You were once the demon king. “Defeated” by the hero, you went into hiding to pursue a simpler life. Today the “hero” has appeared, threatening you family to pay tribute, not realizing who you actually are. Today you show them what happens when you have something worth fighting to protect.

You are told at seven that you won’t ever do anything good in your life. You grow up knowing that it doesn’t matter that you help your younger sister make her letters properly or that you’re the one who stays up late with mother when too many custom orders come through the tailor shop. It doesn’t matter that you don’t want to hurt anyone or control anyone or anything of the sort. It doesn’t matter that your name means Light in your mother’s native language because as soon as they realize that you’re the Demon King, no one ever calls your name again.

You are chased out of your village the moment your powers bloom at fifteen years old, and the skies turn black with your fear. A rock hits you between your shoulder blades just as you make it to the main road and you stumble, falling to your knees in a mud puddle at the very moment the skies open up.

“She’s cursing us!” the midwife who delivered you screams over the thunder. “She’s damning us with her!”

Your mother is crying, but she doesn’t raise a hand to help you. She did everything she could, keeping your Role a secret all these years. She won’t risk anymore with another little girl to take care of.

No one tells you that you have a choice. No kind stranger drags you out of the rain and into the warmth of their home where a wise sage tells you it is not how we are born, but what choices we make.

Instead, you take the little pack your mother hid for you in the depths of the forest and sling it over your shoulder. There’s money, provisions, and more wraps to cover the evil mark on your left bicep.

“Your destiny will find you,” your mother told you only hours ago. “I forgive you for it.”

She meant the words as a comfort, but you only heard condemnation in it. Without having killed so much as a fly, she is already blessing you with forgiveness.

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You, the queen of a fairy tale kingdom, got cursed to give birth to a princess who’s going to live her life isolated in a tower the first 20 years of her life. Narrate how you avoid your daughter’s fate.

She laughed, when she placed the curse on me. Laughed and laughed. She called me a fool for coming to her, for wanting children who would sap my strength and steal my power. 

One child to take my kingdom, she promised me. Well, I’d wanted an heir. It didn’t have to be a curse. 

One child the sea would steal. There was room in that. They didn’t have to die, only to love the sea. I would buy the finest ships. 

And the third would suffer my grandmother’s fate. 

The tower. 

Grandmother told me stories about that tower, shuddering. About the isolation almost driving her mad. About the desperate longing for escape. I know what that escape cost her, and my grandfather as well, with his scarred face and limping gait. 

That was going to be difficult. 

The sorceress’s curse worked. Within the year, I held my first babe in my arms, a sturdy boy who kicked and cried and cuddled against his mother as if he hadn’t been made only to bring me grief. Well, all mothers grieve. 

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• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony

- Jill Thomas Doyle

A zeugma walked into a bar, my life and trouble.

After having the conversation multiple times about how many people (myself included) had stopped writing for years until the Sandman on Netflix came along and grabbed us by the neck.

And after watching the screaming reactions to Good Omens season 2, (and all the meta and analysis and thoughts about plot structure, and suggestions for what makes sense for season 3.)

I have decided that Neil Gaiman's secret agenda is not the screaming or the angst.

I think his secret agenda is to make us all WRITE.

Honestly “thanks I hate it” is one of the funniest phrases in the English language

i one time told my italian professor “grazie lo detesto” and she lost her shit, so it’s not just english

“¡Gracias! ¡Lo odio!”

“Danke, ich hasse es.”

“Merci, je déteste”

Tak, jeg hader det.

Bedankt, ik haat het.

Спасибо! Я это ненавижу.

go raibh maith agat, is fuath liom é

どうも！ それが嫌い。

411 Writing systems of standard forms of languages

.شکریہ! مجھے اس سے نفرت ہے

(shukriah! mujhay isay nafraat hai.)

kiitti! mä vihaan tätä.

תודה! אני שונא.ת את זה. Toda! Ani sone.t et ze

谢谢，我厌恶它！

Takk, jeg hater det.

Hvala, mrzim to.

Dankon! Mi malamas ğin.

teşekkürler! nefret ettim.

Qatlho’! vImuSHa’.

diolch! dwi’n casau fe

salamat! kinasusuklaman ko ‘to

amei, nota 0

tack, jag hatar det

Dreamling concept

I absolutely love the 600 year slow burn to friendship and then wildfire romance that's in dreamling fics (it's IMMENSELY satisfying) but also, please consider:

after they finally (finally) become friends after 600 years they just... take their time, with romance. They spend years getting to know each other, genuinely, as friends. They don't know eachother, not really, until Dream has held Hob while he sobs over a loved one dying AND when he's seen Hob in his PJs eating ice cream out the pint because his students have stressed him out to the point of needing either ice cream or violence and Hob likes to think he chooses violence less often these days. And Hob doesn't really know Dream until he's heard that awful laugh, some unholy mix between braying donkey and the sound of magma shifting beneath the earth's crust OR until he's watched Dream scowl at the tele because they got to the last episode of "Game of Thrones" and Dream isn't any happier then anyone else is about a lot of those decisions.

And they spend days and weeks and years of being in one another's pockets. Choosing to come together again and again for a pint or a season binge or a silent supporting friend when the weight of living is a little harder. They earn each other's trust, and because they're both a little dense and maybe a lot more walking-wounded, the moment that each of them realizes that the other trusts them is, well, it's something that makes life worth living, for both of them.

Hob realizes Dream trusts him first, something small, something like Hob going to guide Dream out of the way and Dream just goes without any sort of hesitation. Not mountains or meteors could move Dream if he didn't want to, but he just goes to where Hob guides him out of the way so Hob can take the carrots out of the oven. It's enough to humble a man, and Hob might have a little cry over it later, in private, but for now he grins and tells Dream he has to try the carrots with the lamb, he hasn't lived until he's done so.

And Dream is a little slower to realize, I think. Because Hob is pretty open and friendly, it's a bit harder for Dream who's not so good with interacting with people face-to-face, to tell that Hob doesn't really get close to very many people for all that plenty seem to like him. There's a few exceptions, but even they are kept at a distinct distance. And it's maybe something small, like a small party or gathering of some of Hob's friends and it's late and folks are tipsy and Hob just kinda... dozes off against Dream. And Dream doesn't think anything of it, Hob does this quite often but Hob's other friends are immediately very surprised: Hob doesn't sleep in front of others, they explain. A relic from the war/traumatic past/whatever Hob's used to tell them. No matter how late or how tired or even how drunk he is, Hob would rather drive/bus/walk home then sleep where others can see him. You must be pretty special, one of them says. He even fell asleep on you like that: I've never seen him look so relaxed.

And I think that there's something beautiful about the slow, inescapable draw of it. It's like two meteors from opposite ends of the galaxy that have been on a collision course for eons. They both have moments of realizing that they're falling in love. They know it's going to happen, and the tension is slow and sweet and lovely. And there's no need to rush, because there's trust there too. Sometimes they'll meet gazes and they'll know, both of them, in that moment that they're in love. That, someday, what's growing between them is going to be a bloom unlike anything the universe has ever seen before. And they'll smile together and continue watching bad tv dramas or swapping gossip or sharing their pints and maybe their shoulders brush and their touches linger a bit longer that night but it's okay. There's no need to rush. They have forever after all.

And I think also that Dream is just a dramatic romantic enough of a bastard to confess to Hob on June 7, 2089 and i think Hob is just enough of a dramatic romantic to tell Dream that he certainly took his time.

I'm not late, am I, Dream will ask.

Of course not, Hob will laugh, you're exactly on time. We've plenty of it.

And in the Dreaming there will be a quiet warm breeze and gentle sunshowers as in the deepest heart of the dreaming a flower never before seen blooms awake. And in the waking two friends close the gap between them and talk about how Sally next door really needs to stop over watering her flowers she's going to drown the poor things, really.

And then they'll have the absolute longest courtship and engagement of anyone in the universe. There will be entire religions that will rise and fall before they get married. Pantheons will come into existence and be utterly dumbfounded when they're invited to Dream of the Endless and Hob Gadling weddings because weren't they already married? They've been together since the beginning of it all.

It's be great.

He and I go back a long time. (crowley's version || insp.)

Mammals both produce milk and have hair. Ergo, a coconut is a mammal.

I know you’re being facetious, but this is an actual issue with morphology-based phylogeny.

*leans over and whispers to person beside me* what are they talking about

*leans over and whispers back*  Human ability to quantify and categorize natural phenomena is sketchy at best and wildly misleading at worst

consider the coconut

this reminds me of that time Plato defined humans as “featherless bipeds” and Diogenes ran in with a plucked chicken screaming “BEHOLD A MAN!”

i love how you say “it reminds me of that time” like you were there.

listen if an immortal feels brave and supported enough to come out we should respect them

This post is a journey

1 Reblog = 1 Respect

I maintain that humans started attempting classify animals, and some god or another made the platypus, and is still laughing.

Zeus: *hits joint* okay so like. It’s gonna have a duck bill right. But an otter body okay? And then a beaver tail. It’s a mammal. But. It lays eggs!

Hades: wait wait dude. Give it. Give it poison. Make it poisonous

Athena: You mean venomous, and make sure the eggs have both reptile and bird traits. Hermes: *takes the joint* Give it extra senses. Poseidon: It should be aquatic.

I MEAN where’s the lie

Demeter: … And where exactly do you expect me to put this? Everyone: Australia.

World Heritage Post

You idiot, we could have been...us. I forgive you.

thinking about Nimona’s face in this scene because she already knows how this plays out, she’s lived this already and while Bal has the hope that she once had in his eyes, she KNOWS what happening before the sword is even raised. She’s NOT SURPRISED she’s NOT SHOCKED she’s only DISAPPOINTED that Ambrosius can turn on the man he loves because she’s already played this out with Gloreth

not enough secret gardens and hidden passageways and bookshelves that open to a mysterious library these days. get working on that girls.

i will never be against piracy ever but i also need physical media to remain

the average blockbuster carried about 3x as many films than that that are streaming on Netflix or any other streaming service, physical media along with piracy is more important than ever.

I thought this wasn’t true, because how could it be true? How could one small store have more movies than an online database? So I googled it.

I am surprised and depressed to learn it’s 100% true, according to google. A Blockbuster store was required to have a minimum of 7000 titles, but most averaged about 10,000. Netflix has 4000 movies. (And 1800 tv shows if you want to count those, but even included, it’s still less)

Now I’m even more depressed about the collapse of physical rental stores.

Spooky season is closer than you think.

DDoS Attack Against AO3: Correcting Misinformation

Normally I don't make any posts like this, but I have an interest in cybersecurity and sadly I've seen people are being really ignorant about this recent DDoS attack against the site AO3 (Archive of Our Own), so I thought I'd remind people of a few things:

My advice to people who've noticed this attack is two-fold: calm down since this is part of a larger pattern that has literally resulted in basically no loss for the end-user of any of the sites, and... I don't really know a better way to put this, but don't believe everything you read. A religiously-motivated hate group wouldn't use terms like "LGBTQ+" and "smuts," and it's so blatantly obvious that the timing of every single one of these attacks is being used to smear Muslims and Sudanese people if you think about current events for like. One second. And if you look up Anonymous Sudan, you'll see their string of attacks and how all experts know that they have nothing to do with Sudan at all. Even AO3 itself told everybody that the group is lying about their motivations... though I think I'd go further than that personally because even their name itself is almost certainly a total sham.

To be clear: this post isn't targeted at anyone in particular. I've just seen a lot of people falling for this overall or not realizing this is part of a pattern, and I also wanted to remind everyone that this isn't anything to be concerned about. What is something to be concerned about is not doing research or thinking critically and then unwittingly spreading racist ideas.

Van Gogh And His Sunflowers by terry wei