#pact textpost

[lakesbian]

here's every way wildbow accidentally made pre-meiosis "russel" thorburn transgender that i can remember. if you can think of any reasons i forgot please add on

his parents named his younger sister "ivy," as if the obvious grandmother-pandering name "rose" had already been used up. blake theorizes that they used a male version of "rose" for PMT, but this is nonsensical--there is no male form of the name rose, and everything he comes up with as a possible option (in other words, everything wildbow came up with as a possible option) is a major stretch. most don't sound even tangentially like the name "rose." it makes far more sense to assume that PMT was afab and had the deadname rose. (this also makes sense on a thematic level wrt how rose thorburn jr is supposed to be the Real heir that grandmother is forcing blake to die for, but that's getting besides the point)

rose has memories of being harassed over the inheritance by her female cousins, and the idea of these memories just being wholly pulled out of thin air when basically everything else involves memories either being split btwn blake and rose or erased altogether is weird

blake is friends with, like. a lot of gay people. textually runs in poor gay artist circles. the idea of them adopting this weirdly cool cis straight guy is funny but it makes a lot more sense if PMT was trans + gay and only got turned into a straight guy (and a straight girl) yesterday, due to the homophobia demon

PMT literally thinks "Besides, why devote any more attention to your son, when you could just start over?  Have that beautiful baby girl you wanted, right?" which is also like one of the only pieces of internal narration we get from PMT in the entire story. first girl they named rose ran away and did some shit with their gender so now they have a second girl they can't name rose but can still try to raise to go for the inheritance

in the same chapter as when pmt says that, callan is like ohhh you think youre going to worm your way in-, implied sentence ending being "-to the inheritance," which is, like. the family knows it's going To A Girl. so.

PMT was childhood friends with paige, who is The Gay Cousin. it is deeply sensible to imagine them bonding over this, regardless of whether or not PMT (or even paige) knew at the time

it is, like, fully possible for a cishet dude to get sick of living with his shitty toxic abusive family and abscond at the age of 17, but also homelessness is an extremely prevalent issue among transgender kids in abusive families. the narrative of a transmasc kid growing up in an abusive, catholic extended family where girls are pressured to compete for a very gendered inheritance + leaving at the age of 17 & finding a new home among a bunch of gay artists is Significantly more compelling than the cis dude alternative. it just is.

okay i think im running out of, like, logical errors that make sense only if pmt was trans prior to the Obliteration, so as for the thematic stuff. like i said, rose being the half grammy decided was supposed to be "real" and blake being the half that's supposed 2 die for her 2 exist, rose just being unhappy and disconnected by nature of existence while blake is the parts of pmt that escaped from the constraints of the family + found happiness, so on and so forth. "catholic grandmother literally obliterated her transmasc nonbinary grandchild by splitting them into two binary gendered halves & expecting that the man they could've been die to allow the acceptable woman--literally forced to dress in grandmother's clothes--live on and do as grandmother wished" is Everything, doing the same thing but to a cis man grandchild is significantly less compelling

Others who r very old/operating on what are explicitly stated to be oppressive and antiquated gender roles as per the book's themes about inherited/traditional forms of harm keep mistakenly calling blake she/her and rose lmao

??? probably some other thangs im forgetting

[lakesbian]

just so we're clear it's regular blake because he's still capable of pissing himself and then collapsing into a pile of his own blood and tears

Sure, Blake is a Pactblr sexyman. But which one?

[thornethenorn]

The Losercat Tyria as textposts.

[harringroveera]

Henry: Blood pacts you say?

[lakesbian]

what is pact about? I've heard so much about it, yet I still haven't been able to piece together a coherent plot

don't worry about the plot you're not allowed to have a coherent understanding of the plot until you actually read it. pact is an urban fantasy novel with horror elements. it's about cycles of family trauma and abuse represented very literally through magic, the experience of having a very bad time in young adulthood, and, completely accidentally, transgenderism. people who haven't read pact aren't allowed to have the way it's accidentally transgender explained to them, you just kind of have to take peoples word for it and find out while reading. you'll know it when you get to it.

it's got some of the most delicious execution of clones you'll ever see in it, some of wildbow's finest applications of "hey, wouldn't it be REALLY fucked up if...," various women with demented psychological problems, and perhaps the Most Special Boy Wildbow Has Ever Written in it. it is only 16 arcs long, which is half as long as worm and thus twice as convenient to read. it also has, of course, the famed Blake Thorburn Himself, who is a chew toy to some, a tragic character to sniffle over to others, and rightfully beloved by all.

i would recommend pact most highly to: people who reblog poetry about familial trauma as a type of haunting, people who enjoy calling bloodied sopping wet crying doomed men "pathetic little meow meows," people who like strange and callous female characters, people who are capable of being really abnormal about flesh wounds and/or hypothetical deranged psychosexual dynamics, and Symbolism Enjoyers. (LEGAL DISCLAIMER: pact is not highly psychosexual or abnormal about flesh wounds. i just think having the trait of enjoying those things improves the pact reading experience.)

people i will try to get to read pact even if they might not love it just to see if any of it will stick to their brains anyway: literally everyone. please meet blake and rose thorburn. please meet the 5-6 other characters whose names i'm thinking but won't explicitly spoil. please.

[lakesbian]

#to add to this i really appreciate how pact portrays the people who don't benefit from the system but nonetheless conspire to perpetuate it#the behaim and duchamp kids who think that breaking tradition is preposterous and that if they keep being silent and obedient#the people in power will eventually serve their interests#or they'll one day get to be the boot stomping people down#even though the systems they work to maintain have long since decided that they'll never be the ones to benefit or the ones that get to mak

I’ve been thinking about Pact a lot since I finished it, and it just hit me how Wildbow not only portrayed the difficulty of working against a system normalized and supported by society itself, but about how those that have benefited from it feel and interact with it.

Case in point, during what’d be the first half of the novel, everyone feels entitled to remind Blake that there’d be no penalty for them just straight up walking up to him and shooting him: the universe will always conspire to make his life hell anyway, and they’d actually be better off if they did it, but they don’t. They could, but they don’t. Not because it’s immoral to do so, but because his continued existence as the one at the bottom feeds their needs and goals better than his death. Blake continues to suffer so the powerful can more comfortably forward their goals.

Come the second half (after he escapes the Abyss), and the roles reverse. Blake is unhindered by the Thorburn’s debt, and actually rides a wave of karma that makes his accions the ones that are the most desired by the system. You could say that the burden of the karma was so great that not having it at all makes things look like they’re going his way, but I’d like to believe the characters that told Blake about this and say he did have the support of the spirits in his actions. Because, what do the powerful do when he shows up? They tell him to stop, that he has to compromise. They no longer have the backing of the system, yet they still tell him to let them continue their things basically undisturbed.

And of course he doesn’t, and there’s no punishment for that. Because why would he? The only time he does stop to consider the other option is when Allister goes out of his way to tell Blake square and straight how things are, what the most realistic options look like. And their working together ends up helping the most people in the end, after Blake neutralized those that would seek to keep fighting in spite of the problems assaulting Jacob’s Bell.

So, long story short, the powerful have been powerful for far too long to be reasoned with. And Pact tries to make a point that most of that power is poising, and that a single individual placed right can make the system sweep them all under the rug because it always needs someone at the bottom to feed those above. And, although this is hardly an analyzis or something well-put together, I think it’s a thought we should keep with us.

[twicecondemned]

Two Time ∿ he / they / halo / spawn 19!

♡ no DNI! pro-radq pro-consent

fictive ✢ Body age is none of your business!

Click under the cut for more info, dear ⤹

Body: cisabled (chronic pain, chronic fatigue, POTS, narcolepsy), cisautistic, cisBPD, cisharmed, cisplural, cisshort, cisintersex, cislactoseintolerant, cisADHD, trans ftm (basically), CisNPD, CisASPD

My IDS: pansexual, polyamorous, cisrobloxian, sourcecultist, transcultleader, transworshipped, transfeared, transadored, transheight (5'11), transunderweight, transfeedee, transthirdeye, transspiralpupils, permaeyebags, transdelusional, trisvampire, transangel, transdeity, cisSHaddict, nullrace, trisallparas, trisharmful, sevharmed

Tags

#✢ Soul pact - textposts

#✢ Carved in stone - reblogs

#✢ Whispers of the past - horny posting

#✢ Twice risen - vents

[cephaloprincess]

textposts i drew with death pact again hehe

+ a bonus tree with a beard bc i forgot to give him facial hair before oops

[lakesbian]

carefully writing down 'pact is implausible about blake being into motorcycles AND birds from the perspective of people who are into those things' on my list of pact facts. it's unfortunate bc i didn't think abt this lack of detail while i was reading (due to not being into birds) but it really would have added more charm. there is at least when evan makes a casual statement about the type of birds that are trying to chase and kill them and blake corrects him on the species. i think it would've been very funny if he did that more often. imagine if during the pauz bit blake was like. woah there are some awesome birds here. too bad they are feral and rabid and personally thirst for my blood

I am a very casual birdwatcher.

Blake is, apparently, notably into birds. Enough to have bird tattoos (and the two big things later that I won’t mention bc I don’t wanna spoil anyone).

I have a tough time telling between similar birds with distributions in my area.

Blake can distinguish between several local types of sparrow.

Every time I go outside, I am actively looking to see some of my favorite birds.

Blake never mentions scanning lampposts or tree branches to catch a sight of them.

???? Why. This would be so easy to establish in the text. It would be just a few words set into the description of a new location. I think “show, don’t tell” is often misapplied or overused or whatever but this just feels like such a weird hole ……. He loves birds so much but only when they’re directly relevant to a part of the book. Hate this. Seriously why not have him talk about the calls he hears or doesn’t hear, an eagle enjoying the thermals in the distance, a bluejay zipping by in his peripheral vision. These are things on my mind all the time as an extremely casual birder.

[thywheelof-fate]

swears with an upraised hand (this is not enough)

swears with an upright hand (this is not enough) on ao3

Pairing: Dark Urge/Enver Gortash, Dark Urge/Astarion (background)

Rating: Explicit

Tags: Rough Sex, Knifeplay (Gauntlets), Bloodplay, Light BDSM, Biting, Office Sex

◈━◈━◈━◈━◈

If you’re so determined to learn about your past, why don’t we make another deal? “What do you want?” Lennox arched an eyebrow. “You already have my soul. Probably.” Oh, if only. My proposal: I show you a snippet, and all you have to do is keep your mouth shut about it. I’ll even sweeten the deal and show you something you can get back after all this nonsense. It’s a deal that appears to be tilted heavily in Lennox’s favor, which made it all the more suspicious. “I’m guessing this won’t be a useful memory at all.” Usefulness is subjective. I think you might enjoy it. But perhaps you’d rather stew in ignorance.

Lennox slowly learns about what being a warlock means and the creature who holds the other end of his pact. An offer to experience one of his forgotten memories gives him a chance to learn about the person he was outside of killing. But who was Enver, and why was Lennox hooking up with him in his office?

◈━◈━◈━◈━◈

This is the promised rewrite and extension of my fic of the same name, which can be read here

It still remains a piece focused on the fact that Lennox is a warlock, but fleshes out his relationship with some of the other companions and his patron more. I also wanted to explore Durgetash in a slightly meta way by having Lennox play voyeur to his own memories- who does he assume Enver is to him, when the context of their history is stripped away, but their own sort of affection remains?

I'm a bit out of practice of writing smut, so the Prodigal Son series has been an unintentional opprotunity to flex that muscle, haha. I'll probably alternate between pre-canon and canon timeline works, so my next project is aiming to have Durgetash exploring each other's bodies as Chosen of Bane and Bhaal.

There are little things I want to write about my fics, but I don't know if meta analysis on my own fanfiction is a bit too self-indulgent. Vague textposts I make is probably me hunching over my keyboard and mumbling about the motifs of it all.

Comments/kudos/asks are always welcome :)

◈━◈━◈━◈━◈

[lilyskisser]

are you today‘s date?

cause you‘re a 10/10

[bugkinn1e]

I will never stop making this joke

Death Pact being spat out of 4 seeing everyone dead

[lakesbian]

AND one of their last acts was to pull up to the Shit Family Reunion on a motherfucking motorcycle to 1. offer support to their only cool cousins and 2. call their shit grandma a cunt

the funniest part about the original thorburn heir is how much of a fucking gigachad they were. if you put together blake and rose, without even accounting for the stuff they explicitly lost and didn't get attached to either of them, the original: did well in pretty much all their classes in school, had creative talent and the technical skill to put it to use, worked as a handyman, earned enough money for an apartment and a motorcycle after living on the streets and escaping a cult, kept a tight social circle of over 15 people, had at least 4 exes, reconnected with their parents at some point, had a car and went to university. while gay. in some ways barbatorems cuts emphasized existing aspects at the expense of others to create finely honed tools. in anothr way barbatorem fucking nerfed them

[idexstuck]

mental image 1: nikolai listening to a really sad [american] 80s song and barely understanding the lyrics but bawling his eyes out anyway

mental image 2: emerson in scrubs just acting like a normal functioning adult who is kind to patients and, like, normal in any capacity instead of the fuckboy he is when not on shift

[1rakus]

hello i would like to also ask: what the HELL is house md?? is that gifset real lines from the actual show??

IS THAT TEXTPOST ABOUT THE FIRE AND MOTORCYCLE AND GAY SUICIDE PACT ACTUALLY WHAT HAPPENED IN THE SHOW??????

WHATS GOING ON HERE

genuinely no idea but it seems real from how people talk?!?

[starberry-cupcake]

I’m seeing lately a lot of posts that are a screecap of a tweet that has the screencap of a tumblr post, or a screencap of a meme platform that is a screencap of a tumblr post. Basically, someone finds a tumblr post that was screecapped in some other site that claims that tumblr is dead and brings it back to tumblr while everyone interacting with the post makes some sort of collective pact into acting as if it’s not a repost. 

Since they are most often text posts, it’s very easy to find them, you just google one sentence from it and it will pop up through google. Added advantages to reblogging from source include: that the original posts tend to have links to sources that screencaps can’t replicate (the lack of which ironically can cause discourse in the repost), and that they don’t require an ID because they were originally textposts to begin with. 

Eventually I know I’m gonna end up witnessing one of these screencap reposters ask for tips in their posts and op will find out and we’ll have a tumblr version of an episode of Cheaters on our hands.