#emotional cost

[postscript-mc]

A Lesson From Loss, Learned Too Late

You've learned now to be a better man,

How I believed back then you could ㅡ that was the plan.

But must it come at my expense,

Pathetically, trying to fix our past through your present tense?

Empathy requires practice to be a habit;

Too bad you were never one to fully commit.

I deserved more than just another lesson.

I guess when you're young, that's just beyond comprehension.

ㅡ M.C.

[inkskinned]

you know, you know. no gods, no masters, no kings on pedestals. everyone is fallible. death of the author. you know! you are balanced about your intake of media - you allow the wiggle room, the grace, the gratitude, the skepticism. nobody above criticism.

but still. a weird gut-punch feeling, something akin to betrayal. you read the article. surprise! an author you love is actually: a serial fucking predator.

well, shit. what now. no, you knew he was a person (all people are), but now you're wondering - what have i overlooked by accident? what messages have i internalized that are strange and cruel? and also, like, what the fuck?

his actions lay a thick glaze on top of everything. like each place is now ruined, opaque in a new way. but okay, fine, you've done this before. you knew better, right? you've been betrayed by many a cherished childhood author.

still, this stickiness. fuck. can you pick up that book again. will you read it to your children. you've recommended it to others - will you ever do that again? and of course, of course, no parasocial relationships. you were theoretically above this kind of sentiment. but the artist informs the art, right.

so it's not something as clear-cut as feeling he owed you, specifically (a stranger) better behavior - just that you kind of, in a distant and odd way... sort of trusted him to do better. it's not like a real trust or something speakable, just the faint hope that the product (good books) was a thin representation of the soul. now it feels like the product (good? books?) was a mask. in some small or insignificant way, your previous support of this person lent them power. your money and your time and your laughter.

and the thing is - you have this terrible, echoing sensation. how many times will this happen? over and over. you find out that the singer you love is actually a predator. you learn over drinks that your favorite high school english teacher is in jail for what he did to her. you listen to the news idly and suddenly discover that a woman you used to idolize has been abusing her kids for an actual eon.

what can you touch without the static melting off. you can't even really complain about it too much (you were supposed to know better, and besides, you don't want the same re-split "it's not your fault, love what you love" basic advice), but now it's here. somehow, it feels like - you let him into your life.

it's not that things need to be pure or an artist has to be like, endlessly perfect, mindful. demure. it's more just this terrible truth that has been replayed through your veins so often it feels criminally vain. power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. did you want any one person to be worth that power?

it's just that he wrote books where he seemed to understand that. he seemed to know about hierarchies and unfair systems and bigotry and privilege. you thought they were books about what it means to struggle. you thought they were about having power and still using it for good rather than for control. he spooned you a narrative of being a good guy, a kind soul. you fucking bought what that fucking monster sold.

maybe that's why they were fantasies, after all.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Welcome (back) to the world!

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[chara-55]

For those who doesnt have Twitter, I've recently found these. Please pls plss go check it out 😭

These storyboards has me in shambles

Here's the link to the storyboards

I'd like to give my thanks to Zhi Khang & the other storyboarders for sharing us these 😭✨️

[birdhism]

I'm so tired...

[reasonsforhope]

This is now a Kamala Harris for President blog btw

Obviously I'll keep posting good news as usual! And I'm going to pull up as much good news and reasons for hope about Kamala Harris's campaign as I can.

[ilta222]

commissions open! reblogs super appreciated <3

[whumpypepsigal]

Outer Banks s04e10: “If [dad] was still around, he'd want us to work together. I know you know that.”

[dumblr]

It cost you nothing to consume all the love I had for you, but it cost me everything.

[sincericida]

ANDREW GARFIELD and ELMO

«Elmo is here to listen. Elmo loves you, Mr. Andrew Garfield! ❤️ #EmotionalWellBeing» (@elmo)

[marzipanandminutiae]

okay has anyone else dealt with extreme neat freak housemates? because I feel like I'm losing my mind

I'm not a dirty person, I'm pretty sure. a bit prone to clutter, but not actual dirt. I don't like for the house to be dirty. but there's just been a House Meeting called and when I went to ask the housemate who requested it what was going on- because I hate house meetings that I don't already know the purpose of; it feels like a Wait Until Your Father Gets Home situation and I don't even know what I'm potentially "in trouble" for

and basically they all feel that I'm leaving the kitchen "filthy"

"nobody wants to cook there because it's gross" was the exact quote

I feel like I'm losing my mind, because...I don't think I leave the kitchen gross? I wipe crumbs off the counter; I wipe up spills if and when they happen. the most I've ever noticed when I go in there is a couple of crumbs here and there, genuinely. or when I look over the kitchen after I finish up with a meal

(also this housemate once sent a picture to the group chat with like. five single, spread-out crumbs on the counter individually circled in red. but the thing is, everyone else seems to agree with her)

but I'm also very good at hating myself, so now I'm wondering if I AM somehow disgusting

and of course, my House Meeting tribunal has to convene at some point. the last one made me feel like everything I said was pointless because everyone else put up a united front and shot it all down, so I guess I'm headed for more of the same

[grenadine-blood]

post-quarrel 💔

[whetstonefires]

You know I'm realizing one reason you keep seeing mdzs modern AUs where the Jiang parents are alive mainly so they can dramatically fail and betray Wei Wuxian by cutting him off financially--defaulting on his college tuition or formally disowning him etc--isn't just that people want to translate the Burial Mounds II arc into modern terms while keeping Jiang Cheng clean of it.

(Despite the fact that the internal logic of Jiang Cheng's character is largely built around him being a person who would abandon someone he intensely cared about under these specific circumstances.)

It's because it's hard to set up a modern analogue for the way that Jiang Cheng is responsible for Wei Wuxian, as his Sect Leader.

We live in a highly individualistic society. People are trying to write Wei Wuxian Tragically Wronged, and because there's a normative expectation that people in the position of parents will provide you with resources, and certainly won't withdraw them without warning, but no such assumption that people in the position of siblings necessarily owe each other support, making this work in modern setting with Jiang Cheng in his canon role would require a lot of extra work, just to get a less readily resonant result.

But I keep thinking about it. Because something that's getting lost here is, not just the nuances of character and relationship, but like...it's sort of key to the story that cutting Wei Wuxian off was, in fact, Completely Socially Appropriate.

The level on which it was a betrayal is subtle, and deeply cutting. And intensely tied up in the very different opinions each of Jiang Cheng's parents had about what obligations existed in their family wrt Wei Wuxian, and what these meant.

The level on which it was the obvious, normal course of action is blatant. That is to a huge extent why it happens: because Jiang Cheng's instinct to conform is a survival instinct, reinforced by trauma, and Wei Wuxian's choices meant he had no coherently compelling reason not to obey it, and enormous peer pressure to do so.

The fact is that Jiang Cheng was making a reasonable choice, the actual thing 'anyone would do in that situation,' unlike Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao's respective wildly warped ideas about what that is.

Wei Wuxian wasn't betrayed by Jiang Sect like your foster parents cutting you off because you're disobedient. Wei Wuxian was betrayed by Jiang Sect like your brother refusing to drop fifty grand to bail you out of jail.

Of course Wei Wuxian tells him not to. And of course the fact that Jiang Cheng already chose in the moment not to pay a cent because Fuck You Wei Ying still stands there glaring, a precedent that can never be taken back.

And then later he's betrayed by Jiang Cheng like your brother cooperating with a police investigation into a manslaughter you really did commit, that's being handled like domestic terrorism. And then like your brother calling the cops on you. And then like your brother helping the cops find where you're hiding.

I'm personally fascinated by the way Jiang Cheng's lifelong resentment for the way Jiang Fengmian reliably bailed Wei Wuxian out of everything informed those decisions to do the normal thing, the way he's reacting against his dead father as well as against Wei Wuxian and the actual situation.

But even without that daddy issues angle, the fact that the person who made that choice was Jiang Cheng, and that it was simultaneously the reasonable appropriate normal upstanding citizen rational thing to do and so shitty Wei Wuxian would be entitled never to forgive it is sort of. The Point.

Of the scenario, and also to a considerable degree of the entire finely tuned narrative construct that is Jiang Cheng.

[anigst]

Hakuouki Movie 2: Shikon Soukyuu (2014)

[thatsbelievable]

[augustinewrites]

fushigojos tackling a home project together is the first true test of how well they've bonded as a family