#except no because fuck you

[embraceyourdestiny]

to any americans who feel "paralyzed" and "dont know what to do" to help with gaza:

reading a fucking book. i beg of you.

in a time of knowledge suppression is it your duty to arm yourself with knowledge.

read about americas occupations in the middle east.

read about 9/11 from outside of america and see how they inflicted senseless harm and violence to countless amounts of people and have been suppressing your rights for the past 2 fucking decades.

read about any of the countless wars from the past 30 years. especially from a civilian's. and the victims and survivors' perspective. listen to the horror stories and do not plug your fucking ears as to what your country is doing.

and read about fucking gaza and palestine and keep up with what is happening no matter how "sad" or "uncountable" you might get.

dont look away from this.

you dont have the right to be comfortable during countless active genocides.

if you're knowledgeable, you're powerful, and our current state doesnt fucking want that.

you have the power to change things if you open your eyes and scream to the world.

wake the fuck up.

Edit: please check the reblogs there are readings and ways to help

[haunted-xander]

Well, I guess you didn't have much of a choice either

[shivunin]

Because I have just seen this specific thing for the second time, I would like to say:

If I reblog your art, I do not expect you to reblog (or share!) my fic in return

If I comment on your fic, I do not expect you to comment on (or read!) mine in return

My enjoyment of anyone's work does not come with strings or expectations

My friendship is not a bill that you will have to pay later

That's it!

[daftmooncretin]

imagine being scotty in tos. every day your friend group goes on dangerous yet exciting adventures to new planets but you can never go because they always make you babysit the ship. also you have to stay on facetime with them the whole time in case they need a lift. you are the eternal designated driver. the seventh wheel. you dont mind as much as you should though because you sort of want to fuck the ship

[unpretty]

How To RSS: 2023 Edition

An updated version of the guide I keep rewriting even though no one asked.

What is RSS?

Really Simple Syndication. Websites generate feeds, you plug the feeds into your feed reader of choice, you get updates as they happen instead of manually checking bookmarks. If you are using an actual podcasting app instead of spotify, you're already using RSS, because that's how podcasts work. In the same way that you can follow someone's blog and have everything they post appear on your dash instead of manually checking their blogs, RSS lets you build a dash for the entire rest of the internet. Assuming they have an RSS feed. You'd be surprised how many of them do and will learn to be annoyed at any that don't.

Picking an RSS Reader

For the purposes of this post I'm assuming you'll be using inoreader.com, because it's what I use and it has a free option and I'm lazy. Inoreader also has Android and iOS apps, so if you interact with the internet entirely through your phone you can still do all this. The only limitations of a free Inoreader account is that there are ads, and you're limited to 150 feeds. That's still a lot of feeds imho. There are a ton of alternatives and you can look into them if you want but I'm not worrying about that here.

It is unbelievably easy to change your mind later and switch to a different RSS reader without losing anything. Do not get hung up with decision paralysis trying to pick The Perfect App like it's a commitment. You can port everything you do in Inoreader to any other app or website in minutes. It's fine.

Subscribing to the Internet

If I weren't lazy I'd go make a new Inoreader account to walk you through that process but here we are, with me not doing that. Once you make an account, it's probably going to suggest some things for you to follow. You can do that if you want, but the real things you care about are the search bar at the top left and the 'add new' button at the bottom of where all your feeds will go.

For most websites, Inoreader can actually automatically detect any RSS feeds, so you don't have to go hunting them down. I'm going to use my own website for this because fuck you that's why.

If you're using the Android or iOS apps, search is hidden under the 'discover' menu item. When you click on the feed, you'll be subscribed! You can also click the 'add new' button, which will give you a bunch of options, but the one you want is 'Feed'.

A lot of the options listed there are locked behind a pro account, I don't know if they even show up if you're on free and I'm not checking. Once you click 'feed' it just takes you to another search bar, so you honestly might as well just use the search bar up top tbqh. 'Add new' is more useful for creating folders to organize all your stuff.

Mastodon, Cohost, and Tumblr accounts all generate RSS feeds automatically, just enter the URL of whoever you want to follow and the feed will get detected. But on Tumblr specifically, username.tumblr.com/rss will give you a feed of everything, while username.tumblr.com/tagged/fanfic/rss (for instance) will get you a feed of nothing but posts tagged 'fanfic'. This is actually a very useful way of following blogs that post way too goddamn much about things you don't care about.

If Inoreader is having trouble detecting a feed, try searching the website for an icon that looks like this:

That's usually where the feed is hiding. Just copy the URL and paste it into Inoreader to subscribe.

Okay But Now What

NOW YOU WAIT

Or don't, there's probably already recent articles your reader has now been populated with.

I don't remember what the default settings are, mine are currently set to only ever show me unread posts in 'magazine view' which is like a list with a little preview I can scroll through, sorted by oldest first. Clicking on an article opens it up in a reader view.

Personally I'm partial to scrolling through and only opening up things that look interesting to me. If I realize it's actually too long for me to read right that minute, I'll hit the 'read later button' to save it. Once I've scrolled through the whole list, I hit the 'mark all as read' button. But that's just how I do things, I'm an inbox zero kinda bitch.

If you really want to make it feel like Tumblr, you'll have to set it to expanded view and newest first.

In this mode scrolling past articles will mark them as read, but if you set it to still show you articles you've already read that probably doesn't matter as much.

By default most RSS feeds will contain previews of articles rather than the full thing in order to prevent scraping, but here's a fun thing: Inoreader has a 'full article' button that will automatically pull through the article text, and which bypasses a surprising number of paywalls.

A major use case for my RSS reader is webcomics. While a lot of them don't actually display the full image inline, and the full article button doesn't really work with these, it's still nice to get the update notification and opening a new tab to read a comic is not that big a deal imho. Keeping up with webcomics this way is so much easier I can't imagine going back to bookmarks.

There are certain YouTube channels I subscribe to via RSS because I don't want to miss any episodes. You can subscribe to podcasts in Inoreader if you want to. Substack has RSS options for every newsletter that's hosted there. Most news websites have had RSS since forever and every Twitter account you ever followed for news was probably actually just reposting from their RSS reader.

Import and Export

Once you have one RSS reader set up, it becomes super easy to try out every RSS reader you can possibly think of because they all use .OPML files. Except maybe Feedly? Seems like they have a special import option for Feedly. Just another reason to not use Feedly, The RSS Reader For Bootlickers. Anyway Inoreader keeps all that under preferences, in Import, Export, Backup.

The full archive is nice to have, but the OPML file is what you want for quick and easy trying out of different readers. Export the file, import it in whatever alternate reader you want to try, and you will automatically be subscribed to all your feeds. It takes, like. Five minutes. I try out new RSS readers all the time to see if I'll like them. Once you switch to RSS you will marvel that you ever used the internet any other way, and also that everyone else has been putting up with websites and apps that use stupid bullshit to keep them from leaving.

[softpng]

sometimes I think about that guy on amazon who reviewed pride and prejudice and did an entire angry, weirdly math focused rant about how awful darcy is and then ends it all with "I could carve a better man out of a banana"

[ghost-proofbaby]

too sweet (astarion ancunin x reader)

"you know, you're bright as the morning, as soft as the rain. pretty as a vine, as sweet as a grape. [...] you're too sweet for me."

summary: astarion realizes you're too sweet for him, and he probably shouldn't let this go further than necessary. but, oh, he's going to. isn't he? (based on this request and the song 'too sweet' by hozier <3)

pairing: astarion ancunin x gn!reader

warnings: spoilers for games regarding camp dialogue with astarion, discussion of astarion's past trauma, talks of self-loathing/disgust with sex, vague mentions & allusions to sex having been had, manipulation at it's finest! minors dni.

wc: 2k+

a/n: i just wanted to get inside this man's mind when he drops that fucking line the second time he tries to sleep with us/tav. why does his face fall like that? why?

divider by @firefly-graphics <3

As Astarion observes the rise and fall of your chest in the soft morning light, he can only think one thing: shit. He fucked up. 

And he had spent most of the early hours trying to retrace his steps, trying to decipher exactly where his monumental mistake had begun, but it seemed useless. 

It could have been somewhere between the first and third bottle of wine shared with you last night during festivities, where he’d sweet-talked you to the high Hells until you’d agreed to return to his bedroll in the dead of night. Where he’d made the joke that wasn’t all that funny – the joke that he loved you. Three pretty words tried out on his tongue, and they hadn’t been nearly as light-hearted as he’d wanted them to be. More of an experiment, a quick sip to see if he liked the taste. And he had fucked up, because he did like the taste. He liked the sweetness that stuck to every corner of his mouth as he delivered the sugar-coated lie to you, his entire face falling as a new weight appeared in his chest. 

But perhaps it had been the first night he tasted you – well, your blood, that is. The night he’d awoken from a nightmare of Cazador and in his vulnerability, had chosen you as his victim of yet another experiment. A test to see if he was truly free. One drop of a thinking creature’s blood, that was all he needed. But you’d given more than he’d bargained for, and your cloy ichor had coated his taste buds so addictively, and he had just known that night was only the beginning. It was the first time, but certainly not the last. 

He thinks he could drink in whatever you offered him, and only that, for the rest of his days while still finding some sickly, twisted version of reprieve regardless. Not a drop more than he needed, always vying for more. 

He’d be okay with that type of hunger, that type of yearning, and that might have been his first real mistake. 

Or maybe, just possibly, it had been that very first meeting. Maybe he had doomed himself from the moment he’d pressed a blade to your neck, when he had dragged you to the ground with him and felt all that warmth, all that fear, radiating off of you. So frightful, and you still had offered your help to him when it was all said and done. Perhaps that was when he had well and truly screwed himself over. One simple introduction, void of his usual wine and flowers, and he’d locked himself in for pure trouble. 

Not even the fun kind, at that. What a shame. 

At the end of the day, or rather the beginning of the day as it is now, it doesn’t matter where his threads had started to unravel. All that matters is that they were – every carefully thought out line of his plans had all frayed, all detangled from the bigger picture, all because of you. 

Heart of gold, blood of honey. You were far too sweet for him, and he knew it. 

“Having fun, are you?” 

“I am, it’s hard not to with you.”

You’d taken each of his tactics in stride, hadn’t you? Whereas his face had nearly crumbled beneath the weight of that beautiful lie, insides twisting uncomfortable as the humor had slipped through his fingers, your eyes had only glittered as you bit back a smirk. To so lightly tease him, to banter right back with him, instead of see the truth behind it all. He didn’t know if you were simply that naive or if you were another kindred soul – Perhaps you were finding just as much safety, just as much sanctuary, in whatever dance he’d dragged you into. An entanglement of lies, a blithe facade, a daring smile that whispers come now, play with me. 

And play with him, you had. 

You’d played with him, you’d drank with him, and you’d now slept with him. Twice. 

“You’re up early,” your voice murmurs, silken tone cutting through all his racing thoughts. 

He hadn’t even noticed you had stirred, rousing yourself out from underneath his stolen blankets to peer at him curiously as he perched on the edge of the bedroll. As far from you, and as far from your sweetness, as possible. 

“Oh, you know what they say, my dear,” he chirps, rolling his shoulders as the act wraps him back up. The charismatic charmer. The illusive rogue, trained impeccably to coax you in and secure his safety, “No rest for the wicked.” 

He’d awoken before you last time, too. Had watched the sun rise and enjoyed the warmth of it plastering across his skin long before you’d ever woken up. He half-hopes you’ll be less talkative this time; he half-hopes you’ll try to rope him into whatever discussion you can, if only for a few extra seconds of your attention. 

You were too sweet. Too sugary on his tongue, too soothing in his chest. He shouldn’t entertain you – he shouldn’t let this go further than necessary. 

You hum thoughtfully, the blanket slipping and exposing more of your chest. With the light flickering in from his tent’s entrance, he can easily spot those two scarring dots along your jugular where his fangs fit perfectly, “I don’t know if I’d describe you as wicked, lover.” 

“No?” Roped into discussion, it is. “How would you describe me then?” 

He’s not comfortable in this lighting. He feels feverish beneath your steady stare, the way your eyes take their time as you look over every inch of him. The languid observation has him convinced you’re seeing right through him – your glance can pierce right through all his armor and expose every flaw. You see him for the monster he is, you see him for the bitter soul he’s become, you see him as the unworthy spawn he believes himself to be. 

He almost swears that you even see right through his nice, simple plan at hand, not so easily fooled as he had believed you to be. 

“Charming, certainly,” you suddenly sigh, sitting up and keeping your body mostly covered still with that knitted blanket. He’d only snagged it because the shade of the wool nearly matched your eyes – not that he was paying attention to your eyes, of course, “But then again, you’d have to be to have bedded me twice now, wouldn’t you?” 

“We can always make it thrice,” he banters back, ignoring the bile that builds at the insinuation. But if that’s what it takes – laying on his back over and over again – to guarantee your protection, he’ll do it. He’d do it a thousand times over to keep himself as far away from Cazador’s chokehold as possible, “Does that entice you, love?”

When he turns his body fully, beginning a carefully and calculated crawl up the bed roll, ready to slot his body back between your thighs and encourage you to have his way with him, you stop him. The heel of your foot delicately presses against his chest, your head tilted curiously before you shake it. 

“Who’s the eager pup now, Astarion?” 

He likes the way his name drips off your tongue. Almost as if he might be made of the same sugar and spice as you, the same pure honey flowing through your veins also inhabiting his. You say it like a song, articulate it like the sweetest fruit. 

He shouldn’t like it. It shouldn’t be able to overpower his lingering disgust with himself so easily. 

“It’s hard not to be eager when it comes to you,” he says the line with good practice, beckoning a purr to his tone that had always won over the victims he’d entrap in dark taverns back in the city, “I said the Gods had made you just to ruin me, and I meant it.”

He’d meant it more than he’d realized. It wasn’t just your body that had been sculpted to draw him in – it was everything. Your entire aura, your entire glacé demeanor. All that innocence and all that geniality enticed him more than he could ever admit. You were certainly going to ruin him, so wholly and so entirely. You’d already started to, really. 

You don’t respond at first, and he swears he has you. You’re locked in on his distraction, caught up in his web, just as he needs you to be. One lithe hand lifts to your ankle, cool fingers wrapping around your warm skin as he begins to lower his lips, ready to pepper kisses up your leg. Prepared to offer you his mouth, his body, in return for the one thing he needs. Self-loathing be damned. 

Old habits die hard, right along with pride, and he’s not quite ready to bury either at your grave yet. 

But just as he presses the first chaste kiss to your skin, nearly taken back by how your sweetness still breaks through the salty surface, you’re pulling the limb away from him. Your knee draws back and a disarming smile has risen on your cheeks, eyes glittering at him just as they had the night before. 

“I suppose I’ll have to come find you when everyone is asleep, then.” 

“I’ll be waiting.” 

What exactly had he been waiting for? You, of course. But had he been waiting for you to find him solely for what had transpired? To explore your portfolios of talents once more, as he had put it? Or had it been for something more… precarious? 

Was he nothing more than a prey, waiting for you to be his demise? 

Had he actually been waiting for this? 

The challenging look in your eyes as they reflected back stars, the warmth of your skin so close to him he nearly melts into you. The upturn of the corners of your mouth, outlining the way you certainly know something that he doesn’t. A look you wear well, a look that shakes his foundations and rattles his bones. 

“As tempting as you are, I’ll have to decline. Duty calls, as they say.” 

Can you see right through him? 

He should be more deflated when you start going through the motions; he should be pouting or overthinking it all as he watches you gather your clothes once more, covering up the few bite marks of his that litter your skin. Every moment you prepare to leave his tent should be one spent overthinking where he’d gone wrong – why didn’t you want him? Was his plan even going to work? 

Were you truly too sweet for him? Would he have been better off trying to romance the likes of Gale for the safety just shy of his grasp now?

He doesn’t, though. For once, his mind is quiet as he watches you patter about. The bile retreats, the disgust fades. For the first time in a very long time, Astarion is leaving this interaction not feeling used. 

Maybe it’s in the way you cheekily snatch one of his shirts as you both pretend he doesn’t notice it, or maybe it’s in the gentle caress of your fingers through his hair as you pass him to pick back up your discarded weapon. Maybe it’s in every shy glance you offer him, or maybe it’s in your ever present grin. 

Watching you leave should worry him, but it only feels like a breath of fresh air. A wind that comes sweeping in with the promise of next time just as you pull back the flap to his tent. 

And he hadn’t realized he’d been waiting patiently for you to turn back to him until you do just this, offering him one final glance that sets him aflame, “Oh, and before I forget – you can feed on me tonight, if you need to.” 

Heart of gold, blood of honey. He couldn’t say no even if he wanted to.

“Then I’ll see your delicious self tonight,” he takes a pause, one big and unnecessary breath filling his chest alongside that warmth you bring to him. The fearless leader, the kindest soul. His most apt nickname for you yet falls off his lips in a content sigh, “My sweet.”

He shouldn’t entertain you – he shouldn’t let this go further than necessary. 

But he’s going to. Gods, he is going to. 

After all, the sweetest fruits always fall from the most forbidden branches, do they not?

[doghart]

i’m catching up on tsv, i think something that eskew prod does extremely well is using horror absurdism to capture the absurd horror of capitalism. it’s clear in eskew too, but i think it’s especially fantastic in the silt verses. the casualness with which sacrifice is discussed. how red lobster has a god that has and continues to take human sacrifice, and so do cereal companies, cops, and the grueling start up that has a “fun room”. it captures EXTREMELY well how it feels to live under capitalism, that you’re constantly bombarded with horrible things, discussed cheerily in a nice tone. the way it’s simultaneously numbing, hysterical, and horrifying. i think i was especially fond of how in ep 39, protest against sacrifice was taken as radical, a propostorus, idealistic thing that’s just so SILLY it’s not even worth considering, something that feels very real to revolutionary organizing/protest irl. i also liked how despite the face, when everything gets down to it, when everything is about profit, all people come down to are bodies. all capitalism is a gaping maw, and it eats the poor and marginalized first, but doesn’t STOP eating just there. the very literalized version of this, where the profit wheel (and all that includes— war mongering, the prison industrial complex, wage labor, etc) is given a very real literal set of teeth, but the body count is the same. so the electric company has a god, and so it takes humans sacrifice. do real electric companies not have a very real human cost? overworked and underpaid labors looking to make rent, or well off comfortable employees no less likely to get the axe under profit margins, or the blood shed when colonizing in the first place, in clearing the space for the electric company to move in. is that not also a very real human sacrifice? the commercial aimed at elderly people talking about “back in my day, we would just talk about all this human sacrifice and find a compromise :)” is so bleakly hysterical, but is that not very accurate? that you can put a good face on it, but in the end what it comes down to is that you’re being sold the chance to be human fodder? that there is no glory or honor on a battlefield or in working yourself to death, just mud and shit and bodies to throw at problems. idk! i’m rambling but it’s a deeply engaging podcast.

[lambmotifz]

this is a controversial take but i don’t really think sexual wincest dynamic would be the same as the dynamics they have with girls. mostly because this interpretation tends to ignore canonical nuances that define sam and dean’s relationship, which includes dean’s extreme possessiveness, sam’s willing submissiveness with dean (especially when it comes to physical touch), the fact that dean is the only one with whom sam is able to be physically vulnerable in a way he can’t with anybody else, the fact that dean genuinely loves taking care of his little brother. it’s an essential part of their relationship, and it just makes sense for it to be part of their sexual dynamic too

[fellow-meme-lover]

There’s something so sad about Ferrari being Carlos’s dream team and home for the last four years and not once has it ever loved him back. “Our team” and yet he’s constantly excluded from pictures and celebrations, “our team” and yet there’s only like 4 people who show up when he gets a podium, “our team” yet the TP says his wins were because of leclerc’s sacrifices and the CEO was too busy signing LH when Carlos thought he was going to continue with them next year. They never deserved you, Carlos.

[bypatia]

The bjp government introduced the ucc bill in Uttarakhand which has made it mandatory for live in couples to register with the government and a copy of the registration will be sent to respective families. It also added the father as a first class legal heir for inheritance of property, encroaching upon the the right of the mother, wife, daughter (the actual victims of patriarchy, who most likely did not have any social right to gain access to financial independence or inheritance from other family members) to accommodate the father, who more than likely than not already has financial freedom and ownership rights over land property. Moving on, they removed the Muslim personal law, which guaranteed the rights of the daughter in a fixed inheritance percentage. Not to mention the whole act is modelled after hindu personal laws and demanding other religions to bend according to it is inherently regressive no matter how progressive the law on paper looks to be. So should I just bang my head against the wall right now and be done with it or watch as the bjp government slowly sets fire to all our lives?

[jiiyawns]

fight the pain awaaaay

[dumbfucksystem]

imagine if the shen family was actually a part of the mafia. and shen yuan just never knew.

like his Family is rich and they are all super close. he’s even in contact with some of his distant relatives pretty often, which is kinda cool for him, he’s sure that this isn’t the case for most families so he considers himself lucky to know the extent of his family tree. sure, some of them seem to have lost a marble or two but what family doesn’t have a couple oddballs in their midst, you know?

and its not just sy’s comical obliviousness that contributes to this. his family is well aware that sy is not suited for this life style- especially his siblings. they grew up watching him get himself into all sorts of weird situations and putting himself at a disadvantage simply because he’s too nice. he can try and deny it all he wants (just like how he denies he’s gay- c’mon sy everyone can tell you are not straight) but his sense of justice would only burden him if he were to work for the Family. not to mention his sense of self preservation is absolute shit and they don’t want to have to babysit him his whole life- and he probably doesn’t want that either!

so they send him off to college, help him find an apartment, and basically do everything they can to help him start off on his own, away from the Family. his siblings had to do a whole lot of convincing to let this happen btw- this kind of thing usually isn’t allowed, but sy doesn’t know anything that could be used against the Family, so they make an exception in his case. better for them to not have a deadweight sticking around either is what they say but they all dote on him anyways and refuse to admit they care about him. sy definitely picked up this line of reasoning from them btw.

shen yuan is a little upset and confused that his Family seems eager to send him off (it’s not like they can’t afford for him to live with them after all- both of his older brothers still live in the Family’s massive house and even his aunts and uncles are living there??). he manages to recover quickly though. at least now he can read his web novels in piece without prompting any dick jokes (his cousins had a field day when they found his account with all of his pidw comments…). now he just needs to figure out how to live by himself.

it’s not that sy is incapable of taking care of himself- it’s just that he’s so used to having other people with him that he never understood how much they were doing for him until they were no longer around. but that’s fine, living on your own is just another learning curve and sy is willing to rise up to the challenge. which he did, by the way! he found a job and pays his taxes and even though that isn’t much he still gives himself a mental pat on the back for it. he is still in contact with his siblings, he never misses an update for pidw which he totally doesn’t get excited for and his life is going great.

……until he accidentally eats some expired food and dies.

[thebrainrotsreal]

EVIL MARK, EVIL MARK, EVIL MARK!!! I want to be coherent about this season but please picture me foaming at the mouth and running on the walls. S2 being what if Mark's just like his Dad? Insanity. I love this show. Anyways, AU where an Evil!Mark tries to make Our!Mark worse, and Our!Mark tries to make the other better. Something something confronting your idea of the worst version of oneself. Plus, tweaked black and yellow costume because I saw it and immediately went murder hornet lookin' ass and knew I had to draw it. Evil ass Mark. Horrible. I think he should be dragged kicking and screaming into redemption.

[moderndaypandora]

Hob is going to come home one day two months into Dream's retirement (and seven weeks into their marriage) and Dream's going to be full Victorian maiden on the chaise lounge, arm covering his eyes.

Hob, who is not a fool: Want to talk about it, or want to be consumed by the agonies for a little while longer while I prepare dinner? You got groceries, right?

Dream: [horrible groaning dirge of assent]

Hob: I'm starting to get a little concerned, dearest

Dream: I went out to. Obtain groceries. And the woman at the till said 'enjoy your food'.

Hob: And you said?
 Dream: "My thanks. you as well."

Hob: My poor love. Have a kiss to ease the sting.

Dream: [accepting the forehead kiss as his due] I can't go back to that grocery store in this lifetime.

Hob: Understandable.

Dream: Can we fake our deaths tomorrow?

Hob: Give me two weeks to wrap everything up, then we can.

Dream: <3

[crunchchute]

Sam and Max if they were cool /j