#unique present ideas

[watatsumiis]

you know when you see pics of older people from when they were in their early adult-hood years and and turns out they were BANGIN’ hot. like they-definitely-had-a-line-of-lovers type of sexy. Pierro.

YOURE SO SO REAL FOR THIS LIKE GENUINELY. Like. Pierro is that brand of old man crunchy where like.. he aged like a fine wine most certainly, but its so easy to tell that he looked like a greek god in his youth - chiseled jawline, striking eyes, that easy confidence that comes from a life of having pretty privilege thrust upon you from pretty much the moment you came out--

Like.. i feel like he wouldve looked like the grunge aesthetic young adult they slap on the front of album covers where he looks sunken and tired but in a totally dashing way, with wind-tousled hair (honestly i never even thought of his original hair colour until now. i just imagine it white/grey because thats SO him. i could see it being brown, maybe blond?) and eye bags that look like they were dabbed on delicately with eyeshadow and a brush.

but even with all of that i do also just see him looking like he was just straight up carved from marble with his broad shoulders and the confident way he stands. Like he was drop dead gorgeous, the folks of khaenri'ah swooned over him, most everyone assumed he would go on to become a knight simply because of the whole 'dashing knight in armour' stereotype.

He's the sort of guy you see playing someones grandpa in a film and you're like "wait hes so hot though. now i wanna see what he looked like when he was younger" and then you get mad because HOW CAN PEOPLE BE SO GORGEOUS THEIR ENTIRE LIVES HUH. HOW IS THAT FAIR.

I feel like his looks are not really something he openly acknowledges or even really realises - I guess this ties in to my oddly specific Pierro headcanons ((gives that old man a million mental illnesses and refuses to elaborate)) but i imagine he gets really really caught up in the minor details and just sort of passively sees himself as very just .. 'whatever', despite just how many people have always told him how handsome and beautiful he is.

Like, of course he'll thank them for the compliment but in his head he has like 90 rebuttals and genuinely convinces himself that theyre just saying it to be nice/polite/to get in his good graces/whatever. man has imposter syndrome out the wazoo .

I think he definitely aged very finely and gracefully, all things considered, but his obsessive fear of aging physically makes him feel like he hasnt. but to me . old man pierro is the most gorgeous . perfect.

[perfectlyfucked]

I belive we should normalize giving swords and daggers as gifts and presents

[transdimensional-void]

jonsa, “children of dune,” & women’s disenfranchisement

this is basically a part 2 of this meta i posted last night. if you haven’t read that, i recommend reading it before this one to get the full context! a certain anon (hi!) challenged me to expand upon my thoughts by demonstrating how jonsa might be a response to and/or critique of the ideas presented in the dune series.

i’ll put the rest of the post below the cut for those wanting to avoid dune spoilers!

westerosi historical parallels

i think one of the strongest arguments for linking jonsa (and specifically the bran/sansa/jon trio) to children’s leto ii/ghanima/farad’n resolution is the fact that grrm has sprinkled variations on this relationship throughout westerosi history.

if we look for the pattern of “woman is married to one man but her children are fathered by a different man,” we of course find it several times in the series:

laenor velaryon/rhaenyra targaryen/harwin strong - rhaenyra’s velaryon children were in fact fathered by her lover, harwin strong--apparently because laenor was gay and had no interest in sleeping with his wife. (or going by hotd canon just couldn’t impregnate her for undisclosed reasons).

aegon iv/queen naerys/aemon the dragonknight - while the truth of the accusations against naerys and aemon is dubious at best, the idea that the two of them were secret lovers and that he might have fathered the heir to the throne remains firmly rooted in collective westerosi memory.

robert baratheon/cersei lannister/jaime lannister - this is the most important iteration of this pattern for the main series. we have confirmation from both cersei and jaime that all three of her children are his and not robert’s.

honorable mentions for: the possibility that aegon the conqueror’s two sons might not have been his due to infertility on his part, and the possibility of at least some of aegon ii’s children with helaena actually being aemond’s.

you’ll note that all of these examples echo leto ii/ghanima/farad’n (right down to the prevalence of sibling incest within them) in one or more ways.

you’ll also note that the majority of these led to disputed successions and that all of the children produced by these relationships were involved in succession disputes in one way or another.

the bastardy of rhaenyra’s sons was used as a reason to deny her place in the succession. the alleged bastardy of queen naerys’s son was used as justification for the blackfyre rebellions. and, of course, cersei’s children’s bastardy led to the war of five kings. aegon the conqueror’s son maegor usurped his niece and nephew’s claim to the throne, and aegon ii’s children were caught up in the dance of the dragons.

this leads us to the question, if the arrangement between leto ii, ghanima, and farad’n was shown to be such a useful solution to a succession crisis in children, why do similar relationships show up over and over again in grrm’s series as causes of succession crises?

bastardy and women’s rights

i think what we are seeing is grrm responding to--and likely critiquing--the position of women in dune’s society by focusing on the issue of bastardy.

in the society in which the dune series takes place, a child need not be born of a legal spouse in order to inherit its parent’s position, title, wealth, etc. for example, paul atreides himself is the son of his father’s concubine, jessica. paul’s father, duke leto atreides, never married jessica but kept her instead as a concubine. similarly, paul’s own heirs are the children not of his legal wife princess irulan but of his concubine, chani kynes.

the society’s lack of interest in ensuring heirs are born of recognized legal unions is what allows the arrangement between leto ii, ghanima, and farad’n to be successful. nobody cares that ghanima’s children weren’t fathered by her husband. they’re atreides princes and princesses regardless of their biological parentage, which means that farad’n’s fatherhood (and therefore the children’s corrino ancestry) can be openly acknowledged and leveraged for political benefit.

but that has not been the case in many real societies, and for good reason.

legally disinheriting bastards is a form of protection for the rights and positions of married women in strongly patriarchal societies.

we see within the world of dune itself how men exploit the society’s laissez-faire attitude toward bastardy to disenfranchise women.

duke leto atreides never marries his concubine jessica because keeping the position of his legal wife available gives him political leverage. he can dangle the possibility of a marriage alliance in front of potential allies to draw them in. refusing to marry jessica benefits him politically. and the fact that he can easily name paul as his heir without marrying jessica means that he can use her to give him the heir he wants without offering her the legal rights and privileges that becoming the wife of a duke would afford her.

similarly, paul himself exploits the non-existence of bastardy to disempower his wife princess irulan (and to deny his beloved chani the position of empress consort). he uses irulan’s claim to the throne to gain legitimacy for his rule but by fathering his heirs through chani, he ensures that irulan’s position remains an extremely weak one. 

the first book in the series, dune, famously ends with jessica consoling chani by telling her that history will remember them as wives. irulan gets erased despite having the legal title, but while chani is paul’s wife in many real senses, she is denied the legal position and its attendant privileges and protections. both of the women in paul’s life end up in weakened legal and political positions due to his choice of heirs.

in grrm’s series, we see through catelyn’s eyes that the prospect of a husband’s bastards usurping his legal heirs’ position is a very real fear for women in this type of feudal, patriarchal society. in such societies, a woman’s position in the world is determined first by her father, then by her husband, and ultimately by her son. if one of catelyn’s own children succeeds ned, catelyn can be assured of protection, support, and a position in society even after ned’s death. however, if ned’s bastard son, jon snow, inherits, where does that leave cat? she’s no longer the mother of the lord or lady of winterfell, a position that guarantees her a safe future. she has to hope that one of her children, at least, is still in a position to support her--or throw herself on the mercy of another family member. her future becomes incredibly precarious.

we see over and over again in a song of ice and fire that grrm is centering this issue of bastardy, of how it affects questions of succession, yes, but also how it affects the lives of those it touches. we very much get jon’s perspective on how awful it is to shackle a human being with this social position of bastard--but we also get the flipside: how awful it is that women are so disenfranchised that they have no choice but to fear their husbands’ illegitimate children.

furthermore, while these societal structures allow men to exploit women’s bodies to create the children they want, when women try to take control of their own bodies to create the children they want, the society punishes them. we see that in the examples of rhaenyra, naerys, and cersei. in dune, we get a taste of it with jessica, who is derided by her bene gesserit sisters for choosing to give birth to a son instead of the daughter they ordered her to have... except that jessica chose to have a son because it was what leto wanted, and she wanted to make her lover happy. either way, jessica’s body and its reproductive possibilities are not hers to use as she desires. they are meant to be tools for others.

as i have explained, these issues very much exist in both dune and a song of ice and fire, and yet frank herbert seems fairly uninterested in exploring how they affect women and, through them, the wider society. jessica, irulan, and chani’s perspectives are largely sidelined to focus on the men’s stories.

jonsa as a response

in a song of ice and fire, grrm made the crucial world-building choice to have the majority of westerosi society make a legal distinction between the rights of legitimate and illegitimate children. (perhaps someone else has spent some time musing on the somewhat different attitudes of dorne? if so, i’d love to hear your thoughts). if he is writing in response to the ideas presented by herbert in dune, this would be a deliberate choice and a key difference between the societies presented by each.

in the dune series, while leto ii loves his twin sister ghanima deeply (in fact, they both hint that when they are older their love might have a romantic dimension), she ultimately becomes little more than a pawn in his millennia-long plan to save humanity. to put it bluntly, he breeds her with farad’n as a step toward fixing certain genetic traits within the atreides line. 

ghanima accepts her part in all of this, but that’s really all she can do. while ghanima may have preferred to have a true marriage with leto (or perhaps some other life entirely), refusing leto’s plan would mean refusing to help him save all of humanity! how could she be so heartless? herbert characterizes her as weaker than leto, both in terms of their prescient abilities but also in terms of moral fiber. ghanima lacks the strength of will to make the sacrifice that leto does and undergo the physical transformation that removes him forever from normal humanity--she must settle for making the “lesser” sacrifice of becoming a pawn in his breeding scheme. (there’s a lot of gender essentialist bullshit happening within dune, as well, but that’s a whole can of worms i don’t have the time to open right now). 

in the end, ghanima is no less disenfranchised than her grandmother jessica, her mother chani, or her stepmother irulan. her life and her body belong to leto and his golden path, not to herself. (anyone picking up on the rhaegar/lyanna parallels?)

at the heart of each of the westerosi parallels i mentioned earlier is also a disenfranchised woman. rhaenyra must marry the man her father chooses and somehow give them both heirs even when he doesn’t want to sleep with her. naerys, too, is forced into marriage with her very awful brother aegon when it seems likely she would have been much happier with aemon (helaena seems to be in a similar position with aegon ii and aemond). cersei is married off to robert, who calls her another woman’s name in bed, physically abuses her, and fathers countless bastards while married to her. 

but the trio of bran, sansa, and jon will be different.

first of all, the close, loving family relationships among the starks set them apart from virtually every other family we see presented throughout the series. this will be key in making the bran/sansa/jon balance work. precisely because of the relationship they formed with jon while growing up, bran and sansa will know that they can trust him to support their rule without threat of usurpation. similarly, because bran and sansa love and trust each other (heh heh see what i did there) as siblings, they can share power without the need for a marriage alliance.

unlike leto, bran will have no need to marry sansa in order to control her and her claim. this removes the need for sansa to marry one man while having children with another. and unlike farad’n and ghanima, jon will be someone that sansa has already formed a bond of love and trust with at the point that they marry--and someone that she wants to marry.

this is why the romance between jon and sansa will be a key factor in differentiating their relationship from the previous patterns. their love for each other will allow them to break the mold because their marriage will give them what they both dream of having rather than denying them what they’ve always wanted.

unlike the women in the previous examples in westerosi history (and unlike ghanima), sansa’s marriage will empower her. sansa will be queen in her own right, not consort. she will be her brother’s equal in position and power, not his pawn and certainly not his baby-making machine. sansa will be able to have children with both her husband and the man she loves, because they will be the same person. and, crucially, sansa will be able to have the children she has dreamed of having: stark children, to replace the family she lost and fill winterfell again with the love and laughter she remembers from her childhood.

there is also the element of this arrangement resolving catelyn’s fears, though catelyn herself (even as stoneheart) will likely never experience this resolution. jon yields his potential claim not once, but twice, to catelyn’s children. and yet, jon still gets winterfell, gets to be a stark, and his children will have a legitimate claim to the home he loves.

king bran/queen sansa/consort jon might very well be grrm’s answer to the issues inherent in herbert’s trio of leto ii/ghanima/farad’n. it would almost certainly be an answer to the parallels grrm himself has placed into westerosi history of rhaenyra, naerys, cersei, and others.

this is why i think that jonsa will be part of grrm’s end game: because it works not only politically but also romantically...and corrects the wrongs we have witnessed over and over again in previous relationships within the series.

[loubella77]

I love present days

[therewithinthestars]

warframe spoilers: the new war & whispers in the walls !

this is just speculation, but now that it has been basically confirmed that the operator is not gonna be doing the romance in the new quest, i think it's safe to assume we will play as someone else? not arthur either, so perhaps drifter?

i'm really curious and excited to see how they'll connect the story!

the new war was really fun and unique in giving us the choice who to play as - i know a lot of people prefer the drifter due to their maturity, but i personally chose the operator, because i feel like my traumatized inner child needed the closure lol.

and it just felt right in the story - this used and betrayed and abandoned child got to prove themselves finally in the end, they got to save Lotus - someone who they have kinda complicated relationship with but is ultimately very important (and to finally properly revenge Umbra, at least in my heart).

i know we then get to choose gameplay wise, whether to use the drifter or the operator, but i assume witw was from the point of operator no matter who you chose? (correct me if im wrong). and despite being quite passive/ quiet in the story, i feel like that's an important detail still!

so how will the drifter fall into this puzzle?? what happens that the operator has to stay behind? will the drifter have the same emotional stakes that we built up with the operator in witw???

i dont know but i am so so excited to learn what they have in store for us, and if it is a drifter story indeed then i am even more excited! I'm happy about my choices in the new war, but having a story revolving around our other us would be just amazing and connect us (operator & drifter) in even more meaningful ways!!!

[warandpeas]

Christmas Gift Ideas!

Holiday season is around the corner and especially during this time, shipments often delay. That’s why we want to encourage you to order your gifts early! You can learn more about our shipping prices and durations, right here. Here’s some inspiration for your Chistmas gifts: You’re looking for the perfect gift for a hopeless art student or philosophy major? Search no longer! We got you with this…

[chronomally]

I'm playing Heaven's Vault and they've been suggesting I go back to visit Myari on Iox for about the last 5+ hours of game play but I keep finding new archeological sites so she can wait a hot minute

[reel-fear]

people who still make Joey the ink demon despite canon steering far away from that being the case this is for you I am sending u kisses XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO <3

People who make Joey well-meaning, sympathetic, a lighter shade of morally grey than canon I am also sending u lots of love <3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3!!

And people who generally steer wildly from the direction Bendy takes with its characters and has fun with it I hope to see more from all of ur aus and rewrites!!

[balsamcraft]

[shazleen]

Boston

[noisycowboyglitter]

"The Art of Being Awesome: Lessons Learned Over 21 Years"

Twenty-one years of awesome is a journey worth celebrating. This milestone marks the transition from youth to full-fledged adulthood, a canvas painted with vibrant experiences and personal growth.

Buy now:19.95$

From the first wobbly steps as a toddler to confidently striding into the world, these two decades and a year have been filled with laughter, tears, triumphs, and valuable lessons. Each year has added a unique brushstroke to the masterpiece of life.

The awesome journey includes academic achievements, from learning the ABCs to perhaps earning a college degree. It's about friendships forged in playground sandbox and strengthened through life's ups and downs. It's the evolution of passions, whether in sports, arts, or intellectual pursuits.

Twenty-one years of awesome means facing challenges head-on and emerging stronger. It's about discovering oneself, embracing individuality, and learning to stand up for personal beliefs. It's the courage to dream big and the determination to turn those dreams into reality.

Buy now

This awesome journey is also about family - the unconditional love, the guidance, the shared moments that shape character. It's about the communities that have nurtured growth and the mentors who have inspired greatness.

As the 21-year mark arrives, it's not just a celebration of the past, but a toast to the exciting future ahead. Here's to 21 years of being awesome - and to many more to come!

As the 21st birthday dawns, it symbolizes a beautiful metamorphosis, much like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. These 21 years have been a journey of growth, transformation, and self-discovery.

The birthday celebrant, now fully spread their wings, ready to soar into adulthood. Their path, like the delicate flight of a butterfly, has been filled with twists and turns, moments of vulnerability, and bursts of vibrant color.

Buy now

Friends and family gather to celebrate this milestone, their love and support as nurturing as the garden that sustains a butterfly. The party shimmers with the iridescence of butterfly wings - perhaps in decorations, in the shimmer of a special outfit, or the sparkle in the eyes of the now-adult.

This 21st birthday marks not an end, but a new beginning - a chance to flutter forth into the world, strong, beautiful, and free.

Butterfly presents bring a touch of natural elegance to any occasion. A set of butterfly-themed garden stakes can add whimsy to flower beds, while a delicate butterfly wind chime creates a soothing atmosphere. For fashion enthusiasts, a silk scarf adorned with butterfly prints offers versatile style. Book lovers might appreciate a

Buy now

beautifully illustrated guide to butterfly species. A butterfly-shaped serving platter makes a unique addition to any host's collection. For children, a butterfly kite or a grow-your-own butterfly kit combines fun with education. These gifts celebrate the beauty and symbolism of butterflies, delighting recipients of all ages.

[bigtownstudio]

CREEPY DOLL WRAPPING PAPER

purchase at BIGTOWN: https://bigtownstudio.etsy.com/listing/1551991734

[iamanartichoke]

Anyone have any short prompts or idea nuggets for a short story with a creepy, spooky theme (ghosts, specifically)?

Asking for a friend.

[roostertuftart]

anyway though i'm gonna write an essay on why kyle isn't a nice guy/incel bc I feel like someone's gotta do it and I'm shocked I haven't seen it done already

[marrossi01]

As megamind has said it’s about presentation!

I seriously hope my mom loves all the stuff I got her. It’s burried in the flowers and everything from the planter to the flowers she is probably going to use if not I’m gonna use them. Made the card and envelope to. I’m a little crazy.