#anyways. I need therapy to get over this

[deadandphilgames]

oversharing in the tags time :)

[deoidesign]

.

[shima-draws]

Me: Oh god. It's time for our company's yearly performance review. Where my boss will judge my performance over the past year and see how awful I am at my job and--

My boss: You're doing such a great job and I'm so happy you're here <3

Me:

[chainsawprophecy]

what's crazy as fuck to me is that the bad kids literally went through kipperlily's therapy notes and everyone's falling over backwards to justify that but god fucking forbid someone who lost her best and only friend in the world has anger issues. you bitches would not have survived the vriska trenches.

[brown-little-robin]

I need to sleep for 70 hours and then maybe I'll feel not evil again

[lovecanbesostrange]

Rogue & Gambit (2018) #2 writer: Kelly Thompson artist: Pere Pérez colorist: Frank D'Armata

That time Rogue and Gambit got back together by going to therapy. Of course it was undercover and it was like exes fake-dating, except they both still had lots of feelings.

And then #5 brought closure. Bad guys got defeated and the therapy worked by confronting the past (in so many ways, don't ask about Rogue's look, things happened).

[ccxvxxcvzxbxccxbvcxb]

-- TAKING A BREAK --

hewwo, im gonna be taking a break from tumblr for the next while.

ive come to realize that im on tumblr wayyyy too much bc of my (newly found) ocd so im leaving for a while to try and deal with it (+ other stuff in the op tags)

i'll be back once im satisfied w/ my progress, but there is a chance i won't be back for months, so if u want to stay in contact send me a DM w ur discord or smthn, i'll check them a couple of times in the next couple days, but after that no tumblr at all.

so yeah, byebyes & i'll see u people later hopefully <3

[frozenhi-chews]

I need to see some platonic Starlo and Ceroba stuff REALLY SOON or else I'm gonna go crazy

[syrenki]

Does pretending to be fine on the outside bring you at least some sort of satisfaction? That they won’t see how bad it gets

yesss and it's so selfish and embarrassing, i keep hoping someday they'll all see right through the bullshit and then they'll say "oh my, it was so very bad all along and you never said anything? you withstood it all and never brought any attention to yourself? that's so selfless, i could never, i would have broken earlier, you are so strong. we will help you now, you deserve it now because you never asked for anything!!!" but it never happens and it never will happen and the worse it gets for me the more i put on the cheerful and selfless and carefree demeanor, i get so desperate to keep it all up because if i ever drop the act and start Acting Depressed, start wearing my arms out or stop smiling at everybody all the time, i would be acting selfish, i would be attention-seeking, i would be undeserving of any help at all since i'm simply craving attention. you see what i mean? it's all twisted but i swear there is a logic there - the more desperately i need something to change, the kinder i will act, the milder, gentler, more selfless, quieter, i have to handle it with humility because not complaining and just taking it quietly is what would make me deserving of some care, and sometimes i need it so badly that i'd do anything to deserve it. i keep thinking if i deserved it i would have already received it, only that's not how people function, people go to psychologists or tell their friends 'i'm depreseed' and that's how they get help, not through martyrdom and humility. but i do it the quiet way and the worse things get the quieter and more mellow i become and it will probably go on this way until i kill myself and then people will say "holy shit, she was always so cute and kind and pastel, nobody could have expected this, who could have had any idea?"

[yuridovewing]

Was gonna make Hollycinder endgame to my hyporewrite but now that Hollyleaf is gonna be a medic all the way through po3, I kiiinda want to put her with Willowshine instead. For the drama. Oh the misery of swearing yourself to your restrictive code to an unhealthy degree being challenged when you fall for another medic from another clan, indulging in the romance when you're children but breaking it off because you refuse to put your selfish sinful desires over the goodwill of StarClan and tradition, spending a few years in yearning and guilt and ruminating going "I had to, I can't love her, I would be less than scum if I did" and throwing herself into her work. Only to learn that she herself is a product of a forbidden relationship, the same as the one she indulged in. And her mother had "no" consequences for so long. Her mentor who she looked up to more than anything, who she previously honored for her faith in StarClan and the code and saw her as a standard worth following, had faltered in her faith. Why? Why would she inflict that on her clan? Why would she inflict that on Hollyleaf? What was it for? . .. Could Hollyleaf have done the same? Would she? But why? Was she cursed with her mother's name because she was destined to be like her? Were they both destined to be sinners? No, no. No. This can be fixed. It has to be. She can repent. They can both repent. And she will make her mother repent if its the last thing she does. She has to. She has to get back in StarClan's good will. She has to. She has to.

[moeblob]

Deacon loves two things: Ymber and digging himself a grave.

Fulj hates one thing: Deacon.

[daisywords]

\

[maiteo]

Can we see the outfits pleaseee🫣

ofc mamas🤭

wardrobe re-up: Rúben Dias🐎

this is just maiiiii interpretation of his style and a few pieces that I don’t think he’d be scared to wear….a starting point if you will<3

he needs more prints…more colors! some more statement pieces (NOT being a leather vest or big ass birkin😭) include more aspects of his personality in his clothes…all that!

[shreddeddescent]

probably oversharing at this point ive been doing that a lot. very much had the experience of everyone ive told about this going "hey. im glad youre getting whatever that is out"

hmmmmm

[deus-ex-mona]

mona sure wasn’t kidding when she said that zakenna’s an uplifting song huh…

[ingoodjesst]

seeking the permission to be weak: on the themes of goro akechi’s arc

vulnerability, isolation versus connection, resentment, emotional immaturity, sunk cost fallacy, constructing and confronting oneself, and what it means to be acknowledged.

for context, these are my semi-connected thoughts after playing through the game’s seventh palace for the first time. it left me feeling like i'd been hit by a goddamn truck, and suddenly all these damn words erupted from me. haven't actually finished the game yet, but i needed to get these feelings off my chest before i could keep going LOL [late-game spoilers for persona 5]

the akechi confrontation in shido’s palace has earned its right to reside in my head rent-free forever. i mean, it’s mechanically brilliant. all i’m looking for was a place to SAVE like normal after a mini-boss; instead i am ambushed by a boy who, frankly, could’ve used someone to save him. which is to say, i enter this fight fuckin bedraggled because i haven’t even healed up from that last encounter. three of my current party members are under 100 hp, and only a third of joker’s sp remains. it’s looking kinda ugly.

and yet, even though akechi had all the preparation on his side and demonstrated three full phases of power… he still loses. purely on the basis that mechanically, joker has so many powerful abilities gained through his confidants and all of his phantom thief friends fighting by his side–friends who could tap in when the others were exhausted. it’s entirely because of those bonds between joker and his party that they could beat the sole, sad akechi.

i LOVE how thematically resonant that is. for all his talents that even the phantom thieves begrudgingly admire, akechi still comes up short. not because he himself is deficient, but because he has no one else to rely on once he’s given his all.

when it comes to the thieves, this is the sorest part for him. akechi mocks their friendship, calling them “pieces of shit… who lick each other’s wounds…!” but what he really resents is that they help each other when they’re weak. growing up, when he was scared and lacking, he had no comfort but himself. it kills him to see them supporting one another because deep down, he’s always longed for the permission to be weak, yet still looked after.

this resentment is especially interesting when you examine how much akechi’s circumstances reflect those of the phantom thieves. having your life turned upside down by masayoshi shido. enduring the superficial judgment of your peers. betrayed by your father figure and haunted by your mother's death. performing perfection and compliance at the expense of your ideals. believing you have no choice but to obey your dad's orders while holding out for any shred of remaining affection. even being orphaned and hiding yourself from the world, feeling as though you have no power to escape your pain on your own. akechi and each of the phantom thieves have all been victimized by cruel adults and ostracized by corrupt systems. society had deprived all of them of a place to belong. but only akechi remained disconnected from other people, and only akechi took irrevocable actions that anyone would rightfully revile.

yet despite what could reasonably be expected from anyone, the thieves still choose to sympathize and plead with him to join their cause, properly this time. even futaba and haru, who have both been most directly harmed by akechi’s actions, try to acknowledge him and the isolation he’s felt all his life. it’s kindness he may not even deserve. but maybe it’s because, within akechi, they catch a glimpse of a much lonelier path that they might’ve stumbled down if it weren’t for their fellow outcasts… particularly joker.

joker is the foil that slices deeply into akechi’s pride and sense of self. just look at what they share: their unjust treatment by adults, their insightfulness, their quick wits, their charm, their competitive drive, their metaverse powers, their thief personas. hell–they’re even the same height. but despite their common ground, joker is stronger than akechi. which forces akechi to admit that his counterpart might have something special that he lacks. there’s something missing from his life, a void he’s never been able to fill but others can. and though there are material ways in which joker was simply luckier than akechi, the most important thematic difference between them is the strength and number of joker's bonds–things that akechi never learned to nurture and thus could never rival.

so akechi hates him. he hates him because joker and his friends stoke his sense of inferiority. joker isn't an empty phony. joker became acknowledged and supported without sacrificing his justice–in fact because he upheld it. joker found a way out of the misery when he couldn't. maybe worst of all, akechi hates joker because joker could've changed the course of his entire life, if only they'd met a few years earlier.

which makes it ever more tragic that in the present, akechi refuses the thieves’ extraordinary kindness. perhaps he doesn’t believe their show of grace to be genuine, rankling under sympathy that he mistakes for pity; perhaps he cannot fathom being equals in a non-transactional relationship; perhaps he just no longer considers himself worthy after all the awful things he’s done. whatever it is, he rejects what’s possibly his last chance to desert his path of self-destruction and embrace the camaraderie that has always escaped him. he thinks them fools, believing they should just get rid of him, because that's the only thing you can do with people who get in the way, right? it’s in this manner that his inability to move past his pain condemns him yet again.

the thing is, despite the cruelty he inflicted on the world through his childish temper tantrum, it's hard not to mourn the fact that akechi got here largely because he didn’t know how to grow up. if love is a safe space to be vulnerable–to mess up and mature–then with so little of it in his life, no wonder he got stuck stewing in his lies and hatred. that’s why he ends up standing before you as a kid burdened by trauma and loneliness from a young age. a kid whose parental figures abandoned him to bounce from foster home to foster home. a kid given great power yet no one to steer him away from his bad choices. a kid manipulated and molded into a mentally unstable weapon. a kid who committed to a rotten path until he felt he could do nothing else but continue tearing down it. i mean, by then, who was gonna want the real him? who was gonna save him? who was even gonna help him?

by the time he could feel the regret sink in, it was already too late. if only he’d been given the necessary love and direction beforehand, if only he’d met joker and the phantom thieves sooner… his mistakes are still his to own, but no one stepped in to show him how to wield his powers responsibly, how to rely on others, or hell–just how to make friends. when left alone to fend for himself with hardly any resources, he doubled down with the cards he was dealt. how surprised can we be?

instead this “undesirable child” grew desperate to become someone others could rely on–someone so undeniably special that even a person with a blackened heart like shido would have to acknowledge him. with such demanding standards to toil under, he could never be anything less than perfect; he could never entrust his whole broken self to anyone.

ironically, while freezing everyone else out, he grew dependent on external validation. he sought academic honors because it was an “objective” measure of his worth. he sought fame because he craved even the most mercurial of affections. he sought shido’s praise, not just because he thought he could take revenge on him one day, but also because deep down, he was a wounded kid who just wanted love from the father who should’ve loved him from the start.

his life became ruled by an immature revenge fantasy, leading him down the most counterproductive path possible. he worked so hard to construct an ideal version of himself. yet inevitably, every trait of his that others came to envy, every trait that made him “special”–his academics, his celebrity, his charisma, his strength in the cognitive world–is utterly wasted on a man who would never appreciate any of it. like akechi, shido never trusted a soul either, and he never hesitated to crush a pawn whose utility was used up–even if it was his own son.

if only subconsciously, maybe akechi already understood some of these realities. but it isn't until he is confronted by shido's cognitive akechi that the full weight finally sets in. in that moment, filtered through the eyes of the man he hates most, he experiences a reflection: an akechi who is twisted by self-serving logic, who quite literally hates himself, who would mindlessly self-annihilate for shido in a heartbeat. now it's clear: in the process of seeking futile validation, akechi has thrown away his immense potential and, ultimately, his sense of self.

the truth is, akechi admitting that he ever needed or wanted teammates would be admitting that all the suffering he endured and all the blood he spilled–things he defined himself by for lack of anything else–weren’t necessary. it would be admitting that he didn't have to be a perfect prince. he was worthy of acceptance–weaknesses and all–this whole time. that's why, after all the time and energy he's squandered, he can't do it. not even in the face of the phantom thieves’ exceptional compassion.

maybe he could’ve admitted it earlier, if he had just found real friends or familial figures to accept him. he never should have had to be “special” to deserve love. nor did he have to be an honors student, nor an ace detective, nor shido’s puppet. he just had to be akechi.

he just had to open his heart to other people long enough to realize. he just had to put his faith in those who–against all odds and beyond all reasonable expectations–still wanted to save him. but he couldn’t. the myriad complexes guarding his heart wouldn't let him. so even at the very fucking end, although he helps them escape, akechi still closes himself off–metaphorically and physically–from the phantom thieves.

not all is lost, though. at last he makes a choice in defiance of the pathetic self who shaped his entire life around shido’s will. by claiming this agency, akechi may well have elected to destroy both versions of himself: the shadow self that shido cast and the real self that he finally asserted. yet with this pyrrhic action… at least he would die not as his father’s miserable puppet, but as his own person.

if that were the end of akechi's story, it might be bittersweet enough. but before slipping away, joker extends him one last kind gesture: a reminder of akechi’s promise. his promise–perhaps the epitome of how, despite insisting that he hated joker, akechi consciously and unconsciously offered so much of himself in joker's presence. with just a few words, joker recognizes everything akechi has shared with him. perhaps it's notable that there is no sympathy expressed. he just acknowledges who akechi is to him. a rival. a phantom thief. a friend.

finally, this is the unconditional acceptance akechi has been seeking all his goddamned life. and even if he can't comprehend why on earth joker would offer him this… for once, an unguarded smile slips onto his face.