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Bruce used Awkward Flirtation. It's a Critical Hit!

Reference under cut

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Bruce used Awkward Flirtation. It's a Critical Hit!

Reference under cut

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All I'm saying is Jayce Talis is a bisexual polyamorous man who has a type and that type is just, Higher Beings. His type is just Jesus Christ. Bro straight up wants to fuck God

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based on my other meow meow who killed his husband

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Okay so not to diss Andrew or Renee… but neil should be able to kick both their asses,,, like he’s been on the run for like seven years, and he has a ton of scars from fights. I know his mom prioritized running but he definitely had to know how to fight as well. AND he should definitely be better at knives than both of them like his dad is the Butcher of Baltimore and he was being trained before he went on the run. At least I knew for a fact he’s good w a gun, since he used to keep one under his pillow.

In comparison, Renee’s history with knives is a lot shorter and she ran with low level drug runners, not the fucking yakuza and a serial killer. And Andrew’s is even shorter AND everything he learned was from Renee. I will give him this though, his complete disregard for his own safety would absolutely give him an advantage, but it’s also a disadvantage in that he could die in a fight he won bc of his recklessness.

Ofc this is all hypothetical bc atp none of them would ever hurt each other, but in the beginning. At least I got the impression that Neil only capitulated to Andrew to keep exy and his neil josten persona intact. But when he ran from Kevin? KEVIN?? He should have been able to beat Kevin at least, although there would have been consequences afterwards from Andrew.

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Headlines across eight years. Who you vote for really does matter. None of these headlines delve into the Boar's Head listeria outbreak because I can only post ten photos in one post. But the slaughter house self regulate headline? Yup, that's why.

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Last year, I had said how I wanted to write about Solitaire and We Are the Ants back when I read the former for the first time. I had pondered on that post how both books could "share some of the same core messages," and while I think I was right, there was more than just that. For one, both happen to feature main characters with undiagnosed depression* and a supporting character who faces anger issues that will become very special to the main character as they care a lot about them. Also, both our main characters went through something very traumatic in their stories: Henry having to survive the aftermath of his boyfriend's death by suicide, and Tori going through the motions after what I'm assuming is Charlie's downward spiral with his eating disorder and self-harm. It really shines a light, in my opinion, that these types of situations not only affect those who go through it but those who surround them. Still, it's not like these novels shame those feelings. On the contrary, it illustrates the importance of surrounding ourselves with people who want to help us, people who know we deserve help, but most importantly choosing on our own accord that we deserve better as they keep on showing them that live is worth something. To quote the ending of Solitaire: "I don't know what's going to happen to us. I don't know how long I'm going to be like this. All I know is that I'm here. And I'm alive. And I'm not alone."

However, the way our characters deal with those feelings throughout most, if not the entire novel is really dark. There are two specific moments in each of their novels that to my personal opinion are the darkest. First, we have Tori breaking down when she tells Lucas the following:

Maybe, like, everyone I know has problems. Like, there are no happy people. Nothing works out. Even when it's someone who you think is perfect. Like my brother! ... one day he got so fed up with himself, he was like, he was so annoyed, he hated how much he loved food, yeah, so he thought it would be better if there wasn't any food. But that's so silly! Because you've got to eat food or you'll die, won't you? So my brother, Charles, Charlie, he, he thought it would be better if he just got it over with then and there! So he, last year, he—he hurt himself. And he wrote me this card afterwards, telling me he was really sorry and he didn't mean it to happen. But it did happen. And you know what just makes me want to die? The fact that, like, all that time, I knew it was coming, but I didn't do anything. I didn't even say anything to anyone about it, because I thought I'd been imagining it.

It hurts to read this, not only because she says this makes her want to die, but because she describes to us how she probably exaggerating all of this, that it wasn't that big of a deal, but we know that it was and it is a big deal. It makes me think of how much it hurts to take it upon yourself to pretend to be well, and the changes you might show in your personality will not be paid attention to either by friends or family when you're basically screaming inside. To me, this scene puts into perspective the way Tori behaved from the very beginning, very apathetic towards life; when something would be going well in her life, she would self-sabotage and kind of practically try to ruin her relationships around her, isolating herself.

Then there's Henry who I believe haw always dealt with feelings of worthlessness with his father walking out on them. Part of me thinks this because we gleam from all he tells of about Jesse that he put a lot of his self-worth on him so much that when Jesse's gone, it all comes back full force. His family is now deteriorating with his mother working herself to the ground, his grandmother having Alzheimer, his brother being a drop out who gets his girlfriend pregnant, and his best friend disappearing for months after Jesse's death by suicide. To me he is just afraid of opening up again and though the entire novel wonders whether the world is worth saving with the push of a button. When he finally reaches his breaking point, we get the following exhange:

"Henry." Mom's bottom lip trembled. "Do you wish you were dead?"

We slammed does in my family. We beat each other up and we asked questions we didn't want answers to and we wielded silence like a dagger. I wasn't sure how to respond to her blunt honesty except with honesty of my own. "I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to live, either. I don’t know why anyone would. This world is so fucked up, Mom, I think we’d all be better off if I didn’t press that button. Everything hurts so much. And I miss Jesse, and I tried to be okay. I thought Marcus could help me forget, and Diego could replace Jesse, but I miss him so much."

Mom was quiet for a long time. Her silence stretched across the morning and led me back through the part hundred days, and I knew what she was going to say before she finally said it. "I think you need help, Henry."

"I don't need help."

"Then answer me truthfully: Are you okay?"

... All I had to do was to tell my mom I was okay, and she'd believe me. ... All I had to do was say three little words, and I could fix all that I'd broken. But I was broken too, and I didn't know how to fix myself.

Going back to what I said earlier, it hurts to read moments like these and all that lead to them. All I'm seeing is two teenagers begging for help, and to see them thinking of their lives being worth so little just hurts. It makes me think of the fact that you wouldn't want to hear friends talking about themselves the way they're thinking. You would want them to know they're loved, cared for, and important. This is most likely the reason I adore Michael Holden and Diego Vega, both characters who also incidentally might be pansexual (add representation bonus as well as another similarity I should've referenced earlier). They come into the lives of the protagonists when they most need it. Both relationships are extremely different, though, as Diego and Henry are both romantically and sexually attracted to each other, whereas in my experience Michael and Tori seem more of a platonic relationship bordering into romantic, but they kind of take it upon themselves to try and be there for them.

Michael looks for Tori enough that there will be moments Tori looks for him, and while they have some fights and disagreements, they still find a way into each other's lives. While I've always loved the idea of having a Diego in my life, I do gravitate more towards the kind of relationship Tori and Michael could have (or the way I read it at least. I'm ace after all, and I can't help but wonder where their friendship will go forth, but I have my ideas). A scene that I feel encapsulate what they mean for each other is at the end when they have the following exchange, which has made me cry the two times I've read it:

"Do you want to kill yourself?" he asks, and the question sounds unreal because you never hear anyone asking that question in real life.

"I don't want you to do that," he says. "I can't let you do that. You can't leave me here alone."

His voice breaks.

"You need to be here," he says.

As for Diego, we get a bit more insight on his anger issues as that's the way he and his sister find themselves in Calypso, but from the moment he met Henry he is just such a sweetheart. He never judges him, tries to meet him where he is despite the struggles from Henry and his struggles, and even though there are times they think pursuing anything might not be such a great idea, they always find themselves pulled towards each other, which reminds me of when Henry thinks: "Sometimes ... I think gravity is love, which is why love's only demand is that we fall." Some of my favorite scenes are where Diego takes Henry stargazing, or when they have their first kiss. It's just so nicely written and it will always be the one relationship I will remember reading and thinking to myself maybe I did want one (though again, something more akin to romantic/platonic rather than romantic/sexual), but I digress.

Still, the thing that makes both Michael and Diego stand out so much is the fact of just how deeply they care about Tori and Henry, how they see them and hear them and understand them. It's just beautiful, and I wish I could feel this level of hope again one day. I mean, I remember my first ever quote-unquote review of We Are the Ants. I ended it with such a positive note, how I felt inspired but now, seven years later there isn’t much hope in my opinion. I'm still here, but there seems to be not much. I'm still hoping the fact that I wrote all of this means something. Maybe not me going back to writing about everything I read and watched but more that perhaps more fiction ideas will start to pour out of me. I'm no longer a young adult, and I'm thinking of a story of an asexual grown man, dealing with undiagnosed depression* back on his home town he left quite a few years ago. I guess all I can do is hope.

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this is so stupid but i had to make it

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i said we’d lose. you said, ‘we’ll do that together, too.’ well, guess what, cap? we lost. and you weren’t there.

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So do you think there was like maybe 3 minutes between seeing Neil irl for the first time and Neil opening his mouth that Jean thought he was pretty before he decided Neil is a horrifying creature?

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and Neil picks up on this and starts yapping just to be kissed even more

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hi any life advice for 21yo

Don't date thirty-year-olds until you are at least 25.

Having a glass of water for every glass of alcohol will give you a 50% reduction in hangover viciousness.

Bad people will use your willingness to be quiet as a weapon against you. If someone's being awful to you and trusting you'll be quiet to keep from making waves, surprise them.

There is no physical object in the world that is worth as much as your honor.

Honor is not the same as dignity. Retaining one sometimes means leaving the other aside.

Don't have any sex you don't want to have; have as much as you want of the sex that you do, whether that's a lot, a little, or none at all. Nothing you can do to your own body is immoral, unless you're doing it as an act of self-punishment.

Food is morally neutral. You do not have to earn the right to eat calories. Fat and sugar keep your brain from eating itself.

Learning to sit still and breathe--in, in, in, hold, hold, hold, out, out, out, out, out, out--can give you five feet of clear space around yourself in a maelstrom.

Find out how to make three good meals: A comfort meal you can make for just yourself relatively easily, a fancy meal you can use to wow a date, and a meal you can feed a bunch of people. All the other cooking can come later, but you can build a community on those three meals.

If you ever get to the point that things are so bleak you can see no other way forward but to die, make any other choice. If that means leaving everything you own and being a beach bum, or quitting your career, or taking up or leaving a religion, or deciding to bicycle across the country, so be it; living means more chances, dying means everything stops and you don't get to see any more interesting things. As you have not yet seen all the things that can interest you, it is better to live.

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I am a FIRM ginger katelyn truther. the idea of aaron and andrew having the same type? phenomenal. amazing. I need it so bad, she's ginger idc

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Real Talk: Ace Didn't Need to Ask For Help, It's On Garp

i always hate when i see comments about how ace was an idiot or ace should have just asked garp for help because, no? like dawg wtf do you mean?

the one thing we have been told repeatedly across the manga and anime is that ace could have lived his entire life being perfect and he still would have ended up on that podium

he could have become a marine, a police officer, a teacher, a chef and all of that would have been reduced to nothing the moment his parentage was discovered

yes, ace became a pirate of his own volition, but sengoku never mentioned his piracy

he never mentioned all the criminal activity ace did as the captain of the spade pirates or even later as the second division leader of the whitebeard pirates

you know what sengoku did bring up though the moment he got on that damn podium? ace's parentage

he mentions nothing that gained ace his bounty to begin with when he gets that den den mushi in his hand. why?

because it doesn't matter that ace is a pirate. what matters is that they are eradicating the last gol d roger's bloodline

bear in mind that they were killing pregnant women and young children who could have even had the slightest possibility of being roger's lover or kin

akainu deadass says that he doesn't care if every other pirate at marineford escapes as long as ace and luffy died and he would ensure their deaths personally. and for what? not their piracy. none of their crimes. not even for ensuring that the truth that certain countries and lands that were actually saved by pirates instead of the marines never got out

but because their fathers were gol d roger and monkey d dragon respectively

solely because of that, he deemed neither of them deserved to live

and as far as garp goes - i love garp as much as the next person but garp has never done anything for ace to trust him enough to ask for help even if he felt he deserved to ask

garp's negligent parenting coupled with the abusive words ace grew up hearing led ace to believe he didn't even deserve to be born. when he even asks garp if his being born was a good thing, garp can't even tell him 'yes'. he just says 'time will tell'. my brother in the blue seas, that is an elementary schooler questioning his right to exist

ace is defeated by blackbeard in episode 325 (chapters 434-441), luffy hears about his execution being set in episode 416 (chapter 522) and then finally ace is killed in episode 483 (chapter 574). that is 158 episodes and 140 chapters total and in that time what ace receives from garp are conversations that boil down to

"you did this to yourself"

"i just wanted you to become a fine marine"

"i don't have sympathy for criminals but i do have sympathy for family"

and garp actively preventing those who wish to save ace from reaching him. yes after akainu strikes ace, garp does react viscerally with instinct to protect his grandson, but that's too little too damn late at that point

garp having his moral dilemmas mean nothing when, however long ace spent in impel down, he isn't trying to help him

garp having his 'wishing things had been different' thoughts mean nothing when garp is preventing people from saving his grandson

there's a reason garp lets dadan beat and berate him when they reunite in windmill village and it's because he knows she's right

over the course of 20 years, garp has consistently chosen work over ace and luffy. as much as i love dadan and co, bandits are not a good choice to have raise your grandkids and then be the surprised pikachu meme when neither of them wish to become marines

garp's inability to see past the system he disdains yet clings onto actively shoots him in the foot

prevents him from seeing that ace is right when he says he never could have become a marine

luffy could have never become a marine. i do hear arguments saying that luffy might have had a fair chance considering garp is biologically his grandfather but i say that's truly up in the air considering how, even with that knowledge, akainu still wants to put luffy on a poster

but that's all to say, asking why ace never asked garp for help is ridiculous

the fuck would ace look like asking the man who has done nothing but

unintentionally fostered ace's resentment towards luffy in their early childhood

told ace it was his own fault he landed where he did

falcon punched marco halfway across marineford

for help?

and that's not even mentioning the fact that up until that point, ace didn't believe he deserved to live. he didn't think he had the right to exist. the only thing that kept him going up until that point was hoping he'd find an answer that justified his being born and his love for luffy and sabo. ace tells luffy in his dying breaths if it weren't for the two of them, he would have gave up on living a long time ago

yes, garp loves ace and luffy

he loves them both dearly but he is also incapable of putting them before work, before his ideals of justice. these two truths can coexist at the same time. garp's stubborn to a fault and his moral dilemma resulted in both inaction and the prevention of ace's escape

so to say that marineford would have gone differently if ace had asked is seriously undermining the character work. because in reality, it's up in the air on whether or not that would have done anything. ace asking garp for help could have gone either way and that's the beauty of the gray area regarding garp's actions during the summit war

and yes, i can get why it's frustrating that ace turned around to fight akainu when he could have just left and got it back in a blood a different time

but aside from ace having a temper about specific topics, we do get an answer as to why he couldn't bring himself to runaway when we finally are able to dive into his past with luffy and sabo:

he doesn't want to run away from any situation because ace is deathly afraid of losing something if running away ends up being the bad call

and in that moment, luffy was behind him

even if akainu hadn't talked down whitebeard, ace would have inevitably turned back around because he wouldn't have been able to shake his fear of losing something or someone he cared about

as long as there is something precious for him to potentially lose, ace will never run

he was doomed from the start

his being the son of gol d roger doomed him from the start

and that's what makes ace so tragic

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Ill never forgive the aftg fandom for saying aftg is poorly written but loveable. it is so fucking well written. The characters are all interesting individually and as group dynamics. The plot is unexpected but always makes sense. Theres so many incredible 1 liners said. Theres humour. Theres heartfelt love. Theres angst. You can cry and you can laugh and you can get invested. Nora made characters with actual fucking personalities instead of just catalysts for neil's story. She did this so well she was able to take 2 minor characters and give them an entire sequel.

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laptop overheating?? pour water on it to cool it down!