#and sometimes vibes is all we need?

[ecstarry]

you should never ask a woman her age, a man his salary and a fanfic author when they are posting

[abirddogmoment]

I'm feeling a lot more confident in my training with Rory than I ever did with Mav, which is really cool, and the single best thing I started doing this time around was Rory Appreciation Time.

Allocating mindful screen-free time to be silly with Rory helped me avoid the puppy blues, creates a lot of levity, diffuses tension, and helps me learn more about what she finds rewarding. It's been really cool to see.

[mmolly-ringwormm]

Today is such a good day, celebrating by bestie’s birthday. We’re going to the park, the weathers beautiful. I love my outfit, I feel good for the first time in while. ❤️

[astralleywright]

Marisha's comment about how Relvin is one of those parents who ended up with a child they didn't know what to do with really gets to the heart of it, i think, and is such a good way to tie the fantasy element of Imogen's powers into things more tangible. because there are really a lot of parents like Relvin in real life, who have a child with the person they're happily married to and never expect to be left alone with the kid. or who expect a ""normal"" (read: cisgender and heterosexual, able-bodied, relatively neurotypical and obedient, etc.) child and end up with one who's ""difficult"", who demands more or different of them than what they believe they signed up for. and that's not entirely entitlement on a parent's part- many cultures' common frameworks of parenthood and child-rearing do not include space for these children. it makes sense that Relvin was unprepared. raising any child is difficult, and raising a child whose needs you were never taught how to accommodate, who the world is so cruel to, is even more challenging.

and yet. and yet, the person who bears the brunt of the harm in these situations will always be the child. they're the ones who have to live every moment of how the world treats them, without the support that their parent is supposed to provide them. and when asked to care for his child even when she turned out to be ""difficult"", Relvin couldn't. for entirely sympathetic reasons, of course. he tried, in his own way. i don't think he's a bad guy. but he's let his own broken heart bleed onto his daughter. he hasn't been able to give her much else.

[llitchilitchi]

I get hating certain political systems and trying to abolish totalitarian regimes but at the same time many of them are so interwoven with our history and society they have become tropes and when I consume media with a setting where the monarchy is absolute and revered then I am playing my part and sucking that princeling off

[longagoitwastuesday]

I am liking Jujutsu Kaisen, way more than I imagined I would, but I foresee it will let me down and it's keeping me from enjoying this as much as I could haha

I think the characters and dynamics are well set, and I think many of them have an incredibly good and deep potential, but I would be willing to bet they'll not get a proper development, enough for them to really hit. A well assembled set of gears is not enough to make the movement go, you have to wind the clockwork.

I think Gojo and Megumi have a fascinating and very complex dynamic, but I doubt it will be given the time and care that imo it needs to actually work. And it is going well enough for now! One could see the intimacy between them was deeper than the one Gojo had with, say, Yuji and Nobara ever since the very first few episodes despite the fact Fushiguro too was a first year. But the pieces forming what they have are extremely complex, and it just wouldn't be realistic if it doesn't show, even if in a not showing way, or if it doesn't have consequences or implications.

It's one of those dynamics that shape one's life, the way one regards the world, the way one establishes or not relationships with other people. It's one of those dynamics that could be full of fondness, gratitude, resentment, admiration, trust, and that imply intimacy, the good kind or the bad, even if in just the knowledge of someone who's been a constant through your life. It could, and would, imply a myriad of feelings, and probably in such a mix it could imply contradictory feelings too. Even the nothingness would weight, even the nothingness would be significant and meaningful.

Gojo took Megumi and his sister under his wing, the son of a man who murdered him, because of both selfish and selfless reasons. Megumi looks like Toji. What does Gojo feel about this? How does Gojo deal with this? How does Gojo go about taking care of Megumi? Would he walk him to school? Make him breakfast? Celebrate his birthdays making him blow candles? Did he take him to the zoo? Does the relationship between them feel professional or is it something more? Gojo appreciates his students, but is Megumi to him just another student? When Gojo faces Sukuna in Megumi's body, did he see the kid he raised, or does he just see Sukuna in one of his students' body? Did he have one faint wavering instant? And how does Megumi feel about this? Is he resentful of him? Resentful of the situation? Of the selfishness behind his actions? Does he feel like a pawn? Is he grateful? Does he resent feeling grateful? Would he rather not? Does he love Gojo? Does he feel nothing about him other than what he could feel about a teacher that sort of annoys him but knows he's reliable in his strength? Does he think it unfair, cruel or unfeeling that Gojo is close, closer perhaps, with Yuuji or Yuta, considering their story? When Sukuna slices Gojo in two, does the remnants of Megumi's soul tremble?

And not just Megumi and Gojo. Yuuji and Nanami, Gojo and Nanami, Yuuji and Fushiguro, Nobara and the boys, or Nobara and Maki, Todo and Yuuji or Yuta, Gojo and Yuta, Megumi and his sister. Gojo and Geto, even! If the pieces are well set, the dynamics are intriguing, interesting, and have potential to be deep, but then the characters have like two plot relevant scenes that punch you hard, but little more, it's not nearly enough. Especially not nearly enough for the enormity that is shonen dynamics and situations. And the potential existing at all, and then not delivering, makes it all the more frustrating when you're left with something mediocre that could have been so good.

The development of dynamics through not only a few plot relevant gut wrenching moving scenes, but also the smallness of life, is important. The friend who recommended this to me said that those things were just unnecessary filler, but I disagree. I think there's a big difference between a large amount of anime-only filler episodes whose existence is based on the fact they had run out of manga chapters to animate, and moments of quietness. The low stakes character-driven moments of quietness can be so telling and so insightful, and they are so satisfactory when brought back later in higher stakes situations. My friend teased me there was no scene of Gojo making breakfast to Megumi, that it would be an idiotic idea, but it would be so telling. How he makes breakfast, what they eat, if he tries hard or if it's all mechanised, if they have personal bowls or if they use whatever, if he just buys them some pastry on the way to school, if the way they have breakfast changes through the years, or if he doesn't make them breakfast at all! All that would be very insightful on their dynamic and its evolution. All that would give a glimpse on how they regard each other and why, even in the present. All that could become meaningful in tense situations and high stakes scenes.

These moments also let the plot breath; if a lot is happening all the time, if every character is always experiencing trauma after trauma, the entire story is so emotionally draining that at some point you don't even care all that much. Besides, these nothing moments or low stakes plot arcs, besides deepening and developing dynamics, also let some in-world time pass, which would make the intimacy and bond between characters more believable imo; between Yuuji eating Sukuna's finger and their last confrontation in December how much time has passed? A few months? Am I truly to believe these characters are so everything to each other in only a few months?

Without some smallness, some repetition, some daily life, some low stakes not plot-centric development, the dynamics don't hit, they don't truly feel fleshed out, and dynamics as complex as the ones Megumi and Gojo have, or as supposedly meaningful as the one Megumi has with Yuuji or his sister, should be fleshed out if they're going to exist at all. Otherwise they'd risk making the writing feel awkward and fake. Besides, if the dynamics felt well fleshed out and realistic, they would shape the way the characters interact and act, and how they deal with situations, thus being plot relevant.

The shonen genre has so much happening all the time, the stakes are so high, the dynamics are so rooted in big events and the relationships carry enormous weight and implications. Yet they barely get developed, and it feels so stupid, so plain, the absence of something so important noticeable like a constant void, a shapeless nothingness present in every scene. It makes the characters feel like cardboard figures. Jujutsu Kaisen is already getting a better job than many, but I doubt it will do enough for what I've heard, and I fear I am bound to feel let down, and bound to feel unmoved.

After all, if not enough time and care has been given to develop a dynamic, I am not going to feel pressured by the high stakes; if not enough time and care has been given to develop the dynamic between Megumi and Yuuji, as good potential as it has I am bound to feel little for this last confrontation between Sukuna and Itadori, and his effort in getting Megumi back.

[fromthechaoticmind]

psst - hey.

If no one has told you today...

I see you.

You make the world a better place by being here.

No, hey, listen, yes, you do. Even if it doesn't always feel like it right now.

You deserve good things.

You deserve love.

You deserve happiness.

You are not a mistake.

You are supposed to be here.

I love you.

You're going to be okay, kid.

[esteemed-excellency]

ok i'm almost done with the new firmament chapter, i have So Many thoughts 👀

[t-u-i-t-c]

nothing like watching a bl movie from 2010 in the lowest quality possible with color-coded subtitles, very familiar faces, and the low budget being spread thin

[serabellyms]

i hate that feeling when i'm writing w/ a new mutual or a mutual that I haven't written with much and don't know what's too long of a reply that's gonna scare them off

so ig this is my way of saying to the dash: if you're not intimidated by long replies sometimes PLEASE let me know directly bc this vibe literally results in me deleting and rewriting replies to people multiple times when the first few were probably just fine to send and i'm instead overthinking how much content i'm putting in it when that particular mutual would've just gone with the flow--

[irregularbillcipher]

watched the musical demon show (don't wanna name it so this post isn't in the tags) at the behest of an IRL friend and i can already tell this is going to be a piece of media where i absolutely cannot stop thinking about it, not because i really love the show as-is, but because it has so many individual components i really like and find incredibly fun or compelling, and i'm so frustrated that it doesn't come together for me

i think the main thing i can say about it as a show, setting aside some of the insensitive choices that were made that i really don't feel qualified to tackle or talk about, is that the entire thing sort of gives off this vibe of someone really excited to show you every single oc they made in high school and college and i very genuinely mean that in both the best and worst ways possible

there are some good hooks for season two though so i will absolutely give them that

[b4kuch1n]

gonna start subjecting u lot to my rambling abt classic viet authors

[erstwhilesparrow]

Can you tell me more about this vampire hunter pretending to be domestic? 👀

i can!! i very very very much can!! :D

so. first thing you need to know is that this is an AU of an AU and i've entirely lost the thread. the second thing you need to know is that this AU of an AU is the lovely @cohnal's doing. it read one of my fics and went, "hey, what if [Much Beloved Character] met these guys." and i went, "AUGH. FUCK. YEAH. HELL YEAH."

under a cut due to Paragraphs. o/

o/ !

so. the background information is that there's this little gang of three vampires who've been living together for a long time. they're super close, and have most recently been living in a big old house somewhere that could reasonably be described as 'on the edge of town.' they've been getting a little reckless lately with their feeding, killing people they probably shouldn't and attracting attention when they didn't before. so one day, a vampire hunter comes to town.

the hunter -- we will call him owen -- by virtue of being a hunter, is already a little on the edge of things. his work mostly keeps him alone and separate from others. this is an interesting contrast to the vampires, who have of course been exiled from life but very much behave like family with each other. it's winter, and owen gets trapped with the vampires in their big old house.

the 'pretending at domesticity' was a thing in my original fic -- the vampires sometimes put blood in bowls and sit around the dining room table drinking it as if it's soup; one of them curls up in front of the fireplace and thinks about how if she looks very sweet the others might carry her upstairs like a child to her room -- and it was at least in part about... playing with this image of 'family'? none of the three vampires stays in the 'parent' or 'child' or 'sibling' or 'partner' role for very long in relation to the other two. it's supposed to be a little bit off, a little more mutable, a little of both [hey this set-up looks familiar] and [hey wait that's not supposed to happen].

and the thing my brain has snagged on re: owen is (1) figuring out how he responds to this, as someone who has no family or other long-lasting connections, and (2) where he ends up fitting into this dynamic? because. look. he's trapped in a house full of vampires. his whole job might be killing them, but he's not walking away from this one. i like the idea of him turned more than i like the idea of him drained of blood and dumped in the snow.

so. guy trapped in a house with something family-shaped but not in the traditional sense. the image of him fitting alarmingly well into that family-shape. the image of him bristling with weapons and tension still sitting down at the table to... eat? the image of all of them, three vampires and owen, settling in front of the fireplace as if to share drinks and stories, and that's where one of them sinks their teeth in his neck to make him turn.

[randomjreader]

Are threezo completely over the top? Yes. Would I absolutely hate them if I met them irl? Oh definitely. Am I completely invested in them in a boss and a babe? Unquestionably, 100%, I need so much more of them on my screen asap.

[hjemne]

(Gay bear flag anon) I’m stupider than anything because after realizing your pfp wasn’t the gay bear flag I was like. Ah yes the beach in the evening. Except it’s not it’s Wolfwood having a smoke sitting on a crate. Which is excellent btw. And your vibe is immaculate don’t worry

Sjfjsjskd the possible interpretations of art are as limitless as the night sky and this is most definitely a vibes-based pic, especially when squashed down to half a centimetre

It's not a very recognisable picture of Wolfwood I don't think & tbh (especially when it's so small on my phone screen) it's kinda like abstract art to me too lol. I had a pic of WW from the manga which I thought worked better as visually legible pfp but I used that for my alt account so I landed on this instead

[doubleedgemode]

There's a post that explains it way better than I do but. I'm currently thimking about A.B.As frankenstein influence

Aside from the obvious "concept art refs frankenstein by name, so one could assume the head key worked as her electrodes/bolts" I don't see many people mention how her strive boots are black platforms a la creature's movie depiction's (roadworker if I'm not mistaken?? I probably am) boots. Also yknow they have lil bolts