Y/n: Remember your emo phase?

Wanda: nope

Y/n:….yeah you do

Wanda: I can assure you my love I’ve never had an emo phase

Y/n: so this isn’t you?

Wanda: Never seen that woman before, she looks about 24 trying to be 16 in those clothes

Y/n: Well I'm not here to judge you for your questionable fashion choices at that age but why was your ponytail so tight? Didn't that hurt?

Wanda:

Y/n: So do you remember the phase?

Wanda sighs: The ponytail did hurt yes, Pietro had to help me with it some-

Y/n: I knew it!

Wanda: Why did you bring it up?

Y/n: Oh the boys wanted proof of your emo phase and I just got a confession now I’m gonna go and show them the pictures *runs off*

Wanda: Hey you come back! Don’t you dare show them! They already think I'm the uncool parent!

medcatgender

for @pawfuu 's 100+ coining event!

april 1st: related to cats, dogs or both

gender connected to being a medicine cat from erin hunter's warriors book series.

may also be related to cats, medicine, nature, the moon, forests, rivers, and herbal plants.

completely free to use in any way you see fit without credit!

I think when my phone breaks eventually I just want to get a flip phone maybe even a landline. I'm kinda tired of having the Internet in my pocket all the time I want to be able to be reached in an emergency or something but I'm sick of having the option to just be on the Internet or on social media all the time and I think forcing myself to have to use a computer to do so will really benefit my mental health.

I love your thoughtful SoC meta! I would love to know your thoughts on Kaz and Jesper’s relationship. Specifically, I adore Kaz but one thing in particular that always seemed so dark to me was that he enabled Jesper’s gambling addiction even though he obviously does care about him. Kaz is obviously willing to do a lot of fucked up things in service of his goals, but this one in particular, toward his own brother figure, I find sad. It’s kind of addressed during their fight at the end of CK but still feels a little unfinished.

I love Kaz and Jesper's relationship. There's sooooo much to dig into there (way too much for a single meta); it's super juicy and complicated, and one of the best complexities of it is that they often enable and feed off of each other's trauma. The pre-canon status quo is a situation where Kaz and Jesper are, in many ways, using and abusing each other as a way of avoiding dealing with their own trauma. It's a fascinating push-and-pull dynamic because neither of them are pushovers and yet neither one is particularly interested in facing their Issues™ head-on, and they both seemingly recognize that in each other and give each other an uncharacteristic amount of grace in helping the other avoid dealing with it.

In Kaz's case, that most often looks like enabling Jesper's gambling addiction and then repeatedly bailing him out of trouble under the justification of "he's loyal and competent, it would be wasteful to let the other gangs kill him." In Jesper's case, this looks like ignoring Kaz's countless and extremely obvious issues in favor of playing the loyal second. Basically, it's not just Kaz enabling Jesper's gambling addiction; it's also Jesper enabling Kaz's unhinged ruthlessness with little pushback other than a few snarky comments.

They also project a lot of their own issues onto each other! Kaz pushes Jesper away in part because he's projecting the grief and blame he feels over Jordie's death onto Jesper, but Jesper is using Kaz's ruthless pragmatism to escape the crippling disappointment of returning home to face his father's judgement for being a college drop-out, gambling addict, and gang member. And Kaz withholds praise and verbal declarations of trust from Jesper because he hates acknowledging that he cares about people, but Jesper uses Kaz's emotional detachment as a crutch to avoid dealing with his own commitment issues by pining after a boy he knows will never reciprocate his advances. This status quo is, of course, insanely unhealthy for both boys long-term, but where would we be if any of the Crows actually dealt with their issues in a healthy way?

That dynamic, imo, is also only possible because Kaz and Jesper have known each other for longer than anyone else in the main crew; Kaz may have let Inej in further, but he let Jesper in first. As far as we know, Jesper is the first person Kaz genuinely lets past his mile-high walls since Jordie died...but he very deliberately holds him at arms' length in a way that he does not with Inej (something that Jesper notices and is jealous about!). Being "the first" in this case unfortunately comes with a lot of baggage, and Kaz and Jesper would both lowkey rather die than talk about how much they care what the other thinks of them.

Kaz clearly didn't recruit Jesper looking for a friend or someone who reminded him of his dead older brother; he recruited him because he saw someone with a useful skillset who he preferred to be at his side rather than in a rival gang or dead in the canals. It's to Jesper's credit that he managed to break through those walls anyway, but there's only so much he can do in the face of Kaz's armor. And like Inej, Kaz's closed-off personality and actions hurt Jesper repeatedly. But he stays anyway, because he (like Inej) sees the boy underneath the mask that Kaz wears and cares a little too much to let him go:

“He wouldn’t—” Jesper stopped short, and then he laughed. “Of course he would.” Jesper flexed his knuckles, concentrated on the lines of his palms. “Kaz is…I don’t know, he’s like nobody else I’ve ever known. He surprises me.” “Yes. Like a hive of bees in your dresser drawer.” Jesper barked a laugh. “Just like that.” “So what are we doing here?” Jesper turned back to the sea, feeling his cheeks heat. “Hoping for honey, I guess. And praying not to get stung.” Inej bumped her shoulder against his. “Then at least we’re both the same kind of stupid.” “I don’t know what your excuse is, Wraith. I’m the one who can never walk away from a bad hand.” She looped her arm in his. “That makes you a rotten gambler, Jesper. But an excellent friend.” “You’re too good for him, you know.” “I know. So are you." -Ch. 17, Six of Crows

Kaz is unused to verbalizing the trust he places in others and actively in denial about how much he cares about them until Crooked Kingdom; he spends his time deliberately being cruel and pushing people away even as he proves over and over again that he doesn't actually want them to leave him. This casual assholery hits those closest to him (Inej and Jesper) the hardest because they are clearly trusted with his life but not with his heart, and that hurts them both.

For Inej, resolving that behavior looks like giving him an ultimatum ("I will have you without armor or I will not have you at all") and telling herself to walk away unless he meets her challenge. For Jesper? That looks like duking it out on top of the Geldrenner when they're both at rock bottom, because of course that's the only way either one of those boys is ever going to verbalize the tension that underlies their relationship. There's just a lot of baggage and mutual toxicity and unsaid words that neither of them are very interested in dealing with until everything comes to a head during the Clocktower fight.

I think we also forget that the Kaz-Jesper dynamic we see in the majority of the duology is not their normal dynamic: it's how they interact when Kaz is mad at Jesper. And a mad Kaz is, within the scope of canon, a pretty cruel Kaz, which is something that I think a good portion of the fandom likes to handwave away in favor of pointing towards Kaz's active attempts to be better in the back half of the duology.

Ultimately we only see the "normal" Kaz-Jesper dynamic for the first 12 or so chapters of Six of Crows (when the Dock Fight/Eyeball Incident happens) and the last few chapters of Crooked Kingdom. Those chapters are a really interesting look into what that relationship looks like when they're on good terms. It's clear that they're good friends, trust each other a hell of a lot, and joke around with each other quite a bit (the "saves ammo" joke in the parley chapter, their interactions during the Hellgate breakout, the "man with a knife!" "man with a gun!" exchange immediately after Kaz throws Oomen overboard, etc), but we also see the stress points: Jesper getting mad at Kaz for not telling him about Big Bolliger's betrayal, Kaz sending Wylan with Jesper during the prep chapters to keep an eye on him, and Jesper's bee and honey conversation with Inej on the Ferolind, for example.

These stress points are what fracture and crack in the aftermath of Jesper accidentally alerting the other gangs that they were headed out on the Ice Court Job and nearly causing Inej's death, and further buckle under the stress and pressure that Kaz and Jesper deal with during the following month and a half: the Ice Court job, Van Eck kidnapping Inej on Vellgeluk, Colm showing up in Ketterdam, and the Sugar Silo/Auction scheme.

In this way, I think Kaz enabling Jesper's gambling addiction is less about Kaz being actively cruel towards someone he sees the ghost of his brother in and punishing Jesper for the sins he percieves Jordie to have made (which is also true, and a meta for a different time!) and more about the weird balance of toxic mutual leniency Kaz and Jesper have allowed the other to provide for them for over two years...and how that leniency breaks down once it's not just Kaz's life or time on the line when Jesper fucks up.

Put more succinctly: for a long time, Kaz and Jesper existed in a toxic balance of enabling each others' worst impulses and behaviors, which was only able to be verbally addressed when they were both at rock bottom, desperate, and seemingly had very little left to lose. This conflict is somewhat addressed and resolved in the conversation where Kaz refuses to give Jesper the last of the parem and offers up a tiny bit of information about Jordie—showcasing his own growth and how he's finally trying to break the cycle by refusing to enable Jesper's self-destructive tendencies—but that level of tension is unable to be properly resolved in one single blowout argument. And I think it's deliberately left a bit unfinished because neither of them are really in a place where they're ready to address everything they've left unsaid for so long, even in the epilogue chapters.

However, we do see the beginnings of that reconcilitaion (Kaz asking Inej to tell Jesper that he's "missed around the Slat") and the story ends on a hopeful note regarding Kaz's commitment to removing his armor, which implies a lot about the resolution of that dangling thread. And of course, we know that by Rule of Wolves they're back to being thick as thieves and fucking around as usual, so clearly they hashed it out at some point in the in-between (and personally? I don't think it took either of them very long after the CK epilogue chapters to do that hashing out).

tl;dr: I love it when two traumatized and emotionally constipated teenage boys use each other to avoid facing their own personal problems and then get into a fistfight to avoid talking about how much they care about each other. Top-tier dynamic. Chef's kiss. I could talk about them for hours.

I would also like to see some miphlink, if that's okay!

I was really struggling with what to draw, and then I remembered your ask from ages ago (dang ADHD brain...) anyway, sorry its such a late answer, but Miphlink inspired by Dicksee's La Belle Dame

For a blog called the badly drawn sanses, your arts be improveing- at least in my eyes lol. Just saying I like your art <333!

i'm probably gonna go back to low-effort to curb burnout (posting twice a day and whatnot) but in the meantime, have a Killer in the less non-bad artstyle :D

Hi! it's dember and some stuff has Happened and I am now in need of a buffer between now and lunar new year. so I'm opening for

digital ink commission

How this works is

comms will open for one hour at a time or until 5 pieces are in the queue, whichever condition comes later

I will edit and reblog this post when it opens or closes, so if you're not sure if I'm taking comms or not please click through to the original post to check!

I will take commissions via email to [email protected]; please include visual or textual references as well as your PayPal email in your inquiry.

a confirmation email will be sent out once your commission's added to the queue. I reserve the right to turn down any commission I receive (in which case I'll also tell you via email)

payment will be through PayPal - please wait for the invoice before paying - and made in full before I start on your commission.

there will be no sketch revision. please keep this in mind when preparing your references

UPDATE 30/12/2023: Commission closed! Thank you very much for the support!

"I feel as though I'm... shirking my duties.. Squandering my glorious purpose... What if this is all a mistake...? I don't want anyone at risk just bec -"

"O.B. is keeping an eye on things, he'll let me know the second there's an issue of any kind. But you? You need to learn to relax."

"Mobius -"

"Ya'know, there's a saying about working smarter, not harder. You're smart; just accept that maybe you can relax a little. Live a little."

My girlfriend and I have a little post-canon AU and a lot of it is just... Loki learning to relax and slow down. Something Mobius has been kinda doing.

I kinda like the idea that for all Loki can hear and feel the timelines while he's a being at the end of time, he really enjoys how much nicer it is to clearly hear stories directly from Mobius' mouth. And there's bound to be anxiety about not doing something actively with the timelines from our boy, and getting constant reminders he's also earned making choices if he can have them. They'll all fight for his ability to have them too.

Also my girl and I keep commenting on comfy analyst Mobius and his eventual returning to fashion icon someday to be boyfriend lol

Every time I see a @khunspikesficrecs post on my dash, this is what I imagine:

Just felt very important to tell you guys that.

Karlach just very casually carrying Astarion around like this

I think he'd like it once he got over the horrifying ordeal of being vulnerable

George Harrison and Paul McCartney, circa 1962.

“When we lived in 12 Ardwick Road I vaguely remember a lad who lived in Upton Green, a couple of roads away from us. The next time I saw the same lad was in and around the ‘Inny,’ but as he was a year ahead of me, he was immediately classified as one of the ‘big lads’ and therefore unapproachable. He was obviously one of those working class rebel chaps and toward the end of our school days together he got more and more outrageous. The compulsory school uniform was outvoted by his extrovert dress sense and his hair was the longest anyone could possibly get away with in the Inny, all ‘Tony Curtis’d back,’ with a school cap perched on the top rear like a rabbi’s skull cap. When his guitar playing affinity with Paul was established in the end of term skewl koncerts, he’d visit our new Forthlin home [...]. His dress by this time was even more interesting… full length, skin-tight drainies down to his bright fluorescent socks, even brighter lime (Upton) green waistcoat under his blazer which he would flash at me in the school corridors (followed by a wink). He had the first blue suede, winkle picker shoes which together with incessant chewing of gum all became his trade marks. My Sweet Lord knows who he was, but his Mum must have loved him.” - Mike McCartney (writing about “George Handsome”), Thank U Very Much: Mike McCartney’s Family Album (1981) (x)

Scarlet Witch: Kneel before me

Y/n:….

Nat: Don’t you dare

Y/n: But-

Steve: No!

Scarlet Witch tilts her head

Y/n falls to their knees

Nat: She’s trying to kill us!

Y/n: Yeah well she can kill me stand on me whatever she wants look at her!

Scarlet Witch: I think I’ll keep you for myself malysh

Y/n: Yes ma’am

Nat: alright well enjoy your new home I’m taking your room and all your secret snacks

Y/n: That’s fine I have a whole 5 course meal in front of me and I'm hungry

Tony: Why are you so horny??? Who gave you oysters?

Y/n: You know I don't like seafood

Scarlet Witch: I'm bored of this nonsense, come with me little one

Y/n: Bye guys I'll call you at Christmas! *Leaves with Scarlet*

Nat: What do I tell her family?!

Tony: She died in battle

Nat: Pretty morbid Tony

Steve shrugs: She made her choice

(Is this not what we'd all do in this situation?)

permasleepygender

requested by @streetpunkgender

neutral gender that feels permanently sleepy.

may also be related to coziness, blankets, pillows, purples and blues, and fatigue.

completely free to use in any way you see fit without credit!

Trips around Skyrim Doodle 01

“Are we lost?”

“Probably.”

i... i feel weird about how this may come across, but i just wanted y'all to know that i won a big scholarship for the 2023-2024 academic year - and i will be able to quit my job and focus wholly on school

AND WRITE MORE FIC AND INTERACT MORE 💌

happy new week beloved crew  !  💖