#is it possible to love every single character in a show?

[koryxx]

gotta love the people in the notes doing the thing op is criticizing. “that’s just life, things change and you need to adapt” and “friendships have ebbs and flows, they aren’t static” and “people get swept up in romantic relationships but will come back when they realize their romantic partner cannot fill their every need” and “i love my best friend but i have a romantic partner and they do come before my best friend that’s just how it is.”

babes. we should not just accept this as normal and okay and healthy. analyze why it’s so absurd and confusing to you for someone to suggest maybe you should value your friends and maybe you don’t need to have a hierarchy of relationships. friendships are indeed not static, but “i have a romantic partner so now you don’t matter” isn’t the natural and normal ebbs and flows of friendship, it’s the amatonormative belief that friends are only important until romance comes into the picture—that friendship is a mere placeholder for the real thing.

(ever notice how common it is in media for someone to have an established “best friend” but then that title goes to their romantic partner to emphasize their elevated importance? this is a reflection of the belief that your romantic partner not only has to be the most important relationship, but should also encompass all kinds of relationships within it—your sexual/romantic partner and best friend wrapped in one—an approach to relationships that ultimately dooms both platonic and romantic relationships by “expecting too little” from the former and “expecting too much” from the latter. also, if “best friend” is less than “spouse,” why is it imperative that your spouse also be your best friend?)

the implication of folks being clingy or codependent or unrealistic for wanting their friends to not sideline their relationship of years for a romantic partner they met two seconds ago is the problem. we should be making time and space in our lives for all of our relationships, not just the romantic ones. because that’s what it is healthy and fair. and if you sideline your friends to make your romantic relationship the center of your world, only to realize that your romantic partner can’t possibly (and shouldn’t have to) fill all of your needs and you actually need friends in your life in a meaningful way, well, don’t expect them to have just been waiting around for you to realize their value.

and realize that this isn’t just a thing on a personal level. it’s not as simple as "oh your best friend prioritizes her husband over you? just make him your new best friend too! problem solved!" it’s bigger than that. romantic relationships, particularly marriages, are systematically privileged over other relationships: “amatonormativity intersects with other forms of oppression, especially gay and lesbian oppression and women’s oppression, to impose steep costs. amatonormativity is itself systematic in a way characteristic of oppression: legal penalties and discrimination interlock with social pressures and discrimination, stereotyping in the media, workplace discrimination, consumer pricing, and children’s education.” statistics show that married couples are less connected to their friends, family, and community than those who are single, and that not having a network of relationships outside of romance can lead to poorer health outcomes. this is more than your attempts to make people look ridiculous for being upset that their friend's spouse comes before them.

and more importantly, realize that romance being the most important kind of love is a modern concept. there are point in history and different cultures where platonic relationships were not so degraded—where they were treated with the love and passion and care and prioritization that has now come to be reserved for romantic love; where they were considered and treated as beloved family, not disposable side characters; where they would take on roles now only associated with family or spouses; where they were even referred to with language now considered exclusively romantic. so the argument of “of course romantic partners come first, that’s just how life is” doesn't hold up. that’s “how it is” because that’s how people make it. it is not naturally occurring; it doesn’t just play out like that.

we can change it if we so choose. if you don’t want your friends to have such importance in your life, just say that. don’t try to rewrite history or make people out to be dramatic or too much for wanting the people in their lives to value them. (and even if you don’t want that for your life, you should not only full heartedly support others doing so, but also advocate for changes that allow others to live the lives they want without unnecessary societal and legal barriers.)

if anyone is interested, minimizing marriage: morality, marriage, and the law by elizabeth brake (the book “amatonormativity” is coined in) and the other significant others: reimagining life with friendship at the center by rhaina cohen are good reads on this topic.

being on the aro spectrum would be a lot easier if being single wasn't made to feel like a literal death sentence

[nekrotiize]

It's a controversial take because everyone's stupid but I'm never going to stop calling fandom + shipping culture homophobic. Fandoms are consistently extremely homophobic, and shipping culture is consistently even more homophobic.

Yes, the way fandoms center men so religiously is obviously misogynistic. The only people who deny that are themselves misogynists. But the aggressive centering of men and the resultant fixation on male/male dynamics lends to this slimy coating of homophobia that nobody talks about. The misogyny is an issue, clearly. But gay men are, to most people in fandom, toys. We are sex objects to coo over. It's intensely voyeuristic. Every god damn interaction is scrutinized to hell and back, and the second a man shows any kind of emotional connection with another man, it gets pounced on, and he gets thrown into a mill that flattens him down to one of three deeply heterosexual yaoi tropes that are fandom's only way of processing the existence of gay men.

It doesn't even matter what that man is. A disconcerting amount of time, people will start fawning over the idea of literal rapists being gay with zero critical thought applied. As if gay men being painted as and assumed to be sexual predators isn't a method that's been historically used to literally legally murder us. (What the fuck do people think "Gay Panic" means, even?)

Gay men aren't given the ability to be human beings in fandom. We're not afforded nuance. We're accessories, we are constantly objectified, and no one ever takes the time to consider that we have cultures, and that we are real human beings. We keep getting shoved into the most heterosexual boxes physically possible for the easy digestibility of people who do not want to see us as human beings. Semes- sorry, I mean Tops are the taller, older, more masculine, capable men of the relationship. Ukes- oops, sorry again, I mean Bottoms are the smaller, younger, more feminine, and totally useless women of the relationship. It's painfully yaoi. Gay men in fandom are never given the opportunity to be regular men, because people are too busy turning everything into homophobic, misogynistic fetish porn of our existence to be normal for five seconds.

There's something comedic about how many people in fandom want to say they're progressive, accepting. Safe. How fandom is welcoming of everyone. Look, we've made all this representation! And every time, gay men are sex objects, the women are scapegoated to hell and back, the headcanoned trans men are always skinny white softboys not a single day over 21 maximum, lesbianism is maybe acknowledged 0.5% of the time and largely for brownie points, bisexuals are across the board made out to be overtly horny and often sexually aggressive, fans of color are harassed out of the community left and right, anyone on the aro/ace spectrums is called a freak and a killjoy for not participating in shipping, characters on the aro/ace spectrums are heavily included in shipping content with the excuse of "aros/aces can date/have sex like normal people, too!" with zero regard for what our love looks like, and there isn't a single accepted trans woman headcanon to be seen.

Fandoms are circuses full of dirty little liars with cotton stuffed in their ears and Shipping Culture is a disease.

And if you criticize either of them, the most annoying white liberals you've ever seen will start clutching their pearls because how dare you criticize something that's free?! Don't you know a lack of price point immediately negates any criticism?! Just laughable.

[water-lemon-alex]

objects in mirror.

inanimate insanity s2, episode 18.

(sequel to my “through no choice of “their” own” art.)

The end result of Inanimate Insanovember! Thank you for sticking with me on this journey!

I drew EVERY SINGLE CONTESTANT (and i hope i didn’t forget ANY) including our co-hosts and our very own MePhone4!

( VERSION 2 BELOW ; II18 SPOILERS ) + my special message!

I’ve known Inanimate Insanity since around 2021? Around the same year when I discovered BFDI. I got introduced to it because a lot of people in the BFDI community talks about the show, so I watched it for myself. And boy, I enjoyed it!

I was around when Hatching the Plan recently came out, and it looked great, so I watched it from the start. I was around during II’s 10th anniversary celebration; including the start of Season 3! So I watched most of the Invitational episodes when they first released.

But then I took a break from the fandom after Friend or Froze’s release, you know how stuff happened in the fandom during that time…Until one day, I got a lot of posts in my feed about the II movie, and the events of II16. When I heard my favorite character in the show (OJ) literally DIED, I HAD to go rewatch the whole show!

I binge-watched II up until II16, caught up with Invitational— things were wild. Listening to Taco’s Tirade for the first time (where I didn’t know it would become my favorite song), watching the entirety of II16 and finding out the big reveal…

Then I decided to draw some art for the show, and it got really popular! So I drew more, and they gained lots of traction. I took a liking for Season 1’s final four— OJ, Paper, Pickle and Taco! I gave them a cool name— the Menu Squad! Made headcanon designs for them, memes, doodles, everything. Just to show my love for them. Heck, I called myself the “Self-Proclaimed Menu Squad CEO”.

Then a cool AU idea appeared in my head before II17 released: the Welcome to Insanity survival AU! It was inspired by some lines from II16, then my intro post to the AU gained A LOT OF NOTES and it made me so happy when I found out people were INSPIRED by my AU! And so I drew more, and more, and now I’m here.

This community is full of wonderful creators big and small. I’m still really proud on how far we’ve come! I think there’s no other object show that could bring me such a wild experience! So thank you for all your support! And thank you to the II team for making this possible! I enjoyed the finale so much!

- With love, Lemi. 🍉🍋

[oodlyenough]

well now that i think i've talked about more or less all of arcane s2 i suppose i should also address The thing for me personally, which as anyone who followed me in 2022 knows was jayvik lmao

they are simultaneously the unquestionable high point of s2 for me while still also being pretty frustrating. i was never very excited for season 2 tbh because after spending time in fandom and learning a bit about the Sacred Texts of the impending lore, i was dubious of how s1 would lead into that and felt like we were going to get some square peg/round hole characterization and plot points to match up with league and the infamous "divorce era". i was particularly skeptical of viktor, whom I (unpopular opinion here i know) did not feel was set up for a villain arc, and I also felt all this would happen to a backdrop of the show mashing the no homo button repeatedly the way they did in season 1

so in that sense s2 did absolutely nothing i expected and was significantly better for it. jayce in particular had probably the best/most/perhaps only satisfying arc in season 2 for me. i loved him getting attacked by the mom of that kid he killed, i loved him falling down a hole in silent hill to confront his own bisexuality, i loved being validated three years later that he didn't give a single fuck about what viktor was doing with the hexcore lmao

i also loved many of the broader ship moments: loved loved loved the nonconsensual hexcoring to start the season, loved the salo convo, loved (generally) the council chamber fight, LOVED the convo next to dead clicker jayce about "in every possible timeline, only you", looooooooved 90% of the astral plane power of love sequence, loved the reveal viktor gave him that damn bracelet in the first place lmfaooaofhfl. lots of those scenes were very beautiful or hit beats i wanted them to hit and i was generally pleasantly shocked by how much their relationship was central to the final act.

but ... the downside was that imo for a vast majority of his screentime viktor felt like a different character, and not even really in the "possessed by malevolent demon cube" way that was (maybe???????) the intent. just in a flip-flopy way where i could never tell from scene to scene why he was doing anything or how much i was supposed to believe it was really him vs the hexcore and then it all culminated in a speech about weaknesses and imperfections that i don't feel reflects any of the character i saw in season 1. if I really squint, i can kind-of imagine some emotional trajectories to explain things scene by scene, but it overall is just a mess to me. if i try to imagine writing season 2 fic i wouldn't even know where to start because i have no idea what's going on in viktor's head the whole time

in conclusion: my most confused yeah boi ever??????

[booknbrew]

SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING OF PANTHEON SEASON 2 BELOW 👇 TW: Sui, self h, murder

One of the things that breaks my heart most about the ending of the show, is the fates of the human main characters:

David Sr. - died of cancer being the first human subject to an experimental brain surgery, in the hopes of mending the heartbreak of his family after his passing. It could be true that he suffered just as much as Chanda did on his surgery, though it may also not be the case, because Logorythems had a different surgical process to Chanda's captors.

Ellen Kim - chose to end her life because she felt irrelevant in her working field and because of her immense divide with her daughter (and probably grandchild), both on an emotional, philosophical and probably physical level.

Maddie Kim - died 20 years after her first and only love passed away in front of her to save humanity. Before passing she lost every close human connection she had, had to go through teenage pregnancy, raising a child as a single mom, and having that same child bleed to death in her arms. The only reason she uploaded was that she felt she had no other reason to live. She was the only one that felt that uploading was not a solution, but suicide.

Caspian Keyes - died as a martyr to save humanity as a teenager, after years of mental and physical abuse orchestrated by a big corporation, his last few years experienced in constant existential crisis and the disregard for his own safety and survival.

Cary - died to save his adopted son, but ultimately, did not get to know that he died as a martyr shortly after.

Renee - not a very nice woman that drove herself insane for a person she was madly obsessed with. After abusing a child for years, being a horrible and abusive colleague (if you call being a fake wife that), involving herself with a plan to genocide the entire human population (or at least as much of it as possible) for a lover just as insane as her, and just as dead.

Cody Lowel - similarly to maddie, probably uploaded out of despair.

Laurie Lowel - was murdered for the purpose of a failed experiment. Twice, if you consider the faith of her UI.

Chanda - same as Laurie, but had to be awake and suffer for a long time before dying in the very same experiment. Twice.

Though we did get a relatively "good" ending for a variation of Maddie and Caspian's UI, the only individuals I keep longing for are the humans involved in this story. I believe the one that suffered the most, if you can really make such a comparison, is Maddie.

Having experienced loss and grief over and over and over, just for her very last moments to be surrendering to despair, after holding your dying son... I cannot think about her character without getting misty-eyed. Having lost all of your family in the most brutal ways, including your would be future husband/long-term partner, it's just gut-wrenching.

Lots of people have found feelings of relief after realizing the fate of the UIs, but I could never stop thinking about the humans. I'm not even sure if we watched the real story, because we were introduced to a simulation in the first place. What if their fates were worse than what we saw already?

The slongen of the Pro Upload folks was "die now, live forever" but the reality is that not every character in the show considered their UI copy to be a continuation of themselves. So those who chose to upload even though they philosophy opposed it, have essentially ended their lives seeing it as us the viewers see suicide in our world, and it's heartbreaking. Though, ending your life viewing your UI copy as a continuation of you is horrifying in it's own way (may make a separate post on that).

[liliumofthevalleyy]

Roman Empire

My Roman Empire

[heymacy]

IAN GALLAGHER + his journey with bipolar disorder

╰┈➤ “At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning at all, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of." - Carrie Fisher

[retributory]

gx is so crazy how do you explain to someone with a surface-level understanding of what yugioh is that the series after dm features a hermaphroditic dragon-demon card spirit fusing their soul with the main character, who also has apparently been continually reincarnating for 100s of years with the card spirit's primary goal being to protect him, and when they embrace to fuse he says they shall never part again because they will forever and always from that point on be one jointed soul and body, and also he commits a borderline genocide against the card spirit race (???) and straight up kills some of his friends (they get better), and also there's a character who got his leg broken during an archeological dig and they replaced the broken bone with a dinosaur bone (???) and now he's like part dino and has fucking dino dna (?????????) and they send him to space as his dinosona to destroy a satellite that is about to destroy the earth (????????????), and also one of the teachers in the school (seto kaiba's duel school for dueling) is a homunculus and when he dies his soul (???) gets eaten by his cat and for the rest of the series he is living (?) inside of the cat's body, and also on top of all that theres a cool rival character as expected of a show targeted towards young boys who looks cool but in actuality he's lame as hell like he canonically stinks like shit cause he doesn't wash his clothes and he joins a cult and they get him out of the cult by reminding him that his real personality is being a rancid little stinky smelly bastard loser and no one likes him and he spends the entire series getting completely dunked on and also his main archetype is these things:

and then you have to concede that at the end of the day it is still an anime for a children's card game designed to sell the cards so if you ever try to explain the impact this had on your developing mind at 7 years old you'll sound sick

[nartml]

Trust and believe that it ain't gonna be pretty if season seven comes and anything touches my baby Soren or Corvus or Amaya or Janai or Gren or Rayla or Callum or Ezran or

[triglycercule]

murder time trio should get to all experiment with dead bodies. why? because they can and it would be cool (okay but seriously i'll provide an explanation). all these freaks are scientists. i think it would be cool and funky if they all got to experiment! except morbidly and bloodily because none of them are right in the head now

killer like has his whole thing with wanting SOULs for some unspecified reason??? i'm just gonna steal the common interpretation that it's so he can find a way to fix his own soul through coding. but like,,,, what does he do with the desd bodies??? all the fellas he stole those souls from??? well this is where dust and horror come in

it's One Panel and i'm ABSOLUTELY reaching here but there's a (single) panel in horrortale where horror's pulling apart some sort of human limb like an arm with a device. why? what for? i dont fucking know at all man like papyrus said why is he always doing something weird in his room. anyways i'm just gonna guess its probably for rationing in horrortale (but it could also be that horror just felt like ripping apart an arm. for scientific purposes. or because he did this after ripping off aliza's arm so maybe he's doing some sort of recollection reflection or something i dunno im not a professional on this man). killer could totally send all the already dead HUMAN bodies horror's way for horrortale's food situation. maybe horror likes to dissect the humans yk maybe he's not just the type of bash (a head open) and dash. monsters dust so you cant see their guts but humans dont so horror gets prime time first hand experience on the human body! and then after he's done poking around in the brain he can give the meat and organs to papyrus for him to do his specific spaghetti confectionery

but but but what about the monsters that killer takes the souls from! surely he doesn't just take from only humans (dude idk if he actually does take from only human or monster. probably not right? he needs to study BOTH types of code so he can be most informed) so he must also take monster souls. and fortunately for dust (i do NOT think he'd quite like handling gore) monsters don't leave behind bodies or blood or allat they leave behind dust. hah. dust experiment with dust. i think its already a headcanon out there that dust likes to study dust. i cant exactly recall WHY exactly but maybe it's for sentimental reasons or just something to do to pass time between resets. so killer can just pass on whatever dust he gets to him and he can put it under his little microscope and be a little nerd what a GEEK. give this guy glasses and remove all his teeth but one i guarantee you he'll look like 🤓

and once again i hear you cry out but but triglycercule! why would killer even give the dead bodies and stuff to horror and dust in the first place??? erm number one because i said so silly. jk. and number two (if we're going in a nightmare's gang context here) it could be as a way for killer to gain horror and dust's trust. a way for them not to tattle on him for stealing souls for some unknown reason. maybe there's somehow important coding information left behind in the bodies/dust (because that's literally what utmv is made of) and killer wants dust and horror to do that work for him for some reason. maybe just a way for him to get rid of evidence maybe if theyre buddy pals and close enough just as a gift. i dunno man there's a bunch of reasons as to why he could possibly do this. i just really liked the thought of the trio all wearing fancy lab coats and goggles and i was like damn how can i make this a real possibility

[koka-mi]

vent under the cut you don't need to read if you don't want to!!!!!!!

I honestly hateee opening up or oversharing with ppl. it's kind of like eating for me where it feels okay in the moment but then afterwards I just feel awful. it feels like I'm attention seeking or saying someone else's experience isn't valid for some reason and it sucks. I don't do it at all with ppl I just met but with friends I tend to get carried away with it sometimes,,,

It hurts even more because I've been distancing myself from ppl bcz I'm scared of this exact thing happening. People have messaged me before, saying I seem cool and they want to be friends. And I get happy in the moment, but then I get really anxious about accidentally getting too comfortable and blurting out personal things, because then their opinion of me will wane and they'll think I'm annoying or ungrateful. So I subconsciously begin to distance myself and take a while when responding to messages, because I'm scared of getting too comfortable with them. But now I'm anxious that they think I'm cold or distant and that I secretly don't like them. It's just a lose lose situation mannn </3

I have so many DMs I've put off responding to, and I've stopped talking in servers as much bcz I'm scared of getting close with ppl in them. I really feel bad for it, though. I've drifted from friends bcz of that and it sucks because I genuinely love them a lot. I love everyone I talk to a lot and they always make my day better--I just wish I could be the same for them. I feel like it's a chore to talk to me. I honestly don't know what to do. It's even worse when I get close to someone bcz they like what I make/post because again, now that they've seen how I really am and I've opened up, they more than likely see me as annoying or a bad person. Like it hurts enough whenever we become friends naturally talking, but if it's with someone who's seen me at my "best" and has seen things I work on or stories I've created, they ofc associate me with those things, and their expectations of me are through the roof. So when I disappoint them it hurts a lot more. I hate getting attached to people it hurts so much

[billpottsismygf]

.

[tar0star]

i love haikyuu so much omg I'm dying i just spent the last 4 hours consuming haikyuu content

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread

Love Letters For Joy

YA contemporary Cyrano de Bergerac retelling

an ace girl with cerebral palsy who’s determined to be valedictorian, with only her academic rival to beat

when her friends start pairing up, she starts to wonder if she wants something like that, and emails the anonymous romance advice email going around her school

[scattered-winter]

I love my shows but if I see one more piece of queer media say "sex is what makes us human" then I just might turn into the joker

[morzowo]

now i need unfix-it fic i need every person from the main group to be left by their respective partner that realised fundamentals of their relationships don't guarantee happiness and hope for the future i need the final shot of the show to be parallel to the first one in the bar but with the feel of sadness and defeat in the air all of them sitting together looking at each other with understanding no one apologized and no one will be apologizing there's no need since they know they only have each other that they are each others only friends