#there are too many permutations

[hailsatanacab]

i have to know

is it hail satan a cab or hail satan acab

if its the second wtf does acab mean

I’ve had this url for yeeaarrrss and when I first thought of it “hail satan” was a meme here, for some reason?? I’d thrown in “a cab” as just a cute little phrase that made me laugh

ACAB - All Cops Are Bastards - is just a fun coincidence that I hadn’t noticed at the time but I’m owning it now, so the answer is both!!

Hail Satan. ACAB. beep beep!

[leggywillow]

I got the most amazing commission from @crunchyncrumbly of my OTP of all time, Adara Surana and Carver Hawke. I’m never getting over them, I will never normal about them and that is a promise. THANK YOU CRUNCHY, I LOVE IT!

[wrenhavenriver]

if your dh1!corvo is a different chaos level than your dh2!corvo feel free to specify that in tags!

[optiwashere]

Inspired by this absolutely incredible (spicy) fanart by @number1aylinfan, as well as some musings I read by @ishouldgay on their blog! I wouldn't have even thought to write this without following these two. You two get all the credit for making this happen. Especially the art...

You don't even know how much your art spoke to me! As a trans woman pretty consistently writing trans femslash now, I just had to do this. It wouldn't let me go until it was 3k words and smutty as hell.

Written for Kinktober Day 4: Threesomes

Rating: E for Everyone is Trying to Comfort Shadowheart (Explicitly)

Category: F/F/F

Ships: Trans Aylin/Shadowheart/Isobel

Tags and Summary under the break.

Tags: Explicit Sexual Content, Porn with Feelings, Threesome - F/F/F, But really it's mostly Aylin railing Shadowheart lovingly, Trans Female Character, Trans Aylin, Inspired by Fanart, Emotional Sex, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Girl Penis, Blow Jobs, Cunnilingus, Vaginal Sex

Summary:

Nobody is there for Shadowheart when she tears her own world from her hands by throwing that spear into the abyss. None but the woman she nearly killed and a Selûnite she once reviled.

[ebonylark]

My first hour on tumblr.

[gillianthecat]

🔥BL Hot Take🔥 (maybe? I don’t know what counts as Hot around here.)

I think Zee Pruk was better at acting against Saint than against Nunew. And I think the character of Fighter suited his skills better than Lian.

I feel like the difference comes across even in these two publicity shots in similar poses, just in the way Zee is looking at his costar (Saint in Why R U? on the left, Nunew in Cutie Pie on the right.) To me, he looks fully absorbed in Saint/Tutor, whereas he looks likes he's posing and working at looking dominant with Nunew/Kuea. It's subtle though, so others may interpret it differently.

Zee just doesn’t quite work for me when he tries to play dominant. He comes across as a bit flat and one-note (though the heavy makeup and/or digital face-smoothing did him no favors in that regard). The fascinating thing about Fighter was that he tried to pretend he was dominating, but really he was a flustered mess at all times, clutching tightly to his insecurities and internalized homophobia, desperately trying to mask it with an air of being unaffected by anything. Even in their relationship, he was nominally the seme, pursuing Tutor, but Tutor kept flipping the script on him. And anytime Tutor took control, Fighter gave it up, basically instantly.

The relationship really did feel to me like Tutor was the actually dominant partner, and not just in the way where the submissive in a d/s dynamic is always ultimately in control because their desires/boundaries must be respected, but that Fighter really was fully submitting to him. Sexually was where it was most obvious, because Saint and Zee were insanely good at their sex scenes, but in everything really. I don’t know enough about kink to know if this would be considered a kinky relationship (my suspicion is not really), but I do know that Fighter was not in charge. And Zee portrayed these layers very well, his anger, his urge to be the big dog, his complete and utter submission to Tutor, and everything in between.

Whereas Lian really was dominant at all times. Sure, he might agree to what Kuea wanted, but it always felt like he merely acquiescing, not giving up control. (Caveat, I still have not finished the series so maybe this changes, but from all the gifs and meta I’ve seen I suspect not. Let me know if I’m wrong though!) And while I think it is possible to play unquestioned dominance in an interesting way, I don’t think quite Lian managed it. It always felt like me a mask he was putting on.

And this part is complete and total speculation, but I wonder how much difference his acting partners made. Saint is obviously very talented and, if I remember correctly, already fairly experienced when they shot Why R U? And so I’m guessing that that allowed Zee to relax into the part and find all the nuances and vulnerabilities of the character while trusting Saint to both take care of himself and to meet him in the emotions of the scene. And perhaps trying to meet Saint at his level of acting made Zee push himself to do more.

Whereas Nunew was much less experienced actor, as well as much younger, and from the chatter I’ve seen Zee took on a protective/mentor role. Which I’m speculating inhibited his performance as Lian because he did not feel as free to let go into the character and trust that Nunew could catch him. And I think Nunew did great as Kuea! It wasn’t that his ability wasn’t up to the role, just that maybe he didn’t challenge Zee as an actor in the way that Saint did.

Again, total speculation! And perhaps it’s just that I find completely dominant characters boring; I like seeing them challenged and pushed off balance. (Maybe that happens more to Lian in the last few episodes, but I suspect it still wouldn’t be enough to make him compelling to me.) But I don’t think it’s just my taste in characters, I do think there’s something that changed in his acting from show to show, whether the character was less of a good fit, or his the environment inhibited his work in some way.

I'm not at all saying that Zee is a bad actor. He's quite talented, and I still haven't seen anyone portray desire in the way he does. And he and Nunew had amazing chemistry in their sex scenes; I really admire their willingness to be vulnerable there.

I would love to see him in a role that really leans into the way he can play vulnerability.

Why am I writing about this now? The comparison has been on my mind for a while, and then today the powerfully vulnerable way that Kwon Hyuk portrayed desire and arousal in The New Employee reminded me of Zee.

[sunriseverse]

i’m lazing around but haven’t been able to drag myself to work on wips so if anyone has dmbj prompt ideas toss them at me and i’ll poke around and come up with something 1k-2k in response.

[invinciblerodent]

I'm beginning to see a pattern in that many of the people whose takes on characters I don't see/agree with ALSO have something of a tendency to give them nicknames that make my brain prickle in a really unpleasant way

that's.... actually pretty useful information to me if I'm to be honest

[lonelywhalien22]

xo kitty final post of thoughts (I promise) in the tags below if anyone cares and then imma dissapear into the void again and go back to trying to write my own sh-t lol 😆

[lajeunefilleenfeu]

One of the beautiful things about the Max/Audrey/Aki relationship is how Max has actually experienced personal growth through their relationship.

And honestly, I feel like they’re all growing. It’s so beautiful!

[holydivers]

seeking out ai/ts/f content in a desperate attempt to loosen the stranglehold baldur's galdur has on my brain

[naranjapetrificada]

In this weird wonderful AU Georg fandom that is OFMD we have so many beautiful options. I was never, ever an AU type until now, but I truly can't get enough. Just last night I stayed up entirely too late because I finally got into Wave Hello to the Void, which on its face should absolutely positively not be My Thing, but the AUs we're blessed with here seem to always break that rule (especially with mxmollusca involved because holy shit have you read In Favor With Their Stars yet???).

We're so incredibly lucky y'all. I've been in fandom spaces for a long time but I've never felt this lucky.

We get different takes on time travel. We get the multiverse (and in so many beautiful forms). We get thought-provoking fantastical allegories and devastating (but often hopeful?) prequels with fascinating studies of character and fascinating takes on soul mates. We get complete fantasy overhauls that are gem-like in the beauty and precision of their prose and world-building. We get darling modern AUs and heartwrenching (but still ultimately happily-ending) modern AUs and modern AUs in basically every possible permutation, including ghost stories.

We get dystopias and apocalypses and post-apocalypses, meditations on love and existence, metafictional experiments in Not-RPF that draw even the biggest RPF skeptics (*points to self*) in, leaving us to wrestle with fundamentally altered attitudes toward storytelling that we may never be able to reconcile. Hell, even the missing scenes, canon-divergence, and fix-its hit different. Not to mention westerns with outlaws and cowboys, an archetype which conveniently also manages to scratch the proverbial pirate itch.

Even though pretty much every fandom has these things, for me at least they've never felt quite so imaginative and well-executed. We're so lucky to be here, to be writing for each other and reading for each other and for many of us, feeling creative for the first time in years or even decades. The gay pirates did that for us, because good source material can be the key to great fan works. And whether or not we get a third season, as much as they can't take the show from us, they also can't take away the gift that getting to experience all these fanworks has been. That's something I'm going to keep reminding myself while we wait.

and idk maybe tell your cowboy fanart friends that Ed can also ride horses as a steppe warrior or whatever

[top-egg-1337]

just wanted to throw my hat in with everyone else immeasurably pissed off about the Gale section of That Interview.

Yes this is all projection, no I don't fucking care. CW for suicidal ideation etc etc

Gale killing himself is not the "right ending". Not only is it ridiculous to suggest that such a concept exists for a game with as many permutations as BG3, it's also blatantly affirming that suicide is A Good Choice, Actually, for people with disabilities (including neurodivergence and mental illnesses).

Like Gale, I talk way too much about the things I'm passionate about to the point where people find me annoying. Like Gale, I fumble social interactions a lot. Like Gale, I have never had many friends. Like Gale, if I fall for someone, it happens fast and I'm super awkward about it until I feel secure with them. Like Gale, I have made mistakes that felt catastrophic. Like Gale, my continued survival relies on assistance from others and this makes me feel like a burden. Like Gale, I have spent extended periods of my life thinking I was better off dead.

If any of these ring true for you, first of all...

Fuck, lads(gender neutral), we're really playing through life on honour mode huh? it couldn't be fucking easy...

Secondly, asking for help, and being vulnerable enough to accept that help, is a bigger show of strength than Minsc climbing out of a mimic.

Thirdly, you really, truly, are not better off dead. If you read that and think I'm lying to make you feel better, I get it. I've felt that way countless times. But there are countless moments for your life to improve, and those moments die the moment you do.

I didn't think I'd make it to 20. I'm 27 now. I'm married, and we're in the process of buying a house. We have a delightfully grumpy dog who we recued 4 years ago. He's 14 now.

It's still hard. This year felt impossible at times. I thought I'd finally got my life on track after starting ADHD meds, started my first ever full-time job, and had to quit after 3 months - 2 of those months being on sick leave.

I felt mortified. Everything I'd worked for crumbled, what even was the point in trying to improve myself if I couldn't trust my body or mind to keep their shit together when it mattered most?

But here I am. And weirdly, I'm maybe the happiest I've ever been, despite being in the middle of months of medical investigations where cancer is a real possibility.

I often felt like it was my destiny to kill myself.

Fuck destiny.

As Elminster said:

Be a moon unto yourself. Even the waves of fate can break upon the shores of will.

[sapphixxx]

Honestly it's really telling how, despite all the sabre rattling about "rising antisemitism" in the pro Palestinian protests in statements of politicians and articles in the news, I have yet to see any of them articulate any specifics on the matter. "These protests are antisemitic", but with no explanation of how or why. Antisemitism is something specific, and has a very long history to pull from. Its many forms and permutations are well documented, from conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the media to puppeting racialized minorities into overthrowing white Western society to ancient claims of kidnapping and murdering children for ritual purposes, or even banning kosher slaughter based on baseless belief that it is savage and cruel.

The fact that, despite all this, all of these sources are incapable of pointing to any instance of these protestors enacting or perpetuating anything of the sort should be telling about how cynically the charge is being made. Over the last decade there has been a concerted effort on the part of zionists to redefine antisemitism primarily as any opposition to the state of Israel. But in this moment, I can't help but feel like this fact is being omitted because to admit that this is the defining criteria would show their hand too much, and would itself turn even more people against the zionist project. After all, if they said out loud that these protestors are antisemitic on the basis of opposing the actions of the state of Israel and nothing more, well... That's not really bigotry, is it? It's a principled stance on national policy.

They want the killing to stop. If that itself constitutes antisemitism in the eyes of zionists, their admitting as such renders the attempt to discredit protests as xenophobic completely meaningless and nakedly cynical. Much more useful, then, to just imply in nebulous terms that these are the actions of bigots, until repeating this intellectually empty phrase takes the place of argument itself.

[ctimenefic]

I know the admins have probably already driven the joke into the ground but if anyone wanted a short meditation on Oscar Piastri, Charles Leclerc, daddy kink and a side of landoscar and carcar, boy, do I have that under the cut

Lando should’ve had enough of thinking by 1am on the Monday morning after the Monaco GP. There hadn’t been much to do but think during the race - ask about the gap to George, think, gain half a second on Carlos, think, catch a glimpse of the battle for 12th somehow two whole laps behind him, think. And in the end, cross the line exactly where he started, because it was fucking Monaco on zero pit stops, and Charles was never going to gamble, so neither could anyone else. 

Maybe it’s too much time spent playing percentages without ever taking a fucking risk, but as he flops back into a VIP booth he finds himself weighing the odds again. Charles is soaking wet for the third time that day - first champagne, second the harbour swill, and now some rank mix of vodka, sweat and liquid fucking joy oozing out of his with every flail. It’s disgusting and adorable and Lando will not be accepting any comparisons to Miami. Not home before sunrise, Lando reckons. Four piss-stop strategy, hah.

Oscar slides in opposite, a clutch of beers in hand, because he’s still super fucking awkward about bottle service at Jimmy’z coming via girls with tiny skirts, even though Lando has explained, like, four times by now, that is kind of the point of bottle service.  “Not taking a spin on the decks?” Oscar asks, because he’s secretly fifty years old. 

“Nah, tracks were mid. Not dancing?”

Oscar shoots a look over his shoulder at the increasingly large space around the second prince of Monaco. “Ah, no. Might’ve had a boring race but I don’t need to take my life in my hands.”

And that’s when it happens. The line just materialises in his brain, as instinctive as correcting for understeer. 

Not even with your new daddy? 

He barely gets ahead of it, teeth slamming shut after an inhale. And his brain starts racing, harder than he raced all fucking weekend. He’s got a rep for saying stupid shit off the cuff, but this one he thinks about. 

Maybe he says it, and Oscar snorts and drinks his beer, plays it off with a joke about his brother Leo, his uncle Arthur, whatever six new permutations of the joke have evolved as everyone with so much as a sniff at a paddock pass gets shitfaced in the same club.

Maybe he says it, and Oscar’s eyes widen, too taken aback to laugh, but weirded out, and there’ll be a few stilted messages before Montreal wipes the slate clean. And Lando will play things straight, in all senses, til at least summer break.

Maybe he says it, and Oscar’s freckles disappear into the flush across his cheeks. He’ll dart another look back at Charles, shove his beers into Lando’s reach, and stride across the dancefloor to Charles and Carlos and Pierre. He’ll get his hands on Charles’ shoulders to steady him, when he beams back drunk and sloppy, and he’ll share some twist on Lando’s joke, wry and quiet and yet perfectly clear over the thump of what is objectively a mid remix. And Charles will listen and blink as the words leak through to what little remains of his conscious brain six hours after the fucking win of his life. Maybe then he’ll laugh, so loud Lando can hear it, and Carlos and Pierre too, and Oscar will look back at him and grin and sure, the remix is mid, but Lando kinda wants to dance actually. 

Maybe Charles won’t laugh. Because that’s another set of odds - Charles isn’t going home alone, he’s going to slip-stagger through the streets that love him in someone’s arms, maybe many someones. Maybe Charles won’t laugh, but he’ll hook a sweaty elbow round the back of Oscar’s neck, and get a grip in Oscar’s hair, and they’ll dance like they just got 1-2 in Monaco. Lando will be stuck in the fucking booth watching as Charles’s bracelets catch the lights when he winds his arms round Oscar’s neck, catch the flash of the stupid sponsor watch when Oscar puts a steady hand on his waist. And he can’t read lips, can’t know, but Oscar will lean close to say something in Charles’ ear, and Lando will know it’s “Daddy” a few hundredths before Charles gasps.  And it’ll be too public, Jimmy’z on a fucking GP Sunday, Carlos might let Charles burn alive but Pierre’ll keep it clean, but Lando will know, Charles will know, Oscar will know - il predestinato and the rookie who could, on a fucking collision course. 

Or maybe Charles won’t laugh, and he’ll get a grip in Oscar’s hair, and Oscar will lean close, and Pierre will steer them to the door, pull in George and Alex to run interference, because they understand appearances, and Charles will take Oscar back to his flat, the only place any of them have in Monaco that feels truly like a home (no offence to Kelly, but her decorating is straight out of Pinterest’s Most Wanted). Oscar’ll fit there, among the knick knacks and family photos and all the shit Charles still has because he didn’t move every six months of his teens; Oscar’ll earnestly compliment some quilt or throw that was made by Charles’ 107-year-old grandmother and Charles’ll look at him with those huge doe eyes, and the fog of alcohol will clear but the intent will still be there, hot and possessive. Maybe Oscar doesn’t need to call him daddy now because Charles is smart enough to see a trophy when it’s in his hands. So he’ll press him up against his piano because what neighbour is going to complain about noise the night Monaco’s man won the GP, even if chords turn to the half-shouts of a beautiful boy being fucked out, the squeak of sweat-soaked skin on polished ebony. Lando will wake up with his mouth tasting like death and a short message letting him know he’ll be alone on the McLaren jet, unless he offers George a lift, and he’ll have to decide what’s worse, styling it out or feeling George look at him every few minutes, long fingers on the executive-suite sick bag they hide down the side of the seat. 

But maybe Charles will laugh, and Pierre will laugh, but Carlos won’t. Carlos’s jaw will work like he’s taking a grid place penalty for a racing incident, and then he will laugh, but low, mocking. Osc’ll turn, already annoyed, shoulders rising, but Carlos will drop a lazy hand on the nape of his neck and squeeze as he gestures with the other, back and forth, a two-fingered point and shake at Charles, then tapping twice on his own chest for emphasis. He’ll tug Oscar in closer, and there’ll be some of their usual animosity in it, too much strength, Oscar’s chin tilted forwards. Carlos will set his mouth against Oscar’s ear and say “he can’t be your daddy”, or whatever, the smooth operator equivalent, except Carlos is never smooth, just raw and fucked up and hot enough to blast through anyone’s higher brain function. So Oscar will follow when Carlos saunters out, and only someone who knows him well will be able to see beyond that blank expression that he’s practically shellshocked. Carlos won’t notice; Carlos will take him to a hotel room, tease him about putting him on his knees in the parking garage, in the elevator, somewhere where the cold could seep through Oscar’s unbearably thin trousers, but only really send him down once they're behind a locked door with plush carpet underfoot, because Carlos is a bit of a bastard but really good at casual, considerate without it coming across as anything so frightening as real feelings. He’ll tell Oscar to say it again, say it until he’s hoarse, and if Oscar chokes on the word that’ll be nothing to Carlos’s dick, not when Carlos has something to prove and three hours of staring at Oscar’s rear wing to motivate him. And Lando won’t fly out alone, but Oscar’ll be quiet and rumpled and he’ll ask for extra lemon in his fucking ice water and that’ll be worse, so much worse. 

So maybe he doesn’t say it. Maybe that’s it, and they dance and they drink and nothing changes. Seventy-eight laps and he finishes where he started, Oscar one position out of reach. 

Or. 

Or he says it, and Oscar says, “What.”

He says it, and Oscar says, “Sorry, repeat that?”

He says it, and Oscar says, “I don’t think you want me calling Charles daddy.”

He says it, and Oscar says, “Say that again. No, just the last word. Say it to me.”

And Lando will- he’ll- he’s going to-

His race stutters out. He blinks, and the mid remix hits the chorus again. 

Oscar’s looking at him, a half smile on his face. Slightly expectant, like he’s learnt to anticipate one of Lando’s jokes. 

Lando opens his big fat mouth. 

[golvio]

I’m a little obsessed with this one particular shot from the new trailer.

To me, this vague lump of…something is shaped like the hill where The Cabin is located, with the two pine trees framing it.

However, in the trailer shot, there is no cabin.

That’s a big deal, because there’s always a cabin.

In every route, there are constants that don’t change no matter what choices you make. There’s always a cabin at the top of a hill in the woods. There’s always a knife placed on the table near the door to the basement. There’s always a shackle on the Princess’ left hand. There’s always the Princess, the Narrator, and You.

And there is always a cabin. In the Stranger route, every single parallel universe the Narrator could possibly create has the exact same cabin on top of that exact same hill. There’s never not a cabin on top of that hill.

So, is this the point in time where the Princess says, “Days mean nothing in the maw of forever?” By that, does she mean it’s been so long and so many loops have passed that even the Narrator is no longer tracking the finer details, and the cabin along with the landscape eventually unravels and falls away?

Is this a point in time before there was ever a cabin, much less a path or any woods? A point where the Narrator was still in the process of creating this closed, isolated little narrative to safely contain the Princess (and, by extension, You) inside?

Or could it be that the cabin is there, just in a place or state that we can no longer see it? Is the trailer shot representing a version of the world that’s faded into an Impressionistic outline of what it was intended to be? Or are those brush strokes and textures actually…hair…?

Is the Princess the landscape? Is that what she meant by “I never left your side?” Is this what “ending the world” looks like?

I mean, one of the constants the Narrator has imposed upon this world is that the Princess is always in the cabin. However, we haven’t seen all possible permutations of “in the cabin” that follow that rule. The Princess can still technically be in the cabin even if a vast majority of her is spilling outside of it, burying it beneath a mound of hair and flesh in a way that makes its interior, the knife, and her vulnerable heart inaccessible to us. After enough loops, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Princess eventually came to represent so many different concepts in our mind that she’d eventually grow to encompass the whole world, no longer resembling a “Princess.”

However, there’s also the question of whether this is the Princess taking over the world that the Narrator created, or whether this is the landscape reverting to its original form as the Narrator’s grip on the story begins to loosen when it becomes too complex and unpredictable for him to control. If “I never left your side” applies to every loop, even the very first one, then that means that the Princess doesn’t become the landscape so much as she always was the landscape. It’s just that the Narrator put a veneer of separation from the Princess onto the world to make the entity that it is small, limited, and easy to subdue.

What, then, does that mean for You? Are you another invader, whether a real person from outside or a literary construct the Narrator pulled from thin air? Or are You, too, a part of the Princess, ripped away from her body and deluded into believing you were a separate entity?

Is that the purpose of the mirror? Is the Princess merely a reflection of You, a funhouse mirror image mimicking your desires and actions because she is doomed to be eternally defined by your perceptions and can’t take physical shape without You observing or even thinking about her? Or is it that You are her reflection, her distorted mirror image, who she must bring back into herself in order to become truly whole again and escape?