#it's probably obvious but i've run out of ideas lol

[capydoodle]

hi... long time no post

#sorry guys things keep happening to me #if anyone has suggestions for future posts pls send me asks! #it's probably obvious but i've run out of ideas lol #art #digital art #illustration #capydoodle #capybara #capybaras #animals

[imtrashraccoon]

This one was slightly tricky to write and I spent several days just writing dialogue whenever I was able to lol. Oh well, it's still something I'm proud of.

By the way, I think I'm going to call this "Have Some Empathy, Dear" and I have already started posting it on AO3. Some of you have already found it lol! There's additional lore bits that I'll probably post over there if you're curious.

CW: Not sure if this is needed, but there is some mentions of toxic family dynamics in this chapter. Classic family favorites one child over the other and makes negative comments about them as well.

@owl-bones

First Day & Next Day.

Bad Sansuary: Horror - Romance

Word Count: 2,087

You'd seen Axe a few times ever since the day you met him in the forest. Somehow, he'd figured out where you lived but had completely dodged the question when you asked how. You kind of just let it go after that as it was nice hanging out with someone after a long day of work.

Yeah, a smart person would've avoided the obvious red flags... Not that you weren't smart, maybe just selectively blind.

He seemed to be a genuinely nice guy, despite the mildly unsettling habits he had, like the fact that he tended to stare at you for long periods of time. It was like he had scary dog energy but without all of the bite, at least towards you anyways.

Today was a you day. No errands that needed to be run, no one requiring you to be at work, and no chores to do around the house. It was just you and the latest episode of your favorite historical romance show. The last episode had ended on a cliffhanger and you were dying to see if Madam Fratchurine accepted Duke Von Gossimer's proposal or not.

You were only halfway through the episode, without a clear answer to the 'Will they, won't they?' question, when a sharp knocking sounded on your front door. Pausing the episode with a frown, you emerged from your blanket cocoon to see who was outside.

Taking a peek through the peephole, your mild annoyance quickly evaporated when you recognized the person on the other side. Barely sparing a thought on how presentable you were, you unlocked and swung open the door to greet them.

"Axe! Um, hi! I, uh, didn't expect to see you today..."

He quirked a bonebrow when you nearly stumbled over your words and his smile morphed into one of mild amusement. You could feel how warm your cheeks had grown all of the sudden and glanced down at your socks.

Clearing your throat, you tried to start over. "Sorry, why don't you come in? Although I should warn you that I've been relaxing all day so the apartment might be a bit messy." You moved to the side so he could step over the threshold rather than remain standing awkwardly outside your door.

Axe chuckled and his eyelight briefly flicked past you into the hallway. " 's no problem, i didn't let you know beforehand. sorry about that..." he responded. He nearly had to duck his skull in order to come inside but thankfully the doorframe was still a few inches taller than he was.

You gathered up the fuzzy blanket you'd been snuggling in and quickly folded it up to make the room slightly less messy. While you were at it, you straightened the sofa cushions and deposited your blanket on the coffee table for now.

"heh, i didn't think you'd be the type to watch sappy stuff like this," Axe commented.

"Huh?" You glanced over and realized he'd noticed the still paused episode. "Ah, well... It's a bit of a...guilty pleasure of mine."

He glanced at you out of the corner of his left eye socket with a look that seemed to suggest amusement. You flushed and quickly looked away from him.

"I suppose you could say I'm a bit of a hopeless romantic..." you muttered. "The idea of finding your one and only? It was just a thing I fixated on when I was younger I guess."

"nothin' wrong with that," Axe said quietly. "a lot of folks look forward to meetin' someone special like that. soulmates or somethin'... i don't really care, but i suppose it would be nice. i'm sure it would all work out though."

You nodded slowly, "I guess so... Honestly, I kind of envy how carefree you are about it."

"well, i'm not in a hurry to settle down right now," he responded with a shrug.

He was right in a way. There was no hurry to find someone and you could always focus on your career in the meantime. Although growing up, there was always the pressure to find someone quickly so you could be taken care of and give your parents a couple of grandchildren. It was "The least you could do," your mother had said.

Of course, you'd then struggled with a string of bad relationships ever since getting out of high school. Not only had you gotten attached really fast whenever a guy ever showed you any modicum of attention, but you also weren't great at standing up for yourself. Your relationships never lasted longer than a few months and while you'd since learned what mistakes not to make, you were starting to wonder if you should swear off dating altogether.

"so, uh, other than shows like this," Axe motioned to the tv, bringing you out of your thoughts again. "what else do ya like to do?"

"Well, I read occasionally and have a small collection of fantasy type books. I used to be part of my school's chess club but I haven't actually had anyone to play against in a while."

You glanced around the living room before your gaze focused on two of your plants on the window sill. "Oh, I try to keep a few plants alive but I don't think I have much of a green thumb. I also like to press flowers or colourful leaves in the fall. They make some pretty collages but I have to make time to actually put them all together."

He nodded approvingly and studied the plants for a moment. "What kind are they?" he asked.

You pursed your lips in thought while you tried to remember. "The one on the left is a yellow Cala Lilly and I think the other is called a Christmas Cactus although it hasn't bloomed since last year. I'm not sure why as it has sun and I haven't forgotten to water it." You shrugged and added, "It's otherwise thriving so I guess I'm doing something right."

"can't say i'm familiar with either of those types so i can't give ya any advice," Axe hummed softly. "i'm more familiar with the kinds of plants ya can cook with, like vegetables or herbs."

"Do you like to cook then?" you asked.

"i do," he answered with a slight nod. "it's somethin' i just really enjoy doin' i guess..." His singular eyelight was still focused on the plants by your window as he trailed off.

When he didn't elaborate further, you couldn't help but feel a bit awkward. His tone of voice seemed to hint at a deeper meaning to what he'd said and you didn't know if you should ask or not.

So, rather than potentially making things more awkward, you decided not to ask and instead to talk about something else. "You know, I like cooking as well. Although, I really only cook for myself so I have limited experience."

Well that certainly seemed to make him perk up. Axe turned to actually look at you and his eyelight flicked over you in a way that you thought was him sizing you up.

"limited experience or not, it's still an important skill to know. did ya teach yourself or...?"

You shook your head, "No, at least not completely... I learned the basics from my mother but everything else I had to learn through good ol' trial and error." You rubbed the back of your neck and quietly added, "Granted, it was mostly by error..."

Axe let out a short chuckle at that. There was clear amusement written across his skull once again, yet it didn't feel like he was making fun of you.

"that's good, sometimes the best way to learn is to actually try your hand at somethin'. or at least it's the best way i know to figure things out." He lightly scratched the right side of his skull, although you noticed how his phalanges nearly hooked into the empty socket as he did so.

"Maybe we could cook something together sometime then...?" you asked.

To your surprise, he nodded vigorously and his permanent grin quirked wider at the idea. "sure, that could be fun. 's not every day i have the chance to cook with others."

"Awesome!" you exclaimed and gave a bit of a victory fist pump. Axe chuckled again although it was more natural sounding this time, like he hadn't expected you to react with this much enthusiasm.

This conversation made you remember something all of the sudden that you had to share. "You know what's funny? One of the things my mother used to always tell me was, and I quote, 'You gotta find a man who can at least cook because you certainly can't!'" With an awkward chuckle, you added, "In hindsight though, I realize she wasn't actually joking..."

That had been a bad thing to say apparently. His expression flickered between discomfort and concern before settling on a slight frown. You could feel a familiar pit form in your stomach as you realized that you'd basically stuck your foot in your mouth.

Axe let out a heavy sigh through his nasal bone and couldn't seem to meet your gaze all of the sudden. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other before finally muttering a response.

"your mother probably didn't have a guy who could pass for a slasher villian in mind..."

You felt bad for saying something so forward in the first place as it had clearly made him uncomfortable. So you resorted to damage control in an effort to ease tensions once again.

"Well, uh... I guess you're right... She also told me that drinking coffee stunts your growth, which I know isn't true now, but it still frustrated me when I was younger."

Well that got him to chuckle at least. He patted your shoulder in a way that was probably supposed to be reassuring, although it did feel slightly patronising seeing as how tall he was.

"are ya sure that isn't true?" he asked in a tone that sounded like it was supposed to be sassy, although his deep voice did just the opposite.

You crossed your arms and huffed in annoyance. "It isn't! I don't even drink that much coffee compared to other people..."

"what other things did she tell you? any other gems?"

You frowned and shook your head. "Nothing very helpful... She used to be obsessed with my weight growing up and never kept any snacks in the house. If I ever mentioned I was hungry, she'd just tell me to go eat a handful of almonds or something."

You sighed and dropped onto the couch. Steepling your chin with your hands, you tried to take deep breaths to avoid getting all worked up over what had happened in the past. You felt bad that you'd nearly just dumped a bunch of your own trauma on Axe when he was basically a complete stranger.

The cushions shifted as he sat down next to you. You glanced over at him and rather than annoyance like you'd expected, he looked slightly concerned. You very rarely talked to anyone about your childhood as they never understood and brushed off your mother's rules as well-meaning. He didn't seem to be like any of the others though and you started to wonder if he actually understood you.

"I'm...not on good terms with my family...in general," you muttered.

He seemed surprised if the way his left eye socket widened was any indication. "how come?" he asked quietly. "family's pretty important, at least to me anyways..."

You shook your head slowly. "I really don't want to get into all of it right now... But, the short of it is my mother was basically what some people call an almond mom and my older sister was seen as the golden child. I was basically dirt in comparison to her and my entire family favorited her."

"i don't really understand..." Your heart sank but Axe continued speaking before you could try to explain. "but i can tell this is a sore spot for ya, so i won't push ya to explain anythin' else, okay?"

You gave him a stiff smile out of sheer relief. "I appreciate it..." you responded with a sigh.

In an attempt to talk about something lighter, you tried to change to subject. "Do you have any family?" you asked.

His skull visibly brightened, somehow, at your question and he grinned warmly. "yep, i got a younger brother and he's the coolest dude i know..."

#badsansuary #raccoons drabbles #undertale #horrortale #horrortale sans #horror sans x reader #axe #reader #female reader #oneshot #have some empathy dear

[musicallisto]

hiiiiiii if possible can i please also request a 🐚 with formula one? i am a (suffering) woman in stem (biomedical engineering) and although i can be introverted in situations w big groups i love spending time with my friends & making them laugh. i have no gender preference and i cannot wait to see what you come up with <33333

oookay lisa, it is high time i told you about this random ship/association that has been living rentfree in my mind for a while now... i can't keep quiet any longer, and i will wax poetic about you two, because clearly your one true f1 match is lewis hamilton.

okay first of all let me get the obvious out of the way: this man is absolutely gorgeous and oh so lovely oh my god. out of all the drivers on the grid he is the one i would be RACING to introduce to my parents. my mom would never ever reprimand me for anything again if i brought a guy like lewis home.

lewis is such an attentive guy, so he would most definitely try to keep up with your studies/work the same way you do his. it's only fair, and besides, he loves it when you nerd out about engineering; the way your eyes twinkle and you trail off because you get a little self-conscious. he thinks it's the most adorable thing ever, because guess what! he is a little bit of a nerd too!

also he loves asking you for input from an engineering perspective, which you've told him time and time again that you're in biomedical, you have NO idea how his car's aerodynamism or mechanic stress work, but he still values your expertise which is, obviously, the highest of praise coming from someone who is basically The Expert himself in his domain.

and you may act humble and like the mercedes engineers' jobs are way out of your league, but you do know your stuff about thermodynamics and fuel chemistry and composite materials, and lewis is blown away every time by your off-handed commentary, as if your observations were self-evident truths. certainly to you they are, the same way he's got an almost carnal understanding of his car's behavior on the track, and that's why you make such a fierce team. you're the theory, he's the practice <3

that's probably how you would meet by the way. and they were coworkers... oh my god they were coworkers... WAIT NO what if you were lewis' RACE ENGINEER ok ok i'm backtracking!!! you DO know your racing stuff actually. ohhhh good shit

because you know lewis is a cocky bastard (honorary, he's earned it) and when he's still high off the adrenaline of the race, perhaps when he's just scored a podium, he relentlessly flirts with you over radio. tells you he never could've done without you, right, sweetheart?, in that suave voice of his. on LIVE TELEVISION??

oh the twitter girlies are eating that up. and you are fumbling over your words, trying to congratulate him in a way that doesn't give away how putty in his hands you are.

but you're the one he runs to as soon as he's off the podium and free from the clutches of journalists and cameras, without fail.

planet F1 practically implodes after saudi arabia 2021, not only from the actual race which is already a good enough reason to go crazy tbh but also because lewis hamilton, breathless after racing past the checkered flag, seemingly asks you out point blank.

"congrats, lewis! you did it! that's first in the world again!" "... i believe this means i've won my bet, and i can finally take you out?"

we won't talk about the grand prix that followed, lol. he may have lost the world championship but at least he won the girl of his dreams, or something <3

you guys are so silly together it's actually disrespectful to the whole paddock. like there are people working here, loves. doing their 9 to 5. stop giggling and taking the piss at toto wolff in hushed whispers like school children!!

but you won't, and though they may not say it... all the other drivers love you two together <3 less so when knowing you are watching seemingly gives lewis wings during shootouts, however...

#— celebration; 1.5k! #— ask. #₊·͟͟͟͟͟͟͞͞͞͞͞͞➳❥ lisa #f1 x reader #formula one x reader #lewis hamilton x reader

[oh-saints]

as a fellow ruben girlie here, i'm so happy for the anon! imagine seeing ruben's ass live 👀 BUT HERE ME OUT BESTIE can you please make something out of her (incoming) experience? pretty please? 🥹

you. did. not?!?! BCS YOU WON'T BELIEVE HOW FAST I MADE THIS i really need to stick with closing the request box bcs i've been getting so many 😭

signs

you hold up a sign that caught rúben’s attention… and he takes it in his liberty as a sign from the universe.

rúben dias x you

word count: 1.2k (short one because this is sort of a comeback/warm-up piece lol)

tw: brief mention of alcohol

note: this is inspired on this fellow ruben girlie’s incoming experience but let’s just think of this as manifesting *good things* from front row, yeah? as usual, i happen to write during work so this is ofc not beta-read. feedbacks are also welcome! i'm so torn on whether or not to be writing a follow-up to this tho><

your girlies’ idea of bachelorette party was, for the lack of words, non-traditional.

instead of penis-shaped cake and lipstick scribbles across the face or a heavily-drunken trip to and from the strip club, you were flying to Portugal to catch the male national team on action. per the soon-to-be-bride’s words, it was her last chance to fawn over handsome men she never gets the chance to have before settling with the reality that her fiancé is nowhere near the delicious set of men with stubbles and godly bodies.

in reality, you have to agree with the sentiment. there’s no way an ordinary girl like you, no matter how much you try to dream waking up beside rúben dias, is going to end up with a someone that shares one room with Cristiano Ronaldo in the camp. best choice you can have is probably the goalkeeper from your office’s football club.

so who are you to reject the offer of the front row access to see those muscular thighs up close and personal?

however, what your friends didn’t tell you about was the fact that the embarrassing element was going to still be present. it just wasn’t in the form of the lap dance you were getting from the strippers or the walk-of-shame you had to do when you walk out of a club pretty smashed.

it came in the form of the sign boards the upcoming bride had especially prepared for this very day.

everyone was designated for a sign board with different words respectively. it wasn’t provoking enough but the blurred lines were pretty obvious to imply you and your peer group were sexually frustrated in front of these hot guys. quoting the matron of the event, “there’s nothing wrong in trying to get their attention.”

but you’d like to think that wobbly walks you had to endure from the taxi to your flat on the 3rd floor would be much better than holding up the sign in your hands now. well, anything is better than waving “Marry me, Dias! I got the energy of a stallion!” placard from the side lines, to be honest.

you swore under your breath that if the bride wasn’t your best friend from the university days—who was truly having the time of her life, by the way, with the way she was screaming cancelo’s name like tomorrow’s ending—you’d ditch this event immediately. no matter how much you initially wanted the exquisite view of these stunning guys running and drenched in sweat sexily for 90 minutes.

“here, drink this.”

and you didn’t think twice before downing the bitter liquid from the flask another friend of yours managed to sneak in. how she did it—you didn’t want to know, but you got to admit there was a reason why she was the valedictorian. you needed the instant adrenaline injected to your bloodstream because there was no way in hell you were going to lift up the mortifying stack of words sober.

the alcohol effected the way you took on your surroundings, obviously. albeit you were still not as loose as the others, you came to accept your defeat when you started screaming for rúben, too, in the way the future bride was screaming for cancelo and the valedictorian for felix.

people around you were definitely throwing you and your girls various looks. some were disgusted at the dirty words indicating the bride’s dirtiest fantasies on cancelo—which you admitted went a bit too far sometimes—some were also laughing whenever she casted a curse on the opponents tackling the right winger. some others shook their heads in confusion because why the fuck was there a group of thirsty women in a very manly event?

but you could care less. your friends were having the best moments in their lives and you were not going to be a bitch about it. you were not going to even acknowledge the second-hand embarrassment you were internally having because of your friend’s peculiar antics, which had intensified as they ran out of liquid contents from the shared silver flask belonging to the valedictorian.

the rest of the girls—not you, who’d taken in a considerable amount of alcohol compared to others and could now be considered their sober friend—reached their peak when the whistle blew on the final minutes. the winning atmosphere kind of encouraged those crazy ladies to jump in their seats with their assigned sign boards. you even had to stop another friend of yours from flashing her boobs in public because dealing with police in a foreign country was the last thing in your bucket list.

you pleaded them to come down from their seats, as well. in your defence, they could fall off the seat flat on their faces and a swollen bride and her entourage were definitely not welcomed on the wedding day. but they didn’t give a shit about it and laughed at your face for not soaking up the moment as good as they were.

you turned away from the crazy bunch by facepalming your face, the tip of your thumb was massaging the space between your eyebrows. you thought it was working to ease off the headache, for suddenly the girls went silent in the background.

but you realised it wasn’t the case at all when you heard a familiar voice that you used to listen on several man of the match interview.

“hey, kid,” and you had to look up to make sure your head wasn’t playing tricks on you. “here’s for you.”

rúben was actually standing behind the barricade placed between the field and the audience seats. his hand was stretched to give the shirt he’d worn today to the little kid beside you, who’d been flailing his own sign board of can I have your shirt? throughout the match. the kid jumped at the opportunity, his father behind him thanking the football player for his generosity, and you were blinded by the smile etched on his face as wide as the Mississippi river.

you didn’t bother to blame your humiliating friends for shutting up anymore because you were as stunned as they were.

“and you, my lady,”

you turned your head to spot the person behind you, the one the defender was pointing at, so ready to congratulate whoever the lucky woman was for being able to entice the rúben dias’ attention. but you were met with bunch of men instead, shouting parabens, rúben!

so you twisted your body again, this time towards the towering number 3, with a rather perplexed expression because his line of sight hadn’t moved an inch from where you stood. your nearest friend was one or two feet away from you, and noticing how flustered you were in figuring out his call was meant for you, rúben let out a small laugh but enough to make your entire body trembled with overwhelming warmth.

“yes, you, the one who wears joao cancelo’s name on the back,” and that could be your entire team, for it was the bride’s request to wear her favourite player’s number. “I think you’d suit my last name better, no? your sign says you ask for it anyway.”

every power evaporated from your legs right away.

#this is for you ruben girlies #anon asks #oh-saints answers #oh-saints writes #oh-saints writes requests #ruben dias #rúben dias #ruben dias blurb #ruben dias blurbs #ruben dias drabble #ruben dias drabbles #ruben dias imagine #ruben dias imagines #ruben dias oneshot #ruben dias one shot #ruben dias fic #ruben dias fics #ruben dias fanfic #ruben dias fanfics #ruben dias fanfiction #ruben dias fluff #ruben dias x you #ruben dias x y/n #footie #footie fic #footie fics #footballer x you

[transmutationisms]

i just read Against Exercise. i wanted to ask what you make of this sentence and the wider paradigm he gestures at occasionally in the essay:

Upon the desperate materialist gratifications of a hedonic society, commanding immediate comfort and happiness, we engraft the desperate economics of health, and chase a longer span of happinesses deferred, and comforts delayed, by disposing of the better portion of our lives in life preservation.

do we live in a ‘hedonic’ society? and does that framing shape his conclusions on in ur opinion? i have my own thoughts but am interested in yours x

ok i'm glad you asked because i find this sentence and this paradigm very irritating lol. i don't think he's the only left-ish thinker who's acceded to this type of framing (like i've complained about mark fisher pulling a similar move) but with greif there's a particular irksomeness to it because, even in the sentence you've quoted, we can see in the latter half how he contradicts his own idea of a "hedonic society"! if his thesis here is something like "the dominant cultural paradigm encourages instant gratification and hedonism, and the exerciser defies this edict by deferring their happiness and sweating it out at the gym instead" then, like, the obvious question here is, where does the impulse of the exerciser come from? does greif actually think the pursuit of fitness and longevity by physical exertion is some kind of counter-cultural move that reacts against, without acceding to, the demands of a "hedonic society"? if he does then it kind of undercuts the significance of the entire rest of the essay, lmao.

my personal answer here would be—and this is something greif dances around a few times but doesn't ever seem prepared to fully unpack—that the demand to have a fit and 'healthy' and long-lasting body is not at all contradictory to the demand to consume goods, and that this latter is more precisely what is meant by "hedonism" here if we are to use it in any useful sense. i think what greif is actually pointing to is the demand to shape oneself into, simultaneously, a valuable worker and an obedient consumer. in an immediate sense these two goals demand different things (say, 'going for a run' vs 'buying products') but on a more thorough analysis we can easily see how they arise from the same fundamental logic of profit-seeking. body fascism has never been just an aesthetic; what it promises to the state and the corporation is a population that is biologically managed and economically exploitable. i think this is true even in an imperialist economy like the united states that doesn't run primarily on production/export.

i don't know a ton about mark greif biographically but my impression is that he's kind of half-left at best, lol. certainly he's like, curmudgeonly in a way that is sometimes useful to mine (ruthless criticism of all that exists, &c) but i think in this essay and others we can clearly see how easily that attitude can slide into just a vaguely reactionary position when it lacks materialist analysis. like, frankly i think if we lived in a social context that actually had a commitment to ensuring hedonic pleasure that would probably be a better world. it's kind of similar to when lib-left types try to claim that we live in a world that has any serious degree of commitment to "the individual" when what they actually, usually mean is that we've been massified in a way that denies us social connection and material support from one another.

anyway: 'against exercise' was very mind-blowing to me when i first read it and i love to see someone staking out that position seriously; and there are elements of greif's analysis i think can be useful in an actually communist analysis. but i find a lot of cultural criticism (specifically that positions itself as counter-cultural without being explicitly communist) has a risk of just sliding reactionary, and i think this half-baked idea of a "hedonic society" is an example of that happening. curious what you think though!

#mark greif

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

A Very Long, Personal [but positive] Ramble about Neurodivgerency and Character Hyperfixation

[u can ignore this if you want this is just an ADHD ramble - this is a kinda 'mask off' talk about ADHD, autism and my personal history with it all. I also talk about the upsides and downsides - and the importance of Hobie to me personally - I just wanna normalize this stuff lol]

a.k.a The story of how I sent from obsessing over him to HIM in 10 years (what a glowup on my part ik)

(I know a lot of peeps on here can feel self-conscious about being neurodivergent and character connection or whatever you wanna call it and so do I! So I wanted to write it out or just ramble for my own sake)

I don't know if it's obvious or not, but I LOVE HOBIE BROWN. I'm going to be completely candid - I think about him maybe 85 percent of the day if not more, and that's in no way an exaggeration.

No matter what I'm doing, there's a least one tab open in my brain thinking about him. It may not be the focus, but it's there.

That's just how I operate. And I've been this way for a LONG time. In fact, Hobie isn't my first 'total focus' character in Marvel.

I gain VERY deep hyperfixations on Marvel Characters, many lasting years. And there's nothing wrong with that - in fact it's rad!

!!!! ATTENTION: This is a whimsical care-free zone. For Happy Funny Folk !!!!!!!!!

Loki - My introduction to hyperfixation with characters

I don't know if this is surprising or you'd be like 'yeah u seem like the type' but I use to LOVE Loki. For YEARS.

I'm AuDHD and when I was 13/14, a freshman in HS, he was my hyperfixation. Eerything I do for Hobie, I did for Loki. I even had a Loki blog for like 3/4 years.

This was back in 2012-2013, when Avengers had just came out, and the MCU wasn't - well, the MCU yet.

But even back then, the Loki fandom was HUGE. I have no idea who was also on Tumblr back then but it was gigantic. Because movies weren't coming out every 3 months, it went on for yearrrrsssss. Art, edits, fics, everything.

I was soooo into, I loved Loki. Like Hobie, I probably thought about Loki maybe 85-90% of the day.

And sure I was doing a lot of other stuff but in the back of my head there was always the oc x canon storyline running in my head, or replaying scenes from memory and analyzing, or wondering and speculating about his character.

I mask very minimally or not at all - so everyone in my school knew me for it. And at the time I didn't know I was neurodivergent, but that didn't stop me - I was genuinely proud of it.

I wore Loki shirts to school and brought the Avengers DVD the day it dropped (this was back before streaming in ye' old 2013). I knew the Avengers movie back to front.

I saw Thor: The Dark World the day it released and SOBBED openly in the theater when he 'died'. (I remember my mom leaning over and whispering 'Do you wanna leave?' cause I seemed that upset lol)

And everyday I use to wear a necklace like this -

(credit IJSY on Etsy)

But in black, until one day I had it in my pocket and I sat on it in class and broke it in two. And people around me deadass were like 'daammnn I know that shit hurt in ur soul' cause I LOVED Loki and people knew it. And I didn't care if they did.

And I was like that for years. Overtime the Loki fandom fizzled out, especially around Phase 2 when things like GOTG first came out.

But I had a Loki fixation like maybe up until the show came out. And even then I've seen the whole thing (I ain't even like it that much 4.5/10) and I'm gonna watch the second one (I'm a fool)

But any way like to this day I still remember the first time I saw Loki and how it made me feel and I can like picture it in my head and I consider it a pretty influencial albeit mundane moment in my life.

And it was a very specific feeling but it was like as soon as I saw Loki's first scene in Avengers, I was plugged into the screen.

Other Hyperfixations - Charles Xavier, Peter Parker

All of my hyperfixations are on men in marvel and they have always been. There's been others I've cycled through, usually based on the newest movie. I even went through a LENGTHY and very in depth K-pop era (don't get me started).

Charles Xavier was a favorite of mine (from X-Men First Class), and I LOVE MCU Peter Parker. I still do. But none hit like Loki did.

There was never THAT feeling, like the fantastical electric feeling.

And I had never felt that feeling again UNTIL I SAW HOBIE (i wanna cry)

My fixation with HOBIE BROWN HOBIE BROWN HOBIE BROWN (sorry I can't say his name only one time im too excited)

In the theatre my jaw genuinely dropped like I'm pretty sure I said 'OH NAH' to myself when i first saw him

Cause he was the prettiest character I've ever seen and I mean that

I didn't recognize what that feeling was until just now like YES, it's the same feeling. And I can't even describe it.

It's like every other character is normal but as soon as you lay eyes on this character for the first time it's like suddenly they're under your skin and curled up in your heart and you can FEEL them and the weight of them PHYSICALLY like not body wise but like astral personhood wise (do I sound unhinged)

And Hobie was just so pretty.

First of all - I didn't know he was black fgsbtgtuiuigs id never heard of spiderpunk

The wicks were what caught me off guard first. I know what wicks are, I've seen them before. But never animated.

And although Miles and Gwen and Pavi all look realistic - Hobie looked real to me. The high cheekbones and broad lips, the raised brow ridge and wide set eyes - he looked different from them, not just in art style but like - I DONT KNOW.

But that's how it is, you know what I mean. There was just something in my brain that was like 'he has meaning to me'. Like 'Idk who this man is, but whatever story he's writing, I'm reading it'.

That's what hyperfixation feels like.

And Hobie in specific held and holds so much more weight for me IN ADDITION.

I started falling out of my Loki phase around Thor: Ragnorok in 2017 - which is to say I was varying degrees of 'obsessed' with Loki for about 5 years.

Around that time, maybe starting in 2015, police brutality in NYC picked up. Me and my friends started getting more radicalized, going to protests, and identifying as communists, anarchists, or both.

One of my favorite things at the time was The Black Panther Party handbook I'd found at a second hand-book store. And for a while the Black Panther Party was a special interest of mine.

It made me really interested in the 70's, the civil rights movement, and the rise of punk that happened at the same time. Around this time, I made my first 'battle jacket' with a patch that said "Black Lives Matter, Bitch." and begged my parents for a pair of doc martens.

I didn't have Hobie back then, but I have him now. And he still resonates.

There was very much a time where I was that homeless, punk teen, angry at police, who wanted to be taken in by my favorite heros.

My admiration for Hobie comes from like - everything he is. Everything he stands for and represents. I don't need Hobie like I would've as a teen. But I know deep down the healing he could bring other people as a comfort character.

Or even in terms of a good political example, or great rep for alt black people. All of it.

That can't really be said for Loki. Or Charles Xavier (even if X-men is a race allegory), or even Peter Parker.

I grew up in NYC all my life, and I LOVE Spider-man, but I never felt Connected to Peter Parker as if we lived in the same city. I never felt something in common with Peter even if he was broke too.

Hobie's just different, y'know.

The Downsides

It's easy to feel really embarrassed by all this - and even now I'm feeling shy even describing how it feels.

Cringe culture gets in your head before you know it. I'm CONSTANTLY telling myself 'no, Hobie would understand that you're neurodivergent and this is you expressing yourself he wouldn't think youre cringe youre not cringe okay' As if my comfort character Hobie Brown thinking I'm cringe is like jksjfkjf the worst thing ever - i can't, i can't with myself.

I genuinely want to hug Hobie more than I want to huge most celebrities or influential real-life people.

I genuinely think hugging him would be more healing to my being than hugging the Pope or the Dhali Lama or something. I admire him and care about him but he's NOT REAL. It's PARASOCIAL And like duh, I know that - i'm grown as fuck.

Sometimes it can genuinely get you down that you care about this character-person and you can't be with them

It's like you miss them. But they're not real and you don't know them. And I know that sounds tragic or bizarre. But it's kinda just weird. It feels weird not in a sad way, but in a 'why brain?? why is this possible in my brain?? huh???' way.

Like...I know it's parasocial, but like it's not like a fan and a youtuber. He's not real, I'm not giving him money or hurting anyone. I know there's nothing to be ashamed of, but it's just WEIRD.

Like... I know my cat isn't a person and mentally I don't see them as a person and can't like analyze them like a full formed person even if I wanted to. But with Hobie - someone who is not a person - my brain can???? Like I've never met him but like... I can imagine a full conversation with him beginning to end in his place of residence I've also never seen before??????? SO WEIRD.

Also theres that thing of him running in the back of my head 85% of the time.

Even if I'm talking or cooking or something, I'm still daydreaming about him - I have ADHD. And during those times if i'm interrupted and someone give me a THIRD thing to do (besides thing 1 and thinking about Hobie) I get irritated. Because now I have less brain room for Hobie stuff.

The Upsides

Now reading all of this you might be like 'sib this sounds like nothing but a problem r u okay' but I PROMISE ITS REAL FUN SOMETIMES

And it's nothing to feel ashamed of!

Now the last part was just a list of downsides, but the upsides are more things I can do because of my hyperfixation on Hobie that makes me happy

Like I said, I daydream a LOT. Like a LOT.

Mainly with OCs You can probably tell how much I like OCs, and how much OCs - even others', mean to me. And usually, my OCs are the ones who I see the in-media universe through. I don't have to think about making an OC much, for me personally they come fully formed. Because of this, while I'm watching movies I begin to have involuntary daydreams of where I can add in an OC, or what they'd be doing. I typically only do this for Marvel though. Hardly DC or any other media other than maybe Batman. For Loki, it was a character named Asdisira Heimdaldottir who I shipped with him. And for Hobie it's Diane Pastors (Disco-Spider).

And although I am in completely control of what these daydreams are, they are vividly realistic, and can come on at different times.

For me, it's while listening to music mostly. But anything can trigger it - from a good text post, to hearing a phrase. And these daydreams are extremely vivid. Most times, you can visibly see when I'm doing it. My eyes will glaze over or start moving as if I'm trying to remember something. Sometimes I may say 'random' phrases. I say lines from the scene I'm in outloud. (Like saying 'How could you!' in an offended tone to myself, if that's what the character in the daydream is saying). I also make facial expressions. I can do it on purpose, like hitting play on a movie and resuming where I left off. Usually, when I do this, I close my eyes. I much prefer to sit and do it without multitasking, but I often do it while doing something else.

These daydreams connect, and arcs/storylines can go on for months/years.

Usually these stories go on for months in IRL time, and span the whole history of the character. For Loki, I probably has Asdisira for 4 years at most. Which is still a LONG time. These arcs can take different pathways, and I may imagine a scene multiple times - in different ways, but usuall the timeline of the oc x canon stays overall the same. Sadly, I almost never write these down. I would pull my hair out and theres not enough time in the world for me to write Diane and Hobie's full narrative down in detail that does it justice. I wanna make a bullet list of their narrative but i dont wanna clog dashes

I can genuinely use them as a comfort character.

I don't need this much now, and nowhere as much as I needed it in high school, but having the ability to daydream vividly at will about a character you feel safe and happy with - it's dope. Sometimes it really helps. There were a lot of times I imagined Loki comforting me or showing me kindness or helping me calm down. And sometimes you can do it just for fun. Like, as a treat. Whenever. I'm imagining Diane and Hobie at a fish n' chip shop right now. It's drizzling outside and it smells like oil and Hobie douses his chips in wayyy to much vinegar. It's like I'm there. Like...I just do that. thats rad as hell. (and I don't know how to describe it if you can't do it but hopefully others know how it is but it's VIVID, like wayyyy more than any dream.)

Literally a walking fact book about them.

I'm smug AS FUCK. I use to love when dudes in high school challenged me about the MCU cause I wore a shirt. Like, oh buddy. Oh pal. Just you fucking wait. I know this character better than you know your own mother - try me hoe. I love reading characters like a book and rewatching scenes, breaking down motives, watching their movements, looking for patterns and drawing connections to real world history, cultures, or psychology. I LOVE watching behavior and personality in the movies, and making conclusions about where they'd come from, reasonably, for the character, and how it affects them outside the scope of the film.

And most of all - It's Free Joy we're almost at the end I promise

This is long as all hell and unlike my other posts there really isn't a neat little character study but uhhh I wanna end with this I guess -

The best part of it, is it's free joy. Literally.

My brain can do something a lot of others can't. I can feel a kind a comfort and understanding with a character, I can entertain myself and come up with amazing stories that have mean to me.

I can make wonderful worlds and all that without lifting a finger, and hangout with my favorite characters just by going

(literally how i be sitting there - professor x headass)

I hoping the fucking multiverse with my mind.

But there's nothing cringe about that. And there's nothing cringe about drawing Hobie for hours on end, by himself or with an oc. There's nothing cringe about thinking about them a lot, or wanting to buy or make a lot of merch.

We aren't hurting anyone. It's not like a celebrity or a youtuber. Nothing we're doing is taboo or anything we're literally just being happy. And squealing about a character we deeply love

Like..Golly if more mfers in this world were squealing like us once a week maybe they'd be happier, you know what I mean. People be walking around mad as hell at the world...like why don't you look at this picture of Hobie and calm down? That's what makes me calm down.

__________________________________________________

Anyway uh this is LONG and not connected much to ATSV but if you read down this low THANK YOU so deeply it means a lot. If you relate to this at all I'd love to hear.

And if you think I'm unhinged. Absolutely. But that has nothing to do with this and ain't nothing wrong about it, in the words of megan the stallion... 'ah'.

I leave you with this pic of Hobie goodbye :)

im using my magic autism powers to hold his hand :) now im giving him a hug im having fun

#If you relate to ANY of this please let me know lol #NO proofread EVER lol #personal #neurodivergency #hobie brown #adhd #autism #also Hobie has AuDHD #audhd #neurodivergent #neurodiversity #hyperfixation #special interest #hyperfixations #actuallyautistic #actually adhd #actually audhd #actually autistic #spiderpunk #spider punk #id be genuinely shocked if anyone got through this ngl

[imagine-knb]

Yaknow, it’s crazy!! Back when you were originally first active, I had turned on notifications for your blog because I loved your content so so much! I forgot all about it until you became active again! I’m happy to see you back !!♡

I’d you don’t mind~ can I request GoM+Kasamatsu reacting to their childhood crush/friend confessing their feelings for them?!

Maybe a little bland and simple, but I love to think of some characters who’ve really been pining on their crush being over the moon with joy over this kind of thing^///^” > maybe also a little big of how they would act around their crush before the confession!

-koi

You still have notifications on for us? I'm so grateful Koi-Anon! It honestly makes me so happy that so many of our previous followers stayed despite us not knowing until now if we'd be back. I've honestly felt so giddy and have been gushing about the blog to my significant other since I came back (my relationship with my current partner started after I left the blog, so they have no idea how deep this obsession runs lol) Also this ask is far from bland, I think it's adorably fluffy! Admin Neon

Kuroko

when Kuroko has a crush on someone, it's not so obvious at first; in fact, the only clue that he has feelings stronger for you than simple friendship are the little actions he does for you that he doesn't do for anyone else

they're small actions that could simply be mistaken for him considering you a close friend – letting you borrow his jacket when you were cold, purchasing your favorite snacks from the convenience store as a surprise

the day you confess to him, it's more than obvious that you're nervous – how could you not be, because the way he treated you, you thought he only saw you as a friend

Kuroko knew he was staring, knew that it was making your already fried nerves work in overdrive, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from your form. He was surprised, somehow not expecting you to reciprocate his feelings — even more surprised that you had confessed them first. But above all else, he was delighted.

"____-san," he called your name, interrupting your nervous, rambling confession. "I feel the same way."

Kise

in contrast to his light-blue haired friend, when Kise has a crush on someone, it is very obvious; he's clingy and flirty and always wanting to be the subject of your attention

to be frank, Kise would probably want to ask you out long before you came to the conclusion that you reciprocated his feelings – at least, he would have if he didn't think it would jeopardize your already great friendship with him

your confession to him comes randomly in the form of a question – "why aren't we dating?" – and it catches him completely off guard; you'd never heard Kise so quiet before

"Wait, wait, wait," Kise repeated himself, holding a hand up like he could pause your train of thought. "Are you saying you like me, too?"

When what he received in return from you was an affirmative answer, Kise feels overjoyed. His arms are instantly wrapped around you in the next moment, pulling you close. He had to resist the urge to kiss your cheek — didn't want to move too quickly — and you practically have to tear him off you at the end of the night because of how much he's clinging now.

Kasamatsu

you were his good friend and he was comfortable around you... until the day he wasn't; the day Kasamatsu realizes he has stronger feelings for you is the day you think he wants to end the friendship for good

he's suddenly embarrassed every time you catch his eye, he starts avoiding you more often, and he can't seem to talk to you without sounding angry – he's not angry at you though, he's angry at himself for his sudden 180 in how he treated you; why did it feel different now that he liked you like that?

you corner him one day, angry that he'd been ignoring you, and when you grilled him about his recent behavior he actually blurts out that he'd been doing it because of his growing feelings for you; your response wasn't what he was expecting – "is that it? I like you, too, dumbass."

For a moment, Kasamatsu seemed to be floundering in front of you, mouth agape as a red hue flooded his face. His pulse had been quick when you cornered him, then it felt like it had stopped the moment of your confession. Now? Now it felt like it was working double time — this couldn't be good for his heart.

With a cough behind a closed fist, Kasamatsu glanced off to the side before speaking. "Well, that's... good. That's good." He doesn't know what else to say however — now he was even more confused on how he should move forward with treating you.

Aomine

he's almost in denial with himself when he realizes he has feelings for you; the two of you had been friends for so long, practically since you were babies, so he didn't know when he stopped seeing you as a friend and started seeing you as more

he actually starts treating you just a little meaner, making snarky comments and trash talking the things you enjoy, but you're used to his shitty attitude and take it in stride – it actually ends up making him like you more

the day you confess to him actually has him confused, because how could you like someone who treated you so rudely, but he can't deny that it also makes his stomach fill with butterflies

"You must be some kind of masochist then," he commented, trying to hide the erratic thumping of his heart behind a sly smirk. "Don't think I'll be treating you any differently now that we're dating."

But the way you were looking at him, all smiles and teasing looks as you said you wouldn't have it any other way, made you seem so much more alluring to Aomine. As he stepped forward, one hand reached out to tilt your chin up so he could press his lips against yours better, a thought crosses his mind — maybe he would be treating you a little bit differently.

Midorima

it's hard to tell when Midorima has a crush on someone; he doesn't treat them that differently from before he liked them because he tends to treat all of his good friends with respect except Takao

he's actually already planning on confessing to you, but he's waiting for the perfect day; his luck has to be perfect, your luck has to be perfect, everything about that day has to be absolutely perfect

so when you confess to him on one of the most unluckiest days he's had that year, he almost feels mocked – almost, if it weren't for the fact your confession had him elated

"You really couldn't have picked any other day," he mused, a small smirk on his features telling you that he really didn't mean the words he said.

Normally, Midorima would be adamant that Oha Asa was never wrong — an unlucky day was supposed to be just that: unlucky. But after your confession, he was starting to think that maybe even his unluckiest of days could have a brighter side to them. He thanked the heavens he was able to afford double of his lucky item that day.

Murasakibara

he gets a little clingy to the object of his affection when he has a crush; he always wants to be around you and wants to be the only person to snag your attention

he tends to get a little whiney when you give other people attention, even if it's just your or his friends, but he's been that way every since you were kids so you're used to that behavior – maybe he's liked you since then?

the day you confess, he takes it so well, it's almost as if he already knew you would be doing it; maybe he already expected this to be the outcome of all his time spent with you

He was already hugging your smaller frame against his when you confessed, so after the words left your lips, Murasakibara's arms only tightened around you. He was pressing his nose against the side of your neck, hiding his expression, but you could feel that lazy grin of his against your skin.

"It's about time, ____-chin," he teased, voice muffled against you. "I was wondering when you'd say something."

Akashi

when Akashi has a crush on someone, he already starts treating them like a potential future spouse; he's a very straight forward person, so he doesn't want to date you just for fun because he's looking for his forever

he treats you better than any other friend he has, constantly making sure you're okay and healthy, keeping you stress free to the best of his abilities, and wanting to help you better yourself – honestly, it's only a little bit more than how he treated you as a best friend

he honestly confesses to you first, but you don't tell him right away that you reciprocate his feelings because you feel like you're not good enough for him – he only seems to catch on to the fact that you do like him back, however

Akashi seemed almost too calm, like he had expected what you were saying. As you finished your confession, tacking on your doubts on your worth to him, he steps forward and places a gentle palm against your cheek. The smile already on his face only softened when you leaned into his touch.

"None of that matters, ____," he reassured. "I like you. And, if I'm not mistaken, you like me too. That. That's all that matters to me."

#divider by skylightlantern #kuroko #kise #kasamatsu #aomine #midorima #murasakibara #akashi

[flamebringer0]

More About Nightwing Powers

I decided I had more to say about this post, so I reblogged it and wrote some more. It seems like when you do that Tumblr doesn't put the post into tag searches, so nobody can actually find it. I'm just going to copy the full text into a new post. I'm sorry if this spams anyone's feed, I just don't understand how this site works yet. I've never actually had a blog before.

-----

Ohhhh damn I just had another thought about this. This is my problem, I think about this stuff all the time and I keep coming up with new things I think are cool, but now that I've written all this out and published it for the whole world to see I can't change it so easily.

It's actually fine though. These thoughts are kind of a mix of things I think are canon but sufficiently non-obvious to be worth stating (All Nightwings have powers at hatching and then lose them), things that are definitely not canon but I feel like it doesn't mess with the story too much to change them (Prophets have a silver scale on their foreheads), and things that are ambiguous and I'm just filling in the blanks (fake Nightwing magic is based on their sense of smell). But there's a fourth category, which is things that I don't like about canon but changing them would basically entail writing a whole new story. I'm pretty sure this new idea falls into the latter category, so I wouldn't really have put it in that post anyway.

But let's explore the hypothesis that Tui T Sutherland and Scholastic collectively lose their minds and give me the rights to Wings of Fire, and also I have infinite time, resources and motivation to make my own adaptation of the story. Then what happens? Well, the first thing is obviously to change animus magic to be something other than total omnipotence, because omnipotent characters are the kind of albatross (tee hee) you don't want around your neck when you're trying to write a coherent story. And the second thing is to make it so the terrible Rainwing queens in book 3 are hereditary royalty and Glory is not, because I've never liked the valorisation of hereditary royalty in WOF (or in general), and that would be an easy way to subvert that. And THEN I would turn scavengers into lizard people, because I am a furry and I think that's cuter than making them humans. Lol.

But somewhere down the list would be the fact that I don't actually vibe with the idea that normal Nightwing seers/mind readers apparently have a built-in power limiter that varies randomly according to the specific individual, and the special gift you get for hatching under three moons is just to have that limiter set to 0. I don't like this because, first of all, the fact that it works like that just doesn't fit into my brain in a satisfactory way. Hatching under zero, one, or two full moons each results in a qualitatively different outcome, so in my mind, the third full moon should also do something qualitatively different. But it doesn't, it's just the same as two full moons but better. And then I'm left to assume that there are probably very rare cases of twice-moonborn Nightwings who have all the power, just because whatever secondary factors there are happened to line up in their favor? Weird.

But the more important reason is, I don't really like the idea of Clearsight as someone who has extraordinary power because she just hatched that way. Nor do I like the fact that the reasons for this are, on the one talon, unexplained (maybe inexplicable?), and on the other, not a function of who she is as a character. I think it would make for a much stronger motif if run-of-the-mill seer Clearsight were able to take down once-in-a-generation chosen one Darkstalker because she's diligent and doesn't believe in destiny while he's entitled and sure of his glorious future. At its core this feeling is actually the same thing as what I said about the Rainwing queens above: I just don't find it satisfying when the hero has some kind of special trait that makes them naturally better than everyone else. A villain can have that, but a hero I want to prove themselves through their own efforts. But that's explicitly not what happened in canon: Clearsight IS naturally more powerful than all the other seers, that's an essential part of her story, and changing it requires basically rewriting the books. I don't love it!

So anyway in the universe where I'm rewriting the books, here's a thought about how Nightwing powers might work. This partially contradicts what I wrote above, but I've decided I'm cool with that. I love contradicting myself actually, and maybe next week I'll contradict all of this again. There are no laws.

Some Nightwings are seers, some are mind readers, a few are both, and most are neither. But aside from the fact that an individual might or might not have these powers, they don't vary in strength from dragon to dragon. All seers have equally strong abilities, and all mind readers have equally strong abilities. But the strength of the abilities does vary: not per individual, but over time. Specifically, the current state of the moons affects the abilities of empowered Nightwings. On a hypothetical "darkest night" with three new moons, all Nightwings are effectively powerless. On the brightest night, empowered Nightwings experience the full strength of their abilities. Seers can easily look down many different paths into the distant future, and mind readers can easily examine any information in the mind of another dragon. Of course, the phases of the three moons are not synchronous. Most of the time, the moons are all in different states, and empowered Nightwings experience abilities somewhere in between those extremes.

Above, I said that the "strength" of Nightwing abilities doesn't really vary per dragon. Strength, as I use the term here, only refers to the raw potential to look into the future or into another dragon's mind. But different individuals do have different levels of adeptness when it comes to applying their abilities. On the brightest night, any seer can look with relative ease into the far future, down multiple timelines, examining subtle ripples of possibility. The rest of the time, most seers can't use their abilities on that level, but a particularly adept one can get closer. What makes one seer more adept than another? Well, it's really just training. If you're someone who, for whatever reason, keeps looking into the future, over time you'll get better at it, just like anything you keep doing. This is what sets Clearsight apart from her peers. She isn't more blessed by the moons than them, because no seer is more blessed by the moons than any other. Clearsight just looks into the future all the time, to a degree nobody else does. She works harder on her visions than any other seer, so her abilities are more advanced than those of any other seer.

There is one exception to the maxim "no seer is more blessed by the moons than any other". The special gift of the thrice-moonborn is that they are exempt from the cyclical waning and waxing of power with the phases of the moons. They hatch on the brightest night, and its power soaks into them and becomes permanently part of them. And so, they live as if every night is a brightest night. They always have the potential to see the ripples that spread into many distant futures, and they can always pluck any information they want out of another dragon's mind. What other Nightwings may train and train for, these dragons do as easily as they breathe.

There are few Nightwings who never dreamed as dragonets about what it would be like to have hatched under three full moons. How different their lives could have been from those of the common powerless Nightwing, or even ordinary seers and mind readers! And not just directly because of what they could see: the thrice-moonborn are almost inevitably beloved by their tribe, showered with attention, and elevated to the highest strata of society. Wouldn't that be nice, think the dragons who could have walked that path but for something as meaningless as the sky under which they hatched.

It's unsurprising that many covet that life, but it's not entirely as pleasant as they imagine. The adulation that surrounds the most powerful Nightwings is instrumental. As laid out in excruciating detail just behind the eyes of smiling dragons, few love them for who they are; many more love them for what they are. They will never have any interaction with friends or family that isn't fundamentally shaped by the asymmetrical power dynamic implied by their abilities. It's easy for a dragon in that situation to become profoundly isolated, especially without support. But the brightest night comes so rarely that most Nightwings who receive its gift will grow up with neither peers, nor mentors who can relate to these experiences. That many ultimately respond in unhealthy, self-destructive ways is a given; that the self-destruction of such powerful dragons often also destroys those around them is a recurring tragedy in the history of the tribe.

But it's not inevitable. No dragon's fate is actually written in the stars or sealed by the moons. It's always possible to choose a different future.

#the nice thing about making a blog is that now i can record the infinite cascade of thoughts im always having about night dragon moon magic #without feeling like im compelling any particular person to listen #next time ill talk about a different topic though #probably #wings of fire #wof #wof headcanon #headcanon #wof nightwing #nightwing #wof clearsight #clearsight #wof darkstalker #darkstalker

[hikennosabo]

#tristampparty day 6, episode 6: once upon a time in hopeland

THE HALFWAY POINT OF @tristampparty BABY!!! this is another episode i've watched multiple times on its own so... LET'S GOOOOO

and we start right out the gate with

wolfwood vial count: 2

i don't think i need to keep saying that masaya onosaka is the radio dj... he's been a constant...

LOL, LMAO, EVEN

"disposal," though... we know all about the last run, but what else does disposal entail. like what do they do with the. um. the corpse? and the word "disposal"... yeesh...

so they say, even though it's obvious bullshit. but i do wonder. conrad is in charge of july, EoM's base is in july, etc etc... but how many people actually know what's going on? who does "the july government" consist of besides conrad? what about the civilians living in the city? EoM's cover is flimsy at best, they're suspicious as hell, so how deep and how far does the propaganda machine reach that this can just... keep going on?

all this planet has is radio and newspapers, no TV, no internet, and everyone is struggling just to survive... we saw just last ep how EoM had a grip on one village to the point where it was normalized to sacrifice children... just how good are they at controlling information? jeez. roberto and meryl's job as reporters is more important than ever.

we see that part of wolfwood's designated role is to go after deserters and traitors, so that's another way of controlling information, but. he's just one guy. so they probably have more assassins than just him. maybe the rest of the ghg that we haven't seen yet? there's livio, too, but... how long has he been with EoM at this point? the timeline's so unclear on this, i don't know... we know it took "months" between wolfwood being taken by them and his escape attempt + livio(/razlo) joining, but we don't know how long ago that was either... presumably it would also take "months" for the experiments to be done on livio, or maybe even less time? uhhhhh (steam comes out of my ears from thinking too hard)

......i'm less than 3 minutes into the episode. let's continue.

it's cute that they shrug simultaneously. mad at each other but still in sync... :')

no idea why the orphanage would be highlighted on the map except for foreshadowing purposes, but it looks like the steamer stops at... uh... *squints* taradiddlescoast... deucedump?!... orange bazoo... who tf is naming these places?!

:') aha. ahahahahaha. ahahhahahahaha. ah. uah. ue. ueeeeeeaaahhh

we already know that the sandsteamer route passes by the orphanage. so i like that there's a sandsteamer visible in the distance. very nice subtle attention to detail here

i feel like people are always quick to point out that livio and wolfwood being siblings is specific to stampede only but i DON'T care, this is my FAVORITE interpretation of their relationship, i really love it so much and think it enhances the narrative and nicely contrasts the relationship between vash and knives. orange was SO big brained for this and i'm not kidding. they're brothers in the manga too, to me.

the dub line here is "stop, livio! he's not who hurt you!" which just tears me into a million pieces, thanks!

...if i remember correctly... the "great sand ocean" is called as such because things just sink into it, right? (hmm... wonder how many crashed ships sank into the sand ocean...) hence the boat-like vehicles that are used to cross it. as we can see, the bad lads gang uses what look like windsurfers. and yet wheeled vehicles seem to fare just fine...?!

we never see what the test is. huh... i'm reminded of the promised neverland all of a sudden

nicholas gets selected and the bell rings... can i point something out? the bell's presence in scenes... what the bell represents... it has the EoM logo on it. well, so does the building. but notably, we see the bell in the scene with livio and wolfwood on the roof at night and also in the scene of them cuddling which i posted above. they're bonding and they love each other but the eye of michael is quite literally looming over them... and over the orphanage as a whole...

i've already talked about this in my bookclub posts but i want to talk about the orphanage's relationship with EoM again. it's literally run by them... there's NO cover story here, they're CLEARLY suspicious as hell. in the manga, chapel came by himself to pick wolfwood up and the cover story was that they would be repairing churches, right? and everyone genuinely believed he was going off to live a better life. here it's just. a bunch of guys in suits and masks. obviously suspicious. they run the place, so i guess there's no need for a cover story...? but iirc in the manga EoM was also using the orphanage as a "source" for soldiers, right? like i think chapel says something like that, doesn't he? am i misremembering?

i have so many questions. there's no confetti. what does that mean. this is a lot more lowkey than wolfwood's departure in the manga. no cheering, no invitation to come back/saying this is always his home, just... polite waves. and melanie looks... unhappy. how much does she know? how much of a choice does she have here? ...huh. i'm reminded of the promised neverland again.

what does this mean for... y'know. The Scene. like. the confetti is important. the kids loving nicholas so much and cheering while saying goodbye is important. why did orange take those out what are they planning what does it MEAN!!!!

wolfwood is "test subject HL1-06" and i have no idea what that means and we can't determine from this how many kids came before him either.

wolfwood vial count: 3

hi sweetieeeee i love youuuuuu i love youuuuuu

see this gets the gears turning in my head regarding the timeline again. legato says this, and we see some flashforwards (i guess in this context that's what they are) to wolfwood killing people, including the guy from the beginning of this episode and monev from the last episode... (over which legato calls him a loser, lol?! even though that's very much not the reason why wolfwood killed him, and we know it) so how long was wolfwood working for EoM before he was given the job to "babysit" vash?

i already talked about this in one of my bookclub posts but there's the change in livio's motivations, too... he's chasing after wolfwood... as opposed to (razlo) wanting to be needed... what does it mean. man, i really hope orange doesn't do razlo dirty whenever he shows up for real.

THIS CLEARLY ISN'T STRINGS. WHY IS LEGATO'S POWER DIFFERENT IN EVERY VERSION OF TRIGUN I SWEAR TO GOD like it's telekinesis, right?! what does this mean for legato?! and his backstory?! strings are so fitting for him thematically, so i don't know what they could be planning here!!

kouki uchiyama will see a guy with blue hair covering one eye and say "is anyone gonna voice him" and not wait for an answer (and then fight akira ishida over it)

CONRAD I'M GOING TO THROTTLE YOU. WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR EXPERIMENTS ARE DOING HUH. HUH!!!!

HGORHGHGHG.GHG. AHGHGGG.HGH.

thinking about the previous episode and eating rocks

livio hears wolfwood's name and that's when he opens his eyes and kicks vash off him... i initially thought maybe he just took the opportunity because vash was distracted, but he was distracted by the military guys right before this, so...?!

say that to knives and see what happens. also hello pretty boy you are so pretty i love you i'm blowing you kisses mwah mwah mwah mwah mwah

whenever legato talks about his confusion over fraternal love i can't help but remember nightow's comment about him maybe having a younger sister. which is interesting to think about but has never been relevant for any version of legato ever... buuuut... with orange's attention to detail, hmmm, who knows...

also i'm obsessed with legato driving hands-free and I AM ONCE AGAIN ASKING HOW HIS POWERS WORK IN THIS VERSION.

*wipes brow* let's end it there i wrote too much. i know i'll have a lot to say about the next episode too. they don't stop coming and they don't stop coming and they don't stop coming

#tristampparty #trigun talk #june speaks

[omaano]

Other than the obvious, what is a work in your WIP folder that will contain Rex? Got any fun Rex things to share with me? I'm predictable. LOOK. I love my boy getting attention.

There is one that I desperately want to both show off and also whine a lot about, but I can't because we have missed the promo period for that project and now you all will have to both wait and cheer me and @insertmeaningfulusername on to finish our pieces for the Clone Bang to see it (I'm gonna be so fucking proud when it is finally done!) TT^TT

And I also have a lot of other works that are connected to that big bang project and they are adorable and I want to show those off too but but but... This little overwhelmed Anakin is from one of these connecting projects, and probably that is all that I can rightfully show off right now, but Rex in that one is gonna be so good, I'm telling you!

I've got a LOT of (like, 3? which counts for a lot in my case, honestly) MaulRex plans (I'm running an agenda here) which will make me dust off my old AO3 account because I surely won't be able to post those drawings here even with a mature label lol.

There is cowboy Rex and Cody in the pile I shared in a previous answer; I signed up for a rexobi bingo but I don't have anything tangible for that one yet; but but but! there is also one that is permanently on the backburner in my brain from the "aaaaangst" labelled wip (see below)

Which gets redrawn basically every time I open it up, but the concept is based on Michelangelo's Pieta which is one of my all time favourite sculptures, I love it sooo much, it's so beautiful! but with Fives and Rex (because hey hello that arc had completely destroyed me, I haven't been alright ever since I watched it) with various helmets strewn around on the groun and the looming large forms/statues of armed clone troopers in the background as if they were pillars in a cathedral or something.

I have a very clear idea of what I would like it to be, which is a problem because that does not match my skill level and visual library, so I'll have to adjust to that, but it would be so very cool if I could figure out the adjusted pose (because armor makes things bend and twist differently even on a dead-limp body, and would you believe it clone body types do not match a scrawny Christ and his mother lol). Plus I'm undecided whether I only want Echo included as a broken helmet at their feet, or if I want him in there leaning against Rex's knee and hanging on to Fives' hand for the extra kick of it.

This is my big project I dream about finishing aside from that changeling AU and octo!MaulRex drawing.

Thanks for asking! (and letting me ramble on) <3

List of WIPS for the WIP GAME

#wip game #answers #wips #alex rambles #sketch #battlekilt #Sorry I keep tagging you into everything Shevek <3

[emily-prentits]

what are your currents wips!? <3

hi anon! mostly i'm writing for meddison right now, so i'll give you those wips. edit: this got very long so my wips are under the cut <3

lately she's undressing for revenge. i currently have 3 parts out of this fic! the basic premise is addison walks into meredith's life and suddenly her relationship is ruined because her boyfriend didn't bother to tell her that he had a wife. so meredith drops him in a turmoil of feelings and seduces addison to get back at him. and, well, if they happen to fall in love... isn't that the ultimate fuck you?

neighbor au. this one doesn't have a title yet, and it's BARELY a wip with how much time i've had to work on it lately, but it's really kind of an au where one tiny thing is changed in canon and the butterfly effect of what happens because of it- namely derek divorces addison before he runs to seattle in season 1, so when addison shows up in seattle (with henry) in season 18 and moves into the house next to meredith's, they have no idea about the connection between them. slightly crack-y events ensue as well as some very fun, very sexy milf action because really. this is me we're talking about. (it's partially based on my therapist told me by xana if you wanna check that out!!)

sad christmas fic. this is from the mentioned christmas part in chapter 3 of revenge. that's all i'm gonna say about that.

bloomington au. this is based on the sapphic professor/student movie bloomington! the main characters SCREAMED meddison to me as i was watching it so i took notes and somehow it devolved into a whole au. whoops.

elevate me songfic. so um. fun fact about me i hate nick marsh? especially with meredith? so in very me fashion i decided to take the song that played over their first sex scene and make it into a season 18 meddison au. because honestly the whole nick storyline SCREAMS meddison the second time around. the meeting again after a long period of time, the instant rekindling of infatuation, the way they would drop anything for one another, etc. you get it. this one is probably a two parter but i'm excited for it especially since i was just talking about it with @walshies earlier. it's going to be very self indulgent and everything we wished was true about meddison the second time around <3

an addison-centric fic about her early life > relationship with derek > relationship with mark > relationship with meredith <3 i haven't decided whether or not i want to include the events from private practice into this fic yet but i suppose we will see what happens when i have more time lol.

carol au. planned this one out with @thenightmaredrowns! it's based on the movie carol (as was a bit obvious) we have it mostly figured out we just have to... actually write it. in our spare time.

bonus random assorted fics i haven't thought about in a bit:

series rewrite but meddison is cheating on derek through the entire show

a fic set to enchanted by taylor swift. set before in the heat of your electric touch (i want to need you forever)

season 6 au, meddison adopts zola

a fic set to maroon by taylor swift

friends with benefits meddison

a fic set to shivers by ed sheeran (this one has no plot. it's a single scene lol)

#asking jo #anon #meddison #meredith grey #addison montgomery #grey's anatomy #jo writes

[impashableimagines]

Can we get some hickey headcanons for the boys + Asra? Like giving and receiving, where they like to leave them, etc etc. I love your imagines 💕

Oh boy, I've been away too long! T.T Thank you for your kind words, I'll do what I can, hopefully it meets what you were looking for!

ASRA:

Adores leaving little hickeys on your hips and thighs!!

Is actually obsessed with your thighs, ngl

Like, cannot get enough of nibbling on them bc damn, baby, they're *magical*

As for receiving, I have to believe that Asra would 100% be into the idea of you leaving hickeys on their collarbones and chest, more than anywhere else

Bc this magician is smitten, baby, and they will make sure you know it by the sweet little sounds they make when you mark them up

JULIAN:

If Asra's obsessed with your thighs, this man is beyond obsessed with your neck and shoulders.

Loves to pepper you with hickeys all over your décolletage and across your shoulder-blades, so when you wear anything slightly more revealing, nobody can look at you from the front or back and not see you're marked as his.

Absolutely loves for you to leave hickeys on his wrists and his stomach. (What can I say? He's a soft boy who loves the more romantic, sensual locations over the strictly sexy ones.)

MURIEL:

I'll be honest, idk if Muriel's the hickey-leaving type, he seems just a bit too respectful for that, but also, if he IS, then he is absolutely the type to leave them on your chest and thighs.

He'll leave them in places that you can see them, but where you don't run the risk that others can, out of respect for your autonomy (and job security, lol).

As for receiving, he'd probably be too embarrassed to have any visible ones, and would probably hide them under his cloak if you left them anywhere obvious, bc he's an easily flustered man who can't handle the teasing of others. But he would absolutely relish in seeing the marks after the fact despite any outward embarrassment, bc YOU gave them to him.

LUCIO:

Leave. Hickeys. Everywhere. He will relish in every single one, and will absolutely show them off if you let him.

mons hickeys mons hickeys mons hickeys

Hickeys placed anywhere near the rabbit trail on either of you will make this man FERAL.

Lucio will fucking COVER YOU in hickeys. The man is indiscriminate. Expect to have to use A LOT of cover up or wear long sleeves year-round if you want to avoid questions from others.

As always, thank you all for sending in asks and being so supportive of me! You're feeling generous and/or enjoyed my writing, please consider donating to my ko-fi!

#arcana #the arcana #arcana lemon #julian devorak #count lucio #asra alnazar #the arcana muriel

[orangechickenpillow]

Hello, fellow enjoyer of BG3/Prospect/Arcane/The Ghoul Boys/TAD/WWDITS/probably other things I've yet to discover because you clearly have stellar taste in media! ✨

I wanted to throw an idea at you that has been rotting my brain: TAD songs for BG3 characters.

"Inkpot Gods" simply IS Wyll and Karlach. "The Old Witch Sleep and The Good Man Grace" might seem the obvious choice for Astarion but I would like to make an argument that "Farewell Wanderlust" is even better. "The Horror and The Wild" is Karlach's all on her own. "Elsa's Song" is giving Gale for some reason? Unsure why.

Anyway, sorry for the random long-ish ask. But what do you think? :D

Ahhhh thank you so much. I've seen you in my notifs and am happy to report that we're officially best friends now <3

Thank you so much for throwing this idea at me holy shit???? I went back and listened to all three TAD albums specifically to answer this, so.... yeah, we're definitely best friends.

I'm loving what you've got so far -- Inkpot Gods works so perfectly for the Avernus duo, and honestly could be the theme song for bg3 in general. Jesus christ, what a song, am I right. Farewell wanderlust is sooooo Astarion I'm going to lose my mind about it I mean be totally normal. Also I feel like it fits Lae'zel really well too. I actually found that a lot of songs I liked for Astarion worked for Lae just as well. Interesting. Anyway, during my trillionth re-listen to the TAD albums here are the notes I took on my phone lmao:

Love Run for Wyll. The wholesome, strong, hopefulness this song radiates fits him so well. It's also really fucking romantic, and so is he.

I also think that Two Minutes is fitting for him. That whole vibe of an abandoned child, of someone who is so tired and beaten down by life but still manages to keep going despite it all. I really adore Wyll, and the more romantic TAD songs fit him perfectly.

I love Wild Blue Yonder for Karlach. It's silly but heartfelt, and so full of yearning. It has a light approach to life while still acknowledging how hard things can be, and that's just so Karlach. Also, "We don't know what's out there -- could be ghosts or monsters, or a robot vampire, I don't know" sounds like something she would say lol

You're so right about The Horror and the Wild. That's just. Karlach and Gortash. "Give me back my heart you wingless thing" are you fucking kidding me right now, I'm going to pull a Karlach and explode.

Also I think The Horror and the Wild fits Astarion equally well. I'll always yammer on about how Astarion and Karlach are two sides of the same coin, and this song is a great representation of that. "You passed your fingers through my hair and called me child -- witness me, old man, I am the wild" -- Astarion and Cazador. Please send help, I am ill over this and will not be recovering.

"Think of all the horrors that I promised you I'd bring" Karlach. Astarion. Shadowheart. Lae'zel. Literally help me.

Blossoms for Gale. It's a very intense song, but it's also weary. It's strong but desperate, yet determined. I also think it fits him as the one who would be leading the group if Tav wasn't around. It's a somber and dramatic song, but it's ultimately fueled by tender love. Sound like anyone else we know?

Similarly to you pairing him with Elsa's Song (which I love btw), I think The Rockrose and the Thistle is VERY Gale (and, dare I say, bloodweave? The singer begging to die and the other person "sewing" them back together??? Hello?????) Just like the more romantic songs fit Wyll, the quieter, more subdued songs fit Gale. I think those songs really capture desperation in its most potent form, and Gale is kind of like the human version of that (sorry Gale)

Okay, New York Torch Song could be any of the ladies. Literally any of them. It's perfect. This one also makes me think of Karlach and Wyll.

I adore That Unwanted Animal for Astarion. The helplessness paired with the subtle sense of revenge and violence. The sexual tones throughout. The lack of romance.

I like The Old Witch Sleep and the Good Man Grace for Astarion, and I also really like it for Lae'zel. Her whole being raised by a cult thing really aligns with the vibe of the song -- being told that you're one thing and having to fight to be anything else, the desperation of feeling like you have no purpose. Fighting it all and coming out on top anyway. The steady increase in the intensity of the song representing getting your power back. It's so herrrrrr

King fits her well too. This song is so badass. I think it represents the soldier archetype well. It's cool, she's cool, it's perfect.

Pray makes me think of Shadowheart. Obviously the religious tone of the song fits her well, but also its pure spite. It's really giving "abandoned daughter" vibes, which is perfect for her. Also, "honey I'm no man, I'm what's left when children go to war" are you fucking kidding me.

Anywayyyyy, this was long, yikes. I have a lot of Thoughts as you can see. Thank you SO much for letting me yap about two of the things I love very much and might be obsessed with, who knows. I'll end by officially asking for your hand in marriage <3

#just kidding #unless.... #anyway ily thank you for this ask and if you ever want to chat some more feel free to send another one or even message me <3 #bg3 #baldurs gate 3 #bg3 companions #baldurs queue #tad #the amazing devil #ask box #ask response #bg3 meta

[adr-n-sketchy]

I caught you burning photographs Like that could save you from your past History is like gravity It holds you down away from me

I saw @muzarry’s Huntlow Wedding Waltz art challenge and I wanted a piece of the action. I hope this wasn’t too far off from the initial prompt of a ballroom waltz but I imagined them having and outdoor cottagecore-esc celebration.

Some of my reference materials are below the cut along with me rambling way too much about what I’m nitpicking about the piece now that it's posted and all my mistakes are glaringly obvious (ah the power of publishing your art).

Thanks again for the fun prompt!! I already have ideas of how I’d like to redo this bc they’re just so fun to draw

Materials/references - Willow’s dress was a combination of many many Pinterest searches of embroidered flowers and about three dress ideas smushed together

First things first how obvious is it that I hate drawing shoes? Lol if I’d planned this better, I probably would’ve just cropped the pose around their calves but then I was too far in to fix it.

This piece was really fun!! I’ve been on the procreate tutorial side of tiktok while I’m still figuring it out and I actually got to try out some lighting tips on this. Idk if I did them right but it was fun to try. I fish I'd gotten the colors a little warmer like the initial prompt image. Also still figuring out different shading techniques and styles I like. I'd like to title this piece's strategy "slap on a shading layer and then smudge the shit out of it until you get something passable."

I definitely did not draw enough flowers as a child and was running out of ways to draw leaves and petals lol. Phew that dress was a slog, but also so so fun. I have a little headcanon that it was embroidered by Darius and Camila. I've never illustrated any sheer fabrics, so this was me BSing myself throughout the entire thing, but I can't say I'm mad at the response. Clothing folds are still a headache for me, but somehow this is, better?

Also, Willow’s flower crown is made up of the red grass and flowers that Willow first greets when they get back to the demon realm — y’know, the adorable gesture that squeezes the first smile out of Hunter post Flapjack. Also, Flapjack-red tie for Hunter because obvi.

I'm afraid I made Hunter's outfit a little too close to Caleb's, but from the references of outfits and background, we ended here. So maybe his ability to wear things this close is proof of therapy and progress? y'know, if you squint past my blatant art and fashion block. I also just realized I think I was supposed to color the buttons on Hunter's vest but now I'm pretending that was purposeful

Another thing I'm weirdly nitpicky about it Hunter's hair noodle. Idk there's been something that's bothered me about it throughout the entire process but could never quite put my finger on it/fix it.

I had the idea that Willow and Hunter's rings would look like elongated versions of each other's palismen. Kind of like those little dragon rings that look like they're clinging to your finger, but I couldn't get the shape right, and Willow's ring isn't visible anyway. So maybe next time.

That may be it. Might add more as I find more and more things that annoy me. If you made it to the end of my perfectionist rambling, congratulations!! Your service and sacrifice is noted lol.

Don't forget to hydrate yourselves and have a lovely day!!

#huntlow #winter toh #willow x hunter #willow park #toh willow #hunter park #toh hunter #hunter deamonne #the owl house #toh #muzarry1kdtiys #art challenge #my art #come to me #the goo goo dolls

[decepti-thots]

I had no idea that anything was actually happening with otw but thank you I see this as a sign to start downloading all my fav fics lol

On reflection, I suppose I did make that comment offhandedly without thinking that many people have no idea what I'm talking about- it concerns stuff I suppose falls into that "if you're in circles that know it seems obvious, if not you have no idea it exists" valley.

I should probably clarify that that post wasn't me talking about some imminent risk of AO3 as a platform imploding or disappearing or anything, and nobody needs to start panicking in that regard. I was referring to the current boiling over of a lot of very long term (like, back to when it was founded) institutional/structural/operational issues within the OTW as an org that have been coming out over the past week or so. So me looking at being less solely reliant on AO3 was more a matter of longterm "seems a good idea not to be on just this one platform having these issues" planning and not anything anyone needs to be worried about like, right now.

...and because I know folks not as familiar with this same longterm stuff WILL ask, I'll put a brief summary below the cut for if any of you are curious. However, please be aware, this discussion will by necessity include reference to an incident last year in which OTW volunteers were sent CSEM/CSAM materials as part of a horrendous targeted campaign; while nothing graphic regarding CSA itself is discussed, I mention it here for post filtering and general warning purposes.

So these past couple of months there has been a sustained fan organizing action going on under the name #endOTWracism, which is a specific, targeted attempt at pushing for the OTW to make good on promises they made in 2020 to look at improving their response to racism on their platform. There's an FAQ covering the scope of the action (which ended yesterday, and ran through May) here.

I've been following this with very great interest and it's brought a lot of really good focused discussion out in fan communities, bringing back up a lot of talking points which have historically been shouted down re: the OTW and its poor (one might say "nearly entirely negligent") response to racism in fandom over the span of its existence, and the long standing attempts to get them to address this.

Anyway, one of the posts I especially was recommended that looked at it from the perspective of someone with experience in volunteering and organizing was this post, which takes a look specifically at the issues of how the OTW is structured as an org in a practical, real-world sense. I think it's a great post that brings a really good, grounded approach to the whole issue, looking not just at the big ideas but at how to really run a functioning organisation in a way that is able to be e.g. antiracist. A post like that of course brought in a lot of discussion of... how the OTW is structured and functions day-to-day! That being the topic at hand, and folks wanting to bring their own experiences to the table.

Which, both on that post itself and elsewhere, has uh. Brought some stuff to light that makes even the most hardcore OTW skeptic look like maybe they were overly optimistic. To be quite honest

Some highlights:

Last year, there was a horrendous attack in which OTW volunteers were directly emailed and bombarded with high volumes of CSEM. This was of course horrifically traumatising and scary, and even at the time it was noted that the OTW's response to this was wildly negligent in terms of taking action to safeguard and help their volunteers. Well, it turns out that a) this was an escalation of preexisting issues that the OTW knew about and failed to reasonably address, b) they took a HIDEOUSLY unethical approach to how CSEM distribution attempts were moderated on the platform and just dumped it on one unsupported volunteer who was left horribly burned out by the experience. This post has a good summary and roundup. The fallout from this entire debacle is way too much for me to summarize in full but suffice to say: folks are thinking maybe people should consider not continuing to volunteer for an org that is this unethical and exploitative towards its workforce in a way that directly puts that at serious risk! This is a standpoint I would agree with given there's seemingly also been internal retaliation against the person speaking out! This is terrible! I feel so bad for all these poor volunteers! I have been reading about and fuming regards this situation for two days now and it truly is awful.

There has recently been an instance in which Chinese OTW volunteers got hung out to dry regards their specific work with OTW on Weibo, where it was made clear to them that the org really wasn't interested in any of the work they were doing to engage with and support specifically Chinese fandom. Basically, "we don't really think this is worth doing, and noone involved in the board etc even speaks Chinese, so whatever". This follows an observed and longstanding pattern of higher ups at the OTW undervaluing... basically anyone who isn't part of Western anglophone fandom.

In general, just a LOT of current and past OTW volunteers talking on various platforms about the sheer dysfunction that means things at OTW are deeply incapable of getting basic shit done at best and straight up chew well meaning volunteers up and spit them out at worst. This is basically the nth round of this exact cycle since the OTW began, but in conjunction with the above, it seems to be getting a lot more attention than such things usually do.

This is only some of the stuff that's going on right now but basically, every single issue of internal bullshit the OTW has been accruing as an org for the past ~15 years seems to be blowing up at once, and it's really the first time I've considered that this time it might, in the long run, have a serious impact on the viability of the org in the future. (As things stand: it absolutely should do, because any org that so comprehensively fails the human beings working for it in such an immediate, real life sense needs to make huge immediate changes or fuck right off tbh.)

So that's a bad summary of... SOME of the stuff going on right now. It's a lot. Needless to say.

I wanted to make this post for a couple reasons. One: many folks came into fandom well after the AO3 was just this... site that was there, used by default, and which just sort of operates and you don't think about how. Which is understandable. A person coming into fandom in a post-AO3 world will see the site the same way one sees Twitter or Tumblr or Wattpad; a thing too big and too... default to really concern yourself with the details of how it came to be so big, and used by default. I, personally, have been in online spaces since I was very young, and AO3 launched when I was around sixteen, many years into my experiences with the fandom spaces it came out of. I was around at the time that the OTW and AO3 were proposed, developed and began to expand in scope. I was in circles where folks were talking about this stuff in a very direct way, basically. So I think I have a decent enough sense of context to help lift that veil a little for folks who have no such advantage, and also to help highlight that these are issues years and years in the making, not sudden revelations as they sometimes seem.

Two, because I expect to see many, many folks trying to pass this off as "discourse" or "wank" or "purity culture" in the coming weeks as the fallout continues, and I want dig my ankles in and say if you try that shit on with me I will laugh you off my blog. I think this post makes my opinion fairly clear on where I draw the line between "dumb fandom wank" and "this is not dumb fandom wank, this is serious shit"; it is well before this stuff. So.

tl;dr: I don't know what the OTW will look like in a year or two or five, and this shit has reminded me I shouldn't bank on pretending I do. So, I'm mirroring stuff elsewhere, not because I think the org will collapse, but because maybe the centralization of fandom is overall bad, actually. I encourage folks to consider their own feelings on the topic, since this is as good a reason as any to consider for yourself how you feel about this stuff.

[magicalrocketships]

i love the cross stitch! could you expand on it and the colors and everything?

Yes!!

So each row is a race, and it shows the grid position from P1 (left) to P20 (right). The bottom, incomplete, row (Spa) shows Max in P1 and I'm just finishing up Checo in P2. Shout out to Kevin for doing that nice little symmetrical arrow in yellow at the right of the grid for the previous few races, v aesthetically pleasing if meaningless, points-wise. Sorry, Kevin.

Before I started I was just going to try and pick an appropriate colour that matched each driver, but it turns out... I'm bad at that and also it was no fun, so what I ended up with was a mixture of a few colours that made me think of a driver (Max had orange, George has a blue that I think was on his helmet, Fernando had a really dark green for reasons I felt were obvious at the time but have subsequently slipped away) and then a pile of random colours for everyone else. These were my almost final choices:

Zero shade at all to my friend who looked at these and went "that is the wrong colour for Carlos and the wrong colour for Pierre" so I swapped them out, when I probably should have kept them distinct. Unfortunately I didn't actually think to mix alllll of them up and see how they looked next to each other, and as you can probably see from the actual cross stitch (if you stare long enough at it like I do) then I've got three very similar pinks (Pierre's new colour, Esteban, and Alex) and two dark wine reds (Zhou and Carlos's new colour) so you can't track them very easily in anything other than good light.

So: next year, I'll get 20 distinct colours that mix up well and then assign them out, rather than trying to think of a driver and a colour that goes with them (I wish I had this skill, but I... do not).

There was also the question of what to do to indicate the cancelled race, and I think I went for too dark a colour. If one's cancelled next year I'd want the row to be there but almost visually invisible, so I'd go for a shade nearer the background colour, I think. As you can see from this older picture, I'd tried marking out the DNFs/DNSs with a little x but I hated how it looked so I took them out again. I've got an idea for how to mark these without annoying myself by stitching onto the squares, but I'll try that when I've run out of races to stitch.

I'm also planning on doing little flags for each row to indicate which country they're racing in (will have to design these if I can't find someone else who's done it already on the internet), and then a key with each team and the driver colour. I might also try and log fastest lap and MAYBE sprint results, but I'm short of fabric space so we'll see.

For team colours (these aren't stitched yet, but they will be), I went with Sky's team colours, and these were a lot easier because someone on Reddit did a list of RGB colour codes for the Sky colour choices, and then I just converted them into the nearest thread colours, and decided which of the closest approximations I liked best. Here's the shortlist before I picked my favourite for each team.

So, there you have it! I was v lazy when it came to thread picking because I've got... a lot of thread (five or six thread boxes full) so didn't want to buy anything new and I also just wanted to get started sewing and colour assignment was stressing me out (lol) but it has been nice to do something that is actually very easy to cross stitch one I'd sorted out the colours.

#waffling on about crafts