[Image: Tweet By Emily Mullin (@EmilyLMullin) And Tweet By Isobelle Winter (@IsobelleWinter), Both About

Putting powdered sugar on the post below

No matter what a post on tumblr tries to tell you, your moral and ethical stances will never be determined by what you reblog and what you scroll past. Don’t let manipulation tactics force you into doing anything you don’t want to do.

thinking about Aasimar au warlock Kristen again (wow what a series of words lmao) so have some more silly thoughts about it:

- when Kristen first multiclasses Fig says "don't worry, I got you, I know a lady" and drags them both to see Zara. Zara looks at these two (Kristen, literally about to vibrate out of existence with excitement and happiness, Riz, looking like he's five seconds away from hyperventilating to death) and is like "oh this one's gonna be interesting"

- Zara Sool takes one look at this poor rogue-paladin-patron who looks like he's gonna have a mental breakdown, but deep in his heart trusts Kristen enough to dedicate his love and his time and his magic and his oath and his goddamn soul to this girl (warlock relationships are about exchange, after all, even if he doesn't know that yet. Kristen isn't the only one who's handed away her soul to safer hands with this) and says ">:) I'm gonna trick this boy into talking about his feelings." the following conversation goes pretty much like this:

Zara: look it's really safer for Kristen herself if you tell her what's going on with yourself emotionally, otherwise you might make a faulty contract, which will put her soul in danger.

passive investigation of 21 Riz: >:((( you're trying to guilt trip me

Zara: yeah, is it working????

Riz: ..............maybe

- following Zara's intervention, Riz and Kristen sit down and have a real conversation about their fears and their struggles and the things they want from their lives. Riz admits that he's scared that none of them will stay together after high school and that's why he's pushing so hard to keep them together. Kristen tells him that, yeah, she can't guarantee what will happen after high school, but that they're all prepared to work to keep their friendships, and that she in particular is gonna make sure she's always always friends with him. Kristen talks about the specific things she's been struggling with between school and her religion and they make a plan to help her and also actually talk to Jawbone and Sandra Lynn because Jesus this girl needs help. so after this conversation they make the most detailed fucking contract that has ever been (Riz's anxiety goes crazy) and they show up back to warlock class like "is this good?" and present Zara with an absolute mess of a document that is overflowing with footnotes and sticky notes and annotations and is written in this unholy mess of common-goblin-celestial-rogue cipher, but she kinda quizzes them on it, and lo and behold, they have it fucking memorized

- Riz is still pretty worried so Zara fully enlists her paramour to come down and talk him into being a little bit calmer. Zara and her paramour think this is the cutest thing ever.

- Zara tells Riz he can audit warlock class if he's still nervous about it but he's like "fuck no, if I'm taking a class I am damn well gonna get credit for it" and gets his mcat signed to do three classes. Fig-Kristen-Riz are the terrors of the warlock class but also the best students Zara has ever had. everyone both loves and hates them in there (but mostly loves. they're just too cool)

-after The Conversation, Kristen drags Riz to have another Conversation with the rest of the bad kids, and they echo all her sentiments about staying friends even if they go their separate ways after high school (except Adaine and Riz, who nail down that at least they are gonna go to college together). so even though it feels super unnatural, Riz kind of takes a breath like a whole half a year early. he stops pushing them so hard to perform academically, but the rest of them finally understand why he was doing that, and also understand the consequences of the party failing a little more. so they're all just trying their best, but more organically

- Kristen is technically borrowing from Riz's well of power, and he's not like, a full angel or anything (yet) but magic is a muscle. the more you use it, the stronger it gets. and again, warlock relationships are about exchange. so what happens is that as soon as Kristen starts using her warlock magic routinely, Riz finds that his smites are getting more powerful??? his radiant soul damage is increasing???? he suddenly has access to spell slots he shouldn't??? turns out, power borrowed is power returned, and while his power base is incredible, Kristen is a much more accomplished spellcaster than he is, so she exercises his magic more effectively than he does, and he starts getting more powerful as she gets more comfortable in her powers

-Riz can feel whenever Kristen is using her warlock powers. sometimes she'll start eldritch blasting shit for fun along with fig and five minutes later her crystal will start blowing up like "kristen what are your doing that requires eldritch blast every ten seconds" and then she has to admit that she and fig were seeing who could eldritch blast tin cans off the roof of mordred better

-Riz's wings kind of start to, for lack of a better word, calcify? like, they're still intangible, but they start sticking around even when he's not in radiant soul form. just two ghostly, intangible wings always hanging out, and they only start to really glow when he actually turns on Radiant Soul. he has a flying speed now. he's also frantically researching whether or not its possible for aasimar to start organically rising to angelhood because THIS ISN'T NORMAL, KRISTEN STOP TRYING TO GRAB THEM! (everyone else is so enamoured with his wings. he starts using them like his tail to wrap around people and even though they're intangible everyone swears up and down that they feel cooler and calmer and safer when wrapped up in a Riz wing)

-Kristen and Riz start to more or less have the same magical signature because they're sharing so much power. a side effect of this is that if Kristen is in the room, and Riz is stealthing, even casting something like Detect Evil and Good won't give him away, because his aura is so much like Kristen's and vice versa. they abuse this relentlessly to get Clues. kristen is team distraction and riz is team extraction

-at some point Adaine approaches the two of them like "hey all this stuff that's happening is totally fascinating, can I write a research paper about it?"

"sure," says Riz, "but only if you list us as co-contributors for college credit and stuff"

"well, duh," responds Adaine, and the three of them proceed to make the most detailed paper the world has ever seen about the magical and physical effects of a patron-warlock relationship between two mortals. it comes out sometime in their senior year and the magical research community loses their shit

-Kristen gets up to second level warlock in junior year, and her eldritch invocations are Eldritch Mind and Eyes of the Rune Keeper. the first time she realizes she can just read every single language her friends speak she cries. also she's sooooo scary now. she can hold two concentrations at once AND has advantage on concentration checks. terrifying.

-soooo many prospective warlock students start approaching riz and fig for warlock powers. they didn't know you could just ask normal students!!! (riz and fig are not normal students but that is beside the point.) fig thinks it is amusing. riz thinks it is stressful. kristen thinks it is fucking stupid, like, it's not like he's gonna share, no, I'm not jealous, what are you talking about? at one point it gets so frustrating for riz that he gets up on a table in the middle of the lunch period and shouts "blanket statement for everyone who is not in my party, NO I WILL NOT BE YOUR PATRON, STOP ASKING!!!" the bad kids think it's the funniest thing, but they're also being hella protective of riz and fig. everyone stop BOTHERING them, no they're NOT interested in being your patron!! the number of physical fights that they've all gotten in because of this, in order of least to most, is riz (2, on behalf of fig), kristen (3, on behalf of riz), fig (5, on behalf of riz), fabian (7, on behalf of both), gorgug (8, on behalf of both), and adaine (14, on behalf of both). after about a month everyone has mostly taken the hint

-kristen develops a terrible habit of just. hexing anyone who even remotely annoys her. you were breathing too obnoxiously in class today? blocked hexed. you said something mildly shitty about one of her friends? hexed. aelwyn took the last bagel at breakfast and she really wanted it? hexed. she's experiencing the newfound freedom of being a hater. riz is texting her like "kristen why are you hexing someone at nine in the morning" and she's like "I am experiencing little sister rage for the first time in my life, leave me alone"

-Buddy Dawn does not know what the fuck to make of Kristen's warlock multiclass. she makes him fully bluescreen. Bobby Dawn and Kipperlilly, on the other hand, are absolutely incandescent with rage. they're gonna die mad about it.

-on the other end of the spectrum, Kristen and Riz break Bucky's brain open. he speedruns the emotional crisis that Kristen had freshman year when he Divine Senses their magical connection and nearly cries because he can feel this absolutely overwhelming love. he never knew anyone else could love kristen than fiercely. nothing that full of love could ever be bad

-ooouuuuuugggghhhhh there comes a terrible scene between riz and cassandra where she is like "she believes in you more than me" and riz has to be like "maybe. but that doesn't mean she doesn't believe in you. kristen has enough faith to go around. and so do I. I'm still counting on you too." it's about sharing the most important person in your life. self-recognition through the other (bittersweet). "I see why she loves you so much" says cassandra, and for the first time riz doesn't sort of still feel the nightmare king beneath her, and for the first time she feels him as someone to exist alongside without competing with. and riz, who is kind of sort of maybe ascending to angelhood, is not really becoming an angel of cassandra's pantheon, but he's also not not becoming that

-just. augh. kristen and riz are literally so sickeningly happy as patron and warlock. absolutely attached at the hip. best friends of all time. saint kristen applebees and her own personal guardian angel. they make me ill

anyway that is all, thank you for coming to my TED talk

reminder that this blog, while not politically focused, supports BLM. bootlickers and racists aren’t welcome here, and never will be.

Sure would be a shame if this got spread around and he lost his job 💅🏽

listen I don't think this is where I'm going with the main fic of the au so I feel fine sharing it.

I need y'all to know that there is a version of Aasimar au junior year in my head where one night Kristen and Riz have a very sincere conversation about Riz's fear of being left alone and where Kristen basically says "I know you're really worried about this, but I am not going anywhere and you're not getting rid of me. and I promise that as long as you stick around with me I'll stick around with you" and they do a whole pinky promise and everything because they are dorks.

and then the next morning Kristen wakes up and "oh huh that's weird I've never felt this spell before I wonder what it does" and she accidentally Eldritch Blasts herself. turns out that making a very sincere promise to your aasimar paladin friend who you have an extremely devoted friendship with is an EXCELLENT way to accidentally take a level of Celestial Warlock.

Kristen is absolutely delighted by this. Riz is losing his shit because "KRISTEN I ACCIDENTALLY STOLE YOUR SOUL, WHAT IF I MESS IT UP???!! KRISTEN STOP ELDRITCH BLASTING THINGS AND FOCUS". the rest of the Bad Kids think this is the funniest thing that has ever happened

I now know firsthand that going to a car dealership is…an experience.

I went going exactly what car I wanted and I imagine that if you don’t know that much it’ll be easier for a dealership to screw you over when you get there by feeding you misinformation about a car, manipulating you into buying a more expensive model, and etc.

I had already done all my research online so I knew what I wanted. Down to the color. (Green is my favorite color!)

So boyfriend and I went (I followed Tumblr’s advice about bringing a man lol). And I test drove the car and loved it just like I knew I would. And THEN the real dealership experience began.

The bottomline is that I knew my credit score and so I knew what kind of interest rate (APR) I should expect. I also knew the manufacturer price of the car (MSRP) and I knew how much they were selling for on average in my area ($3k less than MSRP).

So I knew what I was going to pay and I had already decided on that in my head.

So dealer #1 (a white guy–this is relevant to mention lol) brings back the first set of numbers. He cushions it with making small talk and flattering me on starting my PhD in August. He also chats up boyfriend.

The numbers were bad. I could tell looking at it. Although they didn’t say the APR, I knew that my monthly rate shouldn’t be that high based on the number of months I’d be paying it. Also they only gave me $2k off MSRP.

I noted that the sticker price was too high because I can go to another dealer and get it cheaper and they knocked off another $1k.

And then I asked him what the APR was. He was very evasive and kept telling me to look at the monthly payments because that’s what “really matters.” No, what really matters is what I’m paying for the car overall which is the sticker price + state fees (unavoidable) + interest rate.

Dealer #1 finally told me the APR and it was 3x the rate I knew I was eligible for. I told him that’s not gonna work. He turned aggressive and said that I’m a first time buyer and I can’t expect better and that I’m being unrealistic to expect a lower rate and etc etc.

So I said that my bank quoted me a rate half that much and I’ll just go through them and buy later (at a different dealer). Because I want the car but there’s 2 other places I can go to get it in my area.

Then all of a sudden dealer #1 could get me a better APR. His next offer was 2x what I wanted to pay. I said nah that good enough.

Then they brought out dealer #2, who was a Black guy. He didn’t sit down and instantly start talking about the price. He said a bunch of small talk and said some stuff about being Black lol. Tryna be chummy chummy and connect with us on a racial level.

Then he tried to push the same numbers as dealer #1. I said I know I’m young and I don’t have a math background but you’re charging me way too much for this car and I’m not going to buy it at that price. Period. I said: get the APR down and I’ll buy the car. He kept telling me it wasn’t possible and I said okay…I won’t buy it.

But then he was like wait…lemme run the numbers. And ta da! He came back with the right APR. Also zero down. And payments lower than my target.

This whole process took 5 hours.

Moral of the story:

- know as much as you can before going to a dealership so you can focus on the numbers - know your credit score so you know what your APR should be - get approved through an independent bank for a loan so you have leverage to negotiate with a better rate from the dealer - don’t focus on monthly payments. Times that by the amount of months so you know what you’re REALLY paying - threaten to walk because stuff magically happens at dealerships when you do lol

My back and forth writings with @dullgecko have only confirmed what I knew in my heart and that is that Fabian Aramais Seacaster was destined to be YA paranormal romance heroine. He wasn't meant to be in these streets getting tormented by Chungledown Bim and Sexy Rats.

He was meant to be fought over by werewolves and vampires after finding out that his absent mother was an Elf and he has an ancient magic. He was meant to be whisked away by a Fey Prince and be held in his enchanted castle. He was meant to attend a remote boarding school that has a secret population of students that are fallen angels.

He has white hair, silver eyes, depression, and pronouns COME ON!

Has “Homosexual” always been in the Bible?

The word arsenokoitai shows up in two different verses in the Bible, but it was not translated to mean homosexual until 1946. We got to sit down with Ed Oxford at his home in Long Beach, California and talk about this question. You have been part of a research team that is seeking to under

This is a VERY interesting read.