#but i know i can overcome

[despair-tea]

I think I'm growing up alright. I'm gonna keep at it.

[ancient-reverie]

a moment of silence for all us disabled ones who had to watch each of their friends move on with their lives without you and get jobs, go to school, have partners come and go, get engaged and move house etc.

shout out to my fellow struggling people who are still sitting in the same bedroom they grew up in. the ones who can't get a job, can't make new friends, can't find a partner or partners, can't move house and can't go to school.

I hope one day we can all find someone to at least sit with us in our rooms. I see you and I understand... and I'm sorry we can't be that person for each other

[eledsart]

the gerudo outfits are always my favorite

[uncanny-tranny]

You know, I feel like other trans people might get this, but it's honestly kind of refreshing when a cis person has, like, undeniable tboy/tgirl/whatever swag. It's like when you come across somebody who speaks the same language as you and you only find out when they start speaking it, too.

[blitzwhore]

It's always fun experiencing severe mental illness symptoms because of fiction, eh?

[im-smart-i-swear]

kuron voice do i look like i was born yesterday

[spocks-kaathyra]

do u think that um. yk Julian was having a rough time in the later seasons. and ofc he wants to talk abt it, wants someone to help him process it, wants someone to just listen. but it's not easy to talk abt. and he wants to talk to Garak, wants Garak to know what's going on in his life, wants to be vulnerable and be met with support and care. but Garak is so emotionally unavailable and so unwilling to break his pleasant facade and so unwilling to deviate from their little social script. he was taught never to show care or vulnerability. and Julian gets so tired of playing their little game when, god, there's a war going on, his life is falling apart, can't Garak even acknowledge how bad things are for both of them? he doesn't need witty retorts, he needs sincerity. and Garak can't give him that. so he withdraws from their friendship. and it's not that Garak doesn't care. it's not that he doesn't want to help. but sincerity and vulnerability were beaten out of him a long time ago, and he doesn't know how to take off his mask. even just acknowledging genuine emotion is practically impossible for him. and maybe that's why ASIT is the apology that it is. it's saying, here, I've learned to be honest, I've learned to be vulnerable. I know the harm I caused you by refusing to acknowledge pain, so here's a whole book of me acknowledging pain.

[beviate]

My fellow aro people... When someone admits that they have a crush on you, do you still hang out/interact with that person? Do you change the kind of interaction you have with them?

I find that I get so uncomfortable when someone admits having feelings for me, that it's difficult to continue the kind of dynamic I've had with the person before. Does anyone have advice for reframing emotions/responses towards confessions to help me resist the urge to cut friends and people off?

[makotonaegiunderstander]

something I’ve been thinking abt is how many people think Makoto is immune to despair. I don’t think he is. I think becoming the ultimate Hope was BECAUSE he felt despair. He wouldn’t have fully reached that point without Junko. Makoto becoming such a beacon was his last attempt to avoid completely falling and it wasn’t because he didn’t feel despair, it was because he was too damn stubborn to allow everything to go to waste and he refused to sacrifice his beliefs for someone else’s. His inner monologue tells me he DID experience the same new low the other suvivors did in the final trial, but at the point where he had the choice to give up and die, he looked at the others and he looked at Junko and he couldn’t allow it to happen, not out of self preservation, but because the idea that Junko would have control over their lives made him FURIOUS. and that utter refusal to die kicked in, wether luck or otherwise, and he made the concious effort for one last push while something in him was breaking. He had to be broken in order for the Ultimate Hope to come through so aggressively, bc it could only exist in the face of the Ultimate Despair. He snapped the same way she did, but in the other direction. In what could have been his final moments he chose to embody everything Junko wasn’t, and every single optimistic and luck fueled ideal in him suddenly charged forward and pushed him. It was a combination of the final straw and a choice. Makoto isn’t immune to feeling despair, he’s just too stubborn to fall into it of his own volition. I think that’s why I like that scene in DR3 so much. People were SO SHOCKED Makoto actually fell for the tape, that he actually became despair for a moment. I saw people getting mad or disappointed, saying it was pathetic and Makoto seemed to fall from some sort of pedestal for them. Honestly part of me wonders if that sort of mentality, which clearly people had in universe, affected Makoto a bit. Like he started to see himself as less of a person, subconsciously. Prompting him to take more risks, less self preservation, act way more bold. It seems he has to be reminded a lot not to put himself in danger by his friends, to not do something too reckless. All over the place I would see in regards to that scene either this frivolous ‘oh this was just angst drama with no meaning behind it’ or ‘he can do better than that. he’s so weak’ or ‘come on, there’s no way he’d fall into despair, he’s the Ultimate Hope!’ This kind of mentality, which was kind of ironic considering Ryota was there the entire time saying the same thing and treating Makoto the same way. Like Makoto was superhuman. Like Makoto didn’t feel despair the same way ‘normal people’ did. In a way that was also how Munakata saw Makoto. Makoto stopped being a PERSON to the world when he became Ultimate Hope, he became a concept, a belief system, much the same way Junko ascended beyond herself. But the difference is that treating Makoto that way is the opposite of the reason Makoto became such a representative for hope. He wasn’t doing something no one else could. He was doing something everyone had the chance to, he just… was a little more optimistic, a little more stubborn, a little more ‘gung-ho’ about things. He just took the lead where no one else did, where no one else knew they even COULD in the face of Junko’s unstoppable force. She had overcome the biggest threats and obstacles in the world, what could one person do? And the answer Makoto found was, anything. Everything. It doesn’t all rest on Makoto, he’s just the one that was inspired to try to do what seemed like the impossible. But as evidenced by the change in his friends after that trial, it’s clearly not something only Makoto is capable of. The others pulled out of despair thanks to Makoto, but it was their choice to do so.

“But… this world is so huge, and we’re so small. What can we do…? No, we can probably do anything. Yeah! We can do anything!”

[pinnithin]

enver gortash fascinates me from the perspective of his relationship with the dark urge because like, as far as i know his alliance with them is one of the very few he didn’t actively despise. the guy was sold into slavery by his own parents (who tried to justify it by saying their child was a hateful monster and anyone would have done the same) and spent his formative years employed by a devil who gets off on gratuitous levels of suffering and manipulation. and then once he's escaped that and built himself up so he can never be used and enslaved again he meets this bhaalspawn who also had to adapt and survive a violent and manipulative environment for years by becoming the monsters who raised them.

gortash sees how the dark urge has risen to command armies and slaughter hundreds in the same way he outfoxed raphael and ruthlessly controls the people in his employ, and after earning and owning his reputation as a tyrant heres another person who might actually have like, a shared lived experience. not exactly a friend, because people like them can't afford to have friends, but someone who at least understands. and he willingly works with them on this plan to enslave the sword coast and agrees to share power with them.

and then orin lobotomizes them, puts a tadpole in their head, and leaves them for dead at moonrise.

like, can you imagine. youre working with the first person you see eye to eye with and prooooobably arent plotting to actively sabotage (or, at least would hesitate to do so) and the rug just gets yanked out from under them by their own sister, and now you're stuck with her because the plan still has to move along. and as the days go by a group of adventurers start to screw up your plot right when baldur's gate is within your grasp, and you learn that among them is your old almost-friend who you actually liked and respected - and they have no memory of you whatsoever. oh, and on top of that they're rolling with people you've actively fucked over and want to kick your ass.

did it hurt for him to learn this? did he ever think about how things could have been different? did he think, you were supposed to be my ally, my friend, someone who actually understands that becoming a monster is the only way to keep yourself safe and in control. we were going to rule together. and now you're ride or die with this squad of people you've only known for a few weeks at best, and you want me dead. you don't even remember me. you don't even remember yourself.

[leonsliga]

Manu the miracle 💫

[royalarchivist]

Hope everyone enjoyed today's QSMP Cinema event!

As expected, many VODs were unfortunately muted for certain animations because of copyright issues. I know some of the artists weren't able to catch everyone's reactions to their work, and I'm sure there are many other fans & VOD watchers who missed out too.

LUCKY I was able to archive Foolish, Roier, Cellbit, and Quackity's reactions to all the animations, and for anyone interested in viewing them, I'll be uploading them to Google Drive and will post the links here when that's available.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

have i mentioned how great cats are. there's a lil guy in my house and when i lay my head on her side she starts purring so hard <3 and ten seconds later she will try to open my wrist with her teeth <3 truly the best <3

[murdleandmarot]

@margo-mania ya boy razzle, and a special guest….

(Dude you ate when you created razzle’s backstory, actually insane, 10/10 in terms of themes and motifs and implications, so so good)

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[trans-cuchulainn]

i feel like i'm a weird candidate for sex therapy bc it's like yeah on the one hand i grew up evangelical and repressed and on the other hand i've spent ten years doing queery theory and hanging out in more or less exclusively queer spaces and deconstructing everything to the point where i've got nothing left that makes sense so i can talk about gender and sexuality with a ton of nuance and understanding of historical and cultural context and also there's a part of my brain that still secretly believes i'm going to hell for it

but i have already done so much work on unlearning that to the point where i have circled around to a completely different issue, which is that i objectively believe it's fine to want whatever you want, and even though my instinct is that this doesn't apply to me i know that's unhelpful and i should ignore those thoughts because they're not true, but also i have absolutely no idea what i want and even less idea how to label it because i'm too aware that labels only describe our current cultural constructions of identities that actually don't adequately match how i understand myself bc i spent too much time thinking about premodern conceptions of gender and sexuality and got myself stuck in a corner with it

so like. i already therapised myself a lot. i've thought a lot about identity and how it works. i've done so much challenging of unhelpful thoughts and dealing with trauma responses and whatever. i have quite an advanced understanding on that front and frankly have probably taken it too far at times. but the basics of "what do you actually want, néide"? nah. fuck if i know

people who know this much about queer theory should be better at queer practice. unfortunately,