#ok wow this is long

[squea]

Bendegúz, the half-gnome inventor dude that tries to trick u into buying "magic rocks" (he found them in a puddle outside his little workshop). usually found with a rolling cart of gadgets and doodads. thank u @buttertrait for creating the simblr adventuring guild he may not be good at fighting but he is usually smart so i hope the guild has room for him :)

[polin-erospsyche]

This post was inspired by a comment from an anon in my ask box. They mentioned that if the Queen hadn’t interrupted Polin's wedding, they could have had a beautiful wedding night (if you’re the anon and you’re reading this, hi! And also, I know this isn't everything, but I'll touch on the rest. Small disclaimer: this got long and I’m sorry).

I agree, that could have happened. But honestly, I'm really glad it didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to see it, but I don’t think it would have been good for them. The intimate scenes we did get tell an overarching story and serve a purpose in the narrative. We’ve been told that these intimate moments are a way for them to communicate, so let’s unpack that.

The first intimate scene is about them discovering each other in a new, intimate way, moving from friendship (which had already started to happen in the carriage) to a lover relationship. This moment is crucial for Penelope's story and character development. From this, she grows in confidence and self-awareness. She expresses this to Colin multiple times, such as when she says, “with the confidence you’ve helped me find this year,” and later, “You’ve taught me to hold my own. You have shown me I’m capable of pleasure beyond imagination.”

From that intimate scene onward, Penelope starts to come into her own power and that includes her sexual power. Colin shows her a level of love and care beyond what she ever thought possible, breaking down the belief system she built around herself. She was ready to sacrifice her dreams of being loved and held for financial stability, a mindset ingrained by Portia. Colin helps her see that this doesn’t have to be the case, chipping away at her long-held beliefs.

Let’s now move to the scene in the alleyway, which links back to anon’s comment. Anon suggests that this is the moment they start repairing their relationship post LW reveal. That following this scene they were in a good enough place to enjoy their wedding night if the Queen hadn’t crashed the party. Yes. And no. 

And oh my god how I’ve longed to discuss this scene but I never quite knew how to approach it. At this point in the show, the narrative is like a tightly wound ball of yarn with so many threads to pull at. So, let’s attempt to pull at them. 

First of all, they’ve entered a whole new playing field. And they’ve entered this playing field while being “the oldest of friends really” so they have ammunition against each other. Pen has hurt Colin by lying (hiding the truth from him time and time again) about her identity. She has let him go on and on about his despise of Lady Whistledown. About his dreams of being an author. These were things he told her in intimacy. Those were things he told his best friend and the person he fell in love with. Not the woman who hides behind her column and has done so much wrong to his family and loved ones. 

There is a separation between the two. For Colin, in that alleyway, there is still just Pen his best friend, Penelope the woman he loves and on the other side of that there is Lady Whistledown, the woman he vowed to destroy. He expresses that when he says “so then you do not need Lady Whistledown anymore”. What he fails to realise at this point, and he cannot be blamed for that, is that Lady Whistledown is an integral part of who Penelope Featherington is as a person. That her alter ego is not just a mask she wears but a crucial aspect of her identity, giving her a sense of power and agency in a world that often limits her as a woman. Something that Pen has slowly come to terms with when she says that she no longer needs to hide behind this alter ego but that does not mean there is no value in it, something that she also explains to him after the Queen has crashed their wedding breakfast. 

Now I say that he cannot be blamed for his refusal of recognizing that they are one and the same because he is still holding onto his misbelief, which is that to be loved and to have a value he must protect what he loves and be useful. Part of that is saving and avenging the people he loves from Whistledown. He has given his word to Eloise, to Marina indirectly, to himself and I’m thinking to Pen silently after what she’s written about herself. He finds himself, due to his misbelief, between a rock and a hard place: “the person he vowed to destroy is, in fact, the person he vowed to protect, and there is no separation between the two” (not me directly quoting myself lol). To this you add all the shame over his writing and his envy of her success and you have a recipe for disaster. 

So essentially, in that alleyway you have Pen who is already well along her character arc and Colin who is still gripping onto his original, unchanged self. This represents a power imbalance. What I love throughout this season, and I might write something about this one day, is that Pen and Colin are never quite on the same level both literally and figuratively. There is always one ahead of the other. This, in the long run, is another recipe for disaster because they are never quite equal. That is UNTIL that butterfly ball when they’ve gone through their character arc respectively. That is the moment they fully come together. They become a unit. They are no longer fighting against each other but with each other and for each other. 

But to arrive to this moment they need to do it separately. They need to be able to work on themselves before they can fully be able to work on their marriage. Genevieve says it well “there is no such thing as true love without first embracing your true self”. For Penelope that is becoming Penelope Bridgerton, an amalgam of the best parts of Whistledown and Penelope Featherington. For Colin that is deconstructing his hero complex and fully believing that he is enough just by being exactly who he is. And that has not happened in that alleyway. Truthfully the surface has barely been scraped in that scene because she essentially shuts down his demons for an instant by saying that she loves him. However, the issues remain. 

So yes, we can speculate all we want. If the Queen had not interrupted their wedding, they might have had a wedding night and they might have had a talk about everything afterward. However, the lack of acceptance of their true selves would have driven them up a wall at the next problem, which was how to handle Cressida.

And I think that is why Polin season is actually so beautiful. It is not just about Polin. It is about marriage and how hard it can get, and how you have to work on yourself to fit around the person you love without sacrificing yourself in the process. It is about choosing each other every day, through the ugly as well as the beautiful, through the hard parts as well as the easy ones. It’s choosing to have faith that you’ll work and figure it out without an assurance that it actually will, but if the love is there, then it just might. That is the story they chose to tell through Penelope and Colin.

First gif made by my bestie @polinsated 💕

[asfodeltide]

omg i was just looking at some of your deltarune art and then i realized that the reason i had followed you was because we were in the space hop server at the same time years and years ago…. i hope you are well lol :-) i think you should draw susie deltarune or something from space hop if you want

[bizarrelittlemew]

i was hoping to make a post like this under happier circumstances, but here goes.

as some of you know, everything with the cancellation and renewal campaign has happened right on top of the worst part of my mom's cancer treatment (plus the show was cancelled on my actual birthday 💀). i won't go into details, but it's been tough. lots of ups and downs, mostly downs, luckily ending (for now) on as much of an up as circumstances allow. the whole thing has been weirdly tied to the cancellation for me, kind of amplifying every feeling. the grief got mixed up, and there was so much of it - mourning the loss of the kind of future i thought i'd have with my mother and the time we might not get, mourning the end of a show that means so much to me and is such a big part of my life. different types of grief, sure, and of different magnitudes, but in one big ugly swirl. i sort of had a breakdown right at the start of february, and it was because of news about my mom, but it morphed into my brain telling me everything i'd ever written was shit and wanting to delete it all. stuff like that, spilling over.

anyway. i was holding off on writing this post to see if the show got picked up by someone else. but i still want to say it. because what also spilled over was the support and community from this fandom, and being in this space (despite the rough times and high emotions) helped me through it, because of all of you here. whether we talk regularly, or you left a comforting reply or simply a like on one of my posts about having a hard time (i tried to keep them few), or wrote a nice comment on a fic, or said something funny or nice or insightful in the tags of a gifset, or was active here (or on twt) in any way, talking/sharing/creating stuff about the show - THANK YOU.

you all helped me through all the ups and downs, and i am so grateful. thank you for being here, listening, distracting, helping me feel some joy despite the horrors. i love you and i love this incredible show and all it has brought and will continue to bring and inspire, and although it should go without saying, i'm not going anywhere. just do me a favor and give yourself a big ol' hug from me, and know that you made a difference for some random guy on the internet (but in reality for many more, and for this fandom as a whole, just by being here and being you) 💕

[fruitsyrups]

May I request a vampire world Marcy?

you may. (I threw in a little vamp world Bonnie for you as well 🦇)

[gooperts-gunk]

ok now that stream over i will explain better when i say bbh's toxic love mindset explains all of his relationships, platonic, romantic, & familial

it's because HIS EMOTIONS ARE INTENSE!!! they are BIG and LOUD and he may express these emotions in unconventional ways (he is NOT human but that's the least of it) but he sure goes out of his way to make sure you notice (pranks), or his feelings are just natural (caring for and spoiling the egg babies). these emotions go unexplained, but they are there, and people misinterpret him so much because even if you DO ask, it's already established that he's a chronic liar and believing him could be a shot in the dark. but even LYING is one of these big emotions from the self-destructive side, the self-sacrificial side. "self-destructive" and "self-sacrificial" might look as to be opposites in the reason for why, but for q!bbh, they're both fueled by the same emotions. he's self-destructive because he's self-sacrificial, he's self-sacrificial because he's self-destructive, and it's because he cares too much. bigger than anyone has been able to understand.

you'd think an immortal would be numb to consequence at a certain point, but to q!bbh, consequence is EVERYTHING. he hasn't gotten over how quickly people and things can be lost, especially considering he's a reaper. so if q!bbh, as secretive as he is, can get all negative attention to him, not only does it help in lowering their expectations or view of him, but it also serves to make him a magnet for bad things. but if he's a magnet, he needs to care MORE because as he's said, disaster follows him wherever he goes, and being a magnet can hurt people. 'toxic love' is normal love to q!bbh, who taught himself to accept pain he feels, and not care to treat his wounds, for his hurt could be protecting someone else. it's 'not getting attached', it's 'when he does inevitably get attached he's overbearing', it's 'worrying about things that haven't happened', it's 'rewriting lies with more lies', and he's been doing this for so long that half of it he doesn't realize he's even doing it or that he could be 'too much'.

these big emotions, reactions, and actions, are natural. and to anyone else, he's just being dramatic and over the top. but in truth, that's just how big his feelings are. his love for his children is so large, he'd freeze hell over to get them back, but without an option to fight pre-purgatory, it originally manifested as him spiralling. his attachment to cucurucho is new since reviving, but since he was alone on & off for a while, he desperately clung onto any reinforcement he could get because even monsters want to be loved, to feel loved, and the chase made him reliant in a way that he refuses to let go of the constant he had during the quiet times, and if it makes him nuke spawn a couple times because he's desperate to be seen by who he's attached himself to, he'd do it, and im sure it wouldn't have been a first for him if we could put a magnifying glass to his past lives.

it's just natural, when the reason you get to be on earth in an eternal loop is because of rejection from what you still love despite your better judgement. because of your big emotions.

[thereallycoolmonsterithoughtup]

marcille overcomes her internalized homophobia with the power of friendship

[yeetusthemighty]

The creechur

The silly (crazy? I was crazy onc-)

So I got inspired to finally post this guy because of this post by @z4n3jul13n (cool person you should look at their stuff)

full version with my doodles under the cut

(I have a whole au based off of this guy)

[redstonedust]

something haunting about passing a faded, weather worn sign about social distancing.

[jesncin]

FINALLY MADE IT TO MA'AL'S DEBUT EPISODE IN YOUNG JUSTICEEE

can I get a YEEEHAAAW!!!

Haha they're already doing the "marginalized villain is too extreme in his methods for justice" nonsense but I'm honestly just so happy to see him that nothing is knocking me from this high rn

[mandiemegatron]

Its officially been ONE YEAR since I started writing for One Piece 😭💖 I can't believe it's already been this long and I can't thank all my mutuals and kind readers/commentors enough for all the love and support you've given me this last year. Thank you for giving me a spot in this precious fandom and for giving me a space to live my selfship goodness! I love you all so much !

In case some didn't get to read them - Happy One Year to Taste of the Divine, Breathless and Four Times We Missed. Happy One Year to writing for the love of my life, I love you always Law !!! 💖💖💖😭😭😭

Thank you all again 💖💖 my mutuals, my friends, my found family - I love you all so much 💖💖

[againstme]

idk man i’m just thinking about against me! and transness, especially cause we’re coming up on ten fucking years of transgender dysphoria blues, on the 21st.

lyrics have been swimming in my head lately.

“what god doesnt give to you, you’ve got to go and get for yourself.”

“if i could’ve chosen, i would’ve been born a woman. my mother once told me she would’ve named me laura. i’d grow up to be strong and beautiful like her.”

“you wouldn’t think something like gender identity would complicate something like asking for some company.”

“she spent the last few years of her life running from the boy she used to be.”

“standing naked in front of that hotel bathroom mirror, in her dysphoria’s reflection, she still saw her mother’s son.”

“agitated states of amazement, never quite the woman that she wanted to be.”

“you want them to see you like they see every other girl, they just see a faggot, they hold their breath not to catch the sick.”

“chipped nail polish and a barbed wire dress. is your mother proud of your eyelashes? silicone chest, and collagen lips. how would you even recognize me?”

“no more troubled sleep, there’s a brave new world that’s raging inside of me.”

“all my life, wishing i was one of them. there will always be a difference between me and you.”

“what’s the best end you can hope for? pity fucks and table scraps?”

“all the young graves filled, don’t the best all burn out so bright and so fast?”

“sometimes at night, i pray to wake a different person in a different place.”

“i don’t want to hang around the graveyard, waiting for something dead to come back. i know you think you’ve got one up on me, that you can see something i can’t.”

“i wanna be so real, you can see the difference.”

“dig up your bones, early graves are not homes.”

“come on, shape shift with me! what’ve you got to lose? fuck it!”

“confessing childhood secrets of dressing up in women’s clothes, compulsions you never knew the reasons to.”

“i’m sick of feeling like i’m losing my mind. sick of doing the same things most nights after night. sick of self loathing and self absorption, self destructive narcissism.”

some of these are directly referencing transness, some just alluding to it. some are just ones that i relate to as i’ve grown up struggling with my gender and sexuality and accepting my own transness and dealing with self harm and self destruction and relying too much on drugs.

finding myself buying baggies of coke and just stuffing them in my wallet while i walked downtown, feeling this immense guilt at the bottom of my stomach for essentially just wasting 25 dollars on a drug that wasn’t doing much for me besides making me feel like i was feeling something different than what my life was. getting scared shitless while in the line at the convenience store after picking up, seeing cops come into the store, and the small tied up bag filled with what was more baby powder than coke in my back pocket felt like the the heaviest and most obvious thing in the world.

and then i’d find myself on calls with my friends, with my camera turned off or pointing at the ceiling, suddenly muting my mic holding a cut up piece of a straw in my teeth as i crushed shit up with my library card from a city i wasn’t planning on living in again. just having them talk while i was racking baby lines, tilting my head back and rubbing it on my gums after. i was sniffling all the time. sometimes my nose would bleed when i would wake up. and i wasn’t even really feeling much; i didn’t know at the time that this would be because of having adhd and just basically spending money on overpriced shit that was just like taking an adderall, but it was a drug in front of me, that gave me the idea or the false hope of running away from my life during the short lived high.

“before you know it, here i am again, fucking 6 o’clock in the morning, rolled up dollar bill in my hand.”

“what the fuck are you cutting this with, anyway?”

“how low can you go before you can’t turn around?”

i don’t think that when i was 14 and getting into against me! that i would ever actually get to a point of fully relating to those lyrics. of running away from such a huge part of yourself or your problems, trying to fill the void with drugs that you’d plow through so quickly, faster than you thought you would every time.

the thing is, was that at this point, i had already started my transition. i was already “passing.” but i never got to the root of it. sure, i’m trans, but who am i? and i didn’t know how to answer that question. so i just pushed it away, pushed it under the rug.

“you can pray all night and day, but you’ll still wake up the same person in the same fucking place.”

against me! has been there for me for ten years. throughout so many transformations of myself, so much shape shifting, so much dysphoria, so many late nights wishing i was a different person in a different place.

i found solace in their lyrics. it gave me some small bit of hope, some realization that i didn’t know that i needed; that trans people always have been and always will be here, that being able to be trans and be alive is possible, and that i don’t have to be digging my own grave, spending late nights staring at the mirror and seeing the girl who i used to be.

against me! gave me the courage to be alive.

[darewolfcreates]

round and round and round it goes

the original colors before the scanner butchered it.

[possibilistfanfiction]

avatrice + flaw

[wonderful prompt @analogoose made me immediately feral :)]

//

you're drunk, which isn't that rare an occurrence, but with all the training you've been doing lately, you don't usually let it get this out of hand. but there had been a pretty girl — sara, maybe? with the most gorgeous brown skin and a nose ring — who had been doing shots and dancing with you when you finished your shift, and, like, sure, maybe you don't believe you'll die, right? maybe you can beat adriel, there's gotta be a way, but, still —

you're a little teary just thinking about it, as you climb the stairs on exhausted legs and feel way more drunk than you had ten minutes ago when you'd left the bar. you unlock the door on your third try, then try your absolute hardest to be quiet. bea has left out some snacks for you, these chips you love that she finds 'disgusting, ava,' and you take them with you into the bathroom, which seems polite and quiet, even if it's kind of gross. you sit in the bathtub without any water and eat your chips in the dark, and then you get up and wash your face in the sink, brush your teeth, and strip out of your pants. you have a crop top and underwear on and, like, that's going to have to be good enough, because it's sweltering in your apartment and bea won't touch you anyway. you love her and you're in love with her and it had occurred to you days ago, when she was concentrating so hard, a little furrow between her brows, listening to hans explain the rules of gin rummy. you're in love with her and, god, it would be so selfish, it would be thoughtless and, like, there are other fish in the sea, or there will be, you guess, but even sara, who was beautiful and kind and pressed you up against the wall in the bathroom and scraped her teeth along your jaw — you're in love with beatrice, and she won't touch you.

you get into bed without too much noise, which is a fucking feat, thank you very much, and settle under the thin blanket beatrice had switched out instead of the quilt during the heat wave. ever faithful, she's in a big t-shirt and boxers, acceptable and very theoretically unsexy sleep clothes, but her hair is loose and light and her eyelashes are so long and the moonlight tints her skin silver, like a sword or a shield or a glass of communion wine. and, like, okay, it's probably ethically wrong that, when sara was kissing you, you closed your eyes and pretended that it was bea, but you were a bunch of tequila shots in and you might die soon, you've already died once, or twice, maybe, so — it's fine. it's fine, the world is going to shit but it's fine.

you're apparently wiggling too much, trying to get comfortable, because beatrice sighs and cracks open an eye and says, 'ava, you're wiggling,' exhaustedly.

'sorry, sorry.'

she sighs again, half asleep. 'it's okay.'

it's not, probably, but she's kind. 'hey,' you whisper, loudly, and you should definitely let her sleep but she's curled up on her side with her hands tucked under her chin, which makes you feel the kind of crazy that could destroy whole temples, just to protect her.

'what, ava?'

you're undeterred by her frustrated tone; she uses it very, very often so it doesn't have the same bite as it used to. 'do you — do you really think being gay, or, like, you know, liking girls, is a flaw?'

'ava.'

you just stay quiet and will the halo not to vibrate out of your skin.

'no,' she says, after a few silent seconds that felt like years. 'no, of course i don't think it's a flaw.'

'because, you know, i like girls.'

'yes, ava, i know.' it's a little pained.

'have you kissed a girl before?'

it's probably, definitely, invasive, but it's the middle of the night and you can't stop thinking about it. 'wouldn't you like to know.'

it pulls a laugh out of you, right from your heartspace, and her smile is soft and bright, pleased with herself. 'well, you weren't always a nun.'

'not always,' she murmurs, and the room is too blurry for you to really figure out what that means. she's so close to you, though, and you reach your hand out — a fucking miracle, still, to be able to move and run and dance and hold someone while you kiss them, while you stand up and let them press you back against a wall, or a bed, or the barstool after closing, and feel the firm press of muscles along their back, or the swell of someone's hips and stomach over their waistband, or — you touch her face, featherlight fingertips, over her cheeks, down her nose, along her dark brows. she lets you, maybe because it's the middle of the night or maybe because she wasn't always a nun, maybe because she likes to be pressed against things too. maybe she loves you back, and it's easier to be touched than to touch, for her. maybe.

'do you think i'm pretty?'

she doesn't even bother to say your name this time, just slams her eyes shut.

too far. 'sorry.'

'it's — of course,' she says, a little broken, a lot brave. 'of course i think you're pretty, ava. you're beautiful.'

'no one has told me that before.' it's a little like standing in a puddle of water while it gets hit by lightning, or watching moths flutter for the first time in lamplight — haze and magic, breathless — to admit. 'i — i didn't get to look at myself, very much at all, before, you know, the halo.'

she just hums, but it's soft and tender.

'did you ever get bullied?' you ask. you know she said that she was punished, for not fitting in, but you can't imagine her, really — powerful, exacting, gorgeous beatrice — being picked on.

'are we playing a very invasive game of twenty questions? it's three in the morning.'

'we can go to sleep, if you want.'

you think she will; you think she'll roll over, that she'll roll away from you, that you'll never get to tell her all that you mean. but then: 'i was bullied a lot, as a child in primary school, actually.'

'they were all jealous, obviously.'

she huffs a laugh. 'my eyes, first and most often.' she frowns and the halo buzzes in your back a little, reflecting your immediate and deep anger. 'my last name, sometimes; the food my nanny would pack for lunch.' her jaw clenches but then she sees the glow of the halo, which you don't bother to try to tamp down, not in the dark, not in this safe bed with someone you love, someone who has had cruelty handed down to her her entire life and has emerged gentle and brilliant and kind. she smiles slightly at the light from your back. 'and then, less seriously, my freckles.'

'oh, fuck that.' you bring a fingertip back to touch her face again. 'your eyes are, like, the craziest cool color? especially in the morning, when we're going to train and the sun is just coming up.' a poem in a book one of your friends had given you recently: you could drown in those eyes, i said. 'and their shape is gorgeous. they're part of who you are.'

she seems genuinely touched by the drunk, inelegant sentiment. 'well, tell that to ronnie white.'

'if i ever meet him, i sure will. i bet he's ugly.'

she laughs.

'and, also, all food fucking rocks, so that's ridiculous. and your freckles, are like, i don't even know, bea. like stars.'

she lets you trace them; she has freckles on her shoulders, now, in the summer sun, and a few on her collarbone; one, that plagues you, sometimes, on the top of her left hand.

'in his own image, or whatever, right?'

you still your hand on her jaw and it takes a moment to answer: 'well, allegorically, yes.'

'allegorically, whatever. fuck those kids.'

'it was a long time ago, ava. i'm fine.'

the way she holds herself, compact, even in sleep, to make herself smaller — it's a life she chose, but you don't think anyone really gave her much of a choice. 'fuck those kids, bea. fuck your parents, and fuck the shitty nuns who didn't treat me with any dignity, and fuck, you know, the whole goddamn patriarchy, while we're at it.'

'you know,' she says, a smile reluctantly lifting her mouth, 'i do enjoy a good moment of sheer hate for the patriarchy.'

'obviously, you're awesome.'

'you should sleep, ava.'

'yeah, probably.'

'okay. goodnight.'

'bea?'

'yes, ava?'

'you're really, really beautiful. i just wanted to say, in case no one has told you either.'

her eyes in the moonlight flash gold, a better gold than the halo, warmer and gentler. you could drown in those eyes, so it's summer, so it's suicide, so we're restless in sleep and —

'sleep well, ava,' she says. it feels like a miracle, when she brings her hand, calloused and careful, to run through your hair, and then pulls it back against her chest. she doesn't turn away from you, only scoots a little closer and lets you nuzzle your way into her body, little movements and warmth, the smooth skin of her legs against yours.

so it's summer — you think, as her hand sneaks its way under your shirt and rests in the middle of your back; your underwear are slick with wet heat but — you've risen from the dead; she won't touch you but this is close, her little breaths against the top of your head as her body grows slack. in another universe this is real life; in another universe you met in college, or at the beach, or she was your ski instructor, or you swiped right on an app after smoking a blunt and she messaged you back — in another universe this is just an afterthought, an ache that neither of you can explain some nights at twilight after a hard day when you come home to a vine over the door and a dog who runs back to you when you call. in another universe you get to love her; she touches you.

in this universe, her gentle fingertips pressed to your back and her freckles blooming more every day in the sun — this is just another miracle.

'sweet dreams, bea.'

[arkiwii]

very sad still see the saria/silence divorce headcanon still going around

have you ever tried to consider that they never dated before lone trail because it would be unrealistic with the timeline and the events and also because it would be overshadowing the actual truth of why they couldn't get along

[front-facing-pokemon]