#best I could do Ig

[rainofthetwilight]

EGYPTIAN MIKU ❗❗❗❗❗❗❗❗

[thecrowsart]

👁️🦎🎯

(crops under cut)

[phantom-alpha]

happy rollo event rerun

[voidcat]

alrght, hear me out on this one– baldur's gate 3 in a modern setting/au:

in the midst of working on a project with gale, he confesses his feelings for you, out of the blue in your eyes. and when you turn him down and he asks why, in a panic struck state, you blurt out you've been seeing someone for a while in secret. absolutely a better idea than to hurt his feelings without meaning to, right?

only a new problem is born when the role of this supposed partner is given to none other than a silver haired, heartthrob with a charming tongue and red eyes; the utter flirt himself who catches everyone's eyes.

[swallowtail-ageha]

Something something Laurence being a foreigner something something him experiencing xenophobia something something him learnig how efficient the oppression he faced is as a tool for keeping the masses calm and distracting them

[mooninagust]

hidden agenda ✑ ep. 1

[bloogers-boogers]

Kyle trying to intimidate Butters "stay away from my man!" style n poor Butters not understanding anything xD

In Butters defense Kyle isn't great with wording when it comes to his jealousy lmao

[achillessulks]

NYT’s top 100 books came out, used to stalk you on GoodReads so I’m wondering if you had any thoughts about it?

YES okay so I’m not subscribed to the NYT because I don’t agree with their platforming of transphobia but you’d best believe that I went through the whole list.

The first thing I saw was the (intentionally?) eye-catching headline:

I’ma be real with you, New York Times, this is a pretty bold statement considering that we are not even a quarter through the century in question.

‘Literary luminaries,’ hah. I guess ‘The 100 Best Books of the First 25% of the 21st Century’ just isn’t as catchy of a clickbait headline.

So, yes... obviously I had some issues with the framing of this list. At the end of the article they do acknowledge that they only included books that were in English (translations were acceptable) and published in America (although books originally published elsewhere were acceptable as long as the translation’s publishing house was based in the US):

I think this is a stupid-ass limitation that, quite frankly, disqualifies the entire list, but whatever. It’s a newspaper from New York; I don’t expect the most worldly of perspectives on global literature.

Anyway, regarding the actual selection! Perhaps damningly, I have only read 34/100, and didn’t even like all of those. Also, there are mistakes (Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis was incorrectly listed as having been originally published in English, for example).

I will be honest, the list felt a lot like it was intentionally curated to give the veneer of diversity. A lot of the books on it are simply not very good, but that’s what you get for not being consistent with how you’re defining ‘best.’ Most popular? Most technical skill displayed? Most memorable? Who knows! The ‘most important [and] influential books of the era’ (or at least the first quarter of it, mind) cannot be determined while you’re still living through said era. That’s just not how anything works.

With that said: let’s do some statistics on these 100 books!

54 books by women; 46 books by men. (This was cool, actually.)

13 translated books; 87 books originally published in English. (This is a particularly egregious statistic, given that the initial claim was that the list would represent all the best books of the century; you cannot do that if nearly 90% of them are from America.)

69 fiction books; 30 nonfiction books; 1 poetry book.

Several authors had multiple works represented on the list (the whole ‘multiple books by a single author’ schtick was particularly annoying, given the constrained demographic of the potential books—not a good look):

Authors with two (2) books each: Alice Munro, Denis Johnson, Edward P. Jones, Hilary Mantel, Philip Roth, Roberto Bolaño, Zadie Smith.

Authors with three (3) books each: Elena Ferrante, George Saunders, Jesmyn Ward.

Regarding genres (this is a clever pun because the French word ‘genre’ refers both to genre and to gender):

17 nonfiction books by women.

13 nonfiction books by men.

36 fiction books by women.

33 fiction books by men.

1 poetry book (by a woman).

In general I really wasn’t too upset at the basic statistical breakdown of the list; it was pretty evenly divided by gender, if not genre. It wasn’t all white men, like many similar lists. The real issue was twofold:

You cannot claim to be providing a representative sample of the ‘best’ books while limiting your countries of origin.

You cannot claim to be providing a list of the best books of the current century when we have not even made it through a quarter of that century.

And frankly, a lot of the books on the list were just plain bad.

—

As a final note: Some criticism of the list mentioned the fact that several of the authors have been credibly accused of various heinous activities (this was shortly after the Alice Munro exposé, for example), to say nothing of the inclusion of, say, Junot Díaz—known misogynist and general creep—on the list of curators (and books). Personally, I have no issue with including works by awful people; the art is not the artist, and terrible people can occasionally create works of quality. However, I do take umbrage with the employment of shitty people in the curation process. The NYT didn’t disclose whether or not they paid these ‘literary luminaries,’ but that doesn’t really matter. When you’re talking about the art itself, it is not always necessary to mention the artist’s real or perceived faults; however, when you’re directly utilising the artist’s perspective and opinions for your own product, I think it is. So yeah, generally a very disappointing situation all around.

[futurewife]

Ven please, I'm begging you to go to therapy. Your posts hurt me so much cause I recognize myself and people I've loved in them and I always wanna say smth to make you feel better but I know from experience that that only helps for a little while or doesn't help at all or can even make things worse. But you don't have to suffer like this forever!! You can get better and there is help!! And as a fellow pmdd sufferer you can get help with that too. Idk how you feel about medication but going on birth control continuously so you never have periods or using antidepressants or mood stabilizers just for the two nightmare weeks after ovulation can help so much. Please please please I worry about you and I know you can have a good life if you get help! you're beautiful and creative and you have everything you need you just have to figure out how to access it and use it and I know you can do it. I know your F/Os would want you to and I know your future real life S/Os who are waiting for you would want you to too. You deserve to be happy instead of feeling like a ghost all the time.

Thank you anon I appreciate the concern, feel a little bit embarrassed about oversharing now but you know what...sometimes you just have to say it out loud somewhere. As you would know the nature of the disorder means there's often not much that can be done in terms of talking myself out of the way it feels cause biology is so (detrimentally) overpowering and intensifies other mental health issues and generally all pre-existing negative feelings about ones' existence. The ghost analogy is apt and I've often used this to describe how I relate to life and connecting with others. now idk if I can overcome myself and thrive but maybe I could switch some things up and see if it makes it suck a little less

I was on ssris constantly for years previously (edit: and therapy on and off) before I stopped taking them but your ask has me considering intermittent dosing even if I dislike the side effects just to see what happens. I thought I could just grit my teeth and bare it (put myself to sleep between being wracked by ugly crying as I cannot stand being conscious in my own mind) every month in lieu of meds but maybe I can't rawdog slog through dark funhouse mirror evil pmdd reality on my own/shouldn't feel that I have to in order to not "lose"

I was very touched by your reaching out and compassionately disagreeing with me (lol) and it means a lot from another person with pmdd. It helps to think someone out there sees the value in me as I am right now, and that someone else is also fighting their own good fight. When you said I have everything I need I just have to figure out how to access it and use it and you know I can do it you sound just like my grandma. (<3)

[theinfinitedivides]

hey quick question how do you have Shah Rukh up for Best Actor in the Filmfares this year TWICE (once for Dunki, once for Jawan) and then do a 180 and pick Ranbir bc he starred in Animal and that f*cker literally just dropped in let me see. December or some sh*t like that. what kind of advanced era of nepotism has Bollywood entered into

[koka-mi]

I dunno why but I keep thinking abt the way I used to spend my nights two years ago

I remember around 6-7pm (in the autumn/winter) or 7-8pm (in the spring/summer), I'd lock my bedroom door, bring my tablet and headphones up with me onto the roof and play songs that I liked I watched the sun set. The songs were mostly either sapphic-coded (like sofia by clairo, strawberry blonde by chloe moriondo, etc.) or something ambient and soothing to me (like colorful interlude by sublime jupiter or rhubarb/#3 by aphex twin). I don't remember why though..I guess I just liked those types of songs back then xp

sometimes I'd bring my sketchbook with me too and sketch out random things like landscapes or characters from fandoms I was in at the time. Or I'd bring my journal and write about my completely nothing day. Most of the stuff I wrote was about the same but it's still nice to look back at them :3

Was it the safest for 14 year old me to just chill on the roof? Probably not. But tbh I didn't care at the time xD I honestly wouldn't have minded dying there.

I was at like.a reaaaaally low point in my life. Probably at my worst. Like I would cry everyday over little things and I found it extremely difficult to take care of myself. I guesss when I was out there on my roof watching the sun set with nice music in my headphones I actually felt..peace?? for once?? I dunno how to explain but it was suuuper nice I remember ^^ and it was nice to let out good cries up there.

I guess I can't help but remember this fondly and find it kinda nostalgic even though it was only two years ago and when I was not.doing great :'D I'm better nowadays luckily but hadhehdjwd makes me emotional sometimes.

[deus-ex-mona]

ok insanity over back to idol sengen (fr this time)

[vaugarde]

pokeani moments that exist purely to make Me miserable:

the line where they call ash's oshawott a throwaway pokemon in the unova league so they're just flat out saying they think it's a worthless pokemon

to thine own pokemon be true (extra angst points for me bc ambipom was my second favorite on the team at the time)

the granddaughter of the guy who trains gliscor calling gliscor pathetic and weak to her face despite gliscor being an extremely sensitive pokemon

pretty much everything about that gible

blue episode (favorite color but they made it a fetish somehow and also dewott and brionne and meowstic are all there and its so bad)

boxing heracross immediately. also that battle frontier episode where it's literally the only returning ash mon (barring torkoal i think but i dont count it bc its native to AG) to get humiliated onscreen

pidgeot returning but gliscor didn't even show up in the miniseries despite being an Actual Character

[blueberrysan]

San ✧ Logbook #111

bonus:

[storytellering]

Love your art and I'm generally curious as to what the appeal of Dante/Vergil is to you? Do you have any hc that you're drawing from or is it just personal preference? I struggle to imagine the right conditions for them to be involved in that way and would like to know what inspires you.

I will premise this by saying, that I’m actually not a MASSIVE fan of just DV for its own sake, if Nero isn’t also included (or like, with the assumption he will, 100%, be included once he’s in the picture). To me it’s kind of a baseline pairing?

As in, I don’t even have to think about it. Of course they’re in love, of course they’re together, of course they’re fucking. It’s almost an afterthought to me, the way the married parent couple of the protagonist in a story inherently are. It doesn’t necessarily interest me by itself, that fact, it’s just a certainty, it just is. I guess, for me, the interest in DV specifically comes more out of what other people make of it, because for me I’m almost always approaching first from the perspective of Nero being there also, haha.

There’s also the fact that I have a lot of hc about just like, the way demons function as a species, I guess. I took a lot of things dmc canon gave me and went like, “alright, time to project this into the most self indulgent, non-human society but humanoid looking species I can think up in my brainhead”. To me a lot of the appeal comes from it being not necessarily a predestined thing as much as like, a biological inevitability - (going to speak in definitives about my own hc from here on, so not making any statement about canon dmc lol) demons mate with their kin, and with whoever deems worthy - and twins from the same litter would inevitably end up being the other’s first partner, their first choice, their other half. In a sense, to me, they’re soulmates - though honestly I prefer to think of it more as two halves of the same soul, following the implications in 3 and the 3 manga that them being twins comes from the spawn of Sparda being too powerful to just be born in one body. That might sound like I’m just saying they’re soulmates in a different way, but not really - to me, if I had to go the soulmate route, Nero would be both of their soulmate - because the two of them make one single soul, and the match to that would be Nero’s.

I kind of just go off of the assumption that they are in love and have been since they were in the womb, you know?

That colors the way I see their every interaction. To me, in their fighting, their squabbles and their feuds, there’s always love at the source. Familial, yes, but romantic and sexual as well - and to me, when I think about them, it’s all one and the same. To love each other like family is to be intwined, is to be mated, is to be a pack and is to be one.

That’s the more deep thoughts I have about it, I have more shallow/surface thoughts (and specifically ship dynamic thoughts about like, what appeals to me about them sexually lol) but if I had to quickly sum it up that’s what I would say, I think. 

[falldogbombsthemoon]

How can one stare at themselves in the mirror for hours and feel like they are the hottest mf on earth but as soon as a stranger looks at them, they feel like a shrinkled up pickle. Like God please.