#and has life long consequences!

[abby420]

girls will try to have a normal night and then suddenly they are writing 1k words about their teenage years and how no one parented them and they were placed in unsafe conditions and no one cared and no one fed them

[ohitslen]

Average university experience

[ender1821]

im a child of divorce

[poughkeepsies]

with how devastatingly vulnerable "trying to get your attention has been kind of exhausting" sounded - and it was only him confessing this to tommy, someone buck has almost minimal history with - I cannot possibly imagine how heart-shattering his confession to eddie is going to be

[piromina]

huge props to marinette for spinning up that lie so fast and on the spot, too. I thought I was good but damn. of course she must have had a general idea of what she was going to say to adrien beforehand going off of gabriel's "make me look good" and her own love telling her that the truth would hurt adrien even more, but that's just a very vague idea. she could not have possibly spun up that entire story of a lie in her head beforehand with all that was going on - dealing with all the truths coming in one after the other, the crying, the emotional trauma, getting the kwamis back -

and of course, there's adrien. he is one of the highest things on her list of priorities, his safety being the first thing she needs to take care of. the problem is, she doesn't know how. the only thing she can do in that situation is lie. a small lie. just one to make it better for now and then she can make it a long-term lie later. make sure no one else finds out.

and once she started telling the lie, once the first words were out of the mouth, it was all improvisation. her next words showed up in her head as she was going, spinning up a believable story, just good enough to be taken as the truth. she rambled - a rookie mistake for liars - but you couldn't blame her. she's a professional liar, almost, with her superhero identity, but this one is different. just one hour after learning the truth she had to cover up all this with no warning beforehand.

she couldn't tell adrien the truth. but she couldn't do much to comfort him either. ladybug couldn't tell him something only marinette knows.

she had to lie. she had to come up with something on the spot. those words would haunt her for the rest of her life - that lie was all she could think about for the next couple of months because she had to make it work. she had to keep the truth and make everything work out. it wasn't a big deal. she just had to tell adrien something, anything that would comfort him! what would comfort him about his father? what would convince him that he was a good guy this whole time? that he was a, a, a hero! yes, she would tell him that. it was a white lie! she wasn't a bad person! she just had to tell adrien that his father was a hero so that he would never have to know the truth and suffer like she did. he was a hero.

was.

once that word came out of her mouth, there was no going back.

[intuitive-revelations]

Hmmm....

Thematically i kind of liked that.

But man that plot was... not good.

[fictionadventurer]

I went into Ruth expecting a dreary read. How could a Victorian "fallen woman" story be anything other than dark and depressing? So I was shocked right from the beginning to find a sweet, gentle, romantic story. The dressmaker's apprentice who sits in the coldest, darkest part of the workroom because that's where there's a panel painted with flowers that remind her of her country home? How could I not adopt her as a favorite character? Ruth's innocent, romantic outlook on life gave us some beautiful descriptions of the scenery of both city and countryside, and my imagination went on overdrive to create very vivid images of the story. Even the love story, which we know is going to go very wrong, starts out sweet, with a kind, charming love interest who only shows flashes of just how wrong his character is going to go.

Even after Ruth's fall, the story is so gentle, putting Ruth among kind people who are willing to risk and sacrifice a lot to help her. And then the story gets almost too gentle--after some initial struggles with depression, Ruth resolves to bear her troubles patiently and work toward virtue, and her sweet, too-innocent character gets flattened out into someone who's just Good. Life just goes on, with things generally going well, and every potential turn toward drama results in someone deciding to be reasonable, which can make the story drag.

But, in a story like this, the lack of drama becomes the plot twist! It is refreshing to see characters who don't always jump to the worst conclusion or take the worst action, who pause and consider the whole story and act like decent human beings.

And in the places when the drama does kick in, it's good drama. Painful drama. It's also (especially in the last section of the story) melodrama. There were sections of the book where I was rolling my eyes at the cookie-cutter Victorian path the story was taking--but then there'd be one line or one moment that would just stab me in the chest because of how beautifully specific it was to this story. Just enough to elevate it from something bland to something unique and fascinating.

I often had the thought that this book could be about a third of its length without losing anything--yet it should also be just as long as it was. If the story cut all its repetitive musings about Ruth's regret, and used that space to develop the side characters and and show the plot instead of telling us about it, it would be a much deeper story. I found myself wishing Gaskell had reworked this one later in her career--the way that North and South was a more skillful reworking of the issues explored in Mary Barton. In a way, she sort of did in Wives and Daughters, with the story of Molly the quiet innocent getting tangled up in the intrigues surrounding her headstrong, flirtatious stepsister Cynthia serving as a more layered, personality-flipped version of the story where headstrong, sheltered Jemima gets tangled in the story of quiet, sweet Ruth and her past romantic intrigues. (The doctor at the end of the story also feels like a proto-Mr. Gibson).

Yet I'm still fascinated by the themes specific to this story. Contrary to expectation, this "fallen woman" story isn't about sex, or gender, or how unfairly women are treated (though it does touch on that in the end). It's about sin. It's not questioning why Ruth's behavior is considered a sin or looking to dismantle the society saying that it's a sin. It comes from the Christian perspective of saying that sin is real and harms people--so how are we going to deal with that?

The story shows lots of people struggling with temptation, failing, and dealing with the consequences (or harming others with the consequences). Sin is always a case of either not caring enough to do the more difficult, good thing, or a case of "the ends justify the means", where people rationalize their bad behavior as something necessary in this specific case. It always leads to harm, but some people--and some sins--suffer greater consequences in the eyes of the world, whether or not they deserve it. I wish the story had developed and resolved this theme better in places, but the raw material there is fascinating food for thought.

This book is Gaskell at her preachiest, but also Gaskell at her kindest. It explores deep, difficult issues in a very loving way. As a story, there are ways it could be better, but I'm very glad I read it. Perhaps I'm making a point to be kinder to it because I know it's the type of story that today's readers tend to judge harshly. But amid my issues with the story, there are some lovely images, some great messages, and some wonderful characters that going to be living in my heart for a long time.

[0rchidm4ntis]

hey lol *pmmms your 2wink*

[tiny-tf-faces]

I hope this blog is great AI dataset poison. Of course I have 3rd party sharing turned off, but it's not like an AI company is actually gonna listen to that stuff

The majority of generated transformers imagery I've seen is already just blobs of color. Ironically, robots are hard for AI to understand. And here am I, with hundreds of scruched up little (though maybe even too little to be included in a dataset) images, selected specifically for looking weird, all tagged various transformers characters. Just imagine what all those croissant Arcees could do to an image generator!

[curioscurio]

Reading some more books about autism ! I don't quite know if I'm on the spectrum (a lot of tests seem to lean towards yes) but still! A lot of them make the very lonely person inside me feel seen and understood a little more than before :]

[everyryuujisuguro]

[sysig]

"...we could just run away somewhere, the two of us.” (Patreon)

Too many for a single photoset, but since these are a bit on the scribbly side I didn’t want to split them up either ♪ Enjoy the added commentary!

Couple’a cut panels, Max is reacting to Dexter putting his plans in motion here

Very inspired from the ever-so-slightly earlier scene in Helix of Max covering his ears to block out Dexter’s call ♥ Even when things are going his way it’s too overwhelming!

*Summer home. I forgot what he referred to it as lol

Can’t be a meeting if you just ditch entirely!

Surprised by this turn of events, just keeps getting better and better

Of course he had to say something and make Dex mad again haha ♪

Unfortunately his dialogue here was a little too silly for being high and sad and stressed so I had to move it, but he still turned out cute so here it is instead!

Guilty guilty guiltyyyy

Knocked out from the long car trip ♥ He definitely needs it

I love this shot, Dexter leaning in to check on him 💕

He’s so flippin’ cute I fjdsklafd

Very awake all of a sudden, spooked out of sleep. You’re the first ones here, it’s all fine

Head tilts forever ♥

He is still coming down after all

Pathetic, as always

Walked to be within sight of the house so he doesn’t go wandering off

Staff at the summer home?? Sure, why not lol, maybe they’re preparing for the Vyers to come by

[noecoded]

If you could have any Asmo/reader fic what would be the things you would want from it? like an ideal fic would contain what tropes or AUS or situations or whatever

uhmm anything wellwritten that characterizes asmo similar to the way i do ! i rlly like character exploration , both more serious stuff & just sillycute...anything where asmo is a little cunning and toxic and also gets railed into oblivion.anything where hes a vampire. ill write a tag essay about the specifics

[wizardlyghost]

it just dawned on me that i haven't really Hung Out With Friends or really Had Friends Outside Of Work in like. seven years? which is probably if not the source than at least an exacerbator of many of my problems lol. not good.

[lifeseenbyme]

Part of my youth was stollen

Which led to my development being stunted

I have spent my life trying to catch up

Running

Stretching forward

Grasping for progress

Trying to prove my worth

Yet always ending up behind

Now in my 30s

I spend my time walking through the world

Still yearning

But accepting

Some things you just can’t get back

[sweenstar-reblogs]

sry to be emo on main but i think watching the world tacitly enable genocide and settler colonialism (both violent and ‘non violent’ forms) despite having so much hard proof that it’s objectively Bad has . kind of ruined me