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artiststarme · 1 year

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Love Me, Love Me Not

Based on a prompt from @mysticcrownshipper, I hope I did it justice! I hope you guys like it and please leave your thoughts in the comments!

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After the harrowing events of Spring Break, the school banned Hellfire from meeting on school grounds. They’d finally managed to get rid of him by sending him a pity diploma, there was no way in hell they were going to let him back for a nonacademic game. Eddie’s new trailer wasn’t big enough to comfortably host all of them, Gareth’s mom wouldn’t let them meet in the garage after hearing about Eddie’s accusations on the news, and Mrs. Wheeler wouldn’t let them use the basement. Just like that, one of the only things that kept the boys sane was taken away from them.

Eddie was practically bursting at the seams when Steve offered for them to use his dining room. Steve hadn’t heard from his parents since Christmas and he wasn’t expecting them to come back any time soon. And he was itching to do something to make the kids happy. They’d been through so much already, they deserved to act like kids for a while and play their little nerd game without restriction.

From that point on, Thursday nights at the Harrington household were devoted to Hellfire. The first few sessions of the new campaign were a bit awkward. The Corroded Coffin boys didn’t know how to interact with Steve. He’d never bullied them or messed with any of them directly but they’d heard enough rumors about him to be wary. After the first few meetings though, they lost their hesitance around him and he became just another guy, another friend that they were excited to hang out with.

On one fateful Thursday, the boys were mingling during a break in the session and Gareth opened up a can of worms he would’ve rather kept shut. He’d been watching Eddie making eyes at Steve all day and he finally called him out on it over a beer and some Cheetos.

“So, you and Steve, huh? I didn’t think he was your type. You going for jocks now?” Gareth said it as nonchalantly as he possibly could but Eddie still snorted his beer up his nose and fell into a coughing fit.

“Fucking shit, Gare! Don’t just drop that on me like that, what’s the matter with you! Of course I’m not, just leave it!” Eddie sputtered.

The Corroded Coffin boys narrowed their eyes at him in unison. None of them believed him especially since he had waxed poetic about the golden flecks in Steve’s eyes just a few hours prior.

“Dude, that’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard you say and you’ve said some really dumb shit,” Jeff told him deadpan.

Grant scoffed in his face, “yeah sure. Just lie to us like we can’t see that you’re head over heels for the guy.”

“I’m not! Why would I be interested in Steve? There’s no way in hell that would ever work out. Just drop it, you’re making me uncomfortable” Eddie seemed adamant on that and the other boys nodded in reluctant agreement. What they didn’t realize was that Steve had heard their whole conversation from his position in the hallway.

He really thought he was getting somewhere with being Eddie’s friend, maybe more. Just like all of his other relationships though, he was putting more effort in than Eddie was. He didn’t realize that he hated him so much though. But, maybe he should have. Eddie had seemed hesitant to accept his offer of hosting Hellfire at his house. Steve probably made him uncomfortable, either being a jock when jocks had terrorized him over Spring Break or maybe because he knew Steve had a thing for him and wasn’t interested. Regardless, he didn’t want to make Eddie feel any worse than he already had so he took a step back.

Steve turned down invitations, made himself scarce on Thursday Hellfire nights, and limited his regular tangents to bland responses. He wanted to make Eddie feel more comfortable with the Party and himself. However, all it served to do was make Eddie pissed off.

From his perspective, Steve had seemingly out of nowhere decided that Eddie wasn’t worth being friends with. Their weekly smokeouts that he looked forward to were canceled. His lengthy conversations at Family Video with Steve and Robin were met with stilted conversation and narrowed eyes. He didn’t know what had happened to cause the change but Eddie couldn’t help but feel offended. What the fuck had happened to cause such a profound change between them?

Eddie lasted a lengthy two weeks before he exploded. Steve refused yet another invitation to watch Hellfire and Eddie couldn’t take it anymore. “Oh yeah? You’re too good to fraternize with mere peasants, huh King Steve? You have everyone fooled but you’re still such bullshit!”

Steve whipped around in shock and stepped closer to Eddie to scream into his face. “I’m bullshit? Really? Are you fucking serious?! I was fine, I was having fun talking to you and hanging out and then you said I made you uncomfortable so I backed off. If anyone is bullshit here, it's you. Stop sending fucking mixed signals and leave me alone!”

Eddie just blinked at his back as Steve grabbed his car keys and took off in a haze of confused anger. Well shit, he’d fucked this up immensely. He couldn’t even bring himself to move until Gareth pushed harshly at his shoulder.

“Dude, what the hell is the matter with you? Steve’s a good guy, why are you jerking him around?” He sniped at him, stabbing his chest with aggressive finger pokes.

Eddie was still in shock at Steve’s words, still reeling at his proclamation. “He said he likes me?”

“Are you a dumbass?” Jeff asked him. “No seriously, are you stupid? He just said that he backed off because you said you were uncomfortable, he was respecting your boundaries, and you called him bullshit. We’re past him liking you now. We’re in ‘you fucked it up’ territory now, bud.”

Eddie’s heart fell. He didn’t know where to go from there, he’d never liked anyone quite like Steve. “How do I fix this? I really like him.”

Grant sneered at him, “you don’t deserve Steve. You’ve been treating him like shit for the past two weeks, just leave him alone.”

“Wow Grant, thanks for your opinion. That was very helpful,” Eddie said before turning to Jeff and Gareth. “Seriously though, how do I fix this?”

Gareth just let out the most profound sigh anyone had ever heard. “Jesus Christ, Eddie. I think he heard you telling us that we were making you uncomfortable when we asked about him and he misunderstood. I’ll talk to him and explain but fuck man, you need to get better at communicating. If this does work out between you guys, you can’t just keep everything bottled up like this. It’s stressful for all of us.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you! I’ll make it up to you, I swear!”

“Yeah, you better,” Gareth muttered.

Hellfire was postponed that week while Gareth tried to barter with Steve to hear Eddie out. He didn’t know the details of what happened after he dragged Steve back to his own house but when Corroded Coffin met for band practice the next afternoon, both Eddie and Steve were sporting multiple hickies and hiding small smiles.

The boys just sighed at them. They were happy for the pair but good god, they had just gotten used to Eddie’s ramblings about Steve. Imagine how awful he was going to be going forward now that they were together.

(And they were right. Eddie made it his mission to mention Steve at all times and always managed to include how great his ass looked in any conversation no matter the topic. The Corroded Coffin boys suffered forevermore, always regretting getting them together in the first place.)

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@strangerthingfanfic @dangdirtydemons @bookworm0690 @hannahhook7744 @dreamlandforever @marsbars97 @precursorandthedragon @romanticdestruction @5ammi90 @death-thee-nervousqueer

#When Robin hears about it she gives Eddie the shovel talk of all shovel talks #Eddie gets a hell of a lot better at communicating upon receiving threats of literal death #the next fic is going to be about Steve hurting Eddie because I feel bad now #I keep making Eddie mess it up and that's just not fair to him!#might delete this (is this even cohesive?)#stranger things #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #hellfire #jeff #gareth emerson #grant

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sugasmark · 2 years

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Let me talk for a second

#youre not going to stop me anyway this is MY blog #tw rant #i feel like im 50% ready to form close relationships but also 50% not ready #then again it feels out of my hand because i constantly feel out of place in every community ive ever been in #like i always feel unready to participate in communities because it complicates things for me in ways that make me stay up at night #and i dont feel like the company is worth all that anxiety sometimes #even if the lack of company makes me a little crazy #i just know people dont understand how hard it is for me to put myself out there and the relationship will not be necessarily deep #and then im stuck between feeling alone and not connected to enough people around me and being glad that im not being emotionally exhausted #at that moment #i don't know if this thought is cohesive and i might delete it later but i wanted to say it if only to make it sound real #to make sense of the way i feel #ok back to studying #🌤 txt

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madigoround · 2 years

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Unfinished lines from my writing tonight that personally I think hit:

Pain and I met at such an early age it grew with me weaving into my marrow

The source code of my body was once victim to yours but I’m not a little girl anymore

#none of what I’ve written tonight is finished or even really cohesive but I think it feels better to make something with the words that #plague my brain #might delete this tomorrow #I just can’t sleep

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pessimisticpigeonsworld · 29 days

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I NEED your opinions about this

https://twitter.com/WtDasoiaf/status/1774489198499684598?t=PPxX9vIyxF8IERTu0pQ8MA&s=19

That post was deleted since I started writing this earlier today, so I'll do my best to sum up what it said really quick. Basically it was some leaked script where Alicent is secretly meeting Rhaenyra at Dragonstone to negotiate peace. She offers to split the realm, Rhaenyra angrily refuses and Alicent is upset (because of course). Rhaenyra says she will spare any who bend the knee but Alicent says that that isn't going to happen. That's all I saw of it. Now, onto my rant:

I fucking knew they were going to try to make Alicent a "peacemaker". Condal and Hess are just going to keep shoving that goddamn rhaenicent narrative down our throats. Even after Rhaenyra's children have been murdered along with Alicent's grandson.

Like why the fuck would Rhaenyra go to meet Alicent alone? Alicent is her enemy, her son murdered Luke, her other son stole her throne. Alicent abused Rhaenyra for ten years, any goodwill between them now just makes no sense! The writers are constantly willing to prioritize their bullshit ship over cohesive storytelling and consistent characters.

There's a chance that the leak is fake, which might be why it was deleted so quickly (but that might also be because it's true). However, the fact that the scene is something I can definitely see them having in there speaks volumes. It wouldn't be the first time Alicent and Rhaenyra were randomly shoved into almost reconciling, and it still makes no sense.

To be clear though, Alicent's offer was actually in the book, however the setting is very different. In the book, Rhaenyra has taken KL and is in the process of hunting down Aegon and his supporters. Alicent offers it as a last ditch effort to secure power and security for her family. It's very obviously a power grab on her part, one that Rhaenyra quickly rejects, just like in that scene.

My main issue with this scene isn't the offer, it's the circumstances in which it happened. Alicent offered it because Rhaenyra was winning and was planning on killing Aegon as soon as she got her hands on him. She wanted power, her whole motivation in the book is power. She offers to split the realm because Rhaenyra has KL and has imprisoned Alicent. That scene is turning Alicent's blatant power grab into yet another scene of "poor Alicent, she just wants peace 😔". Something that makes no sense considering that she started this whole fucking thing when she declared war on Rhaenyra sixteen years ago. It's just frustrating and shitty writing.

#rhaenyra targaryen #anti alicent hightower #anti team green #house of the dragon #asoiaf #anti hotd #anti ryan condal #anti sarah hess #hotd s2 #hotd spoilers #anti rhaenicent

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cozage · 1 year

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Welcome to My Blog!

Hi, I’m Cozage! You can call me Coza. I’m 25, she/they pronouns are preferred, but any are fine. Right now I’m just writing for One Piece, but I’m open to writing for just about anyone within that realm. Please read this whole post before sending a message!

Requests: CLOSED

Pending requests: 50🤭

Masterlist Part 1 | Masterlist Pt 2

Are your requests open?

Not right now! Please do not send me a request when my requests are closed. I ALWAYS delete them, just to be fair. You are always welcome to send me questions and feedback on my writing or ideas for future chapters for my multifics, but please no new requests. Just because I am fulfilling requests, does not mean my requests are open!

Can I request a part 2 even when your requests are closed?

This is where it gets dicey. The simple answer is: no. HOWEVER, you can pop into my inbox and let me know that you really liked a specific story and ask if I'm going to have a part two (respectfully!) and you might convince me. Almost all of my multi-parters have come from requests, and I'm always looking for new multi-chapter fics to write :)

When do you open for requests?

I close my requests when my inbox reaches 20, and then I reopen it again when I get it back down to 5. You can check the status of my requests at the top of this post. Events have separate rules and guidelines, which are always explained in the post. If I have an event going on, it'll be tagged in the announcement section at the top of this post!

What should I include in my request?

Reader gender (if you dont specify I'll just do non-gendered), characters you want (try to limit it to 3 or 4, or else I might pick and choose from the list and omit some characters), the scenario you want, you can also clarify if you want a headcanon list or a short fic!

Edit to add: Just a friendly reminder, the more characters you add to a request, the more overwhelming it is for me (and more likely it is to get deleted! 3 characters really is the sweet spot!)

What requests do you accept?

Just about anything. I do occasionally post NSFW, but it’s always tagged and marked. I have a few hard no’s, though:

Relationship situations for minors/large age gaps, pedophilia, grooming, incest, noncon (that’s not a cohesive list, but you get the gist).

Do you write for polys?

Maybe! Polys are hard for me to write. I struggle making the relationship balance equal and keeping people in character while also doing justice to a well-written relationship w/o being too corny. But! If you send it in, I'll at least give it a shot :)

Who can I request?

Just about anyone from One Piece, and I'll do my best given the scenario. Some people I will definitely always write for and take almost any request you send are:

Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, Ace, Law, Kidd, Shanks, and Buggy

Everyone else is hit or miss on if I can imagine their scenarios, but I'll do my best. Some people who I really struggle writing are: Crocodile, Doffy, Izou (And I will not write for Gol Roger ever because I hate him 💕)

How detailed should my request be?

Try to keep it a healthy medium! If there are important aspects you want to be included in your story, let me know :) But try to avoid giving me a play-by-play. That level of detail makes me feel trapped and it's hard to take a creative spin on it. If you have a story you are imagining in your head and you want someone to write it...well, have you considered being a writer? :)

I have more than one request...

Try to limit your requests to 1 or 2, please! We want room for other people to have their ideas to come to light. If you have two ideas, you need to submit two separate messages. Please do not put two story ideas together in a request, or I will just write one :)

Do you take commissions? How can I support you?

I don't take commissions yet, but I think they are in the works. When they do appear, they'll appear on my Ko-fi account (where you can also support me through donations if you so feel inclined!)

What tags do you use (for blacklisting or other purposes)?

Most of my blog is writing, but here's how I tag certain things in case you want to blacklist or follow them:

"cozage" - any type of writing for One Piece I do will have this (just to show it's my work)

"coza thoughts" - May be my daily thoughts/info about writing. No substance though, just me.

"coza asks" - messages that I get that aren't requests. Usually just me responding to people

all the pairings also get tagged as well, so if you were to search "Zoro" hashtag on my page, any fics with him would come up

Do you have an AO3?

Yes! Same name as here. I put a lot of my short multi-chapter fics there (but Tumblr gets all the updates first) BUT here’s a link to it.

Is there anything else I should know?

Please just remember that when you send me a request or a message, I may not always respond to it. I do always read them, though! I just don't always respond because I don't want to clog up my page with posts that aren't content. Don’t get me wrong, I love hearing everyone’s ideas and working together with you all to bring these ideas to life. Send the ask, let me know what you think and how you feel and all of your ideas, but remember that I’m human too! I have feelings and friends and a life outside of writing for our favorite One Piece characters. I look forward to reading your thoughts, and sharing mine with you.

Love, Coza <3

#coza thoughts #faq

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rallamajoop · 1 year

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On the Epic of Gilgamesh: The World's First Big Budget Adaptation

My Yuletide assignment this year was an excuse for me to reread (and rediscover everything I loved about) The Epic of Gilgamesh ‒ and I can seldom resist the excuse to ramble about this kind of thing, but where do you even start, with a work like Gilgamesh? It’s the world’s oldest (known) work of literature, it features an all-but-canon m/m romance, and (even from incomplete reconstructions from languages which have been dead and alien for millennia) its central themes and most striking imagery still resonate to this day.

But perhaps my favourite thing is that it’s also what amounts to the world’s first ever big-budget adaptation of an existing story, complete with extra of sex and violence, a tropey bromance between its male leads, gratuitous cameos from other popular mythic figures, and even this one wonderfully confusing deleted bonus-scene, tacked on at the end like a DVD extra. I’m not even kidding.

Let me explain.

The oldest surviving stories about Gilgamesh – a semi-divine, semi-mythical Sumerian king – were inscribed on clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia (modern day Saudi Arabia) somewhere around 2000 BC. Five distinct poems from this era have survived in variously-complete format. Gilgamesh and Akka tells of how Gilgamesh gained independence for Uruk from the kingdom of Kish (ruled by the titular Akka, in what seems to be the one Gilgamesh tale most likely to have some real historical basis). Gilgamesh and Huwawa and Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven both recount his battles with their respective monsters. Gilgamesh and the Netherworld deals with the death of his servant Enkidu, whose shade is briefly allowed to return to the mortal realms to report on what awaits in the hereafter. And finally, The Death of Gilgamesh deals with Gilgamesh’s death from illness, the gods decreeing that semi-divine isn’t sufficient for immortality.

But these aren’t the best-known version of Gilgamesh. A few centuries later, someone took those existing tales and reworked them into a single, cohesive epic, spanning 11 tablets (plus one confusing bonus tablet that we’ll get to later on). The new, integrated epic promotes Enkidu from merely a servant to Gilgamesh’s equal: created to be his companion by the gods, in answer to prayers of the people, exhausted by Gilgamesh’s tyrannical rule.

In all the best traditions of modern shonen manga, Gilgamesh and Enkidu meet, fight, and then become fast friends. Together, they battle both Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven, in episodes only lightly reworked from the original poems. But this time, these acts anger the gods, and their punishment is Enkidu’s death. Distraught at the loss of his friend, and faced with the horror of his own mortality, Gilgamesh goes on a quest to find the one man the gods ever made immortal: Utnapishtim, the Sumerian Noah (our gratuitous cameo). But Utnapishtim can only tell Gilgamesh that, short of saving the world from another biblical flood, his quest is a fool’s errand. Finally accepting his own mortality, Gilgamesh returns home. (This is, of course, a very summarised version of the full epic, but you get the general gist.)

Comparing the epic to the ‘original’ poems can be a little fraught, considering that even after reconstruction from multiple different partially-preserved copies, there are still gaps in both versions. We can only speculate whether there might have been other Sumerian poems that haven’t survived ‒ let alone how many other variations existed in oral tradition throughout the region and beyond. But for all the epic version adds and changes, what stands out most is how they’ve picked up and expanded on what was already the strongest running theme of the Sumerian stories: mortality – whether that be the desire to leave behind a record of great deeds to be remembered by (such as the slaying of monsters), or more explicitly in those final two poems, dealing with Enkidu and Gilgamesh's deaths.

For all that’s been added, the promotion of Enkidu to Gilgamesh’s equal does have more basis in the Sumerian originals that it might first appear. Though explicitly only 'a servant', Enkidu is the only other character appearing (or at least mentioned) in every poem, aiding his king in his struggles against Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. In sending Gilgamesh to the netherworld upon his death, the gods even note that he will be reunited with his ‘beloved’ Enkidu, whose death he so fervently mourned. And though everything else in the circumstances of Enkidu’s death has been changed, both versions render it a major event, and one that leaves Gilgamesh heartbroken.

There’s even a trace of epic!Gilgamesh’s tyranny in Gilgamesh and the Netherworld, where he so exhausts the men of Uruk with his games and contests (similar accusations to the first chapter of the epic) that the gods themselves step in, arranging for his favourite toys to fall through a crack in the earth into the Netherworld (prompting Enkidu to volunteer to retrieve them… and you can see where this is going).

But for all the adaptation takes from those old poems, some of its most striking chapters are (as far as we know) completely new – including all of Enkidu’s backstory. The Gilgamesh of the epic is still respected as a wise and powerful ruler, and he still exhausts the men of Uruk with his contests, but now, he’s also been asserting his right to droit de signeur (yes, really – that trope goes this far back), and his people aren’t happy. The gods’ solution is to make the semi-divine Gilgamesh an equal: Enkidu the wild man, raised in the wilderness by beasts. Nearly as huge and powerful as Gilgamesh himself, Enkidu soon becomes a problem for hunters trying to make their living nearby.

How do you solve a problem like a wild man? Well, obviously, you introduce him to sex.

Gilgamesh’s solution to the Enkidu-problem is to send Shamhat, a cultic prostitute of the temple of Ishtar (ritual sex was apparently a Big Thing in some ancient fertility cults) – and it works. After a full seven days of sex with Shamhat (look, this is why you send a professional), Enkidu finds he can now understand the language of men, but the wild animals reject him. Something stirs in him when Shamhat tells him of Uruk and Gilgamesh, but the tipping point comes when he learns Gilgamesh is due to make a scheduled appearance at an upcoming wedding (ifyouknowwhatimean). Enkidu rushes to Uruk, intercepts Gilgamesh on the very doorstep of the bride in question, and the two demi-gods proceed to throw down. And then become instant BFFs. Seriously, I wasn’t kidding about how very Shonen Jump it is; I don’t know what else to tell you.

Now, to what degree these new intro chapters were an excuse to sex things up and get the audience’s attention, I can only speculate – but there is a lot of sex in these first two tablets (and next to none afterwards). Regardless, this feels like the perfect place to segue into what for many will be the more pressing question: just how gay is the Epic of Gilgamesh?

Because I mean, just on a surface level, it’s already pretty suggestive: Enkidu, having newly discovered sex, shows up to pointedly cockblock Gilgamesh’s appointment with a young lady, and one round of (ahem) "wrestling" later, suddenly they really like each other. And the mere fact the gods’ solution to "this guy keeps exhausting all our men and fucking all our women!" is to send him Enkidu… you’ve got to wonder if he’s just a wrestling partner on Gilgamesh’s own level, or is he meant to satisfy other needs as well?

But you really don’t need slash-goggles to find subtext in this tale. Even the academics are here for this one.

Significantly, Enkidu’s coming is foretold to Gilgamesh in a series of prophetic dreams, helpfully interpreted for him by the goddess Ninsun, his mother. In the first, Enkidu is represented by a meteor that falls down before Gilgamesh – and to quote George’s translation directly, Gilgamesh recalls, “Like a wife I loved it, caressed and embraced it.” This is not what you'd call ambiguous wording. His mother corrects this only in that the meteor is to be a man – and to drive this point home, Enkidu spends much of the rest of the poem being described as having strength “as mighty as a rock from the sky.” If that wasn’t all suggestive enough, one might also note that Enkidu does his share of “caressing and embracing” (that same wording, presumably going all the way back to the original language) of Shamhat during their week-long sex marathon too.

Then Gilgamesh has his second dream – almost beat-for-beat identical to the first, except that now Enkidu appears as an axe rather than meteor. This is a little more confusing. Both are certainly dangerous objects which hit hard, but axes don’t generally fall from the sky, and Enkidu is never compared to an axe again. So why include it?

The most compelling (and really the only) academic explanation I’ve seen put forward is that both objects may be playful Akkadian puns. Kisru (meteor) evokes kezru, and hassinu (axe) evokes assinnu – and both kezru and assinnu are apparently terms for types of male cultic prostitute: men who have sex with other men. Lest you wonder if this might be reaching, that amazing “Like a wife I loved it” line is still right there. It all adds up.

Before we get too carried away with pre-historic queer representation though, it’s notable that even in a time where apparently no-one batted an eye at male cultic prostitutes, the Gilgamesh/Enkidu subtext would be left largely as the stuff of implication – but the pattern is also weirdly familiar. Like modern media adaptations from Sherlock to Captain America: Winter Soldier, it’s plain the screenwriters absolutely want to imbue their central male/male relationships with all the intensity and pathos (and maybe even a bit of wink-wink-nudge-nudge) of a romance, and yet stop short of making it explicit. I cannot begin to guess whether the same forces were in play here, but the resonance is still pretty striking.

We’re still not done with gay-Gilgamesh-shenanigans though, because we’ve still got to cover that mysterious, DVD-extra of a 12th tablet, which may-or-may-not include an actual, textual statement of how much Gilgamesh likes handling Enkidu’s dick.

This one is going to need some more context. See, the 12th and final tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh consists of a fairly-literal Akkadian translation of the latter half of the original Sumerian poem, Gilgamesh and the Netherworld. Narratively speaking, this is a bit of a record-scratch moment, because not only has the epic already reached its logical conclusion as of the end of tablet 11, Gilgamesh and the Netherworld is the one that revolves around the death of Enkidu – and in the new epic version, Enkidu has already died in completely different circumstances, way back in tablet 7. So what the hell is it doing here?

The best guess as to why anyone felt the need to include this episode in its original form is that the bulk of the original Sumerian poem relays a detailed account of how one’s actions in life will affect one’s prospects in the hereafter. Enkidu’s shade dutifully reports that a Sumerian citizen who hopes to be comfortable in the netherworld must have plenty of sons (to make offerings in the name of their departed father), must show respect to the gods, must die peacefully – the list goes on. The material has transcended the world of poetry and moved into scripture – and that may have been considered worth preserving long after the original tales were lost.

So where does the dick-touching come in? Brace yourselves: Enkidu’s account of the netherworld includes some graphic details about what happens to your junk. That crotch you touched, so that your heart rejoiced, is filled with dust like a crack in the ground. And so on.

Here’s where making definitive statements about this passage get messy. There are at least two different versions (the original Sumerian and the one from the epic) in different languages, and not always preserved well enough that all the words are still legible. So I’ve seen translations where it seems to be Enkidu’s own body that Gilgamesh ‘rejoiced to touch’. I’ve seen versions where it seems to be some unnamed woman’s body instead. Or maybe Enkidu’s saying that even having a wank isn’t worth much rejoicing in the afterlife (and for the record, I’ve seen all the above in just the work of just one author, Andrew George. Consensus is not a luxury we have here). There’s some ambiguity there, and I have no idea how much of that is down to interpretation, translation, or the actual state of the text. The 12th tablet of the epic of Gilgamesh remains a mystery stuffed into an enigma (then presumably filled in with dust).

Anyhow, back to the main text of the epic. From the meeting of Enkidu and Gilgamesh, things happen surprisingly fast. Gilgamesh immediately proposes a trip to the cedar forest to slay the monster Huwawa: an act which so impresses the goddess Ishtar that she hits on Gilgamesh, he rejects her, and she sends the Bull of Heaven to punish him. Angered by the death of both Huwawa and the bull, the gods inflict a fatal illness on Enkidu, whose death leaves Gilgamesh heartbroken. Like screenwriters trying to cram everything from Captain America’s origin story to his emergence from the ice into a single movie, the complete tale of Gilgamesh’s time with his literally-god-given-soulmate seems like it’s been compressed down to maybe a couple of months, max. But such is the nature of adaptations like this one.

But the best parts of the epic are hardly over. Gilgamesh’s search for Utnapishtim, the one man ever made immortal by the gods, will see him meet scorpion men and stone men, will take him across a sea whose very touch is death, and force him to race the sun through the tunnel it takes each night under the earth. He finds the man he seeks at the end of the world – which is our poet’s excuse to include the entire Sumerian flood myth in the narrative, as Utnapishtim recites exactly what he had to do to earn his immortality.

Gratuitous as it may be, this is not a complaint. I kind of love the pre-biblical Sumerian version of this story – not least because, despite being initiated by the most revered of the gods, the deluge sent to punish mankind for their ills is unambiguously framed as a mistake. Mankind is saved only because Ea, wisest of the gods, sneakily breaks his oath of secrecy by alerting Utnapishtim to the danger and directing him to build his ark – and Ea gets away with it by directing his warning not to the man himself but to the fence outside his home, so he can honestly tell the other gods “Who me? I didn’t tell anyone, I only whispered it to a fence!” (I like to imagine him walking away from that initial meeting with the other gods rolling his eyes, going, “Well someone’s gonna regret this in the morning, you just wait. Alright, alright, damage control time…”)

And the gods absolutely do regret the deluge. When at last the rain stops, and Utnapishtim lights some incense in ritual thanks to the gods for his survival, the text describes the parched gods clustering around the smoke of the offering like flies. To find something like that – that comes so close to suggesting that the gods themselves depend on humanity for some measure of their power and comfort – in a text this old blows my mind a little. It’s also a hell of an image.

In any version of Gilgamesh, the general attitude to the gods has a lot of commonalities to what you’d find in, say, Greek mythology. The gods are absolutely divine and worthy of worship, but also come across as one huge, long-running soap opera of privilege, dysfunction and pettiness. Even the Athenians, though, generally kept the image of their patron goddess Athena reasonably clean. By contrast, when Uruk’s own patroness Ishtar appears in the tale, her role is to hit on Gilgamesh, be rejected, go crying to her father for help, and send the Bull of Heaven down for revenge. Gilgamesh insults her, kills the bull, and even hurls part of its carcass at her as a parting blow. He then makes flasks of its horns and presents them to her own temple in her honour. For bonus confusion, the original Sumerian Gilgamesh and the Netherworld also opens with a passage where Gilgamesh does Ishtar a much-appreciated favour in clearing out the demons infesting a divine tree. What on earth are we supposed to make of it all? The worship of Ishtar must have taken some truly god-level compartmentalisation.

Much as I love Gilgamesh, some of it is inescapably pretty impenetrable to the casual modern reader. If you were paying attention back at that very first bit about Gilgamesh and the Netherworld, for example, you might have caught that plot point where the great king Gilgamesh so exhausted all the men of Uruk with his games that the gods themselves had to step in and take his toys away. What those toys were isn’t totally clear, but the best guess seems to be a ball and a mallet. These were made of wood from that divine tree, but even so – was ancient Sumerian croquet really that intense? You’ll run into stuff like this a lot reading any version of Gilgamesh – scholars will do their best, but some of it just doesn’t translate, reminding you you’re reading something written in a cultural context no-one’s seen in over 4000 years.

But that only makes it all the more fascinating when (like finding bits of Shakespeare in the infinite monkey cage) you run into the stuff that does still resonate. I could not tell you why Gilgamesh begins his case for why they should rebel against Kish with a spiel about the digging and/or operation of wells – but then you get to the bit where Akka compares Uruk with its great city walls of Uruk to a cloudbank sitting on the earth, or the part where Enkidu finally responds to Akka’s repeated demands of, “Slave, is that man your king?” with, “That man is indeed my king!” – and even separated from the poet by several millennia and the hard work of so many archaeologists to piece this thing back together, the words and the imagery still get me.

I could go on here. There’s so much I love in the various versions of Gilgamesh, so much that fascinates me and confuses me (and has very much tipped me back down multiple research rabbit-holes trying to get my head around it). But as both a gigantic nerd and fanfic writer, my favourite thing might still be learning just how far back the human tradition of telling and retelling old stories goes, recreating and adapting them in new formats, to resonate with new audiences. There isn’t a doubt in my head that even way back in ancient Akkadia, there were grumpy old fans arguing that this modern newfangled epic isn’t a patch on the proper old Sumerian poems – look at all the good bits they skipped and all the stuff they got wrong! Why, you realise they aren’t even teaching scribes proper Sumerian in school anymore? Pah, no respect for the classics!

Anyway, if you’ve never read the Epic of Gilgamesh in full (and it’s really not so long it’ll take you long to do), this would be my cue to recommend you Stephen Mitchell’s version as probably the most accessible English language introduction. This one is (in his own words) explicitly a version, not a translation: Mitchell isn’t a Mesopotamian scholar, but a poet, and his goal was to create something in semi-modern verse that captures as much of the original as possible in a format more accessible to the contemporary English-speaking reader ‒ patching over the holes as best as possible. And I can only applaud him the effort: after all, it’s nothing people haven’t already been doing with Gilgamesh for thousands of years.

But if you’d like to go a bit further down the rabbit hole, my other key source was Andrew George’s translation. George is an academic, and his version is a far more literal translation, preserving the gaps where we still don’t know exactly what’s missing, but including as much as possible from the various different versions which survive to us in different places – including those original Sumerian poems. Both Michell’s and George’s books are available quite cheaply as ebooks. (George’s much-longer and much-more-academic two volume work on Gilgamesh isn’t available as an ebook, alas, but can also be found in pdf format pretty easily on the web too).

Finally, I’ve got to rec you Irving Finkel’s talk on his work on even older versions of that flood myth – it’s only tangentially related to Gilgamesh, but damn, it’s fascinating too!

#Gilgamesh #The Epic of Gilgamesh #Enkidu #meta #just how gay is the Epic of Gilgamesh?

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geekgemsspooksandtoons · 2 months

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Hilda Appreciation Week Day Seven

@hilda-appreciation-week #hildaappreciationweek2024

Day Seven: Free Day/Favorite AU(s) (Yours, someone else's, or both!)

Now it's the last day and it's a free one. Specifically about AU's and whatever else. But I'm going to admit this. I don't really have a favorite AU. I don't really delve into many AU's in the Hilda fanbase. But you know, I have read some stuff that is AU related. Even though I mainly read stuff that could be friendly to canon or not. It depends, but again, I don't know every AU and I don't catch up with them. But I want to give praise to @wildflowers-of-trolberg and her amazing "Runaway Hilda" AU.

While I have only read the "Main" story of it. Not any of the side stories from what I know. But I am genuinely impressed with the amount of work Pikablob has done for making this one big AU. She is a very talented person with all of the writing she has done. Even if we disagree on certain things. I'd recommend checking out their account if you like HIlda.

I also need to read @hyperpsychomaniac 's work as well because they are very talented from what I've seen.

But I want to talk about my own stuff. It's something I've thought of before. But it's still in development. I question if I'll continue it. It all started with a...simple story of Eda meeting Johanna in a certain scenario. And I should continue trying to write a cohesive timeline that pretty much contains Hilda, The Owl House and Infinity Train in one multiverse.

I try to make my stories canon friendly where you can imagine they likely happen in canon before or after certain things. But I did change one thing for Infinity Train. Mainly the end of book 3. But everything else before those events are canon. I'm speaking about books 4, 1, 2 and book 3 episodes 1-8.

One of the challenges I know I am going to face is adding Hilda season 3 into the timeline. Because that season revealed some game changing information for the series. But also, I have thought maybe because of season 3, the multiverse connecting these three shows might be so much easier.

Granted, I have nothing major with any huge crossovers. I've mainly written some Joheda stuff. Even though I'd REALLY want to write some major stuff with Infinity Train. My old plans were to include Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur into it. But I felt because of other plans and other things I've been thinking, I'd likely rather not add a Marvel property into it.

Yet I had announced that I would planning to add Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss into this timeline with this meme. https://www.tumblr.com/geekgemsspooksandtoons/740457984559300608/holy-shit-he-hasnt-even-written-a-story-where?source=share

But I genuinely question about deleting that and if I want to go with through with that. Because season 1 is only a thing and season 2 is going to introduce a lot of new stuff. Yet I like the funny idea of characters like Erik Ahlberg, Emperor Belos, Simon Laurent, Amelia Hughes, Adam, Lute, Alastor and the Vee's all exist in the same multiverse. Yet I should say that would be pretty terrifying.

In a nutshell, I have thought I basically made my own MCU using shows that you need to watch to understand this timeline if I were to ever crossover more of them.

I'm getting distracted and should post this. This is the last of my Hilda appreciation week posts. Thank you all for liking my previous posts. :) I really liked that this existed. It's a great way to have the fandom talk about what they love about the show.

#hilda the series #hildaappreciationweek2024

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heckitall · 8 months

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How do military ranks work? Especially between different branches. Ik that like admiral is for navy but the rest of the terminology is lost on me lol

WOOF

okay! first of all, you're completely right - ranks across the US branches are completely different which is extremely dumb. We don't even know all of them, we only memorize the ones within our own branch (and if we work closely with a sister branch).

ranks are broken up into two sections: enlisted and officers. i explained this the other day kind of morbidly, but basically it works out to:

enlisted -> meatshields

officers -> meatshield directors

officers join the military with degrees that usually the military paid for them to get. meaning, the military was like, hey we need people who have a degree in x

and people are like "oh i want that degree"

and the military goes "great! once you have said degree, you belong to us for 4-6 years"

and people agree to that. officers are the leaders. a group of enlisted are always overseen by officers of varying ranks.

now, enlisted (which is what i was) can be any Schmoe off the street. ie, i had no where else to go and was desperate and the military said "hey we can board and feed you for the next 4-6 years" and i said "oh that's nice" and they said "great we own you now".

enlisted salute officers (enlisted are never saluted (unless you're me and wore an officer rank one afternoon to see how long it took anyone to notice AND I GOT IN A LOT OF TROUBLE DO NOT RECOMMEND)

officers only salute higher ranking officers (ie, a first lieutenant salutes a captain)

enlisted do the grunt work. towards the end of my career, i got to oversee officers (and BOY DID THEY HATE THAT) and whenever we needed something done (like a closet cleaned out) the officers would go "this looks like an enlisted job"

not saying officers are terrible

or that enlisted are worthless

you need both to work cohesively in the kind of environments the military works in

usually the first 4-ish ranks on both enlisted and officers are 'give away' ranks. meaning if you don't get into a bunch of trouble, you'll make rank just based on time. after that, making rank requires testing.

even tho ranks are different across the sister branches, they also go by a number code. E-1 thru E-8 are enlisted, while O-1 thru O-6 (and higher) are officers.

so an E-2 in the Air Force is an Airman First Class

an E-2 in the Army is Private 2nd Class

an O-3 in the Air Force is a Captain

an O-3 in the Army is also a Captain. in fact, i'm pretty sure captain is one of the only ranks that's in all branches of the US military. so bad example. but my point still stands lmao

officers and enlisted DO NOT INTERMINGLE. seriously. no dating, no interacting outside of work (within reason), no "showing favorites". officers are untouchable gods to enlisted. it's weird. trust me.

i once matched with my lieutenant on a dating app and deleted the whole app because i was scared it was a trap (it probably was).

uhhhhh i hope that sort of helps! i figured if you were looking for actual rank names, it might be easier to google them. if youre using ranks for a story, i'd first figure out which branch you want them from and then google the ranking system. E4/O3 is when most people become competent in the military.

#heck asks #military #us military #military ranks #or you can be like most movies and just make up ranks lmao #us air force #us army

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oakleaf--bearer · 4 months

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hi!! sorry if this is rude or weird or anythin, feel free to delete it if you don't want to answer, but- do you ever plan to update "how to bend not break the rules"? and if not, would you be open to someone making a continuation fic of it?

hey! absolutely no worries!!

i am sorry for how long the hiatus for htbnbtr has been, it was not at all planned to be like that. to cut a long story short, a lot has happened in the last year that has meant that writing has been extremely difficult, so i have been focusing those spoons on other projects such as my book instead (which!! might be being published next year!!!). i shouldve probably explained this earlier, but i genuinely didnt know when i would be back for it. burnout is a bitch, and it got to the point where i didnt know who i was writing for anymore

however, i did a reread of htbnbtr a few weeks ago and it reignited my love of it. theres still some notes left from before the hiatus that could become future chapters or spin off fics (college au anyone?), or i had been potentially floating the idea of a rewrite with a more cohesive plot! i do want to return to it, i owe it so so much at this point, and if there is still an audience for it then i would love to fulfil yalls wishes - htbnbtr has always had such a great community that i would want to do right by you all. i want to write for the readers, this time not out of an obligation but out of a mutual love for the work.

also,,, there is now a real possibility of having illustrations in some of the future chapters.....

that being said, if i can shake my brain back into gear and get these notes coherent again, i will seriously consider posting these chapters even if there isnt readers. writing is so so fun

in terms of continuation fics, im down for that!! these characters are fantastic and i love that people are inspired by them. all in all, so long as there is at least an attempt to credit me for the characters, then im okay with it! my only boundary is that i am not comfortable with smut being written for them - they are children, please dont be weird.

tldr! htbnbtr may be returning for 2024!!!

#anon ask #my inbox #yall are literally the best readers in the world and i have been so so lucky with yall #create away!! if theres a story you wanna write then write!!!

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lavenderpanic · 5 months

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Deleted Scenes from Chapter 10 of I Am Ash From Your Fire

I took a few scenes out because they didn't fit cohesively, so I'm going to post them here. NOTE: These are part of a bigger fic, this is not a standalone fic and will not make sense if you aren't familiar with the rest of the fic, all warnings from Chapter 10 apply to these excerpts.

“Something’s seriously wrong,” Steve sighs exasperatedly, pausing in his pacing just long enough to look at Sam and Natasha. “Wanda said he just… quit. No explanation. She said she could tell Brock was there, instructing him on what to say.”

“What can we do?” Natasha sighs, hugging the pillow cradled to her chest even tighter. “We can’t call the police, obviously, and even if we could, Bucky doesn’t seem to want to leave.”

“He’s obviously being abused, who gives a shit what he says?”

Sam lets out a belabored groan. “Steve, if he says he wants is, that’s it. He’s already on record talking to doctors and social workers saying he consents to whatever Brock does. If they both agree that they want it, there’s not much we can do.”

“We need to get to Bucky,” Natasha says gently. “He needs to realize, without being forced, that he has to leave.”

Steve scoffs lightly, continuing his feverish pace from one side of his apartment to the other. “Yeah, real easy when he’s locked at home all day, no way to contact him. I mean, I’ve seen the shape he’s in after Brock hurts him, how much worse does it have to get before he realizes? I don’t think it can get any worse.”

“He has to leave his apartment at some point,” Sam reasons. “And Brock’s a cop, there must be times he’s out and Bucky’s alone.”

“There’s cameras,” Natasha shakes her head. “He’d recognize us if he saw us, Sam, probably you too, Steve. But you’re right, maybe Bucky does go somewhere during the day.”

Steve’s pacing slows down as he tries to think of places Bucky might go in his free time. “He told me he’s been going to the gym for the past few weeks. And I doubt Brock does his own errands, I bet he goes to the store or the dry cleaners or someplace like that.”

Natasha sighs again. “That won’t give us enough time, though. Even if we can get, what, five minutes alone with him? Nothing we can say in five minutes is gonna make him leave. We’ve been trying to convince him since we’ve known him.”

“So we have nothing. No way to help him, no– no fucking plan?”

“There isn’t just a set of code words to snap him out of it,” Sam says softly. “If he really doesn’t understand that what Brock’s doing is wrong… arguments that sound logical to us aren’t going to change his mind. Most people who leave go back, multiple times. I think the most important thing is that Bucky knows he can leave, that he has somewhere to go, someone to support him, when he does.”

“I can’t just wait around while he’s getting hurt,” Steve whispers. “I was there, in the hospital, I saw the state he was in. He almost died and he still got mad that I called an ambulance. He was literally on the verge of death and Brock was blaming him for passing out. What happens if he has another emergency and he doesn’t have someone to force him to get help?”

“It’s painful,” Natasha agrees. “I see it a lot, with the people who come to the shelter. I watch them go back and get hurt over and over again. But I promise you, the more forceful you are, the less likely they are to come back at all.”

“I know it’s hard,” Sam sighs. “But last time he needed help, he went right to you. That’s a good sign.”

Steve shouldn’t get excited when his phone buzzes anymore. It’ll never be Bucky. It hasn’t been, for weeks. He wouldn’t dare call, he doesn’t want Bucky getting in trouble on his account, but he nearly has about a hundred times. He was satiated, slightly, when Sam told him he saw Bucky at the store. He’s alive, at least, or was last week. It worried him to hear Sam’s recollection of the state he was in– exhausted, bruised up, about what he expected– but any confirmation that he’s alive is enough for Steve.

Even so, even though he knows he shouldn’t still hold onto that hope, he feels his heart pick up when his phone buzzes. The hope deflates when, of course, it isn’t Bucky, but instead an Instagram notification. He clicks on it, really just out of curiosity. He doesn’t do much on Instagram but post his drawings, and he rarely has new people follow him. As soon as he opens the app, a message pops up.

b3cca_barn3s: hey ur buckys friend, right?

rogers070420: Yeah it’s Steve! Is everything alright?

b3cca_barn3s: i was actually kinda hoping u would know. he hasn’t answered anyones calls or texts in forever. hes never ignored me like this. is he ok? :(

rogers070420: I honestly haven’t heard from him either, I’m really sorry. I wish I could help. My friend Sam saw him a couple days ago at the store, but he hasn’t called or anything.

b3cca_barn3s: oh :( ty anyway. plz lmk if he texts u

rogers070420: I will! Let me know if there’s anything else I can help with

#i am ash from your fire #iaafyf #fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #bucky barnes fanfiction

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gleesongtournament · 1 year

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Glee Song Tournament Update #1

I’m hoping to start the tournament on Sunday the 16th, but I will post a more concrete confirmation of the schedule once I get it 100% sorted

For now I wanted to talk about the songs that are included and excluded, and how I’ve set this up

What didn’t I included? Well the only two concrete answers were anything that was just a dance performance with the original song in the background (Single Ladies, Bubble Toes, etc), and any song that was album only with no filmed scene to go with it (Dancing On My Own, I Was Here, etc)

Some musical moments I left out might seem hypocritical. I left out songs by rival glee clubs that basically only served to show that yes, there is a third club competing, here’s ten seconds of their song (Broken Wings, Starlight Express, etc) but I included ten second snippets of songs from main characters (Respect, Mr. Cellophane, etc)

I also didn’t included (most) songs whose only purpose was to be bad or get cut off which unfortunately cuts out half the times Tina got to sing. Some exceptions are Crush (because we at least got a full studio version) and Pink Houses (which we heard enough of in the episode). But things like The Climb or Revolution will not be found here

Lastly, songs in deleted scenes. These were cut or kept in based on what I thought was more popular. I can understand someone being miffed if Santa Baby or I Want You Back wasn't included, but I doubt anyone would care as much about Oklahoma or Mr. Monotony (if you stan the latter two songs, I'm sorry). So I only kept in the ones I thought were more well known/liked

If you're upset about one of the above songs not being included, or think I'm not being fair, you should know that there will be 340 match ups consisting of 681 songs in round one alone. I only trimmed the tiniest amount of fat, and I promise there are still plenty of songs for you to vote on. But hopefully everyone can understand where I'm coming from and just accept what got cut x

Now, with hundreds and hundreds of songs in the mix, I wanted to do something a little more interesting than just throwing a million random match ups your way with no rhyme or reason. Bc 1) It could get boring and repetitive and 2) It could be harder to follow if it weren't split up in some cohesive way. That's where the categories come in

What are the categories? Generally speaking, they're the ways I've broken down the polls into themed sections. Hopefully this will make everything easier to follow, plus who doesn't love some good theming?? Specifically, the categories are...

Holiday Songs. All the Christmas songs + the one Hanukkah song. If you hate Christmas music, feel free to skip this round

Original Songs. Basically just any songs that aren't covers, whether it's the humorous or serious ones

Mash Ups. All the songs that are two songs combined

Same Songs. The songs that were covered multiple times on the show, pitted against one another. The only round that isn't matched up randomly

Tributes. Songs by artists/from musicals that the show frequently paid homage to (RHPS, WSS, Grease, Beatles, Britney, Fleetwood Mac, the Jackson fam, Madonna, Whitney, Stevie Wonder)(also the songs are from all eps, not just the one(s) that served as the actual tribute ep)

Musicals. Songs from musicals not listed in the last bullet point

Rivals. Songs performed by opposing glee clubs (The Warblers, Vocal Adrenaline, etc)

Guest Stars. Songs performed by, or heavily featuring, any of Glee's numerous celebrity cast members

New Directions. Songs performed by the main club. (Not necessarily a group number. Could be sung by half the club, or even two or three people, but as long as the rest of the club is there vibing, it counts)

Solos. Songs sung by one main or recurring character

Duets. Songs sung by two main or recurring characters

Misc. Everything else! Mostly trios, quartets, or group numbers that go beyond just ND

Of course there are plenty of songs that could fit into multiple categories. For example, "Somewhere" could fall under Tribute, Guest Star, and Duet, but will only be included in one of those. So if you think I left something out of a certain category, don't worry, you'll see it pop up in a different one later!

So I think that's all the basics so far. If you have any questions you can send them here or on my main @angelhummel

#glee #glee song tournament #klaine #pezberry #brittana #faberry #quinn fabray #blaine anderson #santana lopez #kurt hummel #mercedes jones #tina cohen chang #rachel berry #brittany pierce #finn hudson #etc etc

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pinkmoondoll9shihtzu · 1 year

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diiary 2/25/2023

okayyy i been needing to write a longform post for a while! just to chronicle some thoughts in a cohesive way. & getting straight to the point: i'm realizing there is very little, if ANY payoff, to being an artist online. i'm not talking about money. im talking about the way it's like, the more ppl start to see you as an "artist", the more they feel like ur some kind of public figure they can lash out at w no repercussions. ur humanity is just wiped from their minds. i don't have some huge following by any means but for ME its gotten big since in the past i've been a serial deleter. usually at 800 followers im gone.

i love being creative & sharing for the sake of sharing but i deeply fear any kind of spotlight. since i came back onto tumblr i made the pledge to myself not to delete my account if it started growing but now im having second thoughts!! well i'll never delete this account cus im too sentimental but part of me just wants to stop posting in the ways i tend to do. like maube im too forthcoming & need to slink back into the shadows a bit. because i don't want to stop contributing art & music to the world but idk how to protect my heart.

like it's so crazy to me that artists are expected to b these idealistic icons of everything the viewer represents & if they make a single mistake its like fuck we better launch a pUBLIC HARASSMENT CAMPAIGN!! genuinely like, how are people supposed to want to put themselves out there when the climate is so hostile? it has got me feelin rly nihilistic i must admit. trying to put nice stuff into the world shld not be generating drama for me, especially when it's just my hobby & not even my "career".

for a while ive had no idea what to do for work or how to generate income in a way that works for me but honestly? im gonna bite the bullet & do some coding bootcamps so i can try n get a remote job doing some tech shit & making a fat salary. i guess i never rly considerd it before cus all the silicon valley stuff susses me out but idk. im naturally really good at code + my only real dream in life is to be able to support others & redistribute wealth. like ive never had anything of my own to share but if i could actually do this & become the secure+charitable person i wish to be, i think i cld finally have some inner peace/sense of fulfillment. plus i cld still be a recluse ^_^

ok well i guess that my diary entry for now. im rly grateful to everyone on this site who is genuine & respectful towards me. i am really enjoying all my creative projects right now & i just dont want it to ever stop being fun just because the internet doesnt want it to be fun for me. i seriously wonder why artists are the number one targets right now, i mean not to get too conspiratorial but like, this is exactly what the CIA wants :/ wahtever....i have no agenda other than plur. but yeah, i might just start to distance myself more from posting anything other than my work. we'll see. just kno that i dnt want it to b this way. ilu guys

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deepspacedukat · 1 year

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Recenter

I was in a very introspective mood, and while I was asking myself some very important questions, I felt an intense desire to untangle some thoughts via a character. Obviously this doesn’t reflect my situation, but this is how I felt S’Talon might handle similar questions. I didn’t even intend to write anything cohesive or post-worthy, but I didn’t want to just delete this. May as well toss it into the void that is tumblr dot com. In my mind, this is pre-Raptor’s Descent Enjoy!

S’Talon belongs to @bigblissandlove1 - thank you so much, friend, for allowing me to use your pretty Romulan Captain Mans to ramble like this! 💖

Cross-posted to AO3 here.

~*~

S’Talon (OC)

[A/N: I was in a mood. S’Talon decided to pop in and exist in my brain for a while.]

Warnings: None, unless introspection and discussions of artistic processes bothers you.

~*~

As S’Talon stared at the blank canvas before him, he almost felt as though it was staring back at him. The last mission he’d returned from had been difficult, and it left him feeling exponentially more introspective and reserved than he normally did. Everything felt just a little bit more up in the air...less tethered than it had before, and he found himself wondering why.

He hadn’t felt this unsettled in decades. His first mission with the Tal Shiar had been so filled with excitement and action that when it ended, he was left with a detached, floating sort of feeling. It was as if the adrenaline pumped its way through his system, leaving behind a gaping void where his sense of direction and purpose had once been.

He’d taken several weeks after that first mission to recompose himself - to ask some difficult questions and face the honest answers to those questions head on. Where did he want his life to take him? What sort of a person did he see himself becoming? How much should he allow his position in the Tal to change him? He hadn’t wanted to lose who he was...to give up his art entirely in favor of espionage.

But art had no place in his future, at least not officially. He had a family name to live up to. He had a reputation to uphold, duties to perform, and expectations to fulfill. As much as he felt as though the Elements guided his hands when he was creating, he knew that he had to do something meaningful for Romulan society. The Tal Shiar’s work was dangerous, but entirely vital.

So...why did he feel like this? Why did he feel so empty after decades of exemplary service? Why was there a hollow in the pit of his stomach after so many successful missions? Why this mission in particular?

And why was the vibrancy of his paints suddenly so offensive to him?

Oh, the paints themselves hadn’t changed, but with the gray mood he was in, the reds and yellows and greens all seemed so...garish. He thought that painting something warm and light might lift his mood, but all the colors had done for him as he’d pulled out the tubes was make him irritable.

Downing a glass of kali-fal, the Riov swept the tubes of paint back into the box he stored them in and switched tactics altogether.

What material brought him the most comfort? What felt like a natural extension of his being?

Charcoal. The expressive lines and smudges were as seductive to him now as they had been when he first smeared it across a page. Paradoxically, the lightness of the stick in his hand grounded him better than anything else in the universe. Whenever he was stuck on a particular question, charcoal held an answer.

Securing his largest pad of paper to his easel in place of the canvas, S’Talon allowed himself to work in large strokes, swiping vine charcoal over the paper in slow, delicate movements to create blobs of gray. Taking a deep breath as he began to smooth out the edges, he began to feel the tension bleed out of him.

This he understood. There was no question of why he loved charcoal. He had no need to ask himself how to create a particular effect with this medium, because he’d used it so much that it was second-nature. He’d filled dozens of sketchbooks with nothing but pencil and charcoal. He’d stained many white garments and linens with the residue left on his fingers after losing himself within his sketches. Hell, he’d even walked into a meeting with Koval unaware that there was a smudge of the stuff across his cheek.

Glancing out the window at the rain pattering gently down across the horizon, S’Talon breathed deeply, forcing his mind to turn itself off to everything else but the paper in front of him. He would allow his subconscious to stew over his questions and problems while he created some sort of organized chaos with his charcoal. He’d need a clean shirt after this session. He always did when he was in one of these heavy moods, but he didn’t care. All that mattered was letting his materials take him away from himself for a little while.

Pouring himself a second glass of kali-fal, S’Talon shifted on his stool as he evaluated his progress, not even noticing the dark gray smudges left on his glass.

~*~*~

Taglist:

@bigblissandlove1 @darkmattervibes @emilie786 @horta-in-charge @toebeans-mcgee

#deepspacedukat fic #Riov S'Talon of Romulus

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multi-lefaiye · 9 months

Text

i remember.

hi. this is some venty ass personal writing that i had to get out of my system. i might delete this in a bit bc i feel weird talking about it, but i also know that i have to just. get this out. and y'know maybe if i try to make something artsy out of this, at least it's worth something.

this is a lot. i do not expect anyone to read it. i also do not expect anyone (especially those of you who are younger) to comfort me about any of this. y'all are not my therapists, and the onus is not on you to be there for me. i'm not upset about this right now and i honestly just... need to get this out.

content warnings: child abuse, physical abuse of a partner, neglect, a brief reference to child sexual abuse, drug use/addiction, emotiomal abuse/gaslighting

when i was about seven years old, my ex mom was almost murdered by her drug dealer/boyfriend, and i saw it happen. it sounds a lot more dramatic than it was. it also sounds fake, even to me.

i don't remember most of it, especially not as a single event. it comes in bits and pieces in my memory. for most of my life, i was convinced it was a dream, a very strangely specific recurring nightmare with no basis in reality.

what did it matter that hearing arguing in the next room is enough to have me trembling like a frightened chihuahua, frozen in place yet overwhelmed with the need to hide? that seeing anger, even not directed at me, is terrifying? that's just me being a coward.

then, when i was sixteen, my aunt called me in tears, apologies tumbling from her lips as she begged for my forgiveness for not intervening sooner. i asked her what she meant, and she said that she and the rest of my ex mom's family knew i was in a dangerous, abusive environment, and yet none of them did anything until my ex mom's boyfriend attacked her. they knew, but they didn't want to get involved or make a big deal about it.

they.

fucking.

knew.

i reexamined that strange nightmare, the bits and pieces i know vs the ones she explained to me as i silently processed the reality that the adults in my life knew something was wrong but didn't act on it. it's certainly easier said than done to react to a situation like that, and apparently my mom asked them not to intervene, but still.

like i said, i don't remember a lot of that day. what i do remember comes to me in flashes, scattered and broken puzzle pieces that don't quite fit into a cohesive narrative until i look closer. sometimes i worry that there isn't a single story there at all, and i'll never really know everything about my own trauma.

i remember the weeks leading up to that incident (what a clinical term, so detached). weeks of my mom drifting in and out of reality, not really being there to take care of me. i missed school a lot. i didn't eat much. i was left alone quite a bit. my mom's boyfriend sometimes took care of me when he stopped by. i wish i remembered his name. his face. anything more than his hands.

i remember losing a baby tooth one day while eating breakfast while my ex mom and her boyfriend talked in the next room. i looked at the baby tooth in my palm and felt a rush of giddy excitement--how grown up losing a baby tooth made me feel--and i ran to tell them right away. they congratulated me with thin smiles and tight voices, and they asked me to go play in my room and let the adults keep having an important talk. my ex mom had tears in her eyes. her boyfriend's hand was clenched into a fist where it rested on the table.

i remember someone putting a hand on me between my legs, and i remember being scared. i remember that it hurt. i didn't know where my ex mom was, but i remember being told to keep it a secret with a warm smile and a wink. just between us. i remember being given a cupcake and told to watch cartoons for a while.

i remember endless days of my ex mom lying listlessly in the house, pupils blown wide as she laughed about nothing. my friends' parents never seemed to like her, but they never told me why. i spent a lot of nights at my friends' houses, i think.

i remember hearing an argument. my ex mom was screaming and crying. her boyfriend was screaming back. i was scared, but i wanted to make sure my ex mom was okay. this was a common enough occurrence that i didn't think anything was wrong, but i wanted to give her a hug.

i remember walking into the room and seeing my ex mom on the floor, her hands shielding her head as her boyfriend loomed over her. there was broken glass on the floor and the furniture was in disarray. i think she was bleeding. i asked what was happening. her boyfriend told me to go back to bed.

i remember my ex mom telling me to call for help, to call my grandparents.

i remember him moving to grab me before i could do that, hands reaching like jagged talons to snatch up my skinny little arms in a bruising grip.

i remember running back to my room and closing the door with a slam, locking it immediately. he followed, but he didn't try to break in. there was no phone in my room, after all. no need to worry i'd call someone.

i remember curling up on my bed and staring at the TV, trying to focus on cartoons to drown out the pounding of the blood in my ears.

i remember there being more shouting, furious and terrified screams shaking me and the house to our foundations. the front door slammed, and it was quiet. everything was silent. hours later, i got the courage to leave my room, and i saw my ex mom and her boyfriend were gone.

my ex mom was missing for at least a day, maybe longer. she was found later, broken and battered and barely alive, and taken to a hospital. she was delirious from the pain and there were talks of sending her to rehab while she dealt with the withdrawals from the cocktail of drugs in her system. before they could, she called my aunt and told her where i was.

my aunt came to get me some time later. she packed me a suitcase and drove me to my grandparents' house. for a few weeks, i stayed with them. i remember waking up before dawn every day to drive two hours to school, just to be berated by teachers who were furious i was too exhausted to pay attention. i remember not knowing where my ex-mom was. i remember being so scared all the time.

at some point, my ex mom left rehab. later, i found out that there were talks of sending me to foster care. my ex mom didn't want that to happen, because then my dad would know what happened, so she was going to take me back.

my aunt came back to talk to my grandparents. she spoke to them in a low voice, one i couldn't hear from the other room, and said they needed to get me out of there. for once, they decided not to stand idly by.

i remember a long drive to my dad, a whole state away. i remember him holding me tight, trembling with rage as my aunt told him what happened. i remember being confused, because no one told me where my ex-mom was. my dad told me not to worry about that.

years and years later, i asked my ex mom about all of this. (i wasn't yet calling her my ex mom, but soon i realized the term fit very well.) i asked what happened, and i asked why no one protected me. protected either of us.

she told me i was a liar, that i was a self-righteous, attention-seeking moron looking for sympathy by pretending i was abused. i didn't know what i was talking about, and i had to get over myself and understand that the world didn't revolve around me, the perfect little victim who never did anything wrong. i was against her, just like my aunt, just like my grandparents just like my dad. she just hoped i'd never go through anything like what she did, so i'd never have to realize that no one was going to help me.

(i was a fucking child, i wanted to scream. the words were stuck in my throat. i was a fucking child.)

we haven't spoken in years now.

i don't know how to end this. i call her my ex mom, but she's still out there. still connected to me, if perhaps very distantly. i don't know where she is anymore.

i don't know where i am either sometimes.

#multi makes text posts #multi's writing #negative cw #vent cw #heed the content warnings #idk how to tag this oh god

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