#complex minds

[bulldog-butch]

i’m gonna say something controversial yet brave: sexuality labels are a convenient tool we use to define something that is undefinable

[baeshijima]

thoughts on being engaged to duke!sunday, the head of the oak family, an incredibly influential figurehead within society, the close subordinate of emperor gopher wood who brought him and his sister in and raised him like his own, and the villain who faces a tragic ending in a novel you recently finished — the very same one you just so happen to find yourself transmigrated into. he is as cunning as he is blinded, a trait which brought ruin to many in the empire, and one which ultimately brought ruin to himself at the hands of the protagonists.

as luck would have it, you became a barely mentioned side character from a marquis family, whose role was to be the villain's wife stuck in a one-sided love who, too, would get caught up in the tragedy alongside him. however, now that it's you who is stuck in this position, you're determined to try any means necessary to deter him from going down that path, all in an effort to escape your predestined doomed fate!

of course, you didn't expect it to be easy. the day of your arrival in this world was already the night before your wedding, so you had little time to prepare yourself for the nonchalance of your supposed family, how they viewed you as but a means — a tool — to boost their influence and prosperity, the dismissive mannerisms of the household servants, and the absolute beauty of a man you will be married to.

(seriously. the novel descriptions did not do him justice. he was like... like... like he was handcrafted by god himself! and not to mention his sister, robin, was the very epitome of an angel! perhaps you're destined to perish by the god-tier visuals instead...)

to say the least, the wedding ceremony went by quickly. safe to say you didn't spend the night; he was cordial and gentlemanly upon letting you know that he won't do anything until you're ready, that you can take this relationship slow, but somehow you ended up feeling a tad insulted. like, who leaves their newly wedded alone in a big cold bed as they walk out on their own? a sick bastard that's who!

well, whatever. it's not like you need nor want to consummate with him! besides, you have bigger things to worry about — things such as your impending death. and, of course, the only way to stop sunday that you can imagine working is by chipping away at his resolve bit by bit, and opening his eyes to reality.

he is a tragic character, one who cares more about the well-being of penacony and its people than anyone else, but was manipulated into getting his hands dirty in the emperor's stead. you knew this. you sobbed over his story, cursed out the protagonists, and even fought internet randos on novel forums about sunday's motivation and how,

no, he is not just a stupid villain. he is a complex character with flaws and humanity and was cruelly taken advantage of by someone he considered family. he was deceived through the suffering the emperor wanted him to see to make him easily manipulated, creating a rift between him and robin to have that prominent separation. you know what? maybe you're just a !%#@ who can't even #@?"% read properly!

and yet you still find yourself at a loss when faced with the walls he has in place. your initial efforts went as well as it possibly could have; you trying to earnestly help him, while he "kindly" dismisses your offers! well, "kindly" being more condescending since you could read between the lines of his mannerisms and amiable demeanour, but that's fine! you expected this! that just means you have to double down on your sincerity, get through to his heart (somehow), and help him realise humanity isn't as weak as he's led to believe!

you have three years until the novel's plot officially starts, and another year after that until your demise. that's plenty of time to get him to warm up to you!

it was easier said than done, but after your valiant effort and abundance of time put into this relationship, which admittedly you could do with some of that lost time back, you could give yourself a pat on the back with the progress you made! while you definitely could have done without a lot of the headaches, it's safe to say sunday has significantly warmed up to you in comparison to your wedding day. he now willingly eats all his meals with you with some real conversation, takes garden strolls with you in the early evenings, invites you out for dinner at a restaurant at least four times a week, hell he's even joked and laughed with you more frequently! but most importantly, he has begun asking for your opinion before finalising any decisions he is required to make. and he actually listens and considers your side! now, that certainly is the best outcome you could hope for after all this time, and it most definitely will help in your endeavour to save you both from the protagonists!

however, you've noticed he's been more... affectionate? well, at the very least he now willingly holds your hand when in private (not just in moments when you're in the public eye and he has to make sure the family's reputation is spotless), sometimes he will hug you out of the blue ("i just need to... recharge. you have a way of calming me down. i hope you don't mind." ...how could you say no to his supreme god-tier face card? that's just a losing battle you won't even bother fighting against.), oftentimes he opts to just gaze wordlessly at you (robin had mentioned over one of your tea times how it almost appears as though there is no one but you in the world when sunday gazes at you with, in her words, "the eyes of a man so deeply in love!" ...whatever that's supposed to mean...), but a more recent development has been his sudden interest in kissing you; well, more specifically giving you a kiss to the back of your hand or on your forehead — certainly not anywhere near the lips! (besides, he's probably just gotten comfortable with you, enough where he can freely act without judgement. nothing more, nothing less.)

well, either way, development is development! soon enough, the time for the main plot to start has arrived. it of course follows what you remember, from the organised balls to the protagonists meeting to the political aspects of it all. the only difference is sunday's less active involvement in all the schemes and the emperor's ploy. rather, he seems more focused on you and the future of your marriage and even displayed a sudden interest in your practically non-existent relationship with one of the foreign diplomats, aventurine— wait...

"[name]," he calls your name out so sweetly you nearly disregarded it as someone else he was talking to. well, perhaps you would have done had he not suddenly appeared before you, a tight-lipped smile tugging the corners of his lips as he steadily approaches you.

oh. he doesn't seem very happy, if his tense figure is anything to go by. you wonder if one of the nobles grated his nerves a little too much this time?

sunday comes to a halt a step away from you. "i don't like that... gambler being so close to you. it... it brings me a rather unpleasant feeling." there's a slight, trembling pause. not a moment later does he close the gap between you, one knee on the ground as he matches your seated height on the fountain rim, your hands gently enclosed in both of his.

you idly wonder if this is what robin meant by the so-called "eyes of a man so deeply in love" she constantly gushed about, for the way in which he gazes up at you is enough to render you breathless.

"tell me, [name]," he begins once more. there is an underlying desperation woven within his tone, one which has your head spinning and heart thumping wildly as his trembling gaze holds you in place. "tell me, what am i to do with this fervent love and overwhelming adoration i hold for you?"

oh.

...oh.

perhaps your impending doom should be the least of your concerns when you now find yourself in the arms of a clingy husband...

(though, it's safe to say you did, in fact, manage to prevent him from succumbing to his tragic fate! you just gained a loving, yet slight slightly emotionally challenged husband along the way.

well, you can help him work through it; you have the rest of your lives now to figure it out, after all.)

[thebrainrotsreal]

When I tell you I am still so speechless over this episode.

When I tell you I am thinking about Mark who we know really ingrained Nolan's speech back in s1, only see that Nolan looks like he meant every word. That Mark was replaceable, his mother was just a pet. When I tell you I'm constantly thinking about Mark, who only saw his father cry over a planet he's only known for months, and not the family he's had for years. When I tell you I'm thinking about Mark finally calling Nolan 'dad' again only to be immediately choked and yelled at. When I think about the parallels of s1's fight and this one.

[captainmaxatx]

I honestly haven’t been this obsessed with something in a long time, I don’t know what Hugh and Ryan put into Deadpool and Wolverine but it is dragging me back to my old levels of hyper fixation and I’m going insane

[fangrurin]

Fashion of the Great Houses of Westeros: House Tully of Riverrun

[eldritch-ace]

Commissions for Palestine 🇵🇸

Hello all, in trying to do my part and help those in Palestine and Rafah I'm opening up commissions.

Send me proof of donation or purchase of esims and I will make you a commission!

I will accept proof from day of or day before actually dming me. Donations of 3 USD and equivalent currency are good for sketches. 5 USD for a colored sketch, 10 USD for an image with lineart and color, and 15+ USD for anything more detailed or with a background. If you're unsure what I'll do for your donation/esim payment, just ask and we can figure it out together!

If you're curious where to donate @northgazaupdates has lots of links, as well as many other blogs signal boosting people who need help. There are many many vetted families that need help through operation olive branch and pass the hat that other creators have been sharing too. If you have any other good resources please let me know!

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to reach out!

[collophora]

This fic is leaving rent free in my head since a week so go read it: Haunting by @iiidunno : https://archiveofourown.org/works/54832273/chapters/138984958 [Edit] ok I put half a BG 'cause really It was bothering me

[intermundia]

have i mentioned lately i love him

[novelconcepts]

wait wait wait, so we had: a gorgeously diverse, complicated story about the folly of the Jedi, set against the backdrop of truly fascinating Force witch lore and a potential deep-dive into the real fallout of suppressing emotion, complete with totally rad lightsaber fights, grayscale characters all around, and the coolest fucking helmet in the history of the franchise, all tucked into the world of Star Wars, which makes money simply by existing--and they cancelled it?? i am going to explode

[billford-dump]

Simple Misunderstanding

Finally, after nearly two decades, he’s back. Not home, not nearly home, but back in the nightmare realm. Back with Bill.

He’d tried to hate the demon for so long, to resent him for the betrayal, for using him, for tossing him out like a broken toy, but he found that he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, he could never hate him. It was a constant, open wound, the knowledge of just how much in love he had been, only to be tricked, and to add insult to injury he couldn’t bring himself to do more than feel grief for what he lost. He didn’t hold a hint of anger for what had happened, and for years that feeling of loss was a constant companion.

And eventually it was too much. He was tired of running, tired of pretending, tired of everything, and he gave up. He went right back to Bill. (He was beautiful. Ageless. Perfect.) Ford was greeted with open arms, with an enormous eye crinkled in a smile, with an apology from a being who had taken this long to realize why Ford had been upset at his so-called “betrayal”. (Flawless golden symmetry.) Things like Bill, they don't think the way mortals do, with their mayfly lifespans. When he had told Ford they would change the world, he meant real change. Not minor alterations in the culture of one species on one little speck of dust. When he told Ford he had chosen him, it was true. He'd had his eye on Ford since the day he stepped into Gravity Falls, only staying back out of politeness until he was summoned. Of course he had inspired other mortals throughout the centuries, how else would he have laid the groundwork for a portal to even be possible? (Divine geometry.) He doubted, at first. Of course he did. No matter how much he had wanted to return, how tired he was of fighting, the idea that he had put himself through so much pain because of a cultural misunderstanding was…  (Unending alien knowledge wrapped in that simple, familiar shape.) But Bill somehow convinced him. It took time of course, effort and evidence and seeing for himself, over and over again, how differently Bill's mind worked and how he, the all-seeing, all-knowing eye, really hadn't known. Ford was an ant (small, unimportant, abstract) who had become a favored pet (important, beloved, mine), nearly an equal. And he would be an equal if he could just take that last step. (Every inch the Muse he had claimed to be.) The saying goes that if you can't beat ‘em, join ‘em. And Ford did. Cosmic fire burning in his veins and a whole spectrum of unseen colors and sounds and perceptions that bombarded his new senses. Screams of agony as the power he was given destroyed him, because the birth of a god is a destructive thing. (Every inch the demon he'd always been.) When his brother opened the portal, they changed the world together.

[canisalbus]

the anon saying they wish vaschete were plushies inspired me

.

[dykedvonte]

Love that in New Vegas you can like personally and permanently fuck over your human companions:

You can destroy the Brotherhood of Steel which Veronica still considers her family despite their differences. On top of that you can kill Elijah and Christine, the latter not being necessary or beneficial to you at all.

You can set up Cass and take her to the Silver Rush to be killed by Jean-Baptiste. Which is extra cruel cause you can literally only do it by first getting her to sell out to the people who tried to kill her in the first place.

You can put more innocent blood on Boone’s hands and fuck with his head more by having him kill his former best friend who is the last person he is implied to have any sort of relationship with outside the Courier.

You can literally sell Arcade into slavery to the Legion in where his hatred for every single one of them is so strong he literally disembowels himself as a final fuck you and so he doesn’t have to spend one more second there.

Not to mention how you can just ignore ED-E, Lily, Rex and Raul’s issues leading them to live their relatively immortal lives full of hardships, unhappiness or inevitable slow deaths. Like it’s not cool but it’s really cool that the game lets you be really awful along with really good.

[toydrill]

i missed drawing venture siblings so bad

[isagrimorie]

Criminal Minds Evolution 17x05 - Conspiracy vs Theory

"Ever since I was arrested, I have sold out every value I've held dear. And when you do that, it gets harder and harder to tell the difference between a 'conspiracy' and a conspiracy theory."

[hunybody]

buck absolutely knows the suicide rates and ptsd statistics re: eddie’s active combat tours. he has those memorized but he never says them out loud because they scare the shit out of him

[achaotichuman]

Cassian strikes me as the kind of guy who would physically overpower Nesta in order to cake her face at their wedding.