#and that's what had her so nervous

[melmedarda]

Can't stop thinking about the thoughts Mel must have had after waking up to an empty bed. She had just laid her heart bare, given her body to Jayce and to wake up the next morning alone?

When he returns to her, she tells him there's a lot he doesn't know about her. She'd shared such an intimate part of her the night before, but she doesn't want Jayce to feel like he knows her. Because if he thinks he knows her, he must have not considered her worthy of staying for. She likely thought that he had gotten what he wanted from her and cast her off.

And why should Mel think this? A woman who is so wealthy, so beautiful, so accomplished and powerful? Because her mother had seen her and cast her off. Her family had disowned her because she was not good enough in their estimation. So all those twelve years that she's been in exile, and her mother has not visited her or called her back to her side, Mel likely thought she was not good enough. All those twelve years, she was just a girl trying hard enough to be.

And then Jayce comes, bares his heart to her as well. Lets her see him in his weakness, in his uncertainty. Shows her how much he values her, wants her around, how highly he holds her opinion. Even when he knows. Perhaps, because he knows her heart. Values it and the compassion she holds within her. And she finally feels good enough.

Only for her mother to come, and tell her it's time to come back home, to be at her side. Only after her brother is dead. When there is no other choice. So yes, of course Mel chooses Jayce, Piltover, and the legacy of peace they've begun to forge. Her family disowned her. Now, she disowns them too.

[tcustodisart]

Whenever I drew Connie with a single dandelion behind his ear this scene was playing in my head like wii channel music.

[haunted-xander]

What's there to be afraid of?

[luna-loveboop]

I want. Four to get appreciation. Because

Four gave a ton of unnoticed help when Twilight was injured

The fight with Wild was difficult, and I know we're all concerned about his negative view of the shadow crystal

But Four did something that no one else really thought of to help- He took care of Twi's stuff

From the beginning he told Twilight to not worry about them

So Four took care of pretty much everything but the others (that Sky and Wars handled)

He took care of Epona

Which is so very important- he took care of Twilight's horse. After her arrival at the stable Four followed up on her

And for Epona, a horse so attached to her human, having some company can help so much for reassurance

He took care of Twilight's stuff

He got Twi's shield- his bags and equipment, and organized it into one place

And he was worried. He obviously found the shadow crystal while handling Twi's stuff, but his negative reactions to it were out of concern.

Also- because of his placement in this scene

I'm fairly convinced Four was ready to start cooking before Wild showed up (since he's beside the counter with food supplies). At the very least he had the basket of fruit out for everyone -but he was literally standing with food behind him- he thought of everything

And he did housekeeping!

Wars payed for the inn, so Four took care of the inn

Realistically these boys were probably not too concerned with tidyness. Four got all of Twi's things on one table, and took care of the room they stayed in

Organizing tables and Twi's things, having food supplies ready, and opening the curtains- overall he was the one tidying up the inn

Four helped in a huge way! He took care of Twi's horse (Epona is so important), his equipment and shield and bag, as well as the other rooms in the inn

Four filled in all the little tasks that others didn't think of. He helped in ways that were needed, but not obvious

There's a lot of problems with the shadow crystal and with Wild, and I don't know what's gonna happen in the future

But don't forget this- don't forget that Four was one who stepped up in an almost unnoticeable way

Don't forget that when everyone was barely holding it together, Four visited Twilight's horse and took care of his things

No matter what develops in the future- this amount of care shown is important ya know?

.

Art and comic from Jojo @linkeduniverse au :)))

[ineed-to-sleep]

*me immediately after going through a terrifying and traumatic experience* haha yeah I guess it was rough but I'm fine now like I'm totally chill. It was kinda funny actually if you think about it

[eywaseclipse]

The scene where we all knew something was about to go down. My heart was racing so fast here. We already saw things escalate with Ro’a being hunted but this was the final straw for the Metkayina to unleash their fury on the sky people finally. Also I just realized I never saw Tuk?? Am I crazy?

[oddly-casual]

I think Mutant Mayhem is the first tmnt propriety to make Leo my favorite turtle right off the bat.

Not that I don’t like Leo anywhere else, but usually it takes me like a second rewatch or something to really pick apart Leo’s character in full to appreciate him- and even then he’s usually not my favorite.

But MM Leo is my favorite for reasons I cannot identify.

Maybe it’s the way he walks, his cringe fail personality, I don’t know but I care about this loser so much.

Idk he cares so much abt his siblings despite the fact that they can be so mean to him sometimes. He is also the one who continually pushes to do the right thing when theres nothing (or even sometimes worst things) to gain from it.

Even his attempts at being cool come off as dorkish but it’s charming in a way only little kids can be. In a ‘you’re doing your best sweetie’. Leo is a single mother of three while also being a teenage boy, that takes work.

He’s such a silent but calculating character, ironically when he doesn’t try so hard and does what he feels is right he gets the best results (ie his leader speech, the plan to be accepted, gaining the acceptance of other mutants) for all his fumbling and try hard attitude he has such natural potential it’s insane.

[anonymouscheeses]

HEAR ME OUT!! VAGGIE IN A SUIT THING 😍

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

i stand with you in the face of a defensive misunderstanding of what critique is.

i think understanding what a critique actually is is a skill that increasingly is not taught. i remember going through freshman art courses feeling the frustration that all negative, nasty, unhelpful, and missed-the-point-entirely feedback is so commonly conflated with critique, and then critique gets a bad name because everyone remembers the time someone said their painting looked like an asshole (true story, altho now i think i would take it as a compliment) instead of the time a teacher or friend or classmate helped them uncover a hurtful bias or think of new ways to explore the same idea or how to connect it to related ideas or how to look up and understand other people's ideas on the same topic.

anyway i think you're great.

ahhh you're so kind to me!! i appreciate your support, and i think you are great also.

i have experience with giving and receiving critique as a student myself, and i think it was the best part of my degree! i majored in creative writing in college, and critique was just a generally accepted part of learning to become a writer. i don't even remember people being especially worried about receiving critique on their work. we had guidance on what kind of feedback was useful, but we were still at liberty to give it as we saw fit as like messy 19 year olds. the standard was that we gave it both written on printed copies of the work AND aloud in front of the whole class, and the writer receiving it was not permitted to speak during the critique. understanding how people are perceiving your work is important!

i don't have any particularly negative recollections of the critique process, although once in a high school writing class, the boys in the class told me that my male characters touched each other too gently and real boys are more rough with each other. in particular, they took issue with me writing that one boy nudged another. nudging is too soft. nudging is for girls. that was more than 20 years ago, and i still think about it sometimes because it was such an interesting perspective! i did not take their advice, though.

i should dig up that piece and see if it reads queer in any other ways. i think that's what they were getting at. (actually i once had a non-fiction class tell me i was in love with my roommate after reading an essay i wrote about her)(i did not listen to that advice either, but having 12 acquaintances tell you that you're gay in 2006 before you realize it yourself is Truly Something!)

i think people have conflated criticism and critique and think that being more openly analytical is the same thing as being negative. but analysis is so fun to me! analysis is why i joined fandom in the first place, and it's why i write fic! can we trust each other to be respectful and to speak in good faith even when we're not singing each other's praises? for me fandom would be better if we could.

oh i also want to clarify that i don't think it's impossible to demonstrate that you've thought deeply about a piece of fanwork while remaining completely positive. people do it all the time and do it very well!

i know i sometimes have tunnel vision wrt my own perspective. in a lot of situations, i wish it were more acceptable to be more direct, and i know people sometimes find the way i express myself to be kind of shocking. i know a lot of people like to be spoken to more indirectly than comes natural to me, and i don't mean to imply that my perspective is the only correct one or that there's no good reason to err on the side of gentleness/politeness in our responses to amateur art and writing. i just think that at a certain level of circumspection, it feels like we're all holding each other at arm's length.

i think for people who can't bear to feel exposed, making and sharing art is always going to be painful and difficult, and maybe too painful and difficult to enjoy the process unless they're sure of a soft landing. but like. the rewards of being loved only come after the mortifying ordeal of being known, right?

[booasaur]

2023 World Athletics Championships - Women's 100 meter finals

[akkivee]

the pivotal points in bat’s past 🤔

kuukou

age ????- his best friend moved away

age 14: attained a higher level of asceticism than his father, met hitoya who helped clear an assault charge on some good will that went awry

age 15: left home to flex his talent, got humbled quick lol but met ichiro and vowed to grow stronger

jyushi:

age ???? (presumably 6)- received amanda from his grandmother

age 13- started middle school where he ‘befriends’ iyogi

age 14- has been a victim of bullying for a year and the bullying escalated to the point his grandmother was killed. met hitoya who made sure iyogi ain’t seeing the light ever again and a little later helped jyushi find the will to keep living

hitoya

age 14- loses his brother

age 23- upon receiving a tip, he decided to change majors from being a doctor to a lawyer in order to jail the guy that bullied his brother. broke up with jakurai after a disagreement

age 31- meets kuukou and jyushi for the first time and we see the fruits of his lawyer efforts

[pansyfemme]

good day today! good day! just long

[fullmetal-angelgrace]

man.... poor cressida, eloise totally ditched her in her time of need :( and then her life went to shit

i was hoping for a good outcome for her story, but the writers really just shoved her back into the mean girl role to move the plot along :/

i really liked her speech to colin about how different they are because her family doesn't support her, cuz the bridgerton's make bad choices all the time that cause society to look down on them, but they always bounce back (and don't start shipping off children to the country to avoid further ridicule)

i really liked how they had all the featherington's reconcile and explicitly try to be more supportive of each other, like a whole women supporting women storyline, but then the writers fucked over cressida so horribly 😭

[morganmnemonic]

I'm watching The Magnus Archives for the first time (i think im going to start tagging posts relevant to this with "tma liveblog" so I don't have to keep specifying). I just started season 2, and I've got to say I'm with Jon's paranoia on this one. Martin IS more competent than he's letting on. His soft, sweet, british voice is just so disarming that even hearing him talk about surviving the worm siege, I stilll mentally categorized him as "likely to die first". Sure he survived, but thats because Prentis let him go. If he actually got wormed, he'd probably just perish. Turns out, his initial idea for what would happen if he got wormed was performing emergency worm removal surgery on himself with a pocket knife. He sounded serious too, like he was mentally prepared to go through with it without hesitation if that's what it took. And if we look at what each of the characters did during the worm invasion,

Jon made no judgement calls that significantly impacted group survival one way or the other (+0) and got very wormed at the end (-1) for a grand total of -1 survival points.

Tim didn't notice that Prentis was in the archive and nearly got got (-1), sent Sasha ahead to get help, which resulted in the fire suppression system going off and saving himself and Jon from certain death (+2), got surrounded by worms in Jon's office (-1), and got very wormed at the end (-1), for a grand total of -1 survival points.

Sasha saved Tim from Prentis (+1), successfully got help, saving Tim and Jon from certain death (+2) and died (-1). For a total of 2 survival points.

Martin directed an injured Jon and Sasha to a safe place to hide from the worms and provided an effective tool for worm removal (+2), hid the stash of fire extinguishers that saved Tim from certain death (+1), and kept himself out of mortal peril for the entire duration of the invasion (+1). 4 survival points. He didn't even get injured. He's the only one who survived without intervention by forces beyond his control. Martin didn't play the part of first to die. No, this man was born for the roll of Final Girl.

And I don't think he's evil, and I don't think he killed Gertrude. But I do think that he's entirely capable of murder, if that's what it takes to survive. And I do think he will continue to exert his agency in the story in ways that the other characters and audience forget to expect from him. Not me, though. I learned my lesson. As entirely disarming as his demeanor is, I'm not going to underestimate him a second time.

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Raised in Amphibia AU Marcy has a very complicated relationship with Andrias. They love each other and see each other as father and daughter. He never yells at her, never raised a hand at her, yet she's so utterly terrified of him. She doesn't even know why she feels like this, but all she wants is to not lose his love and to make him proud, and feels like she's always in debt, always failing at earning her place, always desperately two steps behind, never quite pleasing him.

She gives up so much of herself to earn his love and approval... she keeps most of her less useful interests secret, she doesn't have any friends except for maybe Lady Olivia, she drops whatever she's doing, no matter how important, to go to her father when he calls her, she "forgets" about her feelings when they're inconvenient to him...

She used to wear her hair long because he liked it. He never pressured her to wear it like that, possibly didn't even notice the effects his words had on her, but he once said it's what's traditional for the Leviathan royal family, and that it looked good in her, and she was determined to keep hers as long as possible, until one day she can't handle all the stress and anxiety and she desperately cuts it all in her bedchambers. Now it's so short, barely reaching her jaw. She cried herself to sleep that night. Andrias didn't say anything about it, only that it looked nice, and Marcy feels her heart sink - she let it grow for years no matter how uncomfortable it was or how little she liked it for nothing.

[keepthetension]

still stuck on mhok's trauma, unsurprisingly. i keep thinking about the opening scenes of this show, showing us day losing his sight, and mhok losing rung. i really thought that the show would spend equal time and care on both

my first post about this show was pointing out that the first shot of day is a close up of his eyes, and the first time we see mhok, he's holding something in his mouth. and i thought it was so interesting that we see mhok gagged, because society generally doesn't care what people who've been incarcerated have to say. or poor people. and by and large, it doesn't care about the voices of traumatized people, either

and i was so curious to see what the show was going to do with that. i can't believe the show itself was never really interested in what mhok has to say

and i'm stuck on mhok's time in hawaii. the show highlighted over and over again how poor he is, and we know that he didn't like studying. what are his english skills like? we saw singha there, and i think one other thai person. was that the extent of his social circle? he seemed pretty happy to leave hawaii behind, so did he make no new friends? did he spend his days off just sitting in his room by himself, the way day did when he went to songkla with mhok?

i assume he and porjai were still in touch, but he moved abroad at a time when his ptsd was getting worse, and in the wake of a terrible breakup, and he just walked all of that off? alone???

feeling overly protective and over-responsible is absolutely an understandable trauma response for mhok, but you know what else is? losing a relationship, and feeling like you HAVE to go back and fix it, and that if you can just get a do-over, you'll be able to do everything perfectly this time, and you'll get everything right, and everything will be okay! this makes more sense to me in the final episode than the idea of mhok and day having a happily ever after does