#even though people probably don't care

[arohuacheng]

imagining the story from pei ming's perspective is rlly funny i think. this god from all that time ago ascends again (you were there for the first two times) and immediately waltzes into a situation that fucks something up for your descendant (putting both of your reputations on the line, messing up how hard your descendant worked to become a god and how hard you worked to ensure that he would have that chance) and then refuses to let you smooth the situation out and on TOP of that your friend's little sister (who hates you and who you are trying to look out for by request of your friend) is on your case about it too. so you've gotta work all that out and then like. you chill for a little bit (still kind of upset about your descendant) until your friend undergoes a heavenly calamity. and then in the space of like A Day the god from earlier shows up again with a fucking ghost king, your friend dies, the little sister you're supposed to be looking out for disappears, and everything just kinda goes to shit. so you're like. grieving. trying to process everything. until your OTHER close friend goes off the fucking rails with the spirit of that guy she murdered, and then you get called out to the spooky ghost mountain where you're confronted with the girl whose death YOU were essentially responsible for and have never really come to terms with, and then like. you just kind of hang out with these gay people until everything resolves itself. fight some ghosts. fight the heavenly emperor. get your friend to stop being evil for a little while so she can fix the filing systems. and then you just have to keep being the god of love i guess

[feroluce]

Thinking tonight about Caelus, and the nature of his loss and his grief after the Everything that went down in Penacony during 2.0.

Because Acheron, Black Swan, and Misha kind of knew of Firefly, they at least met her, but they didn't like really know her, and Caelus never even got the chance to introduce her to the rest of the Astral Express Crew. The only person who would have talked to her much was Sparkle, who is. Probably not really someone Caelus is interested in grieving with skznmsks

Anyway, all this to say, I like thinking about how alone poor Caelus is in his grief, because he was the only one who knew Firefly. He's the only one really mourning her. There's no one to talk about her with. There's no stories to trade or memories to reminisce with anyone over. It's not as though he knew her for long, but still. No one else knew her at all.

And I love the thought of all of this coming bubbling up, hot and acidic and bitter, during a conversation with Sampo, who Caelus just so happens to run into in the Golden Hour. Poor Sampo is kinda blindsided, he knew shit was going down in Penacony, but yeesh. And he just. Isn't quite sure what to say about it all, because he's never really encountered this before. His feelings about the Masked Fools are...a mixed bag, but he's been a part of them for a very long time, and when you're with a close organization like that, it's hard to feel alone, in grief or otherwise.

So Sampo sits there on their little bench that the two of them have occupied, and he thinks of his old friend April, how she'd died in his arms cackling and spitting her own blood after a heist gone wrong, and how after he'd dragged himself back to the World's End Tavern they'd all held a Fool's Funeral- which is basically just a big party where everyone gets really really drunk and reminisces and toasts the dead and celebrates their life.

He still thinks about her a lot, and he remembers how the time he'd most keenly felt her absence was on Jarilo-VI, the one place where he couldn't talk about her because he couldn't say anything to give himself away as an alien. The Fools still tell stories about her every time he goes back to the Tavern. His first toast of the night is always in her name. Even now, all these years after she'd died, Sampo is still learning new things about her. He's never had to grieve her alone.

Caelus doesn't have any of that.

He might never have that. As they speak, Caelus has no proof that Firefly was even her real name, or if she dreamt with her true appearance. He might not ever find out who she even was.

And just imagining that kind of loneliness hollows out a strange little pit, right behind his sternum, deep between his ribs.

So Sampo claps Caelus' shoulder and offers him a deal. Come find him outside of the dream. He knows a guy who can get them a lot of beer for really cheap-

("Is that guy you and your five finger discounts?" "Whatever do you mean, dear friend, I don't even know the meaning of the phrase, hehee.")

-and they can hole up in a bar or a hotel room or something, and get completely shitcanned. Tell him all about Firefly, tell him everything, and he'll tell Caelus about April and everyone else he's ever lost. Sampo will carry Caelus' memories of Firefly with him, and at least this way, Caelus will be a little less alone in remembering her. And the next time they cross paths, Sampo will be the one to bring her up, and to tell her stories, and Caelus can get to be the one listening. He won't have to be the only person to talk about her anymore.

Caelus rolls his eyes when Sampo avoids another remark about sticky fingers, but...ok, yeah. That sounds good. Nice, even. Thank you. Caelus bumps his shoulder against Sampo's. Sampo bumps back.

(They find each other again the next day, and true to their word, get themselves completely and utterly shitcanned. Caelus talks more than Sampo has ever heard him; every minute detail, every word choice, Firefly's every odd little mannerism and habit. Because Caelus wants to make sure this will outlive him, that even if the Stellaron dwelling within him finally burns him to a crisp and he really does up and kick the bucket, or even, godforbid, if he forgets, he wants to make sure someone remembers her. She deserved that.)

((And it takes quite a while, after that. Caelus doesn't see Sampo again until after everything has settled down. On his last day in Penacony, he finds the guy slinking out of a seedy back alley and all but runs right into him. Sampo happily leads him to some dive bar in an even seedier back alley that Caelus has never even heard of, and Sampo raises his glass. "To Firefly! Who sounds like she probably would have hated me at first, but I would have liked to have met her anyway."

And Caelus stares at him, almost looking startled, long enough that Sampo worries that he's read him wrong and brought this up too soon. He's halfway into planning how to talk himself out of this situation when Caelus finally throws back his head back and laughs, tells him that yeah, Firefly would have politely called him out on every lie he told, and all their conversations would take twice as long with the way Sampo is so full of shit.

And he can see it, the same way he watches and sees through everyone, that Caelus' eyes have a tightness to them, his knuckles are nearly white around the handle of his mug. But he smiles. He hits his glass against Sampo's far too hard and throws it back and gets foam everywhere like he does every time they drink because the guy's about as elegant as a raging bull, but those things don't lessen the genuineness of his smile.

The grief is there, but so is the elation, and those emotions aren't a sliding scale between one or the other. It is all of both and both at once, and that's what contents Sampo enough to throw his own mug back when Caelus makes a toast of his own, "to April!!".))

[icewindandboringhorror]

Hrmm... put together a roommates quiz finally after years of thinking it would be an interesting idea lol.. Though obviously not meant to be taken super seriously, I just like thinking about this aspect of personality compatibility. Like yeah, maybe you could get along with someone just chatting with them, but living together is such a different thing. .. curiouse...

[unproduciblesmackdown]

rhetorically: is there a standard for how to treat people based on universally recognizing their personhood, or is there the idea that how we treat people should be determined by our assessment of their vibe or whether we like them based on their harmless behaviors

ppl will posit "politically, you should lend this support to even individuals you don't like" while also positing "if you don't [engage in behavior they deem likable] how do you expect any support XD"

are people required to move from a status of "less deserving" to "adequately deserving" based on others' assessments of their likability, what essential job interview performance are they supposed to do with whom to be judged, who's getting to judge, why are they getting to judge.

the application of the twin experiences of being autistic in general and being abused interpersonally (and, i mean, societally) wherein ofc you're not "likable" and ofc the abusive treatment towards non normative nd existence is framed as "well what do you expect when you Won't Just [do things the way i want you to / think is correct]." people questioning what "community" or "relationship" is meant to mean, politically.

thinking how common social isolation (not the quarantine sense) actually is, and how people may recognize this isn't ideal and don't posit that like i guess all these people are losers who bring it upon themselves and also shouldn't have any support in their life if they have no personal friends, while also apparently embracing the idea that people they think act wrong will put other people off and isolate themselves. like how abuse needs isolation and the people abusing aren't the more isolated ones, even if you think "well ppl who are bad and act wrong? will be alone b/c no one likes them." like how behavior that abuses & harms is framed as disabled (with a pathologized view of disability ofc) while it's disabled ppl more likely to be abused & harmed, actually.

all like about how you have to Prove Yourself win people over and mask and talk and be popular and approved of and not Weird and [interpretations of nd existence as rude / hostile / mean / etccc] and/or perhaps you have to seem sympathetically admirable or sympathetically pitiable and if you don't make eye contact and befriend everyone around you how do you expect to not be left to die

[monty-glasses-roxy]

I just had the funny thought of Roxy lowkey 'abusing' her power as a security node to allow herself a little pettiness by eventually figuring out how to ban Gregory off EVERY attraction of the PizzaPlex, INCLUDING THE FREDDY-CENTERED ONES, since she is part of the security while Freddy isn't. Now they might figure out a way to undo this in some areas, but it would still be inconveniencing them for at least a couple hours which Roxy takes as a win. Or, when it happens they can tell who is responsible and have to figure out a way to make Roxy undo it, which I highly doubt she'd do without some demand or strings attached.

Oh she's absolutely abusing her security power for this and everything else ever lmao

It would be pretty funny if they can't override it at all and had no idea what the problem is. She doesn't even have to just ban him! There's normally at least two or three doors in halls and rooms on your way into the attractions, so she could fuck with him way more here. He can't get through one of the doors for ages and she randomly unlocks it when he's trying to fix it so he thinks he found the solution... only to get stuck by the next door. He goes back through the previous door a few times before that one stops working again too. And oh hey! This door is opening now, but it's only opening far enough to stick his hand under it at most! Sometimes the doors work, sometimes they don't, and neither Gregory nor Freddy know what the fuck is happening, cause Freddy has the same problem now lmao

Freddy asking Roxy is she knows what's going on cause she usually knows when something's wrong. She answers like "oh that's soooo weird... none of us are having that problem that's wiiilldd..." Doesn't even try to cover it up that she's messing with them cause what are they gonna do? Override her? Good luck with that!

Why just doors though? She could be a little shit in other ways too I bet. Interferes with Gregory's Fazwatch a little bit so when he calls Freddy from Mazercise or wherever, Freddy thinks he's in Gator Golf. She could randomly make it start blasting Never Gonna Give You Up, and if they don't know she can do that, they'd have no idea what's going on lmao

He tries to find anyone on the cameras and they just don't work all of a sudden. That's soooo weird! It's such a mystery that he hasn't seen Roxy on these things since that night!

That could be what gives her away, but they can't prove anything so they can accuse all they like lmao. They keep trying to catch her out but they don't know how she's doing it or where she's hiding out to do it. Can't track the signal cause they don't have that kind of clearance. They try to get her back too by banning her from various Plex areas but like... obviously the security animatronic can just... bypass that...

It's not like she's hurting them or anything! She's just waging psychological warfare on them for shits and giggles! She's inconveniencing them at best and it's driving them up the wall cause they can't figure out how to stop her lmao

What would she even demand from them to make it stop? Would she even want anything, or would this be entertainment enough for her to just keep playing the clueless innocent card in the most unconvincing way possible? They know it's her but they can't prove it and get her into trouble for it and she's living for their frustration over it.

Bonus: She doesn't even watch most of the time. She could potentially have randomised how the doors react to both of them so they can lose their marbles with minimal effort on her part. She's absolutely this petty lmao

Maybe she locked Freddy out of his own attraction and his room in Rockstar Row too. I bet she's done that a good few times. A bunch of kids staring at him as he struggles to open the door and he has to very awkwardly pretend he's lost his keys or something, only for it to open when he leans on it so he falls on the floor. What's the point in all this power if she can't be funny and abuse it, right?

[raifuujin]

It’s done!

The directory of all the various DC related books (that I own) has been completed!

Not all of the scans are mine, when other people have shared for the main series and spinoffs over the years, but a very solid chunk are my scans of all the ‘unimportant’ material. (If other people had good scans, I opted to save my own time, even if I could scan my own copies, basically.) And now it’s all fairly organized in one easy access list!

Includes: Conan, Kaito, Yaiba, the novels, movie manga, educational manga, activity books, tokubestuhen, archives, game guides, etc.

Now that it’s caught up, I’ll try to keep it up to date when I get more books in the future.

[dawntheduckrb]

I'll stop posting wips eventually but it's been five days since I've said anything and I don't want anyone to think I'm dead/dying/stuck in a ditch and withering away, so here's 10% of the reason I disappeared (the duck is stuck in rendering hell) (and my little baby laptop is screaming at me every time I open up this file)

I might still be mostly lurking for a little bit so please be patient with me in the meantime 🙏🙏

[void-botanist]

Rose's Kiss Week Day 6: Home Alone

OCs: Sierra Callawel and Ian Carlisle (Spinder's oldest sister and her husband)

Words: 1189

Content warnings: none

Notes: Ian's canid form is a common raccoon dog. It is also well-known that shifting to that form makes you itchy.

When Sierra looked up from her computer, she could see the full moon hanging too-large over the faraway trees outside her window.  She’d lost track of time.  Ian would be transformed, now, and she hadn’t seen him at all.  She locked her computer and stood up.  The kids were out, so making a circuit of the house wouldn’t draw them out of their rooms and interrupt the nice night she wanted to spend alone with her husband.

“Ian?” she called as she started up the stairs.  “Where are you?”

She heard a mournful squeaky-toy noise from somewhere down the hall and smiled to herself as she went to find the source of it.  When she flipped on the light in her bedroom, she got a louder and angrier squeak from the bed, where a golden brown and black fluff of a dog was burying his little face under his front paws.

“Sorry,” she said, going to turn on her bedside lamp before turning off the overhead light.  He didn’t raise his head until she sat down on the side of the bed, and then he tried to crawl in her lap immediately.

Laughing, she held him back gently and got fully onto the bed, leaning back against the headboard before she let him snuffle his way into her space.  He seemed content to put his paws across her legs and rest his head on them, but she scooped him up all the way, holding him close against her.  His response was to put his paws on her arm and set his head there instead.  He was probably just tired after transforming, but he always looked so cute and sad in his dog form, and it made her want to hug him tighter.  So she did, pressing her cheek to the top of his fuzzy little head and then kissing him there.  He let out a longer squeak, stretching his neck out further, and as she petted his head she followed his gaze to the brush he’d set out for her.  Oh, of course.  Grabbing it was a bit of a stretch, and she almost dumped him out of her arms accidentally, but once it was in her hand she settled him in her lap and began running it through his fur in long strokes, head to rump.  Instantly he was a dog-shaped puddle in her lap, his only reaction little snuffles of pleasure.  

When she paused to pull out the mat of hair that had collected in the brush, he rolled over onto his back, cradled in her crossed legs.  She scratched behind his ears while she drew the brush along the contours of his ribcage and haunches and arms.  He didn’t even tense as she carefully brought it over his neck and chin.  As soon as she set the brush aside, though, he was getting back out of her lap, jumping down onto the floor with a cacophony of clicking nails and pausing in the doorway to look back at her.  She smiled and followed him back downstairs to the kitchen, where he waited by the table while she got their dinner out of the fridge: sliced chicken, lentils, and a touch of cranberry sauce.  For him, at least.  She could have as much as she wanted.  His was already in a bowl, so once she pried off the lid she set it in front of him on the floor.  He wagged his tail but didn’t move.  While she made her own plate from the main bowls of food, she saw him bend down and sniff his bowl, his eyes never leaving her.  

“You can start without me,” she said.  

He made a sound somewhere between a shriek and a growl and sat straight again. With a laugh she returned the food bowls to the fridge and brought her plate to the table.  

“Blessed be the fruits of the earth, and us among them,” she said, and he squeaked out the same cadence before shoving his face in his bowl.  She ate with half an eye on him inhaling his food, mostly because his enthusiasm was adorable.  

On the way back to bed she carried him up the stairs, letting him jump down on the bed before she got into her pajamas.  He didn’t stay on the bed, though, since she had to go to the bathroom to brush her teeth and he apparently had the energy now to not let her leave his sight.  He brushed against her ankles where she stood in front of the sink, hopped in the bathtub, and started rolling around on the textured treads on the bottom of it.  That was why he was accompanying her.  He’d told her before that there was something sublime about the feeling of the bathtub treads specifically that he really couldn’t explain.  He didn’t feel that way about them in human form.  She didn’t care as long as he didn’t leave his fur in the tub, though she was often the one who cleared it out to take a shower anyway.  But it was worth it to see him being so happy in there.  When she left the bathroom, he followed, and she scooped him back onto the bed.  He curled up right next to her while she read her book for a bit.  After she turned out the light, he yipped along with her presleep prayer, and she gave him a last pet on the head before relaxing into the dark.

At the crack of dawn the sudden weight on the bed woke her.  In the light that sifted around the edges of the curtains she could see Ian, now fully human, getting under the covers.  He turned his back to her—he might not even remember that his transformation always woke her up—but she came over to him anyway, putting a hand on his side as she kissed his shoulder.  When he shifted onto his back, she kissed his scratchy cheek, then gave him a peck on the lips before leaning back on her elbow to look at him.  There was always something a little canine about him to her, but it was stronger when he’d just come back—the way he blinked at her like a sleepy dog melded with the way he still smelled of fur.  And it was his smell, because he smelled the same if she met him in the middle of the hallway, or raiding the fridge downstairs.  After he took a shower it would fade, but for now she breathed it deeply.  She could never explain it to anyone but him, but these were the hours when he smelled most like himself, like her Ian.    

His hand slipped into the curls at the back of her head, guiding her into a deeper kiss.  She wrapped an arm around his warm chest as he smoothed his other hand over her shoulder.  He kissed her a second time, then ever so gently pushed her away.  

“Okay, I’m sleeping now,” he said with a tired smile.

She caressed his cheek, then laid back on her side of the bed.  “Goodnight.”

RKW taglist: @jezifster @kk7-rbs @vacantgodling

Shifters taglist: @outpost51 @kk7-rbs

[trans-cuchulainn]

saw your post about reading a book in a medieval setting that didn't seem to mention christianity at all. i love medieval historical settings but i dont often find anything where the setting contributes meaningfully to the plot, or where daily life is faithfully represented to some degree. i know it's a high bar but name of the rose is the only really good one I've found. do you have any novels with medieval settings you do recommend?

i enjoyed the story of silence by alex myers for the medievalism of its setting. it is, as the title suggests, a retelling of a medieval text, so i would've been pretty damn disappointed if it didn't lean heavily into its medievalisms. in particular it makes a lot of use of the cultural christianity of the setting e.g. using paternosters to mark time, days being divided by services, knowing the time because of church bells, lodging with a religious order while travelling, etc -- all the things the other book i was talking about notably omitted (made more pronounced by the fact that i read the two one after the other)

could honestly not tell you how much i enjoyed the rest of it because my brain yeets every piece of information about a book from my mind as soon as i finish it lol. it left a fairly positive impression in my brain though.

there were a lot of medieval-set books that i read as a child which i enjoyed and which felt realistic to me then/when i've reread them, but i don't know how they'd hold up compared to modern research! e.g. i loved the load of unicorn by cynthia harnett, and rosemary sutcliff is always a good time

i don't know of many other recent publications (esp. adult fiction) that have a strongly medieval setting that aren't also a retelling of a medieval text though, but that is partly because i have avoided reading quite a lot of pseudomedieval books because so many of them have caused me suffering. i also don't read a lot of Pure Historical novels like your bernard cornwells or whatever, i'm not really into big chunky novels about real historical events, i want pacey genre fiction in a medieval setting if that makes sense. but probably there are some better-researched books in that genre for the purely medieval details

the book i was vagueing about was a "historical" romance novel that had clearly been a fantasy romance novel at some point earlier in its life (judging by the acknowledgments) which the author had retrospectively attempted to set in the fourteenth century with what seemed like almost zero research into what material culture and everyday life in the fourteenth century would be like, let alone how people would experience and express emotions

tbh it was massively disappointing because so many historical romance novelists put a shitton of research into their regency/victorian romance novels and i wish we could have a medieval romance novel that did the same instead of half-arsing it! or i wish that author had left their book as a fantasy romance novel so that i could have still enjoyed everything else about it :( alas. i will just continue to think resentful thoughts in the direction of that book whenever i see it in shops or in rec lists lol

oh ETA: it's ages since I read it but I remember Hild being pretty solid for early medieval vibes? and the sequel just came out so I will probably try to reread it at some point and give an updated opinion

[starpros-sunshine]

When others enjoy things in an overly emotional and enthusiastic way I find it tacky and rebarbative. When I do the exact same thing though it's different. Then it's appropriate and justified. Obviously.

[advisorsage]

I think I've fucked up

[barbieaiden]

today i dreamt that my i found my hamster now, a year later, and that she was somehow still alive and absolutely thriving on her own

[chuthulhu-reads]

[ID: Five panels from Trigun Maximum. The first shows Milly and Meryl looking up at something, startled. The second shows Wolfwood hovering around a corner, peering out from behind it. The third shows a closer up image of Wolfwood peering around the corner, a serious look on his face as he says, "Booze? Him? First thing in the mornin'? Ya gotta be kiddin'..." The fourth panel shows Vash crouching on the ground, a really awkward face smile on his face as he looks down on his coat, which has been splashed with whisky from a broken bottle. He's sort of laughing, the speech bubbles saying "Ha... heh heh..." but he doesn't really look happy. The fifth panel is a close-up of Vash's face as he slurps some of the spilled whisky off of his glove. Despite being close up, his face is so heavily shaded that it's almost impossible to make anything out. His left eye is sort of visible, closed and curved as if he might be smiling, but that's really not the vibe. End ID.]

I know I yell a lot about Nightow ruining my health and happiness but Colourless Expression really is such an INTENSELY impactful character chapter about SUFFERING. These people drink a lot for fun (can't blame 'em, given where they live) but in the aftermath of remembering about July Vash is day drinking to cope--and his friends don't even know he's been drinking until now. FUCKING OUCH