#things that scratch an itch specific to one part of my brain and my brain alone

[thescreaminghat]

tfp knockout --> has staff that discharges electrical energy

armada megatron --> can use electric-based moves

crossover fight --> biggest mistake of KO's life (dialogue from this)

[post-punk-revival]

Hi bird therians! I'd like to present the following list of definitions of avian terminology; instincts and anatomy. Specifically, terms for things that many birdkin may already be aware of due to their own shifts, but not know the word for or even that it's a real and normal thing. Why do I make that assumption? Because my own mind was blown every time I discovered one of these words, the way things I would do or phantom parts I would feel suddenly made sense. So I hope to induce the same reaction in at least someone.

Behaviors

Mantling is mostly a bird of prey thing, the action of leaning over a kill and shielding the spoils with your wings so as to defend it from thieves. I can do no better of a description than a photo, included at the bottom of this post and for raptors it will probably spark recognition.

Rousing is the word for that "slowly fluff up the feathers and then shake the whole body" thing that birds do. Yes, it does have a name! Birds do it when relaxed or just chilly. It is not a threat display. I experience this as like an near-involuntary action -- like scratching an itch or sneezing -- and because I'm not actually raising physical feathers it feels kind of like shivering. But it sort of feels frustrating that I can't seem to achieve it. Like when a sneeze goes away.

Feather-plucking (pterotillomania) is a maladaptive habit birds in captivity develop when they are stressed. You see it most often with parrots, because they're kept as pets more than other birds and are also extremely intelligent so more easily understimulated. Sometimes this does feel like being a bird in captivity and a lot of you might experience this instinct without knowing what it is your brain's asking to do because you have no feathers. Calling it pterotillomania is helpful to me because I have actual dermotillomania and if my body had feathers I'd be plucking them.

Anatomy

Nictitating membrane. Starting with this because you may already know it by now. The third eyelid of birds, translucent, drawn sideways across the eye so that you can keep it moist while still being able to see. Also, as you may know, relevant to cat therians!

Crop. Part of the digestive tract of a bird in the throat where food is temporarily stored before being digested. If you had these shifts it would feel like, according to Wikipedia, basically an enlarged portion of the esophagus.

Keel. An extension of the sternum, the structure to which flight muscles are attached. If you had these shifts it would feel like a thin bone going beneath (or I guess on a humanoid body plan, in front of) your ribcage.

Cloaca. In the interest of not having to mark this post mature, I will not define or describe this one. I encourage you to look it up. Mammals are already working to reduce the stigma surrounding these types of shifts and instincts; we can do the same. There is no shame in it. You're a bird and birds have these. Accept it.

Birds do have sensation in our beaks. There are nerve endings in the beak. Not as much as, say, human skin, but yes, birds can feel touch on their beaks. If you can feel your beak, great! That is anatomically correct, and it certainly does not make you fake!

And now for your enjoyment, a mantling eagle:

[olderthannetfic]

This isn't a complaint, just sort of a musing-- Yeah, if AO3 allowed monetization, it would cause the whole platform to become way shittier, not just for legal reasons. But this kind of reminds me of something I've thought about a lot.

I'm someone who's not a very strong or attentive reader, but the ease with which I can find thousands of appealing works on AO3 means I have ALSO found dozens of writers who grip me enough that I would read ANYTHING by them. I also find reviews and recs for popular book series' to be... very unreliable, but I can consistently find interesting works by looking at user bookmarks and by trawling tags. And I don't even mean in a "oh, this user doesn't want stories, they want tropes" way, because I'm with everyone else that reading the exact same enemies to lovers romance gets kind of boring after a while (no shade on people who enjoy that sort of thing). I mean that sometimes I find an idea and think 'oh, this is a VERY cool literary theme; I wonder how other writers have explored the same idea?' - and then find out that there's a canonical tag that sees very little use, and trawl through people exploring the same ideas about the nature of freedom when you have a duty to family (or whatever it is this time) until I find one that just NAILS it and sets my brain on fire.

In other words, AO3 is the only place I can get the same reading experience that I had in school where there were teachers and mentors who would not only do just about anything to help me find interesting stuff, but also knew me personally and would help me find extremely specific concepts like "I want a story that captures the feeling of being completely owned by another person and the oppressive surrendering of will that comes with it, but which isn't about slavery, religion, or marriage" or "I want a story that's just like Howl's Moving Castle but specifically in these three ways."

I don't wish AO3 was marketplace, but I wish there was marketplace that gave me the experience of AO3. The fact that there is SO MUCH free user generated content on AO3, and that it's so easy to explore with great specificity, means it's the only place I KNOW I'll find something fun. I wish it served as a platform to find professional artists doing silly stuff on their down time. (In fact, last time I fell in love with a fic, I got to talking to the author, who sent me a novel draft with all of the same themes but original characters and setting. That unpublished work is now one of my favorite books.)

I can think of a bunch of platform ideas that would scratch this itch for me, but I can't imagine any of them working out as well since the fandom experience and culture is such an integral part of why fanfic is different from original fic. (And also since monetization makes platforms get shitty fast.)

--

[adventuringblind]

Joint Coping

Lestappen x Reader

Genre: Angst

Dialouge: "Help me understand."

Summary: Max helps his partners learn to cope in healthy ways

Warnings: Selh-harm, unhealthy Coping, blood, Ferrari, Max being the sane one of the group

Notes: I would like to emphasize that this is a thing that does happen. I know because I've done it. This specifically is not something to be glorified at all. Self-harm done in groups can become competitive. This is a pretty toned down version of things I've experienced and it's less toxic. THIS IS NOT REACHING OUT. Just wanted to clarify :)

This is part of my 1000 follower celebration! Requests are still open if you'd like to participate (the link will take you to the request form).

Masterlist

Max knows something is wrong with his partners. It's like an itch in his brain he can't scratch. A sixth sense, if you will.

The two Ferrari drivers are struggling with their team. Every problem is their fault. They have become the Ferrari scapegoats. When they do poor, it's the driver. When they do good, it's the team and the car.

He's coming to the end of his patience. If he has to hear them self deprecate one more time he might actually consider making them stand in the mirror and say nice things about themselves. Can he fuck it out of them? Is that a possibility? He really doesn't know but is desperate and willing to try anything.

They both DNF at the next race. Max is a man on a mission through media and debrief. He needs to see that they are okay. At the very least not sitting through some kind of lecture a parent gives to a child.

He sprints to the Ferrari garage and runs into Carlos. Despite his injury that took him out of the season, he still comes to support his team and teammates.

"Carlos!" The Spainard spins around to face him. "Have you seen-?"

"They already left over an hour ago. Did they not text you?"

There are warning bells going off inside of his head. Something is clearly wrong and they aren't telling him about it. He's about to sprint away when Carlos stops him.

"Before you go, you should that there were some awful things said by their engineers and they looked really upset about it."

"Thanks Carlos."

Max is back at the hotel as fast as he can manage. He tried both their cells with no answer. It's killing him from the inside out with anxiety. He's probably just overthinking, but it'll feel better when he sees they are okay.

He keys the door open and doesn't bother taking off his shoes. The lights are off aside from the one in the bathroom. Maybe they decided a nice relaxing bath would do the trick. Max could also go for one. He pushes that thought aside for now.

He knocks gently on the door. "You two in there?" No response. Or at least - not one to him directly. There are a few hushed whispers, but nothing loud enough for him to hear.

He waits Aproximatley ten seconds before he can't handle it anymore and swings the door open. He expects to see fogged mirror and water on the floor. Instead he's met with the sight red wrists and thighs.

He's lost. Max Verstappen has no idea what to do.

They are stripped down to undergarments. Legs dangling over the side of tub. A switchblade in the hands of Charles. They both look teary eyed and doped out. Are they enjoying this?

God, he feels so stupid. Weeks of having Sex with no lights on, sweatshirts in hot weather, no swimming and doing private ice bathes away from trainers. He should've noticed. Max could've stopped this sooner. He wants to rewind and tell them to come to him instead of relying on this to get the through.

"Guess you caught us." Charles let's out a half assed laugh. "You gonna stare at us all night? Or can we get the yelling part over with? Last three partners left us when they caught it. I understand if it's to much. Not your burden."

Max had been a later addition. The two in the bathtub had been together since their teenage years. Had they been Coping like this for so long?

"Sorry about the mess. Relapses are hard. We made it all season until a month ago." She leans her head onto Charles' shoulder. How can they make this type of environment endearing? This is unreal and they need serious help. Which Max will eventually get them when he can get his act together.

He kneels on the floor in between them. Max is just now registering the tears on his cheeks. They'd been in pain for so long. It hurts him just thinking about it.

"I'm not going to yell-" he looks at one. "-I'm not going to leave-" he looks at the other. "But help me understand. I want to help."

"It's easier to do with someone else around. It's more therapeutic." The lopsided smile on the female's face is not helping Max. He has to many questions.

First, he gets them cleaned up. Neither of them flinch when he disenfects the wounds. They don't look at him as he wraps them in whatever gauz is in the first aid kit. They look ashamed as he puts the knife in his bag and rinses the tub.

The one that gets him, however, is the look of pure confusion when Max hugs them both so tightly. It's like they don't know how to respond.

They sit in a circle on the bed. It's comfortable and Max can see both their expressions clearly.

"I know the struggle." He starts. "Punishing yourself is better then someone else doing it, right? But I had Daniel there reminding me to reach out."

"It's just easier this way."

"Easier isn't better. Look at the state you're in. I'm not leaving, but I am getting the both of you help."

He followed through with this the next morning. Then looked supposed to see him when they woke up. He, and his childish mind, kissed all the cuts and scars. Every single one of them received proper treatment.

The female cried and thre her arms around Max. Charles had looked away in shame. The reasons they started this are still foreign to him, but that's not his priority.

He gets them help. All of them, mind you. They do group sessions as the three of them to find healthier ways to cope with each other.

Reasons seem to fade into the background because they don't matter as much. The important thing is that Max caught it in time. That he didn't lose them to their own minds. They are partners, and Max would be devistated to lost someone he loves to those dark places.

He rests easier now that the itch has been scratched. His partners are doing better. They smile and laugh at his stupid jokes again. A bit of confidence regained.

And Max reminds them daily that nothing is worth it if you have to destroy yourself for it. Drivers or not, he loves them regardless.

[empresskadia]

I can’t stop thinking about Mistress Warden-Commnader Surana/Amell to King Alistair—it’s living rent-free in my brain! In my first playthrough of Dragon Age: Origins, I went with Warrior Cousland because, honestly, Noble Lady with an axe? Yes, please. But there’s just something about Mage Elf/Human Surana/Amell as Mistress to the King that scratches a very specific itch.

I mean, in that playthrough, I had Alistair marry Anora for the sake of stability and preventing civil unrest. But the idea of Surana/Amell staying on as his mistress and being the real power behind the throne? Absolutely perfect. Like, she’s just there, controlling everything, and everyone knows it. And the best part? She’s perfectly happy with that arrangement.

Picture this: Surana/Amell lounging in Alistair’s chambers, casually munching on chocolate-covered strawberries, when she makes some off-handed remark about a political matter—and of course, Alistair immediately goes through with it. No questions asked. She’s the one standing beside him at formal events, commanding respect and intrigue, with her full title trailing behind her like a reminder: Warden-Commander Surana/Amell, Hero of Ferelden, Mistress to the King.

And here’s the thing—Surana/Amell owns it. She’s content with her life because she gets to do her own thing: running the Grey Wardens, dabbling in magic, and occasionally poking at political affairs, all without anyone telling her what to do. It’s the ultimate freedom, and Alistair being head over heels for her is just the icing on the cake. When she’s away, he’s this sad puppy missing her terribly, but the moment she returns? Full golden retriever energy, tail-wagging (metaphorically, of course), and a grand ball thrown in her honor.

But here’s where it gets fun: Even Anora eventually warms up to Surana/Amell. They have this mutual respect, maybe even a friendship, built on tea-drinking sessions and political discussions. And when Anora needs Alistair to do something he’s dragging his feet about? She knows exactly where to go: Surana/Amell. Because, let’s face it, if anyone can convince Alistair to get his act together, it’s her.

That said, Anora can absolutely be a total bitch to Surana/Amell sometimes, and that adds some delicious drama to the dynamic. Surana/Amell, of course, doesn’t even flinch. She’s just sitting there like, “I’m a badass Warden, a mage who survived the Circle, and the king will never love you as much as he adores me. Try me.” And honestly, Anora’s frustration over this makes for some amazing tension. But deep down? Anora knows exactly how important Surana is to keeping Ferelden (and Alistair) running smoothly, so it’s this fascinating love-hate dynamic.

And then there’s Alistair. Once he figures out his lineage and starts to feel secure in his role, you know he’d push for a child with Surana/Amell to take the throne someday. The nobles would be losing their minds, but Alistair? He’d be 100% on board. It doesn’t help that, much to everyone’s dismay, he doesn't bother to visit the queen’s chambers. His heart—and let’s be honest, his brain—are entirely with Surana/Amell.

And then the drama really kicks off when Alistair decides to make it official. Imagine the court’s reaction when he publicly declares Surana’s/Amell's title: Official Mistress to the King. He does it at a grand event, all smiles and with a glowing introduction that only makes his adoration more obvious. The hall is dead silent for a beat before whispers ripple through the nobles like wildfire. Scandalized gasps, angry mutterings, and the occasional choking on wine—everyone has something to say about it.

For her part, Surana/Amell is unfazed. She just stands there, calm as ever, with a slight smirk as if daring anyone to challenge her. Alistair? Completely oblivious to the outrage on purpose. He’s too busy grinning at her like a lovesick puppy. Meanwhile, Anora looks like she’s trying to decide whether to laugh or scream, all while calculating how to manage the fallout.

The fallout is immediate, of course. Nobles protest, claiming it’s an affront to Ferelden’s traditions. Anora is bombarded with demands to “rein in her husband,” which she pointedly ignores because she knows better. The court is a hotbed of gossip and outrage, but none of it matters—because Alistair made it official, and Surana isn’t going anywhere.

Honestly, I love the whole dynamic. The Mage Elf/Human who broke free of the Circle, became the Hero of Ferelden, and now wields her influence not from a throne, but from the shadows, with wit, charm, and undeniable power. It’s deliciously unconventional and exactly the kind of chaotic energy Ferelden deserves. And half the court hates her for it.

Random written scene

The grand hall of the Arl’s estate was alive with the hum of conversation and the glitter of finely wrought jewels and polished armor. Nobles dipped their heads in deference as King Alistair Theirin entered, his golden hair catching the light like a crown all its own. The room seemed to hold its breath as he walked, his presence commanding every gaze, yet his eyes sought only one person.

Warden-Commander Surana/Amell stood near the far end of the room, a glass of wine in her hand and a bemused smile playing on her lips. Draped in a sleek, deep blue gown that complimented her features, she was impossible to miss. Beside her, a cluster of courtiers whispered in hushed tones, eyes darting between her and the approaching king.

As Alistair reached the center of the hall, the crowd dropped to one knee, bowing in respect. A wave of silks, velvets, and armor sank around him like a sea parting before its king. Surana/Amell arched an eyebrow, her smile deepening as she casually tilted her wine glass. She waited a beat longer than necessary before setting it down on a nearby table, preparing to follow suit.

But as she began to lower herself, Alistair was there, closing the distance in a few quick strides.

“No, you don’t,” he said firmly, his voice carrying just enough to stop her—and a few others—mid-motion.

Surana/Amell froze, her eyes narrowing in playful defiance. “Oh? Since when do I not bow to the King of Ferelden?” Her tone was light, teasing, but the room had gone unnervingly silent, every pair of eyes now fixed on them.

Alistair gave her one of his trademark grins, saved only for her, the boyish one that softened the edges of his crown. The one she loved the most. “Since the king decided that his lover doesn’t bow to him. Ever.” His voice was warm, but there was no mistaking the command in it.

The tension in the room thickened as nobles exchanged scandalized looks, some outright gaping at the open acknowledgment.

Surana/Amell tilted her head, considering him for a moment as if juggling her options. Then, with a small chuckle, she straightened back to her full height—or as full as her diminutive elven frame allowed. She crossed her arms and gave him a mock-glare. “You know, Alistair, you make it very hard to be properly deferential in public.”

“Good,” he replied, stepping closer until only a breath of space remained between them. His grin softened into something more tender as he added, “Because I’d rather everyone here remember you’re just as equal as me, not someone who bends the knee.”

A ripple of murmurs spread through the crowd, but neither of them paid it any mind. Surana let out a soft sigh, shaking her head, but the smile that curved her lips was unmistakable. “You really do enjoy stirring the pot, don’t you?”

“Only if it means reminding everyone how lucky I am,” he murmured, so quietly only she could hear.

With that, he extended his hand to her, palm up, an unspoken invitation. Surana/Amell hesitated for half a heartbeat before placing her hand in his. Together, they turned to face the room, and Alistair’s voice rang out loud and clear: “Rise, all of you. This is a celebration, not a coronation.”

The nobles stood, though many looked unsure, their gazes flickering between the king and the Warden-Commander at his side. This was the most public the king had ever gotten with his mistress. But Alistair paid them no mind, guiding Surana/Amell toward the head table with an easy confidence that dared anyone to challenge him.

And as they ascended the dais, it was clear to everyone: Warden-Commander Surana/Amell might not have a crown, but in the eyes of their king, she was already his queen.

[ninthprime]

finished my short power fantasy reread a couple days ago and came out very impressed by it- it’s starting to scratch the itch wicdiv did years ago, though they’re very different books. i read die and a bit of once and future too, but i think this deep character drama/high worldbuilding mode is my favorite gillen. i have a bunch of things i want to post about eventually but one that immediately came to mind, especially seeing the solicits for the next two issues, was that i’m really intrigued by whatever is going on with jacky and eliza’s dynamic.

jacky in general is a character i’ve ended up really loving (er, as a character, not a person), partly because he feels like gillen working against archetype in some ways? i feel like a considerable part of the readers are going to go in with preconceived notions of what a right-wing guy with a mask is going to be like, and particularly they’re going to compare him to woden, which is of course where my brain instantly went after the first issue. if you asked me what i thought was up with jacky and eliza after #2 i would probably have the valkyries and woden’s dynamic with cassandra enter my brain. in reality jacky isn’t a lot like woden for the obvious reasons- woden’s an old white dude whose character is fundamentally linked to those things, and jacky’s a brown guy who used to be an anarchist- but also because woden’s character motivation turns out to be grimly simple and selfish, whereas jacky’s right-wing shift is clearly influenced by massive trauma and fuckups but also not justified by those things.

jacky and eliza’s dynamic appears to be pretty much(?) platonic- at least in the sense that jacky tells the pyramid that they should just kill him if he ever goes evil cult leader and has sex with any of them*- but is still incredibly loaded! jacky let her into the total arseholes in the 70s but later notes that he never trusted her enough to promote her higher, and he didn’t even back then:

(by the by, eliza being rendered in complete white in flashbacks before her decension is one of my favorite wijngaard artistic touches for the book so far. really emphasizing the good girl gone bad.)

eliza spends this entire scene questioning him, and it seems to me like she had her own ideas and agenda even back then. (what exactly is christianity in this world when valentina came down from heaven?) presumably then there was another decade-plus of history between them before the second summer of love, at which point things imploded in a way we’ll presumably find out about this week as i write this.

what’s really juicy to me though is what we get in the post-SSOL scene in #5 and after. from what i can tell, eliza’s decension was probably both a consequence of whatever she had to do in the SSOL and her own desires and beliefs…but jacky pretty clearly blames himself.

which i’d argue is a bit rude to eliza’s agency- she comes off as pretty confident in her choice here, although we haven’t been deep in her head- but that’s sure not how jacky is internalizing it. later in this scene he refers to her as “an occasional really good person who wants to be a martyr” (she seems to acknowledge this as referring to herself) and a “beautiful, sweet-hearted, doomed, dumb fuck.” it’s probably quite good for humanity that eliza came around when she did, but i don’t think jacky likes that it happened to her specifically. more importantly, it makes her the only surviving member of the original pyramid; in jacky’s eyes, she’s a living embodiment of his failure walking around, and also she could end the world right now if she wanted to on an even greater scale than he could, judging by the estimates in #6.

by the time we get to 1999 this all seems to have metastasized for jacky as…some sort of belief that eliza is aligned to him? she has to correct him on it in #2:

“eliza arrived to join me” is interesting wording- pretty sure she arrived for her own reasons, buddy. but eliza has been so offscreen up until this point that i don’t think we really have any full idea of her politics, and i’m inclined to think she might keep a lot of them to herself. it’s never even in question whether she’ll come to masumi’s art show; she was never going to. i don’t get the impression that she and jacky talk often, even if their history makes them important to each other. so jacky’s just spent years molding an idea in his head of what he would like things to be like, an idea that’s all tied up in what he thinks he needs/wants to do for the world, as it is with every relationship between the superpowers.

jacky, i know you’re saying this because she’s the only one whose powers can interfere with your plans, but it feels like you’re really saying it because you’ll burn down your relationships with the other superpowers if you have to, but you feel like you have to retain your relationship with eliza because she’s the last vestige of your past life and you hold immense guilt for her actions and you feel like retaining a stable relationship with her is important for your own stability and self-perception? is that it? i’m just saying man.

and of course none of this explains what eliza thinks about him, which is much more ambiguous, like everything else about her. well, that’s for the next few issues to discuss.

(i feel like this sort of not-quite-romantic dynamic is permeating a bunch of this book’s relationships, particularly some of the early stuff with etienne and valentina- valentina refers to some of his compliments in the first scene of the comic as “flirting”, and they have the classic childhood friends backstory. but they also are pretty obviously not a thing. you wonder how many relationships among the superpowers have hovered around it and not gotten further because The World Is At Stake. heavy seems incredibly polyamorous and isabella and masumi’s dynamic is a fucked mess neither can completely acknowledge, but the other four superpowers seem very single. etienne almost certainly has an ethical discussion of such things in his head.)

* as a side note, this is a fun parallel with heavy and his cult’s “weird sex stuff”, though despite his occasionally almost world-ending behavior heavy is still way more likable than jacky. interesting counterpoint to any potential Sex Coded As Bad takes that a lot of fiction stumbles into.

[tyrantisterror]

Wife Goals: Edelgard von Hresvelg

Alright gang, after covering Morrigan from Dragon Age Origins last time, it's time for another RPG gal here on Wife Goals, the emotional breakdown masquerading as a series of personal essays that I swear won't go more than seven entries! I swear! It's going to be video game ladies from here on out actually, both because the interactive nature of that medium makes it REALLY easy to form these unhealthy parasocial attachments to fictional ladies, AND because it's the most socially acceptable way to project your desire for romance on made up people! Huzzah for video games! Huzzah!

I don't remember exactly why, but I was in a bad headspace when Fire Emblem: Three Houses came out. It was probably just the normal "why have I accomplished so little in my life why am I still alone oh god I've wasted my time on earth" thing that's always gnawing at my brain, IDK. What I know is that the void inside me was GNAWING and I needed to fill it, preferably with something new, because replaying my age-old favorite RPGs, while soothing, would also feel... sad. You gotta try new things to trick yourself into thinking you're going somewhere, you know?

I had played Fire Emblem Awakening, and it was pretty good! Pretty fun, it had an evil witch in it who was romanceable, and that was fun. I didn't finish it, but I sunk a good few hours into it. I had also played Fire Emblem Fates and.... I shouldn't have! It's bad! It's basically Incest: The Game! Don't play it! So, you know, I didn't exactly have full confidence in Fire Emblem: Three Houses when I picked it up, but the gnawing void needed some new content, and if it was as good as Awakening, or just less incest-y than Fates, it'd scratch the itch for a bit.

Guys... Three Houses is so much better than Awakening. My void was eating GOOD that summer.

The conceit of Fire Emblem: Three Houses is that there are three nations who send their most promising young people (i.e. mostly the rich kids) to an academy located in the monastery of the Fantasy Vatican - by that I mean it's owned by the leaders of the church that forms the primary religion in all three nations. Each nation has its own "house" in the academy - fraternities, basically - and your Player character is a mercenary who's been more or less forced to be a long term substitute teacher for said fraternities despite being about the same age as the students. You're the honor student who's forced to play teacher by a struggling school district, basically, only if said honor student was hired because of their experience in killing bandits.

Which house you choose matters immensely, as the OTHER conceit of the game is that all those friendly college-aged students of yours are destined to inherit important political roles in a war that is beginning to brew, and when that war breaks out, you and your students are going to be seeing one nation's perspective in the three-way conflict that ensues. Those perspectives, or routes as they're officially called, differ DRASTICALLY, in part because the leaders among the three groups of students you have to choose from have vastly different goals they're trying to achieve. And one of those students is Edelgard von Hresvelg, heir to the Adrestian Empire.

The first thing you need to know about Edelgard is that she is heavily villain-coded, both in general and in the Fire Emblem franchise specifically. Fire Emblem is a franchise with so many entries that it has its own recurring tropes. There are specifically archetypes that recur a lot, and one of the most common is The Big Villainous Tyrant Wearing Red. They often lead a big, villainous empire that's trying to take over the world, as you do. And Edelgard's nation... has red on their banners. Edelgard's customized school uniform includes a red cape and red tights. And the title she stands to inherit is Emperor - i.e. a title that you specifically get by owning more than one nation, and it's stated that the Adrestian Empire used to own ALL of the continent before it was fractured to its current state, which is exactly the sort of setup that led past Fire Emblem villains to start world-conquering.

She is going to grow up into an empress in red. She's the Big Bad. Maybe not right now, but if you know the genre, and specifically the Fire Emblem tropes, you KNOW she's inevitably going to be the villain. Or at least a villain - often the Big Villainous Tyrant in Red is, in normal trope terms, The Heavy, i.e. the villain you fight the most, but not the FINAL villain. The Darth Vader, if you will, with a Palpatine who reveals himself towards the end.

This is why Edelgard's route is the only route that bifurcates - there is a crucial moment, the moment right before Edelgard proves she is very much the Fire Emblem trope you'd think she is, where you have to choose whether to stand with her or not. You can choose to side against her, and if you choose to do that, or to do either of the other two routes, then Edelgard is exactly the villain you think she is, and as such, you have to kill her before the game is done. And that's all she is - another Evil Tyrant in Red, an emperor to be slain, a villain through and through.

...but this is a game about different perspectives on a war, and wars are never black and white. They're messy, and the game is very good about showing that while most of the people in this conflict have good intentions, NONE of them have all of the facts, and none of them made completely perfect choices, in part because there were very few perfect choices to make.

We get to know Edelgard very well before the crisis moment in her route. As you'd expect of a royal heir, she has a lot of weight on her shoulders from the responsibilities that leadership will bring. But she also has weight from a lot of unexpected sources as well. She's tight-lipped at first, but it becomes clear that this young woman has some horrific trauma in her past - she keeps waking up with night terrors about rats trying to eat her, night terrors that you find out are suppressed memories.

Edelgard, it turns out, is not just a royal, but also the subject of the fantasy equivalent of horrible genetic experimentation. So were all of her brothers and sisters - the only difference is that Edelgard is the only one who survived. She spent her childhood being tortured physically and psychologically to make her stronger, all while watching the same things happen to her siblings until they died one by one. Her night terrors about rats come from the time she spent in dungeons with her dying siblings.

See, the magical fantasy world of this game has a society that buys into what is essentially fantasy eugenics - noble houses are marked as such because they bear "crests," i.e. magic powers that make them stronger and more durable than normal people, which can be passed down through familial lines. Crests are said to be gifts from the gods that the Church is devoted to, so the Church explicitly supports and provides propaganda for this eugenics-based hierarchy of nobility.

Everything Edelgard suffered as a child was because of a scheme endorsed by some nobles to put two crests in one person's body - a scheme to make an ubermensch through eugenics. If it weren't for the crest system and this idea of noble, divinely ordained bloodlines, Edelgard would not have had such a horrendous childhood.

So, rather than make a girl who embodies the ideal of this system, the people who experimented on Edelgard ensured that she knew one thing was true above all else: the crest system, and everything that supports it, needs to be burnt to the fucking ground. And hey, what do you know, she now has superpowers AND is the heir to a fucking empire. With some clever scheming, she could turn the tables on the people who planned to make her a pawn, destroy the entire hierarchy of the continent, and remake society into a place where bloodlines don't matter. It'd take a lot of work and ruthlessness, but it was possible. She could make a world where no one would suffer like her again.

And, like, she's not the only one suffering! In her house alone, you have students like Bernadetta, who has become an agoraphoric wreck as a result of her father trying to force her to marry men she doesn't know to secure their bloodline's place in the hierarchy, and Dorothea, who is a commoner that had to scrape and strive just to get to this monastery in hopes of marrying into a family that will let her live without the specter of poverty hanging over her. In the other houses you have characters like Marianne, whose family's crest is said to be cursed and feels she deserves to die because of it, or Lysithea, the youngest student at the monastery who knows she's going to die in a few years because she suffered the same experiments as Edelgard did, or Mercedes, whose father was so desperate to continue his crest's bloodline that he, uh... tried to do a Fire Emblem: Fates on her. The crest system sucks, nobility sucks, the Church created and enforced all of these systems so it sucks, ALL of this shit needs to be BURNT TO THE FUCKING GROUND!

So think about that big choice in this route again. You can look at what the tropes tell you - that Edelgard is a villain, that she is starting a war that will cost hundreds of lives, and that it would be perfectly morally defensible to stand against her. If you make that choice - that very genre savvy choice - you will become the champion of the Church, literally the organization that stands for the Status Quo above all else, crush Edelgard's rebellion, and forever brand her as the villain she so definitely is.

...OR

You can see her point, and stand with the woman you took as your pupil. You can make the choice to allow yourself to be branded a villain by history if it means fighting for the possibility of a better world - and that very well could happen, because one of the secrets of this game is that you're villain-coded too. The default player character name is Byleth, after all - and that's not just any name, it's one of the fucking arch demons in the Lesser Key of fucking Solomon! You're a mercenary dressed all in black with the name of a fucking demon who just spent half the game tutoring a Tyrant in Red. If Edelgard fails, it will not be hard for history to smear your name alongside hers!

But you can be brave and do it anyways. You can say fuck it, let me be the villain, because this system needs to burn.

Edelgard makes some horrendous and evil choices in the other routes, but one of the great things about this game is that playing all the different sides allows you to make sense of the actions of other characters, and that's SO important to Edelgard's route. You are, in many ways, the crucial component Edelgard's plan needs for success. She has, until meeting you, been more or less on her own - I mean, yes, she has Hubert, her loyal minion who acts and dresses like a Dracula, but Hubert's flaw is that he is slavishly loyal, to the point that he is unwilling to tell Edelgard she's wrong. You, however, are an ally that does not treat Edelgard as a superior, but as an equal - you provide her counsel that's willing to contradict her, and as such provide insight that allows he to find better solutions to problems.

With you on her side, Edelgard never gets so desperate as to take the more drastic and cruel choices she does in the other routes. She's able to stick to her ideals without risking survival, she's able to be her best self, to offer mercy and reduce casualties as much as possible.

And it's not a one-way relationship, either. Byleth, your player character, was also a sufferer of magical genetic experimentation - Rhea, the head of the Church, basically tried to make her dead mother (who's also the main god of the church, it's a whole thing) reincarnate by implanting her crest stone into Byleth as a baby, an act that killed Byleth's mother in childbirth and resulted in Byleth always feeling half-dead as a person. In the other routes, Byleth ascends into a sort of demigod, absorbing those godly energies but never fully manifesting as the old goddess reborn.

But in Edelgard's route? You kill Rhea, and in doing so, that crest stone in your body vanishes, and your heart beats for the first time in your life. Protecting the status quo makes you a demigod - but burning it down let's you finally be yourself. Your mortal, human, living self, with a heart that's you're own, not something someone forced into you.

Edelgard does not remain emperor long when she wins - she keeps the throne long enough to put all her reforms in motion and make sure anyone who'd bring the old crest system back is dead as dirt, then appoints a successor and retires. She lives a normal life, with you if you choose to romance her, content to have made sure that the horrors she and others witnessed under that hierarchy never happen again. That was her goal, her big villainous scheme.

I don't know about you, but I think that's fucking rare in fiction - to have character look at the systems in place, think, "this shit needs to burn," and, in at least one version of the tale, be 100% right on the fucking money. God, I love her so much.

(Also, if you need additional convincing: Rhea, the leader of the church and basically Edelgard's archenemy, is a green-haired milf with a dumptruck ass who turns into a dragon, and I still chose Edelgard over her. Do you know how hard that is for me, specifically? She's got an enormous butt and turns into a dragon and I still said "No thanks, it's the albino for me!" instead. That's how much Edelgard fucking rules!)

[myrmecophagous-mermaid]

Full-Body Logic Reference

The design is free to use for your own projects, as long as you credit me!

If you use this design for something, please tag me, I’d love to see what you make with it!

Designer’s Notes:

• I left out her pupils, to make her eyes look glazed over or dead. You can depict that in whatever way best suits your art style.

• Aside from the obvious spikes, the rest of her hair is defying gravity on purpose. It’s meant to look like she’s about to be struck by lightning!

• The red shoes are Reila’s. They’re one of her most important identifying features, so I kept them intact, to signal that this is what’s become of Reila. You could always color pick directly from Reila’s shoes instead, but I opted for a simpler and more cohesive color palette.

• Despite being made of a metallic substance, her mechanical parts, like her gauntlets, retain full articulation. The only thing that might get in the way of posing are the shoulder pads.

• Her legs are metallic also, but they’re meant to look die-cast, and shouldn’t be too shiny.

• Yes, those are AV cables.

• She is actually wearing white shorts under her skirt, in case you pose her in a way that makes her skirt ride up.

• Her skirt is NOT pleated. Below is a reference photo of the type of skirt she wears, featuring one of my cats. This skirt is made of neoprene, but that’s not exactly time period accurate, so feel free to modify it a bit, if you care about that sort of thing. I personally think the anachronism suits her very nicely!

There’s no real reason for her to be wearing that specific skirt, but something about skirts that are longer in the back just scratches all the right brain itches.

Have a bonus Reila too, as a treat :)

[osakanone]

I've been getting into gunpla and i'd like a rec since you know mecha. Are there any gunpla you recommend? I'd appreciate one that doesn't look like a dude as much as possible.

The closest i've gotten to that idea so far is a guarda/rever nova build from the 30 minute missions line because of the two scorpian arms.

May I suggest the Wodom Pod?

Its fairly simple to build, very cheap and readily available.

--

If you want to straddle the "a guy thing" in your mentality and challenge it a little, also good is the Aegis specifically its transformation mode as its primary mode (like all humanoid MS) is intended for generalized combat and front-line logistical work (hence the hands).

--

If not, Hildolfr is a fun one. He bridges the space between early mobilesuits in minovsky signals displacement warfare and was used by a starship cannon pilot, requiring a lot of manual skill to aim well!

--

The Xamel is also really good though only provided you've got skills to bring the best out of the kit with scribing and painting. He's a heavy launch platform hovercraft designed for opening vollies with a high powered mortar grenade system via coordinates coming from other units, with legs designed for hit and run skirmishes so he can make his get-away after providing the opening strikes and fire-support during the mop-up phase of an attack.

--

Not gunpla, and a bit more advanced is Variable Infinity's Armored Core Aaliyah. You're probably gonna need some glue for this as smaller parts fall off. Its extremely detailed, and very "not a guy" despite being humanoid.

It uses a spherical particle field of highly radioactive and toxicparticles to protect and cool itself, and is capable of absurd mobility.

Quite a pain in the ass to work with, the design itself is utterly sublime and a spectacle to look at and I fell in love with it circa 2007 with Armored Core 4. Sadly, it isn't anywhere near as posable as most Gunpla due to how "un-guy-like" its body design is. These are the concessions we make cool appearances like this.

--

A substantially easier build (and much closer to Gunpla) is bandai's 30 minute mission 30MM Armored CORE Ⅵ Fires of Rubicon - BALAM Industries BD-011 MELANDER Liger Tail

I'm a huge sucker for 4-legged mecha since they're about as far from "an guy" as you can get. They're also super affordable right now if you can find a stockist who isn't a scalper.

--

Also while not Gunpla, if you have advanced skills, Gunhed is also very good though it requires a lot of extra work since the plastic provided with this kit is more of a raw material you need to do work to, to achieve the look and hide the seams akin to more traditional model kits. Gunhed's role is to invade gigantic sprawling synthetic superstructures and wipe out unmanned weapons.

--

Though likely not to your tastes, my own personal favourite of the year has actually been the Lfrith Ur. I don't usually go for chunkier designs but it has that delightful "chubby girl in a swimsuit" energy despite being a very intense and scary weapon that scratches some strange itch in my brain that I find deeply pleasing.

It is likewise, also very cheap -- and if you get two of them, its very easy to mod them together into a single 4-legged machine with double loadout (very cool, and probably bringing it more in like with your preference -- I wish I still had photos: I'm currently out of the country and my "big database of cool research files" is at home and wouldn't search well from two continents away)

--

Also Zowort heavy from the same line if you do the same quad-leg/tetrapod adaption looks amazing. I have a huge soft-spot for unusual legs, if its not clear.

--

I hope this provides some food for thought. If you have a clearer idea of the kind of kit you want, or what your needs are, let me know and I can provide more suggestions if you'd like.

Happy modelling!!

[whumpsoda]

Seeing Me in You - Delivery

Masterlist

Wrote this on a whim :3 pretty short but who caresssss… might write more??? Might also delete later

cw: pet whump, threat of recapture, box boy universe/bbu adjacent, institutionalized slavery

——————

He shouldn’t have opened the door. Checked the peephole at the very least, as if that would have done him any good.

He could never have escaped them.

August stared ahead into the corridor of his apartment building, jaw falling slack as his mouth went wide and eyes stuck agape. A lump formed quick in his throat, tightly wound with sick acid burning a hole through his neck. His organs flipped and churned over one another, brain filling with flooding nausea.

WRU employees. At his house. August was going to be sick.

Were they speaking? Their voices reduced to a muffle inside his mind, hearing going blank. An itching sensation flared over his arm, just the spot where his tattoo was carefully shielded by his sweater. He lifted a hand to scratch at his throat, the place where a cheap collar had once sat and rubbed around his neck. The memories stung, yet not worse than the sight of such specific uniforms.

No, this was much worse.

His pulse was quickening my the second, heart beating in and out of his chest. He couldn’t breath. Warm, thick bile was slithering it’s way up from his stomach, twisting his insides in contorted knots.

They found him. After so long of comfort and faux personhood, they had found him. Come for him even, to take him back as their property. To refurbish him. To sell him and beat him back into shape, and to train him yet again-

Before August could so much as collect his scattered, bleeding thoughts of past horrors and tortures, one of the employee’s lips parted. “Would you like us to bring it inside? Or leave it here?” He muttered, so casual August almost couldn’t digest his words.

August, body filling ever so carefully with disbelief and panic, trailed his vision down to his feet where his eyes stopped. A large, nearly-fit-for-a-human sized box sat at the workers’ feet. He knew that box well. Very well. He’d been inside that box.

They weren’t here for him.

August could have jumped and squealed from a mixture of terror and joy that he was still safe, never to be recaptured and refurbished. At least, not yet, anyway. But there was a boxie in the process of a delivery at his apartment doorstep.

How could that be? How? What disgustingly cruel, rich asshole’s boxie was sitting inches away from him? Just waiting to be claimed as his own? And why?

His mouth moved swift beyond his own accord, mind gradually catching up with his quivering lips. “You… um, you can leave them there.” August croaked out, voice meek and continuing to waver no matter how hard he tried to hide it.

“‘Kay.” He shrugged, and that was that.

They didn’t suspect a thing. No idea they dropped the order to the wrong person, let alone a former boxie. How impossibly lucky for the poor thing. August could barely believe it himself.

He watched with intense focus as the two employees calmly and quickly left, keeping an intense eye on them just until they finally turned the corner. As if at the last moment they would realize their mistake, and either take the boy back, or end up taking him as well.

Careful and terrified, as soon as he heard the pitter patter of their steps dissipate, he turned to the box.

August, still standing rigid in the doorway, with intense fascination trailed his vision over each and every little ridge of wood and nails, eager yet terrified to open it. He swallowed, thick and juicy saliva that rolled it’s way down his throat.

What just happened?

—————

Masterlist

Taglist- @softvampirewhump

If anyone wants to be removed or added to the taglist, please let me know! :)

[jessconsumesmedia]

CBS Ghosts 4x08 and 4x09

Hello so this is gonna be Two parts because the episode was two parts so get ready to listen to me twice (I mean or not that is fine too) (HI THIS IS SO LATE I KEEP WRITING ON IT AND THEN GETTING BUSY!)

Also they are not broken up by episode they are broken up by storyline cause I’m pretty sure like most of the next post will be me freaking about H-money snippets.

Tis the season to freak the fuck out about fictional characters :)

Festive spoilers ahead

Ok so quick overview I fucking loved this episode. Like genuinely it had so much going on and it scratched a very specific itch in my little tv fueled brain.

Sassapis is a 500 Year Old Virgin

Awesome actually that’s what I figured. I kinda love the idea that he is ace and just is not a fan. Thor tried so hard to keep his secret he really did he doesn’t really know how relationships actually work. He also really did not need to add that whole still a virgin after death he really coulda just left it and flower probably woulda forgot lol. Flower also does not know how relationships work so her saying he had to tell her was a bit rough but I am glad that we keep seeing parts of these characters that show how grey they really are. CAROL I genuinely love how insane she is like when we see her she makes me giggle like a mad woman so her being like “you can’t handle this” like that woman is a FREAK. And you know what good for her. (I also kinda hate her cause she’s terrible but it’s like fun hate)

SASS AND THOR ARE BEST FRIENDS I WILL SOB. It stands to reason that Thor would have learned Lenape but having the confirmation is lovely. I really enjoyed that they were like little toddlers yes in fact I do want to go see a moose carcass we’re besties now. It is so sweet.

Double Possession/Sam and the Core Four

Oh my god. Rose’s Nancy impression is probably like one of the funniest and best impressions. Like she nailed it. It even sounds like her! The basement ghosts probably should have warned them they know they aren’t that smart but oh well. Nancy being the reason that Champa likes Sam is hilarious like she is actually going insane and that is what you like. I feel bad that Sam was excluded for so long but after she finally is I think she has a better chance at bonding. Rip the car though Nancy was really not very nice for that. Jay telling his mom to chill and try to be mean is very wife guy of him. I’m probably forgetting things now cause it’s been a few days but I really loved that Sam got added and I love that we met Jays family (also his full first name is Jayanth idk why I just automatically assumed it was just Jay but it’s a very good name) and now this post is incredibly long so I am going to stick Jays relationship to his dad in part two lol.

Also absolutely crazy random tangent but I just learned Hetty’s middle name is Eleanor and I just like that.

Anyway part two will exist sometime soon hopefully but I am also going on a study abroad trip for like two weeks so I will be very busy. So idk

Here’s a picture of Trevor that I think is funny

-Jess 💖

[sodachalice]

you were posting some things that intrigued me in a very positive way the other day. may i ask how one 'connects' to a new kink, especially for redirection? I would like to start living in a more authentic, kind way.

glad to hear it!

i will be clear with the fact that i am not perfect at this, i cannot give advice with certainty that its the right thing to do. i am not a mental health professional, and i am in no way an expert when it comes to this stuff. i might be able to regurgitate a lot from my experiences as someone whos been through a LOT of therapy and trauma, but im still someone who. you know. is so traumatized they needed to be in intense legal mandated psyche care for most of my life. i am speaking from experience, and could very well be wrong.

anyways. warning for a lot of personal oversharing and implications of csa/grooming

when im attempting to redirect attention from one kink to another i tend to attempt to find the source of what specifically im enjoying about it in an abstract way. what part about this is specifically turning me on, is it the physical properties? is it because of the size differences? is it because of what it implies about me, or the other person? is it because of a specific experience? if so, why am i attempting to revisit that experience when i'm intimate? i will be candid here, i was into a lot of "problematic" stuff growing up (what homestuck fan isnt. it comes with the territory of reading it too young) and one of the things i was into was a large age gap, i was very very into older men and because i was younger i liked to put myself in their shoes, especially because i was very very short, and transmasc. i wanted characters i could project onto. i was a victim of grooming and this was something that was frequently used against me by older people on the internet. a lot of reevaluation and work on myself with the questions i've listed have helped me find the source of a lot of the things i find personally attractive about the dynamics that i was latching onto when i was a really early teenager, which has allowed me to actually engage with my sexuality. up until now, i was completely and wholey sex repulsed/identified as asexual due to this.

this has developed into kinks and interests in things like macro/micro and findom specifically. i realized while running a lot of questions by myself that it wasn't the specific age gap that was keeping me to the kink but the implications of someone who is much bigger than me and someone who has a lot more money than me being able to take care of me. and once i was able to grasp that i was able to redirect my interest somewhere else. the interest isn't focused on the idea of youth or ages (which, to be honest, i probably had an easier time with than someone who struggles with something more extreme. i am attracted to older men) but on the physical properties of a more abstract and less grounded concept, and i've reframed a lot of my interest in power to specifically be about finances, mostly because my brain already associates "being taken care of" with "financial stability" just due to who i am, i realized that that was scratching the same itch.

i hope this makes sense. im being very candid right now but i do think its impotant to just talk about these things openly without shame. so thats what im trying to do

[thecurioustale]

The "Middle West"

I was recently watching Trump speak (not something I typically do 🤢), and the most interesting thing he said had nothing to do with anything he was actually talking about: It was that he used the term Middle West to refer to that generally north-central part of the United States, centered on the Mississippi River, that is neither the South nor the Northeast (nor the Mid-Atlantic, but that's really just a subcategory of the Northeast that Northeasterns use to not get lumped in with each other).

We all know it today as the Midwest. But in times past it was much more commonly known as the Middle West.

(Tangent: It is also one of many geographical region-name reminders of our national East Coast beginnings, as America has like six different kinds of "West": the Midwest, the Southwest, the (Pacific) Northwest, the Mountain West / Interior West, the West Coast / Pacific West—and that's not counting the deprecated terms (such as "Far West," i.e. distinguished from the Midwest) or the old Northwest (which would've referred to places like Ohio and (what we know as) West Virginia)!)

Over the course of the 20th century, "Midwest" became an increasingly common form of the term, eventually overtaking "Middle West" in popularity and, by our lifetimes, completely replacing it. The only people who still use "Middle West" today are very old. I'm only aware of the term's existence because I'm a fan of midcentury media and if you go watch (for example) old Dragnet episodes from the 1950s you'll hear the term used.

I was looking at the Google Ngram Viewer to get a sense of the relative usage frequencies of these terms, and I noticed something interesting: Not only has "Middle West" been driven almost extinct from active usage, but "Midwest" itself has also declined precipitously in the 21st century. People today are not calling the Midwest the "Midwest," at least not with the frequency and relevancy they once did. I was curious if this was another permutation of the usage, so I also looked up "Midwestern" (which I included in the link above), thinking that maybe people nowadays are calling it the clunkier "the Midwestern states" / "the Midwestern US," but the adjectival has declined in step with "Midwest." It really does seem to be that people are just using this geographical category less often.

Perhaps unsurprisingly: the sociopolitical cohesiveness of the Midwest has significantly diminished over time. I think most Midwesterners would still recognize and affiliate with the term if you applied it of them to their faces, but increasingly I think many of them do not think of it in their daily lives as a personal or cultural identifier. Which has many fascinating implications that I'm not going to get into.

(Another Tangent: I feel like I've talked about specifically this "Middle West / Midwest" thing on Tumblr before, but I feel that way about half of everything because after all I've been writing down my thoughts for over 20 years and I've been having thoughts for considerably longer than that, and it's often not clear to me what I've talked about publicly and where.)

Anyway, this entire post is really just me scratching the itch of verbal brain noise about the orange guy using a term in a public address that I never hear people use in the present day. A little piece of lost language, hearkening back to a completely different era and world.

[applestorms]

books i wanna read in 2025 ^w^

lolol ty @dancing-lex for the @ this was v. fun to make. more yapping about choices below the cut. also uhh mutuals feel free to do this if you wanna but i'll also @shydroid3000 + @partingwayssoon + @kiyomitakada if you guys would like to and/or haven't yet!! ^w^

literally all of these books i have started/read part of in some capacity but i desperately need/want to finish All of them lol so. motivation. we got this 🎉🎉there's also a billion others i probably could've put on this but lets just stick with the 6 for now yeah =3="

anyways: top three are fiction, bottom three are nonfiction. are my tastes overwhelmingly obvious from this list? i feel like they are lmfao, but ig let's go thru it regardless.

the kurosagi corpse delivery service is the only manga i put on here since it's the only series i've been actively working through as of late (no, DN doesn't count lol). also considered putting junji ito on here since i have a long-running personal project to try and collect as many of his english-translated works as i can. both scratch a similar itch, and while i think ito's art is ultimately more impressive (hard to beat him when it comes to body horror tbh) i really really really like how this series treats death in terms of story-- it's very humanizing, less focused on the Fear of the Unknown or the Monster or whatever, and more on the realities of loss that come with it. good shit 👍

petals on the wind + ada fill a similar niche to each other, that being weird brother/sister incest books. shrug. petals is actually a sequel to another book i've already finished, flowers in the attic, which absolutely Captured my brain when i read it last year. i quite like the voice of the narrator, cathy, and both of these andrews novels really give me that deliciously nostalgic Vibe of something you might read on a whim one summer break which then fucks you up for the rest of the vacation LOL. ada i've been reading through verrrrry slowly for like, a year at this point, though i'm almost at the halfway point and i enjoy it Greatly every time i pick it back up. nabokov is a truly fantastic writer, and ada is hilarious in a way that i genuinely did not expect. also working on lolita + pale fire a little bit, though i'm trying to keep ada the priority since i'm the furthest along in it.

for the nonfiction, all of these books relate to different areas of philosophy i've recently been especially interested in. black rights/white wrongs is the sole book on this list that i'm basically Guaranteed to finish since i'm currently in the middle of reading it for a class. i'm actually very glad my prof assigned it as his points about epistemologies of ignorance, specifically related to race, is directly related to ideas i've been contemplating as potential areas of study for grad school. similarly, i had a chapter of wretched of the earth as assigned reading for one of my previous classes and Really enjoyed it, fanon has just this incredible perspective in talking about colonialism and the process of rebuilding after such traumas. (reminds me, i should ask my old prof about beauvoir's critique of him + i think sartre, since i believe he mentioned something about that?? i also need to read more of those two, actually. sighs.) also i found the entirety of wretched on audiobook so i really have no excuse to not listen to it all the way thru lmfao.

and then finally for the last one... i have an interest in nishida (and eastern philosophy) more generally, but i picked that one out since it's the book i have currently sitting on my desk. my dad actually gave me that one since i was asking him more about mu w/ regards to DN stuff, w/ a couple others too (the karma of words by lafleur as well). again, my current big interest in philosophy rn is on epistemology-- not just in terms of what knowledge we do have, but what we don't have, or the things that we know but are unwilling or otherwise unable to engage with directly (e.g. social taboos, the ways in which history might be written over/overly focused on a White Male POV, etc.). both my interests in fiction + nonfiction relate to this i think, for my reading and my writing, and there's a lot of interesting routes it can lead ya down, whether it be more social justice/political philosophy oriented "erasure of our histories" type stuff or like. incest. and necrophilia. but my god, mostly just a lot of fucking incest.

[isa-ghost]

Any specifically avian related qphil headcanons? I love that Phil being a bit more birdy is canon in the qsmp but whenever we get lore about it its angst

/I don't know why I'm asking if you have any, I know you got them /

*cupping my hands together and holding them out*

/give em here/

/pretty pleasee/

Oh fuck yeah man. I have an angel OC based off Phil, I've got PLENTY of avian headcanons >:)

Previous Headcanon Sets (x8)

MORE: Avian Edition

I've stated it in a prev set I think, but if you put this man in water his wings will sometimes involuntarily flap like he's in a birdbath. It's somewhat of a stim, bird brain just goes "you gotta."

I've also stated before that when he's stressed, his wings will flap kinda like the way someone might nervously shake out their hands.

Another restate, sometimes his laughs and startled yelps sound almost like squawks. Also his hiccups. It's very rare, but whenever it happens, he gets teased for it. Especially by Etoiles.

Another restate, sometimes his echolalia is his bird brain mimicking a sound he heard if it scratches an itch.

Yknow what just skim the previous headcanon sets I linked bc I talk so much about his wings & what he does with them & how he communicates using them. All those apply here.

Obligatory mirror and windows struggles mention.

Obligatory molting & preening struggles when stressed mention.

We've all seen the way he perches above everyone. It's probably his most prominent/noticeable avian trait.

Apparently camomile calms birds down. If this fool liked hot drinks, he'd have another way to settle his anxiety.

His obsession with noodles got him accused by Tubbo of enjoying them bc bird brain likes worms. He was NOT pleased. Almost gagged.

As long as you're careful around his wings, he LOVES back rubs. (It's bc the dumbass mf slept in that damn chair too much so now his back riots)

DO NOT THE WINGS. Petting them is one thing, he loves when Lullah hugs them, he thinks it's cute. But omg do not dig your fingers into his feathers. They're very sensitive. And that could mean tickling OR pain.

However if you gently do it, his wings will spread a little and his feathers poof up, which is kinda funny. It's like how if you touch a cat's foot the right way, their toes will spread out to present The Beans(tm). Blessed.

He likes to gift his shedded feathers to people he trusts. Chayanne, Lullah & Missa each have one. Although he's extremely close with Etoiles and Fit, he feels too awkward to give one to them yet. Feels a little too intimate.

Gift giving in general is a HUGE part of his love language though. Crow brain must give shiny things to people he loves yesyes.

Bird zoomies!! Wings poof up, he starts hopping all over the place like a big dork. He'd fly all over too, if he could.

Bobs his head to music. Those videos of pet birds dancing? That's Phil babey!!

Another one of his fave bits is pretending to understand and have a full-on conversation with birds. Loves pretending to gossip with them right in front of the person he & the bird(s) are "gossiping" about. However the crows he DOES understand & gossip with.

When he can fly, he's an expert at dive-bombing targets like a bird of prey. It's TERRIFYING. And very attractive depending on who you are (*cough* Missa *cough*)

Lullah once tried to test if throwing a blanket over his head would make him fall asleep like how if you put a blanket over a bird's cage they'll think it's night time and go to bed. It didn't work. He was very confused.

Birds whenever they're happy to see you will stretch their wings out like "Hello yes!" Phil do happy wing stretches when he see the kids :D

His hearing and eyesight are fucking amazing. The only reason he's able to be snuck up on is bc he hyperfocuses on things or the things that sneak up on him are super fast.

Rare Isa Fluffy Headcanon: He make blanket nests.

When stressed or overwhelmed, he'll wrap his wings around himself or raise them to shield his head. He doesn't do this so much after his wings were clipped & injured. They hurt too much.

100% will spread his wings all the way out (when they aren't hurting a lot) to look more threatening towards enemies. They almost autopilot do it when he's angry, but if they hurt too much they'll stop. He's pissed they don't look as threatening after The Federation clipped his wings

[horny-jailbreak]

Okay here's my treatise on why mechs are so got to me: theyre a combo of computer and automobile.

Computers are hot because they're just a bunvh of logic processes that all do One Thing, but interact in such a way that they do Many Things at a massive scale. Working on a computer involves balanving all of the little logic processes that are all so interconnected that it feels and looks like manipulating magic runes. With enough knowledge, you can make any computer do any thing, you just have to manipulate it JUST right, and at that point it looks like negotiation with an intelligent human. In fact, at a certain point, a sufficiently complex robot looks a lot like the human brain, and hey isn't psychology just kinda looking at all the little logic processes that our nervous systems make in order to interact with the world? What really is the difference between the way operant conditioning takes in input in order to adjust future output and the way a computer adjusts its variables to be more precise? In this way, computers are kinda just brains that are a little less plastic and a lot more susceptible to being directly edited on the basic code level.

Automobiles, on the other hand? They are highly specialized, extremely well engineered parts all put together in order to make something that does one job Very Well. This ball joint is engineered to perfection, and when combined with this motor (also engineered and tuned to perfection) and a couple other parts (that are, likewise, engineered to perfection) they make a machine that moves an arm in a specific way Very Well. And then that arm is combined with other parts, and you get the picture. An automobile (or mech) is a big machine that's made up of increasingly smaller groups of extemely well-engineered parts, and those tiny parts have to be maintained and cared for or else they'll fuck up the whole system, cascading outward. The general wear and tear of being in the physical plane makes is so that you Have to get in there and maintain and replace parts, but with such care that the delicate, graceful balance of engineering isn't lost. And once again, with enough knowledge, you can navigate this delicate landscape and make that machine do whatever you want.

The idea that these specialized things that are only supposed to be used Like So can then be adjusted to be able to do something else, only accomplished by having an intimate knowledge of what these parts and processes' limits are and how far you can push an individual component before damage is done, then lends itself very well to the idea that that intimate knowledge is no different than the love and care you could feel for a human being. After all, a human brain is a squishy, extemely complicated computer, and the human body is a squishy, very complicated piece of machinery. If you take out the squishy part (and hinestly sometimes you dont even need to do that) and scale it up so that someone can pilot it, thats a mech babey!

Anyway i hope this was coherent enough that I'll someday find something that scratches that itch, or maybe i'll write it myself. Just know that that's the fantasy im aiming for with the #robot fucker tag