#because you've worked hard

[fanaticsnail]

hi love! it’s been a while since i have been able to enjoy your content because i’ve been so busy with uni, but i have always been so grateful for the piece about studying and killer you dedicated to me. i kept on coming back to it (along with your other content) whenever i felt demotivated, and i’m so proud to announce that i have my bachelor’s degree in philosophy and i am currently pursuing applied ethics :)))

i’ve been a silent ghost occasionally popping up to read whatever you have bestowed upon us, and because i’ve been so silent i just wanted to come here and explicitly let you know how much i love your content and how it always makes my day <3

Just want to say, I'm so proud of you Ushoppu! You've worked so hard, and you've done it! I love that you're going into your field, and I hope you have the best time in this new beginning.

Graduation Day

Themes: Killer x gn!reader, platonic. 400+ word mini-fic.

Docked in a port not too far from the main island, only a skeleton crew remained behind to serve the Victoria Punk. Drawing straws was the only way they could possibly decide who would miss out on viewing this occasion, but one such member to rig the vote was the ever faithful watchdog, Massacre Soldier Killer. 

Killer was your rock through your study, most days without ever meaning to be. Whether bringing you snacks, doing your portion of the chores, ensuring you were given silence to study, and keeping up with your timetable to mail off the appropriate notes to your lecturers. Your favorite sessions were always with him sitting rigid on your bed while pretending to be your class, often with either Bubblegum or Boogie beside him, listening to you practice your oral presentation while nodding at the appropriate times. 

He would not miss out on watching you graduate. If he had to fight for his right to witness you stand on that platform, he would bully and shove his crew out of his way to be there for you. In that silent understanding from your captain and his crew, Killer was present, front and center, as you stood on that podium when your name was called. 

Shaking a few of the faculty's hands, you received your qualification and smiled softly while fighting through your embarrassment. You knew who was coming to support you, you knew exactly what they were like, and you thought you knew what you were in for. Unfortunately, you did not prepare for the large uproar of praise, claps, and cheers from those in attendance. 

Killer was the first person to rise to his feet as you continued to walk from one side of the platform to the other. 

The applause intensified: continuing to rise from the center, first row: the light reflecting off the blue and shell-colored mask as you could almost feel him winking through the port holes. 

Time stood still, just for that moment, as the world slowed to a brief pause. No sounds, no motion, not even the crowd stood between you and Killer as he shouted the words out to you.

“I’m so proud of you.” 

In that moment, your heart bloomed to spread a heat through your body: from your cheeks down to your toes. He really had your back through this, and you could feel him continuing to support you as your watchdog throughout your new journey with this behind you.

[yeonjune]

Yeonjun about the strain he felt while preparing for his debut solo project ✙ "GGUM" MAKING FILM

[beaft]

one thing that does stick in my head is the time i was a temporary hire at a bookstore, working under the unofficial agreement that if they still liked me once my probationary period was up, they'd hire me on permanently. i started in september and they had me commuting 20 miles a day (no expenses paid, naturally) on three different trains and working insane hours right up till christmas day for minimum wage while repeatedly extending my probation and saying they just needed "a little more time" to decide. and then as soon as the christmas period was over they fired me on the spot

[navree]

Incorrect, the fact that Biden has dropped out and a candidate with history of supporting medicare for all and being more receptive to a ceasefire in the I/P conflict has made me go from "I cannot morally support the Democratic nominee" to "I am voting for the Democratic nominee despite the fact she isn't perfect in every respect." I'm really happy this played out. The Dems for the most part abandoned the old Obama platform and it feels like its possible an actual progressive agenda could come to pass in my lifetime.

Kamala 2024!

If you weren't going to vote Democratic in this election before Biden dropped out you're a dorkass loser who does not care about any of the issues you're yammering about here and also a fundamentally bad person, and I hope you get run over by a bus.

But you got one thing right in all of this gibberish, Kamala 2024.

[starmocha]

Love and Deepspace + Tumblr Text Post ↳ Zayne

[marlynnofmany]

Note for someone to turn into a story: one way to give the middle generation/s on a generation ship a purpose in life, aside from "raise the children whose children will eventually land on the colony world," could be as creators of art and story. Music too.

Just imagine: you have your whole life ahead of you with all the training and materials of this vast spaceship at your disposal, and all of society plans to revere the creative masterpieces you and your peers come up with.

No pressure.

But yes possibility.

[ame-to-ame]

throwing down my 2 cents in the alien stage band AU stocks <3

they're taking a small break during set rehearsal!!! mizi is trying really hard to subtly inch her hand closer to sua's while making it seem natural hehe <3

[altarfates]

i think i've been sad for a while and it's definitely better now but it's still like ??

[kdelarenta]

potential tw: slut-shaming, catcalling, misogyny, parental abuse

me when i try to break the cycle but the cycle breaks me 🙂💔🥀

name: claire coleman

li: alaric

story: debt of deception by @debtofdeception-if

[vaguely-concerned]

...you know with a fandom that has lasted 30 years I'm sure I'm not saying anything new here, but 'right after his best friend from when he was thirteen (who he newly reunited with and asked to sleep over at his apartment. For Reasons) seemingly flicked his nipple (!!???? mark I have questions) to set him up for a prank and then cupped the back of his neck with rough affection in a deeply homoerotic way' sure is an incredibly specific moment for the camera to deny us access to fraser's expression fhksjafhas

(especially with the pattern over the many many times we see a woman hitting on him where his face will be clearly visible, with his expression placidly (one could be forgiven for starting to suspect tactically) uncomprehending/confused or uncomfortable. though we see him speak of specifically victoria for the first time turned away from the camera -- from behind, and only getting the faint reflection of his face in the window, to much the same effect. I think I might be on to something here.)

[buwheal]

We can't hear it Spam, but it's real to you. I get auditory hallucinations a lot, and usually what helps me is a distraction. Maybe... name 5 things you can see? Or make paper airplanes with old messages, or draw some pictures. Otherwise, I'm sure someone has a crossword or story they can send you to help you out!

[hypotheticallyhaunted]

You can have an amazing day out and then come home and want to kill yourself and that's just so wild to me because your brain would not shut up about it and you will purposely make it worse by exposing yourself to stuff that amplifies it and it just yeah why am I still here

[brianskangs]

(230917) YOUNG K x NOTHING BUT

[enjoyvoidblack]

our big post was getting long and it won't let me message so I thought I'd just come bother you here asldkfjsad I am like. so 1000% certain there is mention in the text that the initial purpose and efforts of Jonah and the Institute were to research the fears and prevent their many catastrophes, and that somewhere along the line he came to the conclusion that this wasn't viable, that the world and the fears simply didn't function in a way that was conducive to meaningfully stopping them from doing anything. which was how he settled into the position of 'well then I am going to use the instruments of power to save ME and build a ladder to free myself personally from their clutches forever' I def don't know when he started to turn from that, but i'll have to go back through the transcripts and find it again.

I do get that the narrative is written with Jon as the focal point, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for Elias to be sympathetic--he certainly doesn't make himself sympathetic TO Jon, or any of the Archives crew (beyond what I find to be an interesting amount of patience, understanding, and restraint he shows for them), but I still think like. Part of the beauty of Jonny's storytelling is that there is a kernel of completely understandable humanity to most everyone that's presented with any depth in the series, even the people we DON'T like. The "people here don't have excuses, they have causes" is again really excellent wording. There isn't really a lot of the usual karmic style reasoning or justice in this series; it isn't about Good People doing Good Things or Bad People doing Bad Things, it's just. People Doing Things, while under the influence of powers that are at once cosmic and beyond us, and inherently OF us.

adsfkjas this is getting long too I'm so sorry you activated a trap card here but idk. He absolutely is both manipulator and victim. He did all that shit, and all the while it's being done TO him, and he's walking this incredibly razor thin line between feeding his god/being empowered by it, and bc of it's nature knowing in intimate detail every nasty thing that awaits him should he fail (and I think being deathly afraid of it). That gif from Knives Out lmfao, compels me.

(apologies this probably isn't hugely coherent but there we are)

Thank you I am chewing on this ask violently. You Get It.

Unfortunate that tumblr killed your paragraph breaks, because I now can't find the section easily, but that thing about Jonny's character work in this series entirely consisting of aspects of "completely understandable humanity" is SO deeply how I feel about it. This is part of why I love horror of this kind so much. The horror being the fact that no one can really do anything to stop it opens up a space where the characters don't need to be presented along clear lines of good and evil, or even helping a cause or hurting it. It's a lot closer to how real people react in a natural disaster, if anything. There is love and selfishness and incredible acts of violence and cruelty and understandable failings and greed and fear, and pretty much all of it has a root that you can see, if you know enough about the people doing it and the circumstances to really feel where their mindset must be. I'd say Elias is functionally the closest thing TMA has to a narrative scapegoat, but that doesn't mean he is one. I almost feel like he's there as a pressure valve for the story, to be a villain if people need one to make sense of what's going on without having to constantly confront head-on the horror of the way the setting traps everyone in it. He can be made that kind of scapegoat, but only really by ignoring the parallels to Jon and the letters sent to him in older statements, and the way both show how the Fears drive the people who learn about them into more and more desperate straits.

It's kind of like that with all the older avatars. Simon Fairchild throws people off of stuff for a joke, because he's had more than 400 years of being steeped in the knowledge that humanity is both insignificant in the span of the universe, as well as utterly incapable of stopping the course of the Fears as they exert whatever influence they will by the force of sheer bulk. Peter Lukas never had a chance - he was born into this, isolation was his family and religion and paradoxically from childhood his only possible road to belonging. Adelard Dekker thought he was helping, as did Gertrude, even as they both fed the things that claimed them alongside those efforts. Nikola Orsinov was so far away from having an identity anymore that she couldn't go back if she wanted to, if she had even had enough left to want. Her world would have just been a home that was more like herself, and who hasn't wanted that? They're easier to vilify because their outlooks are harder to understand until the very end of the series, but looking back it's so clear that they were also just people once, and the writing never really lets you forget that.

If I said I'd tried to make all of these replies short, you probably wouldn't believe me. And Yet. I am not NORMAL about this show and the way Jonny writes people.

[pensivespacepirate]

it feels like the whole purpose of venom 3 is to kill off venom what the fuck

[hongluboobs]

book reader i have a copy of dream of the red chamber (volume 1) that ive been trying to get through for over a year how do i motivate myself to finish it

I'm recently coming out of a half a year ish period of not reading very much so trust me when I say the lack of motivation comes for us all. I think I have some tips for how to motivate reading in general+ some for DOTRC specifically :)

(Real quick, I assume because you mentioned a volume 1 you're talking about the Hawkes-David translation published by Penguin in five volumes under the name 'The Story of The Stone'. This is the translation I read through, and it's the one I see recommended most to english speakers looking for an enjoyable reading experience, so to any other prospective readers of this novel I HIGHLY recommend reading this translation as opposed to any other ones. I don't know if I need to say this or if it's well-known to seek out that version, but because Hong Lu's canto is coming up I want to make sure anyone interested in reading through the source material can have the best experience possible with it👍)

It's important to remember that reading is a hobby, and the best way to keep going with it is to make it a habit. Unfortunately, this means forcing yourself to read sometimes, but it comes easier the more you do it. The trick is: it doesn't have to be a lot of reading.

The hard part for me is really just picking up the book and starting to read. Normally with books I like to set a goal of a chapter or so per day, but because this book has longer chapters that wasn't always feasible for me, especially if I had stuff to do. But once I had the book in my hands and started reading I would usually go above my goal I had set :)

Last year a lot of my DOTRC reading was done while I was waiting in line for things, getting/eating food, waiting on the bus, or killing time between classes/during boring lectures (I don't know if I'd advise that last one). This is moreso once you get in the rhythm of things, though.

Another tip is sometimes the format is the thing to stop me. I don't know if you're reading from a physical book or an ipad/kindle/etc or a computer or what, but sometimes I read better on my laptop than other things because it's Always Around. Sometimes I don't feel like grabbing a book or I don't have it with me, but my laptop's already open and I'm bored so maybe I'll do a little bit of reading instead of scrolling social medias. Lately, i've been jumping between my laptop and kindle for reading (laptop for convenience, kindle for portability and reading before bed at night) but I've gone between physical books and digital devices before. (If you want the epub versions of dotrc, I'd be willing to share them as well. The only difficulty is page numbers change between reading formats so I can only really switch at the start of chapters or if I skim to where I last was.

Something that saved me while reading DOTRC specifically (as well as other sinner books) was having a place I could discuss/"liveblog" the book. These books can get LONG and the reading experience varies from "really interesting and compelling" to "oh my godddd I do not need 20 pages of Outdated Whale Facts right now". (no offense to Moby Dick. I'm only slandering that one because I read the whole thing and in spite of enjoying it I understand why there are SO many abridged versions around.) It's kind of just the classic lit experience to deal with these types of things, but it's a lot more tolerable to me if you can talk to other people about it.

When I read DOTRC I didn't have anyone else reading with me, but just having a place to tell people about all the things that happen in this book helped me to keep track of events and characters. It also motivated me to keep reading so I could tell The People what happened next. Having someone else read with me would probably have helped as well, but it's hard to sell people on reading a 5-volume behemoth of a novel with so much stuff in it it has it's own field of study dedicated to it.

You can really yap anywhere. I have a channel in my Limbus Discord dedicated to the books so I don't drive everyone insane with my rambling and it seems to have helped some of my friends get through some of the other books as well so I think this method is a pretty solid success? You could also pretty easily do it just in someone's DMs if they're already familiar with the book (this has the bonus of them potentially being able to clarify things for you and help you get a deeper understanding of the book) or even yapping on a tumblr sideblog or empty notes doc or something.

So TL;DR:

Picking up the book is the hardest part. Reading a little is better than not reading at all.

Subjecting your friends to this book will make it easier to keep going :)

Also: for Dream of the Red Chamber specifically: the book starts slow. I don't know how far in you are, but so many people drop it early. I started reading it during a 12-ish hour car ride and that might've been the play because i can see people getting bored during the first few chapters. It definitely picks up though, so trust me when I say it gets a lot easier to read as you keep going. Chapter 5 is an incredibly interesting chapter, and from there I find things pick up and start going faster. (It helps that chapter 5 is pretty relevant for the direction I think Limbus is going to take canto 8 in!) The later volumes were able to go by a lot faster for me than the earlier ones as well.

This is a long ass book, but it's gonna be a while before Hong Lu's canto drops and we get to Witness that Surrender. Or Surrender that Witness. I'm not actually sure. But regardless, you've got plenty of time to get through it, even if you're a slower reader or don't have much time to dedicate to reading. Steady progress is the name of the game for stuff like this.

Worst case, you've killed a bunch of time during the wait for Hong Lu's canto (because oh boy, I have a feeling this one's gonna be a wait) and you are able to gain a better appreciation for canto 8 by understanding some of the nicher bits of how it adapts stuff from the source.

Best case, you really enjoy reading it and end up like a bunch of the Hong Lu fans I know who were permanently changed by reading this book and started reading scholarly analysis of it for fun (or start seeking out every adaptation of it you can find, or read the book 5 times over... I am coming to realize this book does something to people.)

This book is legitimately incredibly good, even outside the context of me reading it because I was very invested in that beautiful cyan freak from a game I like. I might not have been able to get through it without Limbus providing me the push to keep going on days where I really didn't want to read, but it's a legitimate interest of mine now I will seek out information on regardless of its connection to Limbus! Trust me when I say it's worth getting through even if it feels hard or tedious.

(and if it helps- a solid amount of the stuff I feel is most likely to be Limbus relevant happens near the end of the book. There's so much in this book so things that could be relevant are scattered throughout almost all of it, but I've been picking up so many end of the book vibes from stuff we've seen lately. so you've got to get there!!)