#((although I suppose that both))

[stranger-feathers]

Funniest thing about the stranger things love triangles for me is still the way the writers used almost the same plot beats twice, with siblings on both sides, with similar thematic resonance, and half the fans have still not caught up on where they're going. You are allowed to think it's not going to end up with canon Byler. But the amount of fans (people who are actually invested in watching and understanding the show you know) who won't even admit that they could be setting up a love triangle is still so strange to me. Genuinely, what more do you need to at least consider the possibility ?

[aaandbackstabbed]

Scrooge: are you ready to commit?

Goldie: like, a crime or to a relationship?

[better-call-mau1]

[taz-writes]

here's a hot take for today

the narrative function of sex is the same as the narrative function of fight scenes is the same as the narrative function of songs in a musical

no i will not explain

[ccbatman]

actually so evil how much of hal's internal world gets obliterated with the rewriting of his relationships with jessica and martin.

[frankiebirds]

ohhh boy i forgot about this plot point.

i don't think kevin applying for an overseas job is wrong. i don't even think him suggesting that penelope apply with him is wrong. he's allowed to want to move forward in his career and he's allowed to ask his girlfriend to come with him.

what i do think is wrong is that he doesn't bring it up until right before the final interview. i'm hesitant to suggest this because i know kevin gets a little bit of a ron the death eater* treatment from the fandom, but it feels almost calculated. that's a major life decision you're forcing someone to make very quickly. he says he "didn't want to say anything to [her] until it was real" but even if it's not calculated (which i don't actually interpret it as being, the possibility just crossed my mind) i still think it's a shitty thing to pull on your romantic partner. it's softened a little by the fact that he says he's known for "a few weeks" so it's not like she would have had tons of time to decide in the first place, but like...dude. you don't spring that on your partner while literally dressed for the final interview. are you twelve?

*i believe some, if not all, of the ire kevin lynch gets is because of some stuff that happens later that i'm mostly unfamiliar with, so it's very possible that the vilification i see has more justification. but i do think at least some of it is because he gets in the way of other, more popular garcia ships. (that's not to say i like him or that i like him with garcia. i don't lmao).

[indelicateink]

tagged by @hereticaas -- thank you!

make a poll with five of your all time favourite characters and then tag five people to do the same. see which character is everyone's favourite.

okay so I have zero chill on EpisodeSevenWeekendEve and i'm going to kind of bend the rules here. they're five different characters, but they're all the same character--kind of. is he my fav characters of all time? HE IS/ARE TONIGHT, FRIENDS.

which lestat is your favorite lestat: lestat as recounted by louis, lestat as written about in claudia's diaries, lestat as relayed by armand, louis's 1940s dreamstat hallucinations, or the real lestat, whom we have yet to meet televised as of 21 june 2024?

(no sixth opt-out/nuanced/all-of-the-above/none-of-the-above option, you are brutally forced to choose)

if you are reading this, I am tagging *you* to do a five favs poll, too

[kaiserkisser]

can someone nice (!!) please please please adopt me im begging you im requesting you (huge word vomit and vent in tags, pls dont read if u dont want to!! and if you don't want this stuff on this blog PLS lmk!! i dont wanna make anyone uncomfy! )

[kazikq]

ut/uty wont leave my brain until I actually post about it I think. here are some humans

[triptychofvoids]

The human psyc is such a extraordinary thing, i get myself thinking of milions of situations that happened purely because of a self awareness of being that the human has, a random example being kinks, why do they happen? Trauma? Cause n effect? Association? I really need to think about a psychology course tbh, but what about you? Besides from human anatomy and, does neurology interests you? (And i know psychology and neurology are different alr)

ooh! i agree! of course my interest lies primarily in anatomy and physiology, but it would be a lie to say i dont find topics such as neurology and psychology to be fascinating as well! the brain is incredibly complex and extremely important, well, the whole nervous system really, but there truly is just so much about the brain and about our psyche to learn and to understand and i do find it very very interesting....!

[sisterdivinium]

Age equalled experience, it was plain common sense.

And indeed those eyes perceived that which only decades of practise would concede, those scars testified to skills acquired only with the teachings of time.

Yet both experienced scientist and nun hesitated. The dogmas that had disciplined them had always shunned intimacy (rigour: to see, to deliver death as well as die) and both stood untouched before the other now. Age alone granted no knowledge.

Suzanne was a subject for Jillian to study from the start; Jillian a mortal idol Suzanne must learn to adore.

“Too old” for it, they uncovered love.

[kyouka-supremacy]

Gin is such a tricky character. They've got a very good premise and compelling relations with other characters which makes them very interesting to explore. They have near to no screentime which makes everybody have a personal and original idea of what their personality is like with equal canon basis, so that in the end it feels like the fandom is filled with as many different Gin-ocs as people that are in it. I'm forever pursuing the objective, doomed to be unsuccessful by its own premise, of finding a fanfiction that features a Gin characterization that perfectly aligns with my own Gin-oc.

Anyways, meet my Gin-oc:

I already mentioned this, but Gin and Ryuunosuke aren't biologically related. Back in the slums, everyone assumed they were for their similar looks and how they never left each other's side, and they never bothered correcting them; what did it matter anyways? In the end, when all their friends were slaughtered, they ended up being the only family they had.

Gin's quite confident actually: she could cut your throat at any given moment, and she knows it. That's the consequence of always having been quite spoiled by Ryuunosuke: not really with words, but it'd be extremely rare for him to criticize anything she does, and he would let her win on everything more often than not. She is the youngest sibling. The difference in age feels a lot bigger than what it actually is.

Gin's the blunt, sharp type; doesn't talk a lot, but when she does it's sure to cut you. She's similar to Ryuunosuke in that. She's the only one who can speak back to the most feared pm member without fearing consequences... And it shows.

The only thing that intimidates Gin is for people that have only ever known her in her work attire to see her in civilian clothes, or the other way round.

Gin is also a little naive compared to their brother: she doesn't contemplate the endless fight between good and evil or what it means to take a person's life like Ryuunosuke is used to, she just gets her job done. She's younger than Ryuunosuke and, although she's still a feared Port Mafia operative, I think she is fairly more immature than him, also given the fact that, again, Ryuunosuke used to spoil her and always tried to shield her from seeing the most gruesome, terrifying sides of the world. It's not like he managed to keep her blind to everything, she is from the slums too and she did see her family being slaughtered in front of her eyes and she does know how cruel the world can be a thousand times more than your average Yokohama citizen; it's just slightly better than it is with Ryuunosuke, that's it. And keep in mind that to me Ryuunosuke is quite naive too, so they're also close in this.

Gin and Ryuunosuke live together. Ryuunosuke moved them to a little rented apartment as soon as he could when he started receiving pm retribution, and they later moved to a big flat when he got promoted to command unit (the apartment was destroyed after Dazai left the pm because. yeah).

Ryuunosuke was actually against Gin joining the pm too. He never contemplated it being a possibility when he accepted to join himself. But Gin never had any intention to sit around uselessly, and was going to join whether Ryuunosuke liked it or not. He eventually gave in, reasoning the pm would have protected her, so it was all for her to be safe (a little naive thinking on his end, but he was young too).

The one and only time Ryuunosuke ever got mad at Gin was when he found out that she killed someone for the first time. Which like, what else did he expect ever since she joined the mafia? And yet he had thought (perhaps, hoped) that her role would be limited to low stakes missions, and that she would have maintained a low rank (he's a little stupid). He was furious. Which sounds quite hypocrite given the fact that he's killed countless people, but the thing is in his mind he always was the only one supposed to stain himself with sin, never Gin. Despite all the lives he's taken, I have reason to believe Akutagawa still values life and understands what burden it is to take other people's; a burden that Gin should had never known. He's quite the protective kind. But Gin is not afraid of Ryuunosuke (of course, he's her dear brother), and she wasn't afraid to speak back at him; in the end, she did what she wanted, but it was a tough tooth to swallow for Ryuunosuke.

No one has to know they're siblings– no one. Ryuunosuke is dead serious on the matter and mildly obsessed by it; he's tormented by the idea of any of his enemies getting revenge on him through Gin, and that's literally his greatest fear and worst nightmare (not only Gin dying, but also Gin's death being his fault). The only people to know they're related are the executives and Hirotsu; if Ryuunosuke ever found out anyone else knew, he would instantly hunt them down and kill them, no matter who they were. At work, Gin and Ryuunosuke act like they don't know each other; Gin never protested, because she understands just how vital the matter is for their brother, and how it would be impossible to change his mind on this.

Gin and Ryuunosuke love each other more than anything. They're always going to be each other's priority, always, I can't stretch this enough. 50% of the reasons Ryuunosuke joined the pm to begin with was because of Gin, because he wanted to take her away from the slums, because he wanted her to be safe. Yet they just... Have no idea how to help or comfort each other. Both of them are entirely inadequate with words when it's about comforting someone. So their only way to show affection ended up just being there for each other, silently. I can picture, in one of Akutagawa's lowest moments, when months of being beaten up are starting to really feel on his already frail body, and his illness is starting to emerge, him vomiting blood at home; and Gin just being next to him without saying a word– because what could she possibly say? But she's still there, next to him, and she's the most important thing for him; and it doesn't make the world any less cruel, doesn't lessen the pain that's killing both of them, but at least there's some sort of white comfort in knowing they're not facing it alone. I really believe that as much as Dazai worked to dehumanize Ryuunosuke, tried to make of him a mindless killing beast only existing to follow orders, Gin was the only thing left to keep Ryuunosuke hanging to the glimmer of humanity left in him. On that front, I find the relationship between them to be similar to the one Kyouka and Atsushi share in Beast: their life is walking through the darkest of nightmares, but they do so holding each other's hand.

Although, those moments of connection became always less frequent as time passed and both of them grew up. The more time Ryuunosuke spent working for the pm under Dazai, the more he was reluctant to show himself vulnerable, the more they grew apart. Ryuunosuke was going through a very hard time and for him it was of vital importance that Gin had nothing to do with it. On Gin's end, it was draining to have to powerlessly, passively witness her brother slowly destroy himself and his own humanity without being able to do anything about it, and ironically that led to her distancing herself from Ryuunosuke in turn. In a funny, cruel way, seeing Ryuunosuke so pained without being able to do anything about it activated the fight or flight response the slums installed in her: since there was nothing immediately tangible she could fight against, her instinctive response was to run away from the situation. I just feel like powerlessly having to see a dear one suffer so deeply without being able to do anything has the potential to be even more painful than having to bear the suffering yourself, and I can see how she would have wanted to distance herself from it. Gin and Ryuunosuke didn't move away or anything, but the time they spent together significantly decreased to the point they were both actively avoiding each other. Ryuunosuke was constantly moody and angry at the world and although it was never - ever - directed at Gin, can you really blame her if she didn't want to spend time with him? It's hard for me to explain this without making it sound like Gin didn't care about Akutagawa, wasn't aware and suffered from his pain, didn't want to help him; because she really did care, and was concerned for his suffering, and wanted to help. It's just something really hard to deal with on daily basis when it drags on for several years, and there's so little you can do, especially if the person you want to help would rather die than let you help them.

It got better, though. I feel like Ryuunosuke touched the bottom when Dazai left the pm. But his and Gin's relationship got better after that. Very slowly, very gradually, but it got better. I like to think something switched in Ryuunosuke with the Moby Dick fight, and he started to change. And if he had to change, he decided to start from his relationship with Gin, because she's the person he cares about the most. He tried to be there for her more often, tried to spend more time with her, and it made her so happy. It took a while, and it was a little awkward at first: after all, Ryuunosuke is still his brooding self, who will tell her “It's been a while // Let's go home” with a frown on his face; but even despite that, what matters is that he's still there where he wasn't before, he's there wanting to spend time with her, and Gin is overjoyed by it, and she smiles sweetly to him. They're fixing their bond together, and I think they will get there! I think they will get their close-to-normal siblings relationship.

Differently from Ryuunosuke, Gin actually grew to quite like her job, especially after the Black Lizard was born. Hirotsu soon enough became the closest to a father figure she could have ever wished for. And she has lots of fun with Tachihara– in a way, they share much more of a siblings relationship than she and Ryuunosuke ever had. They constantly jab at each other, they have inside jokes; they threaten each other's lives on the daily but unfailingly have each other's back in battle. Gin eventually opened up a lot to Tachihara, who she felt like was the only one who could really understand her; she had found a solid common ground in their shared experience of having a distant older brother they struggled to connect with. And she trusted the sentiment was mutual, that Tachihara opened up to her as much as she did to him, completely oblivious to his half-truths. When she found out he was a spy– when he told her he was a spy, it broke her. She felt deeply, thoroughly betrayed; it changed her. She's not much the forgiving type. (talked about the Black Lizard dynamics some more here)

[psqqa]

i loooooooooooove listening to madonna's 'frozen' and thinking about jiang cheng, because first it's like "you waste your time with hate and regret you're broken when your heart's not open" and "love is a bird she needs to fly let all the hurt inside of you die" and oh yeah, that's that Good Jiang Cheng Shit, but then the song's "you" is complemented by an "i" and now suddenly this narrative is interpersonal and the mind turns to the logistics of it all. how would this situation arise? who would even be saying this to jiang cheng? what on earth could possibly have happened that jiang cheng finds himself being told by someone that "if i could melt your heart we'd never be apart"? and all of the options are so so so so good:

first up, the obvious: demon-siren-ghost lady. i'm not up on my chinese mythology enough to know what the appropriate option would be, but there definitely is one. cultures love coming up with evil monster women who lure innocent, horny men to their untimely demise. and jiang cheng's one of the guys in this world who deals with that kind of shit. and now he's done fucked up and gotten himself ensnared or whatever. perhaps he needs to be rescued. perhaps he just rolls his eyes and goes "yeah tell me something i don't know" and zidians his way out of it no sweat. like i said, the obvious option. but still. You Love To Ponder It.

second option, and perhaps the most in keeping with the tone of the song: some poor, unfortunate woman who's been sent by some guy somewhere to Seduce sandu shengshou for nefarious political purposes of some kind. she's being paid a lot of money. she's very good at this. she's.........pretty desperate at this point. like, seducing jiang wanyin, the proud, fearsome, ambitious, and super repressed head of the yunmeng jiang feels like it should be totally doable if you come at it with the right mindset and tools, and she definitely has the right mindset and tools, but here she is, in jiang cheng's bedroom, throwing everything she's got at this guy and he's giving her nothing. it is deeply painful for everyone involved and i am having a great time.

and then there's my favourite option: jiang cheng's recurring psychosexual nightmare. every night jiang cheng lies down, closes his eyes, and, baby, it is all happening here. we've got wen qing and jiang yanli. we've got wei wuxian and his mom. we've got every auntie and matchmaker who's ever sniffed contemptuously at him and declared him unmarriable. we've got qin su. we've got jin zixuan. hell, we've got jin guangyao, lan xichen, and nie mingjue along for the ride as well, i mean, who hasn't felt some kind of way about those three, amirite? like the gang is all here (jiang fengmian excepted, of course), all rolled into a dazzlingly horrible chimera flashing from facet to facet to facet pleading with him to bend even as it tells him he's broken. and then every day he wakes up, drenched in sweat, and has to get up and receive fantasy ancient china emails. truly the kind of soul-crushingly horrendous but delicious bullshit that makes jiang cheng one of the all-time blorbo greats.

what a song. what a guy. yeah i'll put that baby on repeat for hours and rotate between these three scenarios in hideous glee. god i love being alive.

[age-of-moonknight]

“Two Minds,” Superior Spider-Man (Vol. 3/2023), #4.

Writer: Dan Slott; Penciler: Mark Bagley; Inker: John Dell; Colorist: Edgar Delgado; Letterer: Joe Caramagna

[scootatwoni]

The strongest warriors are those that love botw but don't ship zelink (me its me I'm the strongest warrior)

[superfluffychickens]

Miss Maya grew up to be an Absolute Unit of a hen, she dwarfs all her sisters and she’s even bigger than Pluto! If I didn’t trust the breeder I got her from, I’d say a Jersey Giant egg got mixed in to my clutch somehow! But I don’t really care about that stuff anyway, I think she’s lovely and perfect just the way she is! I love her soft and shiny feathers and her big gentle eyes!