#i will immediately change my views

[binobonobi]

original under cut

[somewhereincairparavel]

whenever there are jason slander reels on instagram and basically 99.9% of the comments are defending him and saying 'you aren't cool for hating on him for absolutely nothing' and 'its not 2013 anymore, all of us have matured now, and we realize how overrated jason slander is' angels gain their wings :)

[warlenys]

house md, 4x03 / 8x21 / 8x22.

[brainrot-jikan]

im not the biggest alhaitham/kaveh shipper (because im a rare pair ho) but it seems to me that in alhaitham/kaveh getting-together fics tend to be... unequal.

the beautiful thing about alhaitham and kaveh is that they're both equally right and equally wrong and equally dicks about it. but the writers for alhaitham/kaveh much more frequently seem to give alhaitham the burden change (the burden of the character flaw) instead of kaveh.

in any good character arc, the main character has a fatal flaw or misconception, and by the end of that arc they have addressed that flaw in some definitive way. scrooge was a scrooge and learned that being that way was detrimental; merlin from finding nemo was overprotective to a fault and had to learn that he couldn't (and shouldn't) control everything and to let go; the wolf from little red riding hood learns that you should stop while you're ahead.

stories centering around romance tend to lean heavily on character arcs, which makes sense. and since romance generally requires two individuals to be vulnerable and open and emotional with each other, it makes double sense that alhaitham/kaveh authors zoom straight into alhaitham's lack of emotional vulnerability.

this bothers me.

in society, individuals are expected to experience and present emotions in a specific way. if someone dies, you cry. if someone smiles at you, you smile back. if you're at a party, you're supposed to be having fun. if you don't do these things, you're seen as impolite at best and a inhuman freak at worst. when these behaviors are frequent it's often viewed as emotional immaturity, or a lack of ability to feel at all. the inability or lack of willingness to conform to societies emotional expectations of you is seen as a flaw and a reason for exclusion.

alhaitham is canonically disliked and avoided for being the way he is. he prefers it this way, but that doesn't mean the people perpetuating this avoidance are in the right. they are the societal pressure to conform that alhaitham blows off. alhaitham could be the way he is for a lot of reasons: avoidant attachment style, trauma, following someone else's example (eg. his grandmother), or just his base personality. it doesn't MATTER. he is the way he is. kaveh having to accept that should be part of the story.

putting the burden of the fatal flaw on alhaitham, making the way alhaitham treats kaveh and the people around him the problem, feels invalidating. it implies heavily that alhaitham's way of interfacing with the world, alhaitham's very SELF, is incorrect. my suggestion is to flip a larger portion of that burden onto kaveh. kaveh 👏 character 👏 arcs 👏

some examples/recommendations:

- make kaveh project his insecurities onto other people but especially onto alhaitham; he's overly reliant on other people for his own self worth, and he perceives alhaitham's lack of positive feedback as a direct reflection of how alhaitham feels about him. but learns along the way that alhaitham doesn't hate him, kaveh's actual struggle is with hating himself and being unable to his own self as worthy of love. maybe throw in how you are responsible for your own recovery, other people can help but you can't rely on them to carry you through self actualization.

- or, kaveh tries to make alhaitham behave more like a "normal" person, to be more pleasant and emotive and forthcoming, and then realizes he's in the wrong for trying to make alhaitham into something he's not, possibly for all the wrong reasons (not because he likes alhaitham better like that, but bc society says that's healthier and a better/more conforming way to be)

- or you could go ahead make alhaitham's issues the main problem but they're too complicated to overcome in a short period of time, so kaveh has to accept alhaitham is doing his best in his own way and not push for unrealistic and unhealthy changes. he could alter his own behavior to give alhaitham space and time and a safe place to land.

that got sappy so it's past time for me to dip out. go forth and ship things; but maybe consider letting alhaitham be a rude stone-faced bastard if he wants to be.

[caeslxys]

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere but it feels relevant again in light of the most recent episode. Something that’s really fascinating to me about Orym’s grief in comparison to the rest of the hells’ grief is that his is the youngest/most fresh and because of that tends to be the most volatile when it is triggered (aside from FCG, who was two and obviously The Most volatile when triggered.)

As in: prior to the attack on Zephrah, Orym was leading a normal, happy, casual life! with family who loved him and still do! Grief was something that was inflicted upon him via Ludinus’ machinations, whereas with characters like Imogen or Ashton, grief has been the background tapestry of their entire lives. And I think that shows in how the rest of them are largely able to, if not see past completely (Imogen/Laudna/Chetney) then at least temper/direct their vitriol or grief (Ashton/Fearne/Chetney again) to where it is most effective. (There is a glaring reason, for example, that Imogen scolded Orym for the way he reacted to Liliana and not Ashton. Because Ashton’s anger was directed in a way that was ultimately protective of Imogen—most effective—and Orym’s was founded solely in his personal grief.)

He wants Imogen to have her mom and he wants Lilliana to be salvageable for Imogen because he loves Imogen. But his love for the people in his present actively and consistently tend to conflict with the love he has for the people in his past. They are in a constant battle and Orym—he cannot fathom losing either of them.

(Or, to that point, recognize that allowing empathy to take root in him for the enemy isn't losing one of them.)

It is deeply poignant, then, that Orym’s grief is symbolized by both a sword and shield. It is something he wields as a blade when he feels his philosophy being threatened by certain conversational threads (as he believes it is one of the only things he has left of Will and Derrig, and is therefore desperately clinging onto with both bloody hands even if it makes him, occasionally, a hypocrite), but also something he can use in defense of the people he presently loves—if that provocative, blade-grief side of him does not push them—or himself—away first.

(it won’t—he is as loved by the hells as he loves them. he just needs to—as laudna so beautifully said—say and hear it more often.)

[arom-antix]

Merry Christmas, @crickets-lovely-place! Hope you're having a lovely holiday. Here's my Secret Santa gift for you!

[vigilskeep]

not grabbed by any of the companions i’ve picked up so far for romance, not with sol in particular, but i’m increasingly aware of how funny sol/davrin or sol/emmrich would be. like with both of those i DO want to see where my loser jock assassin is going with this

[spacelazarwolf]

always wild to get the most horrifically transphobic comments from someone then check their profile to see they have “she/they” in their bio.

[svtskneecaps]

ngl i really hope german joins the red team sometime. i have no idea what he's like or what he's up to but 1) i want to 2) carre needs a buddy besides cellbit, because i love that guy and being surrounded by english is probably wild in maybe a bad way 3) idk just want to see what happens. maybe homie can match energy. gas mask squad, team friendship. could this be what drags him back? god only knows, but i want to

[archersartcorner]

Shocked I haven’t seen anyone draw them sharing the seat… maybe folks have and I haven’t looked enough 😭 These two still live rent free in my brain. Love these two synths and the MASSIVE amount of baggage they carry

[theoreticalli]

I put 30 tags on that dear evan hansen post. for the love of god don't click to expand the tags I'm so fucking sorry I just hate that awful fucking show so fucking much. oh fuck I've done it again in the tags here oh god

[solsticelosthermind]

Opened my inbox and someone left me— “Your fics have been wildly intimate with dialogue and all their soft touches - I’m so glad I started the new year w your writing…”

So. I’m starting the new year off as a puddle. Hey ace, I love you? I love you.

[fideidefenswhore]

I'm not getting what weir's trying to say with this novel. did i hear right that in her anne book, she went over her death in prolonged agony for kicks and had her literally burning in hell? so it feels like she had an idea what to do with the six wives (clearly), but this mary novel is a fill in the blanks kind of story looking for someone to write about. like pgregs and margaret pole. and the plot doesn't even make sense to me. so she gives mary a troop of weird crushes that go nowhere for padding, and then she's happy with philip and misses him even when he can't give her basic enjoyment. what's she getting out of it?

p.s. if we're going with crushes for mary i don't know why no one makes a thing with philip of bavaria like the tudors did. at least that almost happened.

the implication is there, because while coa and jane receive 'the light' and angels beckoning them, anne's ending is 'merciful darkness descended'. i won't go into detail about the 'prolonged' portion, but she has defended the choice based on... what one could generously call 'research'.

the connection of their faith, and she's attracted to him, i think the suggestion is that she was so innocent and sheltered her entire life that she's not really even aware that there's a pleasure to marriage she's not receiving. which, like, she is a virgin (upon marriage), but you'd think she'd be aware of the prevailing medical opinion of the time, which was that women couldn't conceive without pleasure... tbf, none of the women in her series seem aware of this, which can either be attributed to weir's prudisheness/animosity towards (certain) women.

there is an interesting part, when it comes to philip's excommunication:

"In her anguish, she realized that she would have to choose between the obedience she owed her husband and that which she must render to Christ's vicar on earth [...] 'We will declare war!' [...] At last, they were as one."

whereas, the anguish of choosing between her father's authority and the pope's lasted... well, arguably her whole life, but she acknowledged the church of england's authority by 1536, so... several years? versus thirty seconds? it's interesting, i think the implication here (had weir had the skill to do more with it, that is); is mary's belief in the sacrament of marriage > that authority (it could've led to a greater moment of understanding her mother's obedience to her father insofar as refusing to do anything against his will beyond sustaining the use of her title, which is a source of frustration for her earlier on in the novel), and an allusion to how being anti, or pro, papal could be a matter of political timing > principle. it could even raise the question of how mary might've reacted had the earlier pope during the great matter declared against her legitimacy. would she acknowledge it? because an often unacknowledged aspect of mary's life is that she defied the pope herself during her own reign; her opinions and principles and beliefs on this matter were probably less straightforward than is usually assumed.

[lostbizkits]

I am not immune to dark skinned baddies

MAAM I WOULD TREAT YOU SO RIGHT DIVORCE YOUR HUSBAND PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE

[dirt-str1der]

Love characterising nishikiyama as a booze hound drug hound meth addict high every day body mass 75% alcohol hands constantly shaking literally spacing out while driving fifty over the speed limit using elderly folk as speedbumps one hand on the wheel and one hand free to do more drugs and coming into work while functionally deaf and blind and he is still leagues more competent at his job than kiryu

[angelstrawbabie420]

holy shit your eyes your eyes your eyes <3<3<3<3<3

thank uuuuu <3333 they are one of my fav features of mine i can’t believe i used to think they were ugly 😭