#i didn't say it was gonna be happy LOL

[skitskatdacat63]

Mark Alan, Count of Queanbeyan

+ explanation & lore

Okay first I'll explain the drawing itself, and then go into Mark's lore a bit, so stay with me!!!

First of all, yep. Mark with long hair. When I first conceptualized how he'd look in this au, I just genuinely could not imagine him with the typical long curly wig. And that irked me, bcs its just sooooooo historically inaccurate for him to have had short hair, no wig. I sketched him and Jense out as chibis, I drew Mark with short hair, and literally wrote "haha wow he looks so bad with long hair!!" Hello, can I take back that statement? It's actually shocking how good he looks???? Maybe it's a testament to my skill that I could make this work. But I did! And man, shameful to admit, but this might be my best portrait ever 😭😭 Funny tho, guy I've barely drawn, and never as detailed as this, ends up being one of my favs. Mark, you bastard!!

^ lmao as you can see, I tried out a more Seb type wig and then realized ahhhhh nah, he needs a different style. And it worked so, yay!!! I've thought a lot recently, "man it would suck back then if you looked shitty in a wig" and I rescind that. I'm telling you, you think a man would look bad in a wig? I say think again, you're just not conceptualizing the right type of wig for him.

Also wow, its crazy thst I can finally actually visually see what he would look like next to others like Seb and Fernando in this au. Hehehe look at them!!! The boys!!!! Just need Jense :,)

Anyways, I digress, some lore notes about Mark since I don't think I've really talked about him in this au on main much.

He is, of course, Seb's closest servant. His Groom of the Bedchamber(yes that term makes me feel rabid.) He's actually also based on a real guy, whom was described as the Emperor's "favorite" and despite not technically having very important positions, he had a lot of influence because of his closeness and connection with the Emperor. So, yeah, I think that's gives a pretty good pic of Mark in this au :)

He's actually pretty satisfied with his role, but he does feel a bitter and jealous when interacting with others like Jenson and Fernando. Because Mark doesn't have a title, well not in the same way. He's a count, not a King, not a Prince. Yes he's nobility, but not in the same way. And he's satisfied being under Seb, because that's what Mark was raised to do, take care of and keep Seb in line. But often realizes he's never going to be on par with him, not in the same way Fernando can, even if he's Seb's closest confidant.

To build on that. He's very satisfied with his role, and even continues to be satisfied when Fernando comes into the picture. Fernando and Seb don't get along, Mark is always going to be the closest to Seb, always going to know him the best, take care of him the best. But he realizes, he would never get to marry Seb, he's not ranked high enough for that. He was raised to do what's best for the Emperor, he's never going to be able to compete with Seb the same way Fernando can. He really wants Seb and Fernando to succeed! To grow closer! But it still really hurts sometimes.

His closest friend, other than Seb, is Jenson of course(and eventually Fernando, after they stop growling at each other like they're Seb's dogs.) But he does get bitter about Jenson sometimes. Jenson is a prince, who had some great performances in battle. But eventually got tired of that lifestyle, and "retired" to being part of Seb's court. Mark can't really understand that. How do you throw that level of prestige and freedom away. How do you just become the Emperor's servant, when that was never what you were born for. But also, I think Jense definitely uplifts him, they just get along so well, and Jense truly cares for him, no other motives :)

LOL sorry I realize how depressing this sounds 😭 I think all of the above is just Mark at his most bitter, but he's genuinely pretty happy. Think of the whole "not bad for a number 2 driver thing", that's him in this AU. He knows his station, and god damn it, he's gonna be the best, most loyal groom there ever was!! He just cares for Seb so deeply, and it truly is his life path to serve him. Seb cares for him too, feels like he can always rely on him and always be reassured by him and his eternal presence in Seb's life. It's nice to have someone you can always fall back on. Sometimes literally. Yes he makes Mark carry him to bed.

Not to stray away from just Mark, but aaaaahhh the Martian in this AU. Just Mark having to put up with Seb's brattiness all the time, and care for him all the time :) He's so tired of catching Seb naked tho...Seb please put clothes on, this is not befitting of your station. Seb takes Mark with him everywhere, and they share the same bed on trips. Mark is always the first Seb goes to to ask his opinion. I said earlier that Mark feels like he cannot challenge Seb in the same way Fernando can, but Seb really wants him to honestly! He loves hearing Mark's thoughts and opinions. Mark is widely known as Seb's favorite, and is often seen as the second authority in the palace and in the court.

As for Webbonso? I think they really dislike each other in the beginning just because the roles that they're in. They both feel like they're pitted against each other, and ir doesn't help that Seb loves to tease them and often favor one in front of the other(he later realizes how shitty this is, and tries to rectify it, because he never intended to make them actually jealous, he just loves being bratty.) Eventually they realize they're in extremely similar situations(both beholden to and stuck eternally with the Emperor), and find comfort in each other in that.

Yep that's right...the palace is honestly one big polycule djkfkglg. But I hope thay explains Mark in this AU well enougg???? All you need to know: Seb's long-suffering servant.

[flamestar126]

Snuggling near the fire

Click for better quality

[unproduciblesmackdown]

excerpts from the Lambda Literary Award winning 2 Trans 2 Furious: an extremely serious journal of Transgender Street Racing Studies

[lesbiankordian]

WE JUST GOT THE VOLUME 23 COVER?!!!

NOT ONLY IS THERE OUR ANGEL KENJI BUT ALSO CHUUYA. I REPEAT WE GOT VAMPIRE CHUUYA ON THE COVER

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

"i know we shouldn't be killing rhea and i personally am against it and my gut tells me this is wrong but i'll do it anyway because nobody else uses logic on this route anyway!"

[what-is-it-to-be-pk-esque]

My partner finally finished BG3 but has no idea that his ending was actually bad cause he was a pro-Vlaakith githyanki who rode off with Lae'zel but got NO EPILOGUE where Withers points out y'all died im 😭😭😭

they have no idea what happened with Gale or anyone else (who was still alive) after flying away 🙃🙃🙃

[keeps-ache]

Shye + Captain :>

[underlying glitch below]

[ladsofsorrow24]

the latest chapter

[xxlovelynovaxx]

Thinking more about the rude anons lately and just... what kind of person do you have to be to go to a random stranger's inbox, assume you know enough about them to tell them they're crazy, or that they need therapy because you disagree with them saying "actually, you should listen to marginalized people about their own oppression and experiences", or that they're a pick-me for using microlabels well-accepted and defended by the community they belong to, or...?

What kind of convoluted reasoning do you have to have, what kind of self-awareness do you have to lack, to think you're somehow doing justice by saying that psych should be used as a tool by majority society to force conformity on anyone who harmlessly annoys you or makes you uncomfortable, and yet not see that historically that's how it's been and continues to be used (in ways that likely actively harm them too)?

How little do you know about psychiatry to not understand that very little of it actually overlaps with neurology, both being infant sciences, and that psychiatry as its intended separate from ableism and capitalism is simply the science of listening to people's internal thoughts and emotions and recording commonalities?

Or to not understand that since its conception, psychiatry has had a proud and storied tradition of able-minded and able-bodied neurotypicals patronizing and infantilizing us and encoding their biases on our perspectives into diagnostic manuals that they then used to imprison, torture, and kill us and other marginalized people? And then to not recognize that doing so as a neurodivergent disabled person only aids and upholds that institution?

On the other hand, what kind of justifications does one have to make to themself to say "actually, this other part of this marginalized community is the only authority on this because they are the only ones really oppressed. It's definitely not circular logic to say that all of your claims of oppression are wrong because you're not oppressed and people who are not oppressed can't claim they're oppressed"?

Plenty of these anons have been so vague I don't even know what they're annoyed about. I know the aphobic one was about a microlabel (and a fairly well known one at that, so probably your average mogai-hater guy) but the others?

"Get help" so you endorse coercive enforcement of a consensus standard of normalcy even when the deviancy you so violently despise, in your own words, is merely annoying?

"I'm just concerned, you're out of touch with reality, spend less time online", somehow you managed to hit ableism, sanism, and some pretty wild assumptions about who I am as a person when you yourself admit you came from a random reblog of mine, all at once! Like truly, what gives you the gall to presume you know anything about my life?

I'd even be willing to extend good faith and say it's reasonable to assume honesty of everyone you meet on the internet. Even with that...

Do I buy my food at a farmer's market or a local employee owned chain grocery store or a supercorp and would that last option be out of ignorance, apathy, or living in a food desert? How often do I go to the local library, what do I do there, and do I get there by bus, uber, a friend driving me, or walking/biking?

What organizations do I volunteer with, and in what capacity/doing what tasks? If I tell you that I volunteer primarily in an online capacity, is it because I'm immunocompromised and no one masks at the physical locations anymore, because my doctor is refusing to provide a mobility aid that I desperately need, because public transport is sensory and chronic pain hell, because public transport here requires a four hour round trip just to get to the Walmart seven miles away, because the primary international org I support doesn't have US locations, because we're in a heat wave that is exponentially deadly to me due to my disabilities, or because I'm simply too sick to leave the house at all most days?

Who are my friends and family? When and where and how do I love them? How much time have I spent helping my incredible partner do the hard, hard work of learning to love herself and to heal, and how many infinities more would I pour into it? How often do I play fortnite with our best friend even though I DESPISE fortnite, just because I love him so much? How many times do I use most or all of my spoons for the day fighting executive dysfunction so I can read another of my best friend's amazing fics, sometimes for fandoms I'm not even in, just to leave comments to build them up?

(Is our landlord fucking us over because we're poor, trans, or disabled? Seriously, I'd like to know, because if it's either of the second, we could sue for damages and get the fuck outta here.)

I mean, that's just it. You don't know me, and I don't know how you can convince yourselves that you do enough to waste both our time being - well, an annoyance! Like, this is not a vent post, I've made those already, I just truly don't get it.

I mean, do you get some trivial satisfaction of feeling like you've done your social justice for the day by telling some random stranger that they're "insane"?

Does it make you feel superior to tell said stranger that they think non-aspec queers are "whores" for having sex, ignoring their near-CONSTANT aggressive posting about the importance of sex positivity and the harm of whorephobia, puritanism, culturally christian ideals of sex as "sinful", and how this impacts ace people, aro people, genderqueer people, and people of queer sexualities?

(Seriously, how do you act like you know me when ignoring my entire blog? Are you lost?)

Does it make you feel like a good little activist to tell disabled people to touch grass, and ignore every disabled person saying "uh, hey, you should consider the ableist intent behind that statement, or at the very least the ableist impact it has"?

Are you coming from a place of privilege or hurt? Or a mix of both? Are you someone who is not marginalized who is still dealing with genuine problems that aren't being listened to and addressed by the people in your life? Are you a marginalized person who is caught up in the conflation of privilege and oppression and evil, so you're too afraid to recognize your own privilege because that wouldn't be a morally neutral fact but evidence that you're an irredeemably bad person?

Are you a person with a mix of marginalized and nonmarginalized identities (white and trans, goy and plural, perisex and queer) who isn't able to get enough help with the harm you do face and is worried that you'll receive less help within your community if you're seen as an evil oppressor, not recognizing that there are people already receiving even less help and more hurt in your community due to the opposite?

People can say "it's not that complicated", but the truth is, people don't do things for no reason. They may not be self-aware enough to identify it, the people around them rarely have enough context to guess at it, but it's there.

It could be petty; they don't like us and want to make it our problem out of spite. "You wasted our time and made us moderately annoyed so we wanna do the same to you."

It could be out of some twisted sense of justice. Maybe they truly believe they're doing good. A lot of people do. Hell, I believe plenty of r//adfems actually believe they're fighting for women, and very few actually recognize the fascism in their own arguments, in the ones they ally with, or anything. It's a much more extreme example than some rando on tumblr, but the same could apply at a much smaller scale.

But is there some other motivation I'm missing?

I just - I've sent anons and non-anomymous asks when I didn't understand an argument being made for something. If I disagree with someone on something unimportant, I'll either leave it, reblog a joke about it, or block them if I find them annoying enough. If it's something important that they're approaching in good faith, which I assume to the extent of my ability to do so, I'll try to engage without being an asshole.

If it's important and they're engaging in bad faith, I may either reblog a rebuttal or make my own post, but I'll certainly block them - because what's the point in continuing to argue with someone whose goal is to undermine someone's personhood (or the fee things of similar weight) by any means necessary?

I just truly don't understand. Anyone's welcome to contribute to this, btw.

As an afterthought, this anon hate is bigoted, so I don't want to trivialize it. Ableism, sanism, and aphobia are still a big deal even when they are online microaggressions, not just because they cause harm but because these people exist offline and have a material effect on the physical (and medical/legal/social) world. Even the immediate harm is bad, though!

That being said, I want to recognize that I feel lucky (knock on wood) to not have gotten any of the really nasty shit again yet. I haven't seen any suicide baiting or "Keep Yourself Safe"s. I haven't been sent gore or death or rape threats or fantasies. I haven't had anyone tell me that I deserved the horrible traumas that I've been very open about, that I'm lying about being a survivor of things that are literally against T/OS to mention on here, or that they hoped my disabilities were terminal again.

It's uh, obviously coming from a place of trauma to have that as my baseline of "really bad". It's why I respond to anon asks to vent (via screenshotting), why I so vehemently defend the boundaries I set by blocking - not just that I have a right to, but am justified in doing so - why, when I get a fee asks like this in quick succession, and one mentions a reblog, my first thought is "how much worse is this gonna get?"

I know I'm making myself vulnerable by even talking about this. I guess I just hope if this doesn't get through to them, anyone who genuinely thinks this has even a lottery's chance of changing a random stranger's mind about anything will get over that. It's not "there's a tiny, one in a trillion chance". It's not even zero. By doing this, you are actively entrenching anyone, of any belief, further against yours. You are working counter to your own goals.

Hell, it's part of why I'm so block happy. I'm not trying to change the minds of the people I refute. I'm just trying to counter their misinformation, logical fallacies, and emotional manipulation to anyone else who may see the posts.

But also... consider maybe just... not. Sending rude anonymous asks to someone already so sensitized by horrific harassment campaigns that at best they'll block and vent about you and move on and at worst you'll trigger them. I mean, maybe that's the goal of some of you? But if so, why not come in guns blazing with the suibaiting? Why even pretend to be a good person to yourself?

Why?

I don't get it.

[winter-tospring]

I want to thank my wife for making me see the color pink in a new light; making it a joyous event for me, instead of something I roll my eyes at. Associating it with her is the best thing that could have happened to my relationship to it. It's genuinely happy for me now, because I know it makes her happy. And I feel protective, and in that feeling, grows a defensive stubbornness to have more pink and more softness.

My heart just burstssss 💓with the desire to surround her with all the pretty things. With all the soft, blooming pink adornments i could find, to make her feel light, loved, and more precious than the stars.

I love that she's the softest soul I've ever known. I treasure her unabashed love of cute things, pretty, silly things I wouldn't have opened my heart to before. She's the smartest and most knowledgeable person I know, and her humor matching mine was like endless cherries on top of what I already was incredibly humbled to be a part of with her. There's something so grounding about the light-hearted moments; I really started realizing that in the past months. She makes me laugh all day, and she laughs with me, and even what I do and what I joke about can make her smile to tears. I'm starstruck by it, because she's a wonder to behold in those moments, and because it makes me feel so liked... I go shy in my heart, and smile to myself. One of the greatest joys.

I'm in awe that I get to know all parts of her, equally. Her resolution of spirit, her encyclopedic brain, her balm of a laugh, her lazy touch, her corny jokes, and so much more... To have known and adored her as someone online, then a friend, and to now know and adore her intimately, constantly makes me feel so privileged and wonderstruck.

She makes me look twice at simplicity, and awards my heart with beauty and meaning that I wouldn't have found had she not pointed to it. Trinkets, patterns, details, words, and actions; I think life is fizzing within her, and she cares so much because she can feel it all for how invaluable it is. She lives through the kind of heart I've aimed to carry in myself. I cultivate the thoughts to behave with intention, but she truly feels it all, second after second, and to watch her is to love life a thousandfold.

I try harder because of her, I wait longer because of her, I give my body pause for appreciation of what's around me, of what beauty could be found in it. I watch her watch things, and take notes. I give pause to more, in general, to feel the length of moments and savor them, and I start to understand that relaxing and nothingness have value in them, beyond preservation, or restoration. Sitting there with you is a treasure in itself. I know it, but my instincts take me out of what I know in my core to be true, for fear, that just being here wouldn't be enough. You brush fears gently with your warmth, and keep me embraced for long enough to feel, that I'm right where I should be.

She brightens everything with her gentleness and her uncorrupted stance in herself, which I admire so greatly. Seemingly uninfluenced by trends and outside opinion, she remains so effortlessly herself that her taste is truly hers, and it's so rare, and inspiring. She's like a true free spirit. She knows what she sees in things, and in others, and she's not afraid to compliment and acknowledge, even the smallest things. Victories are a many, every day, when you are around her. It's so light, so unburdened. All a continuation of communication and cooperation, and sadness, and comfort, and good faith, and care, leading us to all the finish lines we ever start.

I want her warmth to be held and celebrated for the gift that it is. I long to spend all my time embellishing her world the way she does mine. My love is hers, always deepening, filling endlessly with memories to look back on. I want more pictures than one can store, and I'm so happy about it. I used to delete without care, and now I want to overflow in folders of us.

I'm more affectionate than I could have ever been; I feel it become part of me, my hand reaching for her like that's what it's meant for. I feel the eyes beyond us becoming irrelevant. It gets easier and lovelier and more necessary each time I see her face again. It makes me so happy, and proud, and I know it's thanks to her.

I realized recently that I finally understand this thing about not knowing where the other person begins and where you end. Fade into you, you know. I understand. It's beyond words, constant when in her presence, unstated, but here, in me, between us. I feel complete, I feel peace, I'm at home with her. Nothing comes close to this.

I love you, infinitely, Dusty. I love choosing you, every single day. It's effortless; it's the thing that makes the most sense in the whole world. I'm so proud of you, and in love with you. 2 years of giggly disbelief that you love me too. I'm so lucky, @dustlines <3

[ayakashibackstreet]

You are not immune to nosey aunties trying to dictate how you live your life and commenting on your life choices...........

[kuiinncedes]

me going from being bored in my house all day to bored in my apartment by myself all day wow 😍

[stellarspecter]

I think I have. written a full song?

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

This run’s lovely top eight. 😊

VERY SAD Ranulf didn’t make the cut for top five Yet Again but... he did good. He tried and he did great.

Also I love how it’s like 60s 70s 80s 90s 203 lel

also known as 60s 70s 80s 90s Oscar lel

[musical-chick-13]

Once again wishing I liked the books more.

[megaclaudiolis]

柄本 佑 || 「光る君へ」 (2024) · 第十五回 「おごれる者たち」 ​​​