#several paragraphs...

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

It’s hilarious how Vaggie made herself a ‘sinner’.

How that linked her up with Charlie is such a weird, round about truthful way, even when she was lying by omission about it.

And how amazingly dumb it all makes Adam and Lute look.

Thousands of helpless souls killed by her, but she didn’t do anything ‘wrong’ until she wondered if what she was doing was right. The divine powers in her life only took her wings and condemned her to hell after she doubted their orders, their idea of justice, and quietly chose not to completely follow them.

“You fucked up” they tell her “your mistake” she “left the band” “tried for a solo career". It’s so pathetic. They're so butthurt over the idea of one of their own having a mind of her own.

It’s also so funny, because they spin her simple act of whispering “Go, run. Now!” to demon kid she’d been holding at spear point like it was big defiant move- which makes it into one- even though she never challenged them openly, or threatened them.

Hell, Lute’s “You always were weak” plus exorcist Vaggie always frowning while her murder sisters all grin with glee as they kill sinners- it paints a picture of Vaggie never having been as into exterminations as she ‘should’ have been. Too weak to be a proper exorcist no matter how good at killing she was, not just “the traitor” but also “the failure”.

And she was scared of that. She didn’t want anyone seeing her spare that child, whispered her words to them in a back alley, out of sight.

She was scared of what would happen and didn’t even fight it when Lute took her eye and wings- she was scared and no threat in any tangible way, but apparently refusing to do one single murder is enough to freak Adam and Lute the fuck out.

One woman. Doesn’t do exactly what she’s told. After who knows how many decades of being one of the “top girls” at murder, a “bad bitch” named after “the best thing ever”, and they still get spooked by that tiny moment when she wasn’t under their total control. Like it's such a betrayal to them, her daring to so much as think this level of violence isn’t justified actually, and for a split second act on that thought.

It’s an instant ticket to ousting her from the exorcists AND from heaven, while they fly the fuck off again.

“If angels can do whatever, and remain in the sky-”

and they do. After doing that to one of their own. They did that, to someone who was supposedly meant to be in heaven. They didn’t wait for divine justice- took it, and her eye, and her wings, and her halo, into their own hands and tore them away from her. Then happily, they spend the next three years up in heaven, slurping smoothies and doing more murder sprees.

until Vaggie comes strolling back with the princess of hell, there supporting her girlfriend and the idea that all the shit she did for so long really was and IS wrong.

oh and Adam and Lute are pisssssssed about it. They take her being there PERSONALLY, wanna solve it with VIOLENCE

She hurts them without even trying. Without even noticing they're there.

They're told to fix the princess of hell situation and they have no concept of forgiveness, of caring about sinners, so they guess (rightly) that Vaggie hasn't told Charlie about her past and bet (wrongly) that Charlie would never forgive her if she knew, and also assumed (rightly) that Vaggie would be terrified of that

But they don't get that she's scared of hurting Charlie. Of Charlie being hurt by her. It's a selfless thing. That's her whole PROBLEM.

Her running to hold Charlie after the reveal- her NOT breaking down when Charlie takes alone time in the aftermath, respecting that right up until she thinks Charlie's actively in danger- afraid FOR Charlie when the deal with Alastor is made, no crumbling that Charlie went to someone else for help, when being helpful to Charlie is basically her raison d'étre- agreeing to go alone to an overlord, after learning she can DIE and THIS OVERLORD knows how to do it- all this for the sake of Charlie's dream, their shared goal, their hotel. Their friends, resigned to despair in the hotel lobby, losing hope and maybe hours away from losing their lives

No shit she was never going to bow down to the blackmail?? It'd be like turning herself inside out. Charlie isn't just some "little hottie" or whatever, they're partners. They're in this together. Even when Charlie out loud doubts if that's true, it still is.

Lute and Adam don't GET what it means, that Charlie assumed Vaggie was a sinner already. That the thing she'd be hurt about was the lying, not the murder. She was scared of not really being loved by Vaggie- of everything else wonderful between them being a lie too, all that support and faith empty empty- she wasn't afraid of loving Vaggie, whoever Vaggie had been, she was afraid of who Vaggie might be now and that she'd never really believed in Charlie at all.

Charlie was angry at the thought that Vaggie didn't think she would've accepted her. The idea of not really being understood or trusted by Vaggie, that's what hurt.

And it goes against everything Lute and Adam are, Charlie actually caring about sinners while knowing what they've done- about an exorcist after finding out who they'd been- really trusting that people can change. Lute and Adam hear her say it and see her stand up for it and they just want her to shut up and die

again though, no shit she was going to stick with Vaggie after the truth came out, in the end. Once she had a moment to take a breath and step out of her head long enough for a reality check

Vaggie didn’t say to Charlie what she'd done or who she'd been. But she’s been and keeps doing what she can to follow that idea, unvoiced, from that day when she couldn’t kill a sinner- something Charlie didn't know about but now knows must have happened- A final death means no second chance and no worth as a person, but Vaggie didn’t think that, even before meeting Charlie she didn't think that.

She's always been on Charlie's side. They were on the same side before they ever set eyes on each other. All this time, for three whole years, and now she's off to go find a way to protect everything they've built together.

"-words are cheap, but actions, they speak the truth"

Charlie never really stopped trusting her. Maybe she wondered if she should, but even then, she had Vaggie go to Carmilla to find the key that might save them all.

"She killed an exorcist in the last extermination. She knows how they can be harmed."

"But… I- I didn't even know that was possible."

"If you did, would you have told me?"

So Charlie asked. A pretty painful thing to say- and she said it even as she sent an angel to go find out a way to hurt other angels.

She DID trust that Vaggie WOULD tell her.

The irony of all this happening thanks to Adam and Lute trying to keep it from happening, and all of it leading up to Vaggie getting back part of what they took from her, because now she doesn't need them or heaven to be an angel anymore.

Charlie has faith in her. Enough to send her off on an important mission even after Vaggie hurt her- and send her right to the person who end up helping Vaggie get back her wings.

“The rules are shades of gray when you don’t do as you say”

Vaggie’s new fucking wings are gray when Lute sees them. When Vaggie’s standing over her, sparing her life, her wings and that one, fucking unexplained stripe separating her from the other exorcists, all of it is GRAY.

That visual gut punch of, you’re. Fucking. Wrong. You’re wrong about sinners, you’re wrong about supposedly protecting heaven, you’re wrong thinking you can just DO this shit. That imagery of an angel who DIDN’T stay in the sky because she DIDN’T think being angel meant everything she did had to be right- who’s here in hell, trying to protect sinners from heaven’s slaughter-

And Lute wanted Vaggie to “correct” HER “mistake”? Vaggie’s???

That’s Lute, admitting that people in hell can get second chances and make up for what they did. Admitting that “Sinful filth” like Vaggie can be redeemed in some way, by following Lute’s version of what’s right.

But wasn’t her and Adam’s whole thing the idea of blowing your shot? Getting no other chance after it?  

Oh yeah. Vaggie doesn’t believe that though. Not for sinners like her, not for angels like her.

She let’s Lute live. She does it to make Lute suffer, but there are a lot of ways to make someone suffer- an eye for an eye for example- and Vaggie chooses the one that doesn’t hurt Lute more than it has to, that leaves her alive, and leaves Lute’s suffering to be something completely of Lute’s own making (a HELL of Lute's own making, if you will) (Lute choosing to tear her OWN arm off to continue the fight-).

She's totally dismissive of the woman who was just going after her remaining eye like a dog after a bone.

Why is it that nothing Adam and Lute to do her matters?

Why don’t THEY matter to her at all?

Walking right past them, being so done with them up in heaven, not caving to the blackmail, only being worried about Charlie afterwards, not letting that crack in their relationship stop her from doing what she can for their hotel, Lute threatening to take her other eye and BLIND her just making her snark- even the vague threat to Charlie only gives Vaggie the oomf she needed to defend herself.

“Pathetic” she calls Lute. She’s right- they’re so pathetic, both them, Adam and Lute. They’re so scared of being wrong. So pissy over the idea of being less than great and perfect.

It breaks them. Adam’s last words are him having a meltdown in the face of not actually being hot shit. Where’s his respect, he wails, they should all be worshiping him! But they’re not. One of his random decedents stabs him to death because he would’ve done the same to her, and one of the last things he hears is Vaggie- the fuck up, the traitor, his former grumpy top girl Vagina- whooping with glee as he dies.

And Lute lives knowing that could’ve been her, too.

If it wasn't for Vaggie.

Being not all that didn’t break Vaggie. Finding out she was wrong got her to stop and think and change, not run straight on blindly into a fight that ends up with her (with HIM) dead.

Why does she go from terrified of Lute and Adam, to dismissive and annoyed and just all around not caring about them at all?

They gave up all her respect for them when they demanded the death of a child.

The father of humanity wanted a child killed. A helpless, whimpering kid, sacrificed to his ego and bruised pride, and for shits and giggles. His first lieutenant saw failing to do so as a sin worthy of hell. All this over a child. How could she ever take them seriously after that.  

She came down from high and chased the child and held a blade over them on divine command.

Then, somehow, she saw the HORNS in her own shadow above them- even though she wasn’t WEARING her MASK, and she stopped.

She was her own messenger angel.

She chose to give the child mercy, and became the sacrifice herself.

Vaggie stuck it to the man. Didn’t steal that life. And, terrified of what would happen to her next, acted selflessly. The same thing that got her left behind in hell should have earned her place in heaven, according to Adam-

heaven was shit to her though. Made her into a soldier. Sent her to kill and kill and kill. Taught her trust on the battlefield- in heaven, of all fucking places-

Timeline wise we see her very first smile when she meets Charlie. When a stranger does- again- the bare minimum for someone else.

When she’s back up in heaven later she isn’t wistful, just angry, uncomfortable, annoyed. She isn’t happy there. It’s not home to her, like her and Charlie’s room back at the hotel is. Why should it be? What good did she ever find in herself up there?

Down here though, she's happy. Hell is where her heaven started. So I guess in the end, she did find what she’d earned after all. Or it, Charlie, found her.

When “The rules are shades of gray…”

Sometimes they’re wrong, and you have to break them.  

People like Lute and Adam would rather crack under the pressure and die instead, but not Vaggie. They're out for blood. She's out for love.

Sucks to be them~

[simplyfroggy]

me when a movie is bad: 👎

me when a movie is good: 👍

me when a movie is mediocre:

[stump-not-found]

dude it's just like the tv show ....

[hellynakisser]

i hope people understand and come to terms with the fact that markgemma’s relationship will quite literally never be the same again. like do you guys get that. mark scout has been grieving her for years and to escape the grief and forget her he voluntarily chose to basically get a lobotomy and have a disconnect with himself. so for people to think in episode 10 that mark would leave lumon with gemma and then live happily ever after makes zero sense considering that he’s reintegrated and he’s going to have conflicted feelings about hellyna while being with gemma. also innie mark does not love her (he cares about her though), and he’s a part of outie mark. it’s been YEARS. mark got what he wanted and he’s not aware of it, but a part of him has already moved on from her. im excited to see how it develops next season

[fantastic-nonsense]

oh this is delicious, I'm absorbing it into my Cass character study WIP immediately

[ot3]

have u read the homestuck epilogues? what do u think of them if u have? and do u have thoughts on june egbert

when the epilogues originally dropped, i read candy but i did not go on to read meat because the experience of being a homestuck fan at the release of the epilogues was a pretty miserable and i saw no reason to prolong it.

i did not categorically hate everything the epilogues were attempting to do but i think they are fundamentally and irredeemably flawed for one extremely big reason: you can not release something as the official continuation of a work while also insisting it is not a piece of the canon. it felt like they wanted to have their cake and eat it too in a way that completely undermined the entire work. they released it with faux-ao3 tagging/styling, but weren't brave enough to actually release is on ao3. it had to be elevated Above fanwork, but if you got too upset about it they could always just point out 'well we said it wasn't canon' to deflect legitimate criticism. plain and simple, it all felt like cowardice. release something intentionally designed to provoke and antagonize a dedicated fanbase and then retreat to twitter to complain about how nobody can understand and appreciate REAL, SERIOUS, QUEER ADULT CHARACTER WRITING. but like. real, serious queer adult character writing still needs to be good and I'm not sure the homestuck epilogues Were that. having characters you know to be 100% fictional and are now being written by a brand new set of people pretty much look at the camera and say "if you think my character writing is OOC it's only because you don't respect my interiority as a human being" rang extremely fucking hollow to me.

i think it should be obvious to anyone who has been following me for any amount of time that i don't want or need sanitized and saccharine character writing to be pleased and my issue was not that the epilogues were dark, it was that they felt confused and contrived.

being a homestuck fan took up all of the formative years of my life, without exaggeration. it was the main thing i was into from ages 14-21 and has been incomparably important to me. so it's next to impossible for me to separate my feelings about my epilogues from what it felt like to be a homestuck fan during the absolute clusterfuck of these things dropping, especially since i haven't revisited them since. one event in particular that really soured me was an official homestuck team member who i was decently good friends with asking me to delete tweets i made criticizing some aspects of the epilogues. i found to be an extremely unprofessional to do as someone who is on the payroll of an IP speaking to a fan of that work, regardless of whatever terms we may have been on. additionally, i found the way she + the epilogues writers responded to criticism of the epilogues from the pretty significant demographic of teen fans on twitter to be at best condescending and at worst actively cruel.

it felt like a bunch of people who wrote shock fiction about a beloved cast of characters - something they were fully within their right to do, to be clear - but then could not handle the extremely predictable reception to it. my eventual homestuck reread is penciled in for 2029 and if i can bring myself to [re]read the epilogues at that time, im going to. we will see how my feelings change then

as for june egbert: love her, but this is once again soured by the way post-mspa era homestuck treats the concept of canonicity. john egbert is my number one favorite fictional character of all time. if you tell me "great news, she's a girl now" i am in fact overjoyed by that. i think its something that adds a lot of texture to the character. but i don't like people treating it like it's canon when it just simply isn't. i don't think you get points for portraying a transfem character until you have actually... portrayed a transfem character. i do not keep up with hs2 for reasons that are probably pretty obvious so i'm not sure if anything has changed, but to the best of my knowledge june egbert is not yet canonical there either. it's very frustrating.

but you see what i mean about canonicity: ignore the fact that we haven't discussed june egbert's gender in a single actual piece of fiction. the toblerone says she's real so she is! ignore the fact that the homestuck epilogues are official works that were on the shelves at barnes and fucking noble, they're "beyond canon" because weve put AO3 headers on. it feels like lategame homestuck treats canonicity like a switch it can flip completely independent of the works they are making, in whatever way is convenient for them. if the HS2 team (shoutout to floral, one of the best to ever do it and nobody deserves to be writing homestuck more than them) ever does get around to making june egbert canon, i will be standing by to pop bottles.

[blueskittlesart]

Linktober day 27: plants

I think zelda would be the type to keep sketches and research notes in her journals along with the more personal notes we see in totk/botw :) (also yes i did write several paragraphs entirely in the hylian alphabet and no i dont remember what the hell they say. good luck figuring it out)

[tubework]

odo cute outfit came to me in vision will not elaborate

[wyervan]

In the least creepy way possible, what do smoon smell like? What kind of cologne do they wear, detergent they use. Maybe even their favorite scents?

Mucho amor ❤️❤️

*Morgan Freeman voice* I can smell you

I don’t think either are really the type to wear cologne regularly. Sun might pick up something he likes the smell of in the fragrance department at the mall, but then talk himself out of actually buying it because it’s “silly” and he’s a bit of a penny pincher.

So they probably both smell mostly like their shared bottle of 3-in-1. Irish Spring is the usual culprit. Their deodorants are similarly common drug store flavors. Eucalyptus or citrus for Sun, cedarwood or pine for Moon.

underneath it all, an unmistakable sharp metallic smell

Sunny loves the scent of coffee and freshly washed sheets. He finds the orange or lemon of cleaning products soothing (and he often smells of them himself). He’s prone to headaches when someone’s wearing too strong of a perfume around him, but he likes subtle floral or herbal scents like lavender or rosemary. Sometime he’ll light a candle while unwinding before bed. The smell of cotton candy and dust remind him of his circus days.

Moon has a sharp nose. He might be able to tell where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing or who you’ve been doing it with just from a couple of whiffs. He’s extremely averse to strong artificial sweet scents. Prefers musky, spicy, and earthier smells. Patchouli, fir, incense. Wet earth, decaying leaves, the static coming off a CRT screen. Cigarette smoke makes him nostalgic. He doesn’t hate the smell of weed either, but it’s probably mostly positive association.

[vinguist]

Remember now and forever that "fake confidence" is just the first stage of confidence. :] thank you.

[valehour]

I swear to god if I read one more "Messmer/Marika did nothing wrong" post I'm gonna fucking lose it.

Guys, Gals, Nonbinary Pals etc.

Be fucking serious.

it's somewhat obvious that Marika's people's oppression, and the subsequent domination of the social order was inspired by christianity's oppression and then rise to power within the roman empire- going on to be the dominant religious order which, in turn, persecutes religious minorities. Like. that's only just subtext by tooth and nail. It does not at all justify either religious regime's atrocities. It is Exceedingly obvious the game expects you to understand that, to quote Leda "They [the hornsent] were never saints, they were just on the losing side of a war". this line, alongside the black knight helmet, and the crusade insignia Expects us to understand that maybe the whole "Marika ordering a crusade to genocide a people in the name of revenge" is wrong, actually.

As for Messmer, he is indeed a victim of Marika, like most of the demigods. it's just that he's also (arguably Firstly) a willing collaborator in these atrocities, he's not an innocent uwu snake sadboy.

If we are forced to compel a singular unnuanced 1 dimensional archetype onto Messmer, the game expects us to understand that it's "Demon King". he's doing Authurian Romance Villain shit as filtered through the lens of dark fantasy. it's not a coincidence that most of the information about him comes from other people about how much he's personally destroyed their lives. He lives in a castle called the "Shadow Keep" for god's sake, his soldiers torment the people and we, adventuring wanderers and followers of grace/Miquella fight and defeat him, which, were this a traditional story ultimately lets us access Enir-ilim and fix things. That were this a tradiitonal story, then defeating the "Demon King" sets the land back to right by enshrining the True, Good King (or god, such as Miquella is, in this case).

The fact it doesn't is the complication to this otherwise simple story- the fact that Messmer is also a victim of Marika's pursuit of revenge is important nuance, and adds to the tragedy of this story- simply killing The Bad Guy In Charge doesn't fundamentally fix things. It's that complication that makes them so deeply fixating as people. But there is a mountain of difference between "I find Messmer's tragedy Sympathetic and Compelling (and thus want to fuck him)" and "Messmer did nothing wrong". You do not get the title "The Impaler" by being innocent.

you are, in fact, allowed to be horny for the snakeboi or for Marika without actively ignoring the realities of their casual brutality. Actively making a pair of complicated, messy, tragic characters into something simple and easily digestible for maximising fuckability is not a sign of like, actually liking them. Love your genocidal warmongers as they brutally murder civilians or like, admit you don't actually like them, you like the flanderised imaginary version of them- an attraction no more substantive than the kind of R34 art that gives Ranni tits and hips broad enough to change her aspect ratio, instead of her cool weird fucked up doll body. You Cowards.

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

I'm kind of obsessed with Blackwall's idealized ideas about the Wardens. He was once picked up by a Warden and lulled by the promise of atoning for his crimes and turning his life around, only for that opportunity to slip away when the Warden not only saved him, but sacrificed his own life to do it. This whole experience makes our Blackwall become a Warden in heart, if not in blood, but with his own ideas of what a Grey Warden should be - noble, brave, inspiring, heroic, self-sacrificial. Everything he now wants to embody. He knows well that he's not there, but he wants nothing more than to start from scratch and be that.

In his beliefs, he reminds me a bit of Wynne in Origins who tells the Warden at some point that the Grey Wardens are supposed to be more than killing machines and weapons against the blight.

“There’s more to being a Grey Warden than killing darkspawn and saving the world from the Blight. Ultimately, being a Grey Warden is about serving others, about serving all people, whether elves or dwarves or men. As a Grey Warden, you are a guardian of men. And you guard them because their continued existence is more important than you are.”

However, we know that's not exactly how it works. That's what they want the Wardens to be. The light against darkness. The shield against monsters.

Although it's not entirely wrong, either, I suppose, all things considered. The more darkspawn they obliterate and push back, the more people are protected from them. Of course, sacrificing their lives to fight literal monsters, which means those same monsters don't eat everybody's kids, ultimately is heroic, and it's something that must have been born out of the need to protect the world and its inhabitants (from the Blight). But to have idealized opinions of the Wardens to this degree, you have to ignore all the other shady stuff and the mentality we, as players, also know the Wardens for. The fact that the Wardens are primarily weapons to slay darkspawn, prevent and end Blights, by any means necessary. The last part is important. After all, they are the Grey Wardens, not the White Wardens. They recruit from all walks of life and are famous for taking in criminals. Not to redeem themselves and get a second chance at life, but because they usually have nowhere to go and nothing left to lose. It's not a coincidence that each of the Origins gets chosen by Duncan, not only because he sees them as capable, but also because they are in a situation they can't escape from. Either they join the Wardens, or they're done for.

We know the Wardens from a few games now, but does the public in the setting even know? Does the average person have any idea how far the Wardens are willing to go? Besides grand stories of slaying monsters in the dark and preventing the end of the world? Probably not. The order is very secretive. And it explains a lot. The Wardens end up sounding almost romantic, when being a Warden is anything but. Is it ignorance talking out of these characters? Perhaps.

It once again shows us this aspect of Dragon Age where you can't take everything a character says as a fact, because the setting is full of people who have no idea what they're talking about, but who are absolutely convinced that they do.

And yet, I can't help but also like Wynne's and Blackwall's romantic ideas about what the Wardens are or should be, almost knights in shining armour and all that. They're fairy tales, but they're beautiful fairy tales. And I can't fault the characters for wanting to believe it or even live it. Especially in case of Blackwall, who sees it as a way to make up for the crimes he committed, somewhat. In the end, this might actually be a bigger draw to join the Wardens than, "Got nowhere to go? Come suffer horribly and probably die gruesomely with us!" It all sounds great on paper, though. I can't fault Davrin for trying to find purpose in life by becoming a monster hunter, either.

And maybe a little bit of idealism doesn't hurt. Not only it's good motivation, but in the end, doing things by "any means necessary" doesn't always pay off, either. It led the Wardens into all kinds of trouble, like getting tricked into employing dangerous forms of blood magic and demon summoning, basically into doing their enemy's work for them. In their determination to win at any cost, they helped trigger a cataclysmic event. Maybe having some principles isn't so bad after all.

In the end, I can appreciate that we get to see the clash of the old and new blood in Veilguard, where there's hope for the order to transform into an organization that's less secretive, less exclusive, and hopefully less prone to letting corruption spread through its ranks and make other devastating mistakes. Duncan once said that letting people join the Wardens isn't an "act of charity", and I like how Evka and Antoine go, "Yeah, you know what? Fuck that." And that likely inspires more loyalty. I imagine Blackwall would like that.

[npdkondraki]

see ok the thing about norm is that i really truly do think that post-canon she DOES end up realizing shes trans. it's just that, her entire life, she has been told to be a "real man" and by god has she conformed to that. she went to war, she manned up and took care of her mother in her final years, hell, she had a wife and children. she has essentially forced herself into the role of a classic american patriarch.

she has, whether subconsciously or not, molded herself into being everything she has ever been told to be, without any question. she's been told her entire life that men are gruff, that men are cruel, that men do not show emotions other than rage, and that to be a "real man" she has to be all those things and worse. you can see this just in the way that she carries herself, constantly going out of her way to intimidate or threaten anyone. with every interaction she has, she deliberately (attempts) to make them scared of her.

you can even link this back to how she thinks of callum, seeing them as solely a self-made man. norm wants, so desperately, to be viewed as "good" and to be respected, and the only way she knows how to make that happen is to be a man. callum's presidency reaffirmed this, having seen someone in her (perceived) position of a small-town southerner who never got anything good from the world around him, constantly shoved aside to make way for everyone else. when callum grew to power, she viewed them as a "true patriarch", a man who knew what he was doing with his life. a man who was respected, who was good, who was beloved by everyone. she, however, fundamentally viewed this as happening because callum was a "self-made man", unable to separate callums manhood from their success.

literally everything norm does is based in her own ideas of what "being a man" entails. she believes that if she can't be a man, then she has failed at not just being a man, but being alive, being a person. she is so deeply ashamed and guilt-ridden over having failed her duties as "the man of the house"* (*i.e. leaving her wife and children) that she lashes out, desperately sticking to the only clutch she has on the masculinity that she believes will be ripped away from her at a moments notice. she saw what happened to callum, how they were discarded when they weren't of any usage anymore, when they couldn't just "man up", when they were no longer the patriarch everyone thought of them. the circumstances aren't close to the same, of course, but in norms eyes all she saw was someone fail at being a man and be thrown out.

she's already been thrown out and cast away before, what's stopping them from just doing it again? mingus humiliated her, stripped her of any power she had and left her with nothing, tossed her away when she deemed her "unfit". it made norm regress back into that shell of violence and paranoia, so petrified of the fact that she can no longer protect herself that she shut the world out.

she's petrified of being deemed "unfit" again, so she continues to cling to her masculinity. even with the knowledge that dialtown is full of weirdo's, she can't help but stay in her bubble. everytime someone questions her masculinity, she just digs her heels in more, asserts herself more, becomes more violent, more aggressive, more manly. she still thinks that, so long as she acts like a man, then she won't be tossed out, that she's still worth something, that she's still a person. she views every threat to her masculinity as a threat to her personhood. what she lacks in confidence, she makes up in assertiveness. she wraps herself in a blanket of long-gone traditions of being "the patriarch", a living reminder of old world masculinity, because that's all she knows of herself. she's never known anything else, after all.

[absoluteocellibehavior]

Ourthur makes me go feral for many reasons but also due to the dynamic of one guy who believes in the Trinity, one guy who believes in just one God, one guy who believes in no gods, and a god. I love them so much-

[uhgo6d]

twitter user saying that helly's character revolves around a man, as if mark's story didn't literally start with him creating a whole new person because he couldn't cope with his wife's death, and as if this season o!mark had no development while she accepted that she's also helena and started a revolution.

god forbid a woman who's never had any love in her life for having her life "revolve" around a man who chose her despite her flaws and the bad things she's done.

[wikiangela]

several sentence sunday

so this is another fic I started on my vacation (I started three, and had one idea I haven't started yet lol - and one is already posted) - also, the two weeks here might change bc I'm struggling with the timeline (which doesn't matter but also it does lol) but I'll figure it out haha

(I'm still writing all my other wips btw, and gonna get to all the asks, but the writing beans have been gone lately, and I've been too exhausted lol - and my brain is so all over the place with my wips, idk what I wanna get to more)

___

Evan knows he’s in love with Tommy about two weeks into their relationship.

(...)

They still barely know each other, but Evan knows. He can’t explain why, can’t explain how, he just knows. Tommy Kinard is it for him.

The moment he realizes it with utmost clarity is nothing special, really. He just spent the night at Tommy’s – not the first one, but it’s still new enough to fill him with nervous, giddy excitement, butterflies swirling in his stomach, which he hasn’t felt in years before Tommy. Everything about Tommy makes him feel like this. Tommy’s eye-crinkling, nose-scrunching adorable smile; Tommy’s eyes, always so fond when he looks at him; Tommy’s lips that taste so amazing Buck never wants to stop kissing him; Tommy’s big, big hands that feels so good in Buck’s, those strong arms and broad shoulders… – just everything about Tommy. At first Buck thought it’s the newness of this, of Tommy, of knowing about his bisexuality. But he’s also gotten so comfortable with Tommy in such a short time, and it doesn't even really feel new anymore, he knows it must be just him, must be Tommy making him feel like a giddy teen with a crush. Except the way this feels… Buck’s a grown man with tons of experience, and he knows how infatuation feels, how a simple crush and attraction feels, how real love feels. And he knows, deep down in his core, in his soul, in his heart, that this is real, that this is definitely more than a crush. This is what love feels like.

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no pressure tags (lmk if you wanna be added or removed):

@dr-shortsighted-owl @eddiebabygirldiaz @watchyourbuck @ladydorian05 @diazpatcher @monsterrae1 @rainbow-nerdss @pirrusstuff @bucks-daddy-issues @rogerzsteven @honestlydarkprincess @jesuisici33 @steadfastsaturnsrings @diazheartsbuckley @giddyupbuck @thewolvesof1998 @underwaterninja13 @your-catfish-friend @kinard-buckley @evansboyfriend @beyourownanchor6 @weewootruck @kirkaut @jewishbuckley @loveyouanyway @daffi-990 @lonelychicago @reformedplayerbibuck @spotsandsocks @bucked-it-up @theotherbuckley @drcloyd @bidisasterevankinard @tizniz @hippolotamus @diazsdimples @girlwonder-writes @perfectlysunny02 @dadbodbuck