#feeling frustrated tonight

[zjofierose]

.

[mlobsters]

supernatural s11e20 don't call me shurley (w. robbie thompson) be still my beating heart part 3 of ∞

[3416]

Mitch Marner Media Availability | 01.20.24

[chrollohearttags]

I literally never had an issue or felt insecure abt my sexuality until I start interacting with heteronormative, allo ppl lmao. one convo and I’m ready to off myself.

[unorcadox]

i love making text-heavy stuff tbh. i think i've realistically "outgrown" weirdcore at least with regard to the more heavily edited stuff, but i still deeply love the idea of making my writing pieces look like they're fucked up pieces of old web lost media, so i think i've found a way to keep going despite that

[fictionadventurer]

Imagine what it must have been like for Mark Twain to see Ulysses S. Grant write his memoirs. Twain's a successful career author, who, like all writers, knows firsthand the struggle of getting words on a page, knows how painstakingly slow and frustrating the writing process can be. And here's Grant, with no literary training whatsoever, dying of cancer, barely sleeping or eating because of the excruciating pain, regularly writing 10,000 words a day. And it's good.

I'd be tempted to give up writing right there. How do you compete with that? You can't be jealous of the guy, because of the whole "dying of cancer" thing, and yet...it's gotta just about drive you nuts. It just about drives me nuts. In good health, I can work for hours to get a few sentences on a page. And then this guy's showing us all up. It's maddening.

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

me: sits down to write feeling full of inspiration

chronic pain: no 🙃

[losersimonriley]

writing 1k of ghoap verbally destroying each other is destroying me

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

why is everything (showing other people respect. being patient and kind. not flying off the handle about stupid things. emotional regulation and self-control. et cetera.) so easy when I'm not around my parents and so so so so hard when I AM around them?

[savagebisand]

I'm gonna say this and make my peace with it but I am frequently reminded as someone watching from week to week when it comes to Only Friends, that it is so easy in a series like this to find yourself accidentally having bias toward some characters, pairings etc. It's very important that we always remain open to alternate perspective and that we remain able to pick out nuances in our favourites. Critique them when they cause trouble or make a bad choice and cheer for them when they find moments of happiness. For today, I am going to speak primarily about Sand because I've already seen a lot of a sentiment on YouTube mostly that he is justified in his scheming to reveal BostonTop and drag Ray into it and yet Ray is vilified for lashing out and pushing Sand off him in the same episode.

We have really got to stop woobifying characters like Nick and Sand and even Ray or Mew because we see them as the most traumatised or the ones with the uncaring lovers. None of them were meant to be the "innocent" character amongst the darkness. JoJo has always said all these characters are flawed and live in shades of grey.

I'm getting real tired of seeing Sand constantly elevated above Ray because one has to be worse than the other for some reason? Or seeing TopMew and SandRay pitted against each other when both have tormented romances. We can note the difference in how the relationships are developing without attacking one or the other. Sand can be the kindest and most sensible character in this series and he can still be morally reprehensible and wrong in other ways. Mew can be caring and hesitant and only want what's best for his friends and still get it wrong sometimes not out of spite but simply because he just doesn't know better.

We do not have to pretend that Sand is in the right when he isn't because we don't want to lose the Sand as a good person label. He IS a good person..he's also wrong for the mess he indirectly caused this ep. Y'all I'm a Sand stan, this blog is sandified all over. The man is me coded. He's a mirror to my soul for me. And I will still sit here and hold him accountable just as much as I would do for Ray when Ray fucks up. He made some Choices this episode and they were Bad. He prioritised his vengeance against Top over Rays emotions regarding Mew and that is Unkind.

Ray was Unkind to lash out at him and push him as well but to act like Ray was unjustified and deserves to be vilified for it is just... it don't sit right with me. He stooped as low as Sand did, he hit right where he knew it would hurt. It was tit for tat. The second Ray went into that meet up where Sand showed him the audio, you could sense Ray knew he was being used as a middle man. That shit hurts. This is the person he's been vulnerable with finally and he just got treated once again, by him, as someone easily influenced and gullible.

Sand used clever words to make it sound like he was doing this for Ray but it was heat of the moment. He was thinking purely of making Top taste his own medicine and eat his words. He wanted Top to lose Mew to prove the point that Top doesn't always get what he wants. Bonus if it meant Sand got Ray and could prove Top even more wrong because "who have you got?" Well now he has him. But honestly Ray was just a prize at the end of a long game Sand wanted to play there for a second.

It can be equally true that when he saw Ray was going to rain hell upon the group, he became more concerned as in his moment of Seeing Red he thought only Top would get hurt. He under estimated the fall out a truth like this would cause for everyone in that clique. Tell one harsh truth and a million more come pouring out. Ray got hurt because of this little ploy and he got a nasty awakening that oh yeah Ray is more important than some contest with Top, it can be equally true that he cares about Ray when Top isn't clouding his judgement and actions. That he didn't want Ray to endanger himself. That he would follow Ray and get him to a hospital safe after Ray angrily tries to take himself home under the influence because he feels betrayed, a black sheep to his friends.

But like it or not some of Sands actions this episode were still laced with calculation and manipulation and involved using others like chess pieces such as Ray and Nick, two people he normally cares about more than anyone. That moment when he smashed up his phone intentionally to get his hands on Nick's? Batshit insane behaviour. He was high tempered and irrational and he made a very big mistake because as I've said before these characters are portrayed as human young adults and it's what we do. No one is perfect 100% of the time. We all have a capacity for bad inside of us that most of the time we tamper. Sand was not able to in this instance. He caused mass destruction in a butterfly effect of one choice he made way before Ray caused more fallout with the truths he spilled.

Sands actions. Sands choices. Not just Rays or Mews. And don't get me wrong Ray was wrong too, he shouldn't have brought April and Cheum into it just to further a point. He should have just let Mew handle Top alone at home. But to be fair he'd spent all day and night being ignored by his friends for not being as blind in love as them, biting his tongue when Ton played along to insinuations over Nick and still got treated kindly after outright saying he had an ice cold heart when Ray knew just how true that was. Dealing with Ton making his emotions for Mew the butt of a joke again, belittling him. Sand using him to get back at Top and lying to Rays face or stonewalling him after they'd spent a week connecting more.

So it's no surprise he went since we're being honest tonight anyway maybe you all need to see you aren't perfect either. Sand set the spark that started this fire this time around. It's alright. All of them went too far and crossed lines. None are worse than the others. This show is not a competition between which partner in this couple is worse or more fucked up than the other. It is showing its audience what it looks like when two fucked up, flawed, morally grey, young adult and queer people fall into relationships and friendships. All of the couples are equally as wrong as each other for behaviours they exhibit when together.

It's subjective of course, everyone's personal level of what's wrong and what's acceptable is different and that's what makes this interesting. Something a character does may not be going too far for one viewer whilst for another it's absolutely appalling. The beauty of media. But let's not get so caught in picking teams that we lose our critical lens when we consume media. You can be rooting for Nick or Boston or Top or Sand or Ray or Mew! A combination! Have favourites! By all means pick people you'd love to see overcome these messy dramas and challenges they face. Just don't throw rocks at glass houses.

[koheletgirl]

one thing about not sharing your parents' political views is that they will just keep provoking you

[rotisseries]

you guys do know that we don't have to vote with the reddit whims right? like, that's the point of us having 360k people in this tag and all trying to use collective voting power. and it's one thing if on those "who do we vote out next" polls the majority vote is genuinely the one you most want to see go, but I keep seeing it be like "oh we all need to vote out this one because the redditors will vote for that one next" and then you run a poll like "who are we taking out next" and everyone picks the option you just said the redditors will want out. like then literally what's the point of running that poll. you all already know what the redditors want gone and apparently we suddenly care what they think🙄

idk just. I do get the point in running these polls to make sure everyone knows what everybody else will be voting for so that we can team up, but I think on our preliminary polls you should pick who you genuinely want out maybe and it just doesn't seem like we're even trying to give the other ships we like a chance at this point because if it isn't byler then we have to follow the whims of a website we're not even on apparently!!

[alfhildr-the-word-weaver]

I must say, it's pretty poetic that I've gotten to season 6 of Vampire Diaries right before another solar eclipse happens in America. I certainly didn't plan it, but it does feel like my timing is very appropriate with this one. I do have questions about the accuracy of the eclipse portrayal in the show, though. I mean, a solar eclipse did in fact happen on May 10, 1994, and it was visible across much of the country, so that much is accurate. But I don't think Mystic Falls would've had quite as good of a view as they show it having. For reference, here's a map of the May 1994 eclipse path (credit: timeanddate.com):

And, if you'll remember, Mystic Falls is like two hours from my old hometown just a stone's throw north of Lynchburg, Virginia, as seen on the locator spell map (this one's all over tumblr, forgive me for not remembering what blog I grabbed it from):

So if you zoom in on the timeanddate map and pick somewhere closeish to there:

It looks like Mystic Falls would be getting a little over 77% coverage or so. It's also worth noting that the '94 eclipse was an annular eclipse, not a total eclipse like tomorrow's eclipse. That still means that the moon went directly in front of the sun, but it does mean that it was small enough/far enough from earth that you didn't quite get full coverage of the sun (thanks to weather.gov for the nifty graphic):

So, I'm not positive whether it would've looked quite as dark as was shown in the show:

Although, I must admit, in this video I found on youtube of the '94 eclipse, (part of me is shocked to find footage from then but I know I shouldn't be like yes they had cameras in the 90s) it actually looks more similar than I expected it to look, but I imagine it was most likely filmed within the path of totality:

But also, when Kai takes Bonnie to Portland, don't they see the eclipse again there? I couldn't find that clip on youtube just now, but Portland barely had any eclipse--only 42-43% coverage, so it would've been way milder of a visual effect, barely any dimming in the sky noticeable without eclipse glasses.

The funny thing is, the area where I live is going to be sitting right around 80% coverage tomorrow. I was lucky enough to get to travel to Missouri for the 2017 eclipse to get into the path of totality, but I'm afraid that it hasn't worked out for me to do so this year, which is immensely disappointing to me as an astronomy enjoyer, but I do still plan to go to an eclipse party and I'm going to start saving to try and get to Spain for the next total eclipse in 2026, which is going to be right around my 30th birthday (screaming). Anyways, it isn't great, but here's my best picture from the '17 eclipse:

I didn't even have a smartphone yet then, because despite it being 2017, I was somewhat of a luddite, so I had the purple flip phone I so stubbornly clung to and a point-and-click Nikon, but I still think this picture is pretty cool for what it is. Here's the zoom in so you can really see that ring of fire (and my shaking hands doubling the image):

Obviously you can find thousands of better eclipse pictures online, but that one's still special to me because it's mine. Anyways, I'll report back with smart phone pictures from whatever I see of the 80% total eclipse tomorrow to compare and contrast with Mystic Falls's 70% annular eclipse of the 90s, because from what I've heard it's going to be much less impressive than full totality was, but I've yet to watch a partial solar eclipse, so I'll just have to find out. Also, if you happen to have any vampiric loved ones trapped in a magical prison dimension who you need help freeing during the eclipse tomorrow, let me know and I'll see what I can do! ;) Hahaha. Anyways, happy eclipse everyone, and may we all possess sufficient self restraint to avoid eye damage (says the woman who has looked at the sun unprotected so many times and is probably going to go blind because of it some day. I know what I've done lol. Don't be me.)

[fortunately-bi]

A brief return just to let people know, my wife had her full hysterectomy today and the surgeon said they are incredibly confident that the cancer is gone, but that they are going to biopsy everything to be sure. There were no complications, she didn't need a more intensive surgery and is currently getting some much needed sleep. I am so proud of her for being so strong through this and I love her with all of my heart 💜🩵

[darcyolsson]

whats the worst kind of relationship to have with anyone and why is it ex-best friend who you had a massive conflict with that got resolved but still makes you hate them a little at all times but only in the same way that you'll always love them a little for once being your best friend. and you have to pretend you dont feel either of those things because youre just casual friends now

[thegreenleavesofspring]

.