys fault, whether through logic or denial that his mom would want to leave him, so that just adds to it.) but as much as he hates him, his teachings are the only ones hes been exposed to, n its been so ingrained in him since young so even if he hates jerry he would still subscribe to whatever twisted ideology jerry was feeding him, which ill get to in a sec.

going through his accessories, he has that origami that he folds for each of his clients, n it shows that underneath it all, aesop is still kind. this isnt expected of him n its definitely not part of his job scope as an embalmer. he (still?) has the heart to wish the best for those that have departed n takes the time n effort to fold one for each n every client he sends off, which is probably a lot. so going off on that, my hc is that jerry, being the manipulative asshole that he is (who probably definitely manipulated his mom into indirect suicide) probably used his kindness against him to make him believe that by murdering ppl he is helping them, framing all of his serial kills as a sort of mercy kill (like his mom). so the thing that aesop takes away from all this is the very twisted logic that by killing ppl he is helping them, therefore being a good embalmer and a good person in general. n everyone wants to be a sort of good person, or at least for aesop that is part of his job description to be a good embalmer. n we all know aesop is very serious about his job.

i also hc that he has killed several ppl between killing jerry n coming to the manor, cos i follow the story that he took the invitation from that poor lady n thats how he ended up at the manor. surely the lady didnt come to him right after jerry died?? but anyway, the way i see it is that he thought he liked to kill. like he finally truly understood why jerry kills so much (which is interesting now that i think about it. guy really just went along with all those murders without truly believing huh), because it felt good to kill. at least thats what he thought, the revelation that killing felt good n is good, but i say its because he hated jerry, n offing someone u kinda hate should probably feel pretty gucci. n its also so much easier to pick clients off the streets than in the manor, so i would think that he has killed ppl like his mentor did, but each time he did the great feeling that came with ending ppls life just. wasnt as good as the first time round. it just became a sort of normal satisfaction of a successful embalming.

this can go two ways: 1. he keeps on killing to try to find that great feeling again, which is cool i guess (n probably what canon would want, except canon states that he hasnt killed since jerry), but id like to go with 2. he just stops because jerry isnt around to enforce it whenever he isnt feeling up to psychoing someone to their death (which is probably how jerry got his victims, n damn if that doesnt take a lot of mind games that i dont think aesop has the mental capacity for since half of it is fighting with his social anxiety n other issues. dealing with alive strangers?? no thanks?? i doubt he would have learnt properly how to lure in clients as efficiently as jerry because of this, mostly cos he was only needed for the murder afterparty aka embalming n funerals). n as much as he stays professional, there is no. professional way of gaslighting someone to their death.

(n also since ppl have pointed out that his twitter replies n other kinda informal stuff have shown that aesop does have reverent respect for life, which also adds to him not being so blindly bloodthirsty as implied in the letter. i dont really see the twitter replies as very canon, but it does make sense that he would come to revere life with his unique take and obsession over death, for one cannot exist without the other)

so this leads me to the motive that aesop brings to the manor, at least how i see it. he isnt exactly coming to the manor to kill per se (like from the very early story, he came to the manor to return the letter to a relative of the deceased lady, something about respecting her last wishes. something like that, its really been a while since i saw that exerpt), so like killing ppl isnt his main purpose of visit. its more of hes always on the lookout for weaker (or at least those that take less mind games to kill) people to mercy kill, n it just so happens that he knows the manor n his mentor almost died from there, so theres a pretty good chance he can find some ppl that fall into this category n so it just so happens that he also has a job to do there. its still counted as a Job for him since no ones gonna tell him that embalmers dont actually. murder. 

so in my version, aesop only tries to sway ppl that he knows he can convince, n these ppl would typically be those very sickly ones like his mom (andrew im looking at u) or those with an actual death wish/ very weak will to live. but here aesop is choosing his “first victim”, and the criteria for that is... quiet? never mind “not evading him” and “not cranky” being on the list too, but that isnt quite what i was expecting from someone so dedicated to their duty of murder. sure he wants an easy first kill, but like. i dont think its consistent if his motive was really to continue jerrys bastard legacy. especially when the next paragraph is essentially him gushing over victor, that... sort of implies something else. or at least in the way i see it, since i believe that canon wants us to think that aesop just really loves to kill.

aesop likes victor. very much so. so much till he wants to kill him. which i guess makes sense cos he likes death, n now he likes victor. so he just. puts the two things he likes together. whats better than victor? dead victor. anyway the rest of the letter is more like “whatever, i technically should kill the others too but my priority is victor” so like. he confuses his (dare i say) yandere tendencies with his duty since the end goal for both is a body in a coffin.

having said that. i know i have aesvic brainrot but i also know this is one sided as hell (at least from the letter alone, not counting the letter shaped cookies in his birthday art that apparently belonged to victors birthday cake aha) n lowkey alarming since. the goal is to kill victor. i kinda want to interpret it as him genuinely wanting to be friends with victor (really wanting him to be a “silent friend”, maybe cos he doesnt actually know how to be friends with living ppl n is better with dead ones? therefore victor should be dead to be friends?) but not knowing how to n throwing in his obsession with death ends up with. this minor disaster waiting to happen. but i uh. dont know if this is valid. its valid to me at least, with my original interpretation of aesop. n again cos of his ingrained professionalism, he also kinda sees this as part of his job to send ppl off, so its another plus. not for victor, tho.

idk if ill add this yandere side in my aesop. i mean my boi has technically tried to kill victor multiple times in the past HAHAHAHA. maybe like sometimes he can be a bit obsessive. as a treat. but generally nah cos thats definitely gonna end up in a murder somewhere somehow n i cant. just kill victors here on the ask blog scene lashjflkjhdlfkjhas

so yeah that kinda takes care of the last part of the letter, as for the first part. as much as aesop hates jerry, i would also think hes pretty starved for affirmation (like i said jerry isnt going to be a good parent figure ever) n i guess it makes sense if the only times jerry has ever complimented him was aiding him in his kills n hiding the evidence, which might (?) add to his desire to kill (but that probably dies with jerry aha). so the way i see it as aesop is getting affirmation n takes it as a good sign instead of. remotely liking jerry. idk if im stretching it a little but i really dont like the take where hes okay with jerry. anyway we are ignoring that he hasnt killed before entering the manor cos that doesnt quite make sense to me (i wasnt dreaming about the letter from a lady stabbed in the face 36 times or so right???? right???????)

im also not like. trying to defend him, im just trying to make sense of his diary. boi has issues n is a little too far gone (not as far as canon tho), in my take very deluded in his way of showing kindness. literally cool motive still murder (or in canon, just murder?), please get therapy. but i just dont really like the direction that the letter was originally trying to imply, with him really just hell bent on murder without like. a clear motive (at least to me it isnt very clear since the last part really doesnt sound consistent with his supposed intentions). i mean i love being edgy with aesop every now n then but i dont think it would make for meaningful characterizations in the long run so. ill still be sticking with my original take on aesop with maybe a bit of yandere for victor cos thats always fun

[gokiburikko]

PEOPLE I’D LIKE TO GET TO KNOW BETTER

1. Alias / name:    che 2. Birthday:    like anyone worth their salt...in april 3. Zodiac sign:    ew are u going to ask my myers-briggs next 4. Height:    on the cusp of average 5. Hobbies:    writing, drawing, media consumption, cooking, crosswords, diy, studying 6. Favorite color:    pink isn’t a standard option in many things and it’s upsetting 7. Favorite book:    adults don’t actually “read” so i’m going to take this as an opportunity to promote howard the duck, specifically the 2015-2016 run by chip zdarsky and joe quinones, especially because it is getting a hardcover collector’s release in november and, like, the collector, i intend to make that duck mine.  8. Last song:    my sister and i were just singing “we love you conrad” from bye bye birdie to our dog if that counts 9. Last film / show:    like much of twitter, i missed the end of the emmys (because CBS decided to not exist), but it’s okay because that means i didn’t have to see hamilton win anything. also miracle workers. it’s a good show, but if you need convincing to watch, it has daniel radcliffe dancing very sexually to “she’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes.” 10. Recent reads:    i have at least 12 tabs open on my phone with different manga, but i couldn’t tell you the titles off the top of my head and i think that says a lot. go read chainsaw man before the anime comes out. i promise the fandom isn’t that annoying if you ignore makima fans. 11. Inspiration: sometimes music, but i am incredibly picky, so most won’t do anything for me...movies work much better, especially if they’re overflowing with chintzy emotion. in terms of general characterwork, i’m often inspired by fashion and interior design. who would wear this outfit and why? what kind of person lives here? that sort of thing.  12. Story behind url:    gokiburikko = gokiburi + burikko. “gokiburi” is japanese for cockroach, and conveys a sense of resilience and determination. to be a cockroach is to be unbeatable—to stand tall, even when the world doesn’t want you. burikko is a pejorative japanese term for someone who acts overly cutesy, particularly in a way that is often perceived as fake (to curry favor). if that’s what it takes to survive...do you know which character this refers to? 13. Fun fact about me:    i'm actually so funny

Tagged by:   @snw-cnvs​ 😘 Tagging:   anyone who actually pauses to read my posts

[thejudgingtrash]

would you class percy as a morally grey character? i’m really interested to hear your input

Anon 2: Would u class percy as an Morally Gray character?

Hey there! Let me write that essay for you about morally gray Percy ^^

It’s not about whether Percy is a morally gray character or not, it’s about he has to be otherwise the story doesn’t make any sense. At least for me it wouldn’t.

Ashley (@gr33kg0ds) said in the tags of my dark!Percy post something along the line of people diminishing Percy’s character because they need him to be pure and fluffy and I wholeheartedly agree with that!

Just because Percy’s twelve doesn’t mean he’s pure and didn’t do unproblematic things. I’ll mostly refer to The Lightning Thief because that book is the Magnus Opus for Riordan and perfectly stands for Percy as a morally gray character from the very beginning of the saga. (Also the only book I’ve recently re-read)

As much as I love fanon with all the amazing artworks, debates, memes and jokes, analysis, cool edits and wonderful fanfics, projecting your version of Percy doesn’t make the image in your head real. Percy in canon is not the fun and fluffy boy you imagine him to be or which social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, Instagram and yes, also Tumblr) tend to make him to be. He’s a scrawny little sarcastic twerp that was the unpopular kid. He isn’t that cringy dude Tony Lopez doing that fucking weird TikTok dance (side note: I don’t even know who this person is and I don't care, I saw the video and immediately wanted to delete every social media app on my phone, so thanks Tony?), kissing his Yeezys goodnight, vibing to our lord and gay icon Taylord “T. Swizzle” Swift song and flexing them iPhone 11 Max Pros. Percy literally said that going to Burger King with his mother once in a while would be considered a luxury. He’s a poor bastard in literal sense.

Part of the problem with the distinction of Percy’s character and his motives stem from the fact that Percy is a sneaky unreliable narrator and we as the audience (especially if you’re younger) don’t question most of his behavior if you even question some (pretty sure that most of us only picked up weird stuff as adults). Everything seems plausible to you. But does it mean that his behavior is necessarily good? Something that would paint his character as good?

Like I’ve said, let’s take a look at TLT. The very beginning of everything and the wonderful line that gets quoted everywhere: “Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood”. 

The very first line that quoted everywhere or used as in moodboard and edits but its meaning and significance get brushed off for the most part. It immediately sets the tone and the atmosphere for the book and for Percy as a character. A(n in my opinion) morally gray character. The very first thing we hear from Percy is that he doesn’t want to be in this world. He’s an involuntary participant who has been (upon further reading) blackmailed and forced into this world and is only cooperating to get his mother back and said in regards to his father (who also stands for the Greek pantheon) ”well yeah, would be nice to know about my dad but I’ve survived without him the past twelve years so I don’t know, he wouldn’t be missed necessarily I guess?“ That pretty much tells you, it foreshadows, that we will be dealing with someone with grit, someone that fights back, someone that went through shit, someone that isn’t a goody two-shoed character. Does it mean he’s a terrible (in the sense of evil or bad) character from the get go? Not really, but it tells you in nuances that he won’t be the white shining knight you might expect from a fairy tale.

There is so much that little Perseus Jackson has to offer you directly in the first book. So much that paints him as a morally gray character. From the illegal candy stash all the way to tricking Procrustes into his own trap. He knows right from wrong and isn’t innocent by any means. He wants you to think he’s innocent. Yes, he hunts monsters and the book also tells you that some adults (Gabe) can also be monsters, but Percy’s personality is so interesting and full of facets which I love! He’s misleading you on purpose. Deflects, plays events down. He lies in front of you to others but you don’t really doubt it. Instead of questioning it, you understand it.

What distinguishes Percy from other male protagonists in that notion that the author doesn’t try to paint him as particularly good (the reader connects the dots, in reality) is pretty much that. Percy is neither inherently good or bad. He’s in the middle. He does lots of questionable things and his personality adds to it. Something that immediately comes to my mind is his lack of fear of consequences. He thinks in the short term and not in the long term. Of course, he’s caring about those that are close and important to him (Grover, Annabeth and his mother of course. And well. The world not getting destroyed by his weird father and fucking crazy uncle would be a plus). But Percy isn’t really a strategist (yet). Look at the Medusa head thingy. Annabeth and Grover warn him, that he’s gonna get his ass beat and he doesn’t care. That these gods could squish him in the end didn’t matter to him.

The Olympian gods are painted as these unpenetrable huge mighty force and some fuzzy annoyed twelve year old dipshit sends them the severed head of a monster - but not any monster, the monster his father had a role in creating (well, Athena for the most part, but you know what I mean). (Also, I know this kinda reckless behavior gets sorta rewarded but at first, everyone was like ‘NO, NO, NO!’ before Percy was glorious with his attempt). Percy essentially tells these ancient forces that drive the way of his new cosmos how shit‘s gonna work from now on.

Percy isn’t fear riddled and doesn’t think about the possible outcome. He manipulates, he lies, he persuades and all of this as soon as he hits twelve. But probably earlier. Pretty sure he had to become a believable lier in order to trick (survive being around) Gabe. Perseus is angry, he’s agitated. Had Riordan written Percy as a soft spoken, frightened, goody two-shoed kid, almost nothing in TLT and the follow-ups would have made sense. He’s the outcast, but slowly blossoms into the strength and muscles of the group. Of the entire camp. Someone that outsmarts opponents and wins battles. But he didn’t do that by playing nice and being a bootlicker.

TLT would’ve been a perfect standalone book that would have emphasized that Percy is an involuntary person sive) if you skip Kronos, leave a little bit foreshadowing with the prophecy out, tweak the talks with the gods and Annabeth’s first meeting and skip Luke and the scorpion at the end. The ending would’ve been “and so Percy had a first awesome summer vacation and found a group of friends for life” or so (aka PJO movie 1 in less shitty and more cohesive).

The morally gray character shrinks a little bit in the SOM because there lie straighter dangers ahead which dive more into the bigger picture and Percy grows more into the character who takes care of friends and but he does come back with TTC, and definitely BOTL and the St. Helens explosion.

Consequences of Percy’s interactions had people partially dying. There is doubt, there is guilt. But the show must go on. There are battles that have to be won. There is no big giving up, no big overturn for the bad guys.

Also... isn’t it interesting that we start with Percy saying ”look, I don’t want to be in this world“ in TLT and it ends with TLO where he says ”for once I didn’t look back“? The full circle? The way that accepting his fate took five books? To change Percy from being an involuntary participant to becoming voluntary? He didn’t want to be a half-blood, he didn’t want to be the kid in the prophecy, but he actively chose to be in the end. He went from a darker shade of gray to a mayhaps lighter, if you want to say so.

To conclude, I repeat myself again: it’s not about whether Percy is a morally gray character or not, it’s that he has to be.

Thanks for asking me about some meta stuff I really do like diving into these things here and there. Tumblr’s sorta glitchy, I do get notifications but I really don’t see asks, so I’m sorry if my response is mad late ^^

[mariaiscrafting]

idk abt tumblr but if u need reassurance, I, and a lot of other people, do not believe dream lol. it's Worrying how many people are completely attached to him so much so that they'll believe anything that comes out of his mouth.

That’s not my only problem, really. My issue is far from “I don’t believe Dream, and I think this was him and I don’t trust or like him anymore because of the things that were posted, and if everyone doesn’t agree with me, then I’ll dislike them, too.” I follow and love many people who think very differently than me, especially about the cheating scandal in particular. My problem is with the insane bandwagon and shaming campaign, very much akin to mcyttwt, that’s going on right now. It’s so different than December. In December, the people on here who were either for or against Dream in the cheating scandal weren’t shaming anyone for believing either way. I had real conversations with people who disagreed with me, and I left them all on good terms. None of this, “people who do or believe x are assholes/bad people” kinda bullshit. That shit was for Twitter, and I thought this space, on Tumblr, was meant for something beyond simple tactics. People who were obsessed with or hyperfixated on specific CCs were always still willing to listen to criticisms of them, and the “these two statements can coexist” posts actually had nuance, and actually acknowledged that sometimes people do bad things, but we should also respect and forgive when necessary/able. There was also much more respect for minorities’ experiences than on  Twitter. While on Twitter, people love to talk over each other, I always felt like there was space on Tumblr for minorities’ voices to be uplifted and for them to be taken as more of an authority on things than others. Remember that Mexican person who talked about the Quackity skin darkening phenomena? That kinda shit was what I loved about this place, the fact that that was the kinda thing blowing up to 3k+ notes, not white, cishet people who now want to talk over people who have genuine discomfort with watching or supporting ex-Trump supporters, even if they changed. When it came to anyone else, the rhetoric on mcytblr was always, “I’m glad they apologized/changed, but I understand if some people can’t forgive and forget,” but when it comes to Dream, there will always be a double standard. I am so exhausted of the hypocrisy, yk?

[sasodei-is-real]

Hiii! 💙I'm alive !!!(/*u*)/

Yes) I missed You very much *^*💖👾

And now I will quickly tell you what↖️ and how↘️ and what ⬆️plans. In general, yes.

As a content maker, I'm not really very good, because I don't keep up with anything😅

But I love you))💙

And miss you, so at least I will tell you what is planned and where I spent.

Well, everything is the same Classes at the university . I passed the humanitarian subjects! ) But then, of course, it came to drawing and painting. I'm a third year student. And now our main task is portraits The third course is perhaps the most difficult Difficult not because a lot of work But because this is a very important moment for understanding

First of all, understanding the meaning and feeling of the portrait

The complexity of the portrait is not really about the face. Just the opposite. The face in its structure is imprecise, which means it is easy to get. The point is how you look at your nature and the sitter

You need to balance on the brink when a portrait is an academic construction consisting of geometric shapes, and when a portrait is a person whom you pass through yourself

You try to catch the mood of the sitter, feel his character and let him create a character through yourself

And it's emotionally draining. Well, at least at first) But I compensate for this exhaustion with sasodei fanfics 😂😅. Recently I started to read a lot of fanfiction👀

Well, in short, I practiced a lot, I thought how I see and what I want

And as far as I understand, in principle I am already renting in this. It remains only to practice more))) Not well, of course, in terms of meaning, the artist always changes and moves I think; Well, I mean, that the start is founded. I at least understood how to move. how to rearrange my legs🙃

So, with the most important thing, the problem is solved

Now we have quarantined at the university for two weeks. After these two weeks we will have humanitarian exams🌚. Again🌚 Yay

Soo, I will prepare for an exam in art history and anatomy

On April 1, I am leaving for Russia again.But this time I won't be there long. I just need to go to Natarius and I will return on the first flight.

So here

Since I have already solved the main problem that took a lot of time (perception), it means that I will stay to create exams and I will have time👾

I really want to go to sasodei again

1. I miss you

2. I have so many plans for sasodei (my live🥺💛❤) and analyze in general

And I really want to discuss all this with you as soon as possible.👀🤎

So yeah))

About the analysis about the age difference. I'm still thinking it over. The fact is that, as I said, the topic is quite extensive. And it touches on many aspects of our life. And one of these aspects slowed me down. I'm talking about how strongly virtual norms can affect a person's understanding of what is the norm in real life. Well, at first the answer seemed simple to me, and then I thought. it's just a pretty serious topic, and I'll talk about it with you. And I always want to be as honest with you as possible, and will discuss this issue also honestly and openly. And for this I need to think seriously, and not write the first thing that comes to mind. Yes, I think this particular one will not be released as soon as I hoped. But I think it's worth it) The topic is always relevant and we will have something to discuss) Perhaps most of all I want to quickly write and publish this analysis so that I can read your opinion and discuss with you))) (/^*^)/💙

So here

In short, I breathe🌚

I am a little unhappy because of the constant pepenos of plans, I do not like it. But yes. You never know what might happen. But now my plans in my head go to April👀

I'm really ashamed that I didn't write😅

But in general, I really want to talk to you

But okay, soon)

Oh and by the way. I've been falling asleep all the time lately to one of the covers of Isabella's song from The Promised Neverland

Here : https://www.google.com/search?q=isabella%27s+lullaby+cover+by+aviance&client=ms-android-samsung-gj-rev1&sxsrf=ALeKk00IHFgVQwpa0j_blm9H936RXMclTg%3A1616450786110&ei=4hRZYLirBsXIaOjBqbAI&oq=isabella%27s+lullaby+cover+by+avi&gs_lcp=ChNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwEAEYATICCAAyAggAMgUIIRCgATIFCCEQoAEyBQghEKABMgUIIRCgATIFCCEQoAEyBAghEBU6BAgAEEc6BQgAEMsBOgQIABBDOgcIABCHAhAUOgQIABAKOgYIABAWEB5Q9AxYiCRgni5oAHABeACAAaUEiAGWIpIBCzAuMS40LjUuMi4xmAEAoAEByAEIwAEB&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp#

I want to share with you, I loved this one so much

Oh and a dose of sasodey of course(^*^)/

1artist - @Mello0519

2,3,5 - @fountain0109

4 - @_Collapse_19

All on twitter))

I would like to write so much more, but I have very little time. In general, we have night now) So good night⭐

🌻

Know that I love you💙💖

I hope you are healthy and safe🤲💗

Heck

I went to GIFs to send you a cute kitten, but I found THIS😅🤣

God I've never seen such an angry cat🤣😅

Aahhh it's time to sleep😅

Good night)💙🤲

[gullethead]

Writing In Eternian

Hey! I made a post about a little season 5 easter egg yesterday (not linking it here because for some reason it blocks the post from showing in the tags)and while I was poking through the tags, I noticed that a lot of people want to learn how to use First Ones writing! Writing and orthography are actually things I'm really interested in, so I decided to make this guide for people. It's a bit more in-depth than the official press release, so if you just want to use that, feel free!

Here’s the original tweet from the She-Ra Twitter account, which has more examples: twitter. com /dreamworksshera/status/1055474341553623040

Here we go! Putting it under a break so it doesn't eat up your whole screen.

THE SOUNDS OF ENGLISH & THE IPA

So first of all, we need to start with a brief introduction to the IPA. (If you’re already familiar, you can skip to the next big heading.) Lots of languages use a lot of different letters or other characters to represent certain sounds, but when you're working with linguistics, you need to be able to say exactly what you mean. So, we made the International Phonetic Alphabet. This is a long list of individual letters and markings that represent very specific sounds, and you use them by placing them between slashes, like /d/, and sometimes to distinguish, you place the actual writing between corner brackets, like <d>. So for instance, /t/ and /h/ make the same sounds that <t> and <h> make in English, but <th> (usually) makes either the /θ/ or /ð/ sounds. These change based on where you live, but in general the consonants are the same for all English speakers.

Knowing this is important, because something I love about the First Ones alphabet is that it isn't just a letter substitution! Many "secret language" alphabets I've seen in kid's series (like Artemis Fowl, for instance) are just simple one-to-one substitutions for the Latin alphabet we use. But First Ones writing is actually very different! It uses the actual sounds made in the word. So if you wrote "cat" in the First Ones script (which I'm gonna call Eternian, after Eternia from He-Man, which flows better than "First Ones script"), it would actually look like "kat", because the letter c can be used for the sounds k or s, so it doesn't translate.

The alphabet we're using right now was created for the Latin language, derived from the Greek alphabet, which itself has a very long history behind it. English is NOT descended from Latin - it's a Germanic language, and the Germanic family is only kind of related to the Romantic family that developed out of Latin. However, a lot of our vocabulary has a Latin infusion because of mixing with Old French in the 1000s-1100s, and even before that, we used the Latin alphabet because it was the most common. This means that in order to express all the sounds we have, English speakers writing English had to combine different letters together; this, plus over a thousand years of different spellings and dialects, means that our orthography - our way of writing the sounds we say - is FUCKED. The Eternian alphabet is actually a much more efficient way of writing these sounds!

This is the total list of English consonants:

A few notes here:

To make sure you're not lost, /ŋ/ is <ng>, /j/ is <y>, /θ/ and /ð/ are <th>, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ are <sh> and <zh> (the French <j>, not usually distinguished in English writing) respectively, and /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ are <ch> and the English <j> respectively.

Most consonants can come in voiced and unvoiced versions (although, because English is weird, these are called "fortis" and "lensis" because we pronounce them with different amounts of energy). /b/ is /p/, but pronounced using the vocal chords. Only the nasal sounds, the "approximants", and /h/ don't have pairs in English, although /h/ DOES actually have a common voiced pair, and you can technically pronounce the others voiceless in some languages although it's very rare.

The /x/ sound, famously the end of the Scottish word "loch", is only found in Celtic accents (Scottish, Irish, Welsh) and in the South African accent (because of influence from Dutch). Other English speakers realize it as /k/.

The /r/ sound is weird. What /r/ technically represents is a trill, like in the Spanish <rr>. However, in English, that trill is very rare; what we use <r> for is called a "postalveolar approximant", [ɹ̠]. However, it is usually easier just to write the letter r, so that's how we transcribe it for English's IPA.

English also sometimes has what are called "syllabic consonants", which are consonants that can act as the center of a syllable in the place of a vowel. In English, these are mostly /l/, /m/, and /n/. For instance, the word "bottle" is technically pronounced [ˈbɑɾl̩] in General American English, and the same goes for words like "rhythm" and "button"; however, because this would complicate things a lot, phonologists consider it to include a very small vowel, so with the example of "bottle", it would be /ˈbɑtəl/ instead.

The vowels are a bit more weird than the consonants. Our alphabet was originally created for Latin, which only has ten vowel sounds, long and short a, e, i, o, and u (although technically the short vowels are /a ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ/ instead of /a e i o u/, because fuck it I guess). However, we have a MUCH different vowel "inventory" in English - instead of the uniform 10 paired Latin vowels, in General American English we have anywhere from 11-13 vowels depending on your interpretation along with three diphthongs (combinations of two vowels used as a single vowel):

If you look at the British (Received Pronunciation) chart it's much different from that, which is why the accents are so distinct; however, Eternian is made with GA English in mind, so I'm just going to focus on that.

More notes:

/ə/ (a schwa, like in "uh"), /ɜ/ (very similar and hard to distinguish in writing), and /ʌ/ (something between an "uh" and an "ah"), are all very close to each other and sometimes interchangeable, especially between the first two.

/oʊ/ is usually simplified to /o/, and /eɪ/ is sometimes simplified to /e/, since the normal versions of those sounds don't show up so we don't have to make the difference clear.

A lot of accents in North America make /ɔ/ sounds (similar to "aw" or "au", like in "caught") into /ɑ/ sounds (the o in "hot").

Now, let's move on to the alphabet!

ETERNIAN GLYPHS & SIGILS

The "letters" of the Eternian alphabet, in my opinion, are better described using the more general term "glyph". This is because, while they are distinct shapes that mean specific sounds, they are used kind of artistically and variably within one large interconnected word-shape called a "sigil", much different than we would consider letters in the English alphabet. These glyphs are organized in words by lines starting at the basic shape of the sigil and stringing them together in order.

Eternian glyphs are split into two major categories that differ by shape: consonants and vowels.

CONSONANTS

The system of glyphs for Eternian consonants is actually very easy to remember, once you get the shapes down! Let's go back to the voiced/voiceless pairs. English has eight pairs of these, four plosives (made by quickly starting and stopping air with your mouth) and four fricatives (made by constantly moving air through your mouth). These eight pairs - along with another pair for /r/ and /l/ even though they aren't voiced/voiceless, because they're also closely related - make up most of the sounds in English and most of the consonant glyphs in Eternian. In each of these pairs, the voiceless (and /l/) have a basic, empty polygon shape; the voiced pair (and /r/) use the exact same shape, but with a dot in the middle. Like so:

Outside of this, English has four more vowels - /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, and /h/ - and two "semivowels", which can be used either as a vowel or a consonant. One of these semivowels, /j/ (the English y), is used as a vowel in Eternian, while the other, /w/, is treated as a consonant. Except for /w/, these remaining consonants are all marked by the fact that they’re solid color; they also all use the same basic shapes as many of the others, but aren’t related to the sounds which share their shape:

Pretty simple once you get the hang of it! Excuse the messiness; if you want a more precise rendering, you can reference the original release at the top.

I'm pretty sure this is all accurate, but there's one thing that seems weird to me. In English, <th> can be used to express either voiceless /θ/ or voiced /ð/. However, in Eternian, they gave us a "dh" glyph. I assume that this is meant to represent /ð/. However, in Wrong Hordak's "Smooch The Chef" apron, "the" is spelled with the glyph used for /θ/. But honestly I'm just assuming human error on that one, especially because /ð/ is very rare at the beginning of words except for articles or pronouns like the and these, most cases of <th> at the beginning of a word are /θ/ like in "thorn".

Now, for vowels!

VOWELS

Like I said earlier, this bit is much more complicated to get than the consonants, but luckily, this is actually much better for English than Latin letters!

Eternian vowel glyphs are divided, seemingly at random, into two subsets with a single exception. First are line-glyphs, which are formed by altering the connective line between two geometric glyphs. The others are circle-glyphs, the ones used for /ɛ/, /i/, /u/, and /o/. These function in the exact same way as the consonant glyphs, except that they are all circles where none of the consonants (except /n/) are.

There's a few issues here with transcribing words, but they mostly come out of simplifying English's horrible vowel fluidity. For instance, there's no distinct letter for writing the schwa /ə/, but it can be folded into the letter for /ʌ/. That, and combining /ɔ/ with /ɑ/, simplify 16 sounds into 13 letters. The last letter, /j/, is the other semivowel I mentioned above; <y> in English can be used for either /j/ or /aɪ/ and /ɪ/, but this letter specifically represents the /j/ sound like in "yes" or "yak".

BRINGING IT TOGETHER

This is where things get very interesting. Let's start with the basics, walking through how to write the word "Adora".

Eternian, as a writing system, is much more artistic by design than Latin, and words and sentences can be constructed in many ways which are all read the same way. Eternian words - better called "sigils" - are read right-to-left, like Hebrew, Arabic, or traditional Japanese and Chinese. We form the sigils starting with a line sloping down in that direction book-ended with dots. The exact angle and length doesn't matter, but the right side is always noticeably higher than the left, like this:

We then add two additional decorative lines built off of that base, which end in dots:

These flourishes can be curved, geometric, or a mix of both, and often inform a lot about the "personality" of both a sigil and its writer, and can distinguish one sigil from another. They're like the sigil's signature. They can be any shape or length, but never overlap with themselves or other lines.

The next step is to begin adding the sounds. Much like the flourishes, these are constructed differently for every sigil, although again they are all read from right-to-left and the symbols are placed with that in mind. These are strung down from the sigil's base, connecting with straight lines. Let's start by placing the a-sound in "Adora" near the right-side edge of the line (this is the /ʌ/ line-glyph, like the u in "fun"):

Because the /ʌ/ glyph is a line, it replaces the normal connecting line. Let's finish this syllable line with the /d/ glyph:

...and then add another line with the glyphs for /orʌ/:

Generally, when a cluster ends with a line-glyph, it connects back to the base line. Clusters not at the end cannot end on a line-glyph (though I'm not sure about what to do for line-glyph-only words like "I" or "a" - perhaps the base line is changed, the line curves in an arc, or it ends at the changed portion?). Additionally, line-glyphs are always turned in the direction they're going - the beginning and ending /ʌ/ glyphs are flipped from each other, because the ending glyph is turned upwards going towards the base line while the beginning is stemming from it.

The important thing to remember is that sigils can be formed in a variety of ways - the flourishes, line angles, how you structure the syllables, all of these are dependent on the writer, so long as they follow those general rules. I constructed that sigil “AD.ORA”, but it could just as easily be “ADO.RA”, and in larger words there’s much more potential for structural changes.

Sigils in a sentence are connected through lines which meet the word next to each of the flourishes, and which bend to fit the shape of the sentence. Sentences are not read in any specific direction, but words are clustered in aesthetically pleasing ways and sentence order is shown by these connecting lines. However, The initial word in a sentence only has a line connecting on its left side, the final word only has a line on its right side, and words in between connect to the previous word on their right and the next word on their left.

Let's try extending this to a simple sentence - "Adora is She-Ra." We already have the She-Ra sigil from canon, so we just need to connect them with the word "is".

First, let's write the next word, below and to the left:

And connect the two with a line:

And then repeat with the "She-Ra" sigil.

...and finally...

There we go! You've officially written a sentence using Eternian glyphs! I hope you have fun with it! If you have any questions feel free to shoot me an ask. Thanks for reading!

[bisexualhobi]

i would just like to preface that i love both bts and superm before going into this so it doesn’t seem like i’m just pitting one group against another and i’d love to hear your thoughts on tis if you have any after my rambling. but one thing i always found interesting that has been brought up before which you answered (and truthfully is now a bit funny to me) is when superm debuted with jopping which was predominantly english and how a portion of army on twitter mocked it and for sm/superm giving into the western market by making an english song and predominantly english album with the album and then super one. especially since bts had that interview where they said they would never do any english songs and yet here they are with dynamite and butter which generally sound like the same song but regurgitated. obviously it’s aimed at western audiences who mainly listen to top 40 hits so it lacks the typical nuance and charm of bts songs that we’ve come to expect. i just find the general reactions to both interesting since i distinctly remembered how hard superm was being clowned on twitter with people saying how it was an obvious appeal to western audiences … and now bts have done that yet it’s being defended in the name of a grammy nomination?? which, like you said, would be warranted if the song up for one was black swan rather than dynamite. even so a bare bones comparison is that (at least to me) is that jopping still sounded like a kpop song in terms of production as did other songs on the album whereas dynamite/butter sound bubblegum pop. this was a whole lot of nonsense rambling that’s been bouncing around in my head that i wanted to see if you had any thoughts since you’re very well spoken and i like seeing your opinions whenever you appear on my dash!

hey! this is a really interesting comment and i appreciate u sending it cause i think i had some similar thoughts about it and i think you managed to express it really well. i didn't answer before because i was sick lol but i agree with the whole "army attacking other artists for doing english releases vs. it's suddenly okay when bts does it". that's their specialty. they are constantly shifting the goal posts on genuine discussions and their double standard when it comes to bts vs. other artists is so hypocritical it's hilarious how they don't see what's wrong with it

personally i don't really get a lot from bts vs superm discussions because it's really a shallow narrative that won't get you anywhere substantial. i'd very much rather discuss hybe vs sm's marketing approaches regarding their US centric groups. that's more interesting imo and there's no need to pit the members against each other. both groups are gonna face xenophobia and be treated like zoo animals when it comes to US promotion which is incredibly painful and sad.

but i think superm's purpose is so incredibly. transparent?? manufactured?? that there's no much criticism that can be done without acknowledging that bts' marketing tries so painfully to separate themselves from that that it comes full circle and it falls back into the glaringly obvious marketing ploys that kpop has pushed for years. they are the same lol. both are being pushed by a major label to squeeze every last penny off the kpop fever currently taking america. both are groups that won't break into the gp beyond a few tv appearances and an already segmented fanbase. BOTH are trying to appeal to a western audience but the difference is SM is literally not even trying to hide the fact that they just want your money lmao 😭 while hybe tries to rely on a fake sincerity where they try to sell bts as the underdogs and the "not like other idols" raw and real but like. they ARE manufactured and they are made so hard to sell a cookie cutter wholesome image so like. there's nothing raw about that i'm sorry 😭

"jopping still sounded like a kpop song in terms of production" THIS IS EXACTLY IT this is literally what i've been thinking for a long time. jopping may be the most clownable and transparent attempt to become viral in recent kpop but like. it still fucks. it's literally peak Kpop Sound in every aspect. if someone were to ask me how can you define late 2010s kpop in a single song i would probably pick this one. you can hate it or love it but the song is a great expression of music production that is a DELIGHT to listen to with headphones. i also think it's dumb and fun and i don't expect anything from its lyrical content but it manages to take you on a RIDE. you start off with a stadium chant then it drops the bass then suddenly it's got vocal riffs, a tight rap verse, then it takes it all the way to edm and finally has a brilliant dancebreak. it's jampacked of fun stuff that works well together.

would i want bts to do jopping? fuck no. but what they've been doing with butter isn't any better or superior artistically speaking so...

[artificialqueens]

These People in This Room (Don't Shine Like You) (Diamond Chaney) - Ortega

summary: Lawrence has just been crowned the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, and Ellie is right beside her. Just like she’s always been.

a/n: omg HIIIIII! here’s my entry to the fic challenge (will it be my only one? who can say). in a shocking turn of events this is not a drabble asdfghjk but would we have expected anything concise from me? this fic was inspired by Shine and Starstruck, both by Years and Years. they are very diamond chaney songs so pls do give them a little listen for full effect! standard procedure, she/her pronouns bc they’re in drag, u know the drill. this has taken me entirely too long to write but pls enjoy some diamond chaney from the night of the crowning! (pls also collectively pretend they had an actual dancefloor to celebrate on and not just a hotel room bc i had already started writing at the point Ellie posted her BTS. fic is just one big serving of pretend anyway xo)

***

It’s somewhere around midnight, the sun has set on Thursday and Friday has crept in, and Lawrence is sitting in a booth with the dancefloor flashing bright colours in front of her, only just daring to believe that this is her actual life.

There is not a single moment that seems real. Even being one of the top four took her essentially since filming stopped to come to terms with. But hearing her name being read out, hearing the other girls cheer for her and being able to do nothing but stare at the screen in disbelief with her hands over her mouth and sob like a baby…that’s not sunk in yet. Maybe it never will. She’s still feeling the after-effects from the way the shock and euphoria had kicked seven shades of shit out of her pulse, the way the serotonin had crashed over her like a wave and the absolute unbridled lack of control she’d had over any of her emotions.

When the cameras had been cut off and they’d been given the all-clear from the producers that they could hug each other, Lawrence had only managed to stand up from the chair, still in floods of tears as Bimini bundled their arms around her, Tayce had jostled them all with the way she’d jumped up and down and yelled in delight, and Ellie had looped her arms around her neck and murmured into her shoulder, words Lawrence couldn’t hear but felt the love from regardless.

It had to be Ellie, really, that crowned her. It was a full-circle moment. She still remembers the night they met for the first time; Dundee in 2016, some time in the early hours of the morning (she’d probably called it ‘bastard o’clock’ or something similar), coming out of the bar and being stopped by a boy in half-drag similar ages with her who spoke rapidly and excitedly and told her that he’d messaged her about starting drag and she’d replied to him. The way realisation had dawned on her and the way she’d been her usual loud and boisterous self to cover up the fact she’d actually been quite bashful about the fact they were meeting for the first time.

There was no alternative, not least because of everything they’ve been through together; the years leading up to this moment and the rollercoaster it’s all been. She’s glad that they’re on a high because they’ve seen each other at their lows (been the cause of each others’ too, sometimes) and pulled through only slightly scathed, but always stronger. The producer had asked Lawrence who she’d wanted and when she, still speechless, had pointed in Ellie’s direction, seeing the tears start to stream down her face had only made Lawrence’s start all over again. They’d hugged- just the two of them this time- and the way Ellie had immediately felt like a safe place in the crazy chaos of reality reminded Lawrence so much of when they had filmed. The way even just hearing Ellie’s voice would stop her feeling homesick, the way she was a living comfort blanket.

She’d never tell that to Ellie, of course, because she’d never hear the end of it if she did.

It’s been a couple of hours and Lawrence is expecting everything to suddenly sink in any minute now. Something will click like the last piece of a puzzle and she’ll finally accept that she’s won, that the whole thing isn’t a giant and premature April fools’ prank. She turns her phone over in her hand, wondering what all this nervous energy is doing to her body chemistry. She’s got messages from her family, her friends, Kiko, the girls she works with back home. Well…some of them. But apart from reading them and frantically replying, Lawrence hasn’t checked anything else; hasn’t opened Twitter or Instagram, where the notifications are piling up like pizza leaflets through a letterbox and are equally as unwanted. If she thinks about them she can feel her stomach twist, wrung out like a wet towel.

Forty thousand likes. The Team Bimini tweet had forty thousand likes. What did her own get? Eight thousand? Lawrence thinks about the sheer scale of forty thousand people, compares it to the population of towns in Scotland. Almost Airdrie. Just under Coatbridge. She imagines a whole town of people, angry and furious and disappointed, and all of them tweeting her to let her know exactly that. She remembers in high school when she thought the whole of Hermitage was against her. She wants to tell baby Lawrence that that was fucking small fry. A thousand kids? Try the sheer scale of Bimini’s fanbase. Her breath is shaky when she tries to breathe in, like her lungs have reduced in size. It reminds her of that time in school camp when they all had to jump from a pier for some unknown-fucking-reason, how freezing the water had been and how her chest felt tight as she gasped for air. Lawrence supposes it was character building in the sense that it prepared her exactly for how anxiety would make her feel later in life.

In for four. Hold for five. Out for six.

“There she is!”

An ever so slightly slurred and wobbly voice breaks Lawrence’s reverie, and when she looks up she sees Ellie approaching her, a little unsteady even in the flats she’s changed into with a glass of prosecco in each hand. It says a lot that even at the top of a helter-skelter of an anxiety spiral, Lawrence’s heart still gives a little swell when she sees her friend. Ellie has always been able to make her feel better. She feels an almost silly sense of relief that she’s here.

Lawrence takes one last little breath in before plastering a small smile to her face. “Awrite? Where’s Mumma Diamond?”

“In her room conked out. Just got back from putting her to bed, she couldn’t hack it. Letting down the family name, that one,” Ellie huffs, sliding into the booth and squashing up right beside Lawrence, even though there’s enough space for two metres distance even if they had still been under strict instructions from the BBC.

“Tayce?” Lawrence asks, gratefully accepting the prosecco glass and hurriedly downing a too-big gulp in an attempt to calm herself down.

“Facetiming A’whora. Of course.”

“Of course. Maybe a bottle and a half of prosecco is gonny be the love potion she never knew she needed.”

“Fuck, we can only hope,” Ellie grins, already laughing through her words. “If we’re gonna be touring with them I don’t wanna have to karate chop through five layers of sexual tension every time I have to walk past them.”

Lawrence chuckles, tired but humoured and unable to not make the so-obvious joke. “You couldny fight sleep.”

“Shut the fuck up, I’ll fight you in a minute!” Ellie nudges her with her shoulder and spills both of their prosecco from the glasses in their hands. The gesture is affectionate and out of place with the impending threat. “Where’s Bims? Thought they were with you.”

Lawrence shrugs. “Went out for a smoke with one of the runners about twenty minutes ago and never returned.”

“Good for them. Always thought there’s something inherently sexy about a winch in a back alley.”

“Well, you would know.”

“Eh, so would you!” Ellie cries, nothing short of incredulously offended. Her expression makes her look even more like a cartoon character than usual, and it’s entirely too endearing.

“Yeah, forgot that popular phrase. It takes two to winch in a back alley,” Lawrence jokes, but her heart isn’t in it. It’s too heavy and her ribcage feels like someone laced her into a corset and pulled it too tight. She’s hoping Ellie is too drunk to notice.

Ellie sips her prosecco with her eyes on her, then scrutinises her as she swallows it. She frowns, her nose wrinkling up as she prods Lawrence with an acrylic-nail finger. “What’s up?”

Fuck.

“The sky,” Lawrence says without conviction, and the raised eyebrow Ellie gives her in return is enough to unlock her. She deflates like a balloon and brings her phone up so Ellie can see it, turning it over in her hands. “Just…as happy as I am, and as much as this is all a dream come true…I keep psyching myself up to open any social media, and I can’t, because this one fucking brain cell of anxiety keeps telling me that everyone out there hates me and hates the fact I’ve won.”

Ellie’s face falls into a frown. She gently pries the phone out of her hands and places it on the table, takes one of Lawrence’s free hands in hers and rubs her thumb over her knuckles. “But all your other brain cells know that’s wrong.”

Lawrence sighs. “So why’s that one louder than all the rest?”

Ellie presses her lips together in a badly-suppressed smile. She’s giggling as she speaks. “Because you’ve only got two brain cells.”

Lawrence splutters a laugh, shoving Ellie with her free hand. The other is still laced together with hers. As the laughter dies down and the momentary serotonin wears off, Lawrence can feel her brow furrowing involuntarily. “Forty thousand people wanted Bimini to win, Ellie. Forty thousand. You know that’s like a whole town? That’s like the population of Coatbridge?”

“ Fuck Coatbridge!” Ellie exclaims, affronted, and her shock and insistence makes Lawrence snort all over again. “Okay, forty thousand people is a town but really, what’s that to the rest of the world? Think how tiny that is in the grand scheme of things, Lawrence! Honestly, give a fuck about what any bastard who wants to send you anything vile thinks of you! You’re so amazing! You won! Fuck everyone else!”

Lawrence wants to feel cheered up. The prosecco Ellie’s drunk is making her all the more animated and lively, giving her words a determination and a passion that her speech so rarely possesses most of the time. Ellie is calm, and she doesn’t get wound up easily. There’s something about the fact she’s growing this animated over getting Lawrence to believe in herself that warms her heart a little.

Then again…

“It’s not just that, though. There’s girls from home that haven’t even said well done. Girls I’ve always supported and couldn’t do enough for, and it’s like…really? You can’t be happy for me when I’ve actually managed to do the one thing I’ve wanted to do for years?”

“Well maybe they have said well done, and you’ve just not seen it because you’ve been hiding,” Ellie gestures matter-of-factly at her phone. It doesn’t convince her.

“They won’t have. You’ll know who I’m talking about, Ellie.”

Ellie sighs a little, clearly conceding that Lawrence is right. Her grip on her hand tightens a little, and when Lawrence looks up at her in response her blue eyes hold a glint of assurance.

“Well, even if they haven’t…fuck ‘em. Onwards and upwards, chick. You’ve got ten new sisters out of this who’re always going to know what it’s like, they’re gonna be here for you no matter what,” Ellie says comfortingly. Lawrence knows why she’s said ten and not eleven, but Ellie affirms this with another squeeze and a slightly shy smile. “And you’ve always got me. You’ve always had me.”

This is true. She’s always had Ellie. Before the show, doing gigs with her and hanging out with her and going to DragCon with her. On the show, always there to reassure her or pull her out of a negative spiral or just lean against her shoulder and squeeze her hand. And after the show. Whatever that might look like. Whatever that might be.

She supposes that neither of them know yet.

“C’mon,” Ellie says decisively, holding out a hand for her as the song changes. It’s some sort of Paolo Nutini dirge, and Lawrence has to laugh at how obviously whoever is in charge of the music has rushed to attempt to find something Scottish. Lawrence can only blink at Ellie’s outstretched hand.

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Come on! ” Ellie laughs. Lawrence doesn’t know if she’s blushing or if it’s just the lights.

But she does know that she can’t leave Ellie hanging when she’s looking at her like that.

So Lawrence lets herself be dragged out to the dancefloor and pulled into a hug as Ellie sways them left to right ever-so-slightly out of time with the song, tipsy and full of affection given the way her arms are locked around Lawrence’s waist. It should feel stranger than it does. In reality, being held by Ellie feels as simple as just existing.

Or perhaps simpler than that, given the fact that Lawrence’s existence feels entirely surreal right now.

“You have to be in drag for half past se-ven,” Ellie sing-songs, bringing one of her arms out from around Lawrence’s waist and tapping her on the nose. Lawrence immediately misses it, so it’s a relief that it’s not gone for long.

“Because I wo-on,” Lawrence imitates back to her, and the way Ellie squeezes her waist in response and affirmation causes a smile and a blush to bloom on her face without her even being to control it. She rests her head against Ellie’s chest so she can’t have the satisfaction (ammunition) of seeing how she makes her feel.

It’s little moments like that that she needs right now. Anchors to keep her down on earth, to let her know that this isn’t just some really prolonged lucid dream and it’s all actually happening because currently reality is so absurdly ridiculous; she’s just won Drag Race and she’s slow-dancing with Ellie to the song that’s blasting through the speakers in the background, a parody of some American high school prom where she’s just been crowned the queen.

Moments like these- where Ellie’s holding her close as if she’s literally trying to protect her from the world- remind her that not everybody is against her. Not everybody hates her. Not everybody is wishing her a slow and painful death because Bimini didn’t win, least of all them. She knows that Ellie was never able to share what team she was on even though she hadn’t had a chance at the crown, but she didn’t have to. Not really. They’ve always been on each others’ team.

Ellie jolts Lawrence out of her daydream with the way her chest is shuddering, and Lawrence momentarily thinks she’s crying again before her soft giggle becomes audible over the music.

“What?” Lawrence tilts her head up, meeting Ellie’s scheming, smirking face.

“Can’t believe RuPaul Charles asked if you wanted to move to London, city of dreams, city of a thousand opportunities…” Ellie begins, Lawrence already laughing as she knows what the conclusion to her sentence will be. “…and you said, ‘yer awrite pal, am fine in Glesga wi the jakes an’ the Blue Lagoon chippy an’ the guy that stands on Buchanan Street and yells at everyone that they’re going to hell!’ ”

Lawrence would normally roll her eyes at Ellie’s impersonation of her accent, but she’s laughing too much at the joke that’s forming in her head to commit to it. “RuPaul asked if I wanted to move to London, and I said…”

The pair of them are almost giggling too much to get the punchline out, Ellie clocking on to how it’s going to end. In sync, the pair of them splutter out a “… NNNNAAW! ”

Giddy and happy, Lawrence rests her cheek against Ellie’s chest again. “London’s got junkies too, anyway.”

“This is gonna sound really selfish, but…don’t actually move to London,” Ellie’s voice murmurs from above her, and there’s something plaintive to it that makes Lawrence refrain from replying with a joke or a barb like she normally would. The way Ellie follows it up cements that fact. “It would probably be so good for you, but like…Glasgow would be lost without you, genuinely. And so would I.”

Lawrence can’t cry again tonight, even if it’s only because she thinks it’s physically impossible, so she just squeezes Ellie tight until she worries about her ability to breathe. “I’m not going anywhere, hen.”

Lawrence doesn’t even really know what they are, her and Ellie. They both still have Grindr and they talk about their hookups and raised hopes and broken hearts with each other like friends. But they’re not really just that. They’re affectionate, and they open up to each other with the same shared unspoken understanding of something Lawrence doesn’t understand. They hug for too long and cuddle up to each other when they’re together, and Lawrence can’t count the amount of times during filming that she’d find strength in the way Ellie would squeeze her hand without a word. They’ve woken up together too many times (why she’d felt the need to remind Ellie of that while the cameras were rolling, she’ll never know) and kissed each other more than that. Every time they say I love you they mean it, but they also mean a little bit more. There’s no butterflies or fast pulses or fluttering hearts- they’re past that stage. Everything is just natural and normal and easy.

She wonders if they’ll ever put a label on what they have. There’s a part of her that doesn’t ever want to.

“If we’re both still single by the time we’re forty,” Lawrence begins, leaning back to look at Ellie through her glazed, half-drunk half-tired eyes. “…we should just say ‘fuck it’ and get married.”

(She doesn’t even know if it’s a joke or not.)

Ellie laughs as if it is and nods as if it isn’t. “Drag wedding. We’d need to upstage Tayce and A’whora, though.”

Lawrence realises something. “I’ll turn forty two years before you.”

There’s a pause as the song starts to fade out, and it makes Ellie’s murmur seem louder than it is. “That’s okay. We don’t need to wait for me.”

The jolt her words give Lawrence’s heart and the way Ellie’s talking as if it’s an actual plan makes her think maybe it wasn’t really ever a joke after all. It’s ridiculous though, and it’s all theoretical, and it’s a totally hypothetical scenario, and they’re both drunk , for Christ’s sake. So Lawrence pulls out of Ellie’s arms and takes her hands in her own, the song that’s started playing more upbeat and the opening chords inciting some sort of hope and optimism in her heart for the future that’s unfolding for the pair of them.

“One more song then bed?” she suggests. Ellie raises her eyebrows as she looks down at her.

“Whose bed?”

“Shut the fuck up, Dirty Diamond,” Lawrence shoots back without missing a beat, and as the first lines of the song fill the room she leans back and begins to spin the pair of them in a circle, both of them laughing as if everything is as simple as just that room, and the music blaring out from the speakers, and the lights flashing above them drenching them in purple and pink.

[missorgana]

your lucky day

pairing: bruce banner/thor, background pepper potts/tony stark

fandom: marvel cinematic universe

rating: general

word count: 4619

warning: swearing

summary: Bruce gets lost in IKEA. Luckily, he finds someone to help him out. (Ikea AU)

(it’s been Months and i’m finally done with this fic!! this is a very belated birthday gift for @nevillelongsbottom i really hope you like this legend 💕 uwu also thank you to @dykeacademias for beta reading u are a lifesaver seriously. hope you all enjoy this mess!!)

read on ao3

Doctor Bruce Banner is lost in IKEA.

While he certainly didn’t expect to find himself in this position, he can appreciate the comedy in it.

But Bruce is lost. Seriously, utterly lost.

The reason for him to even be in IKEA in the first place is simply Tony and Pepper convincing him to accompany them.

Yes, it might seem strange for a soon-to-be married couple to invite just the one friend along to look at furniture for the apartment they scored.

He’s gotten used to their shenanigans by now. Doesn’t mean he still didn’t lift an eyebrow, though.

“We need your help, Bruce, please?” his best friend asked him, and Tony knows that pleading face doesn’t work on him, but still, he wants them to be happy, you know?

In fact, both of them had that matching face on, because they’re perfect for one another, and he’s got this sense of guilt, and nerve in him, because honestly, he’s clueless as to why they’re choosing him for assistance.

He’s always been a nervous person.

Bruce figures an extra pair of hands would be helpful. And it’s not like he’s weak, wouldn’t call himself bulky either, but he can carry his fair amount.

It seemed like his friends might want his input on things as well, judging by the catalogue on they’d put in front of him on the coffee table, with dog-eared pages all around.

“I’m not really good with design and all, fair warning.” he’d said with an awkward chuckle, but Pepper showcased no worry.

“Don’t stress about it, okay? We just need you to decide for us when we disagree on something. You’re a darling.”

“You don’t really disagree on stuff, though.”

Tony blinked at him, “Have you met us?”

Really, the car ride was pleasant, and he loves them to pieces, but Bruce soon got Tony’s point once they were moving through the store, and not more than ten minutes in was forced to judge the lamps his best friends couldn’t seem to decide on.

It’s a month til their wedding, and they’re already acting like an old married couple.

And honestly, the lamps in question looked more or less the same to him, but he didn’t say that, because Pepper had a compelling argument about the placement and size of them, and Tony had to go with the majority, after all.

Regardless, he didn’t have to listen to their bickering for long, which he couldn’t decide if he found heartwarming, amusing or tiring, because somewhere between the kitchen and the office sections, Bruce lost sight of the couple.

Well, that wasn’t ideal.

Truth be told, he was distracting himself with a phone call, and left them looking at paint samples.

And Bruce figured they moved along without him. So it can’t really be his fault, right?

Or maybe they’re lost somewhere else too, who knows.

Thing is, Bruce has been searching this floor for close to half an hour, and now that he’s finally decided to move upstairs, to try his luck, let’s just say he’d really like to meet whoever designed this floor plan.

In fact, after roaming for another ten minutes, he has to admit he’s not sure where the escalators are located anymore.

Maybe he’s walking in circles. How is this even possible?

Honestly, it’s starting to get ridiculous when Bruce finds himself at the plant section, with little idea of how he got there, and also, since when has IKEA got a plant section?

Tony’s told him more than once that he needs to ‘get into the loop’ and ‘not live under a rock’, which really just means his friend has been begging him to start a twitter account.

Especially when he says some pun that’s not even that funny, and Tony laughs almost so hard he can’t breathe.

He can’t say he doesn’t appreciate that support, and confidence boost, though.

Anyway, there must be, like, a map of this floor, or a help desk, right?

Bruce is more or less dumbfounded, stepping out of the way for an elderly couple who are eagerly making their way towards the floor plants, and decides looking out for an IKEA employee might be his best option right now.

Yes, he did actually send Pepper a text, he’d not that out of the loop, but he’s getting no response, and besides, it might help him more if he had an idea of how to not be stuck in all this gardening interior.

But of course, as his luck has it, and Bruce swears he usually looks out for where he’s going, he very nearly smashes a vase that seemingly appeared out of thin air.

He’s in no way a religious person, but Jesus Christ.

Some luck he does have, as if sent like a prayer, when he spots an incredibly tall figure clad in a yellow and blue striped shirt.

And since their back is turned, Bruce figures he’ll politely tap their shoulder and ask for some guidance in a way that doesn’t sound as stupid as it does in his own head.

Good plan.

Or it would be, if he hadn’t tapped said shoulder, and said person turned around, and Bruce stepped back a little and might’ve smashed something for real.

So this has to confirm that he is, indeed, a nervous person, he guesses, because the vision of the stranger is enough to intimidate the doctor.

Well, intimidate sounds like fear, and that’s definitely not it.

Let’s just say this IKEA employee is a head taller, maybe more, who knows, than Bruce, and aforementioned yellow and blue striped uniform is a polo shirt sitting impossibly tighter than he can imagine it’s supposed to.

They’re well trained, to say the least.

In fact, this stranger’s broad shoulders might be launching him into a mental breakdown, and nope, he can’t be freaking out in an IKEA store because someone working there is, seriously, unexplainably attractive.

They even got their blond hair put up in a bun, for real.

And now, Bruce doesn’t really know how to process this encounter, and how to pretend the internal freaking out didn’t just happen, but luckily, real luck this time, the stranger gives him an easy smile on a silver platter.

Thank his non-existent Gods for customer service.

“Careful there, buddy. What can I help you with?”

The voice is soft and gruff at the same time, Bruce doesn’t really know what it is about it, but it’s… that.

His eyes quickly search for nametag, finding it easily on the employee’s (just as broad) chest, which he doesn’t really have the mind to overthink right now, but seriously, this person might just live in a fitness center.

And said nametag showcases Thor, accompanied by My pronouns are he/him.

Of course this giant of a man is named Thor. Bruce can’t even be surprised, really.

His mind manages to circulate back to the fact that he asked you a question, dammit, and the scientist almost stutters out, “I apologise, I, uh, for my clumsiness.”

Thor simply shrugs, staying silent, and seemingly, letting Bruce collect himself and continue.

“And yes, I, eh, was going to ask for your help. My current situation might be slightly embarrassing, however.” he tells him, finally, Bruce nags himself internally, with a small smile he cannot imagine is anything other than awkward.

And the Greek God-esque man in front of him, Bruce should really stop these God-related equations, anyway, chuckles softly in a way he can’t quite believe comes from a man twice the size of himself.

“I doubt it’s anything I haven’t heard before.” Thor, he remembers, tells him, and takes a quick glance behind him, before continuing, “You know how many customers inquire me about watering fake plants?”

And yeah, Bruce has to smile, a little, because he can imagine, and he supposes that remark did relax him about this situation, to some extent.

Not that he still doesn’t think he’s blushing, or fidgeting with his fingers, but this man’s probably used to that right?

Bruce is careful in his thought, because Thor’s most likely been objectified before, and it’s never anything the doctor wants to do, it’s just that this man might as well have walked out of one of his daydreams.

The tall man’s got this easy smile on his face and Bruce thinks he might be going crazy.

What’s gone into him?

To get out of his head, he chuckles just slightly, appreciating Thor attempting, at least, to make him less embarrassed, and, “Well, I- judging by the floor plan, you might’ve gotten this before, I don’t know. I have to admit I’m sort of lost.”

The man in front of him easily chuckles as well, nodding eagerly, resembling some sort of excitement just for a moment, “Oh, tell me about it! Honestly, took me a month before I knew the way around in here.”

Suddenly, Thor doesn’t look like a figment of the doctor’s imagination, but rather, cute in a way Bruce has never thought of men with his physique before.

As established before, these types of encounters, the rare he’s had, makes him a nervous wreck, and not in any way likely to flirt, which, in this case, would be highly uncomfortable for who his attention is devoted to, so it’s definitely for the best his skills are not brushed up upon.

That is, judging by his recent history of romantic relationships, or lack thereof.

He did come out of a long term one and got his heart terribly broken, but that was more than four years ago, and Tony and Pepper had his back, of course, helped him pick up the pieces.

Anyway, let’s just say he hasn’t been eager with going back to the dating market, which he hates calling it but nevertheless, he’s standing in an IKEA, and he really should think about getting back to his friends and not ponder over his mended heart and nonexistent chances with a man who’s, obviously, only this smiling and calm because he’s told to.

Get a grip, Bruce, you have a phd, for science and the modern world’s sake.

He’s quick to realize he needs to pay attention, now, because surely, he can keep his nerves under control for this. Seriously, he must.

“Where did you come from?” the tall man asks him, and it’s only now Bruce notices the cart next to him.

Typical of him to interrupt a dreamy man, not just standing around, but in the middle of a task, really.

He doesn’t usually swear, but fan-fucking-tastic, as Tony would say.

This embarrassment is going to move to the back of his mind, sooner or later, and so he adjust his glasses on his nose, most typical nervous sign really, and ventures on in the conversation.

“First floor, you see, eh…” and Bruce has to chuckle at himself, again, trying to minimize the eye contact with the tall stranger as much as possibly, which, really, shouldn’t be hard considering their height difference, “I lost sight of my friends, and well, here I am.”

Thor nods solemnly, in a way, like he finds this a completely valid reason.

“Okay, this is standard procedure, really, trust me,” he tells him, because apparently Bruce’s demeanor really is obvious, and it’s almost he’s reassuring him, “What section you think they’d wander off to?”

Well, this question boggles the doctor, because he’s not sure at all.

He does know those two like the back of his mind, but also, they went from browsing lamps, to scented candles, to desk chairs, to wall decor that looked like it was taken straight out of a stock photo search on Google.

Dammit, just give the man an answer! In the end, Bruce’s guess is as good as any, he guesses, and maybe Thor’s got some professional IKEA input, too.

And so he clears his throat and replies, “Can I be honest? They’re kind of weirdos, so, not easy. That’s a good thing, though! They’re newly engaged and took me here to help them find new decor, so…”

“Ah! The neutral third part when disagreements occur, I assume?”

This man’s got a certain pitch in his voice, like someone straight out of film school, Bruce wants to say, like he spent many days on learning Shakespeare plays by heart.

He’s not very versed on theater, himself, he’s only become familiar with this kind of voice by Brunnhilde. Once she’d broke through, he noticed what it was about her tone, and really, it barely changed at all.

It’s like she was born for it, which sounds like an old Hollywood drama, but there you go.

Maybe something about the way she carried herself helped, he supposed, but he still can’t anymore of a finger on it than that.

It smoothes out the voice in certain way. He imagines they know a lot of poetry, those actors.

She told him she’d been to voice coaches and such, besides auditioning, and demonstrated for him time and time again when she needed help practising, and Carol wasn’t available.

Maybe he’s an aspiring actor as well, or something similar, but it’s not like Bruce can ponder on this right now. Sometimes he feels like his brain’s got a life of its own, at least working at double speed.

“Hit the nail on the head, as you say, heh.”

Thor nods once more, and he latches onto this aforementioned cart, which appears fully loaded, and well, Bruce can admire the strength in his forearms, right?

Totally normal. It’s cool, Doctor Banner, you’re being real slick about this.

“Say, I’m not in any way experienced with reading people- or well, tracking them down, I suppose.” the God-like man told him - really, these God comparisons gotta stop - with what he hopes is a lighthearted chuckle, damn, he’s trained well with that smile overpowering most of his features.

Thor continues, “The cafeteria’s pretty much a meeting spot in cases like this, I mean, if it’s of any help to go there?”

Bruce just can’t help smiling back, can he? In any case, it’s becoming more natural for him now, less strained, the man fading less from an otherworldly state and more to quietly admirable.

“That would be lovely. I fear I might disappear from the surface of the earth completely if I keep wandering around like this.”

Right, tell a joke, they’re both laughing, it’s fine. Stop staring Bruce, you’ve thought about how tall he is a million times by now, really?!

In less than a second, the cart’s turned around, and Thor removes a strand of blond hair from his hair, before he starts moving, dear God, is he a marathon runner or something?

“The elevator’s by here, somewhere, don’t worry, I got this.” he tells the doctor, as if he ever doubted his ability in any way, and Thor did quickly realize his pace, slowing down at the first corner, allowing the shorter man to catch up.

“No offense, but this place is a goddamn maze.” Bruce says, slightly surprised when they make it the elevator, like it’s a secret land he would’ve never found on his own. Luckily, Thor’s still not fazed.

Chuckling, still. You got this under control, Bruce. Somehow.

*

The cafeteria’s queue is abnormally long, the soda has definitely been sitting out for a while, the meatballs are steaming hot.

There’s too much noise for Bruce’s liking, but he doesn’t really have much choice of where to go right now.

But today still holds surprises, clearly.

The doctor expressed his gratitude to Thor for leading him this way, which really was hilariously easy now that he thinks about it, but you know, the elevator was actually hidden away, so.

It’s not like he can justify it for himself anymore, so he’ll just give up on it.

The thing is, Bruce in no way expected the handsome stranger to help him anymore so than guiding him here. Only when they stand in the foyer, looking out at the many sterile white tables for customers to have their lunch at, he tells him to stay where he is.

Well obviously, he might get lost again, and there’s no way he wants a second wave of embarrassment right now. But also, surely, Thor has to keep going with whatever business he’s doing?

It seems the man notices Bruce’s scrunched brow, since he dishes out further explanation a few seconds later, “I have to bring this down to storage. It only takes five minutes, trust me!”

Bruce can’t say he expected that. He doesn’t have time to answer, anyway, because Thor once again picks up a pace as if he’s running for his life, and is gone before he knows it.

Guess he’ll stay put. Guess he’ll try to not stand awkwardly around as mothers and children and students are milling around him. It’s easier said than done.

Luckily, because damn, that thing really is with him today, huh?

Well, a minor misadventure, which led him to luck. That could mean something, but Bruce can’t think of that much, because, luckily , just as the fidgeting returns for, like, the 20th time, his phone buzzes in his backpocket.

Of course, Pepper’s texting him now, thank god , because he might go out and trip over himself if that Greek God himself returns, which, conveniently, he does as that moment.

It’s almost like he’s smiling even more now, if that’s even possible.

And he watches Thor wipe sweat off of his forehead with one eye, replies back to Pepper with an urgency, and she’s calm, because she manages to do that in almost any situation, she’s gotten used to Tony, after all, and lets them know his location.

“Hey, buddy!” the tall man comes to a stop, puts both his hands on his hips and shoots a look toward the bustling queue, which, after all, is significantly shorter now, they all work quickly around here, huh.

“You hear from your friends?” he continues his sentence, maybe because Bruce doesn’t know what to answer and he’s freaking out, maybe because he’s simply curious. It’s a 50/50, really.

Again, he really should stop thinking of a million things at once, and nods instead, and now, for some reason, Thor’s got them drinks and a table, kindly offering to wait with Bruce till Tony and Pepper’s finished with their shopping.

Well, he doesn’t offer as much as tells him, makes his way to the queue even though the doctor was about to refuse, but the deed is done, anyway, and he appreciates it.

Bruce does wonder the tall man’s going to get in trouble, though. Surely, hanging out with a customer can’t be allowed?

“You know, uh, you don’t have to wait with me.” he can’t help chuckling awkwardly, because everything he does becomes awkward around Thor, who seems so easy going, it’s insane, “I don’t want you to get in trouble with your boss.”

The stranger, or, not really a stranger anymore, he supposes, is eating like he hadn’t breakfast, which does worry Bruce, but he shakes his head and gulps down some more soda before he speaks.

“Oh no, it’s fine. I was overdue for a lunch break, anyway.”

And he can’t help but just shrug.

A small smile isn’t totally awkward, right? This is fine. Just two dudes hanging out. Thor’s on his goddamn lunch break, he’s working , Bruce, what did you expect?

“Besides, don’t tell anyone I said this, but the conversations my coworkers usually engage in are, um,” he turns his head, and nope, only customers in sight for now, surely those behind the counter can’t hear what he wants to say, “rather dull.”

Okay, he has to laugh a little bit. Because Thor’s laughing, that is.

He’s kind of, sort of, insulting someone, but he’s being so incredibly nice about it. As nice as possible.

And now, he’s totally not watching him, come on, they’re having a conversation, this man seems to be fidgeting now.

In a different way than Bruce, surely, kind of like an excited labrador who’s owner just come home after a two week vacation.

It’s cute. Shut up, he can find him cute, not only teenagers say that, right?

Bruce is feeling like a teenager, seeing some jock in a varsity jacket walking down the hall, every student eager to just have him look at you, just once. Maybe he’s been there before. He barely knows this man, keep it together!

Him beating up himself is interrupted by Thor, again, “Do you mind if I am a tiny bit nosy?”

The doctor blinks. “I guess it depends on what topic we’re discussing.”

Thor gulps some more soda. Bruce truly has to wonder if IKEA feeds their employees at all.

“Right! Right. I just thought, since you know my name, you know, I might be allowed to ask your name.”

And another surprise. More shock, maybe. Definitely not what he expected him to ask, but what did he expect, really?

Bruce does smile, and it’s like, okay, this is casual, it’s like the customer service barrier is a bit broken down now, “Of course. It’s Bruce.”

Thor nods again, excitedly. Excited about everything.

And he’s not usually like this, but this man’s attitude is sort of rubbing off on him. Weird.

“What do you do, Bruce?” and Thor’s constantly removing strands of hair from that worn out bun, “Other than being a good friend, that is.”

Now why does he have to go and compliment him? It’s thrown out like it’s nothing, like it’s easy, and his self hatred won’t let him say it’s easy, but he takes it, because it seems like Thor means it. He hopes so, anyway.

He does laugh, to keep a little distance, “Uh, well, I’m a professor.”

Bruce doesn’t exactly like to advertise, and shout out to the world about his PhDs. No, he’s proud of his work, don’t get him wrong.

But he doesn’t feel particularly impressive compared to some of his role models, who progressed faster than himself, and anyway, he isn’t great with compliments. As is obvious from this conversation.

Needless to say, if this man gets anymore excited, he might just explode in front of him.

“Holy shit,” he blurts, he assumes, because oh, how the tables turned, when the embarrassment Bruce has been feeling is mirrored on Thor’s face, “oh, dear God, sorry for my language. But I love that. I’m afraid I’m just an actor.”

So, he guessed right, he notes. Doesn’t really know what do with that assumption.

“That’s not really a just, is it?”

He shrugs.

They’re both too humble for their own good, in the end, Bruce thinks. At least Thor is only slightly visibly upset when he brushes off the compliments, or at least, tries to signal to his new acquaintance that his work really isn’t that big of a deal.

He does tell him more details when Thor asks, of course, he’s always been relatively polite, hopefully, but Bruce has never been good at not comparing himself to others, as you might’ve guessed.

“That is a big deal, though!” the tall man says, sounding more sincere than anyone Bruce has ever met, “You are brilliant.”

He’s not blushing. Not at all, except he is, a little bit, anyway, “I mean, I- thank you. We’ve only still just me, though.”

“I can tell. And we shouldn’t underestimate ourselves. I’m still learning that, as you can tell.”

Of course, he’s right. Of course, this man encourages a relative stranger to be confident. Of course, it’s lovely.

And this conversation goes on forever, which probably isn’t realistic, he’s aware, but well, Bruce is getting comfortable.

It’s stupid, he shouldn’t, he knows.

But this man is so friendly. Endearing. And he has to think, honestly, how can anyone not immediately be drawn to him?

Thor does tell a lot of kind of ridiculous jokes. That’s endearing too, dammit.

Also, maybe, Bruce wants to spit out his soda when the half God, half man asks him for scientifically related pick up lines. He doesn’t, of course, he’s not an animal.

This can be restrained, sure, and it’s not like his new… friend means anything by it. Really, this is just a once in a lifetime acquaintance. Probably never going to see each other again.

But it’s a fun run.

Maybe he should just thank his lucky stars for this. Maybe Bruce should just get his head out of his ass and go on an actual date, instead of getting nervous about someone in a goddamn furniture store.

Thing is, this nice time ends far too quickly, not soon after the doctor’s almost, completely relaxed, as much excitement as this one man contains, it soothes his nerves. That’s ridiculous, isn’t it?

At least, it’s like Thor can tell how embarrassed he is, and cancels it out by telling embarrassment stories of his own.

Or spilling ketchup on his uniform button up, newly washed, even. Bruce would feel bad for finding it a little funny, if the man didn’t laugh at himself and smack himself in the head.

The self awareness is admirable. The doctor still doesn’t laugh, because he’s just, God, way too empathetic. He feels bad for him.

But yes, it does end, because Tony’s familiar exclaim of “Brucie!” wakes him up from whatever dumb haze this is.

No more time to get lost in this impossible relation. Sadly.

Of course, his friends’ cart is filled to the brim. They have a bag, too.

Pepper rushes for a hug, because she’s a sweetheart and worries too much, as usual, “Thank God! Oh Bruce, I feel terrible we lost you.”

And he pats her shoulder in reassurance, chuckles, casts a glimpse to Thor, who’s standing there like an overgrown puppy, assuming they’ll part ways soon, “I got by, thankfully.”

Indeed he did. After a small exchange not much time passes before Thor has to go back to work (really, how long of a break is he allowed?) Bruce wonders, because surely more than half an hour must’ve gone by.

And the doctor thanks him for the help for the millionth time, like the other times weren’t enough, but he appreciates it, and whatever this relation is, but he doesn’t mention that last part, of course.

The blond man is humble again. Of course.

And, of course, Tony teases him for about the whole car ride to Bruce’s flat about how he ‘was saved by a tall handsome stranger’, and he ‘should’ve made a move, surely’.

It’s not like he disagrees with the savior part.

Pepper shakes her head along with him.

*

Maybe, for once, Tony’s right about something, to his credit, because Bruce spent a lot of time convincing him, and himself, that the man was just being polite when offering to wait with him.

And the conversation, too, as genuine as it felt.

Needless to say, the slip of notepad paper with the Ikea logo on tip that the doctor finds in his jacket pocket a day late, written on in what might be the most pleasing handwriting he’s seen in a while, was surprising.

There's also a phone number.

This is breaking all the protocols, and I am terrified that you will be offended, I sincerely apologise if so, I in no way want to make you uncomfortable.

I did enjoy our conversation very much. I would also enjoy the opportunity to see you again, if you agree, perhaps with other surroundings than Swedish furniture.

Sincerely, Thor (from IKEA).

Maybe he types the number into his phone. Maybe he calls it right away.

Of course, Tony doesn’t need to know that right now.

[powderpuffagency]

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https://www.dummies.com/business/marketing/social-media-marketing/the-benefits-of-using-linkedin/