#i've spent like 5 hours on this

[not-poignant]

Hello Pia. Could you please elaborate a little about challenging a peak alpha and how they really can or connot controll things when they are challenged? As I understand ardolphogen is pieaking when they are in this situation? And they MUST do something? Or? I was comparing two scenes exactly - Ef challenge Gary and Janusz challengeTemsen. Thank you!

Hi anon!

I can definitely elaborate on this :D

(Under a read more because I...well...elaborated.)

So, firstly, Temsen and Gary are different people, and how they react to things are going to be different. This is true across a lot of different situations. Consider, for example, that Efnisien has been rude to Gary many times and Gary has just let him, but if Efnisien does that even slightly to Temsen, Temsen scolds him immediately!

They are different situations. Gary tolerates Efnisien's rudeness because he finds it charming/amusing and he likes that. Temsen doesn't tolerate it at all, because he believes that as a doctor and a peak alpha, he should be awarded respect from other alphas, especially young alphas who have shown a pattern of violent, abusive, disrespectful or immature behaviour (which Efnisien has!) -

This is also why Temsen tolerates Janusz' disrespect better than he does Efnisien's, because he knows it comes from a place of severe trauma. Janusz has PTSD from his experiences with Nate, and that is Hillview's fault and responsibility. Janusz is right to be angry, and his challenge comes from a genuine place of injustice.

Temsen recognises that he is culpable here, and that he has no grounds on which to scold Janusz, in other words he recognises that he's earned some disrespect on this specific issue. He can also tell that Janusz is doing it from a place of stepping into his strength to take care of Nate - that's something Temsen has asked him to do and that he wants, even if it comes from a disrespectful place (momentarily - most of what Janusz says is measured, calm, and clear - and actually not disrespectful at all - disagreeing is not disrespect). So that situation has a lot of different things happening which causes Temsen to react / not react the way he does!

Most important, no one here has any idea what Efnisien does or says to mount the challenge in the next chapter. Assuming it's solely based on what happened in this chapter is understandable! But that's not what it is. If Efnisien doesn't do what he does in the next chapter (which I'm not going to spoil), Gary's reaction would never have happened. They would have talked about Gary's uneasiness around Efnisien feeling the need to protect him, they would have gone back to normal, and they would have been fine.

Efnisien is also experiencing something new for him that he's never gone through before, and no one's really mentioned it yet. Gary had his ardolphogen rage, Efnsien also has ardolphogen in his system. He was dissociated into his rage state in that chapter, and wasn't thinking clearly, especially as he escalated his violence against Cella. We have no indication that he's left this mental/hormonal space or that it's calmed down, because he lost consciousness, and hasn't really been himself since. Alphas and anger control issues go hand in hand, the ardolphogen is not like testosterone (after all, in the omegaverse, they make both!), they can't just go 'oh huh I've been flooded with hormones, let me not do what they're telling me to do.'

And, fun fact, actually most humans can't do this past a certain point! Tell a person with PTSD to simply calmly think through their fight/flight response and stop having flashbacks, and they're going to laugh in your face, or never talk to you again. Lots of people have intense hormonal states they can't just shrug off! They must respond. It's just that the hormones and the emotions are different.

Gary has PACS, an unstable internal emotional landscape, and has been treated as a pariah by the news media, James' entire family, and has challenging mental health issues, from being casually suicidal for years after James' death and hoping that something would kill him, to being very hostile initially to making intimate connections with other people.

Gary and Temsen aren't in any way starting in the same playing field here. Temsen is happy, he's fulfilled, he's got a greater capacity for not responding to disrespect, and he also practices early intervention selectively - badly behaved alphas get scolded, usually-good-alphas who have a reason get a pass.

That being said, we've never seen anyone mount a direct challenge to Temsen, so we've never seen his response to them. No one really does it. That would be the equivalent of someone trying to pin a peak alpha to the ground, mount them physically, take a 'dominating' position over them, threaten them with physicality, or threaten to kill them in a duel etc. Obviously there's very few circumstances where this would happen and very few people would be willing to try (except for other peak alphas lol), because it's legal for peak alphas to murder anyone who attempts it, because they aren't in control of their hormonal responses when it happens.

In fact the only way to easily take advantage of a peak alpha that way is while they're sleeping or while they're too sick to fight back.

And I'll leave that as the context for the next chapter.

But, yes, when an alpha mounts a challenge to a peak alpha, physiologically they must respond. And most respond with immediate, lethal force.

Comparing what Temsen's experienced with what Gary's about to experience is like comparing apples and oranges. They're just not the same thing, and they're not comparable. We've seen Gary be disrespected by Efnisien nearly 100 times by now, we know - with only a few exceptions that involved either domestic violence initiated by Efnisien or extreme verbal disrespect - he can handle that.

What we're about to see from Efnisien is not what he's done before.

[robinmage]

[bestagons]

What Dan and Phil Text Each Other 4 + Familect (article)

[wasabikitcat]

Finally drew what comes to mind whenever I see video of the mascot performer out doing the birthday song while the Chuck E. Cheese animatronic is turned off sitting in the dark, still clearly visible to the audience.

(Original meme I'm referencing below)

[kyouka-supremacy]

Finally gotten around scanning the September Animage issue. Please enjoy!!

[nebuladreamz]

Today you get painting of a genshin oc of mine

Tomorrow? Fuck if I know

[beesinspades]

happy pride month from vash the stampede!!!! 💜 seeing all the ace vash art makes me so happy I wanted to contribute!

[feliville]

why is it SOOOOO difficult to write SOBS

[moonflowerus]

Happy 5th anniversary, ONEUS!

[floydsteeth]

Got a new sketchbook decided to draw a modern au Nokto & Silvio smoking together

[vimbry]

"likes don't do anything" they do

"there's no algorithm" there is

"well nobody uses the for you tab" I do

"reblog all art and fics you see" there's no thought put into that. if this does work on people, then it's just pity engagement borne out of guilt rather than genuine interest, which is arguably worse than having none, because it's totally hollow.

[waterdeeping]

I love you. But for the man that you are. Not the god you'd pretend to be.

[suddencolds]

~

[morrigan-sims]

Okay, I know this is a sims blog, but I've already asked this question on my personal blog and got no responses, and I have literally over 10x more followers here and I really need help with this:

Does anyone have any good ideas of rooms to put on a pirate ship map for a d&d game? (realism NOT required)

I'm making maps for three pirate ships, and all three maps have at least 1-2 empty rooms. I need ideas for what to add!! (And trust me, I know that realistically those spaces would all be storage, or house animals, or hold the capstan, etc. But it's dnd and one of these is going to be a dungeon on its own, so I want this to be interesting, not realistic. So I'd prefer not to add any more storage/supply rooms, even though I know that's logical.)

Floorplan pictures and a list of rooms each one already has under the cut if anyone is curious.

Ship #1 - The Sea Snake (3 masts, galleon, captained by Kora Wolf)

Floorplan: (bow -> stern, top deck -> hold)

Rope Locker (forecastle)

Navigation Room / Wizard's Study (forecastle)

Officer's Quarters (forecastle)

Captain's Quarters (below quarterdeck)

Bow Chasers (gun deck)

Main Battery + Crew Quarters (gun deck)

Powder Magazine* (gun deck)

Galley (orlop deck)

Mess Hall (orlop deck)

Infirmary (orlop deck)

Armory (orlop deck)

Child Guest Room** (orlop deck)

??? No clue what to put here (orlop deck)

Child Play Room** (orlop deck)

??? No clue what goes here (hold)

Main Cargo Hold (hold)

Brig (hold)

Vault/Treasure Room (hold)

*: trust me, I'm aware that's not a good place for it logically. I don't care. **: for character backstory reasons

Ship #2 - The Tide Breaker (two masts, brig, captained by Zara Fairweather (formerly) and Rook (future))

Floorplan: (bow -> stern, top deck -> hold)

Galley (forecastle)

Mess Hall (forecastle)

Captain's Quarters (below quarterdeck)

Ship's Cat's Room** (gun deck)

Powder Magazine* (gun deck)

Main Battery + Crew Quarters (gun deck)

Armory (gun deck)

Infirmary (gun deck)

?? No clue what to put here (hold)

Main Cargo Hold (hold)

??? No clue what to put here (hold)

*: trust me, I'm aware that's not a good place for it logically. I don't care. **: yes, I know this is silly and ridiculous but a friend suggested it and the party does have a cat, so it makes sense

Ship #3 - [Val's Ship] (this one needs a name. suggestions welcome) (one mast, sloop, captained by Kyron Valris)

Floorplan: (bow -> stern, top deck -> hold)

[not pictured] Captain's Quarters (below quarterdeck)

Galley (gun deck)

Mess Hall (gun deck)

Main Battery + Crew Quarters (gun deck)

??? No clue what to put here (gun deck)

Infirmary (gun deck)

Powder Magazine (hold)

??? No clue what to put here (hold)

Main Cargo Hold (hold)

Garden* (hold)

*: this ship has a druid on the crew, who is able to maintain a garden on a ship, despite this not typically being possible Note: this ship technically belongs to smugglers, not pirates, so the choice of them not having heavy weaponry or a dedicated armory is intentional to avoid suspicion.

[lemonycranberries]

sometimes i'm out there living my life in the real world and suddenly i find it so bizarre to remember normal people exist. i mean just completely average people, living their lives regularly. like. what do you MEAN your life hasn't been completely consumed by a gay ship that may or may not become canon from hit netflix tv show Stranger Things (2016).

[sometimesiwritethings]

figured i'd go ahead and share what i've been working on instead of Yeosang's incredibly late birthday fic time is a social construct from which i'm completely divorced