#this is a niche hill i’ll die on

[quietpossum]

When your first crush ends up being gay, go for his sister!

[world0fmadness]

⋆ ˚｡⋆ ✩ ˚ BOTH? BOTH!

oscar piastri x silent hill / horror game obsessed! reader x lando norris

featuring: daniel being very much like a big brother in the comments and * gasp * a picture of my OWN silent hill collection

faceclaim: assorted

୨୧ some people asked for a part two of this smau due the ending really hinting at a throuple so here it is! it can be read separately or as a continuation as they’re an established throuple here <3 and i know the silent hill 2 remake was announced ages ago but it’s fanfic, let me pretend

reading music recommendations: i want love by akira yamaoka - float up from a dream by akira yamaoka - you’re not here by akira yamaoka

oscarpiastri: this is what happens when i take both of them shopping at the same time…

ynlovesthehorror: we’re peaceful beings :)

> oscarpiastri ✔️: you threw a cucumber at my head…

> landonorris ✔️: can’t handle a little fun osc?

> oscarpiastri ✔️: and you’re no better, you shoved me into the boot of the car!

oscarpastrylover: are… are they all dating now? i feel like this is a little too couple-y…

> landoscaryn: there is no fucking way they’re not all dating… i’ll swear on my hamsters life they HAVE to be dating

> iluvf1: leave the hamster OUT OF THIS LMAO 😭

oldf1lvr: lando and yn be serious for five minutes challenge ( IMPOSSIBLE )

danielricciardo ✔️: cute!

❤️ liked by ynlovesthehorror, landonorris and oscarpiastri

> landoscaryn: mr man, what do you know? do tell…

landonorris: not too shabby if i do say so myself…

danielricciardo ✔️: happy for you three ❤️

❤️ liked by ynlovesthehorror, oscarpiastri and landonorris

loveuyn: he really said “you guys still aren’t sure if we’re dating? just have this and leave”

ynlovesthehorror: i kind of look good in these pictures 🤔

> landonorris ✔️: nah, you look like a tramp to be honest

> ynlovesthehorror: die ❤️

landoscaryn: I FUCKING TOLD YOU PEOPLE

> iluvf1: thank god, for your hamsters sake 😭

oscarpiastri ✔️: love you both so much ❤️

> landonorris ✔️: love you more ❤️

> ynlovesthehorror: lol, gay ( i love both of you more, now come home so we can make out )

❤️ liked by oscarpiastri and landonorris

oscyn: praying these three never have a kid because you just know yn would FIGHT to name it after a silent hill character…

> landonorris ✔️: fucking hell, don’t give her any ideas…

> ynlovesthehorror: 👩‍🍼 < me and the god i birthed ( we will now build an eternal paradise )

> loveuyn: i don’t think yn realises how niche her references are when it comes to f1 fans 😭

> oscarpastrylover: literally, i think most of them just think she’s clinically insane or something so they leave her be

❤️ liked by ynlovesthehorror

landoscaryn: not gonna shut up about this for MONTHS, my throuple ship is REAL

ynlovesthehorror: just spent hours explaining some of the silent hill lore to lando and every explanation lead to another question from him, i want him DEAD ( also a very good representation of what i want to do to people that say “ it’s ash not snow ” if you ever come into my comment section with that “ lore ” i’ll get lando and oscar to put a brick through your window )

landonorris ✔️: IM TRYING

> ynlovesthehorror: the information is going in one ear and right out the other, honestly, you just need to play them yourself now because i’m DONE

> landonorris ✔️: i’ll play them on stream then, muppet

> ynlovesthehorror: GOOD

> oscarpiastri ✔️: stop arguing you two

> ynlovesthehorror: sorry babe

> landonorris ✔️: sorry love

> oscarpiastri ✔️: ❤️

> landoscaryn: all three of them have each other wrapped all the way around each others finger lmao 😭

maxverstappen ✔️: it’s ash not snow

> ynlovesthehorror: gonna get lando to crash into you

> maxverstappen ✔️: if he can catch up

> ynlovesthehorror: omg??? maxi pad you are a horrible man 💔

> landonorris ✔️: come kiss me to make me feel better 😔

> ynlovesthehorror: on it <3

> oscarpiastri ✔️: me too please

> ynlovesthehorror: nothing happened to you???

> oscarpiastri ✔️: lando whacked me over the head with a lead pipe

> landonorris ✔️: what is it with you two and making up the most unbelievable lies about me 😭

ynlovesthehorror: look at my husband you guys 😩 i cannot believe it, the transmission was actually something fucking good, after years of drought

oscarpiastri ✔️: the most inhuman noise came out of you…

> ynlovesthehorror: I WAS EXCITED

> landonorris ✔️: still, that noise was mental… and i thought we were your husbands?

> ynlovesthehorror: you are! but james was my 1st husband <3

> landonorris ✔️: and was this before or after he killed his wife?

> ynlovesthehorror: ☹️

loveuyn: i feel bad for everyone on the grid and in the paddock because she will not shut the fuck up about this until it releases and when it does release it’ll be even worse 😭

> landoscaryn: right? i’m keeping the engineers in my prayers lmao

danielricciardo ✔️: excited for you yn! i know how much the game means to you ❤️

> ynlovesthehorror: thank you daniel, finally someone that likes me for ME

> landonorris ✔️: ?

> oscarpiastri ✔️: ?

ynlovesthehorror: we finally did it! me and oscar dressed up as james and maria, here are the pictures <3 and a sneak peak of me and lando dressed as james and mary hehe

oscarpastrylover: they need to stop being so hot IMMEDIATELY

landonorris ✔️: you looked amazing love, oscar too i guess… ours is better though 😗

> oscarpiastri ✔️: oi!

> ynlovesthehorror: we all looked amazing :) but especially you two

❤️ liked by landonorris and oscarpiastri

> landoscaryn: the way they’re always either bullying and mocking each other or being so sweet and loving on each other kills me, it’s literally just three best friends that kiss

> landonorris ✔️: we do more than kiss, my friend

❤️ liked by ynlovesthehorror

> landoscaryn: oh-

> oscarpiastri ✔️: for fuck sake lando!

oscyn: okay… yeah… i’m so normal about this! SO NORMAL

iluvf1: i have no idea who these characters are but this is the hottest thing i’ve ever seen an f1 driver do i think…

> oldf1lvr: literally 😩 hot in so many ways, hot because lando and oscar LOOK hot and hot because they actually do this stuff with yn instead of not participating in her interests! we love men who do things with their gf

❤️ liked by ynlovesthehorror

loveuyn: that 4th picture… hideo kojima approves

> ynlovesthehorror: what could’ve been 💔 biggest heartbreak of my life

> landonorris ✔️: me and oscar could die in a fire and that still wouldn’t beat the heartbreak that P.T. caused you…

> ynlovesthehorror: well at least you know!

> oscarpiastri ✔️: 😔

landonorris: was on a walk with my boyfriend when we came across this strange creature on the side of the road 😟 took it to get some food and we’re not too fond of it, anyone else want it? selling for 10 quid

ynlovesthehorror: honestly hope you get hit by a bus or something

> landonorris ✔️: no you don’t ❤️

❤️ liked by ynlovesthehorror

danielricciardo ✔️: fucking hell, that second picture is amazing

❤️ liked by landonorris and oscarpiastri

> ynlovesthehorror: :(

> danielricciardo ✔️: sorry yn!

oscarpiastri ✔️: i think it’s sort of cute, in its own weird way ❤️ definitely worth more than £10

> ynlovesthehorror: 🥹

> landonorris ✔️: £11?

> oscarpiastri ✔️: yeah i reckon that’s enough

> ynlovesthehorror: ☹️

landoscaryn: seeing and hearing lando refer to oscar as his boyfriend literally makes my heart explode 💔 i love these three so much

> oscarpastrylover: yep, this relationship is literally a bisexual f1 fan’s dream, just three hot best friends in a relationship

ynlovesthehorror: my boys <3 ( i love thinking about things they’d go to silent hill for )

landonorris ✔️: you ALMOST made a sweet post but then you just had to go and bring up that game, BE NORMAL ( don’t be normal, i love you weirdo )

> oscarpiastri ✔️: just be happy she made a post about us at all, it’s a once in a blue moon occurrence, 99% of her feed is silent hill ❤️ love you both

❤️ liked by ynlovesthehorror

> ynlovesthehorror: at least SOMEONE knows how to be grateful, love you osc ( and lando, i guess 🙄 )

danielricciardo ✔️: you’ve 100% gotten over lando pointing a gun at you and threatening you then yeah?

> ynlovesthehorror: oh that, yeah, totally! he bought me mcdonald’s and more silent hill stuff and toys for heather so we’re all good now <3

> landonorris ✔️: we’re literally DATING, you muppet 😭

⋆ ˚｡⋆ ୨୧ ˚ NEW ADDED BONUS ˚ ୨୧ ⋆｡˚ ⋆

yn ln being horny on main

[saintsenara]

thoughts on ron weasley/tom riddle?

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

guess it's time to out myself as a ronmort girly...

obviously, as far as fandom stats go, this is the niche crack pairing when it comes to lord voldemort getting into the funky way with a member of the golden trio. both tomarrymort and tomione/volmione have thousands upon thousands of works and stans prepared to fight to the death over insignificant things.

ronmort has... three fans in a trench coat and immaculate vibes.

i am genuinely shocked that it isn't bigger as a pairing - surely we're all agreed that "i have seen your heart, and it is mine" is an outrageously romantic thing for the locket-horcrux to say to ron? surely we've all deeped that the locket makes its bid to save itself by showing ron softcore pornography? - but not, i think it's worth saying, because i think there's any merit in the tedious fanon [particularly prevalent in ships which pair hermione with other men] that ron is a closet blood-supremacist who'd make an amazing death eater. he's not - he's principled and loyal and, even in a world where voldemort wins and he's the only member of the trio left alive, he's not going over to the dark side. it sounds too much like hard work. 

instead, i back ronmort as a pairing because ron is... kind of mother. and we all know lord v's very much in want of one of those.

he likes to look after people and he channels his negative emotions into doing so [he wouldn’t have left the tent if harry and hermione had learned how to shoplift properly and he could be settled in front of a nice pot, and i’ll die on that hill]. just imagine little captive ron - maybe the snatchers recognised him, maybe voldemort’s won and everyone else is dead - bustling around his gilded prison in malfoy manor making the dark lord a cup of tea when he turns up to psychologically torture him. voldemort would - as i am - be intrigued.

i have two recs for the pairing - wind tunnels by @mrmxlemons and ghouls in the attic by speechwriter - and i also have a statement of fact which I know many of the girlies [gender neutral] won't like to hear...

ronmort is less of a crack ship than tomione, sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

[follow-the-ghostlight]

The way I have studied this musical since 2016 and have made it one of my longest standing hyperfixations is worrying, because I swear on my rare musical merch I have so many opinions and so many words. I love this musical so much that I plan to audition for a show a company 2 hours away from me is putting on. That is the closest I have ever gotten to being in or seeing this musical.

I have also convinced myself that the musical imploded cause of horrible casting decisions, because, like, HOW CAN YOU GO FROM MULTIPLE AWARDS AND BREAKING RECORDS TO NOW NOBODY’S EVER HEARD OF IT. More people have heard of WAY more niche musicals and it’s baffling to me. WHY oh WHYYY did they have to make the TV special that ALL OF AMERICA COULD SEE be the one with Hasselhoff. Why. Why did he have to be the one. To be frank, he sucks ass as this lead. Like, he’s maybe ok at singing, his acting is cheesy and hammy, and he is just absolutely not fit for that role at all. He’d do fine in an ensemble, but not the lead. He cannot bounce between tenor and baritone effectively, he does not sound or look like a different person when he “changes”, unlike Cuccioli and Warlow, his vibrato is out of control… I could keep going, but I won’t unless someone wants to hear it in dm or something lol.

And with the revival??? Why did they have to change the aesthetic??? Why did they have to make it over sexualized AND steampunk?? IT’S A GOTHIC MUSICAL!! IT IS NOT A PUNK ROCK CONCERT!! IT IS IN THE EXTENDED TITLE!!! I could go on forever about this. I am so mentally ill. I wrote a 4000+ word, 10-page, cited paper for fun about how it could be properly revived for broadway and although some of my thoughts and ideas have changed, I will definitely die on quite a few hills with the opinions I have. I’ll likely rewrite that paper over the summer or even make a video on YT discussing it, cause I wanted to make a Jekyll & Hyde iceberg video anyway. In any case, thanks for listening to my TED talk.

[milfzatannaz]

I love being an expert in Vertigo era magic canon as if it doesn’t take 5 minutes and a pirating site to do so

[barkilphedros-hat]

Royston Vasey is a Hellmouth. I’m right and I should say it.

There’s curses and magic and monsters…. And whatever the fuck Hillary Briss was doing…

[gay-mime-jr]

because y'all heathens are bringing homestuck/worm bullshit onto my god-fearing dashboard, we've gotta talk about undersider god tiers because i have Opinions (and also my old tumblr is dead which means i can be back on my bullshit)

spoilers for both worm and ward below!

Taylor: Witch of Doom - Honestly, we all gotta agree miss Taylor Hebert is a doom player, using systems, deadends and actual literal murder to her benefit. She's able to uncannily turn a situation that 100% will result in her death and make it into something good with only benefits and that's hot and sexy of her.

Lisa: Sylph of Mind (derogatory) - God, we stan a girlboss. Lisa is a textbook mind or light player, all centered on information and knowledge. Sylph is the best class for her, as canon powers are what I'm basing these off of since they're so intrinsically personal. She creates information and uses it how she sees fit, with a habit of meddling with everything or anyone she can get her grubby little hands on.

Brian: Prince of Light - Hear me out. We all think of Brian as a Void player (I assume), but the way he lies about everything personal to him, even to Aisha who KNOWS better points me to the idea of him destroying any "light" in his life, and the surrounding light when he uses his power. This is a Brian Laborn stan account.

Rachel: Rogue of Hope - L i s t e n. I'm basing this heavily on how Rachel ends up, rather than how she is at the start, as she's definitely the character who has the MOST 180° kickflip on her character. She would invert to an Heir of Rage, which makes sense for her beginning characteristics, but as she grows she realizes that she can hope for more and that she can give hope (puppy therapy) to others. Rachel is best girl and I'll die on this hill.

Alec: Bard of Heart - Y'all been knew. This man is a MESS, who when he gets a hold of a captive systematically breaks them down into puppets to use as he wants (Shatterbird? Shadow Stalker?) and honestly, how Bard of him to get struck by lighting for being an asshole.

Aisha: Mage of Void - Love of my life, wind in my sails, mother of my adopted sociopathic children. Aisha is a mage, through and through. She knows everything there is to know that should be hidden because she can see it without even being noticed, because of her power she knows what it is to BE the void, annd it hurts. Mage's know eveything about their aspect, no matter what it does to them and that's our girl.

Sabah: Page of Blood - Spoilers for Ward, of course, but as much as Sabah's character is defined by her relationships and connection to Dolltown.. It's all taken from her. She lacks relationships inherently, her father dying, the boy in her engineering class, what happened to the Dolltown residents and eventually having to leave them for the Undersiders. All she really has is Lily and even that is a struggle to get. Plus out of the group, she's the least suited to combat, but grows at a slow pace throughout the story until the Flesh Golem.

Lily: Knight of Space - Knights are known for presenting a false self and I feel like Lily fits that, taking jobs or positions that she doesn't exactly want, trying to stay calm in front of others and freaking out later, all that good stuff. Even her power is exploiting or weaponizing physics, which is a niche idea of space but girl go off, we love to see it.

[zinzinina]

Unforming

Pairing - Bodhi Rook x F!Reader Rating - Explicit 18+ Word Count - 2.8k A/N -  Just an extremely short, super mopey and indulgent oneshot feat. Bodhi Rook who, honestly, is the most underappreciated man in Star Wars and that’s the hill I’m prepared to die on. Not tagging anybody because I am v. aware this one is... uh, kinda niche and probs not for everyone. x

CW: Smut, angst, descriptions of anxiety. 

Smoke curls slowly over both your heads as you watch him sketch, fingers quick, black staining the creases at each joint and in a thin semicircle under his nails. Your uniforms are crumpled together in an undignified tangle on the floor, turned inside out, the underside of the embroidered Imperial sigils visible.

You draw in another deep pull, the marcan herb lightening your head and hazing the glowpanels above until the tiny cabin feels shrouded. Bodhi’s hair is messy, long pieces loosened from the knot at the back of his head and hanging into his face as he works. There’s still a faint line of indentation around his temples from his welding goggles; now looped over the edge of a shelf near the door. He distractedly flicks a black strand from his eyes, leaving a thin smudge of ink high on his cheekbone. He’d been so excited to show you the acquisition, demanding you feel the texture against your lips, adamant that fingertips alone would only miss the subtlety in the grain.

“It’s paper. Actual paper, not that reconstituted adesote shit.”

“It’s beautiful. Oh, Maker, it even smells good. Where did you…?”

“I had another big win. A tipoff from Celfos, he knows a guy.”

You’d had to bite your tongue. Betting on the odupiendo races has cost him more than it’s returned over the months you’ve known him, but he already knows how you feel about it. And tonight is precious. You don’t want to poison the time you have with an argument.

Now, watching him, you’re filled with melancholy. The sheet is draped low around his lean hips, revealing the fine dark lines of his tattoos marked out like shadows on his ribs. He leans back against the wall, head curved down. He has the loveliest eyelashes, you think. The kind any girl would kill for. His gaze darts up and he catches you watching him, a self-conscious smile lifting one side of his lips.

“Do you want to sit up here? I’ll show you what I’m working on.”

Moving carefully so you don’t jostle him, you shift until you're pressed against his side. He reaches two inky fingers to snag what’s left of the smoking herb from your lips, pinching it between his teeth as you look on. The sketch is only rough, but you can already see the curves and valleys and deeper dusked lines of a walled city overlooking rolling hills. Something in the shape of the hills looks soft, and as you watch him outline the strange wind-lifted drag of a rise, you realise they’re dunes of sand.

“Is that Jedha City?”

He nods absently, hand curled into a loose fist as he points out a particular building with his smallest finger, other hand returning your cigarro to your lips.

“That’s the square—there, the marketplace. They’d hold school here if it wasn’t too cold outside. This whole section was just temples. See the lines from the balcony? My mum would hang her washing there.”

His quarters are small and cluttered with sketches on every surface; most on yellow, crinkled archival plastic sheets or panels ripped out of insulation. You remember the day he’d suffered a crazed lapse of self control and pocketed several canisters of luxurious Quarren ink from an officer’s shipping chest. And like every one of his small acts of defiance, he’d spent the following week in a state of paranoid terror, waiting for a squad of troopers to kick his door down with an interrogator droid, edgy and defensive.

You turn your head to the side, resting your cheek against his chest and feeling the vibrations of his heart, so often quickened and alert, now slow and steady.

His hand stills, and he drags his gaze from the drawing to you, blinking several times as he emerges from the depths of memory.

“How much is left?” you murmur, tilting your chin toward the landscape in his hands.

He shakes his head, easing his arm from between your bodies to rest on the other side of your waist, tucking you close.

“Some. I don’t get to see much when I’m picking up the shipments. Don’t want to, to be honest.”

You consider this, stretching down to stub the butt in your hand out on the sleeve of your coveralls.

“Are you fucking kidding?” he startles, arm reached out to stop you.

“Are burns not regulation anymore?” you grin, teasing him. “It’s fine. They have thousands of these things in storage. I’ll just grab a new one. You’re too careful.”

“Ha. You’re not careful enough,” enunciating the second syllable, teeth cutting the “uff” into his lip.

You roll your eyes, carefully lifting the stylus and paper from his fingers, laying them beside the bed. “What are they going to do, send me back to reconditioning? Again? I’ll leave. I’ll go to Gorse, find a job with the mining guild. I get along just fine with Ugnaughts anyway.”

His answer is laced with sarcasm. “Oh, yeah. I forgot we had that option, just free to go whenever we feel like it.”

It’s just a little bit too tender to joke about, considering your current positions.

“There’s more than one type of freedom,” you remind him, and you watch the muscles in his temples flex as he clenches his narrow jaw, eyes dropping back down to his hands.

You slip out from under the sheets, sliding off the side of the bed and padding over to the scratched little plastoid table beside the fresher door. Taking a tepid sip of water from the carafe there, you can feel his gaze on your legs as you stand in your underwear. It’d become habitual when you came to Bodhi’s cabin after work to both strip out of your hot, oil-stained uniforms and crawl under the covers together, not necessarily doing anything right away. Just getting comfortable, shedding your filthy Imperial skins, breathing each other in. Wholly unobserved by anyone but each other, it feels like you cease to exist for the rest of the galaxy.

He’s looking at you now with that face, the one that first made you unable to walk away from him, his eyes impossibly huge and soft, shadowed by the long, straight edge of his nose, and you just about melt. You take a steadying breath.

“I have to tell you something.”

Some line of tensity in your voice makes his curled hand twitch where it rests on his knee, and you’re already regretting what you have to do.

“They’re moving me. Tomorrow. They’re starting to shift the whole division in stages, junior engineers first. Half of us are getting send to Eadu, the others… They want us onsite for the start of the array testing. It’s getting close. Maybe another standard year at the most. Word is, the higher-ups are getting impatient. They’re already over budget.”

He’s looking at you like he’s waiting for the punchline, full brows slightly raised, lips parted as he blinks.

“But—but you were due for leave. They’d already approved it.”

You hate yourself for the lie, even as you work to form it. “I… I tried so hard to get out of it. But… you know. I’m just not important enough to get to make any decisions.”

The quiet chime of the facility’s cycle change is distantly audible as you fold your arms, a hand pressed to your own neck.

He finally manages to speak, still that protective edge of acerbic bitterness in his tone, the one you recognise from whenever he’s trying not to appear nervous.

“You’re more important than me. A droid could do my job.”

“No. You’re a better pilot than any fucking droid. The only reason you’re hauling cargo instead of dying out there in a TIE is because you can think for yourself. That’s not an attribute they look for in their coffin jockeys.”

He hasn’t moved a muscle, quick dark eyes still scanning your face. You creep closer, raised up on your knees tentatively, facing him on the bed. There’s a tight little twist to his lips, and his gaze darts away, considering his own hands, unfreezing and touching his blackened fingers one by one to his thumbs. The gesture is one you’ve seen before, when he’s had a bad shift; the time purrgils nearly wiped out his entire shipment outside of the Hydian jump point, or whenever his smart mouth got him into trouble, poorly-stifled comments attracting disciplinary visits from a site overseer. Whenever the anxious tics became too much, his restless hands needed to be busy. Drawing, working, smoking, anything. Now, you lay your own smaller fingers over his.

“Look at me.”

He does, and you nearly wish you hadn’t asked. You’re betraying him. You’re leaving him here, alone, surrounded by these people, when he was just starting to get it under control.

His eyes are brimming, wild as his gaze darts between your eyes. “What am I gonna do, if you’re not here…? If I can’t calm down, if I can’t get a hold of it.”

You hold his face hard between your hands, your fingers careful as you whisper to him.

“You can. You’re so fucking brave, Bo. A trillion times braver than me. I know you are. And… they probably won’t let any comms out of the construction zone. But you won’t be alone. Find Galen, he’s the head of my department. Talk to him when I’m gone. He’s… not like the rest of them. He’s a good person. He’ll help you. I promise.”

You draw yourself up, pressing your lips to his, feeling the scruff of his pointed chin against your skin. He squeezes his eyes shut, breathing slowly, matching your rhythm as you break your contact and hold still. You run your fingers up the back of his neck, feeling the velvet of the close-shorn underside of his hair. Trying to guide him with each of your own inhalations, your sadness settles low as a stone.

It takes a long time before his eyes open again, and in them, that resolve.

Bodhi always called himself a coward, resentful and ashamed of his body’s disobedience, when his own breathing would choke him with its intensity, chest seized with clawing wrongness in the most mundane of settings. He’d cover it with irritability, the kind that people misinterpreted, but which you'd recognised as self-preserving. Something he could never see, would never recognise about himself; his ability to somehow figure out what the right thing was, despite his fear, made him the toughest person you knew. It’s the only thing you can cling to now: the hope that one day he’ll work out why you needed to do this.

“Once it’s finished, you can transfer back out,” he tells you, and it pierces deep. You can’t tell him. He isn’t ready to know. Not yet.

“Sure,” you respond, all you can think to say, and his hands are on your lower back, drawing you closer.

He curls his fingers, stroking the clean back of his first knuckle gently along the line of your jaw, following the curve of your neck down to your shoulder. You shiver at the lightness of the touch, barely a breeze on the fine down of your cheek.

You let yourself settle down into a kneel, straddling his thighs as you sit on your own feet. Your hands are light on his prominent collarbones, tracing the dark lines underneath the skin. Watching you, he raises his chin, catching your lips with his own.

There’s an uncharacteristic intensity in his kiss, and as he drags your bottom lip into his mouth you hum, curving over him, pressing yourself down onto his lap.

You let your fingers drift over the lean, rangy expanse of his body, knowing even with your eyes shut where each river of ink lies to follow. Memorised already, the hair dusted below his navel, the flat planes of his abdomen. He exhales into your lips, the herby bitterness of lingering marcan passing between you as you roll yourself down, feeling him hardening as he arches his neck up, deepening his hold on your lips.

You thread the fingers of your right hand through his, clasping yourselves together as you flex your thigh muscles to raise and lower yourself, slow and intentional. Ink forgotten, he drags his calloused, elegant fingers up your side, searching, marking your skin.

You pull back, breaking the kiss only long enough to free your legs, your lips swollen. He helps you drag your underwear off in a graceless fumble, throwing aside the standard-issue base sheets, already amess with black smudges.

He drags his face from yours and, bending, presses his lips to the gap between your breasts, hands cupping your ribcage, thumbs rough on your nipples. You brace yourself on his shoulders, the fine dip of each muscle shadowed shallowly under your hands as you ease his cock from the waistband of his pants, trying not to be too rough with your dry, demanding fingers. He rolls up into your hold, unconcerned and encouraging as he leans up, trying to ease you backwards.

Too restless to wait, you stretch up and dip a finger inside yourself, spreading your arousal over the head of his cock before you position yourself over him.

A knee on either side of his waist, you take him inside slowly, your lack of preparation necessitating a pause, and your thighs tauten from the effort of your control. Breaths hitching in tandem, you let your head roll down, savouring the ache in your rending.

You bottom out and shudder, clutching at every part of him you can reach, scratching accidentally at his cheek, a line across the gold of his skin reddening. You try and fail to control your own pace as lift and sink back onto him heavily, the sharpness of your movement making his grip on your waist tighten.

A twitch in your thighs betrays how messily conflicted you are; vacillating between wanting to sanctify every moment of this and needing to move. He recognises your frustration and brushes his ink-blackened thumb from the edge of your lip to your cheek, holding you still, shifting his other hand under your thigh and encouraging your movements to slow. He catches your gaze and holds it, soft eyes creasing at the edges, the faintest sheen on his brow as he traces the edge of your jaw. Lips quirked sadly, he breathes against you, shaking his head.

“We’ve got time.”

It’s enough to make you weaken. Knowing, as he doesn’t, that it just isn’t true. Seated with him inside you, you pause, peppering kisses on the dark arches under each eye. His exhaustion is made sharp by the fine structure of his face, the ash beneath the warmth of his skin. It’s been far too long that you’ve both been away from any source of natural light.

Trying to fall into some semblance of coordination, he meets each arch of your hips, liquid-bright eyes fluttering closed as he tips his head against the wall, the tied knot of his hair pressed back. And there it is, pieces slotting together as you let your body take over from your scattered, grief-spiked thoughts.

Rolling against him in perfect rhythm, waves meeting and withdrawing from the shore of each breath.

Your fingers hold tight to the back of his neck as you kiss him hard, clumsy as your teeth hit his, trying to imprint a copy of yourself here so you can stay with him long after tonight. His tongue slides messy against yours as he lifts your thighs, dragging his fingerprints into the flesh and angling up into you.

Your eyes fly open, your gasp stuttered into his mouth as he meets each of your urgent thrusts, his brow creased, circling higher together.

A hard warm twinge claws up the insides of your thighs and it feels so good, but you don’t want to let go. You aren’t ready yet, despite the desperation to grind down deeper. You want this to stretch on, and on, like you could delay everything else just by denying yourself this release. But as you shudder around him you realise it’s already too late, your body rebelling as he encourages you. Helpless, your fingers find your clit, wrenching yourself higher as you ride his cock.

I’m sorry, you think with all your might, watching the fine veins of his closed eyelids as he gasps, both your bodies beginning to seize. Forgive me, chests pressed so close it’s impossible to tell whose heartbeat is being led by whose.

Your climax ropes down his own, and as your cunt pulses around him, gathering him deep, you feel his answering release rip through him. Your kiss devolves into an artless, parted-mouthed press of wet breaths.

Muffled, there’s the sound of an announcement from the command deck, the voice tinny through the layers of wall and pinned art. It’s still and close in the dim space. You stay in the same position long after he softens inside you, slowly pressing your lips to his neck, his eyebrow, his ears; anywhere you can reach.

Two dark shapes fitted together, edges bleeding away until you’re indistinguishable from the rest of the shadows in the little room.

[kazzyboy]

Thanks for the tag, @local-redhead-bookworm!

Relationship Status: Single and cool with that. On top of the fact that my identity is a mess, I really don’t think dating should be a concern of mine right now. Maybe never. Shall a person I like romantically wander along then yeah I’ll probably shoot my shot but yknow

Favorite Color: depends on what it is, but mostly cool colors, like blue and black because black is a color and I’ll die on this hill

Song(s) Stuck in Your Head: Hellboy by SWMRS, Bad Habit by Steve Lacy, and Roddy by Djo

Dream Trip: ehh, I’m more a stay at home kind of person, especially with everything going on right now. I am, however, being dragged to the beach against my will in a couple of weeks

Last Book You Read: oh that’s a tough one.. so much fanfiction. The last book I actually finished was probably a reread of AFTG

Last Book You Enjoyed Reading: Aftg is a good read okay

Last Book You Hated Reading: I honestly don’t know. I don’t read books if I don’t like them and if they’re just uninteresting I don’t ever get very far.

Favorite Thing To Cook/Bake: I don’t know. I’m more of a sit on the counter and eat frosting out of the can at three am type of person. Otherwise, steamed veggies or frozen fruit is pretty good. Or a grilled cheese, even if my stomach goes to murder me when I so much as glance at a dairy product.

Favorite Craft To Do In Your Freetime: what’s considered craft? I occasionally sew and mess around with clay, but I’m constantly writing and drawing things. Does creating sims count as crafting? I’ve been doing that a lot lately.

Most Niche Dislike: oh, um. I can’t think of any on the spot. Probably not niche but right now the fuckin weak ass hair choices in the Sims 4. Anyone know how to get mods on a PS4

Opinion On Circus(es): I’ve never been to a circus but I don’t think it’s a good idea to cage up animals like lions, if that’s what this question is about. I often do not know things, in case you hadn’t noticed

Do You Have A Sense Of Direction: I mean, it depends on where I am. I know the town I grew up in like the back of my hand but if you asked me to pick my way around my current town I’d probably get lost, but find my way back home eventually. As for the middle of the woods, the only way you are getting me past the tree line is if my older sister drags me in by the hair, thanks. And if I do manage to get in more than fifteen feet, I usually have a decent chance of not getting claimed by whatever forest creatures want to take me off the census

Tagging: @exysexualmoron @andrews-left-nipple @andrewsleftknee @babbling-brook-of-books @mf-means-matthew-fairchild @jensen57

[alisarb]

the nature of frenchie and kimiko’s relationship

in every frenchie-kimiko video about their relationship there’s always someone commenting how much they ship it and there’s always someone else pointing out that their relationship in the comics is like father and daughter

so, being the obsessive shipper that I am and weirdly overthinking everything about a tv show because i can’t enjoy things like normal people, i decided to write this post to defend why I think their relationship in the show (and even a bit in the comics) is anything BUT paternal, and why their relationship in tv vs. comics is so different

(please bear in mind this is my opinion and in no way i wanna force ships onto anyone, you’re free to interpret stories and ship characters however you want!!)

Okay, the first thing we learn about frenchie in the show is that he is a man of many skills: in his own words, a gunrunner by trade, but with a very particular niche. we also learn he used to be a hitman, probably, and then he talks about his victims like scars he has to carry forever. he’s the first character apart from hughie that expresses some kind of remorse in the show about killing someone up until that point in the show (and i know it’s only the second episode, but by then we’d already seen quite enough violence)

he’s a layered character from the beginning, going from what looks like a man who likes his pills way too much and who seems dangerous to someone who actually has more to offer. still, he has other personality traits that differentiate him from the rest: frenchie describes himself as a womanizer in a conversation with m.m, who he mocks for being in a loving relationship with his wife. he “goes to sleep every night next to someone different.” we’ve met cherie by then but we can assume they are not really in a relationship by this statement, more like a casual lovers situation

and then, like a joke from fate, he meets kimiko. and from the very beginning they form a connection like no other. one can argue that their earlier interactions are kinda sweet and tender and not romantic at all, but from what i see, they share the kind of intimacy that most tv couples wish they could convey without even touching. their chemistry is undeniable 

on top of that, as their relationship progresses, kimiko begins to return the affection. she goes from this killing machine that can’t stand to be touched to initiate contact with (and only) frenchie, because he’s her source of comfort and reassuring. at mesmer’s, kimiko looks at him because he’s the only person that she can trust and the first one to show her kindness in who knows how long

the rest of the group is understandably wary of kimiko, as she has proved to brutal and ruthless. frenchie is the only one who understands her, and that’s why he frees her that first time: to give her a choice 

in exchange, when they are at mesmer’s,he asks her to show them what he sees, and she complies. because she doesn’t trust the rest yet, but she trusts frenchie. and even with that first vision he doesn’t doubt for a second that she can’t be just a terrorist. so kimiko shares with them and relives her trauma: the murder of her parents, being removed from her home and sent to a camp with her brother, being forced to become a soldier, being injected with compound v and becoming a supe with a talent for mass murder just to be locked in a cage like an animal... 

the look they share after that revelation is anything but platonic and/or paternal:

LOOK AT MM AND BUTCHER. BUTCHER IS LIKE WTF AND M.M SHRUGGED LIKE “NOTHING TO BE DONE HE’S IN LOVE YOUR HONOR”

sorry about the excitement this scene makes me wanna squeal with delight

shortly after, kimiko is watching shark week again and frenchie comes up to her to talk about vought and how they’re hurting people like they hurt her, how she could help them stop it. at first kimiko keeps staring at the TV and looks defensive, but the moment he says: “it’s your choice, if you wanna go back and look for your brother i’ll take you to the airport” she looks at him, surprised. 

because he keeps giving her a choice, which is the core of their relatiionship

and, as another user pointed out in a post a while ago, if you watched the show with the captions on (as i did bc english is not my native language) as she holds his hand, you can hear and read that shark week talks about mating and how if a female shark returns the male’s feelings will make some sort of move. one could think that this was accidental but c’mon, this show doesn’t leave anything a coincidence 

it’s clear from the beginning that frenchie is completely smitten with her. in fact, we see small glimpses of him literally OBSESSING over her from the beginning: he meets with cherie to get the gas to sedate kimiko and we learn he hasn’t been with her in a while. i’m sure he was plenty busy with the whole vought + kimiko situation, but at that point they were all living separately and they returned to their places even if it was less frequently than usual (and cherie seemed to spend a lot of time in his place, if not even living there)

he cooks for her when she’s chained and then later on he teaches her HOW TO BAKE my heart 

I could keep listing every moment when Frenchie looks at Kimiko (because his eyes inevitably follow her at any scene) or how the rest of The Boys is so aware of what they are (”you’re dating a terrorist”/”your crazy ass girlfriend”), and (SPOILERS SEASON 2 STOP READING FOR A SECOND) in the s2 we see how Frenchie is dog tired, probably angry and frustrated, and his face automatically changes when Kimiko goes to show him the origami piece. He smiles sweetly because she makes him happy, and amidst all the chaos they are going through one of his main worries is still Kimiko and how to understand and communicate with her.

END OF SPOILRS SEASON 2 

One of the last moments is in the finale, when Kimiko is finally pulling herself back together after years of abuse and mistreatment by brushing her hair, wearing pretty clothes or painting her nails. Simple acts that make her feel like she’s a person. When she comes out of the bathroom, he looks at her with pure AWE. He even says “look at you, mon coeur”, because it’s like she’s the prettiest thing he’s seen. When the gas comes into the room he pushes her into the bathroom first thing. 

M.M’s face at the end when they’re surrounded and he sees Frenchie hitting his head against the wall because even though he’s been shot he only wants to go get Kimiko, I think it says everything. His face when he talks about Kimiko and how she made him a better person. The way he pulled the hair out of her face. 

I really love how everything is coming together this new season, so now I’d like to address the main issue of this post: the nature of their relationship and how it’s nothing like the comics. 

There’s a very basic reason to why I believe their relationship is romantic, and not only by the actors’ interactions in Instagram, or the way Amazon promotes their relationship, but because the comics are so different from the tv show. 

Every character’s background story is changed, and so are their motivations, personalities and, as far as we’ve seen, their storylines. In the show they’ve made it pretty clear that Kimiko and Frenchie share a connection that resembles that of a soulmate. 

And even in the comics, (spoiler) when they’re about to die, Frenchie turns around and tells her that he’s loved her since the beginning. I don’t think that’s very father-like. 

In conclusion, it’s likely that they’ll make us wait for a long time before we get more romantic interaction (especially since Kimiko is growing as a character and that might mean she might need to grow on her own, which I think is great), but it’s been clear since the beginning that they are meant to be. I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL 

[annecoulmanross]

Why you, a fan of AMC’s The Terror (2018), should like Marcus Tullius Cicero: A Short Presentation

The intended audience for this slideshow is all my lovely Terror fans who have recently watched HBO Rome for the sake of baby Tobias Menzies and/or for more of Ciarán Hinds’s hubris.

I know HBO Rome makes it easy to like Brutus, but liking HBO’s Cicero can be more of a challenge. At the same time, I adore Cicero, and here’s why I think you should love him also. And also here’s why you really REALLY shouldn’t be into Marc Antony. 

(Okay, fine, you’re allowed to be into Marc Antony – I do know what that’s like, I’ve been there myself. I just hope that people are doing that critically? And, you know, giving Cicero a chance, because HBO Rome did him dirty – without Atticus and Tiro and Tullia, Cicero really can’t shine.) 

Basically, as per this wonderful meme by @marcvstvllivstiro​ – 

My Credentials: Despite….. everything about this post, I’m actually a PhD student of classics with several years of research experience and a couple of papers on representations of Cicero.  

Please do not construe anything said in this post as sound classical scholarship, but like, Cicero is wonderful and I WILL die on this hill. The real Cicero had plenty of flaws – he was quite self-important, and sometimes too snarky for his own good, and there are very valid reasons to criticize his politics and look critically at his many contributions to a radically unjust society (Roman slavery can and should be condemned, and Cicero, like all of the Roman elite you know, owned slaves; if that’s a dealbreaker for you, that’s fair) – but he also put all his effort into fixing the problems that Rome had, and the fact that he was killed for all his trouble very genuinely IS something we should mourn.

Links & Credits: This presentation features lots of brilliant art by @ofhopefuldays and @chelidonart, both of whom you should absolutely follow! Here are some rebloggable links:

Dead Roman Sketches by @ofhopefuldays based upon character designs by @chelidonart

Pliny the Younger & a Bust of Cicero by @ofhopefuldays

Young Atticus and Cicero by @chelidonart

Marcus Antonius, from the Anti-Cicero Squad by @chelidonart

Cicero and Tiro, from illustrations for the Robert Harris Cicero novels, created by @ofhopefuldays

Cicero Reading, from The Dead Romans Society webcomic by @chelidonart

Want More Cicero? A Rec List!

Definitely go read the webcomic The Dead Romans Society by @chelidonart – it’s a beautiful webcomic about ancient Roman writers in the afterlife, and features Cicero as a supporting character. He’s exactly as self-important as he was historically, and he still also has lots of tender moments with Atticus and with his daughter Tullia. It’s the perfect balance.

I can’t recommend enough the Big Finish Audio Drama Cicero. Please, please support this gorgeous show about young Cicero solving his first murder case. It’s very “original Sherlock Holmes stories” vibes, and very good, and very gay.

Author Robert Harris wrote a series of novels about Cicero from the perspective of his secretary Tiro, and they’re a great read. The Royal Shakespeare Company even adapted them into plays!

If you’re into campy old docu-dramas, check out the Cicero episode of BBC’s Timewatch show, “Murder in Rome” (2005).

I have SO many more niche Cicero recommendations – come chat with me and I’ll send you ALL the Cicero things!

[morwensteelsheen]

farawyn and borodred for the ship ask game thing?

thank you so much!! :)

okay i’ll start with borodred because for some unfathomable reason i actually got there first —

1. What made you ship it?

One of my favourite Types of ships is the Elder Statesmen Of War-type set-ups, where it’s less about people brought together through theatrical romantic gestures and more about the steadiness of people who are going through similar (immensely difficult) circumstances, who know that in their hearts they’re always going to put their duty to that cause first, but still seek out human comfort in other people who will understand what their priorities are and why.

I think there’s also a lot of similarities about the kind of helplessness they both face despite having this tremendous innate strength. Both of them still have to deal with family dynamics that are complex (made more complex by the war) and that can’t be fixed just by their own sheer will power; both of them die these utterly unnecessary deaths (not that death makes a ship but I think in this instance it actually points to the constant tragedy these guys face); and both of them are meant to be the principal figures of their families and people and are ultimately sidelined by the cruel mechanisations of war and the forward march of history or whatever wanky term there is for it — my apologies to ep thompson's ghost, dont haunt me bro.

Plus there’s obviously the interesting thread raised when Faramir starts bitching about Gondor and likens Gondor (and by very explicit extension, Boromir) to Rohan. That always made me go ‘Hmmmmmm, wonder what else Boromir liked about Rohan,’ lmao.

Anyways for me the ship is the equivalent of Star Wars’ Kanan and Hera or (my OTP to end all others) Luke and Wedge, just people getting by on love and duty and without big ol fancy romance.

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?

The fanon, I think, really makes it, as with so many other LOTR ships. battlefield manners, by themightypen is essentially the definitive take for me on them — these two guys who are just so fucking exhausted, man, but still overcome by defensive love for their families, even if their (foster-)siblings are naïve fools. That I just love, love, love. Plus I think they’re unique for their ability to pretty comfortable explore the relationship between Gondor & Rohan in advance of the Ring War without having to stray too far into AU, which I always appreciate.

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Not really, tbh, except in that I don’t think Boromir is necessarily as laddy as people like to portray him. I’m happy to play into it in, say, my modern AUs because I think that’s a fun and sweet niche for him, but I am a bit 🤪 about Boromir as this kind of reckless, drunken playboy (not least because I think that’s a much funnier niche for Faramir to fill, at least when he’s younger). Chapter Four of Swaddledog’s Hearts and Minds gets my preferred Boromir characterisation absolutely spot on, I think.

And now, sigh, the ultimate OTP, Farawyn —

1. What made you ship it?

For starters, I think I am obsessed with Éowyn in a way I’ve never quite been obsessed with any other fictional character. I came to reading LOTR at this moment in my life where I was intensely frustrated about everything — trapped inside permanently (helplessly!) because of the pandemic, just starting a new political organisation that I truly believed in but that was still making me feel like shit, facing down an untenable about of work, and, fundamentally, really, really hating being a woman and what that means. And along comes Éowyn, who is bitter, who is cold, who is ANGRY, and who doesn’t perform joy or softness or gentleness just because people expect her to. She’s this seminal Woman Of War in so many ways, I think the kind of person a lot of us wish we could be. She’s got her emotional taps cut off at the source, she holds her head high and faces down unimaginable personal and political terrors, and at the end of it all still has this abiding love for her family that, I would argue, is almost unparalleled by anyone else in the book.

After all that, she gets this incredible moment of emotional catharsis (or what we expect to be emotional catharsis): “no living man am I!” She undertakes THE greatest martial act of the Ring War, and in that moment there’s this unbelievably sophisticated dialogue happening about gender (“Éowyn it was, and Dernhelm also”), and leadership (Merry finding his courage not because of the immediate scenario of the Witch-king, but because he’s spurred into it by Éowyn’s presence), and love and care.

And then we learn that no, actually, this glorious act of violence wasn’t the emotional catharsis we thought it would be. She gets to ride to war, she gets to throw herself headlong at death, and in the end that hopeless act of individualism isn’t really what does it for her. She’s still left desolate and despairing, and actually all of her problems haven’t gone away.

And then we need to rewind a bit, because along comes Faramir, who is gentle, and is kind, and does seem to believe in joy, but not because people expect it — actually it's made abundantly clear nobody expects it — but because it’s something quite innate to how he figures the world. And he’s a huge fucking nerd too. I have a lot of thoughts on Faramir’s flaws and why I find them endearing, which I won’t put here, but almost immediately you get this sense of a guy who’s quite melodramatic, good humoured, and very much not made to live in a time of war.

But he’s also clear-headed about war and what it requires (tactically, if not strategically, though that’s a post for another day), but who is kind of cynical and weary of it in his own unique way. And it’s a unique cynicism given his personal circumstances because he’s the second son of The great family of Gondor, he’s apparently — though with some big ol’ question marks hanging about the extent — very able to command some of the elite units in the realm, and what’s more than that, he’s got all these fantastical powers (the light mind reading to start, to say nothing of this apparently magical ability to command animals too. bruh.). By all accounts he should be this brazen hot mess, but he’s not. He’s desperate to claw his way out of this war-torn cage of expectation his people have for how a man should comport himself in time of war. Is it a little naïve? Sure. A little fussy? Absolutely. But does it point to that same desperation that Éowyn has? Yes! But also the practicality, like, neither of them are really enjoying the circumstances they live under, but good fucking god are they both able to Make It Work.

So finally we get to the Houses of Healing and what is the finest and most aggressively romantic writing of LOTR. Seriously, it’s so fucking much. It’s breathtaking. It reminds me quite viscerally of this fabulous quote from Les Mis:

The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.

At some point I will devote more time to talking about the two reasons line, and the blissful Queen of Gondor speech, but I think to me that big, important line is: “And then her heart changed, or at least she understood it; and the winter passed, and the sun shone upon her.”

It’s not about Éowyn changing herself entirely (though, I think, it really does bear mentioning that she does change, and that’s every bit as important to understanding that scene as it is romantic), it’s about Éowyn coming to terms with how to live with herself as herself, and how to live in communion with someone else. She can’t just cut people out anymore, and she can’t just treat them as objects of infatuation as she did with Aragorn, she has to reckon with people as they are. And that’s sort of the moment where I knew I was about to plunge fully off the deep end with these two and never know a moments’ peace again, lmao.

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?

Someone on here once called Farawyn a love letter to women and, by god, yes, exactly that. I love the capacity for emotional intimacy, that is beautiful in ways I can’t express. To me, though, my favourite thing is the promise of life they speak of. Not as in oh they shag loads and have babies (though not opposed to that, obviously), but in the sense that unlike Aragorn and Arwen, who are always going to be buried under/burdened with the crushing weight of history and tradition, Éowyn and Faramir are going out yonder those hills and they’re going to do some real cottagecore farming shit. Obviously with all the trappings of rank and nobility and whatnot, but they, unique to anybody else in the books, get to sow this new idea of what life should be. They are, outside of Aragorn, the single most powerful people in Gondor. Éowyn’s got the ear of a king, a steward (which is essentially a prime-ministerial deal here), and functionally her own prince (if the hobbits are to be believed when they refer to it as essentially hers). I suspect that, in life, there were remarkably few arguments she wasn’t winning, and that Ithilien probably trended towards the jumped up noble hippie camp Tolkien so desperately wanted Oxford to be (or, in other words — Cambridge, lol).

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Yeah, man, everybody stop treating Faramir like he’s a big fucking crybaby and Éowyn like she’s some kind of shrieking 2010-era tumblr girl.

One of the single most important lines defining Faramir’s character is when Denethor roasts his ass for always trying to appear noble and lordly, if you ignore every other piece of textual evidence we have about him, what part of that line makes you think Faramir’s some simpering daisy? And why would you want to link tremendous emotional intelligence and care with being too limp-wristed to function, lol??? Like I struggle loads with writing Faramir, because I have never once in my life tried to be noble or self-restrained, so find it hard to get into that mindset, but better, I think, to imagine him too closed off than to do this wilting flower song and dance lmao.

And stop making Éowyn out to be this over-emotional angst machine. She’s got problems, yes, and she’s sure as shit got a lot of angst, but at almost every point in the book where we’re overtly dealing with her emotions, she’s sublimating them into something else. One of the most serious times we see her cry is when she’s fighting with Aragorn about riding out, and after that moment she literally tries to kill herself. Those tears aren’t standard, man, that’s a real watershed (lol) moment for her. You have to read around what the text is saying to get a better feel why everybody’s constantly calling her cold and distant.

[steponmepinkjun]

hey i just wanted you to know that i really love and appreciate your posts about new mexico. there's a good chance my mom and i are moving down there someday, cuz almost all of her family lives there. i've always liked NM, but i've never lived somewhere else before so the thought is pretty daunting. your posts are really comforting, cuz they help me focus on the positives, instead of how scary moving away from my home town is. so thank you <3

Okay I know it has been roughly ONE MILLION YEARS since you sent me this, but I've been keeping it in my drafts because every time I see it it makes me smile 😭

Moving, even in theory, is scary and stressful! Especially if it's to somewhere that's very different from what you know and are used to. New Mexico is one hell of a mixed bag, that's for sure. I could spent a long time describing the faults—they mostly revolve around what it's like to be a child here. But I could spend years writing a love song to this land. It sounds like you've visited here, so I'm sure I don't need to wax poetic—but I kinda want to lol. Visiting here and living here are very different.

I'll first start by saying that as scary as it seems, I'm sure you're a capable human being who can absolutely handle the stress of a move like that, and I'm positive you have a lot to offer, so you'll be able to make friends and find your niche no matter where you are. And a place like this can give you opportunities that maybe you wouldn't have had where you're from, and not just in the form of absurdly delicious food.

There's something about spending a lot of time in the desert here that is so deeply, deeply comforting, and galvanizing. After a few years of driving through the endless hours of two-lane highways, you form a unique appreciation for watching the smooth-topped hills rolling by, knowing that once, those were ripples on the bottom of an ancient ocean. The way every horizon goes a hazy purple, rippling and undulating in the heat, the sky barely obscured by even the tallest and most jagged of mountains. You can sit on the mesa and point at the striped rocks and say, "When the earth was this color, dinosaurs walked the earth." In the north, the mountains are scraggly and so close to the sky that you'll sunburn in ten minutes during the summer; in the south, there are palm trees to match the yukkas. If you want sprawling desert hills, daydreams of cowboys, and visions of adventure and carnage in equal measure, you drive west. If you want long, languid grasslands swaying in a hot, stifling breeze under the cottonwood trunks, you go east. Everything about the landscape repels you, at first glance, because this land is a stage bigger than gods, it's the skeleton of the earth itself, the sun beats down in a way that makes you feel sure you're not welcome, everything from the singular annual snowfall to the crushing weight in your lungs trying to hike into oxygen-deprived heights. But it's raw, it's primordial and untouched in a way that feels triumphant. If you want to feel small, and make peace with your body and your planet and your existence, this is the place to spend a few years. The desert will make you do that. You don't come here to have dinner at the top of a skyscraper, this is somewhere you go to be alone with your earth and your god and your own mind, and feel connected to the world in a way that sitting inside a classroom or a cubicle all day will make you forget is possible.

People here are uniquely unpretentious, unabashedly weird, and very enthusiastic about pretty much every kind of art and craft there is. It's easy to make friends, as long as you know how to laugh. A lot of people here have a desire to coexist with the land rather than conquer it, desire to subsist in the harsh landscape rather than dominate it, desire to learn and create rather than to demolish and replace. All these little scattered towns existing so isolated from the rest of the world, everything feels both hyper-real and utterly absurd. It's a great place to just exist in tune with the natural world—it'll make you go, "Wow, I was not put on this earth to sit in a cubicle or stand behind a register, the world is unimaginably vast and strange and beautiful and I am here, just as much a part of it as anything else."

So if you do wind up here, you'll be just fine. You might even love it—just, take my advise, and don't do one of those hot air balloon rides during Balloon Fiesta. People die in those shits every damn year lmfao.

[lizardrosen]

Kit Kat, Playing Space, Songfic, Umineko, Ariel, Split Reality AU

(wip title meme)

Kit Kat is my Cabaret doc! I have a lot of musing on the nature of performance and memory and who gets to shape the narrative when the world is falling apart around them and everyone’s going to die but maybe they can escape the world for a while first.

Berlin, 1931. There was a cabaret with a boy and a girl and an emcee. We were all dancing and we were all asleep. There was music everywhere – in the dance halls, in the beer gardens, in the underground places we went to forget our worries. We were proud of who the songs told us we were, and no one cared to notice that they were beginning to be gunshots in among the drums. It was simply safer not to know anything about it, until it got to be that nothing was safe. We were all dancing that year, but we were all asleep.

Playing Space is about Mercutio having lots of illicit sex and then taunting Escalus about it. It deals a lot with performance and presentation and image and heyyyy, i may have a Theme :D It’s also the most explicit sex I wrote for years, before i had my Pokémon evolution two years ago and learned how to write smut.

Mercutio is and always has been a showman so this much secrecy kills him as he is robbed of the assumption that somebody will be watching. He makes up for lost spectators where he can, hastily muttering half-known monologues as he climbs to the throes of passion. He uses the other man’s cock as his playing space and it bothers him not a whit that he gets no hint of the appreciation in his eyes, because he can hear the applause in the blood of his wrist.

Songfic - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sweet and domestic, listening to Romeo And Juliet by the Killers and reminiscing about their time in Verona. It’s a circular story so they knew the ending before it began, and maybe brought the tragedy with them, but now they’re dancing in a kitchen and things have turned out alright.

“Oh, they probably just moved fast, times being what they are.” “And what are they?” “Indifferent.” Rosencrantz shrugs. “Uncivil. Same thing, really.” “All those parents who couldn’t care less about what their feud was doing to their children. It’s no wonder it all blew up as it did.” Rosencrantz sings along, “/The dice were loaded from the start./ But I thought it was weighted coins that got them in the end.” “No, no, that was us. The Montagues and Capulets were felled by loaded dice and a guitar. Because we’re just two men and they had so many facets to lose.”

Umineko is my catch-all doc! I’ve posted four fics already, and I have two more that are completed and I’m just waiting for my brain to kick into gear - one is a sad Rudolf fic where he blames himself for his abuse and passes it on to the people around him, and the other is speculation about the nature of Battler’s sin from six years ago. I’ve also been collecting the various ways I’ve described the game to people I wanted to get into it, and this is one of my favorites:

i've also been getting extremely into my current hyperfixation, which is umineko, a game about chess and witches and trauma, and the things you inherit and don't want to inherit and past hurts revived as present hurts, and also locked room mysteries and gay demon butlers

There’s a couple fics I won’t ever post because they’re really short and/or extremely niche fusions - one with the Almeida production of The Oresteia, and another with The Haunting of Hill House. There’s a lot of overlapping themes!

Ariel is part of the hamlet d&d verse! after a fight with a bunch of concubi, one of them escaped and was still able to track Hamlet, so they came back wearing Horatio’s face and trying to corrupt him and drag him to hell. At some point we decided they’re Ariel from The Tempest, and also an air elemental that accidentally got summoned because Sycorax botched the ceremony, so now we’re Attached to them, and gave them a whole character arc of self-discovery. But fiiiirst Hamlet spends Several Weeks cheating on Horatio and feeling guilty about it even though he’s being coerced. but the monster sex is really good!

Horatio is the person he trusts most in the world, but he absolutely cannot tell Horatio what’s been going on. Almost reflexively now he skims across the surface of his best friend’s thoughts whenever they are together, but mostly he avoids being alone with him as much as he can. They wouldn’t dare ensnare him with an audience, or if they did it would be three against one. But when its just the two of them he keeps expecting to see those warm brown eyes burn with either lust or malice. Or else he burns with the shame of remembering what’s been done with him when they did get him alone, acts so depraved that none but a fiend could be capable, and worse yet, how much he enjoyed himself before he remembered himself. Because he does want to be called a good boy, trusted to follow instructions so willingly, but he wants it to be Horatio who tells him so, the real Horatio.

Split Realities AU was a cool idea I had for Good Omens that I jotted down but then never wrote. Maybe someday I’ll do something with it, though!

Angels and demons and other supernatural beings can remember the Apoca-not with much better clarity than the humans, and it still gets fuzzy in places so they find themselves remembering the future that might have happened if Adam had started the war. And somewhere, it’s happening, and everyone suffers the double vision of finding places restored that they remember losing. It’s worst for Crowley, who’s so afraid for himself and his angel.

[gizkalord]

hi! 4, 8, 20 for the ask?

4. what headcanon will you defend to the death?

this isn’t so much a headcanon, but moreso my interpretation that the prequel era narrative deliberately invites criticism against the jedi—not to the point of villainizing them obviously, but we are meant to debate whether the jedi were doing the right things in the right ways, and ultimately there isn’t a concrete answer to that question! and i’ll die on the hill of encouraging people to view the prequel jedi as more ambiguous and flawed.

8. what is one thing you would change about any movie, show, book, etc?

uhhh well i would restructure the entire premise of the ST lmao—no destroying Luke’s academy or the New Republic! it should’ve been about what it takes to rebuild and maintain a new government/jedi order.

20. what do you hope will happen in future movies?

hot take but i think they just need to take a break from movies and focus on the tv shows—i think the long form nature of tv shows fits better, and allows them to make more niche and risky content that i personally would like to see more of.

if they HAVE to make new movies, i would looove to see old republic era stuff—war of exar kun, jedi-mando war, etc, and really dig into the morality themes that are really prevalent in that period of sw material (i’m not sure if i actually want to see them touch KOTOR stuff directly ahahahaha). basically i want to see them break away from the well-trodden characters from the PT/OT/ST.

[artax-risen]

15 & 21 for the ask game? :)

15. roller skates or rollerblades or ice skates?

I have skills with exactly none of these things, but I guess ice skates just because the vibes of going ice skating with friends in winter are pretty immaculate, and also professional ice skating is gorgeous and very enviable, whereas roller derby is just terrifying lol.

21. The best ice cream flavour

Oh gods I have no idea! Taste is very subjective and changes based on a lot of factors. Vanilla is very pleasing alongside other desserts, but I've had terrible vanilla icecream before. Chocolate fudge is stunning and I love it, but there's definitely something to be said for the mix of taste and texture that you get in cookie dough. And if you count gelato and sorbets (neither are technically ice cream, but they very much fall into the same niche of frozen sweet desserts) then the options are frankly innumerable (I remember a delicious watermelon gelato I had around a year ago, it was so good). I guess cookie dough, if I must give an answer to an impossible question?

It certainly isn't anything with mint though, and I'll die on that hill. Mint is terrible and those who like it can keep it far far away from me lol

Thank you 💖

This is the ask game, for reference