#i think i mostly sympathize

[artisanalpeanutbutter]

I'm happy overall that I was able to work & develop better empathy, but sometimes it makes life much harder than it used to be

[carlyraejepsans]

One thing I think people forget is that sans probably wouldn’t talk about missing his home and never being able to go back and giving up unless he absolutely felt he had to

with frisk he’s pretty sure that’s the time traveler that could very well end the entire world. He’s trying to reason with em as a someone he’s hoping could be a friend at that point because he’d really rather not have that happen

In geno is IS the end of the world and he’s hoping you’ll realize this is stupid and cruel and reset. It’s not like he’d have this conversation on a random Tuesday with papyrus

yeah agreed, sans goes out of his way to not talk to/with papyrus about their life before the underground. remember the newsletter q&a? (this is more a theory, but judging from their behavior i personally think papyrus is an amnesiac/sans thinks he is, and he's trying to spare him the grief of remembering).

his memories and mementos are stored behind his house for a reason, he's had his realization that he'll never go back already: there's no sense in reopening that wound again if he has an option to avoid the topic.

[jeeliebeeliegoomiebear]

On Isolde and Many Doors (and One Key)

Thinking about Isolde and how she feels like she is constantly trapped in a small cramped room full of 1 million doors. Each door represents a presence that haunts her, an identity that lives inside her that calls to her from beyond the grave, a new mask to dawn.

If every person in the world were to have a room, most would have just one door, their own. But not Isolde.

Isolde feels like an empty vessel who is only there to serve as a point of entry for other people and their spirits. She has been forced to become so repressed by her environment, upbringing, and her nature as a medium that she finds it easy to forget herself. Her “self” is not someone she has ever been allowed to know.

The room grows increasingly smaller, claustrophobic and strangling her with pressure as the amount of doorways in it only increase, every new person she meets a new doorway she is plagued with, a new voyeur who has granted themselves full access to her life and her body. Something she is now willing to let them do. It is easier that way. Easier to let someone else command her vessel, something that never solely belonged to her to begin with. An escape from all the pressure, the expectations, the perfection demanded from her. It is something she should do. The duty of someone like her. Something to hide her wretched face from view, to give the people what they want, to uphold her family’s legacy. A performance that was never allowed to end. Each new door lead right back to that.

The only exception is Kakania. The only person Isolde believes has ever really seen her as more than a host for other identities or something to mold into shape, prop up as a set piece. A perfect lady. The star of Vienna. A tragic heroine. A dangerous hysteric witch. A curse manifested. The only one who was ever interested in finding Isolde’s door and that door alone. When she is with Kakania, a new door does not appear in that ever shrinking empty room, although at first she expects it to. For the first time she meets someone and is not greeted with a new ghost to haunt her. Not a door. But a key. A key that Isolde knows can unlock her own door, even when she herself cannot find it.

[lucifer-kane]

main reason i wanna make clothes even on a small casual scale for myself is there's soooooo many cute things i see. alas. i am fat.

[attila-werther]

sometimes I'll see a post cross my dash where they refer to women as females in a specific kind of tone, and I'll check their blog, and 9 times out of 10 they're a deeply rancid anti-porn/sex can only exist as exploitation preacher, and just a little bit further and bam! the bioessentialism! and I'm like. damn! my batting average is pretty good. what a bunch of freaks.

[pa-pa-plasma]

(pick the one that applies most to you & elaborate in the tags/comments if you want)

[amphiptere]

is gay hockey smut a thing? because unless the authors are prepared to make their hockey universe co-ed, there's no way to have players on the same or even opposing teams get together and frankly that's a way more interesting story than "random hot girl meets hockey guy."

[callixton]

hmm i think another thing i like abt kencen is chess should be played on a smaller stage. now i am an intimate staging truther for almost every play so i may be biased but that doesn't make it less true for chess. like i get the appeal of the big sets bc of the way they travel thru location and our initial reaction upon literally visualizing chess on a stage, but i think it makes it so easy for characters to get swallowed and for the stage to feel very empty. which may work like. conceptually but i think in practice it just limits the actor's effect. & i know that you can argue that chess is a show that needs to get by partially on spectacle bc of the quality of the book but i disagree just choose a good book. or make up for it w staging and strong character choices. it's not like it has a shallow plot bc it really doesn't it just doesn't have a well resolved one. which is actually another argument for it to be in an intimate space bc it will make the audience feel more personally invested in the characters rather than the story and will care what happens to them even if they leave with questions (does this distinction make sense?). i'm also not saying that chess Couldn't be done well on a big stage i just think most of the time it isn't

[periwinklecosma]

wait what's up with kintsugi. i wanted to read that is there untagged shit in there too

warning for mentions of racism and weird shit regarding minors

nah afaik kintsugi was fine - i never got to read the last couple of chapters but i don't remember there being anything that made me uncomfortable. i'm more so referring to chibi's actions outside of her fics.

overall she's one of those "don't like, don't read, just block, and if you call anything out then you're being immature and condoning harassment" types. like essie, she's deactivated everywhere from twitter to tumblr to a03 (so you can't read kintsugi now even if you wanted to lmao), but the other day on tumblr, she was hopping onto posts pointing out essie's racism and weird shit wrt to minors to defend her. i had already known they were good friends so it personally wasn't too surprising to see her do that but it was still one of those "lmao ok now i know you suck too" moments.

i wouldn't be singling her out along with essie if that was all there was to it though. since the whole blowout yesterday, i've seen people talk about her own questionable behaviors, such as following minors despite claiming her account was 18+, defending people from rightful criticisms regarding racism and drawing 18+ content in front of minors, and inserting her opinions on discourse topics that she had no say in. and while i don't have a link for this, i've also heard that she had no qualms rting from r*imob artists as long as the art was good despite having it in her bio that these people shouldn't interact with her; this isn't me accusing her of being pr*ship in secret, i believe her claims that she's uncomfortable with that shit, but she definitely was very "it's okay if you ship this, it's just not for me!!" about it.

i'm not particularly interested in comparing her against essie and determining if she's "just as bad" but in some ways they were definitely um… birds of a feather? this is a bit of an afterthought admittedly but supposedly she also had a habit of throwing tantrums when faced with criticism, even if she came across as a generally nicer person.

and believe me i liked kintsugi when i first discovered it, perhaps even loved it. if you asked me a few months ago what my fic recs were for the fandom i probably would have included it. BUT i also have a very limited amount of patience for 30+-year-old white woman bullshit and she's run out. i've said that i won't hold it against those who simply didn't know or were too scared to say anything, but announcing that you're going on an indefinite hiatus from fandom activities before quietly deactivating and running away is not it. because all that tells me is that chibi isn't sorry at all.

[termitesisagrandslam]

i was talking about getting a 95 on that autism raads self assessment to my mom and she was like "can you send me that" and she got a 90

[dropespeon]

another day another post about kaito regretting being kid When will you people understand

[caifanes]

me when i start watching a new anime and am disappointed: i take back every mean thing i said about dr stone it’s actually a masterpiece

[oblisker]

i don’t wanna get into this discourse (on fiddleford’s end) but i find it very diminishing and honestly a little disturbing to me personally to call ford stupid for being abused. he grew up in a household with an extremely abusive father who had EXTREME expectations for him and his academic career, he was bullied and outcasted his whole life and grew to depend upon his intelligence as what determined his self worth….he’s not stupid for falling for bill’s flattery. he was mentally starved and wanted someone to compensate for all of his insecurities. someone with a history of living in an abusive household will often fall in with other abusers, not noticing the pattern

verdict: sure, it might seem stupid to us—but from his perspective? it’s like holding a diamond up to your face when you’ve been in poverty your whole life and asking you not to take it

I'm tired of pretending that I'm okay with ford being an absolute asshole towards fiddleford and basically abusing him.

first of all, yes, it's not ford's fault that he was manipulated (doubtful tbh) and abused by bill, but that doesn't give him the right to be a jerk who closes his eyes on his friend's deepest traumas. the traumas fiddleford got only because stanford completely ignored his warning and got fidds involved into bunch of shit. like his monster hunting which wasn't even the reason fiddleford went to gravity falls in the first place. he was there to help ford build the portal, not to be a part of ford's anomaly quest. and when fiddleford spoke out against it he was ignored because ford doesn't give a shit about anyone else but himself or his muse. fiddleford got traumatized physically and mentally so deeply that in the need to be able to sleep at night peacefully he completely destroyed his mind to the state that even bill was scared to be in there. and what stanford did? he (the one who couldn't care less about fidds warning him about gremoblin) critiqued fiddleford for using the memory gun and didn't even bother to apologize or say that he's sorry in the journal. god, what am I saying, he didn't even took fiddleford to the hospital after fiddleford feel from the sky through the roof of a fucking barn with a dozen of poisonous quills in his body AND A BROKEN ARM. ford described what happened to fidds in the journal, said he "took him home for a treatment" and the next two paragraphs on the other page is "good news the hyperdrive works" LIKE IS THAT THE ONLY THING YOU CARE ABOUT WHAT THE HELL??? "despite our fortune, I have become worried about my assistant... I myself have survived many monster attacks without trauma, but perhaps F is more sensitive that I realized". no shit sherlock, who would've imagine that seeing your worst nightmares and being poisoned can leave a mark on your mental state. sure it's just fiddleford, he's just overreacting because he's "sensitive"))) /src

ford was ignoring fiddleford's concerns all the fucking time that mcgucket was there with him, he took a superstitious and religious guy with anxiety into the forest with real ass monsters who's no one but ford is used to see. fiddleford was warning stanford about shifty and got kidnapped with his identity stolen by the shapeshifter because ford didn't listen. well, at least this time stanford had bothered to apologize for another traumatic event- ah no, next thing ford said is that when the portal is finished all the traumas fiddleford had been through were "worth it". ford just finds ways to make everything worse

we all know that fiddleford has an addictive personality and that the memory gun is the biggest example of that. what we don't talk enough about is that ford at some point decided that sleeping is for losers, but didn't stop at himself and made fiddleford drink 13 fucking cups of coffee, not allowing him to sleep, what in the future made fiddleford a caffeine addict. ford is not only an overworking idiot who gladly damages his own health, no! he wants fiddleford to be the same and quote "gets frustrated" when fiddleford cares not only about his own, but their both basic needs. fiddleford had to work on the portal, get in the trouble with monsters because of ford, but also babysit this manchild to prevent him collapsing from exhaustion (which is more impossible than building a giant portal into the multiverse)

and here we are, the portal testing. once again (and as always) fiddleford did warned ford about everything. fiddleford was working without breaks for days to make sure if the portal will work, and when he found the flaws, he wrote a whole fucking thesis paper, putting all ford's research into a solid work (not taking even smallest credit even tho he was the one to build the portal. when fiddleford had his own theory in the university, ford helped him to only proof that fidds wasn't going crazy by checking the calculations and ford bothered to take the credit for the whole theory, but fiddleford who was a part and a victim of this monumental theory of weirdness didn't took it because he unlike ford doesn't care only about fame). but what did stanford do? he assumed that fiddleford wanted to steal his fucking fame and backstab him. ford didn't even bother to look at something fiddleford was making for three days without resting to make sure that portal won't hurt anyone in the town and that ford won't end up with empty hand if the portal was indeed a lost cause. stanford coldly dismissed fiddleford like they weren't friends, said that he doesn't really waiting fiddleford for the test of the device that fiddleford did built, and even knowing that the portal was dangerous fiddleford chose to come for the test

and then fiddleford got in the portal and it was the biggest traumatic event for him. it was the breaking point for him from which he couldn't stop using the memory gun. it damaged him so much, that he turned from that bright 30-y.o. man into the familiar to us old man mcgucket in the span of two years. his life was ruined for another 30 years, a half of his life he was a mad lonely guy who lived in the junkyard. the man who could've become someone like steve jobs but much better if only he didn't go to help stanford. his family could've been full, tate could have his father. the incident with the portal was the moment of no return for fiddleford, and what did stanford do?

when fiddleford got sucked in the portal, he thought only about the success of his work, that for fidds it was "a remarkable opportunity to confirm or deny the theory" (which he already did with his pre-test research). he didn't think that it was dangerous on the other side, that the portal wouldn't just disintegrate fidds on atoms. and when stanford saw him speaking in a non-human way, shaking and twitching in shock like fiddleford did after the gremoblin incident, ford decided it was nothing. when fiddleford warned him about the apocalypse because he was in the portal and saw it with his own eyes, ford, as always, didn't listen. he didn't just not care about fidds' condition — he diminished everything fiddleford was feeling and everything he witnessed only because it didn't fit in ford's believes which were based just on bill's words (and for stanford it's not something new to belittle things related to fiddleford. he wasn't taking fidds' dream of creating a portable computer seriously, believing that his weirdness theory was much more important)

and after this, stanford insults fiddleford and his family in the journal. he says that he doesn't regret their partnership (it's not really a partnership if stanford didn't count fiddleford as an equal) and friendship breaking up. "to think I considered him a friend!" I doubt he ever did. stanford doesn't know shit about being a good friend (or even a decent person) to someone who sacrificed everything for him. who did put his life aside to be with ford, who cared enough to stay despite stanford again and again putting him in danger, constantly waving him away and feeling no remorse for that. fiddleford was breaking himself for this guy, he canonically was going through "I am nobody to ford if I don't build stuff for him" (and in the end this is exactly what happened). fiddleford didn't tell ford most of his fears and concerns because he didn't want to bother him. fidds was constantly scared and kept in inside because he wanted to be a "better partner". "if I have an anxiety, I will pop anxiety pills", "I'm gonna get through this". and then he didn't

fiddleford was abused by stanford. he was to stanford that ford was to bill, in some ways even worse. it's fucking wild that fiddleford did forgive ford after 30 years of a neverending madness nightmare with his mind being destroyed so much as like it was the earth in the times of the dinosaurs after being hit by the meteorite. fiddleford had lost literally everything, he wasn't even himself for a half of his life and still fidds found the strength to forgive someone who is responsible for it and who used him with regular emotional neglect. and you know what? fuck this. ford would never forgive bill and fiddleford had every right to stay mad at stanford. ford needed to be stuck in the portal to get his head out of the ass and by that time there were only crumbs of someone who fiddleford once was

fiddauthor and billford both are about abuse and toxic relationships. it's up to you what you like to ship, but we need to acknowledge the fact that fiddauthor isn't some fluffy healthy thing where both are happy. fiddleford was never happy and stanford didn't care about fiddleford and his feelings. they made each other worse and ford ruined fidds' life. THIS is the real fiddauthor

[slayfics]

Katsuki struggles to let you do things on your own.

650 words

Katsuki painfully watched as you fumbled around with the shampoo bottle attempting to pop open the top.

"Here," he grumbled snapping open the top, eliciting a sigh from you.

The room was filled with steam from the hot water that rained out in the shower. You had been home from the hospital for a few days following a major injury from hero work. Even though the doctors recommended that Katsuki let you do things on your own, he was having difficulty staying back. Including, accompanying you into the shower.

"Kats," you sighed. "You're supposed to let me do things on my own," you reminded him.

"I just opened the damn shampoo bottle," he said, but his eyes watched as you struggled to squeeze the shampoo out onto your hand. Hands barely being able to hold back from taking the bottle again to lather your hair for you.

Your hand strength wasn't back yet, and all your movements were painfully slow, making the most mundane tasks a challenge. Including squeezing shampoo out of a bottle.

"Want help?" he mumbled, being unable to contain himself.

"No," You snapped stubbornly. Frustrated at him, but mostly with yourself and your inebriated movements.

Katsuki's eyes snapped away from you, a small gesture that signified you'd hurt him.

You sighed again, finally getting enough soap in your hand to begin running it through your hair.

"I'm sorry Katsuki, I know this is hard for you," you sympathized with him.

"The hell do you mean hard for me? You're the one that's struggling to wash your damn hair," he pointed out. "Just let me help, brat."

"Katsuki if I don't start doing what I can on my own I'm never going to fully recover. I have to do it on my own even if it's hard or takes me way too long," you said refusing his help again. Katsuki grunted in annoyance.

"I get it, your love language is acts of service, so this is hard for you to not be able to do things for me," You clarified your early statement.

"You talking about that dumb test you made me take ages ago?" he asked, eyeing your slow movement as your fingers ran through your hair to work the soap in.

"Mhm," You hummed, placing your head back to let the water run over your hair. Satisfied, you moved out of the water again. "You show love by doing things for me, so this has to be torture for you to watch me struggle, but I have to. I want to get better." You explained. "Maybe just pretend your love language is something else while I recover," you joked.

Katsuki clicked his tongue, "Like what words of affirmation? I don't think so," he said.

"Awe, you did pay attention to the test!" You cooed at him. "Yeah, give it a shot, affirm me with your words" You joked, grabbing the conditioner bottle now and starting the painfully slow process again.

Katsuki watched as you struggled but eventually popped the top open, "Wow babe you're doing great," he said sarcastically, enticing a laugh out of both of you. "Fuck that was awful," he chuckled.

"What? No! That was good!" You laughed, feeling pain in your belly from your deep laugh. It had been a while since you'd laughed that hard.

"Fuck no, ain't doing that cheesy shit again," he stated.

"Fine fine," you agreed, laughter barely subsiding. "How about quality time then, just stay next to me, and when I need help with something I promise I'll ask," you suggested, washing your hair under the water again.

"Alight," he agreed.

"Here," you said handing him a loofah. "You can do my back for me."

You hadn't noticed how much tension Katsuki had been holding until his shoulders dropped and face relaxed at finally being able to help you with something.

"Thought you'd never ask," he smiled.

[aropride]

in 2020 when vanessa hudgens said "people will die, which is terrible, but like, inevitable," she was rightfully criticized by a ton of people, but now that's how almost everyone approaches covid. in 2022 when the then-director of the cdc rochelle walensky said it was "really encouraging" that mostly "people who were unwell to begin with" were the ones dying and not abled people, she was also widely criticized (though mostly by more left-leaning people and disability justice advocates). both of those statements were considered horrific things to say and devaluing the lives of people who were dying from covid.

but covid didn't stop spreading, it didn't stop mutating, it didn't stop killing and disabling people, the vaccines don't fully prevent it, you can catch it even if you're not uniquely vulnerable- and having had a covid infection before makes you more vulnerable, anyway. regardless of what the cdc or your boss wants you to think it's not safe to unmask just because everyone else is doing it.

i understand that the cdc and politicians have been minimizing covid for years, i understand most people don't know you need a kn95/kf95/n95/etc mask to stop the virus, i understand most people don't know that you can spread covid asymptomatically or presymptomatically, i understand that there's been a complete failure to communicate the dangers of covid to the public, i understand most people don't even know what long covid is or how covid can completely ruin your life without killing you. i understand that a lot of people don't know, but there are also people who do know and they don't care. or who are vaguely aware of the dangers of covid but choose not to pay attention to it because it's scary or inconvenient.

but we're five years into the pandemic and people have, for the most part, given up on caring, and i'm running out of patience and understanding and the ability to be nice about it. bc if you're not masking in your day to day life, that means that you've on some level accepted that "people will die, which is terrible, but like, inevitable," and that you're fine with contributing to that. i feel like one morning i woke up in a world that went from condemning that sentiment to fully embracing it overnight. and that's something i don't think i can ever really understand or sympathize with.

[yourdandelionofthedeathknell]

The Theraprism: Good or bad?

Ya know, i've never been sure how to feel on the Theraprism, as shown in the Book of Bill. This is in large part because we get very little info on it, from any perspective other then BIll's own at least (and he is...Not a reliable narrator). Personally, I see three possible interpretations and I don't know which one is correct. To be clear, I think all of these are fairly valid: 1. Their methods seem insipid, but are actually quite effective. They seem to have been effective in the past (one of Bill's fellow patients is slated for release in the near-future apparently), and the Axolotl (who, while not exactly rich characterization himself, has, generally, been portrayed as wise and benevolent) referred to it as "what [Bill] needs the most", which would be weird if it doesn't have SOME merit. I, myself, honestly prefer this one, because I think it works better with the narrative of the Book of Bill (a book which, generally, does not encourage the reader to sympathize with Bill's plight. Pity, maybe, but the framing is very clearly that he kinda deserves this) and the schadenfreude the reader is encouraged to feel if Bill's hellish afterlife is, largely if not entirely, a self-inflicted one: That it wouldn't be particularly bad if not for his own combo of being unable to accept that he lost, that he shouldn't be allowed to do whatever he wants whenever he wants to anyone he wants, inability to form meaningful bonds with others, and, most of all, his total inability to admit to being wrong. He COULD leave at any time, if he would just actually repent, but...He's Bill, so...He won't. It just works best for me if his hell is largely self-inflicted. 2. They are harmful, possibly deliberately. This does have a fair bit of support textually. Mandatory therapy is already a pretty major ethical grey area at best (a major tenant of modern psychotherapy is that you can't make someone change unless they take the first step), they definitely engage in toxic positivity, and, of course, the "Solitary Wellness Void" is...Solitary confinement, which is a practice most modern medical institutions oppose and consider to be psychological torture. So, fair bit of support for this. 3. This is what I think was probably Alex's intent: They're a bunch of oblivious obnoxiously happy morons (as Bill himself would probably describe them) whose attempts to treat eons-old eldritch horror bad guys with puppet shows and arts and crafts is meant to be amusingly-inept rather then actively malicious, and whose effectiveness (such as it is) is down to having literally eternity to try. Kinda like what Mabel might do to rehabilitate someone. To use an analogy, think Charlie Morningstar from Hazbin, at least in the first couple episodes, where the fact that she's treating adult criminals like misbehaving children is the joke and is meant to indicate incompetence rather than malice. I get that isn't that much different from the proceeding (except in terms of "how seriously are we supposed to take this"), but still. I think all three of these have support, and, to be clear, I go with the first one not because I think it's the most supported (might be the least), but because it jives most with how I think about BIll's narrative IE as a character we're meant to, at best, pity, but not really sympathize with. I think the intent is "Bill is suffering a karmic self-inflicted punishment after all the pain and suffering he's caused", not "Bill is being medically abused and we should feel bad for him". The Book of Bill does invite readers to sympathize with Bill occasionally, but mostly past Bill, not current Bill. All viewpoints are valid, this is just trying to organized some thoughts on the subject. I sincerely hope I haven't said anything harmful here. Uh, cards on the table, I am neurodivergent, but i've never had therapy, forcefully or otherwise (although I did have an irrational fear of the possibility of institutionalization for a bit), so i'm sorta going off vibes here, sorry to say. If I said anything insensitive here, I apologize.