Maybe this was obvious to everyone else but it just occurred to me that the reason they even bothered to keep Ortis as cavalier primary instead of Gideon in the first place was because he was a coward and Gideon was a flight risk. This made him more suitable to the position because all they really needed him for was maintaining appearances. Meanwhile Gideon was being groomed to be an attack dog so they could use her instead when it came time to actually draw a fucking sword. Then suddenly the tables were turned and he fled and they needed Gideon to replace him.

You ever think about what Joli (the teacher of New Rho) must think about Nona.

You’re a teacher at the end of the world. Some of your students are homeless. Some of your students are soldiers. Some are just harmed beyond belief.

You run into a young girl who is just so bright and happy even in the midst of this hell. She’s a teenager but seems young and you don’t know if it’s trauma or a mental disability but she seems so excited about the prospect of school.

She lives with a beautiful woman in her twenties and another man who you assume is her father until you realize he is absolutely not. Oh.

It’s not an uncommon story especially for girls like her. Pretty orphan girls with no education, with mental disabilities. They say she’s nineteen and you don’t fully believe them but you convince them she can be an aid.

She’s wonderful with it. She makes friends and begins to learn. You notice she comes everyday groomed with clean clothes and that’s more than a lot of kids can claim.

Does she think about her when it’s all falling apart. Is Nona still being taken care of at the end of the world? Did she do enough to make this exploited girls life a little happier? Could you have done more? Could anyone have done more?

So just so we're all clear ICE straight up murdered that woman in broad daylight and the government is calling HER the terrorist

So just so we're all clear ICE straight up murdered Renee Nicole Good in broad daylight and the government is calling HER the terrorist

So just so we're all clear ICE agent Jonathan Ross straight up murdered Renee Nicole Good in broad daylight and the government is calling HER the terrorist

If you're in the US military or National Guard, and are given an illegal or unconstitutional order, the GI Rights hotline (1-877-447-4487) is there to help give you the support you need to do the right thing by refusing it. It would be good to think about this now before it becomes a live issue for you and it would be smart of you to memorize that number.

I like it/its pronouns.

It's like you're an object or a force of nature, but not exactly one that's beloved. Instead, one that's recognized, that's spoken of, that's planned around. Seen as a 'thing' not a person, but it's not like being seen as a person won me anything.

Also of course there's the transfem appeal of reclaiming our objectification. In an environment where they/them is the degendering of choice, it/its becomes a balm. As a transfem, it feels like declaring my femininity to encompass the inanimate and the profound. Which is fun for me.

“But my bones will rest easy next to your bones.” Line that changed the whole book for me. In a single moment these characters who confounded and frustrated me became holy in my heart. Two sad old gods whose greatest wish is to die in obscurity together, who know they can never be redeemed, so they dream instead of a better world without them in it. Oh my loves. Ten thousand years is a long time to carry so much grief.

“But my bones will rest easy next to your bones.” Line that changed the whole book for me. In a single moment these characters who confounded and frustrated me became holy in my heart. Two sad old gods whose greatest wish is to die in obscurity together, who know they can never be redeemed, so they dream instead of a better world without them in it. Oh my loves. Ten thousand years is a long time to carry so much grief.

“But my bones will rest easy next to your bones.” Line that changed the whole book for me. In a single moment these characters who confounded and frustrated me became holy in my heart. Two sad old gods whose greatest wish is to die in obscurity together, who know they can never be redeemed, so they dream instead of a better world without them in it. Oh my loves. Ten thousand years is a long time to carry so much grief.

“But my bones will rest easy next to your bones.” Line that changed the whole book for me. In a single moment these characters who confounded and frustrated me became holy in my heart. Two sad old gods whose greatest wish is to die in obscurity together, who know they can never be redeemed, so they dream instead of a better world without them in it. Oh my loves. Ten thousand years is a long time to carry so much grief.

"Um," said the fairy. "Choose something else."

Rosamund hesitated. It was, she had to admit, the first time she had ever been given a wish, so she wasn't an expert with this sort of thing, but she felt that this was not part of the typical script. "Sorry," she said. "Is that not allowed?"

The fairy grimaced. When it spoke, its voice came out pained and stressed. "Y-y-y-e-e-e-no," it sighed at last, dragonfly wings sagging. "No, technically no, it's not not allowed, but-" It suddenly brightened. "How about gold? Can't go wrong with gold. Gold's a good wish."

Rosamund frowned. This was really not going the way she expected at all. "Excuse me-"

"Beauty, that's a good one too, beauty's always popular," it went on. "And if there's a ball nearby tonight I can probably-"

"Excuse me!"

The wand was twiddled in chitinous fingers. "Right," the fairy said, sounding scolded. "Sorry, it's just..." Its voice trailed off.

Her grandmother's clock chimed midnight from the mantelpiece.

Then - "I'm sorry," it said, not daring to look up, "I know it's not fair, but - you know what I am. You know what we do to wishes. If you wished for wealth I'd have to turn your hair into silver, so you’d have to tear every strand out of your head before you could spend it. We can't help it. It's what we do. The cost of a wish is that you get what you want, but you don't get it the easy way.

"So if you wish for a child, it'll be - strange. Twisted, somehow. Made of pine or marzipan or have the head of a hedgehog. That's the cost of a wish-child; you'll get the child you wished for, but it'll never be - right."

Rosamund waited to see if there was anything else. She felt a sting to her pride when she realized there wasn't. "Is that all?" she said. "I wouldn't care what I got-"

"You all say that," the fairy said. "You all say you wouldn't care what you got. You all say it, and you really believe it, until the neighbours sneer at you and your hedgehog child for too long, or your back aches because your thumb-high child can't help you in the fields, or your pine child kicks and bites and won't obey, and then you think, 'This isn't the way it was supposed to be,' and then..."

The fairy stopped and looked into Rosamund’s eyes. It was a beautiful thing, all glittering carapace and iridescent wings, but just for an instant it looked terribly, terribly old.

"I'm sorry," it said. "But I'm tired of making unloved children."

"I will give my life for this child," she replies in one world. "By my love or by my flesh and blood."

"So be it," the fairy replies. "You will keep your word."

And in one version of that world, she proves the fairy's fears wrong. She loves her hedgehog, thumb-high, surly pine child with all her heart. The child grows knowing it is wanted and loved. It grows knowing it always has a home, that it belongs.

In another version of that world, Rosamund fails. On the evening she gives up, the fairy finds her. "You promised," it says. In that world, the fairy takes her flesh and blood for the child, crafts it a body that will belong. And Rosamund becomes a soft pine doll, waiting to be loved, waiting to be real.

In this world, in either version, the child grows up happy and belonging.

In another world, the fairy's ancient grief stabs Rosamund deeper than her pride. "Where are these children?" she asks, horrified.

"Many are long-dead," the fairy replies.

"But not all. Take me to them."

"Is that your wish?" the fairy asks.

"If it must be."

In one version of this world, the fairy brings her to a household with a prickly, hedgehog daughter. The girl's mother cries, "How can I love her if I cannot hold her?"

"You were given a gift!" Rosamund roars in this world. "Give her to me if you are too cowardly to love her."

Rosamund takes the daughter and gently holds the girl's hands. "You deserve so much more than you've received."

"Are there more?" Rosamund asks the fairy once the girl has fallen asleep.

"Yes."

"Take me to them."

"You haven't even had this child for one night."

"How can I let those children wait? None of them deserve such pain."

In another version of this world, the fairy refuses. "You do not know what you ask."

"And you don't know what you've begun," Rosamund replies. She leads a crusade to find the fae children, to save them.

She lavishes the children with praise and love, but the story becomes twisted. Such brave children they are, daring to live despite such odd lives.

The thumb-high child will never find a spouse, and yet he remains so cheerful. What an inspiration he is.

In another world, Rosamund says, "Let me prove it to you."

"How?" the fairy challenges.

Rosamund does not hesitate. "Marry me. Let me prove I can love the strange and fae. Let me prove my love is stronger than daydreams and gossip. When you believe me, we will make a child together however you wish."

In one version of this world, the fae says, "No. Choose another wish."

"No," Rosamund replies. And the two remain locked in stalemate and the story never ends.

In another version of this world, the fae sighs. "Is that your wish?"

"No. My wish is unchanged, but I am willing to wait for your approval. I wait for bread to rise and rain to fall. Waiting on you for a child will be no hardship."

"And if I never approve?"

"You will."

And in this version, Rosamund and the fae are wed. Rosamund's friends and family harry her with concern. Her meager wealth dwindles as fewer are willing to buy the bread she bakes for fear of her spouse's enchantments.

"Do you regret this yet?" the fairy asks.

"When I was cold last week, you draped a cloak of cobwebs around my shoulders and I stopped shivering. How could I regret such kindness?"

After a long period without rain and the village drives them both out, the fairy asks again, "do you regret this yet?"

"When we had too little to drink, you collected the dew from every blade of grass around our home so we did not thirst. How could I regret such clever diligence?"

And when Rosamund falls deeply ill after too many nights sleeping exposed to every chilled breeze, the fairy presses its cool brow to her burning one and asks, "how do you not regret this yet?"

Rosamund weakly brushes her fingertips along the fairy's cheek. "You're crying for me. How can I possibly regret being loved by you? I told you my love is greater than hardship."

"This is not how these stories go," the fairy argues.

"I'm human," Rosamund says with a cough. "I twisted it."

In one version of this world where the fairy said "yes" to Rosamund's proposal, she dies, and the fairy collects another regret.

In another version, it carries Rosamund home beneath the hill and heals her. Then, together, they make and raise a child.

And that child is deeply, unconditionally loved.

I feel like all the "they broke weird al" "weird al got serious we're so cooked" comments about the killing in the name cover are missing the point. that is not a broken man. comedy is politics. comedy has always been politics. weird al has been satirizing politics for a long time because he knows the court jester can say to the king what other people can't. by doing a serious cover of an explicitly anti-establishment song that his gen x and millennial audience knows by heart when he's built his career on parody, he's saying this can't be satirized anymore and he's saying it in a very deliberate way that his audience will understand. those aren't the actions of a broken man, they're the actions of a man who is trying to tell you something. are we going to listen?

there's something so good about a character who hasn't had enough comfort and warmth in their life and now has weird complicated kinda sexual feelings about being treated with actual basic respect and dignity and they feel like an awful gross pervert for it. i like those wires getting crossed

Gideon and Harrow drawings I made for my gf for Christmas

ok enough regular fujoshi media we need to investigate how writing about men fucking is actually proxy sex between women we need a story about two womens increasingly codependent and toxic online friendship built on writing slash fiction together escalating to doing sex roleplay on instant messengers pretending to be their favorite ship to get better at writing so they can really embody the mind of the characters obviously and talking one of the women thru her divorce and their weird emotionally blurred and toxic friendship as the more talented friend keeps leveraging her popularity and control over a major fanfic site in the fandom to keep control over the rapidly deteriorating friendship and they have weird phone sex and one of them realizes they are gay for real and gets a girlfriend whos jealous of how much time shes spending online and the friendship eventually explodes and one of them goes on to get published and the other woman shows up at her book signing and its the first time they have ever seen each other face to face but only one of them knows who the other is

Is this your card? *I pull your cousins driver's license out of the deck of playing cards*

No? How about this? *I pull out a Nintedo E-Reader Card for the GBA from 2003*

A pile behind me slowly starts to form, growing larger as I pull out business cards, baseball cards, punch cards, clock in cards, gift cards, and credit cards, none of which belong to you or are the 7 of Hearts

Soon cut up letters start coming out of the deck, eventually spelling out a warning, the calling card of a kidnapper, threatening your son

27 metro cards appear one after another, all covered in water, as of pouring out of a flooded subway station

Christmas cards from little old ladies begin to pour in, hundreds of dollars accumulate, but neither of us can leave this room, we are trapped till I draw the 7 of hearts

A whole bouquet of roses erupts from the deck, alongside an apology from a husband for cheating on his wife with her secretary for 16 years

Eventually, a SD card comes out, alongside a camera, on the camera? A photo of a 6 of Hearts, close but no cigar

At the end of the night, approximately 1794 artifacts have erupted from the 52 card deck, but no 7 of Hearts, so I hand you the Balatro Switch Card and a door appears, I walk out, and lock it behind me

You are left staring at an informational plaque from Pompeii on a mural of a dog, someone drew a tag on its underside, it would be lonely if not for the cardinals flying about the room

The Cardigans are playing on a cd I pulled out juts over 3 hours prior, First Band on the Moon, it's a good album but after 6 listens it gets tiring, but on the 7th loop the door clicks open, slightly on the song heartbreaker

Ortus Nigenad is like-

What if you were a coward. What if your father was big and loyal and your mother loved you with harpy claws and you were a coward.

What if you were a child and were one of two children who survived while all else perished. You were chosen though not for any good reason. You remember the 200 in silence.

What if you were never a child after that and forever a child after that. So young to everyone else and ancient to the two infants of this cold planet. One with gold eyes and one with black.

What if you watched two girls grow in the most horrible conditions and yet grow still like stubborn weeds in acrid soil. Somehow they were brave. Braver then you st much younger times. Thehnhad each other so no need for you really.

Imagine you try to escape this wretched place the worships deaths and you immediately die and you can’t rest even then. There are responsibilities and you want to resent them but your responsibility is the littlest girl in drearburh. Shes traumatized and scared and she’s always been so clever and strong but you realize now just how much she’s needed. Far more than the lonely planet could give her.

You are a coward and you find your own ways to be brave with a pen and a trembling voice. Somehow it works and you save your adept and you meet with people your own age who are so capable and who actually like you.

You are Ortus Nigenad who survived and died by the whims of far more powerful forces and yet you wielded the narrative of life long after everyone had thought you discarded.