#happens to the best of us what can i say

[arevixie]

disillusionment

[turtleblogatlast]

The fact that Leo can go literally anywhere on earth to be alone with his thoughts at a single moment’s notice is something that shakes around in my head all the time. Like, portals and teleportation are amazing and convenient abilities both in and out of battle, but they could also so easily be used to run away as well.

I don’t think Leo ever would, at least not most of the time. He loves his family too much, and is too dependent on their love and attention to cut himself off so suddenly like that, but it’s a very real possibility nonetheless.

It’s a good thing Leo’s overall temper is more on the mild side and he prefers going to his room or something to complete solitude, because it really is dangerous for a kid to have the ability to isolate themselves like that at their fingertips.

[backpackingspace]

I am once again thinking about how odysseus who witnessed the horrors that the captured women went through (one of his main duties in the iliad was taking the women back home and making sure they were as comfortable as possible and safe because he was the only one trusted not to violate them further due to his devotion to penelope. And in the odyssey part of the reason circe sent him to the underworld was so that he'd have to listen to all these women's stories (before he could talk to the prophet) ). Who was one of the few that saw women as people and respected their space and opinions. And was then put in those exact same situations. I don't have the motivation right now to do a full literary analysis of this (I'll site the sources too) but oh man one day I'm going to write a full essay on this.

[unopenablebox]

im making a wedding guest list in order to. uh. destress. from work anxiety. (we are not officially engaged yet in that we are waiting for our rings to arrive sometime this month and also do not even a little have a wedding date and have not figured out a budget yet. so it's a very stupid exercise. but. i can do whatever i want)

anyway im beginning to worry that i only have two friends? i suppose it's actually good because that will cost less but possibly i have some kind of disease or condition

[hallowclave]

What a whimsical looking young man I wonder if he has received any job offers recently

Original photo

[possamble]

I'm not allowed to be on social media for more than two seconds today but I just wanted to say that Laios will absolutely have his own reaction to all this as someone who would die for Falin but has also imprinted on Marcille as his Emotional Support Comphet White Girl Not-Girlfriend along the way

[sukibenders]

The way people are becoming anti-children nowadays is really sad. And I'm not talking about people not wanting to have kids of their own, that's fine and something that shouldn't be shamed nor up to someone else to debate. No, I'm talking about the people who adamantly hate these little humans for simply existing, wanting to ban them from spaces due to them having emotional reactions that they are still learning to understand (you know, the kind of lessons that everyone had to learn and figure out at one point). It's gotten to the point where I've even seen these types of people genuinely support children being harmed and deny their hurt under the consensus of "Well then maybe they shouldn't be there," in your average public space. Like, imagine thinking hating on children, people who need assistance and guidance, is something to be proud of.

[soup-is-here]

Mouthwashing Spoilers

TW: Addiction and Self Harm

I wanna go on about Swansea's final monologue but it's hard to put into words, but I'm gonna try anyways cause it's a short, but strong story about autonomy again. This post ended up significantly longer than I wanted though

It's the autonomy to choose the "less healthy" option because it's appealing to you. It's the moral assignment to normality and stability. An alcoholic is an alcoholic by choice, technically, but do they owe us otherwise? Is it morally reprehensible to enjoy taking LSD at a party? Should we see someone as less than because they relax with a xanax instead of a hot shower? It's not healthy. We know that. We've seen anti-drug ad after ad after ad. But is that the part that's morally wrong, in and of itself? Does enjoying the drugs and chaos make Swansea a worse person?

Like him talking about his entire life and ending it by saying between the "stable" "normal" life and him waking up every morning with a new hangover, he preferred the latter. People always talk about getting clean and fixing their lives and Swansea did it! He did the thing "good men" do! A wife and kids and a trade job and sobriety! He was doing it! He was finally "worth" something!

And he hated it! I mean I don't know if he actually hated/despised it, but he misses his previous life. He misses drugs and partying and living like you might not wake up the next day. He said the thing that changed him was seeing himself dead in a ditch under the bright beam of a streetlight. Now he's looking down the barrel of a gun. And as he looks down it, he looks back. That was his preference. It felt good to be like that. And he wouldn't be here if he stayed there

We always have a narrative about drugs or gambling or sleeping around where a person suddenly realizes that they aren't "doing anything" with their life and becomes stable and it's always played like addiction is a false pleasure. Swansea got to the stability people said would be the real pleasure of life and that just wasn't true for him. One bad paycheck could've been the difference between his stable life and falling apart anyways. His lifestyle was going to kill him someday apparently, yet he's staring down the barrel of a gun at his steady trade job to feed his wife and kids.

I don't know quite how to word it but Swansea is the poster child for rehabilitation. There's this weight to him saying his alcoholic period was the best time of his life. Like it just hits at that pang that makes people wear DARE shirts while smoking weed and post those videos of smoking 100 cigarettes at once. Anti-vaping ads tell you about the damage they do to your body but everyone knows that already. Everyone knows "this is what your brain looks like on drugs." I smoke medical marijuana and it isn't good for my lungs but it's good for my pain. Doing drugs isn't good for me and I know that and that's sorta the point sometimes.

I don't know it's just this weird pang where I know what Swansea means, just not to nearly the same extent. I don't have an addiction so I don't think I could fully understand it. Maybe a better thing I could relate it to for myself is self harm. It's not healthy sure, but who do I owe health? Myself? Other people? And what is healthy? Is it feeling better now? Is it resisting now and feeling worse for it until it stops? What if the coping skills I learn make it worse? What if they make it better? Do I want it to get better? Does Swansea want to get better? What would better feel like to either of us?

Who knows until you try. Swansea got a collared shirt, a mortgage, and a credit card. He got a job and a wife and kids. He got sober. He got healthier, depending on your definition.

But did he feel better? He's looking down a barrel of a gun and he has to decide if he feels better. It doesn't seem like he regrets his new life. He says he wants his kids to be better than him. He wants good things to happen for them. He saw himself as one bad slip away from falling again. I don't think he felt better though. I think he got healthier. He likely would've ended up in the ditch he dreamt about, but we don't know that. We also don't know if that's what he'd prefer. But, we do know he got healthier, depending on your definition.

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

Both my parents actually suffer from HORRID emotional dysregulation and are prone to snapping and going into rages. My sister is the same way tbh. I am now realizing this is why they are constantly baffled by the question of whether or not I am mad at them.

I don't have external meltdowns.

I could. I don't let it happen.

I keep my rage on the inside and stay pretty quiet about it. It's just as strong as theirs [physically shaking nose bleed from high blood pressure kind of bad], but like as a kid I saw how terrifying it was to be around [dad breaking dishes, mom putting our lawn chairs into walls] and I just internalized that I wasn't going to wear that anger on the outside.

So my mother genuinely cannot tell if I am just being quiet or if I am silently hearing the dial-up noises of pure rage. This has lead her to both making strong and confident statements like "You are a pacifist who would never hurt a fly U.U" but also acting like I am secretly dangerous maybe... It's because she has never seen me snap.

She knows what her temper is like [throwing chairs through walls], she knows what my father's temper is like [pick up child and toss out door], and she can tell I am being tested, but she doesn't know what happens when I snap or where that breaking point is.

Her -perhaps unhinged- solution to this, my whole life, has been to do things that should obviously enrage me or shut me down completely, like ignoring important boundaries, repeatedly, punishing me for expressing emotions or needs at all, etc... And then to constantly ask me if I am angry with her when I get too quiet [right after near directly telling me to shut up].

It has occurred to me now, they have never once seen me lose my temper, so they literally just can't tell if I am angry at them. My sister is easy, my mother fights and screams with my sister constantly, my mother understands this. My mother doesn't have any grasp of feelings or boundaries that are not screamed at her [apparently, and I fear my sister is the same way]. Her and my sister are close despite constant fucking fighting because they understand each other.

They are trying to get me to engage the same way and it is not working. I realize now that this has been hard for them.

I was so successfully taught to suppress my emotions, by being punished for any outburst, that rage quiet looks the same as any other kind of quiet from the outside. To them anyway.

I did tell her. For the record. I used my words. I did tell her very calmly that my response to rage, in order to avoid doing the things that terrified me as a child, was to simply leave [the autistic urge to GTFO]. When a situation or person causes too much of the dial-up rage noise, I simply extract myself from that situation, up to and including never speaking to a person again. I explained this calmly. I explained it calmly 100 times and I explained that I explain myself calmly as my rage response 1-5 [also pretty much every other negative emotion tbh], and I told her that what came next was me simply opting out and fucking off. I told her this. I couldn't understand why she never took me seriously, or why she never fucking understood.

I couldn't understand what made her like this.

But it's the same problem I have with everyone else multiplied by a factor of 10.

If I am explaining myself calmly, they can't understand that it's actually serious or that I am actually upset. ESPECIALLY because they read me as "female" and women "aren't that rational" so if I am not screaming and crying about something, which I never do, people assume I can't be upset and it isn't serious.

And then after having my boundaries ignored too many times despite having calmly explained how and why it's a problem [shaking inside or not]... I leave. I leave and everyone gets upset like this is unexpected behaviour, even though I told them 50 times that is how I would respond if they kept doing *the thing.*

And for neurotypical people especially, they are expecting there to be a disconnect between what someone says they need or feel and what their actually boundaries and feelings are, and they expect the latter to be demonstrated with emotions. Telling them bluntly you do not function that way somehow never helps?

My mother isn't just looking for normal yelling or a few tears to know I am serious, whether or not I do those either [I don't], she's looking for an explosion to know there's a problem at all.

Fucked if I know how she proceeds through life this way in general or if this is just her expectation of her own kids???

And I couldn't get why my mother couldn't read my emotions and didn't seem to think I have any. It's because she's testing for the rage limit to see where my 'actual' limit is instead of taking my word for it. Never the fuck mind that she could simply *not* test at my boundaries instead of letting me have them. Separate issue.

I couldn't figure out what made her *like this*

She's expecting me to throw a giant meltdown violent tantrum at people when I have 'actually' had enough. Maybe she got away with those being like 5'4" in another time, but I am the size of the average man, I do not get to have giant screaming rages, whether or not people perceive me consciously as a woman, and least of all because a lot of people -at least unconsciously- read me as 'masculine' or at least always "they guy" of the situation compared to all other women and some men [bigger stronger and more rational, more able to just absorb the damage and let it go so the less rational screaming/crying one doesn't have to be dealt with]. Even if it was in me to be willing to terrify people [usually never], there are such limited instances where it wouldn't just blow back on me. Potentially very dangerously.

I am going to be the quiet calm one. You are going to have to let me use my words, bitch.

So she kept ignoring my boundaries until I had to cut her out of my life, and she probably doesn't understand and probably thinks it feels sudden -after 36 long years of bullshit- abrupt and unfair.

But I told her hundreds of times.

I probably should have just screamed at her.

[biigiiiii]

So this:

Leads to this:

Which leads to this:

Which allows vecna to do this:

Right? Right………. So then this:

Leads to this:

Which leads to:

???????????????? 👀👀👀👀👀

Will has had powers.

[sleepyyghostt]

any time i remember that trump supporters are in any way associated with christianity i feel fcking insane

[batsplat]

casey is obvs funny with this rivalry stuff because on the one hand he's very 'well I don't care who I beat' (lie) and 'I don't motivate myself using my rivals' (also a lie) and then he's also repeatedly emphasising that valentino was ONE of his biggest rivals and he only competed against him a few years... like a lil side quest in the story of his career. Those Few Years where valentino was his big rival. whereas dani and jorge were his cohort so he did compete with them for a greater span of time... and this is technically true and does MATTER but it is also extremely noticeable in his output which rivalry he has the most thoughts about. and yes casey would say that this is because everyone ELSE cares the most about That One Rivalry the most and also his opponent being an annoying dickhead means it's the one he has the most complaints about... but at a certain point, it doesn't really matter, because there's still one rivalry you're talking about way more than any other. you can tell that he's at least given jorge's interiority a bit of thought, kinda went 'well he was arrogant but also Learnt From The Error Of His Ways and was maybe misunderstood so' -- but also he's not going beyond that, he's not examining jorge's soul, and he's not even doing any of that with dani. it's very much a rhetorical commitment to those other two rivalries. ultimately the point is that he's doing what he can to not talk up his biggest rivalry TOO much, because, you see. he Did Not Care That Much. (lie.) now objectively speaking this kind of framing literally does not matter, who cares which one of these was the most meaningful rivalry, but it's interesting that it matters to him!! casey's problem is that he is extremely sensitive and cares deeply about what other people say about him, but one of the things he's most sensitive about is the idea that he could let himself be mentally affected by ANYTHING, worst of all his rivals. they cannot be granted that much power over him. and all of this has kinda funny consequences in that he has pretty rigid patterns in how he talks about this stuff that are at times quite convoluted because he has to simultaneously emphasise that a) none of his rivals massively mattered to him, b) That Rival didn't matter more than the others, c) what That Rival did to him was completely beyond the pale, and d) none of that affected him mentally whatsoever. at most one of these is true. there are so many things casey wants so badly not to care about but it keeps spilling out of him anyway, this oozing sludge of resentment and repressed hopes and desires and frustration and longing and bitterness. he keeps giving himself away... he cares so much and he can't stand it

[italiantea]

i cant believe todoroki has been a bootleg zuko for so long they're now making bootleg todorokis

[vellichorom]

ok this is the year we retire the old template & start using new ones hello

( & SO, this template credit to @ necromosss on twt! (( date edited slightly by me, in case you're confused )) )

WHAT a year, am I right?

2023 opened the door to a lot more experiences, events, fandoms, people, & all KINDS of hectic craziness for me, but it was REALLY fun, & while I don't think I really made HEFTY leaps & bounds in terms of doing something different with my art, every day - with every small change & improvement, I come to love my art all the more.

& that, I will contribute some to YOU! yes, YOU - reading this right now! to casual viewers, to those who have been with me since the premiere of this blog, to those who've come around in 2023 for one thing or another; to those of you of whom I've never spoken with, to those who have made me something or complemented my work, to those who've become my friends, my gratitude is IMMEASURABLE.

this last year, while its had its bumpier moments - I will confess, it's been truly incredible, & I thank you, every single one of you, who's had even the slightest hand to make it so. you are all TOO KIND, & I appreciate you sticking by & enjoying what I do.

hopefully, I can continue to make things that grab your attention, AWE & AMAZE YOU, & beyond anything, make you smile, if only to repay you some for all the joy you provide me.

HERE'S TO 2024! with hopes & prayers & wishes aplenty that we'll be better people in better situations before it's over!

2023: JAN / FEB / MAR / APR / MAY / JUN / JUL / AUG / SEP / OCT / NOV / DEC + BONUS PIECE.

[time-is-restored]

btw not to make everything about My Fucking Guy but i honestly think one of the things that seperates q!phil out from the other islanders is the approach he takes to dealing with the lack of agency + control all the islanders have over whatever the fuck the federation's doing.

it shows up most prominently whenever tubbo is excitedly telling him about the 'progress' he's made with cucurucho or various investigations (ie: trapping him into a corner with the 'do you have free will' questions), and phil always shoots it down w an immediate 'that doesn't mean anything. curucuho will say anything to mess with you. you can't take anything he says as true.'

and it's not that phil is... a paticularly pessimistic character? he's just EXTREMELY practical. like, he's yet to give up on anyone EVER finding ANY answers (he was the one who initially gave the federation that one week ultimatum w the cage for a cage stream), he just doesn't trust the idea that curucuho is ever going to voluntarily give them. they're uncontrollable + senseless - you might as well argue with the weather.

and like, if that's how he sees the one (1) and only point of contact the islanders HAD with the federation for months, it explains a lot abt his characters lifestyle! ofc he sits on the wall all day, talking to his kids, and keeping his head down. he believes that the federation wants nothing more than to drag the islanders into sick games + tasks just so they can fuck with their head (ie: curucuho revealing he was the one cellbit gathered all that information for). and while he can't totally PREVENT any of that from ever impacting him, he can make sure his kids are well fed, well protected, and as happy + comfortable as he can manage. this is objectively not a perfect situation, there is a guaranteed amount of suffering + fear that he can't mitigate, but he can at least account for it.

like, he REFUSES to engage. whenever curucho shows up, he treats them with total ambivalence. he's not going to get riled up by anything they do, he's not going to get super attached to the guy, he's just gonna laugh it off and irish goodbye it when things drag on. the ONLY time he's strayed from that general guiding principle has been since he's lost his eggs, and can no longer afford to let the federation's fuckery go: those are his fucking kids.

hence the completely unprecedented levels of outward rage and sadness and terror he shows throughout the birdcage streams - almost all directed directly to cucurucho. it's all a completely fair + proportional response to the horror the islanders are being subjected to, but it feels so different bc until now, q!phil has been so dedicated to not reacting, and not giving the federation any sign that they're actually getting to him.

[paper-star-ships]

Y’all ever had a crush on a character from a source you’ve never seen or is that just me