#and even more from friends themselves

[decarbry]

[exy-shmexy]

HC that Kevin has a dedicated time slot to go to the swimming pool not only because it’s a great sport to strengthen his body muscles and to reduce the pain in his wrist but also because it’s the only time where his mind stays quiet and he gets to keep his thoughts quiet. He could do laps upon laps for over an hour and it will leave him both exhausted and stress free for a blissful moment before he has to get back to real life.

Matt noticing Kevin has been eerily quiet for a few days so he asks Kevin if he can come to the swimming pool with him because he knows Kevin will push himself too hard again and could accidentally get injured. Kevin is surprised by the question but he says yes. Cue Matt going with him and realizing swimming DOES feel great so he goes back with Kevin again the following week. While Neil has Kevin’s evenings, Matt suddenly finds himself having two hours at the pool with him on Thursdays and he loves it. They get to talk about random things in the car and the locker room, Matt gets outraged Kevin hasn’t seen a certain movie, Kevin is unimpressed by Matt’s breaststroke. Matt holds Kevin up to it so they hold mini swimming competitions. Funnily enough, that’s how they really start bonding and enjoying each other’s company.

[nyatbinary-81]

@vulpixisananimal sifstem art jumpscare!! more specifically i got bored and decided to mess around with sif and mal's outfits.

[naturecalls111]

Wish I never had to sleep I wish I could just stay awake all the time and do nothing but draw and had no responsibilities

[hella1975]

would you like to talk about how bad the mha ending was hella

as much as i would love to give like. a comprehensive response i genuinely dont think i can get my words together just yet without it being a constant unintelligble stream of 'AND ANOTHER THING-' and bc it's become quite torn in the fandom on if the chapter was good or bad i want like. an actual coherent response here. so i will reblog this if/when i can word it but know IM NOT FUCKING HAPPY

[westywallowing]

it has always baffled me that ASL isn't taught as a second language in American schooling. or as a requirement for certain jobs that work with, well, people. the HLAA says that around 48 million Americans have hearing loss!! 1 in 5 teenagers!! 1 in 3 people over the age of 60!!! it's crazy to me that sign isn't more widely taught and used considering that you probably DO or WILL know someone who has hearing loss at some point in their life

[kirbles]

consider. ex catholic gale and shadowheart modern AU childhood friends.

shadowheart's parents and gale's mum being friends since the two were babies. they expected gale and shadowheart to eventually get together since they were stupidly young, even encouraged it. this never happened, but the families remained as close as ever, even meeting up for holidays well into their adulthood.

both drifted away from the religion for different reasons however they still appreciate the aesthetics and history that comes with it. they're always a phone call away when they need to confide in each other when the ~guilt~ takes hold.

the two of them in their late 30s has gale dressed in gaudy vibrant sweaters and thick frames, and shadowheart in monochrome outfits like she just walked off a runway. they look to be from completely different worlds to outsiders, like they couldn't possibly have anything in common.

meeting and befriending the other companions, who think they're together, and even ask if there was ever anything between them. they both loudly defend themselves because 'EW, NO! THEY'RE LIKE A SIBLING TO ME!'

both have insane amount of dirt on the other, and stories from early teens/twenties that they share with the group after a bottle of wine in order to embarrass the other.

[mercurialmalcontent]

Got a fair amount of the Weeping Peninsula explored today, and defeated the Leonine Misbegotten on my second try (my first ended embarrassingly and abruptly as I fumbled around trying to decide what to do first for some reason and got myself stunlocked into a corner. Oops!). I'm not exactly sure how, considering that my budding combat skills devolved into flailing and running around to drink a flask while my Lone Wolves distracted the boss, but hey, it was clearly effectual flailing so I've definitely learned something!

It's gotten me to thinking about how way too many Souls fans make Fromsoft's games out to be the kind of difficult that's unapproachable, the kind where you already need to be good at games like this and have perfect reflexes and pattern recogniton and if you have an impossibly hard time, that's just how it is, git gud!

But -- for Elden Ring at least -- it's NOT that kind of difficult. It's learnable and adjustable. It rewards observation and strategic thinking, and if things are still too tough? You can grind levels and get items and summons that will help smooth out fights. You can get weapons that are melee and ranged, fast and slow, and find out what playstyle you like best. You don't have to fight every single thing, you can sneak, and you can run the fuck away from open field enemies. And if you die, at worst you lose some runes if you die again before you can retrieve what you dropped, but you keep all your levels and your stuff. Keep your runes spent down and it's a minor setback at worst.

That still isn't everyone's cup of tea, and that's fine -- sometimes you want a game that you can learn as you go along and not have to make a lot of do-overs. But it's not the monolith of unapproachable difficulty so many fans have made it out to be, and it really frustrates and annoys me that by portraying Fromsoft's games like that, those fans put me off of trying them until @bleaksqueak's enthusiastic nudging and encouragement got me excited enough to try Elden Ring anyway. Now I'm having a great time that's only marred by how tired I am of looking at the vagabond armor's dirty old cloak.

[lord-squiggletits]

On the MegOP fandom trend of saying "Optimus should apologize to Megatron"

(Speaking specifically for IDW1, though it applies to a lot of MegOP especially ones that do continuity soup with heavy reference to IDW1)

I was talking to a friend in DMs and they mentioned a common headcanon/fanfic trope that I also concurred with, and both of us said it's something that bothers us: a common take in the MegOP fandom goes basically along the lines of "If Optimus had just apologized to Megatron, the war would've ended" (or other variants including "if he'd tried harder to understand Megatron/work in collaboration with him").

And firstly, this is incorrect for a number of reasons:

There were attempts at peace negotiations during the war, but they fell through. So Optimus WAS trying to work with Megatron to the point of participating in formal diplomatic meetings.

Optimus tried multiple times on page to convince Megatron to just stop fighting and work with him for peace (Autocracy, Chaos Theory) that Megatron rejected. Given that these on-page examples take place at the start of the war and at the end of the war respectively, it makes sense that Optimus asking Megatron for collaboration is something he was trying/willing to do the entire time. So again, Optimus was always willing AND ATTEMPTING to work with Megatron and find a joint solution

Even before the war when Optimus was still Orion, he was very explicitly inspired by Megatron's writing and names Megatron as one of the people who "opened his eyes" to the wrongs of Cybertronian society. So how is it that people claim "the war went on for too long because Optimus never tried to understand Megatron" when OP literally named Megatron as one of his biggest idols, thus implying that OP does understand Megatron's ideals

But the primary purpose of this post wasn't to defend Optimus, actually. Even though I personally think Optimus did plenty (dare I say, everything) to try to end the war, there are some who may still think otherwise, so instead of arguing about whether Optimus did "enough", or who should apologize to whom, or who "deserves the blame" for starting/continuing the war, I'd actually rather talk about this:

No matter who is most "to blame" for the war, it's my firm belief that neither Megatron nor Optimus would even expect/demand the other to apologize to them at all.

On Megatron's side, he would never seek to judge Optimus negatively for the decisions to the point of saying "you wronged me, apologize." Whether it's evil Megatron who doesn't care about atrocities and revels in an opportunity to expose Optimus as a hypocrite, or post-war/Autobot Megatron who knows that his own evil actions are irredeemable, the idea of Megatron judging Optimus and demanding an apology for the war specifically strikes me as out-of-character. Why would Megatron demand or even want an apology from Optimus when Megatron knows fully well that he has his own sins to bear, he prolonged the war for his own selfish/material gain, and that he is responsible for an untold amount of suffering? Demanding an apology would imply that Megatron sees himself as the wronged party and Optimus as the wrongdoer, but by the end of the war, Megatron is too aware of his own part in the war to ever demand such a thing of Optimus. Even if he DID think that Optimus was "equally to blame" for the war (which he doesn't/wouldn't, btw), Megatron's own feelings of guilt would prevent him from trying to seek the petty satisfaction of the moral high ground or making Optimus beg for his forgiveness.

Additionally, Megatron knows Optimus very well as a person: he knows that the position of leadership is full of "loneliness [and] agonizing self-doubt" for Optimus (Chaos Theory) and that "when Optimus hurts others, he hurts himself" (MTMTE). Another reason that Megatron wouldn't demand nor want an apology from Optimus is because Megatron knows Optimus so well that he already knows that being a war leader fills Optimus with immense guilt and suffering. Given that Megatron knows about Optimus' self-doubt and guilt, why would he even need an apology when he already knows how much Optimus regrets the war and desperately wishes/wished for it to end?

Then, as established in the previous paragraphs, Optimus is too full of guilt for his part in the war (both before it started and in being unable to stop it sooner) to demand an apology from Megatron. Again, demanding an apology would put Optimus in an implied position of moral superiority and/or victimhood, but Optimus doesn't see himself as morally superior or as a victim (or rather, he sees himself as being responsible for these bad things happening and internalizes this as a duty to do better/fix wrongdoings). In other words, Megatron and Optimus both share this view of themselves and each other: Their hands are so dirty, and they both feel such guilt over this, and they know each other well enough to know that the other feels this way as well. Because both of them feel blame for the war and are acutely aware of their own flaws/part in suffering, both of them feel far too responsible for the war happening for them to ever blame their archnemesis for "not trying harder" or "being responsible for the war."

Hell, if you even look at the socio-political climate of Cybertron before the war started, neither Megatron nor Optimus were the ones who put this conflict into motion. The corrupt legacy of the Primes, Functionism, class issues-- all of these things existed before Megatron and Optimus did. Even once they started doing things like writing about social issues (M) or fighting against the Senate (OP), both of them were "underlings" in sense that they weren't leaders:

Megatron's writings may have inspired the Decepticon movement, but that movement existed as an independent entity with its own leaders and speakers long before Megatron became the "official" ruler of the Decepticons. He wasn't even the leader of the 'Cons until he took control of the gladiator arena and the nonviolent sections of the Decepticons were (presumably) subsumed into the underground, exploitative battle culture that Megatron created.

Optimus-as-Orion was a police officer to start, but even once he started going against the Senate, he mainly worked in collaboration with others like Senator Shockwave and Zeta (later Zeta Prime), who he either saw as his idols or who were literally superior to him in rank due to government/military structures.

So with this in mind, even from a social level, while Megatron and Optimus may have been "catalysts" of a sort that caused the war to escalate to an outright planetary/galactic level, the scenario is too complex to solely lay the blame for the war at either of their feet. I'm not confident in saying that Megatron/Optimus would explicitly think of this when talking to each other, but what I'm trying to say is that M/OP were just catalysts in a long chain of brewing tension that exploded into a war. Even if one could claim that one of them "started" or "escalated" the war, the social issues that caused the war and the positions of power that allowed them to become leaders in the first place were falling into place before either of them actually BECAME leaders.

In other words, this shared fate of being the final reaction that exploded a societal conflict into outright war... Megatron and Optimus both have that in common. And because of this, I really don't think either of them would even think to ask the other to apologize because they're both in such similar positions, with such similar feelings of guilt and responsibility, that they understand each other's feelings without words. To demand an apology would be akin to taking that shared vulnerability/guilt and stepping on it, attempting to claim that one is right/superior and the other is wrong/inferior, and that the inferior one needs to grovel and take responsibility for the bad things that happened.

[kyojuuros]

knowing communication is vital to a healthy relationship but never knowing how to start a conversation or holding back because you don't want to burden them with your emotions or say/do something that will push them away and just generally being socially inadept is such a fun time! :)

[triglycercule]

What do you think the types of drunk would the murder trio be? Im pretty sure ask dusttale already answered this question about dust but i have to ask the mtt expert

see now askdusttale DID answer the question. but they didn't ANSWER the question when asked what dust is like drunk. they just said that dust is the type to drink himself blackout drunk. so that mean i have total freedom on deciding what the mtt are like drunk hehehe (rubs hands together in a villanous way that you would imagine nightmare doing or something idk)

i already have an absolutely hilarious idea for horror and it might just because i'm on the guilt section of his character analysis but i could TOTALLY imagine him being an emotional drunk. like he CRIES. horror sans man known for being incredibly guarded and private with what he feels bawling his eye out. he gets mad he gets sad he does not get happy because horror doesn't have the right to be happy. he is too upset over the fact that he fucking DOOMED all of horrortale because of his selfishness and nothing can stop him from being incredibly vocal about that fact so much so that killer had to tape his mouth shut because he wouldn't stop crying so loud. and then he just silently cries until he passes out from exhaustion. the alcohol has an incredibly strong effect on him because i dont think he would drink regularly plus he definitely hasnt drinken anything in those 7 years of starvation. it hits like a fucking plane crashing into him. or like getting his eye taken out again. either one!

another funny idea i had for killer would be like the alcohol affecting him but he SWEARS that he's still sober. he is very confused when he starts stumbling because wtf he doesnt FEEL drunk??? why is he bumping into walls and tables HELP WHY DOES HE SOUND FUCKING STUPID???? the alcohol is definitely effecting him but he swears he swears he doesn't feel drunk. hes not drunk its just the damn body doing this stupid bullshit!!!! he's still very aware of what's going on and is basically the same as sober but just like. he's wiggly he's wobbly and oh shit he just fell head face first into a tv whoops. he'd also have a high tolerance because just because. he can drink without feeling like shit until he just blacks out mid conversation with someone because his body couldn't take the toll of all the beer or whatever. hilarious idea triglycercule thank you triglycercule i know

dust in the context that we already know that he drinks AND he can fight against the human while like partially drunk.... i feel it would be kinda like a giggly drunk situation. except dust doesn't laugh at anything that's funny he only laughs when someone gets hurt or something. SADISTIC giggly drunk. because i can already imagine a half drunk dust laughing his ass off after killing the human and its a beautiful sight to me.

anyways imagine how it goes when you pair this sadistic giggly drunk with another that wont stop going through the 5 stages of grief and another that keeps on fucking falling over for no reason in his eyes. dream blunt rotation but the blunt is a bottle of vodka. i can already imagine it in my head and its fucking HILARIOUS. horror going on about how he caused the deaths of others and manipulated and tricked papyrus while killer is just trying his best to keep his eyes open because for some reason they won't stop trying to close. he is surprisingly getting frustated. dust has long since lost his voice laughing at this and he's just silent wheezing at everything. also phantom papyrus is only making the laughter worse because he keeps on making rude comments towards horror and killer and only he can hear him and its guffaw inducing. mtt amazing friend group you dont get shit like this anywhere else

[arsenicflame]

do you guys ever think about how ed wouldn't intuitively recognise izzys steps anymore because ive been thinking about that a lot this week

[mayomkun]

Finally done with teen wolf rewatch. Phew

[ante--meridiem]

To socialise or not to socialise, that is the question.

[lloydfrontera]

'live up to your name' au where og knight of blood and iron javier gets "killed" in the middle of the plot but instead of dying he's transported to modern south korea, waking up in a random alleyway with no injuries whatsoever. and because he's a protagonist no matter what universe he is in, despite being deeply disoriented and confused when he sees a group of thugs harassing a guy he steps in and chases them off with no problem and barely any mention of cutting off limbs. and then after making sure the guy is okay he very sheepishly asks him if he could please help him because he was lost and had no idea of where he was or how he got there

and kim suho who just saw a gorgeous but obviously foreign stranger in awesome cosplay chase off his would be muggers with what looked like a real ass sword and is currently high and smitten in "oh thank god i didn't get my week's work salary stolen" endorphins and is about to have the weirdest week of his life innocently says "yes of course"

[bunnihearted]

i've also realized that there is no therapy that can fix what's broken inside of me