Not all those who wander are lost (but I am)

need to put something here. she/her

[ifishouldvanish]

"You're not just a beast consumed by a lust for blood. You have a mind which can think and a heart which can love," is SUCH a great line and YES Olrox is THE character of all time who would ABSOLUTELY say something so beautiful as that all on his own... but allow me to propose to you some alternative scenarios:

It's something his late lover said to him. When they began developing feelings for each other, Olrox started to pull away for fear that he would only threaten the safety of him and his people. Countless hunters were presumably already trying to kill him at the time, he's living a kill-or-be-killed existence and fears that maybe he is a monster, maybe he's no good for him, etc. Maybe word is getting around that he's a vampire, this blood thirsty beast and there are murmurings about whether he has any place in his lover's community. All these thoughts spiralling until his lover takes his hand and assures him that he isn't any of those things. That he isn't afraid of him, that he is loved and capable of so much love.

It's something Alucard told him, when they first met. Olrox being kind of new to the whole vampirism thing, having a lot of dark thoughts about the fact that some Spanish colonizer turned him into a monster. His only exposure to vampires being the kind of people who destroyed his home and his life, whose greed and hunger for destruction and power are as insatiable as this new and strange thirst for blood—until he meets Alucard, who is so, so different. Alucard who assures him that being turned hasn't robbed him of his soul or his self. That he isn't destined to be like the men who did this to him. That he's more than what was done to him and can forge his own path, if he wills it.

It's something he said to his late lover. Maybe the possibility of turning him is something the two of them talked about. His lover considering it, but having that little bit of doubt as to just what it would truly mean to be a vampire. Or maybe it could have been after he'd been turned. Him adjusting to his new life and beginning to worry it was the wrong choice. And Olrox saying this to him to give him that reassurance that being a vampire could never rob him of all the things that make him so beautiful. That they can do this, that they can be happy. Together, like this. Forever. (So what if I'm a "his lover's turning was totally consensual" truther leave me alone)

It's a combination of 1+3 or 2+3 bc I like it when they say the thing three times in slightly different contexts 🫠🫠🫠

[greenprase-art]

i'm an armor understander. a cheek kiss hatch is essential

[bizarrelittlemew]

but above all, one must not concern oneself with the opinions of people who censor the word fuck

[trigona-necrophaga]

my devoted but dangerously unstable knight will be hearing about this

[mevil]

being black in any art community is such a strange feeling cause you’ll see just blatant racism being expressed in others art and you have to just casually ignore it, for your sake if anything, colorism being something that’s just fundamentally there in every artist and you deal with it cause it’s not worth it in the end to even think of it too hard let alone even mentioning it, it’s definitely something

[creatingblackcharacters]

Hello nonblack reader of this post, I think you ought to share this one so that you and your peers can actively remind yourselves 1) of how your Black peers feel when you tolerate antiblack racism in your art spaces for entertainment and 2) that we notice it, but don't believe it is secure around enough of you to bring it up 🙏🏾

[holespoles]

Asako Yoshihama

吉濱あさこ

[boomer-mythology-destroyer]

[cuartosol]

river ⭐

[oncce-againn]

(trying to flirt) can i be your problem

[canidykes]

the big man is the masculine dom and the dom is the top and the little man is effeminate and transgender but fully passes as a cis man and has top surgery but since he doesnt have bottom surgery he literally has to be a bottom theres no way for someone with a vagina to top and the bottom is the sub and they are both uncomplicatedly homosexual with zero positive emotions for women and they both have adhd and autism but only the kind of autism that doesnt actually disable you and they also crossdress but in a specifically humiliating way (why would a MAN wear a DRESS??? 🤪🤪 etc.) and they live together in a big house that they can both effortlessly afford and they're married and have 2 kids a dog and a cat (because Big man is dog coded and Little man is cat coded) and neither of them have jobs or lasting damage from canon events they've been through or physical disabilities or PTSD that I cant turn into Angsty Ship Content and the sun has a big smiley face and birds are just V shapes on the paper it doesnt have to be more complicated than that you dont have to flesh them out. you dont have to. and if you think about it wouldn't it just be soooo much effort to draw a whole bird?? youre just having fun its mean to ask you for detail. and my teacher lives at the school and the bus driver lives in the bus and everything is exactly the same :)

[cherryhatter-deactivated2015072]

KICK THE CAN!

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

To kick the can, reblog it. I wanna see how long this can go on for.

[visibun]

the oldest reblogs for this post that i can find are from january 2nd of 2013. this can has been getting kicked around tumblr for almost 13½ years now

[drtanner]

And yet somehow this is my first time kicking it!

[chelseamotelno2]

no please dont force me to make any decisions i’ll die

[tanblaque]

[tanblaque]

[tockiidk]

i just came up with a scenario so evil dear god

[shine-reblogs]

Okay, today is Speak Your Own Language Day, so I should be speaking Spanish, HOWEVER I want to use this day of language learning and appreciation to explain something about how Spanish works, and Hispanic people already know that so it wouldn't make much sense to explain it in Spanish, which is why just for this post I'm gonna use English.

I'm gonna be talking, of course, of grammatical gender, because of this viral image:

I'm sure you've seen an image like this floating around and people crying about how having non-binary be translated with a feminine and masculine form depending on usage defeats the purpose of the term.

But it doesn't!!!

Spanish is not like English, it has ✨grammatical gender✨ which has nothing to do with gender identity whatsoever. It's not that we believe chairs are female and stools are male, our grammar is just like this. Every word has a grammatical gender and there must be grammatical gender concordance. Thus, non-binary must have both a feminine and masculine form to use depending with which word you're pairing it.

Let's say you want to talk about a "non-binary person". 'Person' in Spanish is 'persona' a grammatically feminine word (despite its usage being gender neutral and encompassing people of any gender, as I said, grammatical gender ≠ gender identity). Because 'persona' is a grammatically feminine word, you have to apply grammatical concordance accordingly, and so to say "non-binary person" you would say "persona no binaria".

Now let's say you want to talk about "non-binary gender". 'Gender' in Spanish is 'género' a grammatically masculine word, and because of that to say "non-binary gender" you would say "género no binario".

See? It's not about grammatically imposed misgendering, it's about how this language is built.

But Shine, I hear you say, that's all nice and good, but how do I refer to my non-binary friend? And well, dear reader, you're in luck because I'm not only Spaniard but also non-binary myself.

In Spanish 'friend' (like a whole lot of words) has a feminine and masculine form. When those words are used to refer to people, grammatical gender does match gender identity. For the most part. And broadly speaking, feminine words are associated with the vowel -a, and masculine with the vowel -o (this is not universal, there are exceptions to this, I'm trying to paint the broad picture to give you a general idea).

So what about gender neutral? Well, officially we don't have one. The Real Academia Española doesn't recognize it... But the RAE isn't word of god, it compiles usage, so the more a term is used, the more chances it will be officially recognized. Not using a term because it's not officially recognized is actively detrimental to the goal you want to achieve.

Okay, not an official gender neutral, but what have we come up with? Well, at least in Spain, it's associating gender neutral to the vowel -e. So you have the femenine ella/la/-a, the masculine él/lo/-o, and the gender neutral elle/le/-e.

Now time for practical examples!

"My friend, David, is a boy." 🇬🇧 → 🇪🇸 "Mi amigo, David, es un chico."

"My friend, Liz, is a girl." 🇬🇧 → 🇪🇸 "Mi amiga, Liz, es una chica."

"My friend, Alex, is non-binary." 🇬🇧 → 🇪🇸 "Mi amigue, Alex, es no binarie."

And that's how you do it!! At least in queer friendly spaces in Spain, can't speak for other places. I have seen the 'x' thrown around to make gender neutral in Spanish, but -e is way more intuitive for spoken language, so I like it better.

But anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk and remember I generalized a lot when doing this. If you're learning Spanish I can only wish you good luck in dealing with our bullshit if you come from English, and assure you that once you internalize our orthography rules you will never again mispronounce a word you read for months before you hear it spoken (we have a very consistent spelling/pronunciation system, gotta be one of my favourite things about my language).

[ifishouldvanish]

@cookbookbutch @tockiidk

Enablers, the both of you. 🫠

Here's vampire/mermaid/siren!Olrox laying eyes on Late Lover for the first time. I'm thinking LL is someone like one of the "Four Kings" who is due to travel back to England to meet the queen. The idea is they have this little meet cute conversation at the docks where LL never sees his face, and yeah. A storm hits shortly after their departure and Olrox saves him 👉👈🥺

Also toying with the idea that Drolta is a sea witch who sort of fills the Ursula role in this AU by granting Olrox temporary human-ness. Something something true love's kiss making him human again. Idk, not sure how "fairy tale"/1:1 little mermaid adaptation I'd go with it.

(anyway for context: this was inspired by @mekhartist 's amazing mermay art 🧜🏾‍♀️)

Olrox rises not quite to the water’s surface. Through the ripples, he can see a group of men on the docks, hear their muffled voices in their drunken revelry. They've spent the past few days preparing the grand ship parked in the bay, and if their boisterous shouts and laughter are any indication, they'll be embarking off to some distant land tomorrow.

He wonders if that land will be their home, or someone else's.

The ruckus quiets down, and Olrox can hear the docks creak under their many footsteps as they shuffle back to the wharf, undoubtedly for another round at the tavern, if not a room in a brothel.

The fins on Olrox's arms twitch in frustration. A drunken sailor is an easy meal most nights, but not tonight—not when they are so many.

But then the wood groans somewhere down the pier, and Olrox whirls around to find one of the men sitting on its edge—alone.

His fangs and claws extend on instinct, and he hones in on his perfect prey. He hides beneath the shelter of the pier, watching where the man's get dangle off of the ledge. They're too high for him to pull him into the water—not without a struggle, not without drawing attention. No, it's best to lure them in, or wait for the ale to do its work.

So that's what he does. Waits.

But the longer he waits, the more Olrox can sense the man's sadness. Loneliness. Desperation. A part of him feels guilty, and he shakes the feeling away. These men, coming off their big ships—what sympathy do they deserve? It was, after all, one of them who turned him into this… thing.

A splash jolts Olrox out of his thoughts, and his eyes lock onto the small stone the man must have skipped across the water. And then he hears his voice—talking to himself in a language too warm, and too sonorous to be any white man's tongue.

Olrox furrows his brows. He drifts around the pier for a better look at his prey, and feels sick to his stomach once he sees his handsome face. He can't feed on this man. Not on someone like him.

[transandrogyny--turtlebug]

I hold the idea that women and (all genders) are just as capable of harm as cis men are because we are all flawed people, it's just that cis men have historically held more power and so they get away with harm more than women/ other genders. Thinking that women are less capable of harm makes me think that you don't see women as people, you know? It's the benevolent sexism stuff