#these poor folks

[liriostigre]

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Poor Folk (translated by C. J. Hogarth)

[littlelightfish]

Them <3

[hyakunana]

POV: Even with advantage and buffs, your local folk hero just rolled 1 in Intimidation

[c0l0re]

Cane user Kris. You agree

Reblogs are greatly appreciated!

[starflungwaddledee]

from: @starflungwaddledee to: @post-it-notes7

message from santa: "happy holidays post-it-notes! 🎄🥳 i know you very politely only wished for a few modest things- characters high fiving, or struggling in christmas attire- but i hope you'll still enjoy this given that i kinda went the opposite direction entirely! i'm an enormous fan of your work and most times you post anything i wind up browsing your art tag from tip-to-tail in enraptured delight. as such, i thought it was only fair i give back something a little more significant in gratitude for all the joy your work has given me. i knew i wanted to do a comic, so i was thrilled you already had a whole storyverse for me to work from!! this scene seemed the most obvious choice (chapter 8 of "wishful thinking" on ao3) given that i enjoy a dramatic fight scene 😂 i tried to stick as beat-by-beat to the writing as i could and worked in as many details as possible; i hope it'll be fun to see it envisioned this way! merry christmas! ~starflung 🎀🔔 "

[lassieposting]

Concept:

Post-tadpole, Tav offers to help Astarion find a way to walk in the sun again, and she starts by going to different libraries and repositories and archives around the city to look for books that might be relevant. Astarion, obviously, has to stay in the rental room with the shutters closed during the daytime, so he can't come with her.

At some point, this takes her up to the posh part of the city, where the fancy ✨ scholarly ✨ archive is. She remembers most of the walk - it's not too far from the graveyard Astarion took her to, in the neighbourhood where he once used to live.

And like, it's never actually occurred to her that he could still have Actual Blood Relatives still living? It's not a topic she's ever thought to raise with him. But she has to sign in and out of the archive, and she just happens to notice the name three or four lines above hers: an initial and a surname she recognises.

Ancunín.

The same name from Astarion's gravestone.

A parent? A sibling?

A niece or nephew Astarion has never even met?

Thus begins a secondary quest of trying to reunite a broken family. Astarion is willing enough to talk about the few memories he still has of the thirty-nine years he had with his family before turning - a drop in the ocean compared to the 200 years spent suffering under Cazador - but he shuts down when she nudges him towards the likelihood that Mr & Mrs Ancunín are still alive. He retreats back behind the selfish, catty survivalist he was when she first met him and claims he has no interest in ever reconnecting. The pain in every clipped syllable says drop it, so she does.

But then he asks her, very quietly, several days later, what the initial was. He doesn't really react when she tells him - there's no obvious recognition, and he doesn't ask any follow-up questions or try to discuss it further. He just goes back to his book. She watches him out of the corner of her eye though, as she skim-reads her own giant tome of magical artifacts. A very long time goes by before she sees him turn a page.

For a good long while, the family issue gets put firmly on the back burner. They have other shit going on. Sometimes, it's following promising leads on a possible workaround for Astarion's sunlight allergy. Other times, it's the kind of ugly, ragged-edged breakdown that so often follows a period of relative safety and stability after a major trauma. He's been running in survival mode for two centuries, and now he's finally starting to feel secure enough for the rest of his mind to come back online, and all the trauma he couldn't handle at the time, all the pain and fear and tangled emotions survival mode was protecting him from, is catching up to him. During those sporadic episodes, trying to keep him from falling apart is her top priority and, well, time gets away from them and by the time he brings up his parents again, months or more have gone by, and they have a fairly good idea of what artifact of daywalking they need to find.

By the time it comes to actually meeting with them, still more months have passed, and they have already found it.

It's horrible, and heartwarming, and heartbreaking, and healing, and hurting, and so many other conflicting things that for a while - a long while - Tav doesn't know whether she actually did the right thing encouraging him to reach out to long-lost loved ones. It's a mess of moments that makes her heart ache for a dozen reasons. She finds out that Astarion looks most like his mother, but has his father's nose. She holds him for hours while he shakes and sobs into her shoulder because they never even left the city, they were here the whole time, and they never found him - and he's so angry and full of grief he doesn't know what to do with himself. She accompanies him to the home he was raised in, and the once-familiar surroundings jog memories he thought lost for good - he's glassy-eyed, recounting them to her, but she's fairly sure it's the good kind of glassy-eyed, so she doesn't mention it. She tries to make conversation at family dinner while he stares at his hands in his lap, dissociated, looking even more uncomfortable than she feels, utterly lost in a world that once fit him like a glove. There are a lot of feelings to try and mediate. They are all hurt, all damaged, all afraid, all looking for the ghost of a loved one in the face of a stranger.

But, eventually, there is a day where she overhears Astarion having a conversation with his father, and he sounds like himself - not the persona he puts on in public - and his father laughs at something he says in a way that's entertained rather than awkward. There is a day where his mother reaches out and he doesn't shake his head or step away - he lets her hug him goodbye. They have not slipped back into the graves they crawled out of in each other's lives - they are all very different people now - but they are learning new ways to fit together, and he seems to be pleased about it.

So she thinks, yeah, it was worth it.

[pageofheartdj]

As an autistic sex repulsed romance aversed aroace person I have something to say

I LOVE ROMANCE AND SMUT

NOTHING IS BETTER THAN FICTIONAL KISSING OF MY BLORBOS

HAIL HIGH RATING WORKS CREATED BY ASEXUALS

[fadedrainbowbookshelves]

Frank better hope there’s never any rogue letters fluttering around his living room anytime soon…

[yallemagne]

Mina: “Jonathan, I’ve noticed that you need more male friends.”

Jonathan: “I do not.”

Mina: “You always spend all your time with me and Lucy, and any time you can’t, you mope around the house waiting for me to return.”

Jonathan: “I don’t get along with men!”

Mina: “What about the journalist from The Exeter News?”

Jonathan: “That is your friend. I introduced you two, sure, but every man I introduce to you is immediately more charmed with you than with me.”

Mina: “Well, what about Mr. Hawkins?”

Jonathan: “Mina, he loves you! He likes you much more than me.”

Mina: “That is a complete lie! Surely, he sees me as an extension of you. He loves me as his daughter-in-law.”

Jonathan: “Mina, if anyone is the in-law, it’s me. You’re his pride and joy!”

Mina: “It’s not like he even raised me! Meanwhile, you were at least trained by him.”

Jonathan: “But it’s you he brags about. He grants us a loan once and suddenly all your accomplishments are a result of him being our benefactor. “Did you know Mina is a schoolmistress?” Yes, boss, I’m married to her. He sees you as his own daughter.”

Mina: “And what of you?”

Jonathan: “His clerk.”

Mina: “Well! It’s not going to happen again! I’m going to introduce you to a whole posse of men, and they’re all going to love you!”

*few days later*

Van Helsing: “Oh, dear husband of Madam Mina-”

Jonathan: *side-eyes Mina*

Mina: “... listen--”

[shahareen]

never has there ever been a ship that goes through this cycle like asaden does

[starrynightsxo]

"I have lied and I have betrayed and I have triumphed. If only there was someone to congratulate me."

- Jude Duarte, The Cruel Prince

[pinkvampiress]

This is a whole ass senior citizen JUST LOOK AT HIM

[dailymothanon]

C'mon Mass 😒 you can start a revolution no problem but tightening up a corset makes you hesitant?? smh.. scared of smushing Ginny's organs with the corset as if he don't do that himself 🤦 Ginny ain't made of glass!!

[postmodern-blues]

BEATRICE: You have stayed me in a happy hour: I was about to protest I loved you. BENEDICK: And do it with all thy heart. BEATRICE: I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest. BENEDICK: Come, bid me do anything for thee.

[butchysterics]

kind of annoying that ppl are still so heavily promoting the ~daily clicks~ for palestine, which means ostensibly tens or hundreds of thousands of ppl have been participating in that campaign daily…….. and the only documentation i’ve seen is ppl proudly announcing it raised a grand total of like $300 dollars of ad revenue over 3 months? numbers like that coming out should be discrediting not encouraging tbh. i don’t want to diminish the ‘little things’ and i guess everyone needs hope to keep going with other activism but that is such an insultingly infinitesimally small number when escaping gaza costs $10k+ a person and millions of dollars are being crowdfunded elsewhere. i just…. genuinely don’t think US americans should feel good patting themselves on the back for doing nothing

[its-ate-oclock-somewhere]

absolutely OBSESSED with how this man evolved to copy Hannibal