The Substitute

Cissy steps up to the plate

so im hearing @astolat is god??? what's your 10 commendments my liege

My best stab! lol

@cesperanza, additional thoughts?

LOL. Okay, give me a minute, I'll work up nine circles of fannish hell for ya. :D

Outside of hell--mundanes, circling and circling!

Inscribed on the gate:   “This work could have adult content. If you continue, you have agreed that you are willing to see such content.”

1 -  Limbo – happy monofans who are still in ST: TOS or Starsky and Hutch (we salute you!)

2 –  Lust – In a fandom where everyone’s lusting after the wrong blorbo or pairing omg

3 – Gluttony - lying awake reading fanfiction at 5 am I am so going to regret this.

4 – Greed: Hoarders  and Squanderers:  “When are you going to finish this WIP!”  “Where’s the sequel! Write faster!”  Also: people who are writing chapter 230/400, people with 1000 open tabs

5 – Anger:  Shitposters, failfandomanon, don’t read the comments!

6 – Heresy:  “Avengers: Age of Ultron was my favorite,” “I prefer Zachary Quinto’s Spock,”  “Bring back Jar Jar”

7 – Violence against self, others, God, etc.: Giving explicit fanworks to actors, selling fanfiction on Amazon, doxxing, etc.

8 – Fraud – Sockpuppets, bots, the lurkers do not support you in email!!

9 -  Betrayers (George Lucas, JJ Abrams, Joss Whedon, etc.) Also: “You have already left kudos here :)

DO YOU REMEMBER? THE 21ST NIGHT OF SEPTEMBER?

Gif I made for this same date last year, posting it here now!

genuinely in hysterics over this image actual united states senator ted cruz posted on twitter

- he watermarked it

- trains run on tracks so the point of the whole meme around who's steering it makes zero sense

- trains also don't have road signs

- i really don't think ted cruz has ever been on a train before

- bernie looks so happy at the front of the train it makes me feel like i'm five and he's the conductor of the train on the children's TV show i was invited to attend a live taping of

- no seriously i don't think ted cruz knows what a train is i think this should be the new "it's a banana what could it cost michael" in terms of rich people being hilariously out of touch with every day reality

- help

@amtrak-official train misinformation meme

I fucking wish I could make an image this much fun and whimsical

Here’s what I’ve been working on for the past little while!!

Illustrations for @oflights brilliant time-travelling fic The Star Splitter, Please check it out on AO3! (As well as their other amazing fics!!)

It was a joy to work on this for you Allie, congrats on finishing your fic!

Close ups below ⬇️

I found some initial sketches from the under the stars scene that i wanted to share!

Little Harry having a little crush 🫶 Big Harry not missing his opportunity 10 years later 💅

Farm animal sketches

btw I AM SO obsessed with this picture that hozier posted

[ID: Someone at the barricade of a Hozier concert holding a Trans pride flag with the lyrics “I was born sick, but I love it” written on it in all caps.]

telepathy

“You never suspected?” Harry whispers into the curve of my shoulder. His skin is warm against my side, our legs tangled together in the cocoon of his sheets.

I know he’s thinking of the appointment I had earlier, of the diagrams I showed him that the healer drew for me, explaining that her scans showed my magic reaching out, touching her mind gently. How she said that that’s the basal state of my magical awareness, touching the minds of those around me whenever I choose, even unknowingly.

“That I’m a telepath? No. Legilimency always came easy to me, but I never suspected actual telepathy.” I close my eyes, lean closer so that his hair tickles my nose and I can smell the coconut scent of his shampoo, fresh and lovely. “Although … sometimes I did feel like I knew what you wanted, what you were thinking. In bed, specially”

He huffs a laugh against my skin, brushes his lips over a freckle on my neck that I only know is there because he mentions it all the time. “That actually explains a lot.”

A proud thrill shoots through my belly and I feel a smile threatening to spill into my face. It’s not that I didn’t know he wants me — he makes it so clear each time — but knowing for sure that he does and that I give him what he wants in turn makes me feel powerful in a way I’ve never experienced before. I reach out then, the path to his thoughts feeling easy now I know I’ve been treading it for years.

He’s running his fingers along my hip, the inside of my thigh, and his thoughts are simple, surrounded by lust and warmth.

All this beautiful milky skin.

I feel a blush rise to my cheeks hotly, and clear my throat. I’m helpless to the admission I want to make, feel it drawn out of me by the sheer glow of being in his presence. I say, “But sometimes I felt it after, too, whenever we finished. I just never thought … to tell you the truth, I just thought that’s how it is when you’re in —”

The embarrassment of saying it out loud feels unmanageable, but I would’ve pushed through if it weren’t for his green eyes widening, for the alarms blaring through my awareness of his thoughts. His lips cover mine swiftly in a pressing, achingly lovely kiss and he rests his forehead against mine.

He breathes out, “Shh. Don’t say it. Now we know why you always knew what I wanted.”

It stings for all of a minute, that he won’t let me, but then I realize that I can’t feel disgust or rejection in his thoughts, only fear. Simple, tangible fear. I huff, raise a hand up the back of his neck, tangling through his soft, beautiful curls. He relaxes once again, and I feel the soundless sigh against my lips before he kisses me again, close-mouthed and sweet.

He’s everything, nudges the edges of my consciousness. Then again, a golden thread of a helpless thought, Everything.

“Alright,” I whisper against his lips, and I can tell he loves that, loves the feel of my lips moving against his as I speak. I can tell he feels it all. So I venture, “That doesn’t mean it’s not true, alright?”

His guard has come back down as he occupies himself tracing my bottom lip with his tongue, following his own body down the path that will lead to desire very soon. Distractedly, he asks, “It doesn’t mean what isn’t true?”

“That I’m in love with you.”

Everything freezes, his arm where it was moving to embrace me, his breath, his mind. And in the center, red-hot fear once again. He pulls back a little, enough to run a hand down his face, pinching the bridge of his nose.

He’s wondering, Why is he doing this?

He’s picturing me running, turning away from us in fear of what it can become. I pull him closer again, cup a hand around his jaw and I know he can see it in my eyes: the truth. His eyes fall shut, his body in a vulnerable curl around mine.

“Jesus, Draco. You don’t even like me.”

“Of course I don’t like you,” I can barely recognize my voice, it’s gentler than I even knew I had in me. “But I am in love with you.”

God, me too. Me too, me too.

Our bodies are so close I can feel his heart pounding.

“Uh. I’m not sure I —,” he’s starting to say, but his mind keeps beating a stream of Me too, me too.

“You’re forgetting that I can quite literally read your mind, Harry.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” There’s a laugh building up in my chest and I let it escape, catching what he feels when he hears it, the way his thoughts soften, the way he sees me aglow like this, in his arms, because of him.

A warm hand comes up to my chest, resting over my sternum. Where, even though he can’t read my mind, he can find beating proof that I feel this.

“Then you already know what I’m going to say.”

I love you.

I nod, basking in the way my heart races, in the way I know that his heart is racing too. It all felt so impossible only this morning. Years of sneaking around, years of sleeping together and not talking, not daring to hope. And it had always been as easy as me reaching out, trying to connect, without ever knowing I could. But there’s something else, and the lingering dregs of doubt rise up in me when I realize this only speaks for now, for this moment in time.

“I can read your mind, but … I can’t see the future. I don’t know what this means for us, or where it takes us.”

He pauses, and I can tell he’s giving it serious thought. I can see futures he’s picturing, trying on as though trying on new clothes, playing out the idea of making me central to the path he sees for his own life. I can tell the thought feels new and exciting. His green eyes meet mine, and it seems it only took him these few minutes, because the fear is gone, replaced by burgeoning joy. He’s always been the braver one. I pull my awareness back, overwhelmed by the strength of his sudden conviction, and I’m once again just me inside my own mind, looking into his eyes, not knowing what’s behind them.

“To tell you the truth, I never expected we’d come this far,” he says. The back of his fingers is tracing my cheek, and there’s an edge to his voice, a soft kind of adoration that only really comes out when we’re like this, bare to each other. “I mean, maybe that was daft of me, seeing as it’s been four years of … this, but it seemed to me you never wanted to talk about it, and so I didn’t think to consider we could be anything more than what we’ve been already.”

And it’s true. I didn’t think we could ever have more that we already had, so I never gave myself the space to want it. Now, knowing what I know, I discover that the want was always there, that I unknowingly let it build up behind closed doors in my head, and that now that I’ve inched it open, it’s all come barrelling out, a flood tearing the dam to bits.

I nod. “I understand. But now my cards are on the table, and … I already know your answer too, so why don’t we stop fooling ourselves?”

“It’s not that, it’s just … we’ve spent our entire lives driving each other insane.” Not reading his mind anymore, I can still read him with the knowledge of a lifetime. I know him, can tell that he means it, that this is something that’s been bothering him. “Last week you almost throttled me when I suggested we saw that Divination expert before you went actually insane.”

It’s true that I had felt something off in my own head for months, that I wasn’t able to hide it from him because at times it felt like the whole world was pushing its way into my brain and I couldn’t channel it back out. The notion that I might be going insane was not infrequent, and he worriedly suggested alternatives before I finally decided to visit the healer today. But him suggesting divination could nearly have been the last nail in the coffin. I’ve never been a pseudo-science kind of man.

“Oh, you know damn well I’ve never believed in those things.”

Frustration tinges his gaze, turns the corners of his lips downwards. “Well, now it turns out you’re a damn telepath, Draco, so you better fucking start believing.”

I’m so scandalized I lose the ability to speak for a few seconds, and he can tell. Which makes him double down, “I — Merlin, do you see? I drive you insane without even trying. You’re driving me insane too.”

“Okay, okay,” I force out, fighting down the annoyance that he can bring up in me quicker than anybody else. My eyes fall shut and I take a breath, letting myself feel his touch on my skin, the length of his body against mine, the night breeze sharing our bed, around our bodies where the sheets have slipped off. I open my eyes, feel the proud bubble of elation that courses through my veins when he looks at me. “I know we always drive each other insane, but we always end up here, don’t we? Curled up in your bedroom.”

His eyes soften. “That’s true. And in the end I — I mean I do really —“

He still can’t say it. But I know it. I’ve seen it, his doubts, his love.

So it’s easy to be the one to voice it. “I love you too. And I’m also terrified at the notion of being apart, and I’m also sometimes horrified and disgusted to realize I feel this way, and I wonder how I even ended up here when I genuinely despised you back in school.”

“Went both ways,” he huffs. I can’t help but smile.

“I know.”

“But then I’m just — God, Draco, if you’re reading my mind, then you know what I have in my drawer right now.”

Alarmed, I can’t help but let my magic reach out so hard I’m left reeling, and I get an image, front and center. His dresser, third drawer on the left, between a bottle of cologne and an inherited jacket: a black velvet box, no bigger than a snitch. I see him in his mind’s eye, stroking the box, thinking of me. Of us. I see him putting it back in. Taking it back out another time, another day, thinking of me. Months passing, him taking it out on sleepless nights after I slipped away following a tryst, see him stroking it, thinking of me. And I’m afraid. I am. But there’s a stronger, unnamable feeling overpowering the fear by the second, dusting it in a golden glow with the certainty and inevitability of a sunrise. I swallow.

“I do know. But I’m not sure I understand. Didn’t you just say you never expected we’d make it this far?”

“I think it’s more that I didn’t think you’d be willing to try. The thing is that … right here, together, when it’s just us? It just works, I feel like we get each other perfectly. I like that a lot. But none of our friends know we talk, much less that we see each other twice a week. When you see me in public you roll your eyes and look away, and Nev told me the other day that you told Pansy you still hate me.”

I’m still in his mind, and I feel how this hurts him. Has been hurting him. But it’s hypocritical as all hell, he’s never been the sole victim of this. Like everything else between us, it went both ways. My temper flares.

“Oh, don’t start. Nev always tells Pansy that you go on and on about how unbearable I am, and … and I saw you flirting with Hannah last week at The Brewery!”

“What?” His volume rises, and he startles himself. He shakes his head and takes a deep breath. “I — Okay. Didn’t you read my mind then? All I wanted was for you to look at me, even though I knew you wouldn’t, because our friends were around. I’m tired of this, Draco, I’m tired of your walls coming up with me outside them whenever we’re not in bed.”

He’s thinking of that night, of me looking away when he tried to catch my eye, of me leaving early so he wouldn’t have the chance to ask if I wanted to go home with him. It’s too real, too revealing, I don’t know if I want to face having been part — or most — of the reason we didn’t have this earlier.

“I didn’t know I could read your mind back then, it was only last week. How was I supposed to know you felt any kind of serious way about me when —“

“What’s in my drawer, Draco?”

My heart pounds. “I know what’s in your fucking drawer.”

“And what are you going to answer? I can’t read your mind.”

I had been so calm, placing the ball in his side of the court at the beginning of the conversation, but he’s hit it right back at me, hard, and my heart is climbing up my throat. He’s asking, knowing I know everything inside his head, he’s asking because he doesn’t know anything inside mine, and he needs it out loud, needs it spelled out. I have to give it to him. It’s only fair. I swallow, try to force my heart back down.

“What do you think I’m going to answer, Harry? Look at me. You’ve ruined me completely, I’m — ”

“Is that a — ?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes”

Oh my God! 😭 You dropped this queen 👑

To think I thought I knew what ethereal beauty was before now. Laughable.

she’s so beautiful i had to include a few more photos

Her instagram is @queennyakimofficial !

Support Black Women!!! Support Black Womens Art!!! Support Dark Skinned Black Women!!! Support Dark Skinned Black Womens Art!!!

🖤🤎🖤🤎🖤🤎🖤🤎🖤🤎🖤🤎🖤🤎🖤

I’ve reblogged her before, but really, you can’t have too many dark-skinned Black queens on your dash. 

imagine accusing the us military of being too woke

when the name is on the patent and you still ask for eViDeNcE because you're a white cis dude who can't cope with the fact not all inventions were made by white cis dudes 🤣

𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖘 | Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)

kurt vonnegut, being good at things is not the point of doing them.

Here’s the thing about Jareth from Labyrinth right?

He’s made up.

That’s not necessarily the same thing as not REAL. But he, just like all her friends who show up in her room before her adventure as toys and figurines, exist in relation to her, in response to what she wanted and needed. She told the story and there he was, there he always had been. But she’s a teenage girl who doesn’t know what she wants yet, and Jareth kind of pays the price.

“but the king of the goblins had fallen in love with the girl, and had given her certain powers.” He’s an archetypal oxymoron. He’s both the dastardly baby stealing villain and the royal love interest trying to relieve the heroine’s suffering, Cinderella style. He’s fucked either way by being both. She doesn’t know if SHE wants to be the villain or the heroine until he shows up and then she decides on the heroine, so he has to sneer and menace and challenge but it’s too late for him!! it’s too late, The King Of The Goblins Had Fallen In Love With the Girl, he’s Cinderella’s prince too and he has to try, he gives her a poofy dress and takes her to fucking goblin prom, sweeps her around the room like a music box with perfect posture and room for Jesus.

But it doesn’t work buddy, it can’t work. You’re just a story for a teen girl to grow up in, and as the villain you have to be defeated. He’s so complex because his tropes contradict themselves, and he doesn’t understand why he has to lose when he was only doing the job he was given. In his last scene he is pale as death with shadows under his eyes, backing away and begging for his happy ending with nonsense mishmash promises that belong to both halves of him.

“I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me.” I’m sure you are, Jareth. No wonder.

#the line you expect#the line he should sing#because it’s a love song right?#it’s almost a love song#the line you want to hear is ‘i can’t live without you’#but instead it’s ‘i can’t live within you’ because he’s a concept stretched too thin#he’s fantasy and sexuality and girlhood and hero and villain and freedom and entrapment and salvation and destruction#goblin and king#and she’ll grow up and change#But he never will#because she needed him THEN#jareth is literally the character of all time he makes me insane indane insane (tags via @lestatslestits)