#so please educate me

[bacchuschucklefuck]

class swap design masterpost for convenience (from top to bottom: bard!riz, cleric!gorgug, sorcerer!kristen, barbarian!fig, artificer!adaine, and rogue!fabian)

[sun-snatcher]

If you're writing for dp3 then Hiraeth from your prompt list would work SO well since they're all stuck in the void! 🤲🏽😭 We need Gambit fics its a DROUGHT HELP

♧ ⎯ LUCK O’ THE DRAW !

summ. You find the Devil himself at the end of the world. Surprisingly, it isn’t the first time you have. It is, however, the first time it hurts. pairing. Void!Gambit x f!Anomaly!reader (established relationship. Kinda. Multiverse be funky like 'dat.) w.count. 1.8k a/n. Because Channing deserved that Gambit all those years ago, and I've come to (attempt to) deliver what the the people have asked. Masterlist here.

MOST PEOPLE MEET THE DEVIL at a crossroads, but you meet yours in— quite literally— the back end of fuckin’ nowhere.

It hurt more than it should.

Your heart practically stutters. 

“Remy.”  

Then he turns, and you wait for the flash of recognition in his eyes.

Nothing comes.

And then. And then.

Realisation— logic. The cold, hard truth: This isn’t your Remy LeBeau. Your Remy had died long before, in a Universe that was pruned and erased into nothingness by the TVA. Your Universe. The joke? That the Gambit before you is merely a variant amongst a million. The punchline? He looks exactly the same as the day you’d lost your own. 

“Well, this is awkward. You know off-shoot Hawkeye here?” Wade says, astonished, before his eyes widened. “Ah. Tragic exposition time for the readers, I see.”

Your mind is still reeling. It feels like someone’s just jammed a chisel straight into your gut. “I— Knew a version. Variant, I guess,” you manage to correct yourself, distracted by the skirting trenchcoat and the all too familiar sound of shuffling cards. 

Christ, it’s like he’d stepped right out of your memories.

Remy’s eyebrows shoot up as he studies you. Something in your chest pulls taut, threatening to snap as he speaks. “Apologies, mon ami. But as far as I remember, I ain’t never seen you before.”

“Ouch,” Wade winces, looking between you both. “What a classic trope! This is like, me talking to my past Mom in The Adam Project. Funnily enough, my Mom was you!” He snorts, pointing to Elektra. 

You ignore Wade and offer Remy a wan smile. “I figured. It’s okay.”

…It is obviously, in fact, not okay. 

You avoid him like a plague shortly after the entire commotion; it’s almost comical. Wade had managed to come up with a plan with the rest of the group, albeit a ramshackle, flimsy one, but you’ve hardly been able to pay attention through the bloodrush of shock rocketing in your head, anyway. 

Being around this Remy is stunningly stifling. 

The lilt of his accent, the sharpness in his smile; the flourishing of cards and the faint hum-drum of kinetic charge against his fingertips. 

You’ve seen it all before, once upon a time. You never thought any of it could ever bring you to this bad of a heel. 

It hadn’t taken long before you’d tried drowning yourself at the end of a bottle of brandy Logan had handed you that night. (The whiskey tames his mordance and makes him uncharacteristically civil. He’d said something along the lines of: Y’need this more than I do, bub; look like you’ve just seen a fuckin’ ghost. Shit, I guess you did, huh? )

“Mais la,” comes a huff. “Ain’t that mine?”

A frisson runs through your heart. 

“Sorry,” you say, barely glancing up from the barrel fire tucked outside the team’s hideout. You’re not quite sure you can handle meeting his gaze. “I know I should’ve asked.”

A playful hum. Remy settles on the log adjacent to yours. “S’alright. No harm done, chèr.”

It takes everything in you not to flinch at the endearment. If he’d noticed, well— he’s smart enough not to mention it. He’s curious and it stands to reason; afterall, he’s never quite seen someone look at him as weathered as the way you do. It’s as if the effort itself to do so would be unbearable.

“Y’kno’, I been told I’m easy on the eyes. Not for you, tho’, eh?” Remy shoots you an amicable smile. It’s charming, if a little compelling. “Guessin’ I made bad on you where y’from? You done been boudéin’ since y’first got here.” 

You let out a laugh. It’s the most brittle sound he’s ever heard come from someone. 

“No, no,” you shake your head. “It’s… You just make me a lil’ homesick, is all.”

Remy bristles with his deck of cards. A Charlier cut; a One-handed shuffle. It’s a mindless tic; your variant used to do the exact same with the exact same ease.

(Such a miracle, you remember thinking once, that there could be symmetries in the Multiverse. Now you learn, perhaps, it’s far more a curse. Either way, you can hear Remy’s doting voice in a distant memory, dimpling coyly at you: “S’just the luck o’ your draw, chèr.” )

You tamp down the memory before it could sink its jowls any deeper in you. 

“You’re curious,” you say.

He makes a noise of assent. Revolution cut; One-handed shuffle. Repeat.

“I ain’t gon’ axe if y’ain’t wanna answer.” 

It’s kind of him. 

You forgot he was like this.

Witty, yet gentlemanly. The way Remy always has been.

Underneath the blanket of the night, the crackle of the flames limn the planes of his face in flickering, hazy saffron. The look in his eyes is sincere as they meet your red-rimmed gaze. It’s been awhile since you’ve seen him, and in this light no less: tall, cutting, strong.

Lively.

The last you’d seen Remy, he’d been drawn out and battered by the war. Not that he’d ever admit it; he always insisted on keeping up his sunny disposition despite the constant losing battles happening. (Sometimes you think you resent him for doing that; it’d felt like he’d taken the light of the world with him when—)

You thank your lucky stars the variant Remy doesn’t make a comment on how you must be staring so openly. It’s a feeble attempt to committing every detail to memory, you suppose, in case you don’t get the chance again.

“In my Universe, a war was waging against mutants.” Your nails tinker against the empty bottleneck of the flat whiskey you’d nursed, thinking of how to cut a bloodshed of a story short; to get your point across before you falter and lose your footing.

“There was a mission sanctioned, and during it— a decision had to be made at that moment. So… you chose. Easily.” Your brows pinch tight against your will. The molten burn returns to the back of your eyes. “You saved so many lives the day you died.” 

Something catches in your throat when you realise your mistake, find yourself amending instantly, “He. He died.”

(It had been swift. A small mercy, all things considered. There wasn’t even a need to check for a pulse when you finally managed to reach for him.)

You’re fidgeting, too, with something in your other hand. Remy catches sight of it only now: a card, sitting pinched between your ringed fingers. Nine of Hearts. Its edges are torn and creased across the face, singed an ashen black. 

A proverbial piece of Remy’s heart, carried to the end with you.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel a cold rush over his body at the sight. 

“…I’m sorry, chèr,” he offers quietly, inadequate as it is. He hadn’t expected that. 

He can’t imagine how haunting it must be to look at someone you’d shared a lifetime with and be met with a complete stranger instead. 

A living, breathing, ghost.

That unbiddable feeling of longing had always seemed to accompany the sight of him; but now it’s different. Now, there’s a blistering, brutal pain to come with; All-encompassing grief, thick as molasses in your lungs, overturning itself like a phantom from wherever you thought you’d buried it a long time ago. 

The only way to smother it would be to reach out, to hold him like you had once before, and isn’t that an ironic inconvenience? 

“No, no. I’m sorry,” you tell him, sigh coming out as an awkward laugh. A breeze passes and you inhale deep to ground yourself. Press your eyes shut momentarily to will away useless tears. “It must be so weird to hear all of this from me about— well, you, technically.”

“Mais, can’t ‘ave all been a bad memory, tho’, right?”

Right. No. It hadn’t been. There’s something else too. An undercurrent. Beyond the grief, the deep ache in your marrows— you think it’s nostalgia. Hiraeth. More bittersweet than it is painful.

It’s… It’s watching mutant schoolkids teaching him UNO for the first time. It’s the bickering over the beignets for breakfast, or your feet on his lap at the couch in the lounge after dinners with the rest of the X-Men. Lazy banter. Conversations that go everywhere and nowhere.

“Yeah,” you agree, feeling something bloom in your chest you thought long lost. “You taught me everything about your home, too. Down South. Told me about the bayou, the cypress trees. Your Cajun, your ways. We used to play Bourré.”

Talk of home has him ducking into a laugh. Remy had been in the Void far longer than the rest (he figures, at least)— he’s very nearly lost most of his fragmented memories to time by now. “Did I? Oughta’ play a game or two wit’ you.”

You buckle at that. “Ah. You were always the better player.”

Then:

He makes the leap before he runs out of steam. “Was we…?”

His finger darts between the space you two share.

“Oh, no,” you override, sheepishly. “No, we, we were good friends and stayed good friends. I was—” Your breath scurries; a reconsideration. “I was glad with that. You had a Southern belle named Anna Marie. A powerful mutant called Rogue. You two were good for each other.”

You must have given yourself away somewhere, though, the way Remy is reading you with a pinned gaze. It’s the same, levelled look you’ve seen before— the kind he gets in a game of cards. 

Something discerning eclipses in his eyes.

He’d gotten the measure of you in an instant. 

“Gambit musta’ been blind blind not t’see you.”

Ah.

You smile. It’s windswept. Resigned. “Well. Doesn’t matter now, does it? My Gambit’s gone. No matter how much I wish I can see him again.”

Remy’s eyes dart to your hands.

“Y’kno’, chèr,” he begins, something spirited in his tone. “In the world of cards, each a’ these and they suits hold a meanin’.”

He flourishes his deck, hypnotisingly smooth with every elegant cut, fan and spring. Every shuffle cascades as smooth as liquid in the sleight of his hands.

“Some of my folks back in New Orleans I remember, they learned me to read ‘em. Now, outta the whole deck? What you got there; the Nine of Hearts is also called the Wish card.”

The small laugh that punches out of you is bell-like. “Really?” 

It’s warm. Bright. Musical to his ears. It washes over him, and he can’t help but hang on to the peal. He wanted to hear it again. 

“Yes, Ma’am.” Remy clicks his tongue as he shoots you a sunny look. “Would never lie t’you, chèr.”

The cracks in your soul don’t disappear, but they surely lighten as you look gently at him. “Huh. Well, I guess I got my wish, didn’t I?” 

He chuckles. 

“Mais, I ain’t your Gambit but—” 

He leans. Reaches out behind your ear with an empty palm, playfully revealing a gilded card from seemingly thin air with a sharp flick of his wrist:

Another Nine of Hearts. His. He hands it over to you, by way of meaning—  I’m here, now.

New beginnings.

You take the card with a smile.

[jugumpuppet]

◗ Got into this thing called One Night at Round1

[runningwithscizzorz]

I feel a deep sense of anger and grief for Palestine. I’m angry at God, at the world powers donating to those who are killing civilians, angry at people looking away and encouraging you to worry about yourself when people can’t even walk down their streets without being attacked. I’m angry that my friend donated, only for it to be stolen and taken by the soldiers abusing Palestine. I’m angry that I can’t do much of anything but tell you to at least CARE about the people being bombed and slaughtered. Please, if you can’t do anything please just CARE about these people and listen to their stories. Hold them in your hearts at the very least. Don’t pretend they don’t exist or just brush it off as “its been going on for centuries, there’s no point in stopping it.” I want to do more, I want to make people care and love those who need it, rather than continue spreading anger and hate.

These are real people I’ve drawn. Keep the people of Palestine in your heart at the very least please.

[trans-androgyne]

The belief that women need to be feminine is sexist. It leads to transandrophobia and transmisogyny. The belief that men need to be masculine is *also* sexist. It *also* leads to transandrophobia and transmisogyny. It doesn’t just target trans people. Any gender non-conformity is punished. It seems so obvious to me the ways cis women (especially lesbians) experience transandrophobia and cis men (especially gay) experience transmisogyny. I don’t understand why any of this is controversial.

[lynnospen]

(my personal favourite is majorwood)

[nebulaedaniel]

since we’re now talking about the racism in the phandom, i’m very glad it’s being brought to light so thank you to @dapg-otmebytheballs @demonqueenart and everyone else talking about this, i want to talk about cancel culture.

now i’m as white as they come, so before reading any of this i need you all to read the posts made by some of the people starting this conversation. here’s some links. xx xx xx xx xx

the reason i want to bring this up is because it’s something i noticed in a lot of the posts bringing up the behavior that dnp have/have had. its bizarre to me that we as a society, but especially we as a fandom, feel the need to disclose that bringing up problematic behavior isn’t an attack or call to ‘cancel’ someone!

to be able to have an open discussion where people CAN evolve and learn, bad behaviors need to be brought up without the immediate assumption that the person talking about it wants to bring harm to the other.

i am not here to defend dan and phil, they are well old enough to have these realizations on their own and stand for their actions, but, without the space to point out these behaviors, there will be no change. if these questions are being brought up within fandom spaces, why assume that the person means harm? excuse my metaphor but why would they set fire to their own house? i can understand wanting to take something with a grain of salt if it was coming from someone not in the fandom spaces at all, or someone not familiar with dan and phil whatsoever, but since it is the fans bringing this up, the absolute least you can do is believe them and listen.

wanting to see change is far from the same as wanting to see someone ‘canceled’ or lose their platform. these discussions are good and important to have, and i want to again thank everyone who has taken time of their days to speak up about this. it’s labor you shouldn’t have to do, and i really hope that we as a fandom learn from this. i know i will.

[purpledemonart]

Master Kohga in traditional Japanese woodblock style

[bartmobile]

this is the first version of my trans/genderqueer sex archive, i’m looking for anything ranging from websites to photos to zines to novels to interviews— if you have anything to contribute please reach out! ❤️

[mint-is-here]

Hey uh. Does someone know Wukong and Macaque's duo name?? Not ShadowPeach, thats their ship name, i want to know if a name for when their relationship is interpreted as platonic exists. Also Mei and Red Son's. Also Red Son and Mk's. Also Mei and Mk- do people in this fandom even name this sort of thing????

[triangular-dude]

Booster Gold never came back in DCeased, so does that mean the future was never saved?

Booster Gold ends up dissipating due to something something future ruined. Ted becomes infected afterward but this little piece of writing isn’t really about him.

And then he appears next to Ted after his crew gets infected. So what does that mean?

I admittedly don’t know much about John Constantine but according to his wiki article he can see ghosts.

So what’s with Booster being there if he “was never born.” Though that may be an error, so I’m not going to press too hard on it as theory material. (After all, this isn’t like other series I like which I’m more than happy to push on inconsistencies, such as Ninjago.)

And then when everything seemingly went back to normal Booster still didn’t show up. “Oh maybe he forgot where they were or doesn’t know.” You forget the characterization of Booster at this time in the DC comics world. Only a few years prior his mini series with Ted ended, and he’d still been written as caring a lot about him, even joked about in relation to Ted such as in Jaimes’s comics. Not to mention that one of his most important solo comics revolved around getting Ted back from the dead (albeit it was tied to the 52 saga.) So to think he’d just casually forget after another crisis would be a bit out of character.

Under the cut I talk about Waverider and the solution to DCeased’s major conflict. So be warned.

(Yes, I made the image blurry because it’s pretty gorey and it may upset someone.)

I did not mention Waverider earlier because I don’t know how it would have worked with him. But he gets hit by Zombie! Ted and I presume he also turns into a zombie at some point.

We never see him after his very short time in this issue. So might another part of the future become infected after Damian’s sacrifice? And the sheer nature of the anti-life equation’s antidote would not destroy all specks of it within the entirety of reality. Simply those who were exposed to it, meaning the time frame that it was administered.

So might have Waverider infected some point in the future prior to Booster Gold’s birth or his escape from the future?

I may just be talking nonsense but hey, that’s just a theory, a DC theory!

also apparently Booster’s birthday is right next to mine, which is kinda dope considering he’s my favorite hero

[dumbbunnii]

⋆˚🐾˖°

[chorus-the-mutate]

This is an edited repost of the Erzsebet Bathory character analysis I wrote yesterday that I refuse to let go to waste. I tried doing the right thing and tagging all of the necessary trigger warnings only for this post to be completely hidden from the Castlevania Nocturne and Erzsebet Bathory tags. Since I can't afford to tag the proper trigger warnings without being punished please do not read this post if discussions of rape or sexual assault triggers or upsets you in any way. I don't take these topics lightly and they are vital to this analysis of Erzsebet Bathory.

This post also contains major spoilers for this first season of Castlevania Nocturne.

This may seem presumptive of me to say but this thought has been stuck in my head for several hours: Erzsebet Bathory is the most rapist adjacent villainess I've ever seen without her actually being a rapist.

The first and smallest point against her is how often she mentions virgins. I know that Erzsebet's initial mention of virgin sacrifices is supposed to tie into the origin of her alter ego and consumption of Sekhmet but it's super fucking weird that it played into why she wanted to sacrifice Maria.

Next point against her is the lawyer's daughter. I'm not sure if this lady was a virgin but when she's first brought to Erzsebet she's already terrified and too dazed to fight back. It's obvious that she doesn't want to be there and that even if she did that she can't really express that desire. But Erzsebet still takes this lady out of a literal gilded cage, sits down and sits this lady on her dress to admire her despair before drinking her blood. The next time we see the lady she's still dazed. The only differences are that she's dolled up and seems more suggestible. Even with hundreds of people in this ballroom scene the lady is literally ignored by everyone except for Erzsebet who dances with her and parades her around for her own amusement. Everyone else knows that Erzsebet likes to make her victims suffer and they still refuse to acknowledge the lady because Erzsebet has made it clear that she's her possession. Hell the only person who is unhappy enough with Erzsebet to go rogue at this point is Olrox and he STILL IGNORES THIS LADY. When the lady is dragged outside to be fed on again without anyone batting an eye it reminds me of a rapist roofying their target and proceeding to do everything in their power to seem interested in their victim's well-being in order to take them to a second location. And no one speaks up since Erzsebet is the Harvey Weinstein, Prince Andrew or Thomas Jefferson of the vampire world; the embodiment of people in power getting away with abuse until the damage has already been done.

The last and biggest point against Erzsebet is the entire scene where she turns Tera into a vampire. For me personally that is just an allegorical rape scene and it's executed very well. Erzsebet makes her entrance at the abbey as a lioness of a woman, a literal predator who wants to take Maria as a sacrifice and turn her into a vampire to ensure Emmanuel the Abbot's loyalty. Tera protests and offers herself to Erzsebet instead. This is such blatant coercion that Tera refers to herself as the ram Abraham sacrificed to God instead of Isaac. And the only question or concern Erzsebet has at this point is if her sacrifice should be a virgin. The only reasons she accepts the sacrifice are Emmanuel's genuine love for Tera and the fact that Tera is a powerful sorceress. Once Erzsebet settles for Tera and physically lifts her to her level no one can stop her. Maria gets knocked out for trying and Richter gets bodied immediately after. Their only option is to get the hell out of there once Annette makes an opening and Richter rightfully runs for his life. Even Maria, the only person that could look back and see Tera turn, is knocked out and that feels like an intentional writing choice to give Tera one last shred of dignity. Erzsebet holds Tera really close in this sort of hug as she feeds on her and once she's fed she literally sits Tera on her lap for her turn to feed. Then Erzsebet cuts herself and the blood starts dripping down on Tera, starting at her skirt, going to her blouse and reaching her face. At first Tera doesn't react but then her body responds to the blood and she feeds even though she doesn't want to. Even though no one wants this for her. And that is exactly what it's like when someone has an unwanted orgasm. Tera's body is protecting itself the same way a victim of assault would and that paired with the blood on her skirt being reminiscent of the blood on a woman's thigh in the aftermath of an assault hammers home the rape allegory. It's very sad and uncomfortable to think of Tera's turn to vampirism this way but the thought lingers hours after like a grimy film on my brain.

I 100,000% believe that Erzsebet would have been an actual rapist if Netflix Castlevania didn't romanticize Lenore raping Hector and ending their relationship on friendly terms. Not to mention Sumi and Taka's sudden shift from allies to sexually assaulting Alucard out of spite. Castlevania Nocturne seems to shy away from rape and sexual assault in favor of allegories or moments so brief that I missed them unlike its predecessor. So I'm blaming the gratuitous depictions of sexual assault in Castlevania on Warren Ellis, the creator of Netflix Castlevania, who doesn't work on this show for a very good reason.

Everything from her size as Sekhmet to her tendency to torture women and girls before killing them contributes to the allegory of Erzsebet being the vampire equivalent of a rapist. She exudes power and not only does she enjoy making others feel helpless she's also great at it. She is a sadist without honor, willing to parade her lady victim of choice around vampire high society or hang a young girl on hooks to drain dry rather than let any of them die a quick death. The dragged out, needless suffering Erzsebet inflicts along with her preference for women and virgins frames her feeding as something more sexual in nature than the other vampire nobles who simply indulge in their gluttony. Even Olrox feeding on his former boyfriend isn't framed sexually, it's framed as a desperate, romantic gesture to keep his lover alive. And every vampire I remember from Castlevania has their feeding framed as a tool for political power or sheer, simple gluttony. Even the vampire general Cho was shown to be more of a tyrant or a general sadist clinging to power in Japan than a deviant.

Erzsebet's sheer sadism actually contrasts quite well with Dracula's humanity and restraint. He understood humanity, only feeding to survive or strike down the merchants who slighted him. (He probably also used feeding as a tool for political power but I don't think we saw that directly.) Dracula ultimately came to understand humanity so well that he fell for Lisa Tepes, the exemplar of what it means to be human. And that love is why I believe he respected Lisa's wishes and let her keep that humanity instead of turning her into a vampire. And after Lisa's death Dracula stopped feeding entirely, hoping to extinguish his life and take out as many people as he could because he believed that humanity should've been better. He believed that the people who lived alongside Lisa would've stood up for her and they betrayed her out of a mix of fear, religious reverence and apathy. Meanwhile Erzsebet doesn't care about humanity, seeing people like the lawyer's daughter as possessions or people like Tera and Emmanuel the Abbot as pawns to further her own rule. She might be taken aback by Drolta's death once she learns of it but there's an equal chance that she wouldn't even bat an eye.

So what do these points of analysis mean for Erzsebet and Tera's future dynamic as master and pawn? The one thing that's certain is that Tera has been fundamentally changed, forced into an unprecedented nightmare scenario that will drag her down a dark path. But I'm an optimist and I believe that Tera will ultimately be redeemed. She may never be human again but her humanity, her love for her son and daughter will save her soul. Ultimately I hope that Tera lives and recovers from the trauma of Erzsebet turning her. I hope that she goes home to her children and is taken in with open arms. But if Tera dies she will die as Tera, not as a pawn, and that is because Erzsebet could never kill her humanity.

[thebekashow]

I frigging love this guy..

✨ childhood comfort character..✨

[darkwood-sleddog]

Sorry but does the prominent adventure/dog bite sports person on my Instagram with a Dutch Shepherd even hear how stupid they sound when they say Dutch Shepherd’s aren’t really a herding breed?

Like. Shepherd. Sheep. Herd. Shepherd. Babe.

[reluctanttrabbit]

my youtube page is just full of art students posting their films.... life is good