#<- this hurts a lot. btw

[metapoetix]

I LOVE CUNTY OLD MEN can weeee. perhaps get some more context on him (also camille. whats her deal she looks like the sort of lady that has a Deal)

HI OK YES YOU CAN. im gonna call the old guy merle for the purposes of this post because thats the name currently winning the poll i made on the dads server (the other option is noel)

so merle is like. a bit of a hermit essentially. he lives in a little hut in a place called mount terpe and mostly keeps to himself although he routinely goes down to check on the village and see if they need any help from him. because hes a nice person

hes highly educated & owns loads of books & grows lots of food for himself

crucially hes very skilled at martial arts and is a good teacher

the reason fubao & julia end up in his care is that the area around mount terpe has a period of conflict partly caused and massively exacerbated by the corrupt official governing the are and this conflict ends with a lot of people dying in clashes with the imperial military

one day merle sees a young girl sleeping in his orchard & he decides to take her in to look after her & teach her all he knows

this girl is called julia!!

he takes fubao in 2 years later under very similar circumstances (im still figuring out the specifics)

for the next like 10 years he acts as a father & a teacher & a best friend to them & they learn to fight incredibly well (fubao is something of a prodigy in this regard) & also gain a wide education

merle is. i mean hes wonderful. hes so good with the two of them and hes so funny and just. raises them well!!!!

we dont see that much of him in the story outside of flashbacks as the action all takes place after julia and fubao have left mt terpe with his blessing to forge their own path across the empire BUT his memory exerts a huge influence on the pair nonetheless & its clear how much they love him & how much their love for their teacher glues the two of them together

also its merle who encourages them to be free and travel around helping people!! he never ever tries to restrict them and instead takes them with him to help around the village. he never shies away from discussing violence with them etc. basically hes the best mentor anyone could have wished for

i think his biggest flaw is that despite his kindness he has this 'i cant save everyone' thing going on which results in him distancing himself from situations in which he has to make that choice/leaving it up to 'fate' (we even see this in the fact that he saved fubao and julia but left a lot of other people living nearby and involved in the conflict to suffer alone and only reluctantly takes in the two girls because they come to him and therefore he sees it as fated

and similarly often if hes working on a case involving violence he will stand by while someone becomes collateral damage because he believes that its pointless to try and save them

he still helps saves SO many people tho. i want to be clear about this. merle is a hero most ways that matter and his heart is always in the right place. and he loves his students so so much and no matter what happens he is always always on their side

NOW. CAMILLE.

here is where i confess that i have actually been witholding some important information from you: fubao and julia are not in fact merles only protegees

he takes a third girl in a few years after fubao and julia

this girl is camille

shes much younger than the other two but they absolutely dote on her & treat her as their little sister

she isnt as sharp witted as them either but she is sweet and her intelligence in the humanities merle teaches them makes up for her relative lack of skill in fighting

and anyway fubao and julia are determined to always protect her!!! :)

but one day the imperial guard shows up at mount terpe and seize camille. they give no explanation for this and are gone as quickly as they appear

fubao and julia try desperately to fight but ultimately are overpowered

they never see camille again

now. obviously this fucks them up on a huge scale. and camille will haunt them for basically the rest of the story!!!!

after this they never talk to each other about her

well. spoiler alert. camille reappears eventually (this is one of the major moments in the story) but its not exactly a happy family reunion..........

camille is like. an incredibly important character in the way she chooses to live her life and how markedly different it is to fubao and julia. and also just how deeply they fucking miss her

[bertoyana]

X-MEN: DAYS OF THE FUTURE PAST (2014)

[lazylittledragon]

what do you mean youre technically a detransitioner cause of terf bullshit?

it's a v long story but i detransitioned for a couple of years when i was 16/17, for multiple reasons but mostly because i fell into the blaire white/kalvin garrah chamber of "you have to be This way to be trans otherwise you're not real".

i was already Deeply insecure about myself and my 'passing' and i was led to believe that i couldn't want to wear makeup or skirts, and i couldn't choose not to have bottom surgery, and i couldn't do anything but bind for 12+ hours a day to the point that my ribcage is still misshapen. basically i thought that if i wasn't suffering enough doing 'feminine' things, i couldn't really be trans, so i should just go back to being a girl and suck it up.

the terf bullshit is because i'd seen a lot of terfs/detransitioners talking about the 'dangers' of testosterone and how it would turn me into a horrible ugly evil monster and how there was nothing worse than wanting to be a man. which combined with 'you need to fully medically transition to be valid at all' creates some very dangerous and upsetting feelings to cope with.

it also came from trying really hard to put myself in a little box before i realised that my sexuality/gender are very fluid and it's FINE for me not to have a label and just do whatever i want. when i was 19 or so i went back to using they/them (and eventually he/him) and changed my name again because even though i like doing 'feminine' things, i don't want to be seen as a woman.

tldr: i was conditioned by transphobic/terf rhetorics to think that i was being trans the 'wrong' way so i couldn't be trans at all, so i believed i must actually be a girl if i still wanted to do 'feminine' things. nowadays i am a transmasc who does feminine things because i don't give two shits about what any transmed prick thinks of me anymore.

[makiswirl]

can i just say. and this is probably a niche hill to die on. that i am so gobsmacked every time someone vaguely hints at the idea that jotaro doesn't care meaningfully for the other crusaders, usually particularly kakyoin and joseph, when those two actually tend to be the ones he reacts to being hurt the hardest

like he cares for his loved ones!!!! that literally plays into his character motives in every single part he shows up in!!! stop lying to me!!!!!!!

[vynnyal]

Turns out Sunlit Trail isn't quite done just yet, so after all that they just send you to a dead end 😂

[yunamiudon]

The crystal 💎✨🌟💫

(I can't believe it's been almost 3 years since I painted this! ↓)

[ddenji]

i really enjoyed this bit of the chapter. two victims of control stand against each other. one of them made it out, certainly not unscathed but still able to find the good in life; the other is still searching for that control, the safe feeling of having no choice and the promises that were made that will never be delivered now. barem acknowledges that he’s still under makima's control, or at least his heart is, which symbolizes a more emotional connection to his relationship with being controlled. he feels robbed that her forced peace never came about. his anger is directed at denji now, the one who ‘got out’, because he’s been living in peace in barems eyes, while having destroyed barems own idea of peace. they are both victims, but denji is the victim who got to move on and barem cannot do that. i just really enjoy looking at part 2 from the angle of "who made it out and who is still trapped by the dreams of a dead woman", because makima does cast a shadow over the whole narrative.

(p.s. i'm not absolving barem of anything, he still sucks, but it would be so absurdly incorrect to me to not acknowledge that the other hybrids are victims of makima too, even if they dont see it that way, and how that affects their character arcs.)

[bellshazes]

the only person who understands joel/etho/bdubs/impulse is me. cos i hate it. and i comprehend who's the dog needing kicked so bad. and it's several of them in the stupidest ways

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

i remember when encanto came out and everyone was complaining about how the abuela was forgiven so quickly. but at the very least she sincerely apologizes to everyone and we see her actually putting in effort to change. not to mention, i saw it less as the family forgiving her and more as them giving her a chance to redeem herself.

i wonder what those people would have thought of spop and catra.

[samgiddings]

Yes, people who don’t take it personally when you don’t reply are great, but like, we all understand that that’s a grain of salt thing, right? Like if you ghost your friend back-to-back-to-back when they reach out to you, they’re going to eventually give up. We know that, right?

If you don’t reply multiple consecutive times when someone messages you trying to have a conversation (not just sending a random thought/meme/something casual), you are ghosting that person, and it’s not on them to keep using their energy to reach out to you.

(AND before you come for me just know I say this as someone who is a notoriously bad texter, and who is super bad for remembering to reply to texts.)

[justaz]

thinkinnn bout arthur pendragon. my baby boy. he's such a bitch but also such a baby girl.

he never felt the love of a mother and relied on his father for all of the love and validation he needed growing up but uther never gave it to him unless he succeeded in battle - probably against druids/sorcerers. arthur never feeling like he was enough, that he was never worthy of love unless he did something for them or won a battle because that was the only time his father looked at him with a modicum of warmth.

being a prince raised to one day be king and being taught to never trust anyone, that as king he can only trust himself, and then watching his father fuck over the people of camelot and going "a king must make hard choices" but arthur never agrees with any of that!! he puts on the aloof asshole act to keep people away so he doesn't get hurt but baby boy wears his damn heart on his sleeve. he cares. SO much. he trusts everyone, no matter how many times he's been betrayed. he does everything he can for his people

he strives for their love and pride because he never got it growing up. he works his ass off to be the best king for his people that he can be, so he can be the best heir for his father that he can be, so he can be the best son for his mother that he can be - all so he can prove that he's good enough and worthy enough of love. yet time and time again, he's betrayed by those he has done nothing but be there for. time and time again, the people he's loved and trusted most have betrayed him and left him like he was nothing. proving to him time and time again that he wasn't enough, that he'll never be enough for their love or loyalty.

[ittybittyremy]

I really hate the use of the word "hypocrite" in the CR fandom because it doesn't let people appreciate the nuances of the characters/situations. This is not to say that the characters don't have their hypocritical moments. I just think there are people who slap the word on a character and call it a day, not even bothering to try to understand it.

I have more to say but TLDR: Hypocrisy is a fact but it feels like an insult because it implies that there is no reason that the contrast of ideas exists.

You won't like to hear this but everybody (including you) is/will be a hypocrite at some point. There are many cases of this, some more severe than others.

As a small example, I hate the sound of other people clicking their pens repeatedly but I click my pen repeatedly all the time. Is that hypocritical? Yes! You could slap that label call it that and call it a day and it wouldn't be technically wrong. However, you could also figure out why these contrasts exist. In my case, my thing with noises has to do with control. I don't mind my pen clicking because I can choose the tempo and decide when to stop it. But others make that exact same noise, I can't control it and I don't know when it'll stop.

Hypocrisy is a fact but it feels like an insult because it implies that there is no reason that the contrast of ideas exists.

This is not meant to say that all hypocrisy makes sense or has reason. Reasonless hypocrisy is one of the foundations of prejudice/discrimination but that's a whole other conversation.

There will also be reasons of hypocrisies existing that you disagree with. However, just because you disagree with the reason doesn't mean that the reason does not exist.

Back to Critical Role

I made this post because of people's reactions to Ashton regarding their views on the gods versus the primordials. During the CR Cooldown, the cast calls Asthon out for their hypocrisy of their views on the gods versus the titans. This is what Taliesin says about it:

"It's the difference between the feeling of being small in front of someone rather than being small in front of everything. Is really what happened, which is instead of having the smallness and raging at the big person, it was 'I'm in the middle of this.' [Asthon] didn't feel separated from it... It was more feeling the place in the cosmos, rather than actual people going 'oh it's you' and you're like 'fuck'."

Of course, you can understand Ashton’s hypocrisy and disagree with the reasoning. That's fine, as long as you see their reasons and acknowledge that they exist. It may not make sense to you but it makes sense to the character.

[maxpawb]

i got diagnosed with Cervical spondylotic radiculopathy today which is causing severe nerve pain in my neck but the annoying part is that it spreads down to my shoulder and right arm/hand which means i will be less able to draw :( it will take a few weeks to improve (maybe months idk) but hopefully get better (basically im hoping it wont get worse bc i really dont want to have to get surgery)

[muzzlemouths]

if DMD chapter 2 was Sun happily adopting you like a new puppy then chapter 3 is the part where he starts having second thoughts

[officialspec]

genuinely curious, and probably will agree but on your tags for the post about mental illness terms being used trivially you said that it’s basically impossible to self diagnosis dissociation- genuinely i want to know why you think that

my stance is that its pretty much impossible to distinguish dissociation from other potential symptoms in any meaningful way without professional guidance, for a few reasons:

for one, its a widely misunderstood symptom even in actual psychiatric circles, and on top of that any legitimate information you might be able to find is surrounded by 100 times more tumblr-infographic-style misinformation and for most people it is straight up impossible to tell the difference

you (general) might be inclined to think 'i know not to trust infographics i would be able to tell', but the sheer volume of misinformation has saturated the field so completely that its plastered on very official looking websites, and even some more trustworthy sources, so a discerning eye wont save anyone

the average person simply will not be able to sift through the hogwash to any legitimate resources without direction from someone who knows what theyre looking for, no matter how savvy they might be. no one is immune

if you do somehow manage to separate the wheat from the chaff, the next issue is that dissociation is a wildly nebulous human experience, and the way it presents overlaps with about one million other things that are all managed in completely disparate ways. a treatment for dissociation might make someones actual problem much worse, or drive them to hopelessness if it doesnt change their symptoms at all. its a huge risk that i just dont think is worth it

this answer is already long as hell but ending on the usual disclaimers that im aware diagnoses are prohibitively expensive and also i cant stop anyone from doing anything. but i will have opinions about it. as is my right

[mediumgayitalian]

fic rec friday 4

hi!! welcome to fic rec friday. every week, i pick five fics i have bookmarked and rec them with a little review. check them out!

Serenade by @porcelaincas

“Will Solace,” Nico said. They were so close now that Nico could see that there were golden flecks among the blue in his irises. “Are you trying to serenade me?” or the one where Nico falls for Will even before the battle against Gaea and it all culminates on a warm summer night.

i am always a deep deep sucker for fics where will and nico know each other, at least slightly, before BoO. theyre so fascinating and for what. in this one in particular...oh will helping nico in the bronze jar is crazy. i don't want to spoil it but my ass was sat on that seat reading.

2. Stupid Teens by tihsho

Will likes getting gifts, and Nico likes the way Will blushes whenever he gives him anything. It should be a simple situation, but nothing's ever simple for Nico. Something's bothering Will, and Nico can't do anything about it. Never mind that he still can't seem to put a name to these feelings, either. Maybe there's a point in here about anger and nuance, or maybe it's a point about being young, or self acceptance, or whatever else. Or maybe Nico's just reading into it too much.

yes the homophobia scene is a little gratuitous. HOWEVER. the beginning scene is so dorky and ridiculous that i actually smile WIDE every time, first time i read it i laughed out loud. and the whole nico likes to spoil will a little bit (a lot bit) even well before they got together headcanon is GODSENT its one of my favourites. and i also like in this one how will maybe needs a minute to get comfortable in his sexuality too!!

3. Find Happiness in Misery by percyspandapillowpet

"Nothing can make me happy, Solace," he spat bitterly before turning away and wiping furiously at his face. "I like to try." --- In which Nico is searching for happiness, for his childhood, and for a Christmas present.

this is an older fic, but i think it still holds up!! i love any fic that goes over the whole mythomagic thing tbh. theres so much story potential there and this fic had a very sweet premise.

4. Looks Like We'll Be Trapped Here For A While by percyspandapillowpet

Nico stopped in his tracks and turned towards Will. “The Aphrodite cabin is planning to prank us. Today.” Will raised his eyebrows. “How do you know?” "They were talking about it. I just heard them.” Sighing as if it were just what he was expecting to hear this morning, Will reached up to scratch the back of his head. “Okay. What do you want to do about it?” Nico pondered this for a moment. “I think we should hide.” “Hide? Where?” Will asked. “We can’t leave camp, and it’ll be awfully boring to stay in the forest or something all day.” After a quick mental scan of all possible locations, Nico realized there was only one unfortunate solution. “Um…how about my cabin?”

cheesy and fun!! the mythomagic scene in particular made me giggle. in particular i love this part and feel like you should all be made aware of it:

“It’s…a game I used to play, when I was little,” he replied carefully.

Will looked up at him. “Do you still remember how to play?”

He felt his entire face turning red. “Well…kind of, I guess, but I’ve outgrown it…”

Will glanced at the back of the box. “What’s the attack power of Athena?”

“Five thousand,” Nico replied automatically, and then immediately groaned. That stupid game was so hardwired into his brain, and now Will was going know how much of a weird geek he was—

But Will was smiling. “That’s adorable. Teach me how to play.”

nico being physically unable to hold the stats back....unbeatable headcanon. adore

5. Pawsitively Perfect by percyspandapillowpet

“Is that…” Nico couldn’t even finish is sentence when suddenly the thing mewed. A moment afterwards, it revealed its tiny brown face, turning to face the son of Hades with round, curious eyes that seemed much too large for the rest of its head. Nico would be lying if he said it wasn’t the most adorable little creature he had ever laid eyes upon. But soon enough, the reality hit him. Will had a cat. Cats were not allowed in camp. Will had brought the cat into the Hades cabin, so if they were caught, they would likely both get in trouble. Not that Nico was scared of getting in trouble with the cleaning harpies—it was safe to say he’d been through a lot worse. What he didn’t think he could handle was the shame of being ridiculed as the kid who tried to hide a kitten with Will Solace. Jason would never let it go. Nico glanced from the kitten’s face back up to Will’s, which was somehow equally as endearing with his pleading-blue-puppy eyes. He knew what he was going to ask just from his expression. He sighed. “Will, you can’t keep it.”

bleeding heart will my beloved. sweatshirt thief nico u are so real. honestly a power couple what more could u want. a kitten? there's a kitten, rest assured.

thank you for joining me this friday!! happy reading!!