#am i being ignored

[inkskinned]

you said you were stuck in a time loop, which was fine. i feel like late-stage capitalism has us all in a time loop, ammiright? you came barging in at 5:33. in the morning. i hadn't even processed the idea of coffee.

but you had this look of utter panic in your eyes. terror like the ocean. you grabbed my cheeks. im in a time loop.

i don't know why in movies the first reaction is to deny it. when someone is panicking like that, it's not appropriate to ask them to calm down. it didn't matter if i believed it, what mattered was that you believed it so much that it was consuming you.

so here we are. i pour you some of the dark roast. "you look like utter and entire hell," i say.

you push your fingers into your eyes. "you always say that."

i try to think of something funny to say that i wouldn't have said on previous time loops, but jokes don't land without the proper timing (lol). "remind me to think -"

"-yeah, of a joke that only works in the future. and before you say anything, i know you're pissed i just stole your punchline." you bolt the coffee, which is wild. it's very hot. you don't seem to notice.

i blow on mine to cool it down. i both am very pissed at you and also i can't see you in this amount of panic without wanting to help. but i'm also not really sure what we are, not since i saw you kiss her like that, no offense. it just was like, kind of rude when you knew i liked you.

and besides. i'm just like, barely a person. i write omegaverse fanfiction. i love the concept of a time loop, but what the fuck am i gonna do? send an alpha in there? i open my mouth.

you point at me. "you're about to ask why me. and then say some disparaging shit about yourself. i'm just a nerd who plays dnd or something. that self-own is slightly different each time." you sigh. "i know you think you can't really help me. i don't know who can help me. i only came to you because you fucking believe me." you check your watch, sigh, and throw your head back. you cover your eyes with one hand. "i've come here on 26 separate revolutions," you say. "you have believed me every time. and yeah, i have no idea how you fit into this but i just -" you sigh again. "i just like fucking talking to someone about it."

"do you need more cof-" i start, but you're already holding the empty cup out. i frown at it. "you're not getting any more until you promise not to bolt this one like an animal."

you laugh a little and sit up, pushing your hair out of your face. "okay, that's new dialogue. but to be fair to you, i'm not usually this rude. i'm still pretty new at all of this." you check your watch again. another sigh. i guess you're cruising for a personal best in the Sigh Olympics.

i almost tell you im not an NPC but i've played enough video games to know i'm very much an NPC. i pour you another cup. "so what happens in the loop?"

"really bad explosion." you mutter into the mug. you put your elbows on the table (rude) and bury your face in your arms like an angsty teenager. one hand floats up while you talk, because evidently you literally can't talk without your hands. "i have to save the day and there's this bomb and i have no bomb training and it keeps moving, you know."

"do i die?"

you peek up from your arms. "yeah. bigtime. you keep trying to run or stay or do anything and you always super die."

"oh."

"to be fair, like, everyone dies in it though.... so you're in good company."

i hate that you make me laugh. i hate that being around you always feels tingly and strange, this electric tension between us. something that is evidently (given how you stuck your tongue down a stranger's throat literally 3 days ago) (well. 3 for me) super one-sided. i take a sip of my coffee and close my eyes.

i die today, i guess. a little spark of panic starts at the top of my hands and starts whipping up my wrists.

"shit," you say. you look at your watch and jump to your feet. "i have to go. if i can come back, i will. i am still trying to figure out when is best to do everything, you know? the order of stuff. maybe morning isn't good for us."

i look up at you and think about how you keep kissing me in the back of my car and in alleyways and in the dark. and i can never fucking get a read on you. and i also think about how incredibly panicked you look. how broken. how long have you been doing this? "i don't want to die," i say.

you glance downwards. "well, you're not really dead, you'll come back in the loop."

"but i will have died." my hands are shaking. i am trying really hard to stay calm.

you push your hands through your hair again. "i really have to go. i will have this discussion with the next version of you, though. it is like, something i am thinking about."

"but i don't get a next version," i say. i don't really have the language for this, because i haven't had 26 tries with you. i only have my memories: you, a week ago. drunk and telling me you loved me in my ear. you, kissing her anyway. you, months ago, throwing up on my birthday, whispering to me i ruin everything i touch, always, over and over. please don't ask. i can't ever fucking have that be you.

i run my finger along the rim of the mug. "i don't want to die in this one."

you seem baffled by this. "i get that but - time will reset, you'll be fine, you won't even remember we talked about this."

"but i know now." i stand up too. "i have to live the rest of this day knowing i could die. knowing i probably am going to."

"you could always die, to be fair."

i feel my hands get out of control. "earlier, you said i always say a different insult about myself. what if you're just going through different parallel universes and those are all just different - but real - versions of myself? what if you're not in a time loop, you're in a fucking universe loop?"

"if it helps, i've wondered this too. also, you're hot in all of them. if that helps."

i point at you. "no flirting. i'm trying to figure out if i die today."

"who's flirting?" you catch my wild hands and give me that long, perfect smile. like we're in this together. "i won't let ya die." you check your watch and sigh again. "well. maybe not this time."

i grit my teeth. you are so not making quips at me while i try to explain the existential dread i'm having. "does the time loop reset if i fucking kill you?"

"honestly i don't know how long it continues after i die, because i just wake up. it could be that the loop goes until the explosion for everyone, and we're all in the loop, or it could be that when i die, the loop restarts. when i die i wake up, is all."

i pull away from you and stalk into the kitchen and start doing all 3 of my dishes. "okay, first, you know i was joking. and secondly, this is exactly my point. you don't know if this is just a parallel universe. maybe in the ones where you died, the explosion happened and nobody reset and it's just you travelling." i have to stop and push the heel of my palm into my eyeball. "... how often have you died?"

i look at you. you look at me. you give me this very sad, halfway smile and a little what can ya do shrug. something in that action seems so old and weary that i want to burst into tears.

"i have to go," you say. "really. for real. there's this family of five i save from getting into a car crash. and i know it's like oh but we're all gonna die in the explosion anyway, what's the point. and..." you shrug again. "it matters to me, is all. at least i saved them for now. at least i saved anything."

you pad over to me and wrap me in a tight hug. you always seem so tall against me. i feel your cheek rest against the top of my head for a moment. for a second, it's just us, and the space is warm, and my heart is a little broken hare.

you leave me there, and i stand in my stupid badly lit kitchen with my stupid mugs. i think about you. i start texting my mom that she needs to get out of the city, but it feels pointless.

i don't know what to do. tomorrow is the same day for you. but i have to prepare to die in my today.

[hinamie]

noir

[lazylittledragon]

relocating

(psst this is not on webtoon but it has its own ig now)

[clouvu]

Cooking up an older Clervie outfit design so I don't have to keep drawing her looking like her child self but Long

[acid-ixx]

mild spoilers for chapter six for my series again &. again, but i really feel the need to ramble about this, and i'd love to hear anybody's opinion on this hehe.

as i write outline chapter six (and write for chapter five), i'd like to say i couldn't wait to write the reader's face reveal in bruce's perspective. and it's not just angst, for me, this plays a very pivotal turn for the series— because bruce will spiral to insanity.

to never once see a single portrait of your second youngest child, whose presence has long been erased from the manor, not a single image, nor trace of you is sickening to the heart, even if he scours through the internet day and night for a single memoir of you, nothing— but to find your portrait in alfred's living quarters and seeing you for the first time in forever? graduating a milestone no less?

god, he's in for a ride just analyzing every aspect of your physical appearance.

the color of your eyes, the shape of your nose, the quip of your mouth, the fat in your cheeks; even the length of your lashes! god, does he brand it into the deepest parts of his mind to never forget you anymore. his pearl, his treasure.

the longer he stares, the more he notices and gazes even more, obsessive as he stands lonesome in the room with every bone in his body locking up, his eyes unable to look away from the portrait that showcases his baby child.

and there, there it is that he concludes a detail so small it's unrecognizable for someone who's seen it for his entire life; yet it's all the same triggered deranged emotions deep within him.

— you don't just share him and your mother's traits, no, your smile is also reminiscent of his mother's.

martha wayne, who'd died in his arms, laying in a pool of her blood with a bullet grazed deep inside her body. his loving mother, who caressed his face whenever he'd cry from his nightmares, who'd shown him motherly love that until now he still craves.

she died with her pearl necklace that once decorated her porcelain neck spilling to the ground and stained with crimson.

you wore pearl earrings on your graduation.

the thought alone is enough for him to just snap.

this? this is the child that he's been neglecting far too long? who shares the same, loving expression of his mother's? his child? not even a single memory could be conjured with you but fantasies now do. if your happiest moments were within the picture frame that he holds with shivering fingers at present; could your smile be any wider if you'd be with him?

how come he never once noticed? why is bruce always destined to fail left and right? why, just why is he brimming with jealousy for all the people who must've seen your smile before him, and contempt for himself that he was never there to pick you up from the police station beforehand?

bruce isn't a heckler for favoritism, but a darker part of him is motivated to take you away from wherever you are, and to never let anybody else witness his beautiful, little treasure.

he's gotham's knight, first and foremost. but he's a father, too, with goals to protect his children just like a father should.

and the things he'd do for you, his child, now? anything.

if it means he has to see that smile, then he'll turn the world upside-down.

he has to protect your smile.

[persona-brainrot-real]

Sae Niijima is such a good character it drives me insane a little. She's not a mother nor a maternal or doting older sister but instead a twenty four year old who was thrown into a position of responsibility that she never asked for. She loves Makoto just as much as she resents her and its so apparent every time they talk up until November. "Are you studying?" (I want you to do well) (I need you to get a job and stop making my life harder) "I'll use any method necessary to get this promotion" (Life will be easier for us) (So stop distracting me with your problems) "Focus on your future" (I know that you're capable) (I can't afford to waste my time on you, so stop wasting time on others)

Makoto is not only the sole reason she pushes as hard as she does for a promotion, for success, and the reason that she loses herself in her animosity over her fathers death, but also someone she can't stand for so long. Makoto was 14-15 when their father died. Sae was 21. As soon as she got the career she wanted and things started to look up, her stability was robbed from her and she was disillusioned with the system that her father had taught her to rely on and completely adhere to. How do you manage, the daughter of a cop, following his footsteps towards law enforcement, when you're suddenly reminded of how unfair it is? You can't quit, your little sister relies on you and she's so young and struggling just as badly with this grief. So you pick yourself up and you get moving again. You push harder, press further. You abandon your morals and your ethics because punishing criminals (guilty or not) is almost like punishing the man who killed your father.

And the whole time she's fighting for promotions, going for drinks with the SIU Director to make herself more favourable for promotions, trying to navigate being a woman in a competitive, suffocating, male-dominated field, falling behind despite doing so much where others are promoted for doing so little - all the while your little sister comes back from school and her biggest issues are so small compared to yours.

Persona 5 revolves so heavily around grief and loss and change and Sae embodies all of that so well, all of the sharp and unpleasant and jagged parts of grief.

[illmoraineakoi]

So, I know I'm a little (very) late to the AvA stuff, but I was rewatching AvM Season 3 for the seven hundredth time and, well, I noticed something and I'm curious to know if it's been discussed before.

AvM Episode 29, Purple's story, specifically, Pink's death.

Her color changes as she dies, or is represented to have died.

It fades to grey.

Now, the question is, can we, or rather should we, use this to infer anything lore-related? Was this just an artistic choice to depict the act of becoming unhealthy/dying, or could this be what actually happens to stick figures that die over a period of time? Are their colors linked to their health?

Let's have a bit of fun with it, and presume that the fading of one's color can happen to a stick figure for health-related reasons, as the scene could imply.

This fading seems to involve loosing the saturation of one's color into grey. Saturation is how vibrant a color is, and the complete lack of saturation is greyscale.

The World-of-Alan reason for Pink's death is that she 'got sick', which is where the health connection of this theory comes from. If she did loose her color as she was dying as the notes depict, that loss of color was likely a result of her failing health rather than any other factors, like age or outside variables. A whole bunch of human body stuff are indicators for good vs poor health, including skin color (jaundice and cyanasis are good examples) so why not a stick's color for them?

What if, when they fully die, they lose all of their original color?

Now, let me propose this…

Who else do we know of who has had their color loose vibrancy?

What if Victim's color has lightened because he's ill?

[800db-cloud]

i’ve been wanting to do this since day one

[crystallizsch]

no one asked for jade but i might as well complete the octatrio

[bread-wizards]

I actually think Dorian and Orym should fight more.

Remember when their slowly building tension over and entire episode (full of passive aggressive remarks and blame throwing) led to threats? And how after, Orym thanked Dorian for handing over the crown sadly because he knew Dorian would be mad at him? And Dorian couldn't even look at him because he was legitimately hurt, thinking Orym was disappointed in him for doing what he thought was right? That was peak.

The fact they went from that to their current closeness and trust is the best part of their entire dynamic. Their relationship was hard fought and still will be. They will fight for it because they respect and care for one another deeply, and their disagreements don't change that, only improve it.

[leopardmuffinxo]

i wouldn't want to be with anyone else

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Assisting Acquaintance Acquired.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[neechees]

If you truly think or know the American education is so useless as to have completely failed you on very basic shit, then why wouldn't you deliberately try and educate yourself instead? How are you not embarrassed?

[macksartblock]

I drew this on break bc I couldn’t get it out of my head

[mucking-faori]

Venting here but it's been deeply frustrating since the treaty principles bill came out to see just how wilfully misinformed a lot of people are. I mean, I expected it of the right, have all my life, and I /know/ a lot wasn't taught in schools, but you know what? Most NZ schools don't teach you deep leninism or about the electoral college, and yet I keep running into kiwi commies who can explain roe v Wade back to front but not who Hone Heke was.

This one time, it's become a social media trend, and I certainly appreciate it right now, but will it stick around when this is no longer a hot button issue? Will people examine the racism running deeply through this country beyond tiktok history rundowns and taking selfies with their meme signs?

Kiwis are so proud of our history of resistance and how good "we" have been to our indigenous people. "We" ensured the language stayed alive. "We" ensured Maori had land rights. But Te Piringa at the office never /complained/ about how we say her name, so we don't /really/ need to learn. And oh, this brown boy is so well /spoken/, using big words like "egregious"!

This refusal to confront uncomfortable truths is partly what allowed David Seymour and the rest of the coalition to stir up so much misinformation and hate. Too many new Zealanders don't know enough basic national history to immediately refute what Seymour is saying because they've spent their lives comfortable not knowing, and now they're playing catch up.

I'm praying people catch up and /keep learning after that/. After Maori politics, and the whole Maori /world/ stops being a trend. Even if something else happens in america that makes pakeha feel less uncomfortable to learn about because NZ looks great by comparison.

Anyway. Peace and love peace and love. Thanks for reading my rant. Check out Te Ara dot com.

[why-the-heck-not]

hell-bent on getting this one thing done by wednesday for some arbitrary reason. why? idk. but that's the deadline I've set for myself and I underestimated how much there was to do, so rn got 3-ish days of the mad scramble left (..hopefully)