#and my hyper independence

[death2normalcy]

I need some advice.

Before I begin, I want to clarify just a couple things, because this is not going to paint me in the best light, I’m aware of this. I should have ended things months ago, but I didn’t, and now here I am. This is about breaking up with my boyfriend.

Now, it’s a complicated situation for 2 reasons.

One, I am leaving for Korea in February, and haven’t told him anything about it. I’m not factoring that into this though, not really, as I very much plan to be broken up by then.

And two, he helps me out with getting rides home at night. My job is forcing me to work an hour past the last bus and without it, I would be walking home in the dark for about 30 minutes (the dark isn’t the problem. The upcoming snow and negative temperatures are). I know that makes me look so shitty, but there are other factors at play here, I swear. I’m not using him just for rides, although I am aware that I do use him in that regard, something I was actively trying to avoid before and now, I’m stuck. I tried to reason with my work last year about this and was told that he could just stay clocked in for an hour (he clocks out an hour before me, he stays to give me a ride). I tried explaining that it wasn’t a good idea for me to rely on him for this, and was ignored by everyone, management and him. He was very insistent that it was fine, and I’ve been through this before, where it’s fine...until it’s not. And now it’s not.

I know that it is partly my fault, I chose this, but I did warn him that relying on him for shit like this was bad, it never ends well. But the ride thing is my own mess to deal with. After finding out some new info, I’m going to talk to management/personnel about changing my hours so I can take the bus home. I shouldn’t have to rely on someone to get me home, that’s ridiculous.

(As a side note, I’ve also been pushing him to get a new job. We don’t work in the same department, but we do work at the same place. He’s miserable where he’s at and for multiple reasons, I’ve tried to get him to quit and find something better. I want him to be happier, but I also want him to leave so I don’t have to see him every single day. He’s adamant he wants to stay, but I know the reason is me and I hate that.)

But what I need advice about is the breaking up with him part. Now, before anyone says it, I am already aware that I just need to do it. Just get it over with, the sooner, the better. But for a variety of reasons, I’m struggling to figure out how to ease him into it.

I’ve debated different scenarios, including just telling him I want to teach English, then telling him I got a job,then going and breaking up with him then, but that’s insane, I won’t do it that way. There are many reasons for my uncertainty, a lot to do with how he is as a person. I could go more into detail, but the very, very basic rundown is this: he has anger issues (although he acts like he does not), he’s clingy and seems to dislike how independent I am, even though he won’t voice that, he rarely voices if I’ve done something to upset him, which I know I have, but anyways. We’ve been growing apart for months, and I honestly thought he would just give up and break up with me, but I’m his first real girlfriend, and he seems determined to spend his life with me, despite us being a good ways into this relationship and me giving him barely anything (again....this does not paint me in the best light. If you need more clarification on this, I can make a separate post.)

So, my question is what would be a good way to ease into breaking up with him? I see him every day at work, for both my breaks, and he gives me a ride home. That’s really the only time we see each other. Like I said, I’m not concerned about the Korea thing, at least not yet. That may make me seem like an asshole, but it’s necessary for now. I’m more concerned with ending things with him completely. Any advice?

[thesoftestmess]

this might not be canon, but personally i need furina to struggle a whole lot longer and harder with post-prophecy depression and mental illness. She's played the same tiring and painful act for five centuries, was constantly in a life or death scenario and had to hide her true self from the world the entire time and she won't just recover in a few years from that.

There's parts of her that will never ever be compatible with a simple human lifestyle, and parts of her that are irreparably broken. She isn't sure of her personality after everything that happened and the lie she had to live. She slips between personas and her archon temperament comes through like a defensive mechanism at any sign of conflict or trouble.

She's plagued by nightmares. Of the flood, of the trial, of the people closest to her conspiring against her behind her back, and of being found out in a million terrible ways. Of saying the wrong thing, making a wrong decision. Of being found out, of being found out, of being found out.

Lying or keeping a secret feels existential still. Being honest still feels life threatening sometimes. Putting herself first feels like putting both hands on a hot stove.

She doesn't live in the palais anymore, doesn't have to sit through trials anymore, but her heart and soul are still there. In her dreams she's still at the place she spent her entire life's memories at.

Yes, she can make new memories, but it'll take time. More time than she has, maybe, now that she's the closest to being human she'll ever be.

She'll never be human in the way the people around her are.

What sort of human has 500 years worth of memories after all? What human tells personal anecdotes and mixes up their centuries?

What sort of human can feel the absence of their divinity like it's a physical thing? A voice that will never speak to her again, or keep her alive? What human has no family, no childhood?

What human remembers so little, but still remembers death somewhere deep within?

She jerks out of sleep from it sometimes, gasping for air, and spends the rest of the night awake, almost frozen by fear. The flood is over, but it's hard to convince her racing heart that the danger is too.

Humans have entire family trees that go generations back, but Furina was put into this world a solitary creature, her blood heavy with sin ever since she turned human.

She owns a hydro vision now and doesn't know how to yield it, but the ocean still calls out to her some days. Sea creatures flock to her like they can smell she's not human enough.

She learns how to make little hydro companions for herself, so the darkness and emptiness of her apartment feels less ominous when she lies awake at night.

She can't turn her vision into a weapon quite yet, but when it rains the droplets seem to cling to her. She's watched them roll upwards along her arm, watched them gather in her palm like kin. She wonders if sea creatures flock to neuvillette in a similar way, or if his immense power makes them recoil. She wonders if elemental dragons can feel regret. Wonders if he, too, ever feels entirely foreign in that human body he was given. If he, too, lies awake trying to grasp faint memories of a past life.

She's extremely human in the way she's plagued by body pains from not being able to relax just one day in five centuries. The years catch up with her once she gets out of survival mode, and fatigue is a constant companion now. Sleep comes difficultly and getting out of bed was easier when the fate of a whole nation depended on it. On her. She's never lived for just herself before and some days she's not sure she wants to.

She did her duty and earned her retirement and the story turned out well, all things considered. She still has people by her side, some of them.

Still, she feels raw and tired and overwhelmed by the life lying ahead of her. As a human and as someone who will always be Something Else.

[avadmortain]

bobby marks: resident reporter & nuisance of wayhaven, & my problematic fav.

[amaryllis-sagitta]

We saw Regret of a god, now time for his Grief

In the gameplay reveal, Neve tells us that Solas's hideout in Minrathous is placed under the statue of Our Lady of Sorrows. While in modern Thedas that title belongs to Andraste, the original Lady of Grief and Sorrow was Mythal. According to the Dalish origin myth, she emerged from the Earth's tears when Elgar'nan cast the Sun down into the Abyss, and living creatures all died in the sunless world.

The reveals so far already tell us something about Solas's hideout in Minrathous: we supposedly descend down a complex filled with murals that will tell us more of the story. In today's Game Informer cover, we learn that the location will feel like "going back in time", also reflecting how Tevinter colonized and regurgitated the ancient Elvhenan in the twilight of its days, rising on its ruins. But it also reflects Solas's apparent fixation on the past, which to me is a symptom of a reparative drive in a process of deeply complicated grief. Solas places himself outside the reality that could thrive, no matter how close to feeling at home he gets -- one more hint that he seems to operate from an understanding of turning back the time.

According to The Lighthouse's depiction in the Game Informer cover, the devs highlight Solas's loneliness through a description of a "massive table" that is only set for one. But there's no utility in having something like this if it didn't use to be full. Solas uses it in this specific way to torture himself.

Another location, that doesn't even pretend not to be Skyhold 2.0, echoes the theme of a place that had a purpose and a thriving community but went completely abandoned due to catastrophic events that Solas incited. Once again, he lends his former place to a new team as he continues to dance in the dyad between self-imposed isolation and rebuilding something that he still holds an attachment to. He lends people his old places to restore them to life, and there's an interesting dance in this initiative: in a roundabout way, he might hope to to feel alive again as the place fills with life. At the same time, a part of him seems to insist that he should forever grieve and remain lifeless on the inside.

The Inquisition almost convinced him that he can sit at the table while others are there, not just to reminisce about the void left after what's gone. But when he used the Inquisition for his own goals, he kind of undermined the very idea of restoring a community and locked himself out of it. This time, it appears he will have less agency within the physical world, and my fear is that he will separate himself from the community even further, since Rook and he have reasons not to begin on the best of terms. His conflict with Rook isn't based on merely underestimating someone, as it was the case with Corypheus. Rook and Varric have actively interrupted him, and he has people to blame, even if the is fully responsible for the lack of communication about his plans.

Another thing that caught my attention when looking at the theme of grief in the reveals is how they keep hinting at Solas as some strange symbolic heir to both Mythal's and Elgar'nan, as if suspended between the two possibilities that these gods embody. Wisdom and Pride this and that, his monstrous form in Tevinter Nights is the dragon-wolf with fiery wings that are actually made up of spirits of Justice/Vengeance (the Mortalitasi in the story demonizes them, naturally, but the boundary between these two polarities is not as clear in nature). Fen'Harel portrays himself as a deliverer of a reckoning for the mortals' foolish transgression -- Nemesis against hubris, which would be closer to Elgar'nan's symbolic complex, or to a darker facet of Mythal expressed by Flemythal in DAI. It seems that long ago, he took it upon himself to replace the missing arbiter among the gods, and to bring the Evanuris to justice for Mythal's murder. Now, in a way, he is left as the only arbiter to his own deeds. Who else will judge him for taking the Veil down and the chaos that ensues (other than his own attachment to selected mortals that he might have developed throughout DAI)?

There's certainly a theme of a vicious cycle between destructive envy ("if I can't have something, why should anyone"), retribution, righteous fury, and further misery that is to be explored somewhere in between Elgar'nan, Mythal's possible return in yet another incarnation, and Solas being placed in between. When he developed the Veil, was he tempted to punish them more severely than it was necessary? How much is really necessary? Is it possible that he's unconsciously punishing the world he inadvertently created -- the pinnacle of his complicated grief -- with destruction that is absolutely superfluous and a result of his deflected self-hatred rather than fair judgment? Will he be able to apply compassion in his wisdom (hello, Cole)?

[shazleen]

commissioned art

[lilithism1848]

[planetsallalign]

If I could not only not have dreams about my ex, but really please brain don’t give me sex dreams about my ex. Especially when the sex wasn’t ever as good as my dream made it, since the dream added in all the things I ever wanted. I know I’m dreaming of him because we’re at the anniversary of my whole life imploding. But I was hoping by now it wouldn’t even be a blip on my radar. But I suppose the body really does keep the score.

[could-they-be-a-pro-wrestler]

How successful would All Might…

[notthebeststufftbh]

Shout-out to the ppl who felt like the whole world depends specifically on them since they were 13!!

It's a negative shout-out. Get therapy bestie.

[themoonunderstoodmydadjokes]

In the mood to be absolutely babied

In the mood to be treated like a princess and have someone dote on me

In the mood to be showered in love and affection and be taken care of in every way

In the mood for my “I can do it myself” to be met with “I know you can but let me”

In the mood to just turn my brain off and let myself be taken care of because someone made it feel safe enough to do so….

[raayllum]

Rayla + going off (or attempting to) on her own

[kishibedefender]

People say they have a great relationship with their parents but when you ask what their favorite jojo character is they show you

[baku-usagi]

My fiance is killing me right now 😭 I had a procedure today, I have a tube in my chest now for draining the liquid that keeps accumulating.

Surprising no one once the lidocaine wore off I have been in cripplingly pain because I have a tube in two holes in my chest now, and I am sore/achy from incisions.

My fiance has been so supportive and I'm so thankful but he's also turned into a god damn helicopter mom and won't fucking leave me alone.

I finally got five seconds of not being in pain, and was sort of half. Asleep and he KEEPS WAKING ME UP. And now I am awake and in pain again and I'm trying not to have a huge melt down

[ghost-bxrd]

What’s your opinion on Janet and Jack Drake?

Phew that’s a tough one!

Ok so I’d like to reiterate that most of my knowledge comes from reading fanfic and looking up some canon events on the internet. I haven’t read too many comics yet >.<

A lot of fics (mine included because it’s a nice plot device for Tim angst) depict the Drakes as horrible people who are much more abusive/neglectful than they are in canon (at least from what little I know).

But even without that they left Tim behind for months at a time, didn’t realize he was sneaking out into Gotham AT NIGHT when he was like—- nine? to take pictures and I don’t think he had an actual babysitter either? But feel free to correct me here.

And yeah, Tim is/can be a very independent person but interestingly enough there’s something called “hyper independence” which is something neglected kids may develop as a consequence to not having an adult to rely upon.

Which doesn’t mean that Janet and Jack don’t love Tim. I’m actually pretty certain they do, in their own way, but neither of them is or was equipped to raise a child. They prioritized their globetrotting business over providing a safe and healthy environment for Tim.

Being a parent is a full time job and they didn’t even put in the bare minimum beyond providing him with money, a roof over his head and some occasional check ins. Being back in Gotham once every couple months to spend some days of quality time with your kid just doesn’t cut it.

So to sum it up I think Janet and Jack Drake are horribly neglectful parents whichever way you look at it. And sure, they could be worse, but neglect isn’t a competition. ✨

[ubike-official]

as i said b4, cant wait til I'm 30 to experience my own yuri cherry maho. its gonna be great

[rottenlittlefink]

Being hyper independent with an invisible disability is such a Bitchin™️ combo