#and she knows what she is doing

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[pangur-and-grim]

one thing that took me embarrassingly long to learn is "sometimes when people say things, they will not be true."

I used to tell people about this revelation and they'd be like yeah.....duh.....but like, why wouldn't my base assumption be that you're communicating to me in a straightforward manner. anyway, I get scammed a lot.

[yeepof]

Local PHD student at wizard school HARRASSED!! FOR SHAME!!

[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.

[monkesupreme]

ref

a satisfactory answer for Selina

[tin-tweezers]

This fits so well into the series’ ongoing critique of empire.

Imagine: You’re a poor kid in a backwater region. You have no money, you have no opportunities, you’re told you’re a burden to society, the clothes on your back and the food you eat have been resentfully bestowed by your social betters.

How do you get out? You join the military.

Hiding the rest beneath the cut, because this got long.

In America, joining the military means you get money, healthcare for you and your family, assistance buying a house, a subsidy for a college education, a chance to see the world. When you ship out, your town installs banners on the street lights with your face, name and an American flag in the backdrop. And if you live in an American territorial holding (Samoa, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, all the others) the military is by far the best pathway to citizenship. You don’t even need to be a permanent resident. If you want to vote for the president who sends you off to war, you have to join the war. Your body is the collateral that jumps you to the front of the line.

(Here’s a poem about it by afakasi Samoan poet William Nu’utupu Giles.)

The thing is, you might not survive to reap the military’s benefits. You might die - and even if you do make it back alive, you might be different. There was a guy in my high school, we’ll call him Prince. He was an asshole - he bullied smaller kids, skipped class, homophobic comments. I lost track of him after graduation - I had shit to do and also wanted to get as far away from that place as possible.

Five years later, I see Prince on the MetroNorth commuter train platform, and almost don’t recognize him. His hair was short, because he seemed smaller, held himself more still than the aggressive kid I graduated with. I called his name, because I was far enough away from high school now that it didn’t hurt as much. When he turned and walked over, he had a limp. A really bad one. I asked him what he’d been doing since graduation and he told me he’d joined the Marines.

I, queer artist and budding socialist, neutrally asked him how that was going. First, he shrugged and showed me his leg. I awkwardly nodded and asked, “How did that happen?”

“It was shrapnel. It killed my best friend.” No preamble. He was on convalescent leave, visiting his family.

We got on the train together and he showed me some videos of the chopper he and his division manned on his phone. I told him a bit about my life, how I’d been to art school and how I was freelancing in the film industry. In my memory, he listens politely but we don’t really have much to say to one another because our lives are different now. And we weren’t friends in high school, so we didn’t have the good old days to fall back on. But, I don’t actually remember how we acted after that initial surprise. Maybe it was awkward, or it could very well be me projecting in hindsight.

We arrived in Grand Central and parted ways at the clock. I gave him a hug, and headed off towards the subway downtown (I had a gallery opening to go to.)

I realized later that my awkwardness stemmed from the fact that I had no military family members, or friends, or colleagues. Not even acquaintances. My long-dead grandfather had been an engineer in WW2 - after that, he got a full time at Bell Labs and helped design communications satellites. Never left, and never spoke about the war around me when I was little.

I mentioned that disconnect to a friend later, who grew up in rural Wisconsin. “Well, of course you didn’t have any friends in the military. Your family’s rich.” I didn’t think of us as rich, but I suppose we were rich enough that no one we knew enlisted. While I had never noticed, it was quite obvious to her.

I don’t know what happened to Prince after we met on the train. I’ve met other veterans since then, of course. Some of them had very nice houses paid for the GI bill, one became a playwright I worked with on a project, one lived in public housing and begged for food on the street in a wheelchair. (I never talked to that last guy, Ed, until my working class Trinidadian friend brought him coffee on one of our walks. After that, I said hello whenever I went by, and he talked about losing his legs in Vietnam.) As for the others, the ex-Navy Seal with the big GI Bill house in Florida flinched at loud noises, and the playwright writes about PTSD.

Anyway. That idea in The Locked Tomb, of sending your kid off to war so they escape the cycle of abuse/disenfranchisement/poverty? And having them come back different? Dead, even? And of course, Aiglamene herself has a wartime injury. Permanently disabled, invalided home. She still knows the Cohort is the only way out for Gideon Nav.

Sure makes you think.

thinking about Aiglamene. Like, so

a child crash lands in town. mystery where she came from. the mother is dead. this tiny redheaded thing has no one in the world. the town takes her in because what else are you supposed to do with a orphan dropped on your doorstep, but they don’t love her. the reverend family needs an heir, so they kill every single child on the planet- wait, scratch that, all but one. this one kid is alive, she’s alive, against all odds. so naturally, everyone’s scared of her. everyone hates her. out of all the children to survive why was it the one no one cared about. but they move on, everyone does, and the kid grows. and she starts asking questions. you start answering them. you start telling her stories, and it’s nice to be listened to, even if the kid is just a twerp. you start teaching her, she’s a natural with a sword, but you don’t tell her because it’ll go to her head. you’ve never had a maternal bone in your body, you aren’t mothering her… but she’s got nobody. and neither do you. you train her, you teach her, you tell her she can get out, get free from this place, if she works hard enough, fights good enough. she works hard. she fights well, better than you ever did at her age. she tries to get out. she gets caught. she tries again. and again. and again. and eventually, there’s a chance, a real chance. you’re the only person in the world who could get through this kid’s thick skull, and you tell her: this is your chance, this is it, you’re getting out, you’re leaving me, you’re never coming back, you’ve going to live, you have to get out now. and she goes. she goes, and she doesn’t come back. she doesn’t come back, and then she does… and she’s dead. she’s dead, and she’s back, the two things you prayed wouldn’t happen. she’s back and she’s dead and this is your child, you raised her, and you sent her off, promising a bright future, and it killed her.

[hinamie]

10 years later

[thatrandomblogsays]

Annabeth: I, a child, had to earn Thalia’s love, that’s how the world works! I have to earn my moms love. Love is transactional, you gotta be worthy of it first silly :)

Percy, listening to this on the train

[leeffi]

As soon as I saw this scene in the new ep, I just had to redraw it. The way Pomni looks at Gummigoo...

She's so relieved & happy to see him 🥹

[followthebluebell]

every year, my boss buys a few cat calendars for our workplace. Due to some sort of mix-up, we accidentally got a few naked women calendars this year.

Normally, that's where the story would end. It would just be a mildly amusing mistake.

But it becomes absolutely fucking hilarious because I opened up the calendar package in front of clients today. One moment, we're just discussing the cats up for adoption and if their current cat might be willing to accept a new baby brother/sister and bam. Suddenly it went all tits up the second I picked up one of the calendars and actually looked at the damn thing.

Unfortunately, the clients ALSO looked at it.

None of us wanted this to happen. None of us knew how to respond to it. There's nothing in any social protocol that could have prepared us for this.

There was just like thirty solid seconds of absolutely dead silence as we all tried to think of the most polite thing to say.

"Wow," i said, because I'm entirely braindead at this point. "Not the kind of pussy I expected to encounter today."

Thankfully, they thought it was hilarious. It probably wasn't the most politic thing to say, but it was very funny to at least three people.

[vraska-theunseen]

DID YOU ALL KNOW THAT YOU CAN DO WHATEVER UOU WANT WHEN YOURW MAKING ART ISNT THAT WILD

[chloesimaginationthings]

The true meaning behind FNAF princess quest

[cometblaster2070]

i'm making myself laugh thinking about this but I wholeheartedly believe madame morrible absolutely HATES the thought of glinda and elphaba being together like the mere mention of gelphie would probably send her into immediate cardiac arrest and it's not even because she's homophobic or anything I just fully believe she dislikes glinda so so much she's just like this is absolutely NOT happening in my house.

glinda and elphaba are having their gay ass moment and she's like "I sense a disturbance in the force; the wind is telling me those fucking lesbians are at it again."

like IK this woman hates to see glinda's fruity ass coming for several reasons but first and foremost I believe it's because she's so fucking ANNOYED by how much elphaba loves and cares for her, like this pink bitch is throwing a wrench in her plans just by EXISTING and being herself.

and she can't even really do anything to glinda because it'll make elphaba upset and she really can't have that so she just has to sit there and be like

[nathaniacolver]

i don't think you guys understand the levels of lesbianism in this scene

this 90 caliber electric net is caitlyn's E ability......aka, she's the ONLY champion in league of legends that can use this ability.........thus, the writing decision to have vi, a separate, melee league champion, be the only one in the show that EVER also triggers it (someone informed me that cait does use it during Hellfire), with her bare hands (and against another champion, at that), suggests levels of intimacy and trust that i can't even comprehend

additionally, this isn't the first time caitlyn's given up her gun (aka ALL of her special abilities) for vi, either

oh to have a girlfriend

[inkskinned]

okay is she being actually immature or is it just a woman over 30 expressing a human experience you find to be immature.

like yeah. at certain ages... let shit go. im not defending the real immature shit. im not defending the karen you're picturing. i worked in retail i hate those people too. (once somebody got mad at me because she didn't like how our winter window decor was a snowman smoking a pipe. i wish i was joking).

but men at 57 will write books about how 17 year old girls are soooo sexy. they will invent worlds where women have to be naked for "armor reasons." they will write songs that treat women as objects. people rush to defend them. meanwhile a woman at 35 will be like "heartbreak is hard, actually" or "i feel betrayed by a friend" or "i am struggling with something emotionally." immediately people will say stuff like this woman is 35 by the way. by the way this woman is SO OLD to be experiencing this. BY THE WAY.

im 31, almost 32. the other day a poet was blasted online because at her "big age", she had written a poem about feeling unloved. top comment was "this woman is 29 by the way." this woman is too old to still be useful, by the way. she has to behave better . maybe if she was a good wife and mother she could stop existing loudly, and the story could continue on without her. this woman has served her purpose, by the way. she's so cringe, by the way. at 29 - so old! - she still hasn't figured out that her existence should be one of shame.

[3liza]

hot autistic adult women are always saying they're doing fine really and everyone is nice to them and they just need to figure out a few little things and then everything will be perfect