#but its exhausting to watch

[coffeewithcalypso]

4:46AM

I've done a lot of emotional labor tonight and I am tired.

A friend earlier this evening messaged me. We don't talk a lot other than when we see each other in person but sometimes he gets buzzed/drunk and will end up messaging me. Which is what he did tonight. It wasn't too bad, he was spiraling a little about something, I didn't ask. Mostly just wanted to talk.

Then right when I was falling asleep at 3AM my friend with the piece of shit abusive husband calls me which is usually a good way to ruin my night, though never as badly as hers has been. At least tonight she was calling because he decided to be an abusive piece of shit again and got arrested this time. But I did have to sit with her for almost two hours while she processed that. She also just got over covid. Or is supposedly over it. I swear if I get covid from this I'll be so pissed. I'm going see Janelle Monae next weekend. But at least he's hopefully out the picture since he was already on probation from the last time he was an abusive piece of shit.

No one is allowed to have a single feeling in my vicinity for the next 24 hours. I just can't do it

[cptnbeefheart]

this old world may never change and sometimes i wonder: do you ever think of me?

[caparrucia]

I think a line where people get confused in the euphoria of "it's just fiction! So it doesn't matter!" Is where bigotry is still bigotry.

Like, I'm not talking about fan works, per se.

Policing fan works is the dumbest, most ineffective thing in the world. And to pretend that when people talk about fandom being racist or deeply misogynistic, people immediately scapegoat into a discussion about how policing fan works is censorship and bad and awful!

But it's not fan works, really.

It's the community spaces. The words you use.

Listen, that female character you hate? She's not real. She doesn't have feelings. But every femme person in your periphery is, so everytime you go on a ran about what a "rancid bitch" she is? The misogyny is real. The character is fake but the people around you are real. Your insistence to couch your dislike in bigotry is what is suspect. You're 100% allowed to dislike things and have personal preferences! That is not up for debate! But the words you use to communicate that matter, and they betray things you've internalized.

The conversation (and frustration!) about brown and Black characters being sidelined in fandom, even in the rare cases when they're pivotal in the source material are not about any one individual person, but rather the racist undertone that permeates the space.

Fictional characters aren't real, their feelings aren't real. You can hate them or love them or sexualize them to your heart content. They're dolls!

But if you bring in your own bigotry into the game of dolls and people call you for it, don't pretend people are saying playing with dolls is itself the problem. They want to play with the dolls too! They'd just want to do so without the slurs. And the ambient bigotry implying they're neither wanted nor welcome in the space.

[alienssstufff]

Your gegg is soooo cuteee 💘💘 I don't know how you do it but you draw this specimen perfectly

ty! the secret is egg :]

[miyku]

[3416]

Preseason Game 1 Leafs vs Sens | 9.22.24

[c-kiddo]

was worried parts of cr2 would not hold up on rewatch (especially seeing people hate the aeor arc so much) but ngl so far its either been good and fun as hell (travellercon, pirate arc) or just straight up banger after banger. like the xhorhas to angel of irons through to refjorged arc and then the cathedral.................. unrelenting slay

[moeblob]

Honestly? Good anime imo! I really enjoyed Aileen. I enjoyed Claude. I enjoyed Isaac and Keith and Rachel and Almond and Ribbon. I enjoyed Belzebuth and the flock of ducks (Walt/Kyle/Auguste) and Jasper.

[bruciemilf]

What everyone should understand from spider verse is that Miguel is right about Spider-Man, but he’s completely wrong about Miles.

[koszmarnybudyn]

Cw.smoking

Im back with more tma au stuff :D some gothcleats this time cause i really like them. Also gosh this took ages...comics are hard guys.

[enden-agolor]

never let me write an almost 30 thousand word chapter for a fic ever again

[i-may-be-an-emu]

The way I go from literally sobbing uncontrollably to laughing and smiling because of sfth is so unfair and should be studied I think

[isogenderskitty]

guys avpm is going to be 15 years old

in 18 days

what the fuck

[lukazade]

Foreword: it's all just my opinion! Don't freak out! Don't worry! Listen if you want, don't listen if you don't! Discuss if you want, don't if you don't! Awesome! Also man it's wordy I'm sorry!

Ok I know we've talked about zooble trans allegory and yes, agree, however. I think it's also like, something about acceptance and adjustment as a whole concept. A feeling of self actualisation,, or something. I'm gonna talk about masking now!

Some characters have adjusted implicitly to the circus (Ragatha, Jax), some have brute-force adjusted (Kinger, Pomni), and some have adjusted by refitting to their environment as it changes (Zooble, Gangle).

What I mean to say is this hints at their past lives a little more (to me);

Ragatha and Jax

Ragatha and Jax are what I would call perfect maskers. The type who do it so well they fool themselves - the type who have the sort of trauma that just can't be given to an adult. It's entwined into your birthright. Ragatha has always come across as having "eldest daughter syndrome" (if you're not sure what I mean by this, look it up!) and Jax chooses destruction and cruelty in his every play (I know men who do not know how to be Nice to others and can only bully and demean the people they even genuinely like, because of toxic masculinity being ingrained in the very fabric of being A Boy in this world- yadda yadda yawn) (note: this still makes them suck and please don't forgive people who say "this is just how I am" when they hurt you just because of whatever they've been through. You are now going through it for them.) but they don't come across as genuine. Neither of them feel genuine.

Jax wants everyone to enjoy his "banter" and thinks that them reacting is similar to them enjoying. They're partaking, after all. He doesn't like when people aren't playing along with him, but they don't play with him because his playstyle is cruelty. He's compelled to be mean. And he needs you to respond in his language - his language that is obscene and hurtful. And it gets worse as you engage with it, because he's playing with you. And not necessarily to hurt you. Just.. to hurt you. You feel me? It's a game. It's not real. Why would it upset you? Lighten up.

Ragatha wants the same, in a way. She wants to play house (needs to) because eldest daughters can never stop playing house. They've been doing it since the second the younger sibling was born. Perhaps even parented a parent, with no siblings at all to speak of. They start the job so young that they do not live in reality. They're playing house. They're the mother. And Pomni is literally child shaped, so of course she wants to nurture and care for her. And of course she wants to care for everyone, because that's what she knows how to do; she can't accept thanks for it because of course she'll take care of you. She'll take care of everything. It's nothing to be thanked for. And Pomni is her child but also,,, she's not actually. That's not her child or even A child. She'll parent her as a way to show her love, right down to, "she's too busy flirting with gummigoo to be with us, wish someone would flirt with me" (aka: "she doesn't love mommy anymore, she's abandoning mommy and growing up"). We aren't going to travel this path further in this post but if you're a freak who wants to explore it feel free! Heck. Maybe you already have explored it! Life's crazy.

Anyway. They hate each other, (Ragatha and Jax) but they get along because they're both able to, weirdly, find common ground. Ragatha gets to bite at him in an angry housewife way. He gets to bite at her because she bites back. They let off steam by arguing, where he tends to play defence to her offence, when you might assume a nasty rude cruel guy would raise his voice and deny her the right to do so. I won't go further here either because I lack evidence the deeper I go rotating these two in my mind. My evil otp. Sorry Ragatha I think you're a lesbian having weird things with Pom but you're part of my evil otp with nasty Jax because you're parallels of what the world does to its eldest sons and daughters sorreeeeey.

Pomni and Kinger

These two are. They're rotating in my mind. Yeah. Yeah they are, right there. The child he never got to have, the father figure she evidently yearns for.

These two are the type who don't adjust well. They don't mask well. They can't hold it in and lie about things, and when they do they fall apart.

Pomni is in the early stages of a new environment - she can't blend into it all even though she looks the most like a circus act. She tries, but the way it drives her up the wall, the way every good moment is also a moment waiting to strike, she can't. Until the moments she can. When it's quiet, when people are acting normal, when she's alone somewhere and can functionally talk about it. And then she's. Fine. She blends, she matches. She's just in hell, just in the circus. It's okay though.

But there's only so much talking things out can do, especially when you're stuck somewhere that actively traumatises you. Going back to therapy won't stop the bad things from happening, and so she'll loop again and again until... well, who knows! I hope we find out!

Kinger my beloved that killed his wife (?) either beforehand (while alive) OR believes so because he watched her abstract in front of him, and confused it with killing her. Who knows. His real life and his life in the circus are one and the same, he can't pick them apart. Because he never did adjust. It all slams into him every time, he needs that quiet, dark, emotional place that Pomni is still reaching for. But he has accepted that he doesn't fit and can't reach. He's literally a piece from a set. A set with no other pieces. Nobody else is from a set; Pomni maybe counts as part of a Circus Objects set. But she is in a circus. She might be able to adjust with time; Kinger does not fit. Cannot adjust. An outsider who (if we're to believe that was his life, in the haunted house ep) was paranoid and lived away from society (with the one matching set piece that he got to have, his queen). And in killing her, lost his ability to be in a set. To have kids. Uh. Pawns if you will. He has no place, and though he cannot truly adjust, though he remembers himself fairly easily in private (something the best maskers don't necessarily get to have; whew boy let me tell you sometimes the mask feels more real than the skin!!), he has accepted it. He has adjusted. Episode 3 there's so much more in you that I'm not seeing.. there's more I should be able to see.. idk what though. But he knew it was his own life. 100%. Also I believe in ep 4 gummigoo remembered his past life as an NPC v.1 idk where else to say that tho. I'm putting it here I believe.

And now we nearly reach the end! Are you still with me folks? And do you like my informal writing style? Thanks! University hated it! I'm shocked that I have a degree!

Zooble and Gangle

These two literally in canon adapt and change themselves to fit in. They're not perfect maskers, but they're also not the type who can't mask. The perfect maskers need their situation to gradually change, the ones who can't mask need things not to change. But change is in the nature of these two. Adapting is what they do. Gangle literally changes her mask right in front of others (think.. code-switching? I guess!) Zooble offers her a mask she thinks might help. Changes up her limb pieces. They are adaptable. But they diverge.

Zooble steps out of anything she doesn't want to do, anything she can't handle, but this is because she is constantly trying to find the right "body parts." She is so interested in the introspective, in the self, that the affectation of the outside just slides right off her. Jax wishes! She is able to ignore everything because the most important thing to her is her sense of self. Never mind how it fits in with others. Her apathy is only for things that cannot help her - she holds empathy and gentleness deep within herself, and gives it to those who care or relate to her struggle. She isn't close to the Perfect Maskers because they fundamentally cannot understand her (Ragatha wants to just go with it and let each adventure play out and end. Over and over. Something to do. // Zooble doesn't want to be distracted from the self actualisation of finding her "correct" body parts. Adventure outside is nothing for her (literally episode 4 couldn't touch her lmao she just did her job good for her)).

And Gangle. Oh sweet Gangle. Ever the bottom of the dog pile, ever the hurt and wounded one, needs to be loved, wants to be loved, but can't ask. So instead she matches her mask to what the people need (or to a tantrum that perhaps This Time someone will care about, maybe, please). Gangle gets to be in charge in ep 4 and immediately becomes Boss From Hell. This is a person who wants to have attention paid to her, but also who feels undeserving or too unimportant. So when given control, of course she doesn't know how to do it in a way that works. It just isn't in her wheelhouse! And whew, everyone has caused heaps of trouble during the circus, but the one time she causes chaos, she blames herself and settles away outside of the group. But she is trying to pursue a sense of self by trying different masks, trying different ways to fit in. She can mask, and will mask, but her sense of self claws out. Her emotional, sensitive self. Tears of a crybaby are easy to write off. Contentment/happiness are even easier to write off. But uncomfortable emotions beg to be seen and heard. Manic mask(?) was extreme in a way that is uncomfortable for the others, and for herself, as it caused a weird little freaky outburst (like anger, jealousy, etc - they result in choice words and actions fairly often). I said good for her even while I was scared of her ngl good for her for real. She can mask fine, she just doesn't truly want to. She does, to make things work. But it's clear from the beginning that masking is just a gimmick to play along and feel part of something, it's clear she's just aching to feel something real and honest. And, just as Ragatha/Jax and Zooble can't get along, Gangle also can't get along with them; she isn't good at playing house. They both aren't into playing house, they want to express something real, either through correct body parts, or through hobbies (like art).

These groups fundamentally form and overlap where they intersect. There are dynamics that are clear, and dynamics that are untapped. Those who can play house, those who won't play house, and those who don't even know what street the dang house is on.

In conclusion

Shit I'm bad at conclusions..

TL;DR

That sounds less daunting. The characters all represent something to me that I think is cool :) and also may not matter at all in the grander scheme! I am always trying to think of the "what do they want" concept when they interact with adventures/caine/each other. Jax is the most interesting to me because he's the best masker on the team. "But he's just like that" you cry. No~ there's something that does that, even if it's nothing you notice. Breathing in tobacco smoke can still give you lung diseases - even if you didn't smoke! Kinger is my fav though uwu I'm an Ice King enthusiast ofc I'm gonna pick up another traumatised and confused old man he's in my basket rn as we speak.

Anyway hope you enjoyed my writing style, this is just how I like to talk. And I felt it was on theme with the vibes of the show hahahaha hope you had fun - also it's 1am, forgive me if I went off topic like 60 times 🥰 I swear I had something to say!

[capricores]

pisces/virgo placements... it's about time you took care of yourself, too, ok?

you burn yourselves out allowing yourself to be pulled by so many people in all different directions. you exhaust all your resources and empty your cup - no, your entire well - to help those around you, even people you don't know. it's such a beautiful thing, and i know you genuinely love helping others, supporting people, seeing them thrive. it's such a beautiful trait! but you constantly end up neglecting yourself, right? you don't realize that you have permission to set aside time to care for you, to cater to your needs for once. you often feel like no one puts a drop in your cup, the favor is never returned - it's exhausting; you might think if you just keep giving your all it will come back; i understand. you will find the people that give the same energy back to you one day, but regardless of whether you've found those people yet, you need to learn to step aside and fill your own cup!

setting boundaries and saying no is the most important thing you will learn to do in this lifetime. it will not be easy for you, sometimes it will feel painful. but you cannot help the world if you're constantly drained and tired! you deserve to take care of yourself in the same way you do for others. be gentle to your kind soul, nourish yourself; do the things you love to do. learn to worry about others less, as hard as it is, and focus on yourself more.

[thebirdandhersong]

Lol