#anywho here we are

[kotofeden]

Happy unnecessary feelings day pals 💖💖💖

[unlikely-gravestones]

@softest-punk so i literally never stopped thinking about yen!Dream and this whole witcher au is running laps around my brain....i love it including the sketch bc he’s pretty <3

[feathercreates]

POV you just told degrading Genesis he's still pretty uwu

[wispforever]

possess

[blazingblorbos]

Phenomenal.

Absolutely phenomenal

Web event releases and literally all it is, is Arlecchino killing 2 (3) men. Congrats. here's your rewards!

I saw a tweet earlier this morning that said

"genshin saw people mad at chiori for throwing a man out of her shop and their honest reaction was making arlecchino kill one in her teaser"

AND I CACKLED SO LOUD so seeing this now, I just had to share it with you all

[maskednerd]

[soracities]

What is your stance on the insignificance of man versus the cosmos? Fear or solace?

the cosmos and i are not at war so i don't believe in "versus". it is and so i am. that is all. the thread is not separate from the tapestry etc.

[youngchronicpain]

I feel sooooo bad right now but I am getting on a plane to nyc tomorrow morning!!

[withacapitalp]

Out of This World

Read it on AO3 instead

Tw: Depression

There was a black hole inside of Steve. 

He would lie down flat on his back in the living room. The stone floor beneath him would pull his mind down from wherever it liked to drift to, and he would be able to focus enough to  stare at the ceiling, put his hands on his stomach, and breathe deep into the sensation. 

When things got really bad, it was like he could physically feel it. A dark mass that spread out from his core and swallowed everything around it. If he flipped over to lie on his stomach and press his cheek to the cold marble, then it would sprout out of his back like demon wings, menacing and grim. 

He had never told anyone about it, but he was sure everyone knew. That was the thing about black holes, they dragged everything towards them. He was a magnetic person, people were drawn to him, but when they got close and saw that there was nothing inside, they ran. The empty expanse living in Steve was terrifying. 

He was the only one who couldn’t escape himself. 

No matter what he did, inevitably he would be reminded of what was inside of him. He could try to be happy, but he had to remember it wouldn’t last. 

Steve could mess around with the kids, dance along to the radio with Robin, try and love the people who chose to stay with everything he had, but the black hole would always return. It would suck up whatever joy he had tried to grow, making it disappear in the blink of an eye, lost to whatever cosmos existed beyond the gnawing hunger in Steve’s stomach. 

It was like it was starving, like he was starving, but not for food. There was nothing Steve could give to make it go away, nothing that would satiate whatever was stuck inside of him. There was just the all encompassing need to have more, to get something that would kill the loneliness that lived there. 

And, when the people around him realized that they really couldn’t make that black hole go away, they left. They ran to keep themselves from getting pulled in, and Steve couldn’t blame them. He had spent most of his life trying to run from himself. 

Even now, lying in bed with Eddie late on Sunday morning, he could feel the first nudges of gravity shifting, the quiet stirrings of empty space needing to be acknowledged. 

There was a black hole living inside of Steve, and nothing he could do to change that.  

“God I swear it’s like you’re the sun,” Eddie sleepily whispered against his chest, unknowingly cutting straight through the icy black tendrils starting to creep up Steve’s spine. 

“The sun?” Steve said, feeling something finally touch the cold dark thing living in his stomach. 

“You just keep us alive and warm, don’t you Stevie?” Eddie mumbled, still half asleep, “Pull everyone into your orbit and make sure none of us go flying off into space alone,” 

Eddie was already starting to snore by the time Steve jogged himself out of his stunned silence enough to kiss the top of his boyfriend’s head and whisper a reverent declaration of love. 

Sometimes Steve felt like there was a black hole living inside of him.

And sometimes he was reminded not everyone saw it that way. 

[faithintheunknownsblog]

Mr. Bernadotte~

[sommerregenjuniluft]

never fails to amaze me to see how bad my dad is at parenting and how Good he is at making me feel like an absolute loser/disappointment

[thunderstomm]

Small redesign of Laney’s party dress from “all you need is cake” because I don’t like it (+plus notes!)

[wildemaven]

LAWKI Inspo

[baeshijima]

it’s officially the 26th for me so !!

HAPPY ONE YEAR ANNIVERSAY TO HONKAI: STAR RAIL 🫶🫶

[bigbarabelly]

Lmao for james_the_tum on Twitter skgjAKFHSHA

[aheathen-conceivably]

Ok so I read the post on your thoughts on Gio and the American Dream and I hate to say it … as an immigrant, I understand him.

I also come from a culture where women tend to their male partner's needs and I don't believe he wants to turn Jo into a subservient wife. He fell in love with a lively, free, and wild Jo and loves that aspect of her.

At the end of the day she loves him too so why would she leave? I understand she doesn't like to be dependent of him but where else would she go? There are no parties or glamour, which was her whole thing, anymore. At least the farm offers stability in the economic crisis.

Point is, I understand Gio as an immigrant, but don't understand Jo as a woman.

BABES! We’ve got another one…

(As in me being touched and having no other means to say how much I love y’all takes other than to give them a standing ovation in GIF form).

But you know…there’s a whole lot to break down here, friend, especially about Jo. I think you know what that means! Under the cut we go….

First and foremost, I very much appreciate you saying you understand that aspect of Gio. I did in part write him as a commentary on the immigrant experience in America (filtered through his own personality/character of course), and so to know that is relatable means a lot to me. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to tell y’all his journey is far from over, and you can already see the cracks in his outlook beginning to form. Whenever Jo is depressed he says this quite vividly:

Because you are very, very correct. This isn’t about molding Jo into some subservient housewife, or even eroding those exact qualities that he loves in her. This is about Gio attempting to square what he’s been taught/believes will bring his life happiness and meaning with his own experience and emotions. It’s about the myth of the American dream and the perfect housewife and the very real struggle of those things existing as actual, lived realities.

Because at the root of it, Gio is amalgamating an understanding of his own family unit and what he knows he doesn’t want in this country. He has seen another methods of “making it” in America, and so he thinks if only he can make the “right” choices, he can avoid that, and become the respected and happy man that he wants to be.

Now onto Jo, boy oh boy, Jo….

I think one of the core misunderstandings here is that Jo wants stability. This is kind of the crux built into her desire for control and her never-ending failure to achieve it. She wants to control her surroundings, to make sure nothing and no one can hurt her, but she also wants to feel in a way that is hard to find in a stable, heavily domesticated life. On the flip side, despite whatever imaginary dream Gio has, he’s the same way. They both want a life filled with excitement and new experiences, new people and rushes of emotions. This is one of the ways they differ heavily from Antoine and Zelda.

Now on one level, this is simply the way Josephine is. She’s high energy, fun loving, and insatiable. But on a deeper level, this is tied into her experiences not only as a woman, but as a daughter. She has a brief moment of clarity in that last post where she realizes:

Now I have chosen not to go too in-depth on Josephine’s trauma, but you can see her lay out the course of events here and also her deep hesitation to any of it here. Josephine is still only a teenager in that second post. Her mother not only told her things like that (“this is the weight that prejudice and expectation have placed upon us”) but also “what do you want to be then? Some glorified maid to a man?” (Which, frankly, I can write another Ted Talk about the juxtaposition here, but I think ya'll can pull some threads).

So when you see Josephine’s struggle with control, this is heavily rooted in bodily autonomy. Now all things considered, Josephine has managed to make great strides toward reclaiming this and reasserting not only her sexuality, but also her sense of self in her body. Gio knows this. We see him recognize and respect it quite clearly in that last post. He’s been part of that process for her, and that only adds another element of love, trust, and safety between them.

But on a fundamental level, neither Gio nor Josephine has made the connection between that trauma, her own personality, and why she hates her life now so much:

Here’s the issue right now: Josephine doesn’t feel like she’s living her own life. We have seen how she would like to live in the 20s not just in the parties and glamour, but when she was managing bands. She wants to be fulfilled professionally, through helping people/places she believes in and bettering her own life by bettering theirs. That’s how she gets her joy, and that’s what she would chose to do if given the chance.

And right now, she does not feel like she gets to chose. You’re correct in that part of that is coming from the current economic situation. Again, she sees that herself here. She knows what demons are waiting outside her window, and how easily poverty can make them rearise. That only makes it worse. It doesn’t make the smell of bread (domestic security) any better or more comforting. It makes it bitter, because she didn’t chose it. She was backed into a corner by circumstance (and, as she can sense, by the choices men made for her without telling her), and now she feels like she can’t say no. That’s her ultimate trigger.

Now whether or not that loss of control is simply perceived, or should be offset by how “lucky” she is to be in a stable position in such precarious economic times, we might all have different options on. Even more, I’m sure each of us would answer differently for ourselves in that situation. I know I would. But for Josephine? Not only is this a life she will never find joy in, because even without her trauma, she is an ambitious, restless, and outgoing person with different goals for herself; but that added memory and pain makes her reaction to it all the more volatile.

Perhaps most importantly, Jo feels as though her life is being controlled again, whether by Gio, the reality of the world outside her window, or by her own guilt/love that makes her feel beholden to the people around her (just like it did to her mother). Because you’re right, she does love him. She wouldn’t leave because she doesn’t. If she leaves now, it would leave because she panicked, because she feels like she’s lost all the autonomy she worked so hard to regain and she’ll never feel the fulfillment she felt when she was successfully independent ever again. That’s the element I hope we can understand, even if it’s not what we would do.