#I say after coming out of hell

[inkskinned]

there are a lot of posts out there that are positive and healthy coping mechanisms for handling the holidays. this is not one of them :)

i think there's like. going to be times in your life you will be stuck in a social situation that you cannot escape from gracefully. i do not know why the internet doesn't believe these times exist. it's not always just that your physical safety is at risk - sometimes it's legit like "i just don't currently have the energy or time to put in the effort of responding to this." sometimes it's a coworker you hate so much. sometimes it's just like, fine, you know? like you know you can handle your aunt when she's cheerily horrible, but if you actually set a boundary around her, it's going to be weeks of fallout with your father.

i don't know why people think the answer is always just "cut them out!" or "don't let them get away with that!" because ... the real world is tricky and complicated. i think kind of a lot of us have an internal "radiation poisoning" meter for certain people. like - i'm talking about the ones who are absolutely giving you gradual ick damage. like, you can handle them, but you'll be exhausted.

and yes. you absolutely should listen to your therapist and the good posts about handling others and set good boundaries and take care of yourself. prioritize peace.

HOWEVER :) ...... since im often in a situation with a Gradual Sense of Ick person i cannot just "cut out" of my life (without losing someone else precious to me) - i have sort of developed the most. maladaptive form of mischief possible. because like, if i'm going to have to listen to this shit again, i like to have a little bit of private fun with it.

now! again, i am physically safe, just mentally drained by this man. you should only do this with people you are not in danger with. which leads me to my suggestions for when your Unfortunate Acquaintance shows up and says oh everyone pay attention to me.

my favorite word is "maybe!" said as brightly and happily as possible. whenever the Horrible Person starts in on a topic you do not want to go further with, particularly if they make a claim that you know to be inaccurate, do not respond to it. you and i have both tried to actually argue with this person, and it hasn't gone well, because this person just wants the drama of an argument. however, "maybe!" gives them literally nothing to go on. it is incredibly disarming. they are used to people having some response. they know they can't prove what they're saying, and maybe! treats them like the child they are. it dismisses them in the politest way possible.

i like to say maybe! and then, in their stunned silence, immediately change the subject. this is because i have adhd and i will have something unrelated to talk about, but if you can't think of topics fast enough, i recommend just pointing to something and saying, "isn't that lovely?" because fuck you let's bring in some positivity.

by the way. that second trick - of pointing to something and stating an opinion about it? - that just works on its own, like, 70% of the time. i picked it up from teaching preschoolers. it's an intentional "redirect". it stops children crying and it also stops grown adults from finishing their explanation on why women belong in kitchens. dual wielding!

keep it silly for yourself. i absolutely do not care if people think i'm fucking stupid (it's more fun if they do) and as a result i will purposefully misunderstand things just to see how long it takes them to realize i've completely removed them from the subject at hand. when they say "women aren't funny" i get to be like. "which women." "all women." "all women in america?" "no in the world." "like the mole people? the people in the world?" "what? no. like, alive." "oh are we not counting the mole people?" "what the fuck are you talking about." "you don't believe in the mole people?"

similarly, i play a personal game called "one up me." my Evil Acquaintance literally knows this game exists (my family & friends caught onto it and now also play it) and it always fucking gets him. i don't know why. you have to be willing to be a little free-spirited on this one, though. the trick is that when they make one of those horrible little bigoted or annoying comments they are always making, you need to go one unit weirder. not more intense, mind you - just more weird. "you don't look good in that dress." "yeah, actually, my other dress was covered in squid ink due to a mishap at the soup store." "you shouldn't wear such revealing clothes." "wait, what? oh shit. sorry, your son tears off strips when no one is looking and eats them. i swear it was longer before we left the building."

the point of "one up me" is to completely upend this person's narrative. we both know this person likes setting up situations where you cannot "win" and then they really like telling other people how badly you handled it. in a usual situation, if you respond "please don't say something that rude", you're a bitch. but if you let it happen, you're letting yourself be debased. they are not usually expecting door number three: unflappably odd. because what are they going to say when they're telling everyone how badly you behaved? "she said my son eats her dresses" ".... okay?"

if you can, form an allyship with someone whomst you can tagteam with. where they can pick up on your weird "soup store" story and run with it.

the following phrase is amazing and can be deployed for any situation: "oh, be nice :) it's the holidays!" i do not know why this works as often as it does. i'll say it for the most random shit. i think this is bc most of the time these people know they're being impolite, they just like to fight.

godbless. when in doubt, remember that you could always start stealing their pens.

the whole point of this is - if you can't escape. maybe see how long you can just be. like. a horrible little menace.

[turtleblogatlast]

I think about Leo’s “I’m your least favorite” comment to Splinter in “Down with the Sickness” a lot. It’s likely just a throwaway comment, a way to get Splinter to leave him alone before Leo gets sick too, but I can’t help but wonder if Leo believes it on some level.

Obviously it’s not true, Splinter loves him as much as he loves the others, but…it wouldn’t be shocking if Leo believed otherwise. After all, just in “Many Unhappy Returns” alone, Splinter has, with no hesitation, said comments like “my other sons would have taken this seriously” and “I knew I should’ve brought purple”, said “no” to Leo’s “I love you”, and pretty blatantly didn’t extend any trust in Leo’s plan even after Leo was fairly effortlessly defeating their opponents.

It was only after, when they’d already won, that Splinter finally gives him a “it was all you my son!” And…that’s basically it. Raph is the one who announces his trust in Leo. Not their father, even though Splinter is the one to witness Leo lowering his walls for once (which Splinter doesn’t react well too, because Leo only lowers his walls in the most hectic of times, and because he lowers them only then, either no one is around or no one is in the right state of mind to respond properly, leading to Leo building his walls back up, and the cycle continues.)

Again, it’s not because Splinter doesn’t love Leo, but Leo…can’t be feeling too good about all that. The way he never reacted surprised about any of Splinter’s words too…

He may know that Splinter loves them all, as a group, but individually…I don’t think Leo believes he ranks all that high with that love. Gives another meaning to “I’m nothing without my brothers” huh?

(Of course, I’m willing to bet the invasion changed that understanding, but with that comes the potential misunderstanding that his father’s outright love is tied to Leo sacrificing himself.)

[caeslxys]

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere but it feels relevant again in light of the most recent episode. Something that’s really fascinating to me about Orym’s grief in comparison to the rest of the hells’ grief is that his is the youngest/most fresh and because of that tends to be the most volatile when it is triggered (aside from FCG, who was two and obviously The Most volatile when triggered.)

As in: prior to the attack on Zephrah, Orym was leading a normal, happy, casual life! with family who loved him and still do! Grief was something that was inflicted upon him via Ludinus’ machinations, whereas with characters like Imogen or Ashton, grief has been the background tapestry of their entire lives. And I think that shows in how the rest of them are largely able to, if not see past completely (Imogen/Laudna/Chetney) then at least temper/direct their vitriol or grief (Ashton/Fearne/Chetney again) to where it is most effective. (There is a glaring reason, for example, that Imogen scolded Orym for the way he reacted to Liliana and not Ashton. Because Ashton’s anger was directed in a way that was ultimately protective of Imogen—most effective—and Orym’s was founded solely in his personal grief.)

He wants Imogen to have her mom and he wants Lilliana to be salvageable for Imogen because he loves Imogen. But his love for the people in his present actively and consistently tend to conflict with the love he has for the people in his past. They are in a constant battle and Orym—he cannot fathom losing either of them.

(Or, to that point, recognize that allowing empathy to take root in him for the enemy isn't losing one of them.)

It is deeply poignant, then, that Orym’s grief is symbolized by both a sword and shield. It is something he wields as a blade when he feels his philosophy being threatened by certain conversational threads (as he believes it is one of the only things he has left of Will and Derrig, and is therefore desperately clinging onto with both bloody hands even if it makes him, occasionally, a hypocrite), but also something he can use in defense of the people he presently loves—if that provocative, blade-grief side of him does not push them—or himself—away first.

(it won’t—he is as loved by the hells as he loves them. he just needs to—as laudna so beautifully said—say and hear it more often.)

[dayurno]

this is somewhat of a vent post & something i said i would not do again but has been plaguing me enough that i think getting it out might feel better. so. has anydoggy else been. Baffled and upset by nora sakavic’s refusal to speak on how terribly aftg has treated its characters of color? with the author of the series coming back with a new book and starting up on her online activity again, and questions of what she’d change about aftg bubbling up, it’s particularly glaring to me that we are all playing this very long game of pretend where we ignore how badly the non-white cast has been treated & her lack of thoughts on it

and i understand not wanting to bring up nicky and thea because people pick on her for it. i’m not trying to discredit nora sakavic’s terrible history of getting harrassed online by aftg fans. but i think it is very cynical, and it is very juvenile, and most of all very cruel, that she gets to ignore the very real ways the books have set up these characters to be hated. i think it’s obvious why the characters who get the most hate are the only canonical characters of color, and i think we do not get to treat this like a deliberate decision on the fandom’s part when the books have put these same characters in degrading and embarrassing and terrible positions in the first place. aftg is not a story about nice characters with clean pasts, but there is a very specific nastiness to the only characters of color being a brown man who sexually harasses and later assaults the main character, a black woman whose only scene is her lashing out at her love interest after being ignored for the first two books, and the japanese villain who gets maybe two lines of complexity before he goes back to being a terrible person. the white cast, in comparison, while not at all free from flaws, are never shown to commit mindless evil; all of their actions are ultimately justified. the book goes out of its way to give them concession after concession. we know exactly who to side with, because aftg tells us who these people are. does nicky’s assault ever get addressed in the books? does riko’s reasoning to be the way that he is ever gets more than briefly aluded to? is thea reserved even a shred of humanity or grace in her one scene?

anyway. it’s been years of talking about this and the fandom has been constantly hostile to criticism in this regard, and more recently any criticism at all, and it’s Grating to be on the other side of this discussion. it’s exhausting to know that in ten years we do not get even an acknowledgment besides the author saying she will not answer questions about nicky and thea anymore. it’s upsetting and it’s ugly and i wish no one had to talk about this again, but we do because what i thought was common sense has been washed away by a sudden influx of no-nuance adoration for the trilogy. basically i hope we all explode

[trappedinafantasy37]

Oathbreaker

[rosiesriiveters]

Keep thinking of Rosie allowing everyone else to experience the trauma of war around him in any way they need to. Whether it be after listening to his crew member choke through the Munster story, reaching a hand out to comfort him, making sure the replacements are all settled and feel comfortable with him - establishing that he's someone who can be trusted with any issues - and listening to Crosby tell him he's scared he's becoming a monster and reassuring him, and yet refuses to give himself the same grace.

Thinking about how he doesn't tell Crosby about what he saw after he was shot down, what he witnessed in that camp. He's never really the one telling any stories in the series. He listens and watches, lets others say whatever they need to, all the while keeping his cards close to his chest.

Thinking about Rosie smiling while watching his crew and the other airmen enjoying themselves at the flak house, and yet not allowing himself the same enjoyment. Thinking about how the doctor at the flak house got Rosie to look after himself only when he framed it that looking after himself is looking after his crew.

Thinking about Rosie re-upping, choking slightly on his words as he explains he can't bare the thought of sending some rookie in his place to only get himself and his crew killed.

He won't give himself the grace or patience he deserves, but by god he'll take care of everyone around him.

[morrigan-sims]

“I should have known that it was only a matter of time before she found me again. I’ll end up dead, or back in her hold. I can’t decide which is worse.”

[flowerakatsuka]

mfs start crushing on a matsuno and begin to lose it—

[ blank ver. ]

[rexscanonwife]

Concept sketch of my new JJBA self insert and her stand, BellaDonna (who will eventually be known as Madonna). Inspired by the song 'Like a Prayer' by...well, Madonna! @sapphire-heart-tippy

(lore dump under the cut, TW for mentions of animal injury and religious trauma)

My self insert (who will also go by Jane) grew up in a deeply religious family and tried to be a good jehovah's witness child that made her parents proud.

One day, she comes up with the power to heal various injuries and ailments, almost to the point of being able to revive the dead. She figures she's given this power by the lord himself and vows to do good with it, but when she's found using them to heal a bird that had been wounded by a cat, her mother falls into hysterics thinking that she MUST be possessed by the devil to have such abilities.

She's punished and shunned by her community while her mother prays for a cure and though she tries to repent her power doesn't seem to go away, so eventually her mother snaps and drags her into the wilderness and attempts to throw her to the bottom of an old well.

Her Stand, which had previously not manifested physically, appears then to cushion her fall and eventually she manages to pull herself out of the well with her Stand's help, who she now believes to be a guardian angel. But not wanting to return home, she runs away to face the world alone, growing jaded and bitter over time. She loses all of her faith, and the power to heal inverts itself, becoming a sort of poison. Something that LEECHES life, rather than heal it.

When she's an adult (my age irl so 25 I guess) she's made her way by becomes a bounty hunter/assassin using her Stand and eventually catches the attention of Dio. Who takes her in and explains to her what her Stand REALLY is, promising to teach her how to properly wield those powers if she agrees to serve him. She reluctantly takes his offer, but starts to see him as a familial figure, since no one else had ever tried to nurture or even accept her gift. Dio is the one who giver her Stand the name BellaDonna, after the deadly plant!

[possamble]

Ohh okay it's just a theory. Thank god. The thought of "him dying prompted the continent to lift" straight up didn't even occur to me. I 100% assumed the implication was that it started happening as soon as the dungeon was destroyed, it just took a few days to reach the surface (and a few days more after that to fully re-emerge, as is stated in canon)

[thefortysecondolive]

I want Niko to join the Agency as their in-house legal counsel

[soobiesworld]

COBRA KAI SEASON 6 POSTER!! Trailer drops July 1st!!

[a-dumb-sarcastic-bisexual]

A long list of Clone Wars headcanons just cause

Sometimes Ahsoka will get the zoomies and how she handles that energy is roughhousing with Anakin who's more than willing to participate 

It becomes a show for the 501 because seeing the small togruta tackle the lanky ass nightmare that is Anakin Skywalker to the floor is hilarious 

They are both guilty of not knowing their strength so some people (cough cough Obi-Wan cough cough) caution them against it they don’t really listen tho which has resulted in some pretty hilarious injuries 

One of those injuries happened when they were playing around and Ahsoka shouldered Anakin so abruptly that he fell back on him tailbone and got the wind knocked out of him she sat by his side laughing her ass off

It took her an unreasonable amount of time to realize he was in pain and when she did she started apologizing like crazy she still gets embarrassed when people bring it up and still apologizes years later

There was another time when Ahsoka turned her back to Anakin when they were roughhousing and he pushed her so hard that she almost fell off of the landing platform they were standing on

He snatched her up by the stomach while muttering “I’m so sorry” and then he started frantically checking to make sure he didn’t seriously hurt her while Ahsoka laughed so hard she swears to this day that she pulled something 

Unfortunately when the laughter stopped she did realize she managed to sprain her wrist and when Anakin found he helped her wrap it

You’d think that they’d learn from these incidents but nope they still play fight like two big dogs 

Even tho Anakin and Ahsoka’s place is pretty clean it’s never really quiet there’s always gotta be some kinda noise 

Sometimes it’s Ahsoka’s music playing loudly in her room, sometimes it’s a holomovie in the living room, and sometimes it’s just them bickering in the kitchen

It doesn’t matter what it is it’s never truly quiet even at night there’s a small amount of noise from Anakin’s snoring (which he denies) and Ahsoka’s purring thing (which she also denies) 

As crazy as it sounds the people closest to them will admit that their noise is strangely comforting  

Anakin and Ahsoka are so freaking similar that it turns heads sometimes they’ll say something the other said but they’ve never heard like “This is where the fun begins” 

It’s stopped Obi-Wan in his tracks before it kinda freaks him out and worries him a little bit but it also puts a small smile on his face when the duo says the same thing at the same time

They’re also able to predict how the other will react once Ahsoka was teaching the clones tricks with her saber and they broke it they felt terrible but they were also terrified about Anakin’s reaction 

Ahsoka was the only calm one in the room and explained to the group that Anakin would pretend to be pissed for about an hour but then he’d “calm down” and ask for the parted to fix it and by that time rolled around she’d already have his favorite holo prepped and food from Dex’s

They listened to her with a healthy amount of skepticism and were happily surprised to find out the next day that she was right  

There was another time when Anakin and Obi-Wan decided to buy Ahsoka her favorite boba to soften the blow that she wasn’t gonna go on a mission Anakin told Obi-Wan that she’d be happy for a minute before asking what happened and he was right 

When Ahsoka got closer to Anakin the clones and everyone else she showed her secret passion for acting like she doesn’t know them in public when they piss her off

It worked a couple of times and one of those times Rex almost got arrested because the officer didn’t believe that they were the commander and captain of the 501st Rex didn’t blame the dude because he couldn’t prove it without Ahsoka’s help and she refused to back him up

Ahsoka finally dropped the act when the cuffs came out but she was still kinda reluctant

She did agree to take a break from that prank and she stopped doing it entirely when Obi-Wan had to bail Anakin out of jail (she bought a lot of boba for a very long time to make up for that one)

They will reference the prank occasionally by asking each other at random points in the day “Do I know you?” 

Like sometimes they’ll be out and Anakin will ask “Have we met before?” most of the time Ahsoka will answer “No actually we haven’t” (this girl is wearing his cloak he’s wearing one of her headwraps and his arm is resting on her head) 

Sometimes Padme will make a big deal of taking Anakin and Ahsoka out to do something just the three of them

Whenever Padme and Anakin show the smallest form of affection towards each other Ahsoka makes a big deal about gagging Anakin makes a bigger deal of “evening it out” 

Like if he kisses Padme and Ahsoka gags he’ll grab her and give her a big smooch on the forehead and then like the little shit that he is he’ll whip his lips calling her greasy

She gets him back by whipping the spit off her forehead with his robes (and also backhanding him which Padme kindly ignores)

Padme will sometimes tease her too like if she grabs Anakin’s hand then she’ll link arms with Ahsoka and make a small comment like “There now you’re even”

Sometimes Ahsoka will get them both back in the moments when they check on each other first she’ll make a big deal about saying “Well kriff me I guess” even if she doesn’t have a scratch on her 

Both Anakin and Padme will make a big deal about checking her for injuries with a couple of comments like “Oh my poor little padawan you have a scratch from training last night how did you cope”

I said in my first post that Ahsoka and Anakin have a playlist and I love the idea that they have different titles for them like “Obi-Wan’s least favorite playlist” “get ready to kick seppie’s ass” “the council pissed me off again” and stuff like that 

It’s all in good fun but they’ll never let anyone else see those titles because they know it’ll get a good scolding from Obi-Wan

The moment Obi-Wan knew Anakin had formed an “unnecessary attachment” wasn’t some big life-or-death moment on the battlefield 

In hindsight it was a pretty funny moment that was caused by Anakin’s stupidity cause he had broken a glass earlier that day and he thought he got all the pieces so he didn’t feel it was necessary to tell Ahsoka

Next thing he knows the poor togruta is gasping in pain and when he goes to check on her she’s sitting on the kitchen floor while the mother of all glass shards is sticking out of her foot 

Now you might be asking “How did Anakin miss a glass shard the size of his hand?” he honestly couldn’t give you an answer but he could tell you was in that moment he realized that he forgot to restock the med kit even though Ahsoka had reminded him about it earlier that day

All Obi-Wan got to see of this was a blur of Anakin holding his profusely bleeding padawan while yelling at the top of his lungs “Move she’s bleeding out!”

No one can really blame the man for dropping everything he was doing to chase after his former padawan and they also can’t blame him for assuming the worst like her being stabbed or shot

He didn’t know what he was expecting when he walked into the halls of healing but it wasn’t an embarrassed Anakin standing over a cackling Ahsoka as the healers scolded him for causing a scene

He makes a silent note to give Anakin a small lecture about keeping his emotions under control before checking on his giggly grand padawan

[fear-no-mort]

loving it keep it coming

[ingo-ingoing-ingone]

So for spooky season (my favorite season) I wanna write more Ghostmmet oneshots, or at least one or two other ones! I have several ideas lol

But I also wanna write a noncanon crossover with ABYS, where instead of being found in time in ABYS, Emmet dies and becomes a ghost and things get real crazy around the station for a while.

Would people be interested in that, or do y'all think it would be too much? I have. Several ideas, and I think it would be so fun to focus on the spooky horror aspect. Something something a violent end leads to a violent awakening, classic haunting shit, stuff like that. More info in the tags of this post :)

I'd say it would still come to the same conclusion as like. He Trusts You.

But I don't know! Tell me what you think, preferably in comments of this post instead of in separate asks :) Thank you guys preemptively for feedback!

[selunesfavouriteprincess]

I can’t even lie over time this pathetic little elf has grown on me and now I really like her as a character. she’s SUCH a loser. and someone said that she should’ve been recruitable instead of Halsin after uncovering the Shadow Druid plot and she could’ve had a redemption arc and now I can’t stop thinking about that alternate reality