#holy shit they did such a good job

[egophiliac]

(looks at upcoming card releases)

I'm in danger :)

[manhattan-gamestop]

please I'm losing my fucking mind

[bougiebutchbitch]

cannot believe that 'yelling at your boss when he repeatedly almost gets you and your crew killed and lies to manipulate you into staying when you try to leave, is not emotional abuse, actually' and 'there is such a thing as a mutually toxic and unhealthy relationship where both parties are incredibly shitty to each other - and this is obviously where Ed and Izzy stand until S2, when it becomes blatantly abusive' is a controversial take. But as this is Abuse Apologism And Ableism, The FandomTM, I really should not be surprised

Just.

I was deep in physically and mentally abusive relationships in my teens/twenties - including relationships that started out with mutual toxicity and bad decisions on all sides, but which became outright physical & mental & other sorts of abuse with myself as the victim. I know my shit.

I suppose I can see where 'Izzy emotionally abused Ed' comes from IF people give literally the most uncharitable interpretation to Every Single Scene, and assume Izzy shouts angrily at Ed and negs him all the time rather than this being how he acts when he's incredibly stressed by circumstance caused directly by Ed and at the end of his fucking rope? Which, as we see in S2... Is not the case.

It's not freaking emotional abuse when you're shouting at your boss who keeps almost getting you and your crew killed. Even if this is NOT a kind or productive way to help Ed deal with his mental health, considering that Ed's actions have consequences that he repeatedly and blithely ignores, it's pretty fucking justified!

It's not freaking emotional abuse if your boss OPENLY LOVES MAIMING PEOPLE AND IS MORE THAN HAPPY TO BURN THEM ALIVE and you encourage that, while upholding his right to not kill with his own hands. Even if he has private breakdowns after the fact because he suffers from black-and-white thinking, dissociates himself from any wrongdoing, and is afraid of his potential to become 'a monster'.

Are these choices helpful? No. Are they kind? No. Is Izzy demonstrating Model Citizen Behaviour? Definitely not.

But it's sure as hell not emotional abuse. And it doesn't justify the physical and emotional abuse Ed puts Izzy through in S2.

Nothing you say can 'make' him hit you. If he chooses to hit you (or... choke you out then repeatedly mutilate you and pressure you to commit suicide and makes you constantly live in fear for your life and the lives of people you care about) he makes that decision himself. Yes, even if you shouted at him first. Yes, even if you were arguing. Yes, even if you were in the wrong in that argument. Yes, even if he has a Tragic BackstoryTM and mental health issues. This shit shouldn't be controversial.

Signed: one of those actual abuse survivors.

[maximumqueer]

My reaction to ep. 46: This isn't so bad, why do people keep talking about it like something horrible is going to - oh.

Oh

OH

[irasra]

glenn close truly is a tragic hero and im obsessed with him for it like holy shit

[xomby]

torchwood rewatch is beginning to really set in (i’m almost done). i have to rewatch it again immediately i think

[rebornofstars]

nobody fucking touch me rn i went to see tf one in the cinema and im shaking. they actually made a good transformers movie. what the fuck

[upsidedownsmore]

god i feel fuckin ILL

still figuring out my feelings in regard to jade shadows but oh god my head is spinning, so cool yet so weird yet so many questions godddd idfk know anymore man

more spoiler ramblings below, please don't take any of it as concrete opinions cause i'm still kinda working it out in my groggy ass head

i do feel very weird about playing as jade after what happened to her the quest, i have a lot of respect for the story and it genuinely moved me but i also feel that the implications of building a copy of her and puppeting her around after all that feels...very jarring lol. i guess that's just the unavoidable nature of the game, but it really doesn't feel like it was addressed past hunhow saying "it's what she would have wanted", even though we barely got a hint of characterization from her other than being motherly i guess. idk i guess for a quest that is at least in half about her it felt like she herself didn't get as fleshed out as i would have liked, especially when people are kinda just saying things for her. weird feelings i guess

idk those feel like big accusations but i still overall feel like the story was really really cool and playing through the quest was cool, but it does feel like it pushes the boundaries of what can actually fit within warframe's framework without parts feeling downright disturbing in some of it's mismatched narratives. idk i'm gonna have to think about it more, legit feel dizzy lol

probably gonna just leave it at that though, i really don't wanna jump head first into discourse because i anticipate it being really toxic given the themes. i've already seen some of that discourse and like man some people are fast to get angry about things

[4th-make-quail]

It's so funny watching advent children now. When it first came out in Japan, my bff got a burned copy off his friend with very very bad fansubs on it, and we watched it with a giant tub of mackies honeycomb ice cream each. I had no idea Sephiroth was gonna come back, and I didn't pick up on the clues because pre-complete version combined with VERY bad fansubs meant it wasn't obvious at all lmao. The amount I SHRIEKED when OWA started playing, holy shit. Those first notes hit and I went fucking mental lmao

It's also amazing how much this film has held up, too imo. The graphics in the bluray complete version are absolutely gorgeous still, the soundtrack is fucking amazing and the action scenes are so damn cool. I feel like a lot of people dislike AC for the characterisation of certain characters, Cloud especially, but it remains one of my biggest comfort films of all time, even now!

Maybe I'm biased because I had such good times on the lifestream forums when it was just out, like babby's first active fandom (outside of pokemon ofc) I guess!

[em0-snail]

Wake up babes new selfship art just dropped!!!

(Art by @thespacehatter go check em out!!)

[kimbapisnotsushi]

you seem to have a good read on HQ and your takes are great, so i have a question...and if you'd rather not go there, please ignore this! but i see oikawa get called "arrogant" quite often and i'm curious, would you say he is? what is it that makes people think that? imo he has a plenty of flaws, but i truly don't think arrogance is one of them. self-centered, sure, but not arrogant i think. i'm open to being wrong, i'm just legit so confused by that particular criticism, it makes me doubting my reading comprehension. i feel like that one post that's like "free my man, he didn't do that. he did a lot of other stuff tho" LOL. if you do answer this, then thanks for your time!

oh, dear anon. this is a very very big question and i'm honored you think i am capable of providing an answer that does it justice!! i don't consider myself an oikawa expert by far, but i'll do my best because he's still very beloved to me, and i hope whatever i say helps!

(but also - maybe take what i say with a grain of salt LMAO)

anyways, to get the main point out of the way: i completely agree that oikawa isn't arrogant! i actually haven't seen any commentary about that myself (bless!!!), so i can't say for sure why some people might think that, but my guess is that they think his pridefulness = arrogance — they think that the confidence he has in himself and seijoh contributes nothing to their actual power and is utterly meaningless if they don't win, especially in the face of ushijima. which, like, come on. what kind of captain would he be if he wasn't confident in himself and his teammates? is he supposed to tell them that they're going to lose??? is he supposed to discourage their hard work and effort???

or maybe it's because oikawa acts like he's all that, but doesn't have anything to show for it. who does he think he is? what does he think his pride is worth? what right does he have to go around making grand declarations when he has nothing to his name?

(which isn't entirely true, either, but we'll get into that, promise.)

now, do i think that he can, occasionally, be flippant, shallow, and/or petty? yeah, sure. he's got one hell of a personality about it. even iwaizumi says as much. oikawa is great at being a little shit. it's one of my favorite things about him!

but is oikawa genuinely arrogant, or self-centered? well . . . i don't think so.

see, here's the thing about oikawa: he knows he's good, but he doesn't think he's good enough. i think it'd be easiest to really explain what that meant if we broke this down into two separate parts, so let's give it a go, shall we?

(buckle up, friends, because it's about to get LONG. also: TIMESKIP SPOILERS!! and there's a tldr at the start of the tags because. WOW.)

so, first things first: if people are calling oikawa arrogant, then i'm like 99% sure that they don't actually know what the word "arrogant" means.

"arrogant" is used to describe someone full of themselves. it's used to describe someone conceited and pompous. it's used to describe someone so assured of and invested in their self-importance that they don't care for other people, and if it seems like they do, then it's usually wildly off the mark and still serves to inflate their own egos.

oikawa has never once been like that. he's been pretty much the exact opposite, in fact.

and yeah, sure, by his third year of high school, he knows he's good at volleyball, and that's fine! it's perfectly all right to claim you're good at something if you have the skills/experience to back it up. confidence is healthy as long as it isn't in overabundance, and we actually see a lot of this throughout the series!

(not to mention that this was where ushijima fell short. he was overflowing with confidence. he did not believe, for even a single second, that hinata shouyou and his meager, scrappy little flock of crows could beat him.

but oikawa? he knew. he knew what it looked like to make something bloom.)

the key to oikawa's confidence that made him better was that he could pinpoint others' strengths and weaknesses just as well as he could with his own. and (bear with me, please, i might get kind of boring here bc it's nothing that hasn't been said in the manga before) i don't mean it in the way we see the coaches or more analytical players do, as observations to be taken advantage of by everyone else; i mean that in the sense of how vital it is to his position as a setter. that was always the biggest difference between oikawa and kageyama: no matter how much more raw talent kageyama had, no matter how much better oikawa believed him to be, kageyama, especially in the beginning, struggled to do what oikawa could with a team. kageyama struggled to bring out the best in each player. and it wasn't because he didn't know how -- oikawa freely admitted that kageyama had the skill for it, that kageyama, once he got his shit together, could win against him -- it was because kageyama didn't have that same confidence in himself.

(not until much later, anyways. but that's another story, for another time.)

so, oikawa's confident. he knows he's good. he can bring out the best in each player. he's got a killer serve (and a killer smile!), a mind for tactics that borders on machievallianism, and cherishes the trust he is given like it's something precious. his coaches let him lead without leaning on them. his team has the utmost respect and admiration for him. he has a reputation. from karasuno to shiratorizawa to the whole of miyagi -- there is not a single character who knows oikawa tooru and would believe that he is, in any way, bad at volleyball.

but it's not enough. despite all of that, oikawa still doesn't think he's good enough. and that, friends, brings us to the second point.

oikawa tooru is nothing if not passionate.

so were the others, of course. kageyama kept going after his grandfather's death. hinata kept going while being a nobody from nowhere with no one to back him up. atsumu kept going while osamu didn't. it's not even about just those who went pro -- kenma, kuroo, noya, and everyone else found things that they were passionate about and kept going with it. the entire story revolves around loving what you do and trying to keep that love alive, and, sometimes, that can be really, really difficult when it seems like it doesn't love you back.

oikawa was so insecure over kageyama to the point where he nearly decked the poor kid. oikawa got crushed by ushijima-- who kept telling him that his team was not good enough, that his choices were not good enough, that there was nothing good enough to be proud of -- for years in a row. oikawa was taught that there would always be someone better than him no matter how skilled he was, but if he let that stop him then he didn't fucking belong on the court in the first place.

oikawa tooru is intimately acquainted with not being good enough, but he keeps trying to be. he keeps going. he tries to keep the love alive even if he's not loved back. he pushes and practices and takes a plane far from home to become even better. even if he doesn't have the skill, even if he doesn't have the talent, even if he doesn't have the love -- he still has his pride. and what does that mean, in the end? how far does that take him?

in the end, oikawa tooru walks across a world stage and sees people who believed in him on the other side and calls it a family reunion. in the end, he gets to play the volleyball that reminds him of why he loves it and how it gives him so much love back. in the end, his pride is unyielding and unbreakable, a product of the forge. he molded it with his own two hands. he will not let it falter so easily.

arrogance would not have taken oikawa tooru this far. i hope this has proven that he is anything but.

remember: instinct is something you polish. talent is something you make bloom. and never, ever let anyone else tell you what your pride is worth.

[hikkokoro]

Oh god today was not a good day

[nat-without-a-g]

I’m scared to watch episode 1 of in the mountains of dadness for two reasons

- I don’t have Patreon and will never get to see the end of the story (sad)

- I fully expect to walk away going ‘HILDY RUSSET HOW DID YOUR SON END UP LIKE THAT’

[lucianlhsystem]

Hot take (I think)

Everyone in the fandom would be like Jax if they got Isekai'd into The Amazing Digital Circus, like it's just so likely that we all would refuse to go mad and become a sarcastic piece of shit (I hate you Jax) (But also damn why are you a mirror bitch)

Like imagine being there for YEARS and slowly forgetting yourself, everyone who you knew and watching other people around you who are in that hell space also lose themselves, getting every day worse and ending up taking by force the role that Caine assign them with their stupid little names in his stupid little game, and seeing how even lovers get separated by the insanity of that whole scenario

I mean Kinger and Queenie in this case, like i'm sure where in a romantic relationship, but even if it was just a platonic kind of relationship, imagine seeing them love and care for each other, just to then seeing one of them get transformed into this fucking mess of a creature and the other be more and more lost in their mind until they are not the person you once met

Like fr if I was there for years I would not think it twice, either I get in a fist fight with Caine to be let out the place and FIGHT my way out with tooth and nail until it worked, OR just don't let myself get attached to anyone and screw every relationship that could be made with the other people in that place, making myself hate them or hate me to ensure I will never get any pain when seeing that they either succumbed to the madness and abstraction shit in this fucking nightmare

AND EVEN STILL Jax was actually horrified when seeing Kaufmo being abstracted, like yeah it could be "oh shit I'm gonna die" but I see it as a "Oh gods, oh fuck he actually went insane nonoononononon-" in a worried for the poor clown kind of way

(And abstracted Kaufmo like trying to grab his face and the mannerisms they showed with him moving his head like trying to snap out of it was so messed up, like holy shit I'm sure he was actually understanding what was going on and even then could not control anything he was doing he was just an spectator to his own body, but that's for another post)

Also that fucking scene

THE CAMERA ANGLE

The way they look so small and freaked out by the thing they are seeing (And Jax taking anything to make as an excuse to leave, the coward twink really just ditched lmao) (Honestly same I would run so fast)

Anyways, a tldr is; Jax is exactly the type of bitch all of us would become if we ended up there alone, scared and not being able to even remember who we were

Or also like Zooble, they are also a "Don't speak to me don't percibe me I do not care" but in a "I'm way too tired and don't/can't deal with anything don't push it b#t*h" way rather than a "I won't allow myself be affected by this shit, even if it means pushing someone else to die in my place (because I'm a coward)" kind of way that Jax has as a wee little bitch (Same dude)

Like no way in hell I would be as kind as Ragatha, like that poor bitch was throw around because of caring to help anyone damn

Anyways that's the take idk if I'm going to die to people who really really likes the bunny man or really really dislikes the bunny man for saying I think he ain't really good nor bad, just a bitch ass coward who has attachment panic like everyone and how we would be as shitty as him ey (pls don't kill me I have a family)

The other hot take I have it's that Caine is a bitch as mother fucker and he knows more than he let's on, let them out before I boil your teeth and cut your eyes like onions tuxedo man, but like it's not THAT big of a hot take u know

Anyways I think Pomni Ragatha and Jax should kiss idk about u people -crow noises-

-Leila (don't kill me please)

[mifithemuffin]