#he's not cynical

[fiddleyoumust]

I know people will be upset about Phum and his dad. But I think Phum's decision is very much influenced by the way Peem loves and forgives, and to me, that's beautiful!

Toey said Peem's art reflects who he is because he makes everyone feel comfortable and safe, and that is because of how he loves!

He takes people at their word. When they mess up, he forgives them as long as they sincerely apologize. He doesn't jump to worst case conclusions and always assumes the people around him are good intentioned and trying their best.

When Phum's father extends a hand, it would be in Peem's nature to take it, and you see Phum glance at him and Peem's small encouragements to accept what is being offered.

Maybe Phum's dad won't really change. Maybe things can't be fixed, and the hurt has sat for too long and dug in too deep, but Peem has taught Phum that giving someone a chance to be forgiven can lead to something really beautiful because that's how they fell in love.

He deserves a chance to have his father. It's not about what his dad deserves or doesn't deserve. Phum wouldn't still be this upset if he didn't want his father , and he deserves to give himself that chance!

[cryptocism]

"just as I did, in 1983."

you'd never know my favourite parts of the show are the fucked up insane bits when my first instinct is to draw the cheesiest thing imaginable

[duckysprouts]

batman is an optimist. how much must i shout this fact into the void that is the internet before people realize. he is the biggest optimist in the universe. he is so insufferably compassionate, he is delusionally kind, his worldview is somehow more catholic than matt murdock because he believes in redemption even when hes lost everything over and over and over. gotham is a shithole that deserves to burn, rent is dirt cheap because nobody sane will live there by choice, and it’s crowning achievement is being the home to the biggest max security asylum on earth staffed by people so corrupt that villains escape every other day. and this stupid boy wrapped his mothers broken pearls around his fists like prayer beads and goes out to get his shit rocked every night for the past 20 years because he fell head over heels in love with said shithole city and its garbage residents, funnelling his wealth into the pit of endless greed because he hopes that a few cents will reach the pockets of those who need it

[thesituationship]

I actually do need all the angsty artists and writers to remember, ford is an optimistic person. This man is full of enthusiasm and whimsy. His love of all things weird is infectious. It's why he gets along with Mabel so well. Hell, it's why his autistic rizz manages to pull two bitches. His manic pixie dream girl energy is off the charts.

Think about how lucky we are. As a mad scientist, with a giant ego, who found it hard to connect with people emotionally, it would have been soo easy to write ford as cold, crude, cynical. Rick Sanchez or Dr House coded. I beg you, don't squander the whimsy.

[hamletthedane]

Imagine telling somebody in 1995 that one day, Snoop Dog and Flavor Flav would both be beloved American icons highly associated with the Olympic Games. With Snoop acting as an official NBC commentator and carrying the actual Olympic torch in his 50s.

They would look at you like you were absolutely insane. What an incredible world we live in

[breadmecoshy]

Why are you looking at me like you care?

[videogamelover99]

Alex Hirsch going "I'd be interested in exploring Bill confronting all of his lies" during the Seattle book signing and him going "This is my child. Please be kind to him. He doesn't deserve it though." during the San Diego book signing...

It makes me incredibly happy that he's just as obsessed with this problem triangle as we are.

[consultingfujoshi]

some thoughts wrt the two established "romances" in severance so far (burt/irving and helly/mark) inspired by @figmentof who pointed out how irving had to find out mark and helly kissed from the corporate video in s2 e1 and how he must have felt seeing his co-workers' love affair like portrayed like that, and how it ties into the queer narrative at play here which uses workplace dynamics and policies as very clear analogues for real-life prejudice against queer couples. I mean, just look at this:

it's not just documented, but celebrated. used as propaganda for how the conditions on the severance floor have improved. proof that the severed workers are happy. and how even though he is unaware of the sociopolitical meaning of all this, lumon is very not-subtly telling him that what he had with burt is inherently lower and less valuable than this.

irving doesn't even know homophobia exists and yet he is still affected by it, it still seeps into every corner of the way his and burt's romance progresses. burt is positioned as an unacceptable love interest from the jump. irv is actively discouraged at every turn from pursuing it. their friendship is viewed with disgust and apprehension from their coworkers. burt working in a different department that's hated by MDR. dylan himself not being homophobic in the sense he opposes their relationship because they're both men but his attempts to keep them apart still has a parallel sort of prejudice behind it and still ultimately has the same effect as if it WERE driven by homophobia. irving is made to feel perverse for wanting contact with burt. he's told this is for his own good.

and then, just as they manage to overcome that immediate resistance from their peers and escape to a place where they can explore this blossoming romance on their own terms, burt retires. for all it matters to irv, he's dead. and then irving is given the option to live the rest of his life with grief that will never heal, or kill himself too, because there is no reality where they get to be together. that's just the way things are. of course they wouldn't get to be together. he was unreasonable and childish for ever hoping that could happen. this is just the way it goes for innies. he's told to get ahold of himself and not make a scene.

but the thing is, the standards are not the same for all. a heterosexual romance gets upheld as the shining example of success and fulfilment for the severed employees, whilst a homosexual romance is ridiculed and invalidated, and written off as something that was simply never meant to be. and even more importantly to irving, a heterosexual romance is APPROVED OF by lumon, and by extension, by kier. irv held back from allowing himself to even call his and burt's relationship a romance, because his god had told him it was wrong, he followed the handbook, thinking this was what kier wanted, and then finding out after suffering the worst heartbreak imaginable because of it, that this WASN'T EVEN TRUE. it's simply just that someone like HIM doesn't get to have something like this. his love is not the kind of love god wants. he does not approve of irv's love. cynical and manipulative though that approval may be (even within the context of the corporate video, the helly/mark romance is only being celebrated to further the narrative that lumon care for their workers, but the point still remains that it was THEIR romance specifically used to suit this end), when your entire life has been in pursuit of that approval, it must be devastating to learn it was never on the cards for you.

he and burt even used the fact kier met and fell in love with his wife in the same circumstances as them to justify this to each other - and they were RIGHT, god does approve of falling in love with your coworkers - this simply just doesn't apply to them specifically. and if irving needed any more proof that he no longer has a place at lumon, that he's better off not existing at all than existing with this pain that cannot be remedied, pain that won't even be acknowledged for what it is, a symptom of a sickness which plagues the entire severance system, pain that he is simply expected to choke down and get over - this is that proof.

and that's the POINT. they're TELLING us that this is unjust, and there's a double standard. they're using the ways the innies experience romance and the difference in lumon's reaction (lumon being the collective of all the management we've seen, lumon as a singular entity) to burt/irving vs helly/mark to comment on how queer people are not afforded the same level of respect or validation IN REAL LIFE, for their attachments, their love, their pain, their suffering. it is NOT just incidental that irving's romance is with a man. it would not WORK if his love interest was a woman. the POINT is that they are both men and how that puts them at a disadvantage, even if they aren't aware of the prejudices of the outside world, even if they don't TECHNICALLY apply on the severance floor, there are very clear analogues which still end up oppressing them in equivalent ways that they would be suffering if this were a normal workplace in the outside world.

it genuinely sickens me to my stomach that even in a world so divorced from reality and the sensibilities of regular society, a queer couple is still made to suffer and feel inferior in a way that perfectly mirrors their real-life counterparts. how they will never, EVER be allowed to exist in a world where their love could thrive freely and uninhibited - they never get to taste the joy our world has to offer people like them, but they are still somehow subjected to all the pain it has to offer them regardless. it's such horrifically devastating writing. it makes my skin crawl. I can't stop thinking about it

[ladyhawke]

There’s nothing in Nassau but horror. You said it was just a transition. That something better lay beyond it, something meaningful. But what if that isn’t so? What if the result of this war isn’t beyond the horror? What if it is the horror itself? Have you given this any thought at all? If we are to truly reach a moment where we might be finished with England��� cleared away to make room for something else… there most certainly lies a dark moment between here and there. A moment of terror where everything appears to be without hope.

BLACK SAILS 4.08 “XXXVI.”

[cursed-angelic-art]

Shen Yuan is a streamer known as Peerless Cucumber. His main focus is an rpg called Proud Immortal Demon Way that is often critiqued as "just another waifu collector" and Peerless Cucumber gets a ton of flak for being so invested in the lore and for heavily defending the main player character, Luo Binghe. But as is the way with content creators who are overly invested in one piece of media, he has a healthy niche following. One of his longtime followers is Heavenly Pillar, a Luo Binghe role player who leaves him lots of donations, despite his pleas for people not to send him money.

Shen Yuan has a love/hate relationship with this follower. On the one hand, he's pretty terrible at roleplaying Luo Binghe. He seems to have the characterization and speech patterns down, but he'll constantly go super OOC and start flirting with Shen Yuan while still pretending to be in character. And he barely says anything about the wives Shen Yuan encounters while playing. Luo Binghe isn't gay! And he certainly wouldn't be into Shen Yuan!

On the other hand, it's nice that someone out there seems to not only like Shen Yuan's content so much, but also values him as a person, showing concern if he's playing at odd hours of the day or hasn't eaten anything in a while or just seems particularly lonely. Maybe it's borderline parasocial, maybe Shen Yuan should be focusing on making friends irl, but it's nice, you know, to have someone's attention wholly on you.

Luo Binghe is a centuries old demon lord who's traveled to nigh on hundreds of universes and donned countless personas in his neverending quest to find something to alleviate the monotony of his life. This one caught his eye a few years back when he saw some advertisements for Proud Immortal Demon Way. It's far from the first time he's come across a story about his life, but a video game is a novelty.

So he downloads it. And in his expert opinion after hours of play, the game sucks ass. Not only are the fighting mechanics unwieldy and the rewards limited, but the wife quests have incredibly contrived plot lines that repeat the same 5 tropes over and over. Sure, Luo Binghe's actual harem was oft unwieldy and annoying (it has dwindled significantly in recent years), but he doesn't recognize any of the people he remembers marrying in these 2d pixels. Even the ones that are staples of the Luo Binghe genre, like Sha Hualing, Liu Mingyan, and Ning Yingying are pale caricatures of their real life selves in his memory.

Luo Binghe decides to shelve the game, but first takes to the internet to see what others have to say about it and that's where he finds him. Shen Yuan shows his face on screen. His voice. His mannerisms. Luo Binghe has only met the "not-Shizun" Shen Qingqiu a scant number of times, briefly, in a handful of universes. And each time, he was closely guarded by another Luo Binghe. But not this one. This Shen Yuan appears to be alone, neglected, a wilting flower carrying on through energy drinks, cup noodle, and sheer determination.

Luo Binghe is going to find out where he lives. It's not a matter of if, but when. And in the meantime, he's gaining his trust and affection one stream at a time.

[rosy-crow]

THANK YOU HAMAGUCHI YES

[cynical-canidae]

I like to think hypothetical Bishop Clancy would eventually grow his own antlers 🦌💕

[otaku553]

How would you say Tage and canon Sabo's personality differ?

I think the main point they differ on is that canon sabo knows who he is even after his amnesia, because the revolutionary army gave him so much motivation and direction, whereas tage doesn’t have a supportive community or any direction to point his anger and trauma at after waking up without his memories so he becomes a lot more directionless.

I think the reason why sabo looks like a noble in canon despite a very pronounced dislike for nobles is that he uses his history as a noble to propel his motivations as a revolutionary. I think dragon would have told sabo from meeting him before that Sabo was a noble, and from that, canon Sabo regained that strong hatred against the nobles and willingness to fight against them. Tage has none of that. Since he’s been along for so long, he fights primarily for his survival, and so he focuses a bit more than canon sabo on appearance and deception. He’s more cynical of the whole world as opposed to just nobles, and is more willing to fight anybody who crosses him specifically.

I don’t think they’re very different on the surface— canon sabo and Tage both do things independently and at their own pace and have the capacity to go absolutely feral but present a demeanor of calm confidence and strength to the people around them.

[myimaginationplain]

jayvik shippers PLEASE be normal about Mel & Sky challenge, part 2, difficulty rating: (impossible)

[obsessedwhyyes]

Fangs, Wit and Charm - An Astarion Quote Prompt List

Writing in Astarion's voice is a lot of fun. His language use and speech patterns are absolutely fascinating to me, so I thought I'd create some little Astarion-style quotes (Astarionisms, if you will) for general use! Drop me a tag if you use any of these - I'd love to see them in action!

Gif by @wolfsong-the-bloody-beast on Tumblr!

"Trust me? Oh, that's adorable. And terribly unwise."

"Ah, the things I do for... Well, me, primarily."

"Darling, eternity is a long time to hold a grudge. But I'm willing to try."

"Feelings? How dreadfully inconvenient."

"I assure you, my bite is worse than my bark. And far more enjoyable."

"Loyalty? Oh, please. Let's not ruin a perfectly good arrangement with such tedious concepts."

"Darling, if you wanted my attention, you needn't go to such extremes. A simple 'please' would suffice."

"Your heartbeat is rather distracting. Mind keeping it down?"

"My dear, in my experience, the most dangerous traps are the ones you walk into willingly."

"Ah, the moral high ground. I hear the view is lovely, but I much prefer the shadows."

"Centuries of existence, and here I am, playing hero. How dreadfully cliche."

"Trust is a fickle thing. Like a neck, really - so easily broken."

"I've been called heartless before. Technically true, but so unimaginative."

"Eternity is overrated. But it does wonders for one's wit."

"Ah, the sweet sound of screaming. Reminds me of home."

"Redemption? Please. I'm far too interesting for that nonsense."

"Eternity is a long time to regret one's choices. Fortunately, regret and I parted ways centuries ago."

"My dear, your naivety is almost as charming as it is hazardous to your health."

"Your blood smells divine. I mean that as a compliment, of course."

"Careful with your heart, darling. I've been known to bite."

I also write Astarion fanfic! Masterlist can be found here!

Astarion smut quote prompts!

[pnfc]