#But they still have a lot to answer for

[nobodysdaydreams]

Your take on the si-5 is great. Kepcobi somewhat makes me cringe, as popular as it is. Its an abusive relationship whichever way you slice it

Anon, thank you for the compliment. I'm glad my SI-5 post has hit home for so many people.

Kepcobi as a ship was not the focus of that post (it was more about the SI-5's dynamic in general), but as for your thoughts on Kepcobi being abusive, I 100% agree that it is. Disclaimer: I know a lot of people who follow me ship Kepcobi, and that's okay. I personally do not ship characters that often, it's just not really my thing, but you can ship whatever you want, as long as we're talking about two consenting adults and not glorifying or romanticizing toxic and abusive elements and calling them out for what they are, it's your life. Ship what you want, have fun. It’s not like I or anyone else can stop you.

But with that said, while I'm hyperfixating and dropping hot takes and long character analysis ramblings, this does bring up another one of my very controversial Wolf359 opinions, which is that, in fairness to the SI-5, most of the most popular ships in Wolf359 and the ones with the most canon evidence are either set up for tragedy, incredibly toxic and abusive (most of them fall into this category tbh), or out of character and most of these hold true regardless of whether you look at the relationship platonically or romantically.

Again, ship what you want, do not let me stop you, and this opinion doesn't mean I don't see the appeal of these ships and why people ship them (that I understand), but I still stand by this statement, love in depth character analysis, and would be happy to explain it.

Let me break this down.

Arguably the healthiest and most popular ship in Wolf359 is Doug and Hera, but even that one is still doomed to tragedy from the very beginning whether you look at them platonically or romantically. Even before Doug loses his memories, Hera has a whole monologue where she contemplates what it will be like for her when Doug "goes away forever" because she is an AI could theoretically live until the end of the universe, and he is a human with a very unhealthy lifestyle of cigarettes, alcohol, junk food, poor hygiene and little exercise. He has magic alien blood in him now, but even that would probably only extend his lifespan so much. Also, any relationship involving Hera risks a power dynamic issue by design (because she's an AI whose free will can be taken away through coding at any time, and she was designed literally to serve the crew). However, I believe this affects Hera's relationship with Doug noticeably and significantly less than the other characters, particularly because we see Doug depend on Hera just as much as she depends on him, though in different ways. However, Hera still expresses her frustration that Doug doesn't realize she can always hear him and that he can't understand or experience everything she does and that he initially called her "robot girl" and didn't realize he was being insensitive (though to be fair, Doug accidentally said insensitive things to everyone). They do work through these barriers over the course of the podcast and it's not necessarily Doug or Hera's fault some of these miscommunications and issues exist, it's circumstance. I do really appreciate that Doug relies on Hera as much as she relies on him due to his executive functioning difficulties. I will say as someone with ADHD who often has friends and partners with more anxious and aware tendencies that balance me out really well, I related heavily to Doug Eiffel and do see why he and Hera have such a close relationship. Their friendship is wonderful, I see the appeal of the ship, and I love these characters so much they are my favorites, and I desperately wish that they could have had better things. They deserved so much better. But their relationship is, unfortunately, no matter how you chose to look at it (platonic or romantic) very tragic from the start due to the circumstances that make their relationship complicated and doomed to end up with Hera alone in the end whenever and however Doug and the rest of her friends “go away forever”. 💔 (and I do plan to write a fic about this because it makes me so sad. Poor Hera).

While we're talking about Hera, I'll also mention her and Maxwell. I’ve always believed that there is a difference between what I personally ship, and what we have canon evidence to prove. And while it took me a very long time to come around to the SI-5, I do think you could argue that we have some canon evidence that Hera might have had a crush (romantic or friend crush however you’d prefer to see it) based on the way she talked about Maxwell. Was this a mutual crush? Clearly not to same degree given Maxwell's betrayal, and therein lies the power dynamic issue I mentioned earlier, which is very applicable to Hera and Maxwell given Maxwell's coding skills. Hera likes Maxwell because she helped fix her and while Maxwell did so at great personal sacrifice and views the AI as people, she still has the coding skills to hurt and control them if she wants to (and she ultimately chooses to do so). Even though she apologizes for it and doesn't want to do it, she still does it, and it's pretty terrifying when you think about it. She forces Hera to tell her where her friends are and be subservient to her commands, very similar to what Pryce does with the restraining bolts. Part of what makes Hera's character so sad to me is that she's set up to be in abusive situations. She needs Maxwell, but Maxwell doesn't need her. She likes Maxwell because Maxwell views her as a person when so few people do, but even that is just the bare minimum. If Maxwell had the chance that Jacobi and Kepler did to change, maybe things could have been different, and I do really wish we could have seen a redeemed Maxwell develop a healthier friendship with Hera (and wrote a whole fic chapter where Hera reflects on that in the middle of my “a duckling imprints on Jacobi” fic), but unfortunately, we don’t get to see it.

And speaking of characters that are set up to be in abusive situations: Cutter and Pryce, and this again doesn’t matter if you see them as romantic or platonic. Look, I understand that just because two people are evil does not mean they are necessarily in an abusive relationship, you can be evil and still love your wife or husband or “weirdly devoted platonic coworker”. But even though I think Cutter and Pryce care about each other, I still think their relationship is abusive and we have canon evidence for it too. Disclaimer: I don't like Miranda Pryce, she was awful towards Hera and the other AI, she did unspeakable things, she's evil. She's a bad mean lady. But that doesn't mean she can't also be in an abusive relationship, and I believe she is in one whether you see it as romantic or not. You can be an abuser and a victim, those are not mutually exclusive. Even if you assume the whole "Pryce met Cutter as a child when he was an old man" thing was just a metaphor that didn't mean anything, there's still probably some sort of age gap between them even if they met when they were both adults. Putting that aside, there's still a huge power dynamic issue between the two of them. In the surface, they are in an alliance that benefits them both, but the benefits are not equal in the slightest. Their alliance allows Cutter to get a possibly infinite extension on his otherwise normal life span, have superpowers, get his revenge, and control the world. Their alliance allowed Pryce to live and see for the first time. She was disabled and going to die young, she was angry at the world and was originally motivated to build AI to be her friends to do whatever she wanted simply because no one else loved her or wanted to be her friend and she felt the only way to get that was to force people to love and obey her. Cutter was the only one giving her an option that allowed her to survive. That doesn't make it right, but it does make it understandable as does her frustration, bitterness, and hatred towards herself and humanity compared to Cutter's more positive silly attitude. But even once they're in a partnership, it's not a balanced partnership.

The story they tell at the beginning of Brave New World puts her and Cutter in a very uncomfortable "Cutter is her savior" narrative that, if you do assume they met when they were both adults, explicitly infantilizes Pryce and romanticizes that dynamic. We also hear multiple examples of other characters, both good guys and bad guys, acting disgusted or disturbed by Pryce's appearance, particularly her eyes, and Cutter seems to be the only one who isn't bothered by them. We also see Cutter interact with almost the entire cast throughout the course of the show, but Pryce mostly interacts with just Cutter or is in a lab by herself until the very end. She’s extremely isolated and most of the main characters don’t even know who she is until the end despite her being Cutter’s “work wife/worse half” and supposedly second in command at Goddard Futuristics. Now, don't get me wrong, I do think Cutter loved Pryce. I just think he did so in a very controlling way. Sure, he allowed her to call him by his first name and speak disrespectfully to him and openly criticize him, he called her the smartest woman in the world and admitted she was even smarter than he was, he praised her for her AI and rebuilding the world in her image and called her a god, and he was worried when she was in danger. But he also told her the one thing he feared was her making her own decisions in a crisis and messing up and that her one job was to back whatever decisions he made. He insisted on having control and the final say in their relationship. Then he forced her to apologize to him in the most condescending and patronizing way possible. It's giving 1950s in the worst possible way, which does sadly make sense given Cutter was born in the 1920s. Furthermore, Cutter also briefly considers whether it's even worth rescuing Pryce even though he does care about her. He ultimately does, and given that this is Cutter, that probably means a lot, but he still criticizes her for her behavior right after she almost died. It’s certainly more emotional abuse than anything else, but the signs are still there and the way that Pryce acts after she forgets about Cutter and his plans haunts me to this day. She goes from screaming at Hera and Doug to quietly apologizing for being confused and asking for help. I’ve never met a character I dislike so much and yet feel so bad for. I made a whole post about how Pryce and Cutter’s relationship and characters were a toxic mirror of Hera and Doug’s relationship and characters and I honestly think those might be some of my favorite parallels. I could talk about them forever. I will likely make more posts about it. But onto the other ships.

Then we have Kepler and Jacobi, and I already did my whole SI-5 post, but yeah…look. Is there canon evidence to support the ship? sure. Is it a healthy ship in a platonic or romantic sense? Heck no. Warren Kepler is a walking HR violation and some of the comments that he makes are just straight up… I don’t even know what to say other than Kepler is an arrogant jerk and a bully who clearly loves that he can get away with this kind of stuff, and Jacobi’s devotion and loyalty to Kepler is incredibly unhealthy. There’s also the issue of the savior complex and power dynamic issues I talked about with Hera and Maxwell and Pryce and Cutter that show up AGAIN here because Kepler saved Jacobi from unemployment and is his boss. Like with the other ships, I think Kepler did care about Jacobi to an extent just like Cutter cared about Pryce and Maxwell cared about Hera, but like those relationships, I still don’t think Kepler cared about Jacobi as much as he needed to or in the way he should have. In this case, it’s more in a “I care about you because we’re having fun or rather I’m having fun, and that’s what I care about” way rather than an “I sincerely love and care about you” way as evidence by the fact that Kepler compared Jacobi to whisky, didn’t care that his best friend died, and these two tried to kill each other. Though I do think a part of Kepler was sorry in end and acted more like he genuinely cared about Jacobi, it took him a ridiculously long time to get there. Plus then we have Jacobi’s whole implied thing with Klein “going badly” where he admits to being the toxic one and look: having that happen with one person at the evil space company is bad enough but two? Jacobi needs help. The man is a red flag running towards other red flags.

Finally, we have any romantic ship involving Renée Minkowski and any of the crew. Minkowski and Lovelace is the most popular one, but honestly, any romantic ship with her, whether it’s healthy or not, feels super out of character to me for a very simple reason. I cannot believe that Renée Minkowski would EVER cheat on her husband. The rest of the ships I’ve mentioned, toxic as most of them are (Doug and Hera being the main exception though their story is still very sad 💔) I will concede do have various degrees canon evidence, but the idea that Minkowski would get in a romantic relationship with anyone in her crew is just so wildly out of character to me. Minkowski, the woman who follows the rules of Pryce and Cutter, memorized the whole manual, and lies awake at night fretting about ethical dilemmas, willingly breaking her wedding vows? Absolutely not. She would never. She might have had a disagreement with her husband about coming to space, but they didn’t divorce over it. Clearly they weathered that storm, and Dominik was willing to wait for her to come back, he supported her dreams! She calls him wonderful, and the video messages she tried to send him were so sweet and personal you can just tell she loves this man and they have a good relationship. Now, with that said, I don’t think it’s entirely impossible to consider Minkowski getting into another relationships after her return to Earth. Dominik thinks she’s been dead for a few years and it’s not crazy to think he might have moved on and she unfortunately might have to move on too, but until that’s confirmed, I do not believe Minkowski would ever even entertain the idea of breaking her word to him, I just can’t see that being in character for her at all. Again, you can ship what you want, don’t let me stop you, but personally, I headcanon that Minkowski and Dominik are still happily married to this day, if nothing else because Dominik is probably pretty well off if he has his own secretary plus whatever salary bump it’s implied that Cutter gave him after Minkowski started working for Goddard, and he is probably more than happy to provide lodging and support to his wife’s loyal crew who saved her life upon their return. It’s the least they deserve after the horrors they went through: a lifetime of luxury vacations and five star hotels on Dominik Koudelka’s dime. Plus I feel like the reactions of the crew would be so funny. Minkowski invites them to stay with her since they have no place to go, and they’re worried about taking up all this space in her house, but then they get to her place and realize how big it is and are like “finding out you were married was shocking enough, but HE AND HIS FAMILY ARE INSANELY RICH TOO??? And super generous and willing to let us be your free loader roommates in your million dollar mansion to thank us for saving you??? Why on Earth would you not mention this earlier?” And Minkowski’s like “he’s a wonderful person and is the love of my life, the fact that he and his family have tons of money is not why I married him, nor is it a detail I was required to share with any of you”. Anyway, now Doug and Jacobi are getting invited to all these fancy rich people VIP events with Minkowski and Dominik and Minkowski has to beg them not to embarrass her (*cut to these grown men doing cannonballs in the country club pool*).

That’s about it for the main popular and canon ships. I suppose if you want to include Lovelace’s crew or some of the other crews, you could get healthy romantic ships out of that (although they’d unfortunately still be tragically doomed for obvious reasons). As for the other characters, I know Hilbert is mostly just for crack ships, but I also feel like the character would be so disgusted at the thought of being shipped with anyone, platonically or romantically. He’s not as old as Pryce and Cutter, but he’s still old enough to be almost everyone else’s dad. I feel like if asked about workplaces relationships for an official form his reply would be “absolutely not. My coworkers are young enough to be my children. Children I don’t even like. Children I would disown.” “They’re in their 20s and 30s. That’s an adult.” “If they are adults, they might try acting like it.”

I also find any platonic or romantic ship with Rachel unbelievable unless it ends with her betraying them for power, which I think she’s done before. I made a post about it, but the fact that she immediately understood the choice Cutter was facing when he had to decide whether rescuing Pryce was worth risking the mission makes me think she’s been in a similar situation.

To make a classic Bods’ long post short (too late), all these relationships fascinate me whether you choose to see them platonically or romantically (everyone has their preferences), but although many of them have canon evidence and strong narrative appeal, most if not all of them are tragic, toxic, or in the case of some of the romantic ones, out of character and/or random. I do understand the appeal and encourage you to ship what you want, write the relationships the way you wish they were (sometimes we all need that), but at the same time, the canon shipping and relationships thing being mostly sad and/or toxic is not just an SI-5 or Kepler and Jacobi exclusive issue. I just wish we had more redemption arcs and had them sooner. Then maybe we could have nice things. But no. So many of these characters just HAD to go and be evil and ruin not only their own relationships, but other people’s too. Sad.

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

I am incredibly serious right now when I beg you all, please, and if you have Twitter or Tiktok or whatever to please spread the word: click on an author's profile on Ao3.

You want to know if an author has written more? Want to know if they're still writing? Want to see more from them? Want to know if they've written a trope or kink or sex scenario you enjoy?

Click on their name. And look at their profile.

I cannot tell you how many times in the last six months someone has read a new or newer fic of mine and said they (a new reader who has read nothing else I've done) "can't wait to see what you do next!" I've written 50+ fics and over a million words already.

"I don't know if you're still writing..." click on my profile. I am. I literally wrote a 128k+ fic for that ship last month.

"Would you ever do X?" "Please do Y!" I already did. Click on my name and look at my works.

Archive of our Own is a library. It's an archive. Not social media. It is your responsibility to fight back against the laziness that corporate algorithms have trained into you.

Click my author name. Just click it. Just click it.

Before you demand more, or ask if a writer will do XYZ, or wonder if the author still writing, or anything - click on their profile. Click on the author's profile.

I'm not trying to be mean or condescending or anything like that. I'm just exhausted. It's disheartening and frustrating to repeat myself ad nauseam, because someone couldn't take thirty seconds to do the tiniest bit of work to see if I've written lately, if I've written more for their ship, or scan my works to see if I've written what they're asking for. Please. Please. I'm begging.

Click the author's name, and explore before you ask.

[jonnywaistcoat]

When writing, did you ever suffer from a fear or underdelivering or misrepresenting a topic? If you did, how did you overcome it? I enjoy writing but rarely bring it to the public out of fear that I am either not doing good enough or badly portraying the themes or aspects of what I write.

Absolutely, and on the one hand it's a very healthy fear - it prompts you to do your research and be thoughtful in how you write. On the other hand you've just got to accept that occasionally it will happen. Inculturation is a hell of a thing, and leaves us all with a thousand kneejerk preconceptions and perceptions of the world, some benign and some downright awful. And sometimes they crop up no matter how thoughtful you try to be. And you gotta understand that when it happens and people call you on it, you just have to take your lumps and learn what you can from it.

It doesn't help, of course, that the words you write are only ever half of what your audience reads: five people reading the same book are reading five different books, each filtering the text through a lifetime of psychology and experience. And they will find themes and problems in there you never even considered, and they will also find resonances and beauty in your work that you could never have foreseen.

At the end of the day, writing stuff thats meaningful to you (hell, writing anything at all) is a messy, bruising business, and anybody who tells you there are simple solutions or clear rules to follow is either lying to you or to themselves.

But you can't let it paralyse you. Its like if you're playing football and you're worried about falling over. It's a reasonable fear and you should do your best to avoid it, but occasionally it's gonna happen, and unless you want to spend the whole game just standing still in a field, you've kinda just got to get on with it. Just try not to be one of those writers who's always taking dives and... screaming for the ref to get a free kick? Hm. That analogy may have gotten away from me. I don't actually know much about football.

Point is, I'm aware that this isn't the most reassuring writing advice I've ever given, but yeah, its a messy, scary business. Just do your best. Be thoughtful. Be kind. And always do your research.

[tofixtheshadows]

Id love to hear ur interpretation and analysis on falin! She’s one of my favorite characters and and I was wondering what ur thoughts on her are

Man, I struggle to think of anything I could say about Falin that others have not already said. But she's one of my favorite things about Dungeon Meshi too.

So much of the story revolves around Falin, and she's not even there. Tumblr loves to talk about haunting the narrative, but Falin might be one of the best examples of it ever put to page. She's dead. She's alive. She's dead. She's alive. She's alive but she's missing, she's alive but she isn't herself. She's dead but she might wake. She's dead but she's frozen in ice. She's alive but she's sleepwalking. They chase her ghost and they chase her body all through the story.

I think what Kui does with her is fascinating. Not just as character with a personality we can analyze, but as an object in a narrative- that's why I say she's one of my favorite things about the story, because I also mean it in a mechanical sense. As a writer, Kui's really good at misdirection- that is, setting you up to believe or expect something about a character or a plot, and then turning that on its head. It's most apparent with Kabru, but it works really well with Falin too.

Because the precious little sister is a very well known character archetype, right? So is the gentle healer. The heart of the party. The white mage girl. The damsel in distress. The martyr.

And this isn't a Laura Palmer situation, where we find out that beneath her wholesome surface there's something dark and troubled. No, Falin truly is a kind and gentle person. That isn't where the misdirection leads (and that, too, I think, is another misdirection- it's not "Plot twist, she isn't as nice as you thought!", which would almost be too easy).

The misdirection here is more about structure than about character (but also, yeah- a little about character).

What I mean is, with these archetypes firmly in mind, along with a whole other host of fantasy genre expectations, I think anyone who goes into Dungeon Meshi un-spoiled probably expects Falin's rescue to be an endgame event; at least on a subconscious level, where you're not really thinking about it but in the back of your head you're already stretching out the story to place Falin firmly in the distance. Fire breathing dragon at the bottom of the dungeon is perfect final boss material, right? Slay the dragon. Rescue the princess.

And Falin is the perfect prize in the traditional old school fantasy that the concept of the titular dungeon is a send-up to. Blonde (white), soft-spoken, sweet-natured, beloved by everyone. An angelic figure.

Maybe that's why Ryoko Kui gave her white wings.

It is sort of jarring when chapter 23 rolls around and it's already time to fight the red dragon. And it takes a few chapters, but they succeed. And then Falin's impossible resurrection succeeds. But by then you guess that this is not going to be the story you expected it to be.

I want to point out that Falin spends a lot of time getting, well, babied, post-resurrection. Marcille washes her in the bath, despite Falin stating that she's capable of washing herself. Marcille schools her about her mana use despite Falin demonstrating that she is not hurting for mana, and brushes aside Falin's explanations. Both Marcille and Laios refuse to actually tell her what happened. Laios scruffs up her hair like she's a little kid and scolds her for something she can't remember doing. Marcille explicitly calls her a little kid when Falin tries to talk about how much she's grown.

Of course I'm not saying that Laios was wrong to act like a big brother, or that Marcille shouldn't be worried about taking care of her shell-shocked friend in the bath. But the framing of it clearly shows a Falin who is struggling to be heard.

If you'd like to address the big gay elephant in the room while we're here, I want to state for the record that- whether you read her as gay or not -I think Marcille is completely oblivious during this. Because Falin is her little friend from school. Her best friend, yes, but also the young tallman student she, in her infinite elven wisdom, had to mentor and look after. Marcille has not yet accepted that Falin is an adult now, nor has she accepted that she, herself, is only barely past teenagerhood developmentally and is not nearly as mature as she believes. Of course she'd scrub Falin in the bath and fuss over her.

Falin, meanwhile, seems more than aware of her own adult body and the inappropriate way Marcille is treating it.

The mana-sharing scene is, I think, Falin trying to get a little of her own back. How do you like it, Marcille?

And she tries again in bed.

Maybe she's wondering if their relationship will change now that they're grown ups. If Marcille prefers her as a little girl, or at least as a woman who lets herself be guided like one; if Marcille will react badly if Falin keeps trying to assert herself. She also might be subtly trying to signal to Marcille that bed sharing, like bathing, carries a different weight to it when you do it as adults rather than as children.

With all this in mind, the decision to turn Falin from the precious prize they rescued into to the vicious dragon they have to slay, hits a lot harder.

Falin with a powerful, monstrous, destructive body. Falin, who couldn't even stand to cause people pain from using healing spells, slaughtering half a dozen people in brutal ways. And that's not her, she's being mind-controlled, but as an object in the story she has completely flipped. From damsel to threat.

And I love that she carries a little bit of that with her when she's resurrected again.

Because she's no longer the girl who's going to let herself be stifled by her brother's and her best friend's co-dependency, no matter how much she loves them. She's different now: stronger, eyes open, forging her own path instead of following in their wake. Falin is still going to come back to them again, but this time it won't be because they chased her. It'll be because they let her go.

[triona-tribblescore]

IM FUCKING BACK BABYYYY!!!! [Read tags for a lil info!]

(Please accept this silly doodle dump of my brainrot boys uvu ✨)

[whaliiwatching]

one in a million admirers…

based on ofc this prompt

[feelo-fick]

more misc au art... (the last two are unrelated but shh)

GAAAHHHH i promise ive got actual stuff cooking im just scared to post it/motivation to finish art Hard :"D clutching my head... always forever 24/7 thinking about them...

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

This was home.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[tapakah0]

[galentir]

Alternative universe where Luke and Reggie share the best werewolf vampire solidarity 🤝

[bread-blogs]

It is absolutely insane how in this year we can have one of the most famous men up on stage talking to fans about his favourite new project and he still can’t express himself fully because of homophobia. AND HE’S NOT EVEN GAY HIMSELF. I am actually so baffled and upset about this because how can we have this in this year? How can this still be a thing?

[ryssbelle]

Just two kids who got left behind

So now we got Clay's side of the cave in!! He didnt really have time to process any of the emotions he was feeling due to having to immediately run for his life, then guide others to safety alongside Viva.

This was made mostly in response to this fun little tag by @zivazivc

I wasn't planning on drawing it up so soon but AUGH I had to, also ty I pride myself in drawing raw emotions

Btw I do read all the tags and comments I get on my posts I'm very happy to have crushed you all thoroughly 💖

[canisalbus]

out of curiosity, did Ludovica and Vasco ended up having children? I know they probably wouldn't like the thought of it much, but I bet their parents would have at least ask again and again about when they're having kids.

They most likely ended up having offspring, initially to give in to their parents' relentless pressuring, but later found out they're both good with children. Right now I'm thinking they had twins, a girl and a boy, and both survived into adulthood.

[buglaur]

i've been playing the game in my own time but i gotta share this lil angel cus she's the cutest toddler my sims have ever had

[markscherz]

Quick, while the frog purists aren't looking, what's your favorite salamander?

No question, salamanders of the genus Thorius, the smallest salamanders in the world.

[Thorius pennatulus — src]

[Thorius sp. — src]

Truly astonishing creatures.

[tizeline]

Idk if you already answered an ask like this already but does Splinter and Donnie have a good father and son relationship? 🤔

For the most part, yeah it's good. Splinter still has his flaws of course, as much as he loves Donnie he isn't always very good at showing it, and he's still dealing with some pretty intense depression.

That being said, taking care of one mutant turtle child, while still hard, is significantly easier than care of four. Because of that, Splinter in this AU is able to dedicate a lot more time to Donnie. On the flipside, because Donnie doesn't have any siblings to entertain him, he seeks out Splinter for company a lot more, and Splinter isn't always able to give all of the attention that he needs. But overall, I'd say they are closer in the AU than they are in canon, considering they've mostly only been able to rely on each other for so long.